Many Young Indians Are Fat; More Are Famished
Scott Eells for The New York Times
In the Barabanki district, Asma, almost 3, is malnourished. Her mother says she did not have enough breast milk for Asma, the youngest of six children, and can barely afford some milk and a daily pot of morning tea.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 31, 2006
NEW DELHI, Dec. 30 — Presenting a confounding portrait of child health in India, new research commissioned by the government finds that despite the economic advances of recent years India’s share of malnourished children remains among the worst in the world.
Paradox being pervasive in this country, the new data on child malnutrition comes even as public health officials confront what they call alarming levels of childhood obesity.
In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India’s youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions.
Asiana, Air China Expand Code-Share Ties
Asiana Airlines will expand its code-share relationship with Air China in February.
The Korean carrier signed a contract with the Chinese airline Wednesday to jointly market all routes between the two countries beginning Feb. 1.
It currently has a code-sharing agreement with Air China on two routes. Under the agreement, the number of routes on which the airlines will share codes will be 11.
The two airlines will be able to sell seats on 151 code-shared flights per week between two Korean cities and nine Chinese cities.
The agreement will increase the number of weekly flights Asiana Airlines operates to China to 172, including code-share operations with Air China and other Chinese carriers.
Brazil Regrets its China Affair
Brazil Regrets its China Affair
Asian imports overwhelm dreams of a lucrative partnership
Matt Moffett
Geraldo Samor
The Wall Street Journal, 12 October 2005
Two years ago, to much fanfare, China and Brazil entered into a bilateral trade partnership, hoping to propel both populous, ambitious nations to the top of the development heap. With increased exports to China, Brazil made modest economic advances since entering the trade agreement. But in the same period, the world's textile quotas expired, leaving many world economies vulnerable to China's rock-bottom prices for manufactured goods. Now, as a glut of cheap Chinese imports floods Brazilian markets and the promised investments in Brazil have not materialized, the nation's leaders are reconsidering the alliance. Hampered by internal corruption and conflicting domestic business interests, Brazil's government wants to renegotiate the terms of their trade agreement with China. Unfortunately, having failed to elicit a voluntary restriction of Chinese exports, and having recognized its partner as a market economy, Brazil will have difficulty imposing antidumping penalties. Despite the emerging trade problems with the Asian giant, reports The Wall Street Journal, a long-term trade partnership may still shake out in Brazil's favor. –YaleGlobal
SÃO PAULO, Brazil -- At a huge chinese art exhibition shortly after he took office in 2003, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was effusive about the bilateral relationship. "If the Chinese believe in China and the Brazilians believe in Brazil, this could be the two countries' century," he said.
A couple of years later, the romance is on the rocks because of a massive tide of cheap Chinese imports flooding Brazil. Meanwhile, Mr. da Silva is facing criticism at home for having moved too quickly to embrace China in his effort to find a counterweight to US influence.
China's booming market helped Brazil climb out of an economic hole earlier in the decade, with Brazilian exports of raw materials such as soybeans and iron ore key to the recovery. Now, the dispute with China shows that the Asian powerhouse may represent as much a headache as a help for Brazil.
"The expected investments and strategic alliance that loomed in 2004 between China and Brazil are far from becoming a reality," says Riordan Roett, a Latin America expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Jet Airways introduces “check-in while walk-in” at Mumbai
SINGAPORE, December 22, 2006: With a view to ease the process of check-in Jet Airways, India’s premier airline, has added yet another customer oriented solution of “check-in while walk-in” (Roving Check-in agent) at Mumbai whereby a passenger can be checked-in by the agent with the help of a hand held interface device and a hip printer.
[IM]
China may decide to engineer coup in N.K. next year: monthly
Participants in an unpublicized White House meeting, called by U.S. President George W. Bush himself, two months ago discussed the possibility that China may arrange a coup in Pyongyang to bring down the regime sometime late next year, the Oriental Economist reported in its December edition.
China was still oscillating between options, but participants generally agreed that Beijing's mood is changing toward the North's Kim Jong-il regime, "with Beijing gradually, somewhat grudgingly, concluding that some kind of 'regime change' may be needed," the monthly said.
There was also "explicit discussion in the meeting of the possibility that, sometime next year, after China's President Hu Jintao has further consolidated his power, that China may try to engineer a military coup in Pyongyang against Kim Jong-il," it said.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley arranged the meeting with Michael Green, the former Asia director at the National Security Council, on Oct. 25 with Vice President Dick Cheney also attending, according to the monthly.
White House chief of staff Josh Bolton and chief political adviser Karl Rove, who has special interest in East Asia, were also at the one-hour meeting.
Green took with him Bonnie Glaser, China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Chinese firms acquire managerial control of large N. Korean copper mine: sources
Chinese firms have bought a controlling stake in one of the largest copper mines in North Korea, industry sources said Sunday.
Sources familiar with business cooperation between North Korea and China said Hebei-based Luanhe Industrial Group and another privately owned company signed a deal that gives the firms control over Hyesan Youth Cooper Mine in Yanggang Province.
The contract for the mine located near the North Korean-Chinese border was signed on Nov. 27 in Pyongyang with Luanhe and its partner receiving a 51 percent stake, giving them managerial control of the mine. No details on the financial terms of the transaction were released.
Hyesan mine lies about 65 kilometerts south of Mount Paekdu and near Changbai, China. It is estimated to have 420,000 tons of copper, with 250,000 tons that are buried 600 meters from the surface already being mined.
[FDI]
History Education to Be Strengthened
Korea history and world history will be integrated into an independent history subject from 2010. Also a subject ``East Asia History’’ will be newly introduced and the history class will be expanded from current two hours to three hours a week
[Koguryo]
N. Korean diplomat requests China to withdraw order to remove hotel from Mount Paekdu
A senior North Korean diplomat has asked China to withdraw its decision to ban the operation of a hotel run by a pro-Pyongyang businessperson from Japan on its soil, a hotel official said Sunday.
Earlier this year, China ordered a dozen hotels operating on its side of Mount Paekdu on the border with North Korea to stop business and leave by the year's end, sparking criticism the moves were aimed at bolstering its historical claims to the mountain.
Ri Ki-bom, consul general at the North's consulate in Shenyang in northeastern China, visited the Changbaishan Hotel on Dec. 15 and met Zhou Bo, deputy head of the Jilin Changbaishan Protection, Development, and Management Committee, the hotel official said, requesting anonymity.
Koreans Mad About Stocks in China, India
By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
The outstanding amount of funds investing in stocks and bonds in China, India and other Asian emerging markets grew at the fastest pace in November, reflecting surging investor sentiment in foreign equity markets
Unions triumphant at Wal-Mart in China
By David Lague International Herald Tribune
Published: October 12, 2006
BEIJING Wal-Mart workers in China have set up unions at all 62 outlets that the world's biggest retailer operates here in what a senior Chinese trade union official described Thursday as a breakthrough for organized labor.
After overcoming stiff resistance from Wal-Mart, which has long fought to bar unions from its stores and distribution centers, the official All China Federation of Trade Unions now plans to focus on other companies in China it accuses of being traditionally hostile to unions, including Foxconn Electronics, Eastman Kodak and Dell.
[Labour conditions] [IM]
China to Launch Korean WiBro Service
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Samsung Electronics, the world's third-largest cell phone producer, has struck a deal with Beijing Airway Communications to launch a Korean mobile Internet platform, called WiBro, in China.
Chinese Success Story Chokes on Its Own Growth
Ryan Pyle for The New York Times
In Shenzhen workers’ dormitories, frustration with hard labor, merciless factory bosses, low pay and miserable living conditions is palpable.
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: December 19, 2006
SHENZHEN, China — When Zhang Feifei lost her job in this booming Chinese factory town, she was not terribly concerned. Jobs had always been plentiful in Shenzhen’s flourishing economy.
Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village in the Pearl River delta, next to Hong Kong, when it was decreed a special economic zone in 1980 by the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since then, the city has grown at an annual rate of 28 percent, though it slowed to 15 percent in 2005.
With 7 million migrant workers in an overall population of about 12 million — compared with Shanghai’s 2 to 3 million migrants out of a population of 18 million — Shenzhen became the literal and symbolic heart of the Chinese economic miracle.
“The pressure is very high in these jobs. They don’t give you weekends, or breaks — especial ly the Taiwanese companies.”
[IM] [Migration] [Globalisation]
In Chinese Boomtown, Middle Class Pushes Back
Published: December 18, 2006
Even with all of this political activity, China is a long way from participatory democracy, even at the local level. Yet a survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences says that Shenzhen’s expanding middle class now accounts for about 10 percent of the city’s population of 12 million — a higher percentage, most here believe, than in any other city in China, though reliable figures are hard to come by. As the middle class grows, civic leaders say they expect to see a steady growth in citizen involvement.
Report: China Currency Not Manipulated
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, December 19, 2006; 5:46 PM
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration said Tuesday that China does not meet the technical requirements of a country that is manipulating its currency to gain unfair trade advantages.
The administration did say Tuesday that "more flexibility in China's exchange rate will help it achieve more balanced growth" and promote a number of other outcomes that would be economically beneficial.
But in the report it is required to deliver to Congress every six months, the administration said that no country met the "technical requirements for designation" as a currency manipulator.
Ben Bernanke and the Qianlong Emperor
By Reed Hundt
George Macartney (1737-1806) was perhaps the Westerner most famously rejected by the Chinese, but Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke are making a good run for his record. Earl Macartney, the first British envoy to China (then, as now, one of the two biggest economies in the world) led a Paulson-sized delegation to the Qianlong Emperor in 1793. His man-of-war had 64 cannon, demonstrating the might of the First Industrial Revolution to a country that had in fact invented gunpowder. He refused to kowtow, just as Mr. Bernanke declined to admit the existence of the terrifying fiscal deficit, the near absence of savings in the United States, the waste of two trillion dollars in Iraq, the crumbling American infrastructure, the growing income inequality in the United States. He demanded trade reform, like Ambassador Schwab just did (with her office nearly neglecting China for the previous six years). He demanded open markets, which in that year meant the export of high-value high-profit goods that would consume China's savings, just as Mr. Bernanke insisted that Chinese should lower their savings and buy more objects and services, especially from the West and especially including those that carried royalties for intellectual property.
The Chinese know what America needs. Most Americans know what America needs. Our emissaries on this enormous, strange, and possibly failed (it's too early to say) mission probably also know that what really needs doing ought to be done right here, within the Beltway, to make America vigorously competitive for decades to come. Because if we take the right domestic actions, China can grow boundlessly without threatening the American Dream; and if we do not take those steps, China's growth will shrink American hopes forever. It's up to us, not them, to choose our future.
[China competition]
S. Korea's trade dependency on China soaring: report
South Korean trade's dependency on China is rising fast, while its reliance on the U.S., Japan, and other Asian countries is falling sharply, a private think tank said Monday.
In the first 10 months of this year, South Korea's trade dependency on China stood at 21.8 percent, compared with 12.2 percent for the U.S. and 12.4 percent for Japan, Samsung Economic Research Institute (SERI) said in a report.
In 2000, the figures were 13 percent for China, 20.1 percent for the U.S. and 15.7 percent for Japan, it said.
India & Japan: Democracy as a Strategic Weapon
By B.Raman
India's Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, visited Japan from December 13 to 16, 2006, at the invitation of Mr. Shinzo Abe, the Japanese Prime Minster. This was in return for a visit paid by the then Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Junichiro Koizumi, to India in the last week of April,2005. The visit came less than a month after the visit of the Chinese President, Mr. Hu Jintao, to India from November 20 to 23, 2006. [China confrontation]
Indo-Japanese Relations: Hype & Reality
by B.Raman
(Based on a talk delivered by the writer at the Indo-Japan Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Chennai, on June 10,2005)
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan visited New Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other Indian leaders in the last week of April,2005. In interviews given before the visit, he did not characterise the emerging relationship between India and Japan as a strategic partnership. However, he spoke of a convergence of strategic interests. He said: "Japan and India need each other as strong, prosperous and dynamic partners." He described the objective of his visit as "to reinforce the Japan-India ties with a new strategic orientation in a new Asian era."
India's shame
Mohammad Afzal is due to hang for his part in the 2001 attack on India's parliament building. But was he only a bit player? And is the country trying to bury embarrassing questions about its war on terror? By Arundhati Roy
Friday December 15, 2006
The Guardian
Five years ago this week, on December 13 2001, the Indian parliament was in its winter session. The government was under attack for yet another corruption scandal. At 11.30 in the morning, five armed men in a white Ambassador car fitted out with an improvised explosive device drove through the gates of Parliament House. When they were challenged, they jumped out of the car and opened fire. In the gun battle that followed, all the attackers were killed.[Terrorism]
Call for Mandarin lessons in schools to boost trade with China
Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent
Thursday December 14, 2006
The Guardian
Chinese languages and culture should be taught in British schools and universities if UK firms are not to miss out on multi-billion-pound opportunities in China, according to business leaders.
A poll of chief and senior executives by the Hay Group revealed directors believe differences in culture, language and communication pose the greatest barrier to doing business in China.
Education is the key to maximising opportunities worth a forecast £200bn a year by 2009, business leaders say, but they warn the shortage of Mandarin-speaking UK graduates will soon lead to a "war for talent" as companies scramble to recruit managers with an understanding of Chinese languages and business culture.
[China competition] [IM]
The Militarization of Space and U.S. Global Dominance: the China Connection
By Tom Barry
The October release of the Bush administration’s new National Space Policy marked an important step forward in a long-fought campaign by right-wing hawks to extend their agenda toward the stars. The advance of the space hawks was also evident in the annual report of the U.S.-China Commission, which in its recently released annual report warned that measures were need to halt the alleged effort by the Chinese to challenge U.S. space supremacy.
[China confrontation]
Branding Taiwan
Publication Date?11/30/2006
In the later half of the last century Taiwan was transformed from one of Asia's poorest countries to one of its richest. How this was achieved has been analyzed at length in the last 15 years or so. Theories range from wise government macro-policy setting and the nurturing of essential upstream suppliers to the natural entrepreneurial zeal of the Taiwanese. Probably it was a mixture of these elements and others.
An International Exercise
Peter Lo has found success in developing brand name products.
Publication Date?11/30/2006
Byline?KELLY HER
Peter Lo is a local legend for turning a small company into a highly efficient multinational.
At 5:00 a.m. every morning, Peter Lo gets up and straight onto a treadmill for an hour. He has been running this routine for more than 20 years. For the 65-year-old native of Chiayi County, being on the treadmill is both literal and figurative: he is the founder of an enormously successful fitness equipment business, Johnson Health Tech. Co.
In the case of home fitness equipment, these concepts need to not merely address people's enthusiasm to get in shape but also blend in their homes with other furniture. "To be successful, companies must delve into the households, lives and culture of their target consumers, and design products based on this knowledge," says Kuan. "From this perspective, fitness equipment is a cultural industry."
Kuan thinks that Johnson has done well with branding and design and pricing levels for different markets. "Johnson is a model of the traditional Taiwanese manufacturer that has maintained a competitive edge through the integration of brand management, design, production and marketing capabilities," he says.
China's foot in India's door
By Tarique Niazi
(Republished with permission from Japan Focus)
China's growing presence in South Asia rides on its accelerated economic and strategic influence in the region. This article gauges the interplay between economic, particularly resource factors, and strategic factors in China's advance in the region and its relations with South Asian nations.
Pentagon realigns Asia watch
New office removes the region from catch-all international division
December 04, 2006 ? WASHINGTON ? Aiming to focus more on China, the Korean Peninsula and the surrounding region, the U.S. Department of Defense recently established a new section that will focus solely on the region, several sources in Washington said Sunday.
In a recent realignment of the department the Asia Pacific region, once overseen by the International Security Affairs division, is now a separate unit called Asian and Pacific Security Affairs that covers Central Asia and Southeast Asia as well. Sources said that Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Richard Lawless will head the new organization and will be promoted to the position of under secretary. A military expert said the move was intended to give more emphasis to watching China's emerging military power and to signal the U.S. military's increasing interest in the region.
[China confrontation]
From Competitors to Trading Partners
Africans Adjust As Business Ties With China Grow
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 3, 2006; Page A23
KANO, Nigeria -- The pasta factory that Umar Sani Marshall's family owns on the outskirts of this ancient city had not churned out so much as a single piece of macaroni in more than a year. The other former titans among Kano's once-mighty manufacturers were doing no better, producing mostly cobwebs as the city's markets overflowed with cheap imports from China.
So last month Marshall, 30, tall and wiry with rectangular, silver-framed glasses and a goatee, decided to forsake his legacy as scion of one of Nigeria's leading industrial families. He strapped $5,000 to his waist and flew off to Asia in search of a new kind of fortune, built not on making goods but trading them.
By the time he returned 12 days later, Marshall had started a new business dealing cars and auto parts, as a middleman between Chinese suppliers and Nigerian consumers. Along the way, he said, he found the kinds of profits that long have eluded Kano's manufacturers, and he learned a few lessons about how to work with Chinese businesses instead of competing against them.
Although the model stirs memories of the kind of economic relationships once common between European powers and their vassal states here, Africans say the Chinese at least treat them as equals and invest in infrastructure projects key to the continent's future.
[China competition] [Globalisation]
India-China: Hype & Reality---Part II
by B. Raman
Paper no. 2042
30. 11.2006
The hopefully positive outcome of the visit of President Hu Jintao to India from November 20 to 23, 2006, was the indication, which started coming in even before his visit, of a seeming change in China's attitude to India's quest for civilian nuclear energy technology and equipment in order to meet the growing energy demands of its fast-growing economy. Its attitude is no longer negative as it was at least till June, 2006. It is seemingly positive now, but whether this change to the positive is unconditional or conditional upon the Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) adopting a similar stance towards Pakistan too remains to be seen.
India-China: Hype & Reality---Part I
By B. Raman
Paper no. 2038
27.11.2006
Shorn of the euphoria and the wishful-thinking usual on such occasions, the net results of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to India (New Delhi, Agra and Mumbai) from November 20 to 23,2006,could be categorised under three heads--- positive, hopefully positive and disturbingly negative.
2. The positive result, as in the past, relates to the steadily strengthening bilateral economic relations, despite continuing differences on the border dispute between the two countries. To understand the significance of the bilateral economic relations, they need to be examined under three heads---bilateral trade, bilateral construction contract flows and bilateral investment flows
Third recall bid is 28 votes short in Legislature
Publication Date?12/01/2006
By Edwin Hsiao
A third attempt to recall President Chen Shui-bian over corruption allegations failed to pass in the Legislative Yuan Nov. 24, garnering 118 affirmative ballots from the 131 legislators present, after the opposition parties could not persuade legislators of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party to vote in favor of the motion.
Initiated by the Kuomintang and People First Party, the recall motion was prompted by the Nov. 3 indictment of first lady Wu Shu-jen on charges of embezzlement of public funds and forgery. It was the latest in a series of alleged corruption and misconduct scandals implicating members of the first family and Chen's top aides.
The motion needed support from 146 of the island's 218 legislators in order to force a national referendum on whether Chen should be removed from office.
[Corruption]
‘Blue Ocean’ Author Urges Koreans to Ditch Competition
Updated Dec.1,2006 09:14 KST
The bestselling author and inventor of the “blue ocean strategy” W. Chan Kim made an exception to his rule of not meeting the press and spared some time for the Chosun Ilbo this week. Kim was fresh from a forum on China's economic prospects in Beijing, where he gave a keynote speech on the strategy he created with his co-author Renée Mauborgne. Their book of the same title has sold more than 500,000 copies in China alone, so Kim is snowed under a blizzard of invitations from the country. "China wants to take advantage of blue ocean strategy to get out of its traditional way of competing against advanced nations, such as copying their products and producing cheap goods,” the professor at France’s prestigious INSEAD business school says. "The Chinese government is particularly interested in blue ocean strategy to promote its national development.”
Blue ocean strategy has become a global buzzword in business. Why is even China, which is already enjoying stellar economic growth, so eager to adopt it?
The idea is simple: avoid the bloody competition of red oceans already crowded by players and seek out new, blue oceans, read markets where competition is irrelevant
Business relocation spurs S. Korean investment in China
South Korea's direct investment accounted for the largest portion of foreign direct investment in China last year as companies, such as POSCO and LG Electronics Inc., relocated plants to Asia's second-largest economy, the central bank said Thursday.
South Korea's direct investment in China amounted to US$10.1 billion in 2005, or 26.2 percent of the total foreign direct investment last year, the Bank of Korea said in its report on international investment data for 2005.
The United States, previously the No. 1 destination for South Korea's direct investment, dropped to second place in terms of South Korea's foreign direct investment. The investment in the U.S. reached $10 billion, or 26 percent of the total.
[FDI][Realignment]
28 Charged In Mumbai Train Blasts
Associated Press
Friday, December 1, 2006; Page A20
MUMBAI, Nov. 30 -- Indian police filed formal charges against 28 people Thursday for suspected involvement in the July 11 train bombings in Mumbai that killed more than 200 people.
Thirteen of the accused are in police custody, and the rest are at large, public prosecutor Raja Thackeray said.
The 28 were charged with murder, handling explosive substances, committing terrorist acts and causing damage to public property in Mumbai, formerly called Bombay.
If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
Police say the 28 suspects belong to Lashkar-i-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, as well as the Students Islamic Movement of India, a banned group based in northern India. Police also have alleged that Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence was behind the bombings. Pakistan has denied the accusation.
[Terrorism]
China's Energy Security and Its Grand Strategy
Liu Xuecheng,
The Stanley Foundation, Muscatine, IA, US
"China's Energy Security and Its Grand Strategy (171.4 KB) [a PDF document] Policy Analysis Brief Authored by Dr. Xuecheng Liu China considers energy security critical to sustainable growth. Xuecheng Liu discusses China's strategies of conservation, efficiency, and a shift toward alternative fuels, and examines the implications on international relations and security. Published September 2006 (16
pages)
Dr. Xuecheng Liu
Xuecheng Liu is a senior fellow of China Institute of
International Studies; director of Asia Studies Program,
China Reform Forum; director of China-India-US
Forum, Yunnan University; director of Beijing Center
for American Studies; and member of ARF
Experts/Eminent Persons. His current research focuses
on relationships between major powers and Asian political
and security issues. Among his recent publications
are The Sino-Indian Border Dispute and Sino-
Indian Relations (University Press of America, 1994)
and China and the United States: Partners or Rivals
(China Economic Science Press, 2001).
[Energy security] [India] [China-India relations]
‘Chindia Fever Exaggerated’
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
American futurist John Naisbitt lectures at the headquarters of the Ministry of Information and Communication in central Seoul, Thursday.
/Korea Times Photo by Kim Tae-kyu
American futurist John Naisbitt on Thursday downplayed the prospects of China and India, sometimes called ``Chindia,’’ predicting that the United States would remain the single dominant economy for up to four decades to come.
During a lecture in Seoul Thursday, Naisbitt presented somewhat negative outlooks for the world’s two fastest-growing countries. He came here to promote his new book ``Mind Set.’’
``In the media, there is a hype that China is going to overtake the U.S. next Tuesday morning. That’s silly _10 years silly. The disparity is so great,’’ Naisbitt said.
Perfect’ Fake Electronics From China Outdo Originals
To say that imitations are selling like hot cakes in China is to state the obvious: the country’s capability to copy premium products is close to perfect. In some cases, made-in-China imitations are pushing the originals out of the market.
[China competition]
Chinese Copycat Car Stuns Korean Carmakers
Hyundai Motor is considering legal action against a Chinese carmaker that presented a SUV that in parts looks identical to the new-model Santa Fe at the 2006 Beijing Auto Show. The altercation is the most serious spat in the car industry between the two countries over knock-off brands yet.
[China competition]
Hu Ends South Asian Trip Focused on Trade Diplomacy
By REUTERS
Published: November 26, 2006
Filed at 5:04 a.m. ET
Skip to next paragraph
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao ended a four-day visit to Pakistan on Sunday during which he promised to work with Islamabad to elevate strategic ties to ``a new high'' and strengthen trade and economic cooperation.
Hu had visited India immediately before coming to Pakistan, and the Chinese leader avoided taking sides over the South Asian rival's perennial dispute over the Kashmir region, and instead focused on economic partnerships with both countries.
Trade pact expected on Hu Jintao's Pakistan trip
By Salman Masood / The New York Times
Published: November 23, 2006
ISLAMABAD: President Hu Jintao of China began a four-day visit to Pakistan on Thursday aimed at reaffirming longtime strategic ties and enhancing a growing economic relationship.
During his visit, Hu will meet with President Pervez Musharraf and is expected to sign economic agreements, including a possible free trade agreement, and to set up a joint investment company.
Korean Steel, Petrochem Industries Under Chinese Threat
"Opportunity-turned-crisis" is how the Korean steel and petrochemical industries see their position as China emerges as a formidable competitor. The two industries saw their performance improve greatly over the last three or four years thanks to soaring demand there. But the boom is nearing its sour end as their Chinese competitors expanded facilities and cheap made-in-China products take over. Just as Korea’s chemical textile industry is at death's door due to Chinese competition, the steel and petrochemical industries may have to fight for their survival soon. Experts say the reason is that the two are large-scale “process industries”, where competitors can catch up as soon as a certain amount of capital and facilities are in place.
[China competition]
Out of India, En Masse and on the Way Up
Population Influx Vastly Outpaces Other Groups
By Cecilia Kang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 22, 2006; Page A01
The once-small Indian immigrant population, which for decades expanded at a slow but steady rate, has ballooned over the past decade. Immigrants from India are settling here faster than any group except Salvadorans.
Many Indians were among the recent wave of high-tech professionals who entered on temporary permits for skilled workers. When their spouses, children and siblings followed, their numbers soared, especially in Fairfax and Montgomery counties.[Diaspora]
China Unfreezes NK Bank Accounts
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
China has unfrozen some North Korean accounts in a Macau bank that have been suspected of being linked to money laundering and other financial irregularities, Yonhap News Agency and KBS reported, quoting a Beijing-based diplomatic source yesterday.
The move, which seems to have been conducted with the understanding of the United States, is likely to oil the wheels in the expected resumption of the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs, reports said. The multilateral talks, which have been stalled for one year, are expected to resume as early as next month, as Pyongyang said it would return to the negotiation table late last month.
[Sanctions] [US-NK negotiations]
N.Korea's Accounts in Macau Bank Unfrozen: Source
Meanwhile, a source said some North Korean accounts in the embargoed Banco Delta Asia in Macau, suspected of being North Korea's main money laundering channel, were unfrozen ahead of the resumption of talks. A source in Beijing said China recently permitted deposits and withdrawals in the accounts with U.S. blessing, freeing $12 million or roughly half of the total.
Pundits speculate that the U.S. in return suggested several conditions for the resumption of the talks, including a complete stop to operations of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear facility.
Chen telephones Nicaragua to congratulate President-elect Ortega
By Edwin Hsiao
11/17/2006
ROC President Chen Shui-bian congratulated Daniel Ortega, the president-elect of Nicaragua, by telephone Nov. 10 on his electoral victory in that country's presidential polls held Nov. 5.
The telephone conversation between Chen and Ortega lasted about 20 minutes, and was "very cordial," according to the quasi-official Central News Agency, which quoted a source identified only as an official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ortega reportedly told Chen that after assuming office, his administration would be willing to deepen relations with Taiwan and continue expanding bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
While campaigning, Ortega and his Sandinista front expressed their intention to forge diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, calling into question the future of formal relations between the ROC and Nicaragua. The unnamed MOFA official said that diplomatic ties between the ROC and Nicaragua will indeed be facing an unprecedented test in the coming two months, as Ortega is scheduled to take office on Jan. 10, 2007.
Beijing to Confer With Pyongyang on Mt. Paektu
By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
Chinese Ambassador to Seoul Ning Fukui has said that Beijing will not unilaterally register Mt. Paektu located on the border between North Korea and China on the UNESCO heritage list.
``We will consult the nation concerned on the registration of Mt. Paekdu (in the UNESCO natural and cultural heritage) because it is located on the border,’’ Ning said during a lecture at Seoul National University on Thursday.
PATA Forecasts in Chinese Launched Tomorrow
PATA is continuing to build its brand profile in China (PRC) with the launch of PATA's first Chinese-language Asia Pacific Tourism Forecasts report, at the China International Travel Market 2006 (CITM2006) on Thursday.
[Tourism]
THE SINO-RUSSIAN ARMS DILEMMA
By Richard Weitz
For over a decade, Russian military exports to China have constituted the most important dimension of the two countries’ security relationship. Since the two governments signed an agreement on military-technical cooperation in December 1992, China has purchased more weapons platforms and hardware-related items from Russia than from all other countries combined. During the 1990s, the value of these deliveries ranged up to US$1 billion annually. In recent years, this figure has approached $2 billion per year. Through these dealings, the various branches of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have acquired Su-27 and Su-30 advanced fighter aircraft, Mi-17 transport helicopters, Il-72 transport aircraft, A-50 warning and control aircraft, SA-10 and SA-15 air defense missiles, T-72 main battle tanks, Kilo-class diesel submarines, and two Sovremenny-class destroyers [1]. Furthermore, in early November, Beijing and Moscow appeared to be finalizing a deal in which China would purchase the Su-33, an advanced carrier-based variant of the Su-27 (Sankei Shimbun, November 6).
Despite these impressive figures, the Moscow-Beijing arms axis is approaching a crossroad. The ongoing improvement in the quality of China’s own defense industry will eventually lead to a declining demand for the advanced weapons systems that Russia currently exports. Russian officials are therefore confronted with a choice: to accept the probability of declining Chinese orders and to seek alternative markets elsewhere or to offer to sell the PLA even more advanced systems that Russian export policies have hitherto prohibited.
A Russian decision to sell its most advanced weapons to China could trigger a sharp U.S. reaction. In its February 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the U.S. Department of Defense stated: “Internationally, the United States welcomes Russia as a constructive partner, but views with increasing concern its sales of destructive weapons technologies abroad” [6].
[Tradeoff] [Military balance] [China confrontation]
China says oil still goes to the North
November 17, 2006 ? WASHINGTON - China has not cut off oil supplies to North Korea, nor will it stop oil and food assistance to its ally as a means of exerting political pressure, Chinese officials were quoted as telling a group of U.S. scholars.
The Americans in the group also said Wednesday that Chinese officials seemed to have a different understanding from the North Koreans about how U.S. financial sanctions would be dealt with at the next round of six-nation talks.
The Chinese reportedly said they were "surprised" that Pyongyang had told the group it expected those sanctions to be lifted.
North Korean officials told the American visitors that they expected discussions and a conclusion of the sanctions issue at the next six-party talks, according to Mr. Pritchard.
But Chinese officials, when told of Pyongyang's position, "expressed some surprise," Mr. Hecker said.
"They indicated, obviously, differences of opinion as to what was agreed on," he said. [Sanctions]
China forces dollar into limelight
By Peter Garnham
Published: November 10 2006 11:56 | Last updated: November 10 2006 17:28
China made its presence felt in the currency markets this week as the prospect of the country diversifying its massive foreign exchange stockpiles sent the dollar reeling to a ten-week low against the euro and to its weakest level in eighteen months against sterling.
On Monday, China’s state television network reported that China’s foreign currency reserves, the world’s largest, had exceeded $1,000bn for the first time.
Analysts said while the event itself was widely expected, it might spark a debate about the renminbi, which many of China’s trading partners believed was undervalued.
In the event, however, it was the dollar that was thrust into the spotlight as Fan Gang, director of China’s National Economic Research Institute and member of China’s monetary policy committee, went on the offensive.
Mr Fan said the real problem the world faced today was an overvalued dollar, not only against the renminbi but against all major currencies. “The main responsibility for this imbalance lies with the US Treasury, which is printing too much money,” he said.
Analysts said with 70 per cent of China’s reserves thought to be in dollars and Chinese officials making noises about the currency’s overvaluation, there was a chance that the country was considering a fundamental change in reserve allocation.
[Finance] [Realignment] [China confrontation]
China, the real threat - Boycott China!
Article by Dictator Watch, Roland Watson.
North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on October 9th, and it also has ballistic missiles (last tested in July). It further seems likely, with additional technical development, that it will be able to manufacture nuclear warheads for the missiles, thereby threatening all of East Asia and even potentially Alaska and Hawaii.
North Korea also presents a severe risk of nuclear proliferation, and it has close ties to Iran and Pakistan. There is a real possibility that it will sell a nuclear weapon to Islamic extremists, which weapon could then be smuggled to and detonated anywhere in the world.
The nuclear crisis in North Korea has been orchestrated - stage-managed - by China, as a way to take advantage of the Bush Administration's preoccupation with Iraq.
[Bizarre] [China confrontation]
The Plight of North Koreans in China and Beyond
by the International Crisis Group
November 7th, 2006
The International Crisis Group an independent, non-profit, multinational
organization, working through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy
to prevent and resolve deadly conflict, writes, "A loose network of
makeshift shelters focused on humanitarian aid has evolved into a
politically-charged but fragile underground railroad on which some North
Koreans can buy safe passage to Seoul in a matter of days, while others
suffer years of violence and exploitation. If they are to minimise the
exploitation of the most vulnerable and enhance the much-needed aid this
network delivers, concerned governments must commit to a sustainable
solution."
[Refugee reception] [Victim]
Chinese-African Summit Yields $1.9 Billion in Deals
By Chen Aizhu and Lindsay Beck
Reuters
Monday, November 6, 2006; Page A17
BEIJING, Nov. 5 -- Chinese and African leaders wrapped up a summit on Sunday with deals worth $1.9 billion and assurances from China that it would not monopolize Africa's resources as it builds influence across the continent.
The agreements, signed between 12 Chinese firms and various African governments and companies, followed Chinese President Hu Jintao's pledge on Saturday to offer $5 billion in loans and credit, and to double aid to Africa by 2009.
At N. Korea Border, an Even Flow
Sanctions Seem to Pose Little Problem for Chinese Exporters
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 5, 2006; Page A27
DANDONG, China -- Shortly after 9 a.m., the parade of Chinese freight trucks set out across the Yalu River to North Korea. Hauling sealed containers marked "Chinese customs inspection," the trucks chugged over the Friendship Bridge at a rate of one per minute with shipments of apples, used television sets and textiles.
The most visible part of China's growing trade with North Korea was on full display in this border town 420 miles northeast of Beijing, apparently unaffected by U.N. sanctions imposed after the Pyongyang government tested a nuclear device Oct. 9. Chinese merchants here said they have experienced only minor tightening since members of the Security Council, including China, voted to block exports to North Korea of nuclear-related material, high-tech weapons and luxury goods.
At least two banks that provided quick and easy financial services for trade between China and North Korea stopped cross-border transactions immediately after the sanctions were authorized, the merchants said, and Chinese customs agents began routinely inspecting North Korea-bound containers whose bills of lading indicated they carried chemicals or sophisticated machinery. Smugglers who sneak alcoholic beverages and fancy foods across in a swampy area north of Dandong also have told friends that Chinese patrols are more intense, forcing them to lie low for the time being.
Other than that, it has been business as usual for the Dandong merchants.
[Sanctions] [Trade]
Lotte, Shinsegae Expected to Duke It Out in China
By Park Hyong-ki
Staff Reporter
Lotte and Shinsegae, Korea's two big shopping and retail conglomerates, are about to take it outside _ outside of Korea.
They have chosen China as the battle zone.
Lotte, led by Chairman Shin Kyuk-ho, is going to engage in an overseas duel with Shinsegae by pushing its flagship Lotte Department Store up front, while Shinsegae, led by Chairwoman Lee Myung-hee, is pushing its E-Mart discount chain store.
In early 2008, Lotte is planning to open its first department store in the heart of Beijing's main shopping district and popular tourist site _ Wangfujin _ with China's Silvertie Holdings Company.
Lotte Shopping, a unit of Korea's fifth-largest conglomerate Lotte Group in charge of running Lotte Department Store and Lotte Mart, said it will expand its operations in China and other overseas markets with the aim of making the Lotte Department Store one of the world's top 10.
Ahead of its Chinese grand opening, Lotte is set to launch its first overseas store in Moscow, Russia, next year.
In the meantime, Shinsegae Group knows its own personal strength, which lies primarily in its lucrative E-Mart discount outlet.
E-Mart, Korea's biggest discount chain store and Shinsegae's main growth engine, has been growing in China for the last 10 years with an average growth rate of 7 percent to 9 percent per year.
Wife of Taiwanese President Faces Embezzlement Charges
Leader Is Called Corruption Suspect, but Has Immunity
By Jane Rickards
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, November 4, 2006; Page A18
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 3 -- The office of Taiwan's chief prosecutor announced Friday that President Chen Shui-bian's wife is being indicted on embezzlement and forgery charges, and said Chen himself is suspected of corruption but cannot be indicted because of presidential immunity.
The announcement, by Chang Wen-cheng, chief secretary of the High Prosecutor's Office, plunged Chen's beleaguered pro-independence presidency into doubt and led Taiwan's main opposition leader to demand Chen's immediate resignation. Chen's own Democratic Progressive Party -- whose support is key to his future -- demanded that he explain his role in the scandal but did not comment on appeals for his resignation.
The charges were the most serious so far in a cascade of corruption accusations leveled against Chen, his family and his aides over the last year. The accusations against Chen's wife -- and the suggestion that the president himself may be involved -- raised the scandal to the highest level of this self-governing island, placing it within the first family.
China and the Crisis of Overproduction
Chain Gang Economics
By WALDEN BELLO
November 1, 2006
"The world is investing too little," according to one prominent economist. "The current situation has its roots in a series of crises over the last decade that were caused by excessive investment, such as the Japanese asset bubble, the crises in Emerging Asia and Latin America, and most recently, the IT bubble. Investment has fallen off sharply since, with only very cautious recovery."
These are not the words of a Marxist economist describing the crisis of overproduction but those of Raghuram Rajan, the new chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His analysis, now over a year old, continues to be accurate. Global overcapacity has made further investment simply unprofitable, which significantly dampens global economic growth. In Europe, for instance, GDP growth has averaged only 1.45% in the last few years. Global demand has not kept up with global productive capacity. And if countries are not investing in their economic futures, then growth will continue to stagnate and possibly lead to a global recession.
China and the United States, however, appear to be bucking the trend. But rather than signs of health, growth in these two economies-and their ever more symbiotic relationship with each other-may actually be indicators of crisis. The centrality of the United States to both global growth and global crisis is well known. What is new is China's critical role. [China competition]
China in Assault on Korea's Shipbuilding Supremacy
China is trying to challenge Korea's lead in shipbuilding, where Korean firms hold a 40 percent global market share, by means fair or foul. Chinese companies are expanding production facilities with the aim of becoming the world's largest shipbuilder by 2010. The attempt apparently involves scouting and poaching ship designers and skilled workers from Korean rivals, and the National Intelligence Service recently launched investigations into technology leaks to China from the Korean shipbuilding hubs of Ulsan, Changwon, Jinhae, Geoje and Busan.
[China competition]
China May Be Using Oil to Press North Korea
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: October 31, 2006
BEIJING, Oct. 30 — China cut off oil exports to North Korea in September during heightened tension over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, Chinese trade statistics show.
The unusual move — the figures show China sold no crude oil at all to its neighbor in September — reduced sales for the year by about 7 percent from the similar period in 2005. China’s oil exports to North Korea, though uneven, had been averaging about 12,300 barrels a day.
North Korea depends on China for up to 90 percent of its oil supplies, much of which is sold on credit or for bartered goods, according to Chinese energy experts. Any sustained reduction could cripple its isolated and struggling economy.
There is no clear indication that the September figures represent a policy shift by China on providing vital food and fuel supplies to its neighbor and ally in the Korean War. North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Oct. 9, after the period covered by the latest customs data.
Chinese dismiss rumours of Kim Jong-il apology
Staff and agencies
Tuesday October 24, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Reports that North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, apologised for conducting a nuclear test were inaccurate, China's foreign ministry said today, adding that while Pyongyang had no plans for a second nuclear test, it may "take further steps" if pressured.
South Korean and Japanese media reported last week that Mr Kim had apologised to the Chinese state councillor, Tang Jiaxuan, during a meeting in Pyongyang over his nation's nuclear test on October 9.
"These reports are certainly not accurate," the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, told a regular press briefing in Beijing. "We haven't heard any information that Kim Jong-il apologised for the test."
China denies reports of North Korean apology
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Tuesday October 24, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, with soldiers of the People’s army. Photograph: AP
Kim Jong-il has reserved the right to escalate the nuclear crisis, China said today, refuting earlier reports that the North Korean leader apologised for this month’s atomic weapons test.
The denial dashes hopes for an early resumption of negotiations, which were raised last week when a senior Chinese envoy, Tang Jiaxuan, returned from Pyongyang with an upbeat message for the visiting US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice
Chinese pressure forces North Korea to apologise and promise no more tests
· Kim said to be ready for compromise with US
· Rice flies into Beijing as nuclear row recedes
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Saturday October 21, 2006
The Guardian
Kim Jong-il has apologised to China and reassured his powerful neighbour that he has no plans to conduct further nuclear tests, according to reports yesterday that suggest the North Korean leader is backing down in the face of unprecedented pressure from a historic ally.
Amid tightening of financial sanctions and growing international isolation, Mr Kim was quoted as telling a senior Chinese envoy on Thursday that he was prepared to return to the negotiating table and compromise with the United States.
[media]
North Korea backs down after Chinese pressure
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Friday October 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
North Korea leader Kim Jong-il (right) poses for a photo with China’s special envoy to Pyongyang, Tang Jiaxuan. Photograph: Reuters
Kim Jong-il has apologised to China and reassured his powerful neighbour that he has no plans to conduct further nuclear tests, according to reports today that suggest the North Korean leader is backing down in the face of unprecedented pressure from a historic ally.
Amid tightening of financial sanctions and growing international isolation, Mr Kim was quoted as telling a senior Chinese envoy yesterday that he was prepared to return to the negotiating table and compromise with the United States.
[Media]
The Ryukyus and Taiwan in the East Asian Seas: A Longue Durée Perspective
By Man-houng Lin
Traveling through East Asia, one can view historic imperial palaces in Beijing and Tokyo, and royal palaces reconstructed from the ruins left by fire and war in Seoul and Naha. Okinawa is the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago. The Shuri palace in its capital, Naha, was constructed more than six hundred years ago by the rulers of the Ryukyu kingdom, which played a crucial role in maritime East Asia from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Today, it takes barely an hour to fly from Taipei to Naha, and the Shuri castle, reconstructed three times in the last century, has been designated a World Heritage Site in an attempt to evoke its former grandeur.
Christmas is coming - and it's coming from China
John Vidal
Monday October 30, 2006
The Guardian
The biggest ship afloat is due to arrive in Felixstowe, Suffolk, this week on its maiden voyage from China with nearly 45,000 tonnes of Christmas presents and fare for the holiday season.
The Emma Maersk, which is 400 metres long (1,300 ft), 56 metres wide and 60 metres tall, and dubbed the SS Santa, will unload more than 3,000 containers for supermarkets and stores before heading to mainland Europe.
But the ship and its cargo of crackers, DVD players, toys, puzzles and clothes was the subject of an intense row yesterday over the increasing number of imports from China.
Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for south-east England, said it was a "microcosm of globalisation gone mad".
"All these goods could have been made in Europe. Whole sectors of global trade are now being dominated by China," she said. "The real cost of the goods that the Emma Maersk is bringing in should include the environment, the markets destroyed in developing countries and the millions of jobs lost."
Britain exported more than £2.8bn of goods to China last year but imported nearly £16bn, a 30-fold increase on 1980. The UK is Europe's third biggest trading partner with China but in global terms represents less than 2% of China's trade.
[China competition]
Congratulations to Indian FM
Pyongyang, October 28 (KCNA) -- Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun sent a congratulatory message to Pranab Mukherjee upon his appointment as foreign minister of India. In the belief that the long-standing bilateral ties of friendship and cooperation would continue to develop on good terms in the mutual interests of the two peoples in the future, too, the message sincerely wished him success in his responsible job.
Dark Clouds Over Asia
[Views From Overseas]
Frank Ching
Journalist, Commentator in Hong Kong
For the second time in three months, China joined the other members of the United Nations Security Council in adopting a resolution highly critical of North Korea, this time for the detonation of a nuclear device after having tested a series of missiles in July.
Despite some toning down of the American-drafted resolution, China was still not totally happy. Ambassador Wang Guangya voiced reservations over the provision for inspecting cargo to and from North Korea, saying that such inspections could create ``conflict that would have serious implications for the region.''
The North Korean issue may see further division between China and the United States. John Bolton, the American ambassador, indicated after the vote on Saturday that the United States might press for North Korea's expulsion from the U.N.
Ambassador Pak had walked out of the chamber after saying his government totally rejected the resolution, calling Security Council members ``gangster-like'' and accusing them of applying ``double standards.'' This caused Bolton to say that his behavior ``raised questions'' about North Korea's adherence to Chapter II of the United Nations Charter _ ``an issue the council should consider in due course.''
Under Article 6 of that chapter, a member country may be expelled ``by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.''
If the United States should seek to expel North Korea, there is little doubt that the move would be opposed by China, and probably Russia as well. At that point, the council's ability to act unanimously on North Korea would be seriously tested.
[Views From Overseas] Dark Clouds Over Asia
'N. Korea Offered Indirect Apology to China'
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) _ Chinese envoy Tang Jiaxuan, sent to Pyongyang to mediate a breakthrough in North Korean nuclear talks earlier this month, spent 20 minutes enumerating to the North's top leader all that Beijing has done for Pyongyang in the past as a means to press the ally to come back to negotiations, a Washington insider said Thursday.
Chris Nelson, author of the widely read political tip sheet "Nelson Report," said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il then apologized, not for conducting the nuclear test as reported by some media, but for upsetting Beijing.
"He said something to the effect that 'I am sorry you've been inconvenienced by our decision,'" he said at a lecture sponsored by the South Korean Embassy.
[Intelligence]
Anniversary of CPV's Entry into Korean Front Observed
Pyongyang, October 25 (KCNA) -- Today marks the 56th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the Korean front. Papers today in signed articles carried on this occasion say that the CPV's entry into the Korean front reflected the friendship cherished by the peoples of Korea and China and its self-sacrificing struggle contributed to the victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War of the Korean people.
Rodong Sinmun says:
The friendship between the peoples of Korea and China has a long history and tradition.
The bonds of friendship between the peoples of the two countries have steadily grown strong. They cooperated and supported each other in the periods of the anti-Japanese revolutionary war of the Korean people, the Chinese people's revolutionary war in China, their anti-Japanese war and in the subsequent period.
China Drafts Law to Empower Unions and End Labor Abuse
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: October 13, 2006
SHANGHAI, Oct. 12 - China is planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers' rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980's.
The move, which underscores the government's growing concern about the widening income gap and threats of social unrest, is setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories here.
The proposed rules are being considered after the Chinese Communist Party endorsed a new doctrine that will put greater emphasis on tackling the severe side effects of the country's remarkable growth.
[Double standards] [Human rights]
China and Russia Stall Sanctions on North Korea
By WARREN HOGE
Published: October 13, 2006
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 12 - The American push to win Security Council backing for tough, swift sanctions against North Korea appeared to be set back by China and Russia on Thursday, in an echo of the obstacles the United States faces in a similar push to punish Iran.
The United States circulated a softened draft resolution to the Security Council in response to North Korea's assertion that it conducted a nuclear test on Monday. The United States pressed for a vote by Friday, but China and Russia immediately signaled their opposition to critical parts of the measure and said they needed more time. On Thursday night, a new draft resolution was circulated, and Reuters quoted the Chinese and Russian ambassadors calling the revisions improvements.
Roh, Hu Seek Peaceful Solution
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
South Korea is stepping up its diplomatic efforts with China and the United States for a breakthrough in the U.S.-North Korea nuclear standoff as discussions are underway at the U.N. Security Council to map out punitive measures against Pyongyang.
President Roh Moo-hyun is to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing today, following his talks with U.S. President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe early this week.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is also scheduled to make an Asian tour as early as next week to discuss the situation on the Korean Peninsula after the North's proclaimed nuclear test on Oct. 9 with officials of South Korea, Japan and China.
South Korean officials said Roh would try to find a solution to the nuclear impasse in the summit with the Chinese president, which was arranged before the North's nuclear blast
For India, North Korea's test poses key challenge
Reconfiguring the nuclear order is no longer a simple matter. For the simple reason that there is no longer any nuclear order.
by Siddharth Varadarajan
October 12, 2006
The Hindu
THE ONE "silver lining" Indian diplomats have latched on to is the "Pakistani connection" to North Korea's "clandestine" nuclear status but this clever point aside, Pyongyang's test of a nuclear weapon has immensely complicated India's quest for assimilation in the existing nuclear order.
The fact is that as of Monday, there is no longer any nuclear order, at least not in Asia. Experts can quibble about its low yield but the North Korean test has brought to a formal end the core bargain on which American nuclear policy in East Asia has rested: that in exchange for Japan and South Korea forswearing their right to nuclear weapons, the United States would guarantee not just their security against nuclear attack from Russia or China but also that there would be no new nuclear weapons state in the region.
Pyongyang may have delivered a body blow to Washington's security architecture but it is China which is likely to be most affected in the medium to long-term. For one, it is now apparent that Beijing has rather less influence over Pyongyang than it had let the U.S. and the wider world believe. Secondly, the spectre of "Japanese militarism" - which continues to haunt not just China but a broad swathe of East Asia including South Korea as well - will start looming larger as Tokyo moves to reassess its security policies in the light of the North Korean test.
[Japanese remilitarisation]
China's N.K. policy unlikely to change
Maintaining the status quo on the Korean Peninsula is in Beijing's best interests
This is the sixth in a series of analytical articles about the impact of North Korea's nuclear test. - Ed.
Two weeks have passed since U.N. Security Council resolutions were unanimously adopted Oct. 14, demanding that North Korea destroy its weapons of mass destruction and halt work on nuclear arms development.
It is widely acknowledged that the success of U.N resolution 1718 ultimately depends on China. The resolution, based on Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, stipulates, "China's representative agreed that the Council's actions should both indicate the international community's form position and help create conditions for the peaceful solution to the DPRK nuclear issue through dialogue."
[Sanctions]
A New Tack for China after North Korea's Nuclear Test?
By John J. Tkacik, Jr.
October 26th, 2006
John J. Tkacik, Jr., Senior Research Fellow in China Policy in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, writes, “The new and mature tenor of China’s diplomatic rhetoric may signal a real change in Beijing’s policies on North Koreaor it may reflect a Chinese tactic of “soft on the outside” but “hard on the inside” when engaging Washington. How receptive Beijing is to the U.S. call for enforceable sanctions on North Korea will reveal how serious China really is about being a responsible stakeholder.”
Nuclear North Korea: Nervousness in Pakistan
By B. Raman
According to well-informed sources in Pakistan of well-established credibility, there is nervousness in Pakistan that fresh enquiries by the US into North Korea's nuclear capability might bring out hitherto unknown (to the international community) information relating to co-operation between Pakistan and North Korea in the nuclear and missile fields. These sources say that Maj. Gen. (retd) Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, who is a close personal friend of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has informed Gen. Musharraf that after the North Korean nuclear test of October 9, 2006, the US intelligence has been asked to do an update of a National Intelligence Estimate of 2002 on Pakistan-North Korea nuclear co-operation and to talk to Mrs. Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Nawaz Sharif, former Pakistani Prime Ministers, about it. Details of the reported National Intelligence Estimate were given by Mr. Seymour Hersh, the well-known investigative journalist, in an article published by the New Yorker magazine on January 27, 2003.
Hong Kong detains 2nd N.K. vessel
From news reports
HONG KONG - Hong Kong's marine inspectors have detained another North Korean cargo ship this week for safety violations, officials said yesterday.
The officials from the Hong Kong Customs and Marine Department said the North Korean vessel, Kang Nam 5, has been barred from leaving the port after its inspectors found about a dozen safety violations Thursday. Details of the suspected violations were not available.
The vessel was the second North Korean cargo ship detained in Hong Kong this week after a 2,000-ton freighter, Kang Nam 1, was placed under detention Monday for 25 reported safety violations, including faulty navigational and fire-fighting equipment and outdated nautical charts.
Hong Kong inspectors said that the safety inspection was a routine procedure and wasn't influenced by U.N. sanctions recently passed authorizing inspections of North Korean ships
[Sanctions]
N. Korean Ship Sailing Without Inspection
A North Korean ship, which the United States and Japan suspect of carrying military equipment, is on a voyage without any inspection after stopping at Hong Kong for refueling, a top South Korean security official confirmed yesterday.
Song Min-soon, the chief presidential secretary for security affairs, said at the National Assembly that the ship, named Ponghwasan, left Nampo of North Korea on Oct. 19 and has been sailing southward after fueling up at an outer port of Hong Kong.
His remarks came in response to a question by an opposition party lawmaker, who doubted China’s volition to comply with the U.N. sanction on North Korea since its nuclear test on Oct. 9. ``I heard the Chinese authorities did not take any steps to inspect the ship,’’ he said.
Song added, as far as he understands, the North Korean ship is a refrigerator ship. ``China has a position that it would intercept North Korean ships if they are suspected of carrying materials related to military equipment,’’ he said.
[Sanctions]
China's Policy toward North Korea Remains Unchanged
11 October 2006
After North Korea conducted a nuclear weapon test on October 9, analysts 11 October 2006were quick to argue that the test was opposed by Beijing and that in response to the test it was likely that China would modify its policy toward North Korea to one that more closely resembled that of the United States' and Japan's. Yet regardless of whether Beijing approved of North Korea's nuclear test, it is unlikely that it will support aggressive punishment against Pyongyang.
China gets tough on N. Korea
From news reports
The U.N. Security Council is expected to adopt a resolution to discipline North Korea for the country's announced nuclear test as early as this week, with China holding the key on the harshness of sanctions the global body will impose on the North.
China on Tuesday signaled readiness to join other major U.N. powers in slapping sanctions on North Korea.
"I think there has to be some punitive actions but also these actions have to be appropriate," Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. Wang Guangya told reporters.
The key question is how far China and Russia, which despite their traditional close ties with Pyongyang have condemned the nuclear test, will be willing to go in backing tough sanctions pushed by the United States and Japan in a draft resolution invoking Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.
‘China Distorts History to Prepare for North’s Collapse’
By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter
Andrei Lankov
A Russian-born expert on Korean affairs said yesterday that China's recent moves to distort ancient Korean history is aimed at politically intervening in North Korea.
``The most likely explanation is that China is considering political intervention in the North,'' Dr. Andrei Lankov said at a lecture in Seoul organized by the Kwanghwamun Culture Forum, a fraternity of intellectuals. The 44-year-old scholar currently teaches East Asian and Korean history at Kookmin University.
China has stirred up controversy by publishing a series of articles claiming that the Koguryo (37 B.C.-668) and Palhae (698-926) kingdoms, which occupied the northern part of today's Korean Peninsula and the northeastern region of China, were part of ancient China.
Preparations for the collapse of North Korea have been deemed necessary and an advance into the North would require both psychological and cultural justification, at least within China itself, he said.
[Koguryo]
Chinese tense at border, but North's side is placid
October 11, 2006 ? DANDONG and HONG KONG, China ? In the aftermath of North Korea's announcement of its nuclear test on Monday, military forces in the Chinese border city of Dandong, Liaoning province, intensified their guard over the bridge connecting the city to Shinuiju in North Korea.
Under the Friendship Bridge yesterday morning, about 30 Chinese soldiers were seen in shooting exercises and dozens of soldiers were at the riverside.
I have never seen soldiers carrying out a military drill on a holiday to mark the founding of the North Korean Workers Party. It is probably because the other side is creating noise, an official managing the bridge said.
More soldiers than usual were dispatched. The number of Koreans buying souvenirs decreased, probably because North Korea keeps causing trouble, complained a Chinese man selling North Korean souvenirs near the bridge.
Wenweipo, a Hong Kong newspaper, also reported yesterday that the Chinese military force stationed in Jilin province, adjacent to North Korea, cancelled the vacations of its officers and soldiers and intensified their alert status. The newspaper reported that soldiers on vacation were ordered to return and most soldiers underwent intensive training against chemical, biological and radiological weapons.
In North Korea, meanwhile, the city of Shinuiju seemed cheerful. On the riverside, a wedding ceremony was held under a streamer marking the holiday. About 200 guests at the wedding were taking pictures with the bride and groom. About 2,000 North Koreans, including middle-aged women dressed in hanbok, traditional Korean costume, and children, were dancing and singing.
Earlier on Monday, the Dandong Customs Office opened as usual. About 60 trucks entered North Korea crossing the Friendship Bridge, an official at the office said.
Dandong city, however, announced yesterday it would indefinitely postpone a convention scheduled to be held in Pyongyang on Oct. 17 to 20. The city said it would set another date after the current situation is resolved.
North's Test Seen as Failure for Korea Policy China Followed
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: October 9, 2006
BEIJING, Monday, Oct. 9 - The North Korea nuclear test amounted to a major failure for China, which mounted one of its most extensive diplomatic efforts in years to find a negotiated solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis and to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula.
The Chinese expressed their anger in unusually strong terms, saying the test was "flagrant and brazen."
Last week, the foreign ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, took the unusual step of publicly warning North Korea not to follow through with its planned test. Chinese leaders had also warned of "grave consequences" if the test was conducted.
China and North Korea fought together against the United States and its allies during the Korean War and were ideological partners during the cold war. Today, China remains North Korea's most important source of food and oil.
But China, which also has worked hard to keep good relations with the Bush administration, has tried to bring the United States and North Korea to the negotiating table.
China and the US are Joined at the Hip
The Chinese Face of Neoliberalism
By PETER KWONG
Weekend Edition
October 7 / 8, 2006
During the recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington, the White House seemed bent on trying in every way possible to extend him a cool reception. The Chinese expected a state dinner, normally accorded to a head of state on the first official visit to the United States. Hu got a lunch instead. The White House announcer introduced Hu as the president of not the People's Republic but the Republic of China, which is Taiwan's official name. A known Falun Gong supporter was allowed onto the White House grounds to hackle Hu during his formal reception speech. Adding insult to injury, Vice President Cheney was caught snoozing during Hu's press conference.
But while Hu received a frosty reception in Washington, D.C., he was treated as a superstar in the state of Washington by the kings of the computer industry (Microsoft), the world's largest coffee shop chain (Starbucks), and America's preeminent aircraft maker (Boeing), who know better than anyone that China is doing everything right by the global capital. Bush might have begrudged Hu the honor of a state dinner, but Bill Gates regaled the Chinese president with a formal banquet at his $100 million lakeside mansion. Among the guests were executives from Costco, Weyerhaeuser, and Amazon.com --all eager to show the Chinese leader their appreciation for his efforts in providing American businesses with an ample supply of cheap labor, a stable currency exchange and an affable investment climate. [Economic reform]
China and Iran Strengthen their Bilateral Relationship
06 October 2006
China's decision to send 1,000 soldiers to south Lebanon with the U.N.I.F.I.L. mission is the latest example of Beijing's increased involvement in the Middle East. The overall importance of the broader Middle East for China's geostrategy is growing. China is searching for new regional allies because it wants to pursue strategic aims such as gaining privileged access to crude oil reserves, finding new markets for its products and technology, and competing with the United States for supremacy in an area that is a fundamental part of the international system. Iran seems to be the best ally for such an approach, thus the strategic relationship between the two countries has increased strongly during the past few years.
The Legacy of Long-Gone States: China, Korea and the Koguryo Wars
By Andrei Lankov
[Japan Focus 2 October 2006]
In Helsinki on 10 September 2006, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun met Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Since the summit took place when the two leaders were attending the ASEM forum, they did not have much time to talk, so they had to concentrate on the most important issues in bilateral relations.
What were these issues? As the official press release revealed, the two leaders spent a good part of their meeting talking about ancient history, in the most literal sense. President Roh expressed his dissatisfaction with some conclusions of Chinese archeological teams and the publications of a provincial research center dealing with events of some two thousand years ago.
China, North Korea make friendly gestures
October 02, 2006 ? Both Beijing and Pyongyang have sent conciliatory signals in recent days, the most recent one coming from the North's leader himself, the North's Korean Central News Agency reported on Saturday. Kim Jong-il sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao congratulating him on the anniversary of the establishment of Communist China.
Kim Jong Il Greets Chinese Party and State Leaders
Pyongyang, September 30 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il together with Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, and Pak Pong Ju, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, Saturday sent a message of greetings to Hu Jintao, General-Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC, Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress, and Wen Jiabao, premier of the State Council, on the occasion of the 57th anniversary of the PRC. The message said:
China, South Korea hold intense diplomatic talks
September 30, 2006 ? Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei, Beijing's point man to the six-party talks, arrived in Seoul yesterday for a string of intense discussions with Seoul officials designed to revive the stalled North Korean nuclear talks.
His visit comes at a time when officials said they have recently made diplomatic efforts that they hope could break the year-long impasse in the six-party talks.
China Awaits North's Response on Nukes
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei arrived in Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart, Chun Yung-woo, to discuss ways to resume the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Chinese Delegation Here
Pyongyang, September 25 (KCNA) -- A delegation of the General Administration of Sport of China headed by Vice-Minister Xiao Tian arrived here by air on Monday.
North Korean Trade with China as Reported in Chinese Customs Statistics: Recent Energy Trends and Implications
by Nathaniel Aden
September 26th, 2006
Nathaniel Aden, member of the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, writes, “Whereas North Korean coal and electricity exports are sold at sub-market ‘friendship prices,’ Chinese coal and oil products have been sold to North Korea at premium prices… Chinese Customs data suggest that Beijing is taking a pragmatic, market-oriented approach to trade with its reclusive neighbor, while the increasingly asymmetrical energy embodiment of bilateral trade may reflect dilapidation of North Korea’s non-military industries.”
[Energy] [Trade]
China Promotion Festival Opens
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
A Chinese cultural event kicked off yesterday in Seoul to promote the world's most populous country.
Under the theme ``Experience China in Seoul 2006,'' the festival opened on the Peace Square in the Olympic Park, southern Seoul, with high-profile Chinese government officials, business people and financiers participating.
The Chinese government has hosted the festival every year since 1999 in countries such as France, Italy, Brazil and Japan, to introduce Chinese culture to foreign countries and boost friendship and understanding between them and China. [Softpower]
Across Latin America, Mandarin Is in the Air
By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 22, 2006; Page A01
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Elizabeth Zamora is a busy mother and executive. Still, for three hours every Saturday, she slides into a battered wooden desk at Bogota's National University and follows along as Yuan Juhua, a language instructor sent here by China's government, teaches the intricacies of Mandarin.
Zamora already speaks German and English, but she struggles to learn written Chinese characters and mimic tones unknown in Spanish. She persists for a simple reason: China is voraciously scouring Latin America for everything from oil to lumber, and there is money to be made. That prospect has not only Zamora but business people in much of Latin America flocking to learn the Chinese language, increasingly heard in boardrooms and on executive junkets.
[Media] [China confrontation]
Pak Pong Ju Meets New Chinese Ambassador
Pyongyang, September 19 (KCNA) -- Pak Pong Ju, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, together with Vice-Premiers of the Cabinet Kwak Pom Gi and Ro Tu Chol met and conversed with new Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK Liu Xiaoming who paid a courtesy call on him at the Mansudae Assembly Hall Tuesday. On hand were Minister of Foreign Trade Rim Kyong Man, Minister Councilor Guan Huabing and other officials of the Chinese embassy here.
Are North Korea and China Drifting Apart after the Missile Test?
by Suh Bohyuk
September 19th, 2006
Suh Bohyuk, a former expert advisor at the National Human Rights Commission
of Korea (NHRC) and now instructor of HUFS and other university, writes,
"Sino-North Korea relations may be neither strongly attached nor completely
broken, standing between such geographical reasons and different political
decisions of the two countries. More profound discussions are needed about
what significances such two-faced Sino-North Korea relations would have on
peace on Korean peninsula."
On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: September 19, 2006
BHADUMARI, India - Here in the center of India, on a gray Wednesday morning, a cotton farmer swallowed a bottle of pesticide and fell dead at the threshold of his small mud house.
The farmer, Anil Kondba Shende, 31, left behind a wife and two small sons, debts that his family knew about only vaguely and a soggy, ruined 3.5-acre patch of cotton plants that had been his only source of income.
Whether it was debt, shame or some other privation that drove Mr. Shende to kill himself rests with him alone. But his death was by no means an isolated one, and in it lay an alarming reminder of the crisis facing the Indian farmer.
Across the country in desperate pockets like this one, 17,107 farmers committed suicide in 2003, the most recent year for which government figures are available. Anecdotal reports suggest that the high rates are continuing.
[Globalisation]
Ssangyong Vows to Launch New Models
By Park Hyong-ki
Staff Reporter
Phil Murtaugh, right, a director of Ssangyong Motor, speaks to reporters about the company's goals with President Choi Hyung-tak, center, and Jung Il-kwon, the union chairman, at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul, Monday.
/Courtesy of Ssangyong Motor
Ssangyong Motor's top executives have reassured its workers of the company's plan to invest 300 billion won annually in research and development, creating new models and improving its after-sales services by 2009.
Hyundai Motor Chief Calls India Overseas Bridgehead
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo declared India will be one of the company's main overseas bridgeheads, officials said yesterday.
During his trip to the Hyundai factory in Chennai, Chung was quoted as saying, ``We are in an age of unlimited global competition. To survive and prosper, it is indispensable to maintain the high quality of products made in our overseas factories.''
Chung was traveling in India as part of his efforts to get Hyundai's overseas operations back on track, putting behind his personal troubles involving an attempt to make his only son his heir apparent at Korea's biggest automotive empire.
China Competes With West in Aid to Its Neighbors
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: September 18, 2006
STUNG TRENG, Cambodia - In the dense humidity of northern Cambodia, where canoes are the common mode of transportation, a foreman from a Chinese construction company directs local laborers to haul stones to the ramp of a nearly completed bridge.
Nearby, engineers from the China Shanghai Construction Group have sunk more than a dozen concrete pylons across a tributary of the mighty Mekong River, a technical feat that will help knit together a 1,200-mile route from the southern Chinese city of Kunming through Laos to the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville on the Gulf of Thailand.
Hyundai Motor Moves Closer to No. 1 in India
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
Assembly line of Hyundai Motor India near Chennai in India
Hyundai Motor plans to invest about $500 million in India by 2008 to overtake Japan's Suzuki, the No.1 foreign carmaker in the country.
Hyundai Motor officials say the annual output from its two factories _ the second one is under construction _ in India will grow to 400,000 units. The cars will be sold in India or exported to other countries.
The overseas plant's combined vehicle sales were 252,851 in 2005, up 17.3 percent from a year earlier, in terms of consumers' registration.
A Hyundai spokesman said, ``Aside from the local sales, the potential of our Indian plant lies in the fact that it is in charge of wide exports to countries in the West.''
He said most of the cars produced in the two plants in India would be shipped to Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
Government Accused of Cover-Up
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff reporter
A lawmaker claimed that the government tried to cover up the results of an investigation into a massive food-poisoning outbreak at schools in June after imported food from China was identified as the main source
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson's Upcoming Visit to China
18 September 2006
early half a year after Chinese President Hu Jintao's tumultuous April visit to Washington, D.C., Henry Paulson, the new U.S. treasury secretary, is readying for his first official visit to China. In light of the harm done to the Sino-American relationship during Hu's visit to Washington -- the numerous gaffes, from the protestor on the White House lawn to the White House announcer mistakenly calling the People's Republic of China by Taiwan's official moniker, the Republic of China -- the tone Secretary Paulson is striking during his pre-trip publicity efforts must be viewed as having favorable implications for both the United States and China.
A Rocky Relationship
Increasingly hostile feeling in the United States toward China seemed to peak with President Hu's visit in the middle of April.
[China confrontation] [Finance]
China to Invite North Korean Leader
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, second from left, talks to officials during his inspection at a machinery factory in Kusong, North Korea, Sunday. /Yonhap
The Chinese government has decided to invite North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to visit Beijing, amid efforts to persuade Pyongyang not to test nuclear weapons, the Yonhap News Agency in Seoul reported on Sunday.
"The Chinese government has decided to restore its relationship with the North, and inviting Kim Jong-il on a state visit is going to be its first step," a South Korean government official was quoted as telling Yonhap.
Google sees a mobile future in Asia
Mobile search and services are still in their infancy, but Google hopes to use them to tap into Asian markets
Mark Sweney
Monday August 21, 2006
MediaGuardian.co.uk
As Google looks to conquer the emerging markets of Asia, Deep Nishar, its head of wireless products, is turning the focus of the company from its PC roots to mobile phones in its bid for global ubiquity - and tackling criticism for censorship along the way.
In the search giant's established markets its accepted guise is as a mostly white, blank web page with a search bar located at the heart of the PC screen.
As it looks to charge headlong into fast growing Asian markets such as China and India, Mr Nishar argued that it could well be the mobile phone, not computers, that becomes the device of choice for accessing information in these countries.
His statistics are persuasive. There are more than 2bn mobile phones worldwide and about 1bn PCs. In emerging countries the number of internet-connected PCs are often limited, and certainly not in every household and office, but mobile phones seem to be in everyone's hand.
China Mobile now claims to be the world's largest wireless operator by number of subscribers. It has more than 200 million customers, while Vodafone has 186 million customers worldwide despite being a much more global business.
Ties sour at North's China border
August 21, 2006 ? DANDUNG, China ? Signs of discontent between those two closest of allies, China and North Korea, have begun to appear. Last month, despite Chinese urging, North Korea fired off a test salvo of seven missiles. Although the tests were generally considered to be a bid for international attention, they provided Japan with more domestic ammunition to change its constitutional bar on warfare as an instrument of national policy, a development China does not see as in its interests.
Some suggestions of those cooling ties can be seen in this Chinese border city. Recently, about 40 North Korean women were waiting in front of the customs office in preparation for returning to North Korea. One of the women said Chinese authorities had order the women, who had worked at a stuffed-toy factory, out of the country.
Airlines woo future passengers on US-China route
By Yusof Sulaiman l eTN Asia
air-and-space.com
The four US-based airlines bidding to win landing rights to the future 'prestigious and lucrative' rights on the US-China route have upped their ante by lobbying future passengers for support.
The four carriers--American Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines, have devised separate strategies to add the service to their Asia routes by wooing support from the public and businesses, in addition to pitching a winning bid to the United States Department of Transportation.
Competition for the rights has become very stiff as the department will approve only one additional daily route to China to a carrier currently flying the route.
China's emergence as an economic powerhouse in the coming decade represents the future market for the carriers. Steep competition from low cost carriers in the US domestic market is forcing the carriers to look at the more lucrative international routes for growth.
The Rise of Baidu (That's Chinese for Google)
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: September 17, 2006
BEIJING
IN the summer of 1998 at a picnic in Silicon Valley, Eric Xu, a 34-year-old biochemist, introduced his shy, reserved friend Robin Li to John Wu, then the head of Yahoo's search engine team.
Mr. Li, 30 at the time, was a frustrated staff engineer at Infoseek, an Internet search engine partly owned by Disney, a company whose fading commitment to Infoseek did not mesh with Mr. Li's ongoing passion for search. Like Disney, Mr. Wu and Yahoo were also losing interest in the business prospects of search, and Yahoo - in a colossal corporate blunder - eventually outsourced all of its search functions to a little startup named Google.
Mr. Xu, who had called together some friends for a documentary he was making on Silicon Valley, thought the two search guys would hit it off. Mr. Wu says he exchanged greetings with Robin Li, but what most impressed him was that despite all of the pessimism surrounding search, Mr. Li remained undaunted.
"The people at Yahoo didn't think search was all that important, and so neither did I," says Mr. Wu, who is now the chief technology officer at the Chinese Internet company Alibaba.com. "But Robin, he seemed very determined to stick with it. And you have to admire what he accomplished."
Indeed. A year after the picnic, in 1999, Mr. Li founded his own search company in China, naming it Baidu (pronounced "by-DOO"). Today, Baidu has a market value of $3 billion and operates the fourth-most trafficked Web site in the world. And Baidu is doing what no other Internet company has been able to do: clobbering Google and Yahoo in its home market.
Vice-Presidents of Presidium of DPRK SPA Meet Chinese Ambassador
Pyongyang, September 15 (KCNA) -- Yang Hyong Sop and Kim Yong Dae, vice-presidents of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, met and had conversations with new Chinese Ambassador e.p. to the DPRK Liu Xiaoming, who paid a courtesy call on them, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Friday. Present there were officials concerned and the minister councilor and staff members of the Chinese embassy here.
Palhae Independent of China's Tang Dynasty
By Yoon Won-sup
Staff Reporter
The following is the third in a series of articles on China's distortion of Korean history. This part deals with the Palhae Kingdom (698-926). _ ED.
One of the most delicate problems with the ancient Korean Kingdom of Palhae is there are few formal and authoritative historical records about the kingdom, which has caused historians to assume different views about the kingdom.
Debates boil down to two key issues: how much sovereign independence Palhae enjoyed from China's Tang Dynasty (618-907) and what was the ethnic background of the Palhae people.
Reef off Jeju draws claim by Beijing
September 15, 2006 ? China said yesterday it does not recognize Korea's claim to the Ieo reef in the East China Sea between the two nations. Earlier, Beijing said it had conducted aerial surveillance of the reef last year.
"Suyan Rock is located below the water in the northern part of the East China Sea, and we have never determined its ownership with South Korea," said Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.
China's Ambition Over Mt. Paektu Angers Koreans
The following is the fourth in a series of articles on China's distortion of Korean history. This part deals with Mount Paektu, near the North Korean-Chinese border. _ ED.
By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter
A single torch lit at the top of Mount Paektu _ the Korean Peninsula's highest mountain, located near the North Korean-Chinese border _ angered lots of South Koreans earlier this month.
The torch was lighted for the sixth Winter Asian Games, which will be held in Changchun, China from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4 next year. The mayor of the games' host city said the mountain was chosen as a venue for the torch on Sept. 6 because three rivers _ Tumen, Yalu and Songhua _ originate there.
Not many South Koreans, however, see the move as merely a part of the athletic event. Many see it as a sly move by the Chinese government to promote the mountain, which Koreans regard as a sacred place, as Chinese.
Under an agreement struck in 1962, China and North Korea, two sovereign states and U.N. members, agreed to share the mountain. The North controls 54.5 percent of the mountain, and China occupies the remaining 45.5 percent.
On Sept. 5, another news report on China's move to hold the 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Mount Paektu surprised South Koreans.
[China confrontation]
Anti-China rally
[Photo]Fought red-handed
September 14, 2006 ?
At Jongmyo Park in downtown Seoul yesterday, about 1,000 citizens wearing red gloves raise their hands in a rally arguing that China is distorting Korea's ancient history. [YONHAP]
Chinese Cultural Gala Due in Seoul
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
The biggest-ever Chinese cultural event will take place in Seoul late this month aimed at promoting the world's most populous country here in South Korea.
Under the title of ``Experience China in Seoul 2006,'' a total of 300 Chinese will take part in the 10-day gala, which will open at Olympic Park in southern Seoul, on Sept. 21 supported by SK Group, Korea's third biggest conglomerate.
Report says China links history to land claims
Mount Paektu called a center of China history
September 13, 2006 ? Domestic media reports yesterday echoed a Korean Broadcasting System report that Chinese scholars would release a paper next month asserting that a large area of northern North Korea is historically a part of China.
The network displayed a copy of a paper it said was obtained from Chinese sources. The paper included an assertion of Chinese claims to about 400,000 square kilometers (154,440 square miles) of territory very roughly centered on Mount Paektu as "historically Chinese," including large tracts of North Korea.
China Stirs History Furor
The following is the first in a series of articles on China's distortion of Korean history. The first part deals with Kochoson, the first kingdom on the Korean Peninsula, founded in 2333 B.C. _ ED.
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Koreans proudly say the country has a history of 5,000 years as its first kingdom Kochoson was established in 2333 B.C. That ancient kingdom has been considered Korea's origin and many elementary schools here have statues of Tangun, Korea's legendary founding father.
Organizing Wal-Mart: The Chinese Trade Union at a Crossroads
By Anita Chan
Surprise, surprise, it is the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the trade union notorious throughout the world for being “useless”, that has taken on Wal-Mart and succeeded in setting up workplace union branches at twenty-two Wal-Mart supercenters in China within four weeks. This has attracted the attention of the Chinese media, all major US newspapers, and the China Labor Bulletin (CLB). CLB is the Hong Kong-based labor NGO headed by Han Dongfang, the worker who emerged for a few weeks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement as a labor leader of the Beijing Workers Autonomous Federation. I was invited by Japan Focus to comment on the significance of the union’s action and the CLB report.
Japan and China: The Next Fifty Years
By Vaclav Smil
Major trends that are gradually changing the fortunes of nations and reshaping world history are not easy to identify. There are three key reasons for this. First, many important trends unfold so insidiously that they are recognized only ex post once the developments reach a breaking point and a long-term trend ends in a stunning discontinuity. Second, we cannot foresee which trends will become so embedded as to be seemingly immune to external forces and which ones will suddenly veer away from predictable lines. Third, what follows afterward is often equally unpredictable: the beginning of a new long-lasting trend or a prolonged oscillation, a further intensification or an irreversible weakening.
The history of Asia’s two largest economies illustrates that nations are commonly subject to such changing trends. Shortly after Mao Zedong’s death, Deng Xiaoping, his old revisionist comrade, launched the modern world's most far-reaching national reversal as he began transmuting the country, stranded for two generations in the role of an autarkic underperformer capable of providing little more than basic subsistence to its people, into a global manufacturing superpower that has become closely integrated into a new global economy. By the early 1990s Japan, the most dynamic large economy of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, suddenly lost its seemingly unstoppable momentum (many experts had predicted it would become the world's leading economy even before the year 2000) and despite repeated assurances of a new turnaround (offered not only by many Japanese politicians but also by foreign economists), it has spent 15 years in retreat and stagnation.
Roh complains to Wen over China's claim
September 11, 2006 ? HELSINKI ? In an unscheduled meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, President Roh Moo-hyun complained about a research paper which claimed the ancient Balhae Kingdom was a Chinese provincial government, said the Blue House spokesman, Yoon Tae-young.
Balhae was established in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula in 698, following the collapse of the Goguryeo kingdom.
The Center of China's Borderland History and Geography Research, a state-run research institute, has posted the claim on its Web site.
[Koguryo]
Greetings to Kim Jong Il, Kim Yong Nam and Pak Pong Ju from Chinese Party and State Leaders
Pyongyang, September 9 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il and Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, and Pak Pong Ju, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, received a message of greetings from Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, president of the People's Republic of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission of China, Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress, and Wen Jiabao, premier of the State Council of China, on September 8 on the occasion of the 58th anniversary of the DPRK.
President Roh Regrets China History Project
By Ryu Jin
Korea Times Correspondent
President Roh Moo-hyun, left, shakes hands with China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of the Asia- Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Helsinki, Finland, Sunday. /Yonhap
HELSINKI, Finland _ President Roh Moo-hyun expressed regrets to China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on Sunday over Beijing's ``Northeastern Project,'' a history research program which claims part of South Korea's ancient history as its own.
Ambassador Seeking to Introduce New Iran to Chinese
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Javad Mansouri said that introducing new Iran to the Chinese sets the top agenda for his activities as Tehran's new Ambassador to Beijing.
The 61-year old diplomat referred to the two countries' extensive and profound developments in the last two decades, and said, "Due to the same reason, I have to brief the Chinese about the detailed conditions dominating Iran."
He also pointed out that increasing the two states' cooperation in various grounds, including mutual investment, implementation of infrastructural projects, development of research and educational cooperation and expansion of tourist activities to enhance public understanding of the two countries and expand public exchanges comprise other programs he seeks to pursue during his term of office in China.
Describing China as one of the most active countries in the domain of tourism, the Iranian Ambassador expressed the hope that the two countries could render good cooperation with each other in this regard.
Protesters Call On Taiwan's Leader to Quit
Chen Urged to Take Responsibility for Alleged Wrongdoing by Relatives, Aides
By Jane Rickards Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, September 10, 2006; Page A21
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Sept. 9 -- Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Taiwan's capital Saturday demanding the resignation of President Chen Shui-bian, whose family members and close aides have been embroiled in a string of corruption scandals.
Chanting "Step down!" and wearing red, the protesters called for Chen to take responsibility for the alleged wrongdoing and resign.
Huge red balloons, some with the Chinese characters for "honor," floated above the masses of people gathered in a main street near the Presidential Office in Taipei. Organizers of the mostly peaceful rally said the protesters' numbers swelled to 200,000, but police put the figure at 70,000.
Chen, a passionate supporter of formalizing Taiwan's independence from China, has the backing of his party and pro-independence stalwarts and is unlikely to step down before his term expires in 2008.
Gripes mount about 'passive' reaction to China
September 09, 2006 ? The government, particularly the Foreign Ministry, is coming under increasing criticism from nationalistic scholars for its allegedly passive stance on attempts by China to "hijack the country's ancient history" of the origins of kingdoms in Manchuria.
The scholars here contend that research papers by the Center of China's Borderland History and Geography Research violated a verbal agreement in August of 2004 between Seoul and Beijing that tried to dampen a similar fight over history.
[Koguryo]
China Names U.S. Expert as Envoy to Pyongyang
Chinese President Hu Jintao has appointed Assistant Gansu Governor Liu Xiaoming to replace Wu Donghe as ambassador to North Korea, the Xinhua News Agency said. Liu took office on Friday.
Serving earlier as the deputy director of the U.S. Affairs Division in the Department of North American and Oceania Affairs, and then as secretary and first secretary in the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu has been a key Foreign Ministry expert on the U.S. His appointment to Pyongyang seems to be making the statement that Liu will be handling North Korea issues not only with concern to the long-lasting alliance between the two nations but in the context of maintaining close international relationships with other nations, including the U.S., sources say.
China Names New Envoy to N. Korea
By Maureen Fan Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 9, 2006; Page A11
BEIJING, Sept. 8 -- China has appointed an outspoken career diplomat with extensive knowledge of the United States as its new ambassador to North Korea, the official New China News Agency said.
Analysts said the appointment of Liu Xiaoming, 50, suggests officials in Beijing are reassessing their relationship with Pyongyang and trying to find a new way to press discussions among China, North Korea and the United States.
"He is young and capable, a new-generation diplomat who is outspoken and sees things with a sharp eye," said Yang Chengxu, a Chinese expert on arms control and a senior research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies. "One of his biggest advantages is his knowledge of the United States."
Seoul bids to dampen a firestorm over history
September 08, 2006 ? A senior Foreign Ministry official said yesterday it would be awkward for Seoul to ask China to suspend its historical research on a 1,000-year-old Manchurian kingdom, regardless of protests here about alleged Chinese attempts to "hijack Korean history."
The dispute has flared up again after an uneasy two-year truce.
[Koguryo]
National Assembly Criticizes China's Distortion of History
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
A National Assembly panel on Thursday strongly denounced Seoul's low-key attitude and called for systematic measures that can properly address China's distortion of history.
In a resolution unanimously adopted during its meeting, the Unification, Foreign Affairs and Trade Committee said it cannot accept the research results purely as a scholastic product, saying China is intensifying distortion of Korean history despite the 2004 agreement.
It also said China's efforts to register Mt. Paektu as part of UNESCO's natural heritage and to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games near the mountain, which Koreans consider as a sacred place, are designed to damage Koreans' spirit and the territorial integrity.
[Koguryo]
Minister Positive About Kim Jong-il's China Trip
By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter
South Korea's point man on North Korea said Thursday North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's possible visit to China could have a positive result on stalled inter-Korean relations, but refrained from making any comment on the reclusive leader's whereabouts.
U.S., China spar over sanctions on North Korea
September 07, 2006 ? China and the United States appeared yesterday to be in the midst of a delicate diplomatic dance over the next steps to deal with North Korea.
Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator at the six-nation talks on North Korean nuclear issues, and Wu Dawei, his Chinese counterpart, met over breakfast yesterday. Speaking to the press after that meeting, Mr. Hill said he and Mr. Wu had "talked about" the need to make clear to North Korea that a nuclear test would be "a very, very unwelcome development."
Mr. Hill also said the United States was determined to take additional measures to press North Korea to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Pyongyang's missile tests in July and calling on North Korea to return to nuclear negotiations.
"I made very clear," Mr. Hill said, "that the U.S. would be pursuing our obligations under [Resolution] 1695 which provide for a very clear framework for looking for appropriate measures." He said the Chinese reaction was "positive."
A day earlier, Wen Jiabao, China's premier, told a group of international correspondents that sanctions on Iran or North Korea might be counterproductive. "The parties involved should be cautious about moving toward sanctions," he said. That same day, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing made the same point, saying China opposed sanctions on North Korea because they could lead to unintended consequences.
[Friction]
History argument
September 07, 2006 ?
At the Tapgol Park in central Seoul yesterday, civic activists denounce Chinese attempts to "hijack ancient Korean history."
[Koguryo] [Media]
Seoul reviewing Mittal Steel's merger
September 07, 2006 ? Korea's corporate regulator said yesterday that it is examining the merger between the world's top two steelmakers to determine its effects on the domestic market.
The Fair Trade Commission said that local representatives of the Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Co. requested a review of its merger with Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based steelmaker. Under current law, mergers by foreign companies that do business in Korea must be checked for potential monopolistic influence on the local market.
Mittal, the world's largest steelmaker, said that it would take over Arcelor SA in late June. Arcelor ranks second in the world in terms of output, turning out 46 million tons of steel in 2005. Mittal produced 63 million tons in the same year. Korea's Posco reported output of around 30 million tons, while Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan produced 32 million tons.
Kim's train moves away from border
A satellite photograph has revealed that the North Korean leader's special train has moved from its position near the border with China, sources said yesterday.
The picture, which was taken on Tuesday, showed that the train had moved somewhere inside North Korea, but officials refused to confirm where, a Seoul intelligence source was quoted by Yonhap News as saying.
Some observers said the train could still be in North Pyongan Province, but others suggested it could have moved all the way back to Pyongyang.
Speculation has been rife that Kim Jong-il was planning to visit China after his train was seen parked at Shinuiju.
China officially denied any immediate arrangements for Kim's visit.
It is highly unlikely that Kim would travel to China at the same time as a visit by U.S. chief nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill, observers said.
Hill arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to discuss additional sanctions against the North following the U.N. resolution condemning Pyongyang's July 5 missile launches.
China, which is against any sanctions, is keen on restarting the suspended six-party talks as soon as possible. China has hosted the talks since they first convened in 2003, successfully raising its international status as a mediator.
Kim Jong-il Not in China
By Christopher Carpenter
Staff Reporter
A special train often used by the reclusive leader Kim Jong-il to travel to China is still in North Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday citing a government official. The official’s statement, which was based on satellite images of the train, calls into question reports that Kim may already be on a visit to China or is planning to leave shortly.
Sources in Dandong, a Chinese city just north of the Sino-North Korea border, said Tuesday that the train had rolled into the North Korean border city of Shinuiju, suggesting Kim was getting ready to cross the border.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the train ``has since moved from Shinuiju to a different area.’’
U.S. envoy says China disappointed with N.Korea
Reuters
Sep 5, 2006 — BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea's test firing of a volley of missiles in July has disappointed its traditional ally China, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in Beijing on Tuesday.
Hill, the top U.S. negotiator in six-party talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons, said the talks were jeopardized by Pyongyang's refusal to participate, and the host country, China, was also frustrated.
N.K. leader's special train sparks Chinese whispers
A special North Korean train has left for a border town in China but it is not confirmed whether leader Kim Jong-il was on board, news reports and sources said yesterday.
Rumors have been rife for the past couple of weeks that the secretive leader was planning a trip to China in the near future.
One of the two trains stationed in Shinuiju in northwestern North Korea left early Tuesday morning towards Dandong in China, sources said.
Posco claims deal on Indian ore could be approved next month
August 19, 2006 ? Posco said it is moving to get clearance from India as early as September or October to mine 600 million tons of iron ore; if successful, it would be the nation's largest overseas investment ever.
Jeong Tae-hyun, vice president of Posco India, was cited yesterday by the company's Seoul-based spokesman, Choi Doo-jin, as saying the local government in Orissa, located on India's east coast, is negotiating with the central government for permission.
Posco, the world's fourth-largest steelmaker, plans a $12 billion plant in Orissa, which if built would be the biggest overseas investment in India and produce 12 million tons of ore a year. The Orissa government agreed last year to allow Pohang to lease the mine, but the central government, which is reviewing the country's mining laws, has not yet approved the deal.
Mittal Steel Co., the world's biggest steelmaker, and Posco plan to spend $21 billion over the next seven years in India due of rising local demand and to secure access to the world's fifth-largest iron-ore reserves.
Chinese Delegation Here
Pyongyang, August 18 (KCNA) -- A delegation of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the China Chamber of International Commerce led by Vice-Chairman Zhangwei arrived here by air on Friday.
Talks between Delegations of DPRK and China
Pyongyang, August 16 (KCNA) -- Talks between a delegation of the Ministry of People's Security of the DPRK and a delegation of the Ministry of Public Security of China were held at the People's Palace of Culture on Tuesday. Present there from the DRPK side were members of the delegation of the Ministry of People's Security led by Vice-Minister Yu Yong Chol and from the Chinese side members of the delegation of the Ministry of Public Security led by Vice-Minister Meng Hongwei and Chinese Charge d'Affaires here Guan Huabing.
At the talks both sides exchanged views on boosting exchange and cooperation between the public security institutions of the two countries and a series of issues of mutual concern.
Hyundai engine order to China $110 million
August 16, 2006 ? Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the world's No. 1 shipbuilder, said yesterday it has clinched a $110 million order to supply ship engines for China's state-run Shanghai Shipyard & Chengxi Shipyard Co.
The order calls for Hyundai Heavy Industries to deliver 77 engines between April next year and July 2009 to the Chinese shipyard.
It is the largest single order the South Korean shipyard has received since it began producing engines for ships in 1979, the company said.
Look More Closely at India
By Ali Suhail Wyne
``India, Asia's Other Superpower Breaks Out'' (Newsweek, March 6)
``India will be the biggest superpower'' (Clyde Prestowitz, March 29)
``India, Inc.: Why the world's biggest democracy is the next great economic superpower'' (TIME, June 26)
And so on.
Like its Chinese neighbor, India has generated a tremendous amount of attention in years past _ and not without good cause. If for no other reason than its mammoth population, the Asian power is a geopolitical tectonic plate, whose decisions will have global consequences. But is it really the next economic superpower? Not by a long shot. Once you look past the glitz and the glamour, you quickly notice that Bangalore is the exception, not the norm, and that Bollywood is the stuff of dreams, not of reality. Three problems, in particular, threaten India's path to superpowerdom:
Socioeconomic disparities
To glimpse it, one might consider that, in between 1995 and 2003, approximately one million Indian farmers committed suicide. (Analysts who criticized India's intransigence at the most recent round of trade negotiations in Doha, Qatar would do well to mull this fact).
Gov't to Seek FTA With China After Pact With U.S.
The government hopes to start free trade negotiations with China in the first half of next year after it clinches a free trade agreement with the U.S, a senior government official said Thursday. The official said once the Korea-U.S negotiations are virtually wrapped up either late this year or in March as planned, it will immediately launch talks with China.
Knocking of the great door of Chinese tourism
By Hazel Heyer l Special to eTN
10 August 2006
With a projected 100 million travelers by 2020, China is poised to become the world’s hottest outbound tourism market. China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grows by 9.9 percent per year. Its economy surging to US$3 trillion and expects to quadruple its GDP in 20 years, averaging 7.3 percent annual growth. Alongside numbers reflecting positive trends is population of 250 million upper-middle class with an increasing disposable income.
Bigger budgets have afforded China to think about travel. In 2005, there was a 43 percent increase in Chinese outbound tourists to 31 million. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, Chinese travelers are the second fastest in spending in the world today, twice the global average. Last year, it ranked number 7 in travel and tourism. In 2015, it is estimated to rise to rank number 2 in travel and tourism demand, second to the United States.
Foreign visitors figure is far below country’s potential, Indian tourism
minister says
By Satish G. | eTN Asia
10 August 2006
Even as the number of foreign tourists is on the rise in India, Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni says the arrival figure is far below country’s potential.
“The rich cultural heritage of our country and the emerging tourism products such as medical, wellness, golf, cruise, adventure, wildlife and rural tourism officers immense potential. In order to exploit the potential of the tourism sector, the Ministry of Tourism in close consultation with concerned ministries and tourism associations and organizations through public private partnerships is endeavoring to build tourism infrastructure, enhance road, rail and air connectivity and develop popular tourism destinations and products,” the ministry stated.
India had managed 3.92 million foreign tourists during the year 2005.
India Fears Terrorism May Attract Its Muslims
Fawzan Husain for The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: August 9, 2006
NEW DELHI, Aug. 8 - The bomb attacks last month on seven Mumbai commuter trains did more than raise Indian hackles against Pakistan for failing to rein in terrorist groups operating on its soil.
They also underscored a gathering threat for India: a small but increasingly deadly cadre of young and often educated Indian Muslims who are being drawn directly into terrorist operations.
Chey's China Love Affair _ SK's New Strategy
By Park Hyong-ki
Staff Reporter
SK Group, Korea's fourth largest conglomerate, is taking a big step in its global expansion, primarily eyeing China.
SK chairman Chey Tae-won often travel overseas with destinations including Kuwait, Switzerland, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China.
But half of them are made to China, the world's biggest emerging market, which is home to 12 SK affiliates. SK, which specializes in a wide range of businesses from refining and chemicals to telecommunications, first set foot in China in 1989, three years before Korea and China established diplomatic ties.
China's rice poses the biggest threat to Korean markets
August 08, 2006 ? Domestic farmers have bitterly fought a free trade agreement with the United States because, for one thing, it could threaten the Korean rice market. But the first round of auctions for table rice tell a different story: Korean government officials think China, not the United States, is the competitor to fear.
Chinese rice, without much fanfare, sold more rapidly than U.S. rice and at higher prices to retailers, emerging as a strong rival to domestic rice.
Calrose rice from the United States, which had great popularity in the local black market 20 to 30 years ago, showed sluggish sales in auctions in April and May, although all of it eventually sold. Some consumers here said they did not like the taste.
"The weak point of Calrose ? its shape ? is the strong point of Chinese rice," a spokesman for the state-run Korea Agro-Fisheries said, pointing out the rice grown in northeast China is similar to domestic rice in shape and taste.
"We can say that Chinese rice has beaten the U.S. rice," he said. "The Chinese rice, which was sold at auction for the first time in May, one month later than the U.S. rice, sold out a week earlier than the U.S. rice, even though the quota for Chinese rice was more than double that for U.S. rice. In addition, the Chinese rice sold at around 1,300 won ($1.35) per kilogram ? higher than the U.S. rice."
[FTA] [China competition]
Premier of Cabinet Meets Chinese Ambassador
Pyongyang, August 7 (KCNA) -- Pak Pong Ju, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, met and had a talk with Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK Wu Donghe who paid a farewell call on him at the Mansudae Assembly Hall Monday. On hand were Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Yong Il and officials concerned.
China in Southeast Asia: The Limits of Power
By Sheng Lijun
[Japan Focus 7 August 2006]
The development of the China-ASEAN relationship began from a very low base. It has improved compared with what it was 15 or 10 years ago, but compared with ASEAN’s relations with other extra-regional powers, it is far from transforming the regional strategic balance. While China has gained influence in Southeast Asia in recent years, ASEAN’s relations with other extra-regional major powers remain robust. For the foreseeable future, China will lack the economic, social and strategic bases to tip the balance. Should China’s goals remain modest, its relations with ASEAN are likely to remain vigorous. If it seeks to press too hard, however, it risks a strong backlash from not only ASEAN countries but also extra-regional powers. This essay explores China’s strengths and weaknesses and the challenges that confront its ASEAN policy.
Between the Lines of China's Korea Policy
Multiple possible scenarios on how Beijing will react to Pyongyang
Kim Tae-kyung (internews)
Published 2006-08-02 13:40 (KST)
Debates on changes in China's strategies towards the Korean peninsula have been ignited because China agreed to the United Nations resolution against North Korea after the North tested missiles on July 5. Interpretations of China's response are varied, ranging from the view that China may have already decided to abandon North Korea to the other extreme claim that China' agreement with the U.N has been discussed and prepared in cooperation with North Korea.
With China cooperating, missile sanctions tighten
August 05, 2006 ? In the aftermath of last month's launch of missiles by North Korea, China and other countries in the central Asian region are tightening the noose around potential air routes that could be used by Pyongyang to export its missile technology, a United States government official said yesterday.
In an exclusive interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, the official said, on the condition of anonymity, that in June last year an Iranian plane that had landed in the North and loaded North Korean missile parts had to unload and head back to Tehran empty, as China and another country in the region refused the use of their air space. Washington, which had received information about the flight, had asked the two countries not to allow the plane to pass through their territories, the official said. He added that about 80 percent of countries in the central Asian region had agreed to prevent North Korean missiles or weapons of mass destruction-related material from passing through their territory, including their air space, after consultations with Washington.
[Imperialism] [Legality] [Pressure]
China Walks a Fine Line With North
By Christopher Carpenter
Staff Reporter
A U.S. official's comments about China's recent actions with regard to North Korea are ``half true and half not true,'' a South Korean scholar said Friday.
Thomas Christensen, United States deputy assistant secretary of state, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Thursday that China has taken ``unprecedented'' actions to relay its concerns to North Korea over its missile tests.
In his address to the commission, Christensen said he believes China realized its own interests aligned with other major stakeholders, such as the U.S., as it rises in the international community.
China's record in dealing with non-proliferation issues is ``mixed,'' Christensen said, with Beijing needing to do more to rein in proliferation activities by Chinese companies
Paik Hak-soon, a scholar at the Sejong Institute, a North Korea think-tank based in Seoul, said while China's signing a UN Security Council resolution, playing host to the six-party talks and freezing North Korean held bank accounts in Macau are concrete measures meant to please the United States, China will not be a party to helping the U.S. bring about regime change in North Korea.
``Chinese policy is striking a very fine balance between the two,'' he said.
[Pressure]
King of Bollywood
In India, Shah Rukh Khan is so famous he can't leave home without half a dozen minders. In the UK, he sells out Wembley in minutes. Emine Saner meets the world's biggest film star
Friday August 4, 2006
The Guardian
I have been waiting for Shah Rukh Khan in the lobby of a central London hotel for an hour. The PR looks apologetic. "He's not very good in the mornings," she says. What can he be doing? His hair? Maybe it's just that he is the biggest film star in the world and that is enough of a reason in itself to keep people waiting. In this country, few people outside Asian communities and Bollywood fans have heard of him (he sells out Wembley arena in minutes when he comes here to perform song-and-dance routines from his films).
As one of India's most high-profile Muslims, Khan hasn't experienced any backlash. "I'm not religious in terms of reading namaz [prayer] five times but I am Islamic," he says. "I believe in the tenets of Islam and I believe that it's a good religion and a good discipline
[Islam]
`Mt. Paekdu Project'
Koreas Should Unite to Keep Sacred Mountain
China is pushing hard to put Mt. Paekdu on the UNESCO's ``World Geopark'' list, a newspaper in Hong Kong said. The move follows Beijing's similar efforts to register the 2,744-meter mountain straddling the Sino-Korean border as the ``World Heritage'' with the U.N. agency. These attempts are not just legal but also desirable for properly protecting and preserving its natural beauty and resources. Unfortunately, it may be that political intentions are involved, however.
According to the report, China plans to develop the area around Paekdu-san, or Changbai-shan in Chinese, into a tourist resort. Beijing has already transferred its administration from Yanbian, Jilin Province, to a newly-established central government agency. Ethnic Koreans living in the autonomous province protested hard to keep their jurisdiction on the place held to be a ``sacred mountain'' by all Koreans, but to no avail. Nor are there any reports on North Korea's response to the Chinese act.
No foreigners can take issue with Beijing's Changbai-shan project conducted in its own territory. Also, Seoul could do little about the decision to divide Mt. Paekdu between North Korea and China, two sovereign states and U.N. members, in the early 1960s. Still, the nation can ill afford to just sit and watch the Chinese move briskly to make entire Paekdu-san its own. Especially so, because all this is being promoted as part of Beijing's ``Northeastern project.''
[Koguryo]
Is China backstabbing North Korea?
The "best buddies" of Northeast Asia have just shocked the world: China signed on to economic sanctions and freezing North Korea bank accounts. Most people would think China's sudden change toward North Korea is due to the failure to influence Pyongyang to refrain from launching eight missiles. However, it must be thoroughly examined why China, a shrewd socialist country, "turned away" from North Korea.
It is doubtful whether we can consider China's move as an act of abandoning North Korea for good. China has gained free access to coal mines and other natural resources all over North Korea. Since China is a profit-seeking, market-expanding capitalist country, an intact market like North Korea is attractive. With this in mind, it is safe to say China is taking advantage of North Korea's predicament to change the unreformed communist state into a market-economy state.
Following this argument, we can imagine how China plans to do this. First of all, China is in a very good position in regard to North Korea. Unlike South Korea, which is easily threatened by the North when it abandons its agreements on tourism and separated-family reunions, Beijing can pressure Pyongyang by cutting off oil supplies, to North Korea is only source of fuel.
To marketize North Korea, the power of the military in Pyongyang must be subdued. Cutting the oil supply would be fatal, since it would immobilize North Korea's military. Prior to such an extreme approach, freezing the North's bank accounts would cut its channels for money to make weapons. Once North Korea's military becomes broke, right wing groups in Pyongyang would be able to assert policies following China's example of economic growth.
Overall, it can be concluded China is now engaged in weakening the hand of the military in North Korea and empowering the right wing to lead North Korea's future as a capitalist country. Viewed in this perspective, it makes sense why a United States diplomat said the United States does not want regime change but a change in attitude for North Korea; they share the same goals as China.
What is now important is how South Korea should act to prevent the total economic colonization and domination of North Korea.
by Kim Tae-ho
[Bizarre] [China confrontation]
Korea Loses in Kimchi War
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
South Korea imported more kimchi than it exported in the first half, losing its luster as the original maker of the spicy fermented cabbage.
Korea saw the trade balance of kimchi, one of the most internationally acknowledged Korean traditional dishes, post a deficit for the first time ever in the first six months of the year.
According to the Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corp., Korea imported kimchi worth $40.3 million during the January-June period while exporting $33.6 million worth.
``Imports of cheaper Chinese kimchi have been soaring since last year due to the growing demand from domestic restaurants,'' a corporation official Ha Jung-ah said.
``It seems to be a bit late to undo what's been already done. Even some Korean kimchi makers have moved their facilities to China to sell their products to their home country in a boomerang export,'' he said.
[China competition]
Asia Between China and India
By Tarique Niazi
[Japan Focus 31 July 2006]
Relations between China and India have long been marked by an ambivalence that has led some observers to describe them as “neither friends nor foes.” [1] In the late 1940s, when China and India won freedom from imperial powers and established new governments, their relations were warm. From the late 1950s, however, relations deteriorated [2], notably from the Dalai Lama’s 1959 flight from Tibet and his refuge in India. [3] This was followed by a succession of events – the1962 border war, Beijing’s nuclear tests in 1964, Indian nuclear tests in 1974, Sino-Pakistan defense cooperation from the 1970s, Indian nuclear tests in 1998 again – that further strained their ties. Since the 1980s and 1990s, when China and India respectively embarked upon economic reforms, their strategic competition was intensified by a scramble for economic and energy resources. [4]
Today, all major parts of Asia – South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia – bear the marks of their competitive economic and strategic outreach. [5,6] South Asia, with its abundant material and human resources, a vast consumer market, and above all geo-strategic importance, is one arena of contestation. Southeast Asia, however, is prized as the most developed part of the continent with immense economic and trade opportunities; while Central Asia’s allure pivots on its energy resources. [6]
4 Arrested on Industrial Spying Charges
Prosecutors charged three employees of an electronics company and a university professor involved with hi-tech projects on charges of stealing semiconductor manufacturing technology and attempting to sell it to a developer in China.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office on Friday indicted a 42-year-old executive, identified by his surname Park, and two other company officials for the alleged industrial spying, and also charged a 56-year-old university professor, identified as Kwak, who had been working as a non-executive director at the electronics maker.
According to prosecutors, Park conspired with his two colleagues and Kwak to download the company's manufacturing technology for non-memory semiconductor chips in order to offer them to a Chinese company in June last year.
[China competition]
House Voted on Indian Deal Unaware of Iran Missile Sales
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 29, 2006; Page A14
The Bush administration will impose sanctions on two Indian firms for selling missile parts to Iran, government officials said yesterday, acknowledging privately that the secret decision should have been shared with the House before it voted this week to support U.S. plans to sell nuclear technology to New Delhi.
It is not the first time Indian companies have been sanctioned for supplying Iran's suspected weapons programs. But the timing of the sanctions, which were not revealed before the vote and are being imposed during fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia, elicited angry responses from Democrats and arms-control experts yesterday.
[Sanctions] [Proliferation]
S&P Ups China's Credit Rating to Korea's Level
Standard & Poor's on Thursday raised China's sovereign credit rating by one notch from "A-" to "A," citing rosy growth prospects and improvements in the Chinese banking sector. China only last year saw its sovereign credit rating raised from "BBB+" to "A-". The move puts China at the same credit rating level as Korea, whose rating the international agency has maintained at "A" since July 2005.
DPRK Students Win Prizes at World Chinese Language Contests
Pyongyang, July 25 (KCNA) -- Han Sol Hyang, student of Kim Il Sung University, received the first prize and Ra Song Hui, student of Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, the second prize and the best acting prize at the 5th world student Chinese language contests. The contests held in Beijing from July 19 to 22 drew 101 students from 49 countries who proved successful in country preliminaries.
The participants competed in the art of Chinese language speaking, quiz and the presentation of special skill prior to finals.
Han Sol Hyang came first by displaying distinguished ability in the art of Chinese language speaking that required all-round linguistic knowledge and expressive power and in the quiz which called on the contestants to possess versatile knowledge about different fields including history and culture.
Ra Song Hui received the second prize and the best acting prize by displaying admirable talent in the presentation of special skill.
Can China and North Korea Mend the Fence?
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
The relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang looks to have reached its worst point ever, following North Korea's test-fire of missiles on July 5.
A number of signals indicating the worsening relationship include Beijing's agreement to Washington's request to airlift three North Korean refugees directly from China to the United States last weekend.
In the past, this would have been difficult, given that Beijing has agreed to return refugees, called economic migrants by China, to North Korea.
If necessary, Beijing has always expelled them to a third country first, from which they can seek asylum, mostly in South Korea.
Another important signal was Beijing's change of stance at the U.N. Security Council that led to the adoption of a resolution on July 15, condemning the North's missile launches.
China's anger might have been intensified as it did not get a prior notice of the missile tests, hurting its pride as a ``big brother'' that provides the largest portion of humanitarian aid to the North.
Bank freezes N. Korea assets
Reuters
Published: July 26, 2006
WASHINGTON The state-owned Bank of China has frozen North Korea- related assets in its Macao branch, the United States has learned, according to two U.S. officials.
Although the development is only now coming to light, one official said it predated Pyongyang's July 4 missile tests and hence did not reflect a post- test attempt by China - Pyongyang's chief patron - to increase pressure on the North to return to six-country nuclear negotiations, as the United States has demanded.
The story was first reported by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which quoted a South Korean legislator as saying that suspicions that Pyongyang printed fake Chinese currency had prompted the Bank of China to freeze all of its North Korean accounts.
A State Department spokesman said Monday that he was unable to confirm that account. The two other U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity Monday because of the issue's sensitivity.
[Sanctions] [Counterfeiting]
China Freezes North Korean Bank Accounts
Embassy Denies Allegation
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Rep. Park Jin of the largest opposition Grand National Party claimed Monday that a Chinese bank froze North Korean accounts last year due to Pyongyang's counterfeiting activities.
But the Chinese Embassy in Seoul flatly denied it. ``I can say it is not true,'' a ranking embassy official told The Korea Times. He declined to go into further detail.
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to the Associated Press.
Park returned to Seoul on Friday after visiting Washington on July 15.
[Sanctions] [Disinformation] [Counterfeiting]
Bank of China Freezes N.Korean Accounts
The Bank of China has frozen North Korea's accounts at a branch in Macau due to Pyongyang's counterfeiting and money laundering activities, it emerged Monday. It is the very BOC branch where South Korea's National Intelligence Service transferred US$200 million to the North to guarantee the success of the first North-South summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il and then-president Kim Dae-jung in 2000. U.S. pressure on the Macau-based bank Banco Delta Asia last year to freeze North Korean accounts reignited conflict between the U.S and the North.
Grand National Party lawmaker Park Jin said a former high-ranking U.S. official told him about the Chinese bank's decision when Park visited Washington last week. A South Korean government official later confirmed the account, saying Beijing could not turn down Washington's demand to clean up dubious accounts since it is well aware of the importance of improving financial transparency for the sake of trade. Analysts say that is one reason behind the recent rift between North Korea and its long-term ally over the North's missile tests.
[Counterfeiting]
China Cracks Down on Trade in Counterfeit Dollars
N.Korea Shows Signs of Caving In to Int'l Demands
Beijing has started a crackdown on high-quality counterfeit U.S. dollars known as "supernotes," a move many speculate is aimed at North Korea, where they are thought to originate.
The People's Bank of China on Friday issued a directive to financial institutions there to increase vigilance against fake US$100 bills they says are being smuggled into China. The PBOC did not specify how the notes made their way to China or where they came from. But Chinese experts say the move was made with North Korea in mind, which the U.S. has accused of being behind production of the supernotes.
[Counterfeiting]
Message of Sympathy to Kim Jong Il from Hu Jintao
Pyongyang, July 23 (KCNA) -- General Secretary Kim Jong Il received a message of sympathy on July 22 from Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People's Republic of China. The message says:
Upon hearing the news that some areas of your country were hard hit by the flood which claimed big human and material losses, I, on behalf of the party and government of China, express sincere sympathy to you and, through you, to the people in the afflicted areas.
I am sure that the people in the afflicted areas will certainly recover from the losses caused by the disaster and lead a normal life as early as possible under the leadership of you and the Workers' Party and government of the DPRK.
All the tea in China
China's national drink is under threat. In Shanghai alone, there are now 47 Starbucks cafes. So could skinny lattes overtake tea? Tim Adams reports
Sunday July 23, 2006
Observer Food Monthly
Hangzhou was, for Marco Polo, who visited in the 13th century, without any question 'the most noble city and the best that is in the world'. It was then a place of canals and stone bridges, a hundred willow-pattern plates come to life. A single narrow man-made causeway crossed the lake, punctuated by temples and tea houses and ornamental gardens, the originals of all garden landscapes in the world. On the lake itself there were gondola-like pleasure boats, with tables set for elaborate dinner; courtesans would drift by the shore, singing siren-songs to the young men of the city. At that time no other place on earth had such a concentration of wealth. The Sung dynasty had chosen Hangzhou as its imperial capital and the merchants and scholar-gentlemen and hermit poets who lived around the lakeside had days of cultivated ease.
India Calls It a Technological Error, but Blog Blockade Continues
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 22, 2006
NEW DELHI, July 21 - After two days of angry inquiries and charges of government censorship, the Indian government took a step Thursday toward explaining a mysterious blockade on personal blogs, calling it "a technological error" that would be repaired soon.
In an e-mail message sent early on Thursday, India time, an official at the office of the Consulate General of India in New York said the order to block a handful of Web sites, including the popular blogspot.com, which plays host to thousands of personal blogs, had been prompted by the discovery of a site that contained what the official called "two impertinent pages" rife with material considered to be "extremely derogatory references to Islam."
Students Feel Power of Korean Wave First Hand
"Alright, we've got Daejanggeum posters here for 10 Yuan," "Take your pick folks, we've got it all: MP3 players to mobile phones." The lobby of the Mirage Hotel in Urumqi, capital of China's remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on July 13. On the Silk Road, a Korean market unfolds, and a group of 27 students from Kwangwoon University on a nine-day field trip join in the bartering.
[Hallyu]
China’s Army Yawns at Pyongyang’s Missiles
by John J. Tkacik, Jr.
July 18th, 2006
John J. Tkacik, Jr., Senior Research Fellow in China Policy in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, writes, “It is now incumbent upon the Bush Administration to face facts… Without Chinese interest in disarming North Korea, much less moderating any of Pyongyang’s other odious behavior, there is no solution to the North Korean problem.”
After initially expressing “concern” over North Korea’s July 4th missile launches, China’s unwillingness to work towards serious sanctions on North Korea provides further proof that Beijing has little interest in restraining Pyongyang. What are we to make of the disconnect between Chinese rhetoric and action? In many ways, it reflects a disconnect between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)which almost certainly does not share any real concerns about North Korea’s missile provocationsand Chinese diplomats, who have largely been kept out of the loop. At the end of the day, Washington needs to face the fact that without any Chinese interest in disarming North Korea there is no viable solution to the North Korean nuclear problem.
[China confrontation]
Head of Chinese Delegation Interviewed by KCNA
Pyongyang, July 14 (KCNA) -- Chen Haosu, chairman of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, who is leading a delegation of the association and the China-Korea Friendship Association, was interviewed by KCNA in Pyongyang on Wednesday. The head of the delegation said the mutual visits of high-level friendship delegations of the two countries on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the conclusion of the China-DPRK Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and its celebrations powerfully demonstrated to the world that friendship and unity between the two peoples could never be broken with anything and traditional China-DPRK friendship will be everlasting down through centuries.
KDI Chief Warns China Catching Up With Korea
China will only be one or two years behind Korea in terms of technology development by 2015, Korea Development Institute president Hyun Jung-taik said Friday.
Hyun made the remarks in a report to a presidential advisory panel for national economy presided over by President Roh Moo-hyun. He said Korea faces a threat amid slowing GDP growth from the rapidly growing Chinese economy.
According to the report, the technology gap between Korea and China narrowed from 4.4 years in 2004 to 3.8 years last year. "The Chinese economy is moving in the same direction as the Korean economy, with the proportion of the IT sector expanding, but the pace is far more rapid." Hyun said. China is still far behind Korea in traditional manufacturing sectors such shipbuilding and automobiles. But it is catching up in new industries like telecom and rechargeable batteries. "China is making great leaps in overseas markets, while Korea's market share in major markets other than China is stagnant or shrinking," he said. To tackle the challenge, Korea should accelerate the rate of GDP growth and boost development potential, he added.
[China competition]
Kim Yong Nam and Jo Myong Rok Meet Chinese Delegation
Pyongyang, July 13 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, and Jo Myong Rok, first vice-chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission, on Thursday met with the Chinese friendship delegation led by Hui Liangyu, member of the Political Bureau of the C.C., the Communist Party of China and vice-premier of the State Council of China, on a visit to the DPRK to participate in the celebrations of the 45th anniversary of the DPRK-China Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. Present there were members of the friendship delegation including the governor of Jilin Province and Wu Donghe, Chinese ambassador to the DPRK, and others.
Chinese Contemporary Art Catches Attention of World
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
Yang Shaobin's "DNA," is a critique of the Iraq war by showing key figures such as U.S. President George W. Bush and former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. /Courtesy of Arario Gallery
China's emergence as a world superpower is now spilling over into the art world. Chinese contemporary art, especially the avant-garde, is gaining international acclaim for its honest critique of modern-day China.
[Softpower]
Chinese Delegates Meet North Korean Leaders
SEOUL (Yonhap) - North Korea's No. 2 leader Kim Yongnam met with a visiting Chinese delegation, which includes Beijing's top envoy to international negotiations over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, the North's state-run media reported Friday.
China seeks concessions from the United States
Says they are needed to lure North back to talks
July 13, 2006 ? China asked the United States yesterday to lift sanctions against North Korea in order to bring the country back to the six-party disarmament talks, but Christopher Hill, Washington's top envoy to the discussions, said there were no signs Pyongyang would return.
"It is, frankly speaking, a little discouraging to see that the DPRK has not yet responded in a positive way," Mr. Hill told reporters after meeting with the Chinese foreign minister in Beijing. "We don't have any signs that the DPRK attaches the same importance to the six-party talks."
After sweeping the region to consult with other nations about the proper response to the North's missile launches, Mr. Hill returned to Beijing to hear the results of a visit this week by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Pyongyang.
The UN Security Council postponed a decision on a Japanese resolution calling for sanctions in a bid to give Beijing more time to broker an agreement with Pyongyang.
Mr. Hill is expected to leave Beijing today. He said previously that the five nations might meet without North Korea, saying that such a meeting was better than none.
The United States has repeatedly said it would not back down on the sanctions. However, Mr. Hill also said there was no deadline for Beijing's diplomatic efforts to bear fruit.
Beijing, the host of the multilateral nuclear talks, put pressure on Washington rather than blaming the North. "We hope the U.S. can take measures to help the six-nation talks resume by compromising on the sanctions,'' Chinese spokesman Liu Jianchao said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzo said on Tuesday he would not respond every time Seoul criticized Tokyo for seeking sanctions against the North, accused it of escalating tensions in the region or speculated Japan would use the situation to rearm.
[Japanese remilitarisation] [Sanctions]
DPRK Premier Meets Chinese Friendship Delegation
Pyongyang, July 11 (KCNA) -- Premier of the DPRK Cabinet Pak Pong Ju met and had a friendly talk with a Chinese friendship delegation led by Hui Liangyu, member of the Political Bureau of the C.C., the Communist Party of China and vice-premier of the State Council of China, which paid a courtesy call on him at the Mansudae Assembly Hall Tuesday. Present there were the governor of Jilin Province and Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK Wu Donghe who are members of the delegation and other members and officials of the Chinese embassy here.
On hand were Minister of Agriculture Ri Kyong Sik and others, officials concerned.
Papers Call for Boosting DPRK-China Friendship
Pyongyang, July 11 (KCNA) -- The conclusion of the DPRK-China Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance marked an important event in the history of the DPRK-China friendship. Papers here today say this in their editorials dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the DPRK-China Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance which falls on today.
Young Chinese Leaders Seek Strengthened Korean Ties
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
With Korea and China strengthening diplomatic and economic ties in recent years, there now must be further efforts to encourage civic engagement between the countries, according to a leader of China's largest elitist youth group.
Zhang Xiaolan, vice president of the All-China Youth Federation, said her group will seek to enhance exchange with Korean policymakers and businessmen to ``strengthen cooperation and understanding'' between both countries at the civic-level.
Zhang arrived in Seoul last Wednesday, leading a delegation of 193 of the federation's members, aged from their late teens to their early forties. The group will stay in the country through Friday, meeting Korean government officials and inspecting Korea's leading corporations and high-tech manufacturing and research facilities.
``With the popularity of Korean pop culture and the widespread use of Korean electronic products and automobiles, there is a growing interest among young Chinese people to better understand Korea and its people,'' said Zhang, a former policymaker for high-tech industry development at the Chongqing regional government before becoming a ranked official of the All-China Youth Federation.
China Knew North's Test Plan in Advance, Says Hill
By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill arrived Friday in Seoul amid escalating diplomatic tension on the Korean Peninsula over North Korea's missile launches.
In Bejing just before he departed for Seoul, Hill was quoted by Yonhap News as telling reporters that the North had informed China of its missile launch plan prior to firing them.
Who believes the new "China threat theory"?
Over the past week, a so-called UN report titled "China's Boom is a Threat to Neighbors" was widely disseminated under the accusations of some overseas media such as the Wall Street Journal and Kyodo News. Under the exaggeration of some foreign media, the "China threat theory" may rise again.
[China confrontation]
What are the tangible benefits for locals?
At 8.55 pm on July 3rd, the T27, the first ever passenger train from Beijing, pulled into Lhasa Station. History shows the construction of a railway line often changes the economic and social life of a region. In what way will the full operation of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway alter and influence the daily life of local people?
The railway is expected to carry 75 percent of the entire region's cargo. It boasts a single-way capacity 40 times that of auto transport and can reduce the cost by half. It would completely break the transportation bottleneck and ease the tension significantly. As more and more low-price and high-quality goods enter Tibet via the line, the purchasing power of local residents will be greatly enhanced, said officials with the Ministry of Commerce.
Indian media highly appraise reopening of India-China border trade
Indian media on Friday highly appraised the reopening of the border trade between China and India through Nathu La Pass after a standstill of 44 years, saying the reopening will further improve the Sino-Indian relationship.
The two countries on Thursday formally reopened the border trade through Nathu La Pass, which links Sikkim state of India and the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China. About 200 Indian pressmen covered the event.
The Times of India said in an article titled "Past buried, new dawn at Nathu La" that India and China on Thursday took a Himalayan step on the road to peace and friendship at Nathu La.
The Pioneer, in an article titled "Trade gets red carpet welcome at Nathu La", said that history was made on Thursday when India and China reopened the famed Silk Road for border trade after 44 years.
CEOs Prefer India to China
By Kim Tae-gyu
Korea Times Correspondent
CHENNAI, India _ Many South Korean businessmen here believe India represents bigger opportunities than China, a maverick idea against the general conviction focusing more on China.
They even believe that India, the world's second-most populous country, has more potential than China even in the brick-and-mortar industries in addition to its flagship info-tech sector.
``China, whose economy is growing at breakneck speed, appears to be better positioned on an overall basis compared with India, at least at present,'' said Shin Ju-ho, joint managing director at the car door-module producer PHC Manufacturing, an affiliate of Korea's PyeongHwa Automotive, situated near Chennai.
``Based on my experiences in both countries, however, I can say India provides bigger business opportunities than China as it has a better workforce and social systems,'' he said.
Young Chinese in Seoul for Cultural Exchange
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
A select group of young Chinese from the fields of politics, business and culture arrived in Seoul Wednesday, for a 10-day trip to meet Korean policymakers to discuss ways to strengthen ties between the two countries and encourage civic engagement.
Hana plans sally into China market
July 04, 2006 ? CHANGCHUN, China ? Hana Finance Group Inc., Korea's fourth-largest financial firm by assets, plans to acquire some Chinese banks based in the country's northeast to gain a foothold in the retail banking market there by 2008, according to Hana's chairman Kim Seung-yoo.
"There is a lot of corporate restructuring going on in China, as many cash-strapped banks in each city are passing their management rights over to provincial governments," Mr. Kim said. "Acquiring such regional banks will be a great opportunity to help us secure a leading position in northeastern regions of China."
Big Korean Firms Put Their Money Into China
Northeast China Exerts Pull on Korean Firms
SKT Buys Into China's No. 2 Mobile Operator
Big Korean corporations invested US$350 million in China in the first quarter of this year, a whopping 75 percent increase from a year ago, the Ministry of Finance and Economy and the state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea said Monday. The Samsung Group raised its investment in China this year by 60 percent to US$800 million from last year's $500 million. Samsung Electronics is to invest $240 million in expanding its liquid crystal display/semiconductor module factory at its Suzhou LCD facilities in China to meet sharply increasing global demand. Samsung Heavy Industries, whose investment in China had been sluggish since 1996, also started in March to build a hull block factory with 500,000 tons annual capacity in Rongcheung, Shandong Province. The company is to invest a total of US $350 million in the project and aims to complete it by the end of 2008.
China to Recognize Kaesong Goods as Made in S.Korea
China will recognize products from the joint-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North as made in South Korea, a high-ranking government official in Seoul said Monday.
According to the official, negotiations are underway but China has signaled willingness and will make a formal announcement in a joint statement with South Korea at the ASEAN + 3 meeting next month.
The government made the request in a bid to pressure the U.S. to do likewise under a planned Korea-U.S. free trade agreement, a concession Washington has refused to make. A Foreign Ministry official said China's decision is unlikely to sway the U.S., "but we try every possible means."
Since China has no FTA with Korea, the recognition of Kaesong goods could amount to preferential treatment in violation of WTO principles. But the government expects Beijing to accept the request taking its friendly relations with Pyongyang into account. In view of possible opposition from other countries, Seoul and Beijing will put a clause in the joint statement saying any countries will receive the same preferential treatment if they conduct business in the industrial complex.
Since the Kaesong complex went into operation in 2004, the government has asked every partner in free-trade talks to consider goods made there South Korean merchandise if more than 60 percent of the raw materials come from the South.
Singapore, EFTA and ASEAN have partly agreed, but the U.S. and Canada refuse. Washington maintains that its arch-enemy North Korea is irrelevant to any FTA with South Korea.
[Sanctions]
Will India-China border talks ever end?
Monday, July 3, 2006
By BRAHMA CHELLANEY
NEW DELHI -- For 25 years, India has been seeking to settle by negotiation with China the disputed Indo-Tibetan frontier. Yet, not only have the negotiations yielded no concrete progress on a settlement, but they also have failed so far to remove even the ambiguities plaguing the long line of control.
Hu Inaugurates World's Highest Railway
The last leg of China's railway to Tibet opened Saturday
Xu Zhiqiang (xuzhiqiang)
Published 2006-07-02 00:16 (KST)
In his book "Riding the Iron Rooster" (1988), American train traveler Paul Theroux wrote, "The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa."
On July 1, the first three pairs of trains from five cities set off to Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. They traveled along the world's highest railway, which opened this weekend for trial operations. China's president, Hu Jintao, cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony in Golmud.
The Qinghai-Tibet Railway extends 1,956 kilometers from Xining to Lhasa.
According to Tibetan Municipal Travel Bureau estimates, after the opening of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, there will be 3,000 to 4,000 new tourists to Tibet every day. Those traveling to Tibet through Qinghai will rise to 400,000 annually. By 2010, the annual number of tourists visiting Tibet is expected to reach 5 million, which will bring in 5.8 billion yuan in direct revenue.
These are considerable numbers for the desolate Qinghai and Tibet plateau. But expectations are high not just for tourism. The availability of natural resources is another hotspot. According to experts, a big salt spring in Tibet, valued at 150 billion yuan, will become one of the biggest lithium production bases. A big mineral water production area and an oil field also wait.
China and Angola Strengthen Bilateral Relationship
23 June 2006 China's relations with Angola have traditionally been friendly due to the fact that both countries were and still are ruled by Marxist Leninist regimes, but until recently China's presence in the country was rather insignificant. In the last five years, however, China's influence in the country has grown rapidly. From a marginal position in Beijing's foreign policy priorities, Angola has moved to the forefront of China's foreign relations. Today, Angola is China's most important partner on the African continent. Angola's importance lies in the fact that it is the second-largest oil producer in Africa and is home to one of the world's largest diamond fields and other precious stones such as rubies and emeralds.
Strengthening Ties
In 2004, Angola became China's largest supplier of crude oil on the African continent. At the global level, Angola is China's third-largest source of oil imports just behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Is China the Nemesis in a New Cold War?
Essay by Emanuel Pastreich
Policy Forum Online 06-18A: March 6th, 2006
Emanuel Pastreich, visiting scholar at the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania and a Japan Focus associate, writes, "The United States is losing its economic and cultural authority through the lethal mixture of ballooning trade deficits and torture scandals. The danger is that a classic military reflex will be one of the few tools left in the chest at a time when the U.S. needs a far more varied and sophisticated set of responses to negotiate successfully the path ahead."
The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China today bears a far greater similarity to the bitter rivalry between Great Britain and the United States that played out between 1910 and 1970. That contest, although obscured by contemporary ideology positing Great Britain as America's closest ally, was not a military conflict, but rather a global struggle over markets, finance, technology and cultural authority
[China confrontation]
Shanghai Motor Raises Stake in Ssangyong
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
The Chinese majority shareholder of Ssangyong Motor is raising its stake in the automaker, drawing interest from the market about what its intentions are.
Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. (SAIC) Motor, which became the largest shareholder of Ssangyong Motor by acquiring a 48.29 percent stake, has continued to buy additional shares over the past year.
Its stake rose to 49.33 percent when it purchased 224,770 and 272,980 shares on May 16 and May 17, 2005, respectively.
After continuous buying, its holding passed the 50 percent mark and has now reached 51.03 percent with the acquisition of 288,730 shares on June 15, 2006.
Ssangyong officials say SAIC's action is believed to aimed at removing market speculation that it will sell the automaker to other investors.
But automobile experts allege the action is designed to make it easier for technology transfer to China by holding an absolute management right. ``Ssangyong is no more a Korean company. Its technology is being handed over to SAIC,'' an executive of Hyundai Motor said.
SAIC is set to replace a number of Korean subcontractors with Chinese auto parts suppliers in an alleged bid to relocate core technologies.
[China competition]
China repatriation remembered
Monday, June 26, 2006
HULUDAO, China (Kyodo) Japan and China held a ceremony Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the repatriation of some 1.05 million Japanese from China after World War II.
The repatriation campaign started in 1946, the year after Japan's defeat in the war. Most of the Japanese emigrants to Manchuria made their way back to Japan via Huludao, in the northeastern province of Liaoning.
According to sources, when the idea of holding the ceremony was first floated in December, the plan was to make it a low-key affair involving just city officials and some people from the Japanese side.
However, it was upgraded into a major event with the participation of senior Chinese officials after the administration of President Hu Jintao put forth "enhanced people-to-people exchanges" as a major pillar of its policy toward Japan, the sources said.
[Softpower] [China-Japan relations]
Mittal's Arcelor Takeover Puts Asian Steelmakers on Alert
POSCO to Guard Against KT&G-Style Takeover Bid
Experts Find POSCO Ripe for Hostile Takeover
Will POSCO's India Project Go the Way of Enron?
The world's largest steelmaker Mittal is poised to command 10 percent of global steel production by taking over the no. 2 in the global market Arcelor. The firm, owned by Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, announced the 26.9 billion euro-merger plan on Sunday after nine hours of deliberations by the Arcelor board.
The merger will cause considerable ripple effects around the world by creating a steel behemoth capable of producing 100 million tons of steel a year, which will spur competition among steel majors around the world to "bulk up" for survival, industry sources say. Mittal Steel's history of takeovers of steelmakers in Europe, its base of operations, the US,, Canada, Ukraine and China is giving rise to industry speculation that the steel giant will next try lay its hands on the Asian market. Korea's no. 1 POSCO has been busy beefing up protection against hostile takeovers since Mittal announced its hostile bid against Arcelor.
Asia's Dawning Multipolar System Increases Australia's Geopolitical Importance
Dr. Federico Bordonaro
14 June 2006
Australia's geopolitical weight in global power relations is increasing. After the Cold War period, when the country was relegated to geostrategic marginality notwithstanding its solid alliance with the U.S.-led Western alliance, Canberra is now emerging as a new protagonist in the security framework of the Asia-Pacific and eastern Indian Ocean regions.
There are two reasons for Australia's growing international importance. First, China's and India's rise as great powers are making Canberra's bi-maritime character more significant in the U.S.-India-China triangle. Washington needs reliable allies since a new Asian multipolar system is taking shape, with Beijing and New Delhi both beefing up their navies.
Saemaeul Movement Goes International
The Chinese government will reportedly dispatch some 30,000 civil servants to Korea over three years so they can learn about the Saemaeul or New Village Movement, a government-run rural development campaign dating back to the 1070s. Over the long term, 350,000 Chinese civil servants will be trained in Korea. In February, President Hu Jintao and ranking officials from 31 provinces and cities studied the history and successes of the Saemaeul Movement at a weeklong retreat. The fourth largest economy in the world, China is troubled by a growing gulf between urban and rural incomes, with farmers earning no more than one-third of urban workers. To improve the lives of its underdeveloped farming communities, Beijing has alighted on the Korean program.
Several other countries in Asia and Africa have been trained in Korea on the Saemaeul project, with some 40,000 public officials and farmers from over 160 countries attending training courses at Saemaeul-related agencies and local government institutions. Even North Korea's Kim Jong-il has cited the Saemaeul Movement's contribution to the development of South Korea. But at home, it is treated with contempt. Modern Korean history books, approved by the authorities and taught to high school students, disparage it as a means of justifying the authoritarian government's grip on power and as "putting the stress on changing the outward appearance of farming villages." They tend to be keen on food-less North Korea's Chollima Movement instead, as a successful campaign that has "played a major role in constructing the socialist economy by rallying the masses' passions."
In Africa, China Trade Brings Growth, Unease
Asian Giant's Appetite for Raw Materials, Markets Has Some Questioning Its Impact on Continent
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Page A14
JOHANNESBURG -- Every time newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube visits his native Zimbabwe, he said, there seem to be more Chinese. He sees them shopping at boutiques, driving fancy cars, picking up their children from elite private schools.
And as in much of Africa, Ncube said, China's reach into Zimbabwe's economy is equally pervasive: The roads are filled with Chinese buses, the markets with Chinese goods, and Chinese-made planes are in the skies. Chinese companies are major investors in mining and telecommunications. The government in Beijing, meanwhile, is a crucial backer of Zimbabwe's authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe.
"They are all over the place," said Ncube, 43, who owns newspapers in Zimbabwe and South Africa. "If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have come and taken their place."
Such unease appears to be rising across Africa as Chinese become powerful players -- and, in some places, the dominant ones -- in economies across the continent. In a pattern replicated across the world, China's voracious appetite for raw materials is helping push sub-Saharan economies to their fastest growth in three decades, and inexpensive Chinese-made products are suddenly available across the continent. Yet many Africans say the influx, while offering consumers more affordable goods, has not improved their economic situation and has hurt local companies.
[China confrontation] [Manipulation] [Spin]
US-China Conflict on Iran Nukes
B[Views From Overseas] y Frank Ching
The package deal of proposals on the Iranian nuclear crisis put together in Vienna by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany underlines the growing convergence of views of China and the United States on the issue and tests Beijing's frequent declarations that the two countries increasingly share strategic interests.
Chinese nuclear forces, 2006
By Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen
May/June 2006 pp. 60-63 (vol. 62, no. 3) (c) 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Newly available information on the Chinese nuclear arsenal requires us to reassess our previous estimate of Beijing's stockpile (see "Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2003," November/December 2003 Bulletin). In 2005, the Defense Department published a detailed breakdown of the Chinese missile force, as part of its 2005 Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China (otherwise known as Chinese Military Power 2005). Taken together with a vague 2004 Chinese Foreign Ministry declaration about the size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal and other information, we estimate that China deploys approximately 130 nuclear warheads for delivery by land-based missiles, sea-based missiles, and bombers. Additional warheads are thought to be in storage for a total stockpile of approximately 200 warheads.
[military balance]
SKT seeking Chinese business partner
Seeking to expand its market presence in the Chinese market, Korea's top mobile carrier SK Telecom is apparently in the process of hiring advisers to buy a 10 percent stake in China Unicom Ltd. for about $1.1 billion.
U.S. based Sprint Nextel and Japan's KDDI are also known to be interested in acquiring the 10 percent stake in convertible bonds available in China's second-largest, state-run wireless carrier.
Dance 'Ah Q' Portrays Absurdity of Humans
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Hong's new creation ``Ah Q'' focuses on the absurdity of humans. The motive of the piece comes from ``The True Story of Ah Q,'' a novel by renowned Chinese writer Lu Xun. In the piece, flowers, peaked hoods and knives appear as meaningful subjects.
NK Foreign Minister Finishes China Visit
BEIJING (Yonhap) ? North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun returned to Pyongyang on Tuesday after wrapping up an eight-day trip to China, according to diplomatic sources.
During the trip, Paek looked around China's economic heartland and sought ways to break the impasse in the six-nation talks on his country's nuclear weapons program in a series of meetings with Chinese leaders.
In talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing, he explained Pyongyang's position on efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis. The details of the meeting have yet to be disclosed.
Before his departure for Pyongyang, Paek visited Guangzhou, the administrative center of China's Guangdong Province, where North Korean leader Kim Jong-il traveled during his secret trip to China in January.
Northeast China Exerts Pull on Korean Firms
Korean companies are rushing to Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces in northeastern China, to get a piece of the development pie there. The region is seeing massive investment in ports, highways and other infrastructure thanks to huge development projects the Chinese government is carrying out there. It already has well-developed electricity grids, ample natural resources and plenty of manpower because it was the center of China's heavy industry in the 1970s and 80s.
Korean parts manufacturers are following in the wake of big Chinese firms
China, North Korea Strike Oil Exploration Deal
China says it has reached a deal with North Korea to look for oil in the Yellow Sea. Chinese officials gave few details of the pact reached recently between Beijing and Pyongyang.
The deal underscores China's need to find new sources of oil to fuel its booming economy, and also its desire to strengthen trade ties with North Korea, which Beijing is trying to woo back to multi-party negotiations on nuclear disarmament.
Talks had been under way between Chinese and North Korean officials for several months before Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao confirmed on Tuesday that they have struck a preliminary agreement.
"Through equal and friendly consultations, our two countries have reached an agreement to jointly develop the border sea area," said Liu. "Therefore, on the natural resources issue, agreement has been reached."
The Political and Industrial Implications of the Clearstream Scandal
05 June 2006While the French media continues to closely follow the developments of the Clearstream scandal, the implications of the scandal on France's political and industrial landscape remain largely unknown. This is due both to the caution used by the press in dealing with the issue and to the scandal's complexity.
The current affair originated in 2003 and involved the question of France's sale of six frigates to Taiwan following a 1991 deal.
U.S., Media Settle With Wen Ho Lee
News Organizations Pay To Keep Sources Secret
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 3, 2006; Page A01
Wen Ho Lee, the U.S. nuclear scientist once identified in news reports as the target of a spying investigation, will receive more than $1.6 million from the federal government and five media organizations, including The Washington Post, to settle allegations that government leaks violated his privacy.
The United States will pay Lee $895,000 to drop his lawsuit, filed in 1999, which alleged that officials in the Clinton administration had disclosed to the news media that he was under investigation for spying for China while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
[Espionage] [Media]
Taiwan's Leader Promotes 'Soft Power'
On the occasion of the first regional convention of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU) June 2-3 in Seoul, The Korea Times had an exclusive interview in Taipei on Monday with Taiwan's Vice President Annette Lu, who played a leading role in inaugurating the international, nongovernmental organization last August. _ ED
By Ryu Jin
Korea Times Correspondent
Taiwan's Vice President Annette Lu speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at her office in Taipei, Monday. /Korea Times
TAIPEI _ Taiwanese Vice President Annette Lu stressed that the future of the world would be determined by ``Soft Power'' and hoped South Korea and Taiwan would play constructive roles to achieve their common goals of peace and prosperity in the region.
China Seeks Deal With Arab Leaders
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa (L),UAE State Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Hussein Al Shaali (2nd L),Chinese President Hu Jintao (2nd R), Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (R) at the Great Hall of People in Beijing, 31 May 2006
Twenty-two Arab nations have agreed to boost energy cooperation and increase trade with China at the end of a two-day meeting in Beijing. Analysts see the meeting as part of Beijing's strategy of pushing for stability in the Middle East in order to secure future oil supplies.
Middle East nations already provide China with about 44 percent of its oil imports and with its economy showing no signs of slowing down, Beijing wants to get more oil from the region. For that to happen, China's leaders say, there first needs to be peace in the Middle East and the key to that is the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Among the Arab League foreign ministers taking part in the two-day meeting here was Mahmoud Zahar of the Palestinian government led by Hamas - a group the United States and others have shunned for its terrorist activities.
[Realignment] [Oil]
Taiwan's President On Shaky Ground
Missteps, Scandal Erode Leadership
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, June 2, 2006; Page A13
TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 1 -- President Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan's ardent champion of independence, has been gravely wounded by a string of political missteps and mounting corruption allegations against his family, undermining his leadership and raising doubts about the remaining two years of his term.
In an unusual step, Chen announced Wednesday night that he was relinquishing command over domestic policies to his premier, Su Tseng-chang, and would stay out of his Democratic Progressive Party's political affairs, including campaigning.
The sudden storm of scandal and accusations of bumbling leadership raised questions about what the unpredictable Chen might do to regain balance. Some analysts suggested he would become more prudent, scaling back efforts to push this self-ruled island toward formal independence. But others predicted a bold move to revive support among the many Taiwanese who believe that their homeland should be independent in law as well as fact despite China's resolve to absorb it into the mainland.
Research on Taiwan's Position as a US Insular Area
(Unincorporated Territory)
We, therefore, in regard to the above statements of fact, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of Taiwan, solemnly publish and declare, that the US Congress should assume jurisdiction over the civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of Taiwan, according to the US Constitution's territorial clause, and that the White House, State Dept., Defense Dept., and other departments, agencies, boards, commissions, committees, etc. of the Executive Branch should take immediate action to remedy their mishandling of the Taiwan question in the post-WWII period, in order to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic.
And in further support of this Declaration, we also give notice that the native inhabitants of Taiwan are ready to submit their DS-11 applications for US national non-citizen passports.
[Bizarre]
Talks between DPRK and Chinese FMs
Beijing, May 30 (KCNA) -- Talks between DPRK Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun and Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing took place here Tuesday. At the talks both sides informed each other of the situation in their countries and exchanged views on the matter of boosting the traditional DPRK-China friendship and international issues of common concern.
NK Foreign Minister Arrives in China
BEIJING (Yonhap) - North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for an eight-day visit to China, where he is expected to look around China's economic heartland and seek ways to break the impasse in the six-nation talks on his country?s nuclear weapons program.
Little progress reported in talks with North's Paek
June 01, 2006 ? BEIJING ? In a meeting between North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, yesterday, both sides agreed to maintain close consultations and strive to expand mutually beneficial areas, the Chinese Xinhua News Agency reported from Beijing. In the meeting, China also reaffirmed its strong support for its ally.
A source familiar with the current visit said the stalled nuclear talks were discussed, but little progress was made. The source added that a visit by Christopher Hill, Washington's top envoy to the six-party talks, to Beijing shortly before Mr. Paek's visit also yielded little results.
Mr. Paek also paid a courtesy visit to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao before meeting with the Chinese foreign minister.
Stand of Chinese Party and Government to Boost Relations with DPRK Reiterated
Beijing, May 30 (KCNA) -- Premier of the State Council of China Wen Jiabao who is member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the C.C., the Communist Party of China met and had a friendly talk with DPRK Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun and his party in Zhongnanhai here on Tuesday. The premier said that General Secretary Kim Jong Il's visit to China and President Hu Jintao's visit to the DPRK in recent years gave a powerful impetus to the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.
China and the DPRK are friendly neighbors with mountain and river in between, he said, adding that it is the unshakable stand of the Chinese party and government to boost friendly and cooperative relations with the DPRK, which conforms with the interests of the two peoples.
The Chinese party and government, he said, are rejoiced over the achievements made by the Korean people in political, economic, cultural and several other fields under the leadership of Kim Jong Il. The premier wholeheartedly wished the Korean people a greater advance in the future.
Paek begins eight-day China visit
May 31, 2006 ? BEIJING ? North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun arrived in Beijing yesterday for an eight-day visit, during which he is expected to look around China's economic centers and discuss ways to break the impasse in the six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, diplomatic sources said.
Upon arriving at Beijing's international airport on a Koryo Air flight along with a 10-member entourage, Mr. Paek waved to photographers, but did not answer reporters' questions.
Ssangyoung now in talks with Shanghai
May 31, 2006 ? Korea's smallest automaker, Ssangyong Motor Co., said yesterday that it is in talks with Shanghai Automotive Corp. about the knockdown production of its sport utility vehicle, Kyron, in China.
The move came two months after Ssangyong Motor scrapped a plan to build a production plant in China due to new Chinese government regulations aimed at curbing the overcrowded auto market. Shanghai Automotive is the controlling stakeholder of Ssangyong Motor. In the latest plan, Ssangyong Motor and Shanghai Automotive will jointly develop a new Kyron model with a gasoline-powered 2,300-cc engine tailored to the Chinese market.
One of the subsidiaries of the Chinese automaker will produce Kyron models through knockdown production by assembling imported auto parts. Ssangyong Motor has an annual sales target of 20,000 units beginning in 2008.
Korea foreign minister in China
By Dan Griffiths
BBC News, Beijing
North Korea's Foreign Minister, Paek Nam-sun, is visiting Beijing amid diplomatic efforts to revive stalled six-nation nuclear talks.
This visit comes as Chinese officials say negotiations over North Korea's nuclear programme are facing serious difficulties
India is on the road to a transport revolution
Huge efforts are being made to improve the country's infrastructure
Randeep Ramesh in Pune
Tuesday May 2, 2006
The Guardian
What Mr Poonawalla experienced are the first fruits of India's roads revolution, which has helped propel the country's economic annual growth past 8%. The six lanes running from Mumbai to Pune are part of the 3,650-mile Golden Quadrilateral highway, which is the largest infrastructure project undertaken since the country became independent in 1947.
The expressways form a diamond linking Delhi with the country's three other largest cities: Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta. On schedule to be completed this year and within its £4bn budget, the Golden Quadrilateral marks the beginning of more than £35bn of road projects.
The auto-parts industry, too, has sought to emulate Japanese competitors. Rane Group, based in Chennai, has sales of £165m and is growing at more than 10% a year with exports rising at a faster pace. Yet only five years ago the company could not take on foreign competitors, scaring away customers with shoddy brakes and valves.
"Our natural advantage is in wage costs. In the past the gap was the quality of our products. So we hired Japanese consultants and got them to show us where we went wrong," says Babu Laxman, the company chairman.
These are the first signs that the country may be experiencing a boom in manufacturing to rival the Chinese. "We do not see Chinese competition as our rivals," says Mr Laxman. "It's the Japanese we want to match and beat."
[Connections] [China competition]
North and China rein in travelers
May 26, 2006 ? BEIJING ? China and North Korea have cancelled reciprocal visa waivers for travel between the two countries, ending a system that has been in effect since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1949.
A source here said that North Korea moved first, requiring that Chinese citizens visiting the North for six months or less now obtain visas. The source said North Korean authorities were concerned at the number of Chinese visitors to North Korea's major cities and wanted to put a curb on "China's aggressive expansion in the North."
Beijing reciprocated on April 18, and while such tit-for-tat actions are common in international relations, another source said Beijing also wanted to try to curb the influx of North Korean refugees as it spruced up its international image for the 2008 Olympics.
The biggest effect, these sources said, has been on small businessmen in border areas, where there is a lively trade in North Korean fish and minerals and Chinese clothing.
Other political analysts here say part of the reason for the North's action was to limit its population's exposure to outside ideas and influences, even from fraternal socialists, that could destabilize Pyongyang's domestic social controls.
China Southern Airlines last month resumed air service from Beijing to Pyongyang, flying three times a week. Air Koryo, the North Korean carrier, operates twice a week on that route; combined, the two carriers offer service five days per week between the two capitals.
by Yoo Kwang-jong
[NK-China relations] [Connections]
Arcelor merges with Russian steel group in final snub to Mittal's €25bn bid
David Gow in Brussels
Saturday May 27, 2006
The Guardian
Arcelor, the pan-European steel group, yesterday torpedoed Mittal's latest hostile takeover bid by buying Russia's Severstal in an agreed 13bn euro (£8.8bn) deal designed to create an "unrivalled global champion" out of reach of its Indian-owned predator. The friendly transaction will see Alexei Mordashov, who owns 89% of Severstal, take 32% of the new group and, potentially, become its chief executive and even owner within a few years.
It is the biggest overseas industrial venture by a Russian company and was personally approved by President Vladimir Putin in an effort to persuade the increasingly sceptical west that Russia is "an open market and keen on globalisation," according to Mr Mordashov.
North Korea Severs Travel Ties With China
Sources in Beijing say China's growing economic power may have been a factor in North Korea's decision to sever the mutual visa waiver program with its neighbor to the north, according to a local newspaper.
The Joongang Ilbo yesterday reported that Pyongyang seems to have been concerned about the number of Chinese visitors to North Korea's major cities and wanted to put a curb on ``China's aggressive expansion'' in North Korea.
The visa waiver program had been in place since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1949.
Beijing followed North Korea's lead and began requiring North Koreans visiting China for six months or less to also obtain visas on April 18.
Another source said aside from the North's canceling the program, officials in Beijing took the step because they wanted to slow the influx of North Korean refugees into the country before China hosts the 2008 Olympics.
The biggest effect, these sources said, has been on small businessmen in border areas, where there is a lively trade in North Korean fish and minerals and Chinese clothing.
Other political analysts in China say part of the reason for the North's action was to limit outside ideas and influences that could destabilize Pyongyang's domestic social controls.
China Southern Airlines last month resumed air services from Beijing to Pyongyang, flying three times a week. Air Koryo, the North Korean carrier, operates twice a week on the same route. [NK-China relations] [Connections]
Haier Struggles to Grab Bigger Market Share
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Though the ``Made in China'' tag is still viewed as a symbol of crudeness and inferiority in Korea, Haier, China's flagship electronics maker, is ramping up its efforts to win the Korean market with an ambitious goal of becoming one of the big three brands here.
The company opened its first company-operated service and repair center at Yongsan Electronics Market on Thursday. So far, Haier has been outsourcing its repair services to some 40 local electronics shops, and the company plans to increase the combined number of the direct and indirect service centers to 100 by the end of next year.
Haier, the world's second largest consumer electronics maker, is also spending more money on advertising. In April, it launched a TV commercial for its LCD digital TV sets on all of three major broadcasters and on several more cable channels, becoming the first Chinese firm to do so in Korea.
If the 20th century ended in 1989, the 21st began in 1978
Eleven years before the epochal events in Germany, a seismic change was taking place in China
Martin Jacques in Beijing
Thursday May 25, 2006
The Guardian
It is, of course, common sense that 1989 was the defining moment of the last quarter of the 20th century. Who could possibly disagree? It closed a chapter of history that had been ushered in by the October revolution in 1917. It brought to an end the systemic challenge that communism had posed to capitalism, the belief that there was, indeed, an alternative. It allowed the United States to emerge as the undisputed superpower of a new century. It gave globalisation access to the former Soviet bloc from which it had been excluded: henceforth, globalisation could live up to its name.
North Korean instability could tempt China: U.S.
May 25, 2006 ? In an annual report to the U.S. Congress on the Chinese military, the Pentagon on Tuesday warned of Beijing's growing military power and a lack of transparency in Chinese military doctrine about the uses that power might be put to.
The report, a requirement levied by the Congress, suggested that Beijing would face a dilemma in choosing between a unilateral or multilateral response to regime-threatening instability in North Korea, triggered perhaps by its ailing economy and no progress in the fits-and-starts negotiations over its nuclear programs.
The report implied that Beijing could justify a unilateral military intervention, if it chose to do so, on the grounds of its own national security. It notes China's intervention in Korea in 1950-53 as a precedent.
[China confrontation]
North Korean Foreign Minister to Visit China
Paek Nam-sun
North Korean foreign minister
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
North Korea's Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun will visit China at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on May 30, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said in Beijing on Tuesday.
Paek's trip to China comes as Christopher Hill, top U.S. delegate to the six-party talks, travels to Beijing on Wednesday. The American official is expected to have talks with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei over ways to resume the denuclearization talks.
After the two-day visit to Beijing, Hill will come to Seoul on Thursday for a meeting with Chun Yung-woo, South Korea's top nuclear negotiator, with whom he will exchange opinions about how to restart the multilateral nuclear dialogue.
Paek will stay in China for eight days, during which he will have a meeting with Li over ``issues of bilateral interest,'' and travel around cities in Guandong and Guanzhou provinces that are considered the economic powerhouse of China, the spokesman said
Get Serious About China's Rising Military
By Dan Blumenthal
Thursday, May 25, 2006; Page A29
The Pentagon's annual report to Congress on China's military power, released this week, reveals that Beijing's buildup has advanced well beyond what most analysts considered likely just 10 years ago. Some highlights: The new arsenal of the People's Liberation Army includes more than 700 missiles deployed opposite Taiwan, a fleet of sophisticated diesel electric submarines, a growing nuclear submarine capability and advanced destroyers armed with lethal anti-ship cruise missiles. By making the potential cost of any U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait extraordinarily high, Beijing has accomplished its decade-long goal of establishing a credible military threat to Taiwan -- as well as a deterrent to the United States. The question is, what next?
[China confrontation]
China criticizes Pentagon's military report
Reuters
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; 11:27 PM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has criticized a U.S. report on its military power, saying it exaggerated the country's defense capabilities and showed a "cold war mentality."
China's Foreign Ministry said the Pentagon's 2006 China Military Power Report released on Tuesday spreads the "China threat theory" and endangers international relations.
"The (report) has a 'cold war mentality', deliberately overstates China's military power and expenditure, continues to spread the 'China threat theory' endangers international relations and brashly interferes in China's domestic affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in a statement.
Pentagon Finds China Fortifying Its Long-Range Military Arsenal
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 24, 2006; Page A17
China's military buildup is increasingly aimed at projecting power far beyond its shores into the western Pacific to be able to interdict U.S. aircraft carriers and other nations' military forces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday that outlines continued concerns over China's rising strategic influence in Asia.
Chinese military planners are focusing to a greater degree than in the past on targeting ships and submarines at long ranges using anti-ship cruise missiles, partly in reaction to Taiwan Strait crises in 1995 and 1996 that saw the U.S. military intervene with carrier battle groups, the report said.
[China confrontation]
Is Outsourcing Good for India?
Despite the hype, BPO doesn't add much value to economy
The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in India has been growing at a rapid pace for the last 5 years. India is now considered the back-office of the world.
This new found place has increased the brand value of India. In some parts of the world it is considered a great boon, while in others it is connected to job and economic losses or competition.
[China competition]
China key to resolving nuclear crises, Annan says
By Ben Blanchard
Reuters
Tuesday, May 23, 2006; 2:46 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is crucial to the success of talks on reining in North Korea's nuclear programs, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday as he urged Beijing to take a more active role in protecting human rights.
In a speech to students at the elite Peking University, Annan said he spent a good deal of time talking to Chinese leaders about the nuclear crises in Iran and North Korea and the importance of nuclear non-proliferation.
"As host of the six-party talks on the nuclear issue in the Korean peninsula, China has played a crucial role," he said.
"China's ongoing leadership will be essential to ensure that multilateral diplomatic efforts result in a peninsula free from nuclear weapons. We cannot allow the current stalemate to continue."
North Korean to head to China next week
The Associated Press
TUESDAY, MAY 23, 2006
BEIJING The foreign minister of North Korea will visit China next week, the Foreign Ministry of China announced Tuesday amid diplomatic efforts to restart stalled nuclear disarmament talks.
Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun will arrive in China on Tuesday and stay until June 6, said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao.
The U.S.-China-Taiwan Triangle: Towards Equilibrium
by Donald S. Zagoria
May 23rd, 2006
Donald S. Zagoria, a trustee of the NCAFP, a
private American think tank dedicated to
resolving conflicts that threaten U.S. national
interests, writes, "In sum, the conditions for
equilibrium in the Taiwan Strait are now at least
visible. It is possible but unlikely that
President Chen, in his remaining two years in
office, can or will challenge this equilibrium...
China, for its part, is unlikely in the short run
to abandon its 'hearts and minds' strategy and
will probably resume an official dialog with
whichever party wins the Taiwan presidency in 2008."
'China fever' reaches domestic art scene
Western art - which has been the mainstay of global art for the past 200 years - is showing signs of losing ground to a new art paradigm taking place in China.
With new opportunities provided through its opening up and rapid shift to a market economy, China has been developing its art at an incredible speed. Its contemporary art is now regarded as a new power on the international art scene.
The fever over Chinese art has also been reaching out to Korea, with many of its artists taking over major exhibition space in Seoul. Among the many talented Chinese artists being introduced to Korea for the first time, Wang Guangyi and Ru Xiao Fan are especially attention-catching
China's Port Development and Shipping Competition in East Asia
By Nazery Khalid
[ China and East Asia are experiencing a harbour construction boom as the region gains a position of ascendance in global trade. Nazery Khalid - Research Fellow, Center for Economic Studies and Ocean Industries. Maritime Institute of Malaysia - reports that 7 of the world's 20 busiest terminals are in China. The port to watch is Shanghai, which is poised to overtake its main rivals (Hong Kong and Singapore). In 2005, Shanghai handled 443 million tons of cargo in total and 18.09 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers, an increase of 24.2 percent compared with the previous year (Hong Kong handled 23.2 million TEUs and Singapore 22.43 TEUs). The Shanghai region is expected to handle 35 million TEUs of container traffic by 2010. This is because the port of Ningbo will continue its own frenetic expansion of capacity as well as install the world's longest bridge (the US$ 1.4 billion Hangzhou Bay Bridge) to cut the travel time to Shanghai to two hours. In addition, Shanghai is adding a deepwater facility in nearby Yangshan and working out deals with other North China ports to provide international service for them.
[China competition]
China, U.S. in talks on 4 defectors from North
May 22, 2006 ? WASHINGTON ? The United States has begun negotiations with China over four North Korean defectors, three men and a woman, who broke into the U.S. consulate in Shenyang, China. It was confirmed on Friday that the four North Koreans who had been sheltering in the South Korean consulate recently entered the neighboring U.S. consulate by climbing the wall between the two embassy buildings.
A South Korean diplomatic source said yesterday, "The ball is now in the U.S. court," and, "We know that negotiations between the United States and China have started."
The defectors are reportedly seeking asylum in the United States and asked the U.S. consulate to grant them refugee status.
According to sources in Seoul and Shenyang, the defectors initially sought asylum in South Korea but changed their plan after hearing that Washington accepted six North Korea defectors as refugees earlier this month for the first time since the U.S. Congress approved the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004
[Refugee reception]
China's Closer Economic Cooperation and Exchange with DPRK Called for
Pyongyang, May 20 (KCNA) -- We will encourage more Chinese companies to participate in the international trade fair to be held in Pyongyang in the future and boost economic cooperation and exchange with the DPRK so as to make a positive contribution to developing the traditional relations of friendship and cooperation between China and the DPRK. Wan Jifei, chairman the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the Chamber of International Commerce, who is heading the delegation of the council and the chamber to the 9th Pyongyang Spring International Trade Fair, said this, when interviewed by KCNA before his departure from here.
China Marks Completion of Three Gorges Dam
By REUTERS
Published: May 20, 2006
Filed at 3:54 a.m. ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - China completed construction on Saturday of the controversial Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectricity project, and marked the occasion with a subdued ceremony broadcast live on state television.
A brass band played and confetti rained over the site after workers poured the last batch of concrete.
No top officials attended the event, in contrast to the launch of work on the dam in 1997, for which then-President Jiang Zemin and then-Premier Li Peng were both present.
Officials stressed that although construction of the dam's main span was now complete, there was still a long way to go until the entire project would be finished.
``Although the dam is now complete, we still have a long way to go and cannot become self-satisfied or relax our efforts in the least,'' Li Yongan, general manager of the Three Gorges Project Development Corp., said at the ceremony.
``We need to continue to put quality and safety first,'' Li said.
Dalai Lama unlikely to get visa for visit here
May 19, 2006 ? A South Korean Foreign Ministry official confirmed yesterday news reports saying the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, had requested a visa for a visit to Korea.
DPRK and China Cooperate in Field of Inspection and Quarantine
Pyongyang, May 17 (KCNA) -- An agreement on cooperation in the field of inspection and quarantine between the DPRK State Bureau of Quality Control and the State General Administration of Quality Supervision's Inspection and Quarantine of China was inked in Beijing on May 17. The agreement was signed by Kim Hyong Chol, director of the DPRK State Bureau of Quality Control who is heading its delegation, and Li Changjiang, director general of the State General Administration of Quality Supervision's Inspection and Quarantine of China.
Chinese Minister of National Defence Visits DPRK
Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the SPA met Col. General Cao Gangchuan on April 6 at the Masudae Assembly Hall.
Colonel General Cao Gangchuan, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, state councilor and minister of National Defence of the People's Republic of China, visited the DPRK from April 4 to 6.
Delegation of Mao Anying's Family and Relatives Winds up Its Korea Visit
Pyongyang, May 16 (KCNA) -- The delegation of martyr Mao Anying's family and relatives led by Shao Hua, former Deputy Department Director of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, went back home on Tuesday after winding up its six-day visit to Korea. The delegation had come to Korea to visit the grave of Mao Anying who is son of Chairman Mao Zedong, the great leader of the Chinese people, and fell in the Korean War. It was seen off at the airport by Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Yong Il, general officers and officers of the Korean People's Army, Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK Wu Donghe, Military Attache Yang Xilian and staff members of the Chinese embassy.
North Korea, China to build power plants
May 16, 2006 ? North Korea and China have agreed to jointly build two hydroelectric power plants on the Amnok River, also known as the Yalu River in China, on the border between the two countries, Chinese media reported yesterday. The site is where the ruins of a 2,000-year-old walled city and 2,360 "massive tombs" of Korea's ancient Goguryeo kingdom were recently found.
According to the local newspaper Jilin Daily, North Korean delegates from the Ministry of Power and Coal Industries and China's central government, along with Jilin provincial officials, signed the agreement at Changchun, the capital city of Jilin province, on Sunday.
North Korea and China had planned in 1995 to construct the two power plants.
According to the accord, China and North Korea will each build a dam with a power plant.
China will begin construction on its dam as early as late this year, Chinese media said.
The North is expected to build its dam about 16 kilometers south of the Chinese power plant.
by Ser Myo-ja
[Energy]
U.S. Aims to Improve Military Ties With China
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 16, 2006; Page A14
SHENYANG, China, May 15 -- Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, flashed what aides described as a broad grin as he sat in the cockpit of a twin-engine FB-7 fighter-bomber, China's most advanced domestically produced warplane.
"They had to drag me out of there," recalled Fallon, a veteran carrier pilot, as he described the first such close look by a U.S. official of the modern two-seater, which is scheduled to become a key part of China's air defenses.
Fallon's visit to China's 28th Air Division, based near the eastern city of Hangzhou, and his pilot's inspection of the newly deployed FB-7 were high points in a week-long tour of Chinese military installations and meetings with senior officers, including Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan.
U.S. officers and diplomats, for instance, were not invited to observe large-scale exercises by Chinese and Russian forces last August in the East China Sea and the Russian Far East. Partly as a result, the exercises were interpreted as a gesture by Moscow and Beijing to show they have the means to protect their regional interests without reference to the United States, even though it is the overwhelming power in the Pacific.
[China confrontation] [Spin]
Visiting Chinese Delegation Feted
Pyongyang, May 14 (KCNA) -- The DPRK government hosted a banquet at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Saturday in honor of a Chinese delegation of martyr Mao Anying's family and his relatives on a visit to the DPRK.
[Korean War events]
China Plays Down News of Massive Disputed Relic Find
An ancient castle and some 2,000 tombs were discovered in a Chinese province that borders North Korea, fueling a dispute over whether they were Chinese or Korean. China's state-run Xinhua News Agency reports a 200-m castle wall believed to have been built in 300 B.C. was found in a reservoir in Baicheng City, Jilin Province. Also, 2,000 tombs dating back to 400 B.C. were discovered near the Yalu River, known as Amnok in Korean, which separates China and North Korea.
Citing Chinese scholars, the Xinhua report says the relics belong to China's Han Dynasty. But Korean scholars firmly believe the construction style is similar to that of Korea's Koguryo Dynasty, which reigned from 37 B.C. to 668 A.D. in northern Korea and southern Manchuria. "The people of Koguryo constructed castles using stones whereas the Chinese built them from clay. So there's a high possibility that the stone castle was built by the Koguryo people," one says.
Korean broadcaster MBC reports Beijing is playing down the discovery, restricting public access and allowing coverage only to state-run Xinhua's Internet news service without photographs. The move is raising suspicions that China is discreetly pushing ahead with its so-called "Northeast Asian Project," which attempts to co-opt ancient Korean history for China. The five-year project launched in 2002 with a budget of roughly US$2.5 billion aims to categorize the Koguryo Kingdom as Chinese.
Arirang News
[Koguryo]
Chinese Delegation Here
Pyongyang, May 8 (KCNA) -- A government economic and trade delegation of China led by Ma Xiuhong, vice-minister of Commerce, arrived here on Monday. It was met at the airport by Ri Ryong Nam, vice-minister of Foreign Trade, and Wu Donghe, Chinese ambassador to the DPRK.
US Utilizes Japan to Check China
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
The United States has been utilizing its Asian ally Japan to check ``rising China,'' while setting its strategy in Northeast Asia basically in a structure of discord with the potential challenger, a Japan-based scholar said Thursday.
In a seminar, themed ``China-Japan Strategic Rivalry and East Asia Security in the 21st Century,'' Prof. Lee Hong-pyo of Japan's Kyushu University said the U.S. tends to allow Japan's military buildup when China's power gets too strong in the region.
[US-Japan alliance] [China confrontation] [Japanese remilitarisation]
Taiwan's Leader Cancels Stopover
U.S. Refused Chen an Overnight Stay on Trip to Latin America
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 4, 2006; Page A20
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian yesterday canceled plans to pass through the United States this week on his way to Latin America after the Bush administration refused a request for an overnight stay and instead sought to limit him to a brief refueling stop in Alaska, U.S. and Taiwanese officials said.
State Department officials portrayed the U.S. decision as consistent with the long-standing policy on transit requests by Taiwanese leaders. But in recent years, Taiwan's leaders have tended to receive permission to stay in the United States for short periods while traveling to other countries, and Chen had hoped to stop in San Francisco or New York, according to news reports in Taiwan.
The U.S. refusal was taken as a snub in Taiwan and was widely interpreted as a sign of heightened U.S. irritation with Chen's confrontational drive for national independence. He caught U.S. officials by surprise in February with a decision to scrap the 16-year-old National Unification Council, originally set up as a display of willingness to reunite eventually with the Chinese mainland.
TV Dramas Revisit Koguryo Kingdom
By Park Chung-a
Staff Reporter
Four big-budget historical TV dramas set in the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C. - A.D. 668) _ one of three Kingdoms of ancient Korea _ are concurrently in production. The last TV drama depicting the Koguryo Kingdom was made in 1964.
Different from most historical TV dramas that, up to now, focused on portraying everyday heroes from the Choson Kingdom (1392-1910), the four dramas center on portraying leaders' patriotic deeds and territorial victories set in the Koguryo Kingdom.
The first is MBC's 60-episode drama titled ``Chumong,'' depicting the founding myth of the ancient Kingdom. It will premiere on May 8.
SBS' historical drama ``Yongaesomun'' is about the heroic general of the Koguryo Kingdom who successfully defeated the Chinese army
Deepa Mehta's "Water
This is the disturbing India of the Hindu widow, a woman traditionally shunned as bad luck and forced to live in destitution on the edge of society. Her husband's death is considered her fault, and she has to shave her head, shun hot food and sweets and never remarry. In the pre-independence India of the 1930's, the tradition applied even to child brides of 5 or 6 who had been betrothed for the future by their families but had never laid eyes on their husbands.
Into this milieu now comes the director Deepa Mehta with "Water," a lush new film that opened on Friday, about Chuyia, an 8-year-old widow in the India of 1938. She has barely met her husband but is banished by her parents to a decrepit widows' house on the edge of the Ganges. Chuyia is left there sobbing, in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the film, but she insists her parents will soon return for her.
Even as it becomes clear that they won't, Chuyia's spirited, rebellious streak shines through, and she begins to change the way the other widows in the house view the world, as the independence movement of Mahatma Gandhi swirls around them
DPRK Supports China's Principled Stand on Reunification Issue
The Korean people are extending positive support and firm solidarity with the Chinese people in their efforts to achieve the complete reunification of the country, strongly opposed to "Independence of Taiwan," Rodong Sinmun said on March 4 in its signed commentary.
The United States and China: Wary Rivals
Immanuel Wallerstein
Commentary No. 184, May 1, 2006
President Hu Jintao of the People's Republic of China has just completed a visit to the United States. Before he came, President Bush said that the two countries had a "complicated" relationship. For once, Bush had it right.
[China confrontation]
China Begins Oil Route Experiment in Mekong
by Lim Tai Wei
April 13, 2006
Lim Tai Wei, researcher at the Singapore Institute for International
Affairs (SIIA), published this report through the South-East Asia Peace
and Security Network (SEAPSNet). Lim Tai Wei writes, "Even if it cannot
be a main route of oil supply for China, the Mekong can certainly be an
emergency route for Beijing's strategic needs. This seems to be the
message in China's official news agency Xinhua as its headline article
ran the word "explores" in covering this story."
China's Strategy of Containing India
06 February 2006
On the surface, relations between India and China are positive. India's economic ties with China are booming. China is set to emerge as India's leading trade partner in the near future, leaving its current number one partner, the United States, behind. Between 2000 and 2005, trade with China registered a hike of 521 percent, whereas India's trade with the U.S. increased by only 63 percent during the same period.
There are regular high-level meetings between Asia's two rising powers. India and China have just concluded their second round of bilateral "strategic dialogue" and declared 2006 as a Sino-Indian friendship year. More importantly, they have agreed to cooperate, rather than compete, for global energy resources. The incipient Sino-Indian entente has prompted some to argue that it has the potential to alter Asian geopolitics radically.
S.A.A.R.C.: A Potential Playground for Power Politics
17 April 2006
At the Dhaka meeting of its Standing Committee held on April 10-11, 2006, the member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (S.A.A.R.C.) agreed in principle to admit the U.S. and South Korea as "observers." This move comes against the background of the earlier decision taken during the summit meeting in November 2005 to bestow a similar status to China and Japan. The European Union has also shown its interest for a similar status.
In short, major global economic players are too eager to be formally associated with S.A.A.R.C. Because its track record as a cohesive and vibrant organization for regional economic cooperation has been anything but impressive, why is there a sudden rush for "observer" status?
India: A Tale of Two Worlds
Conn Hallinan | April 10, 2006
When India's Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the government's budget this past February, he trumpeted the country's vault into modernity. Economic growth is 8.1% and is projected to rise as high as 10% next year. India has completed its Golden Quadrilateral,·a multi-lane highway that links New Delhi in the north, Calcutta in the east, Chennai in the south, and Mumbai in the west. The collective wealth of India's 311 billionaires jumped 71% in the last year.
Growth will be our mount,·the Minister told the Parliament, Equity will be our companion, and social justice will be our destination.·
But for India 's rural and urban poor, the chasm between them and the wealthy only got wider and deeper. Last year, India slipped from 124 out of 177 countries to 127, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. Life expectancy is seven years less than in China , and 11 less than in Sri Lanka . Mortality for children under five, according to a United Nations Development Report, is almost three times China 's rate, almost six times Sri Lanka 's, and greater than in Bangladesh and Nepal .
Bush, Hu Produce Summit of Symbols
By Peter Baker and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 21, 2006; Page A01
President Bush pressed China's visiting President Hu Jintao yesterday to open up markets, expand freedom and do more to curb nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea but came away with no specific agreements in a summit emphasizing symbolism over breakthroughs.
Hosting the first White House visit of a Chinese president in nine years, Bush welcomed Hu with pageantry, marching bands and a 21-gun salute in a sun-splashed South Lawn ceremony, then escorted him inside for polite talks on a range of long-standing issues. In return, Hu offered vague assurances that he will address U.S. economic concerns while resisting tougher action on Iran and North Korea.
Bush, Hu Discuss N. Korean Nuclear Program, Refugees
By Christopher Carpenter
Staff Reporter
Bush-Hu summit: U.S. President George W. Bush grabs the coat sleeve of Chinese President Hu Jintao as Hu starts to walk down the stairs during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, Thursday. Bush and Jintao pledged cooperation in reining in the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and resolving troubling trade disputes of their own, but they made little measurable headway in a pomp-filled summit that was infiltrated by a screaming anti-China protester.
{photo]
North Korea's production of nuclear weapons and China's treatment of North Korean refugees were among the top issues discussed by U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao during their talks in Washington Thursday.
Bush asked China to use its influence to persuade North Korea to become less reclusive and to return to the stalled six-party talks seeking a peaceful resolution to the nuclear weapons issue on the Korean Peninsula.
In a press briefing after the meeting, Dennis Wilder, acting director for Asian affairs of the National Security Council, said China was a model for what North Korea could become in Asia.
``We asked the Chinese to continue to work on the North Koreans,'' Wilder said. ``They need to give up their nuclear ambitions. They need to open up in the way that China has opened itself up since the 1970s.''
U.S., China Stand Together but Are Not Equal
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 21, 2006; Page A18
On the surface, the White House visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday was a celebration of improving Sino-U.S. ties. But the subtext was the future -- and how these two countries will share the international stage.
At every turn, Hu sought to stress the equality between the two nations, which, as he put it in a luncheon toast, are the "largest developing country and the largest developed country." Speaking to reporters after his meeting with President Bush, he said an "important agreement" was reached: "Under the new circumstances, given the international situation here, that China and the United States share extensive, common strategic interests."
For his part, Bush tried to signal that China is not all that equal. The White House would not grant Hu the state dinner he dearly wanted, offering instead a lunch that fell just short of the pomp and circumstance for close allies. Meeting with reporters, Bush simply said, "It's a very important relationship."
How the relationship evolves from this point is unclear. China's foreign policy now is influenced mainly by domestic considerations, especially its desperate need for energy and materials. While the Bush administration has been distracted by the war against terrorism and the invasion of Iraq, the Chinese have forged trade links around the world, even in South America, supposedly U.S. turf.
[China confrontation] [Incompetence]
Target China: The Emerging US-China Conflict
By Michael T. Klare
[Michael Klare, who has written compellingly on oil as a driving factor in US policy in the Middle East and globally, here turns his gaze toward yet larger dynamics driving US military strategy. He concludes that in a world in which there is only one potential military threat to US primacy, the single logical explanation for the continued growth of the US military budget, its drive to expand its nuclear arsenal and to extend its nuclear hegemony to outer space, can be summed up in one word: China.
To be sure, as Chalmers Johnson and others have pointed out, there is a self-reinforcing military logic inherent in a polity whose budget is dominated by the costs associated with permanent warfare, including a global network of thousands of bases, 8,000 generals who don't retire when the latest war ends, and a global naval-air power reach.
Nevertheless, with China's emergence as a potential future adversary, albeit a nation whose naval and air force arsenals pale before that of the US and many others, and with US moves to encircle China with U.S. bases and expanded strategic alliances, it is necessary to place the issue of containing China once again on the Bush administration's front burner. As Klare observes in a letter of April 19, 2006, there is an "iron determination behind the US decision to commit hundreds of billions of dollars to advanced weapons systems that can only be justified for use in a future war with China, and the decision to station six carrier battle groups and 60 percent of US submarines in the Pacific. These commitments will shape events in Asia and globally for decades to come."
[China confrontation]
China and Russia Welcome Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia into Shanghai Cooperation Organization
By M K Bhadrakumar
[As the US seeks to isolate Iran and pave the way for UN sanctions that would legitimate an attack on Iran, China and Russia have taken important steps to expand their regional organization. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization constitutes the major regional challenge to American power in the Asia Pacific region. The invitation to Iran comes at a time when that nation faces extreme international isolation, and raises the stakes in the US diplomatic and military efforts to pressure Iran to terminating its nuclear program.]
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. SCO's decision to welcome Iran into its fold constitutes a political statement. Conceivably, SCO would now proceed to adopt a common position on the Iran nuclear issue at its summit meeting June 15.
[Realignment]
In Hu's Visit to the U.S., Small Gaffes May Overshadow Small Gains
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: April 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 21 - The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, wound up a four-day visit to the United States on Friday with a foreign policy address at Yale that offered an upbeat vision of Chinese-American ties, as the two sides tried to shake off the lingering effects of protocol blunders during the White House reception for Mr. Hu.
[Incompetence]
Saudi Arabia Looks East: Woos China and India
22 February 2006
In January 2006, Saudi Arabia's monarch, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, undertook a tour of Asia that brought him to China and India (along with Malaysia and Pakistan). It was a strategically significant trip and one that may have some important long-term implications. Some have labeled the Saudi king's Asia visit "a strategic shift in the foreign policy of the country" and have argued that it "heralds a new era."
Saudi Arabia and China Improve Relations
The fact that China was the first destination on the king's list speaks volumes not only about the rising profile of China in global politics, but also about a growing intimacy between the two states.
[Realignment]
New Generation Leaning Toward China
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Young people in South Korea want the government to have closer relations with China rather than with the United States, North Korea and other countries in Europe, according to the latest opinion poll of 1,000 juniors aged from 18 to 23.
When asked which country South Korea should keep the closest relations with, nearly 40 percent of the respondents chose China. Their second and third choices were the United States (18.4 percent) and North Korea (18 percent).
[SK attitude US] [Realignment]
L&T starts first manufacturing operations abroad in China
Wuxi, Nov 17 (PTI) Larsen & Toubro (L&T), the Indian engineering and technology conglomerate today launched its first manufacturing facility abroad here with an investment of 11 million US dollars to make high-end switchgear in the east Chinese city.
L&T has established a wholly-owned foreign enterprise (WOFE), L&T (Wuxi) Electric Co., Ltd. (LTW) in the Wuxi New District, a national level hi-tech industrial park in Jiangsu province to manufacture high-end Air Circuit Breakers.
Chinese Minister of National Defence to Visit DPRK
Pyongyang, April 2 (KCNA) -- Colonel General Cao Gangchuan, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the CPC, state councilor and minister of National Defence of China, will soon visit the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Labor Shortage in China May Lead to Trade Shift
Nelson Ching for The New York Times
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: April 3, 2006
SHENZHEN, China - Persistent labor shortages at hundreds of Chinese factories have led experts to conclude that the economy is undergoing a profound change that will ripple through the global market for manufactured goods.
Skip to next paragraph
Nelson Ching for The New York Times
The Well Brain International factory in Shenzhen, China, an appliance maker, has improved salaries and benefits to try to hire more workers.
The shortage of workers is pushing up wages and swelling the ranks of the country's middle class, and it could make Chinese-made products less of a bargain worldwide. International manufacturers are already talking about moving factories to lower-cost countries like Vietnam.
At the Well Brain factory here in one of China's special economic zones, the changes are clear. Over the last year, Well Brain, a midsize producer of small electric appliances like hair rollers, coffee makers and hot plates, has raised salaries, improved benefits and even dispatched a team of recruiters to find workers in the countryside.
That kind of behavior was unheard of as recently as three years ago, when millions of young people were still flooding into booming Shenzhen searching for any type of work.
A few years ago, "people would just show up at the door," said Liang Jian, the human resources manager at Well Brain. "Now we put up an ad looking for five people, and maybe one person shows up."
For all the complaints of factory owners, though, the situation has a silver lining for the members of the world's largest labor force. Economists say the shortages are spurring companies to improve labor conditions and to more aggressively recruit workers with incentives and benefits.
The changes also suggest that China may already be moving up the economic ladder, as workers see opportunities beyond simply being unskilled assemblers of the world's goods. Rising wages may also prompt Chinese consumers to start buying more products from other countries, helping to balance the nation's huge trade surpluses.
China Steps Up Marketing Effort in Korea
Electronics Firms Lenovo, Haier Competing With Established Brands for Bigger Share
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Confident of the growing competitiveness of products, China is setting its eye on the Korean market, with its electronics products leading the way.
Chinese electronics makers are no longer hiding their brand names and their ``made in China'' tag on their products.
Lenovo, China's largest and the world's third largest PC maker, announced Thursday that it will begin selling laptop computers in South Korea under the Lenovo brand. Ranging from 1.2 million won to nearly 2 million won, the price is similar or slightly higher than existing mid-tier brands such as Dell or Trigem's Averatec.
Though the price is still lower than those of premium products made by Samsung or LG Electronics, it is pricey enough to break the preconceptions of Korean consumers that Chinese goods are dirt-cheap and less reliable.
``The general performance was fine last year. We accounted for six percent of the local market with IBM brand,'' Lee Jae-young, CEO of Lenovo Korea, said during a meeting with retailers at Millennium Seoul Hilton in central Seoul, on Thursday.
Though it is not very well known in Korea, Lenovo was the world's third largest PC seller after Dell and Hewlett-Packard last year.
HOWARD VISIT TO DEEPEN INDIA TIES
by Raghbendra Jha, Australian National University, r.jha@anu.edu.au
Prime Minister Howard's visit to New Delhi next month promises to be a milestone in Australia-India relations. Accompanying Howard will be a delegation of business leaders keen to expand and invigorate their engagement in India.
There are good reasons for deepening economic ties with India, with its huge market. A whopping 95.1 percent of India's billion plus population is below the age of 65; and almost a third is younger than 14. By the time these people enter the labour force India is expected to have a US$ trillion economy. Its middle class (those earning between US$2000 and US$22,000 a year) is currently? estimated at 300 million.
Ssangyong axes China auto plant
March 29, 2006 ? Worried about technology leaks, a Korean auto manufacturer has pulled out of negotiations to set up a joint-venture car manufacturing factory in China.
"Our earlier plan to build an automobile production plant jointly with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. has become difficult due to stricter demands from the Chinese government," said Choi Hyung-tak, the chief executive of Ssangyong Motor Co. Shanghai Automotive Industry is the Korean automobile company's largest shareholder.
"The Chinese government demanded that we establish an engine plant as well as a research and development center in China in exchange for approving the factory's construction," Mr. Choi said. "Such conditions have the potential of leaking Ssangyong's technology, and there would be no profit in investments to overbuild manufacturing capacity," he added.
The plans for the China plant were part of its so-called "S-100 Project," a project to get the struggling automaker back on its feet. In addition to the China facility, the plan included a new emphasis on sport utility vehicles.
Mr. Choi said the cancellation of the China plans would not affect the rest of the normalization project, adding that Ssangyong would try to increase its exports to China, including exports of knocked-down vehicles for assembly there.
The company's labor union welcomed the decision, saying it expected that the company would put more money into expanding plant capacity here. The union has cited technology leaks in opposing the company's plans, playing down its concerns about losing jobs to China in its public statements.
China has been aggressive in recent years in demanding technology transfers as a condition for foreign investment, especially in the automotive and shipbuilding fields. Beijing has also told potential investors to set up 50-50 joint ventures with Chinese companies.
by Lee Ho-jeong
China-North Korea trade eyed warily
March 28, 2006 ? Beijing is preparing a push to develop the northeastern part of the country, Manchuria, with particular efforts in Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, near the North Korean border.
That puts Seoul on the horns of a dilemma, caught between its belief that a more prosperous North Korea will be a less threatening North Korea on the one hand, and concern about increased Chinese influence in North Korea on the other.
Chen Shinan, a Liaoning city official who met with the JoongAng Ilbo last month, said the first move in an ambitious plan to boost the region's economy would be to reform the public companies operating there. He said that out of 562 such companies in the city, more than one in five were being restructured.
The same is true of about half the 106 companies in Heilongjiang that have been targeted for reform. In Jilin, he said, nearly 700 of 800 companies are being shaken up. Liaoning province has designated provincial sites to be dedicated to trade with Russia and North Korea.
The winds of change are also being felt in Dandong, further to the west near the North Korean city of Shinuiju. A Chinese businessman, well informed on dealings between China and North Korea, said that Pyongyang is trying to widen the road from Shinuiju to Dandong to handle the increased cross-border trade. He said bridges in the area are also to be improved.
Trade between North Korea and China is increasing, several Chinese ethnic Korean traders said. They estimated that about 90 percent of all consumer goods in North Korean markets are made in China.
Traders with whom the Joong-Ang Ilbo talked said that Chinese customs officials in the region had estimated the value of goods traded every day between Shinuiju and Dandong at about $6 million.
But the downside of that trade for Seoul is that it gives the Chinese additional sway in the North, economic as well as political. Trade between the South and North is still very much a matter of aid flows northward, despite joint projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and the Chinese-North Korean trade could be competitive rather than complementary to Seoul's efforts to draw the North Koreans out of their self-imposed shell.
by Jin Se-keun
[Sanctions] [China competition] [Victim]
Korea Feels Ripple Effect in Chinese Navy's Wake
By Philip Dorsey Iglauer and Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporters
The Chinese Army's on-going modernization could be ratcheted up a qualitatively new level with reported plans for building an aircraft carrier, military sources in Seoul said Monday.
A report by Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper, came on top of the country's planned defense expenditure of about $35 billion, made public at this year's Chinese People's Congress. The figure represents a 15-percent increase over last year. China's defense spending is about 8 percent of its total budget
A Point Ill Taken From the Chinese Ambassador
China Keeping an Eye on U.S. Forces 'Flexibility': Envoy
China's ambassador to South Korea, Ning Fukui, on Wednesday offered a rare comment on a recent Korea-U.S. agreement to give the U.S. forces stationed here greater "strategic flexibility" so they can intervene in trouble spots elsewhere. "If it is targeted against a third country, China will have no choice but to shift attention to the matter," the envoy said at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis. He expressed hope that "both sides will do nothing to jeopardize security and peace in Northeast Asia."
It is perhaps natural for China to be concerned if the U.S. Forces Korea are given a greater remit for their activities.
But Ambassador Ning touched on a question in the Korea-U.S. alliance, a matter well beyond his jurisdiction, in a warning tone and at a public forum. That fairly exceeds the call of duty and is a diplomatic discourtesy to boot. While it is unclear what the envoy meant by his country "having no choice but to shift its attention," it doesn't sound good. Besides, there was no call for Ning to make remarks premised on the hypothesis that U.S. troops in Korea are "targeted at a third country." He seems to be thinking about any escalation in the standoff between China and Taiwan, but there are no signs that such an escalation is imminent.
South Korea has no need to choose between China and the U.S., he reassures us. "It can and should promote good relations with China while maintaining its alliance with the U.S." How considerate.
[China confrontation]
China's envoy warns on use of U.S. troops
March 23, 2006 ? With Taiwan very much on his mind, Ning Fukui, China's ambassador to Seoul, said yesterday that the use of U.S. troops here in other parts of the region, an agreement struck between Seoul and Washington in January, would be of concern to China if the agreement were ever used for an intervention in the Taiwan Strait.
Speaking at a Korea Institute for Defense Analyses forum, the envoy said, "If actions are geared toward a third country, we will have to shift our interest to it."
[Strategic flexibility] [US military dominance]
FIFTY YEARS OF SINO-INDIAN RELATIONS: THE IDEA OF "CHINDIA"
Niharika Chibber Joe
The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation
In spite of New Delhi and Beijing's divergent perceptions and approaches toward their 125,000 sq km disputed territory, the Sino-Pakistani strategic partnership, and Tibet, the on-again-off-again Sino-Indian relationship has undergone a remarkable transformation in the past fifty-some years, planting India and China squarely on the map as the two natural partners in Asia. While South Asia scholars look narrowly at the region as primarily India and Pakistan, and East Asia watchers avoid the landmass south west of Tibet, relationships in Asia are rapidly changing as China "rises" and India "emerges". As the two countries continue to grow in regional significance, and as security partnerships in Asia enter a unique era of realignment, it is essential to ponder what drives the dynamic between these two emerging Asian powers.
Finance Minister Warns Against China Threat
By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter
Finance and Economy Minister Han Duck-soo, right, talks with economists and professors attending the two-day 11th Asia Economic Panel meeting at the Grand InterContinental Hotel in southern Seoul, Tuesday. /Korea Times
Finance and Economy Minister Han Duck-soo Tuesday warned that Korean corporations should beef up their technical prowess to cope with fierce challenge from Chinese counterparts.
Han said the rise of China's economy has brought about not only various opportunities but also challenges to Korea and the rest of Asian economies.
``Chinese industries are rapidly enhancing their competitiveness by attracting large scale foreign direct investment, supported by the policy priority on science and technology, thereby reducing the Korea-China technology gap,'' said Han at the 11th Asia Economic Panel meeting held at the Grand InterContinental Hotel in southern Seoul.
Han noted that Korean firms' competition with Chinese rivals are no longer restricted to the mainland Chinese market but extended to the global market, where Chinese products have become a real threat.
[China competition]
China's Growing Middle East Role and the Potential for US-China Conflict
By Chietigj Bajpaee
Two regions have emerged as the most likely sources of great power conflict in the 21st century. The first is the Middle East, which is the focal point for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The region is important both as part of a global ideological struggle against Islamist extremism and in the quest for oil and gas resources. The second is Asia, as the rise of China presents competition for both intangible and material resources on the world stage.
[China confrontation]
China's New North Korea Agenda: Economic reform trumps anti-nuclear message
By Robert Marquand
BEIJING - With floods of cash and a new policy of patience and friendly support, China has quietly penetrated the thick wall surrounding North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's regime - gaining significant leverage for the first time in one of the world's most closed societies. Chinese leaders have gained Mr. Kim's ear, sources say, with a message that the North can revitalize its economy while still holding tight political control.
China Biggest Threat in 10 Years: Poll
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Nearly 38 percent of South Koreans consider China as the biggest security threat in 10 years, according to a recent poll carried out by the state-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.
The survey was conducted upon 1,000 people over the age of 20, from Dec. 12 through Dec. 22 last year.
It showed that 37.7 percent of respondents think China is the biggest threat to South Korea's security in 10 years, followed by Japan (23.6 percent), North Korea (20.7 percent) and the United States (14.8 percent).
In detail, 42 percent of answerers in their 20s and 43.3 percent of those registered in or finished university-level education chose China as South Korea's main security threat.
[Role of ROK military]
Taiwan stages new anti-Chen rally
KMT leader Ma is blocking a multibillion-dollar arms deal
Thousands of people have joined an opposition rally in Taiwan, protesting against President Chen Shui-bian's pro-independence stance.
In the second demonstration in a week, they urged Mr Chen to stop stoking tensions with China, by scaling down a controversial weapons deal with the US.
Opposition parties say the president should instead focus on the economy.
Trilateral Congregation - Condi Rice's attempts in "Containing" China?
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that China could become a "negative force" in the Asia-Pacific region and urged the US, Australia and Japan to form a common position on how to engage the Asian economic powerhouse.
She was speaking to Australian journalists in Washington ahead of her visit to Australia next week. Rice squarely said that Beijing's military and economic rise would be the focus of upcoming trilateral security discussions with Australia and Japan. "And I think all of us in the region, particularly those of us who are long-standing allies, have a joint responsibility and obligation to try and produce conditions in which the rise of China will be a positive force in international politics, not a negative force," The Weekend Australian quoted Rice as saying.
In all the above, perhaps the only consolation for China was US' open expression of disapproval of Taiwanese President Chen Shui Bian's decision to scrap the National Unification Council. Senator John Warner the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee was quoted as saying 'If a conflict with China were to be aided by inappropriate and wrongful politics generated by the Taiwanese elected officials, I am not entirely sure that this nation would come full force to their rescue.'
[China confrontation]
On Australia Visit, Rice Critical of China's Military Expansion
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: March 16, 2006
SYDNEY, March 16 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the foreign minister of Australia struck markedly different tones Thursday over the rising power of China, with Ms. Rice criticizing its military expansion and the Australian warning against trying to "contain" Chinese ambitions.
The varied comments of Ms. Rice and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer underscored the uneasiness that Ms. Rice has found this week in Asia and Australia, a region that the United States once dominated as a superpower but now has to navigate uneasily amid China's spreading influence.
Ms. Rice's criticism of China was unusually tough, especially since she was speaking in China's front yard and was planning to meet here later in the week with Mr. Downer and the foreign minister of Japan, Taro Aso, to discuss security issues. Mr. Aso has angered leaders in Beijing with his own criticism of China's military buildup.
"There is no doubt that, as with any complex relationship, there are difficult issues as well as positive elements," Ms. Rice said of the Chinese, praising American cooperation with Beijing on North Korea and Iran before going on to criticize Chinese military, economic and human rights policies.
The United States and India: New Best Friends?
Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 181, Mar. 15, 2006
George W. Bush has gone to India and concluded an agreement which many analysts are hailing as historic and a turning-point in the geopolitics of the world-system. On the face of it, this trip (which some have even compared to Nixon's meeting with Mao in Beijing) does seem to mark a major shift in attitudes by both countries. But perhaps there is less there than appears to be on the surface.
But the treaty has immediately drawn much fire. ... And within the United States it has drawn fire from the whole political spectrum on the grounds that it liquidates de facto the non-proliferation treaty. Furthermore, of course, it undoes the whole basis of the arguments concerning Iran, since Iran is really asking for the same thing India has gotten....
India will emerge ahead in any case. Russia has already offered to sell nuclear fuel to India, something that the United States has in the past sought to prevent. But the United States no longer has any good argument. Furthermore, its weak case against Iran is now considerably undermined. And the North Korean government is no doubt chortling.
[NPT] [Double standards]
Bush Visits South Asia and Offers a Nuclear Gift to India
08 March 2006
After taking salutes from the inter-services guard of honor in front of Rashtrapati Bhawan, the official residence of the president of India, U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters, "I have been received in many capitals around the world but I have never seen a reception as well-organized or as grand." This was not simply an appreciation of traditional Indian hospitality but a reflection of the warmth that a large section of Indians feel for Bush. After all, contrary to trends in most other parts of the world, 71 percent of India's populace holds a favorable view of the U.S., with 54 percent supporting Bush's handling of global affairs. Even before the trip to New Delhi, Bush's personal standing in India was higher than even in the U.S. and it is bound to skyrocket after the recently signed nuclear pact between the two states, which was the highlight of the U.S. president's four-day trip to South Asia.
[Nuclear transfer]
BUSH IN INDIA: THE SMILES & THE SCARS
by B. Raman
President George Bush has been the toast of large sections of the elite in India----particularly from the cocooned classes of strategic oracles, serving bureaucrats, businessmen and prospering and upwardly mobile millionaire and multi-millionaire journalists.
2. In the days leading up to and during his just-concluded visit to India, they had eyes and ears only for Mr. Bush. Not for those, who questioned the wisdom of their unbridled enthusiasm for everything American.
3. They certainly did not have time or empathy for the thousands of Muslims, who were demonstrating in the streets. A multi-millionaire journalist was asked in a TV interview what he thought of the over one hundred thousand Muslims, who were demonstrating in the streets of Mumbai even as the gone-gaga elite were wining and dining with Mr. Bush, or if they were not lucky enough to break bread with him, ogling at him.
4. He replied contemptuously: "Let them demonstrate. We are a democracy. They have a right to demonstrate. People demonstrate against Bush in the US too."
22. Having (hopefully) learnt from its experience in Iraq, the US intends to bring about a regime change in Iran not through military invasion, but through political covert action. The newly created Iran Office will co-ordinate this covert action. India, which has the world's second largest Shia population after Iran, with many of them having links with Iran, will be an important window on Iran for the US intelligence agencies for the collection of intelligence from Iran and for the identification of assets, which could be used for the covert action.
23. The proposed increase in the number of US diplomats to be posted in India, many of whom will definitely be from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and opening of a Consulate in Hyderabad, which has India's second largest Shia population after Lucknow, have to be seen as part of this exercise for a regime change in Teheran through political covert action.
24. Indian silence and acquiescence over the use of its territory by the US agencies for their covert action against Iran could be one of the prices demanded by the US as a quid pro quo for the implementation of the nuclear deal.
25. Despite the many smiles, the way the present Government has handled India's relations with the US has left scars in the hearts of the Indian Muslim minority. Its muted silence on issues angering the Muslims and its insensitivity to their feelings over issues such as Falluja, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharaib etc have created growing pockets of anger in our Muslim community, particularly the youth, which do not bode well for the future. Alienation of the Indian Muslim youth outside Jammu & Kashmir and driving it to identify itself with the anti-US and pan-Islamic ideologies of Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) is an imminent danger due to the ill-advised insensitivity of the Government towards the hurt feelings of the Indian Muslims.
26. The countrywide demonstrations seen during the visit of Mr. Bush are an external manifestation of the seething anger inside the hearts of growing number of our Muslim youth. The Government's ill-advised silence and actions have sown the seeds of pan-Islamism in the Indian Muslim community, which had in the past kept away from it. If the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Iran exploit this for their own purpose, we will have only ourselves to blame for it.
[Nuclear transfer]
China Closes Tech Gap With Korea
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
China will surpass South Korea in manufacturing technology for telecommunication equipment by 2010, a government report said on Wednesday.
Also, South Korea is less than three years ahead of China in developing high-tech digital appliances such as LCD (liquid crystal display), PDP (plasma display panel), and has a two-year lead in making rechargeable batteries, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.
The report said that Korea will get the fiercest challenge in CDMA mobile phone and communication equipment manufacturing, where it is believed to have only a one-year advantage over China.
Debate on N. Korea Growing in China
Some Critical of Pyongyang: Scholar
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) ? Debate is growing within China about North Korea's nuclear development and the regime's sustainability, and not all views are sympathetic toward the ideological ally, a China scholar said Tuesday.
According to Bonnie Glaser, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the subject of whether the Pyongyang regime will collapse is going on "as fiercely" in China as it is in the United States.
"There is a great deal of irritation toward North Korea's behavior on nuclear front, and at the same time growing resentment of the aid China provides," she said at a seminar hosted by conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Analysts: China Has Own Interests Concerning N. Korea
Experts say the United States and China do not always have the same interests when it comes to dealing with North Korea. This issue was discussed recently at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative non-profit public-policy organization.
When dealing with North Korea, the road to Pyongyang almost always leads through Beijing.
China's prominence is apparent as it hosts the six-party talks aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. The other four countries involved are the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
Experts at a recent Heritage Foundation discussion examined the issue of China's role in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. Bonnie Glaser, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said U.S. and Chinese interests differ on a crucial issue - whether or not North Korea should even have nuclear weapons. Washington wants Pyongyang to completely abandon its nuclear weapons programs.
The Heritage Foundation's John Tkacik goes one step further, saying he believes the Chinese military, the PLA, actually opposes the eventual reunification of North and South Korea.
"I do think that it is a strategic imperative among the PLA, at least, that there must be a divided Korean peninsula, frankly because the last thing the Chinese want is an economically advanced, militarily powerful, nuclear armed nation of 70, or 80 million people, right on their border, with irredentist [historical] claims to 18,000 square miles (29,000 square kilometers) of Chinese territory," he said.
The third expert on the Heritage panel was Gordon Chang, who authored a new book titled Nuclear Shakedown: North Korea Takes on the World. He says he believes China is interested in drawing out the six-party talks.
"China may be promoting a dialogue, but it is not promoting a solution," he said.
He says in order to push China toward what he described as a more "constructive" role in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, the American government and people should be ready to apply commercial pressure.
Maoist Rebels Kill 25 on Road In India
By Muneeza Naqvi
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 1, 2006; Page A14
NEW DELHI, Feb. 28 -- Maoist rebels attacked four trucks carrying villagers in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh Tuesday, killing 25 people and injuring 33, authorities said. The villagers had been returning from an anti-Maoist rally held the day before.
The militants detonated a land mine beneath the first truck, then set fire to the other three near the town of Darbhanga at about 11:30 a.m., Girdhari Naik, a state inspector general of police, said in a telephone interview.
The attack underscored the persistent threat posed by Maoist insurgents known in India as Naxalites. The strength of the Naxalites, who say they are fighting to defend the rights of poor people, appears to be growing in some impoverished rural areas despite the country's rapid economic growth. They are particularly active in Chhattisgarh, where authorities last year banned all Maoist groups after 24 policemen died in a land-mine blast that was blamed on the rebels.
Tuesday's attack, about 750 miles southeast of the Indian capital, New Delhi, came one day before President Bush arrives in India for a three-day visit. The
Naxalite insurgents have been active in India since the late 1960s and in recent years have extended their reach into central India from traditional strongholds in the east
Kim Jong Il's Southern Tour: Beijing Consensus with a North Korean Twist?
by Wonhyuk Lim
February 28th, 2006
Wonhyuk Lim, a CNAPS Visiting Fellow at the
Brookings Institution, a Fellow at the Korea
Development Institute (KDI), and Korea National
Strategy Institute (KNSI), writes, "After a
decade of economic crisis, only the infusion of
external capital would provide a substantive
solution to the capital-labor coordination
problem and put economic growth on a more stable
trajectory... After his Southern Tour, Kim Jong
Il should have a much better idea about how to
develop an economic model suited to North Korea's specific conditions."
Assertive India Girds for Negotiations With Bush
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: February 28, 2006
NEW DELHI, Feb. 27 - When President Bush lands in India early Wednesday, he will encounter an ever ambivalent American ally with one important difference from the past: this India has new power to assert its views, some of which align with Mr. Bush's agenda and some of which do not.
Much has changed, in fact, since the last visit here by an American president, in 2000, when President Clinton's address to the Indian Parliament was received so enthusiastically that lawmakers climbed over benches to shake his hand.
Facing prospects of protests, President Bush is not expected to address Parliament at all. But that is not to say that India has morphed into an anti-American redoubt. There is still in most quarters enthusiasm for relations.
A Reversal of the Tide in India
Tech Workers Flow Home to More Success
By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006; Page A01
MADRAS, India -- In 1997, Dutt Kalluri left India to work for a Canadian software company, hoping the overseas experience would do his résumé good. A year later, he was promoted to head U.S. operations from Rockville. But as he returned to India for business and to visit his elderly mother, he marveled at the changes sweeping his homeland: new stores, more cars, enthusiasm for technology.
In 2001, not wanting to miss out on this transformation, Kalluri gave up a six-figure salary and the family's townhouse in Gaithersburg for a job here with an Indian conglomerate. His wife, Uma, gave up her daily syndicated dose of "Seinfeld." Daughter Lakshmi said goodbye to her Montessori preschool classmates.
These return migrations have become increasingly common; Indian expatriates such as the Kalluris are finding that, at times, the best way to move up is to move back.
New Generation Leaning Toward China
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
President Roh Moo-hyun, right, shakes hands with Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao during their summit in Pusan last November. The young generation views China as South Korea's most important political partner. /Korea Times File
Young people in South Korea want the government to have closer relations with China rather than with the United States, North Korea and other countries in Europe, according to the latest opinion poll of 1,000 juniors aged from 18 to 23.
When asked which country South Korea should keep the closest relations with, nearly 40 percent of the respondents chose China. Their second and third choices were the United States (18.4 percent) and North Korea (18 percent).
[SK attitude China] [SK attitude US] [SK attitude NK]
China's 'Abandonment' of NK a U.S. Neo-Con Fantasy?
by Kim Tae Kyung
Kim Tae Kyung, reporter at OhMyNews.com, writes "the expectation that the
Chinese leadership would feel burdened by throwing money down the North
Korean hole is fading when one considers that China has been the world's
sixth largest economy since last year. Moreover, in order to avoid throwing
money "into a bottomless pit," China is stressing -- almost forcing --
North Korea to reform and open up. Ultimately, the argument of U.S.
neo-cons that China would abandon North Korea is becoming a dream or
"fantasy" that can never come true."
China and North Korea: Comrades Forever?
International Crisis Group
Asia Report N°112
1 February 2006
China's influence on North Korea is more than it is willing to admit but far less than outsiders tend to believe. Although it shares the international community's denuclearisation goal, it has its own concept of how to achieve it. It will not tolerate erratic and dangerous behaviour if it poses a risk of conflict but neither will it endorse or implement policies that it believes will create instability or threaten its influence in both Pyongyang and Seoul. The advantages afforded by China's close relationship with the North can only be harnessed if better assessments of its priorities and limitations are integrated into international strategies. Waiting for China to compel North Korean compliance will only give Pyongyang more time to develop its nuclear arsenal.
China's priorities with regard to North Korea are:
* avoiding the economic costs of an explosion on the Korean Peninsula;
* preventing the U.S. from dominating a unified Korea;
* securing the stability of its three economically weak north eastern provinces by incorporating North Korea into their development plans;
* reducing the financial burden of the bilateral relationship by replacing aid with trade and investment;
* winning credit at home, in the region and in the U.S. for being engaged in achieving denuclearisation;
* sustaining the two-Korea status quo so long as it can maintain influence in both and use the North as leverage with Washington on the Taiwan issue; and
* avoiding a situation where a nuclear North Korea leads Japan and/or Taiwan to become nuclear powers.
Technology and China
[EDITORIALS]
The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry warned that the technology gap between China and Korea has been narrowing and the technology leakage to China is at a level for concern. The technology difference between the two countries was found to be 4.6 years. The National Intelligence Service through its Web site said that industrial spies are bustling around Korea. Korea is stuck between Japan and China, and it can survive and prosper if only it succeeds in competiting both in technology and price at the same time.
Hu Jintao, China's president, announced during the country's National Science and Technology Conference earlier this year that China would become an innovative nation.
The Chinese president, with his vow to make the country independent of foreign technologies by 2020, showed China's desire for technology.
This means China will change its economic structure from a labor-based economy to a technology-led economy. China's State Council said it would invest more than 2 percent of China's gross domestic product into research and development so that the nation's dependency on foreign technologies is lowered to half of what it is today.
Recently China's strong attachment to technology has been distinctive. China has persistently demanded that Hyundai turn over its automobile engine technology if it wanted a plant near Beijing. Hyundai, with no choice, decided to build the engine plant in Shandong province instead. China's nervousness is because there is a limit to growth without technology.
China's DVD exports were cut into half last year by the patent attacks from Philips and Sony. China's initial idea that bringing foreign companies into the country would also lead to getting foreign technology was a mistake. Multinational companies avoid transferring technology to China and consider the country only a base for production and sales.
China's technology drive is a crisis as well as an opportunity for Korea. It is a competitor as well as a cooperator. Korea's exports of processed products to China exceeded $20 billion last year. The quality of Korean exported products improves as China's technology standards go up.
We should try to maximize this circulating structure. We have to remember that Japan once used Korea's economic development as the basis of its economic take-off. It is up to us whether the new technology-based China will be a land of opportunities once again. [China competition]
Chinese Firm Seeks Listing in Korea
By Seo Jee-yeon
Staff Reporter
Powerleader Science & Technology, a China-based information and technology firm, is expected to become the first foreign firm to list its stock in Korea, an official of Hyundai Securities said Monday.
The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal, Iran, and India's Future
By Harsh V. Pant
[Japan Focus 30 January 2006]
[What will India gain and lose from the U.S. proposal to support India's civilian nuclear program and welcome that nation into the nuclear club? The issues span India's energy profile, its position in South Asia, its historic aspirations as a leader of the non-aligned nations, and the future of the NPT. In the following article, Dr. Harsh Pant provides a multi-sided analysis of the proposed agreement in Indian, regional, and global perspective. One critical dimension is addressed squarely by Arjun Makhijani, president of the Washington-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and a leading technical specialist on nuclear issues in the United States and India. Makhijani observes in a recent Rediff interview: If you look at India's electricity goals, which is 20,000 megawatts by 2020 (presently 3%), the whole of the nuclear energy sector will at best contribute 10 to 12 percent of the total requirement even if everything goes as planned. For this, India seems to be giving up, or at least jeopardising, a much larger and more sure source of energy, one that could provide electricity more competitively than nuclear, which is natural gas from Iran." Makhijani's reference is to U.S. pressures to join in bringing Iran before the UN Security Council, a move that could jeopardize India's access to Iranian gas. But the issues are not confined to Iran. On January 28, 2006 The Hindu reported U.S. warning to India that it opposes the joint China-India oil deal with Syria. What price U.S. support for what is far from a done deal? Japan Focus]
[China confrontation]
India, China and the Asian axis of oil
New Sino-Indian partnership in oil and gas could serve as the foundation for an Asian Energy Union.
by Siddharth Varadarajan
January 24, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
This article first appeared in The Hindu
In less than a year, India and China have managed to confound analysts around the world by turning their much-vaunted rivalry for the acquisition of oil and gas assets in third countries into a nascent partnership that could alter the basic dynamics of the global energy market.
[Energy security]
In Face of Rural Unrest, China Rolls Out Reforms
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 28, 2006; Page A01
BEIJING, Jan. 27 -- Faced with steadily increasing peasant unrest, the Communist Party has decreed extensive changes to improve the lot of farmers and stop rapid economic development from encroaching on their land.
The party declared rural reform a major goal of its new five-year economic program, which began this month. The government has also announced the abolition of an agricultural tax that is thousands of years old, free public school education for peasant children and new rural insurance to subsidize medical care for those among the country's 800 million farmers who cannot afford to see doctors.
The swift sequence of decisions reflected the depth of concern in the party and government as farmers outraged by land grabs and pollution increasingly rise up in violent protests that senior officials have said pose a threat to stability and continued economic growth. The Public Security Ministry estimated the number of riots and demonstrations at 87,000 during 2005, up more than 6 percent from 2004 and quadruple what it was a decade ago.
Is North Korea's Kim Jong Il taking a secretive tour of China?
BY BILL POWELL
Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006
Keeping track of Kim Jong Il on his secret trips outside North Korea is a bit like trying to detect a subatomic particle: proof of his passing can be gleaned only from disturbances in his wake. Witness last week's surge in speculation when Kim was said to be visiting China, stopping in several cities before making his way to Beijing where it was thought maybe he might discuss the future of his nuclear-weapons program with Chinese leaders.
China Urged To Assume Greater Role in Global Trade
25 January 2006
U.S. official says partners want China to help advance rules-based system
As China's economy matures and its apprenticeship in the international trading system ends, it must take on a more responsible and accountable role in its bilateral, regional, and global trading relationships, according to Deputy U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Karan Bhatia. [China confrontation]
Ssangyong aims to double sales by 2010
Carmaker plans to increase capacity of Pyeongtaek plant to 340,000 units
Ssangyong Motor Co. said yesterday its production and sales target for 2010 is 340,000 units worth 7.3 trillion won, double the amount of 2005.
The nation's No. 4 carmaker plans to invest 2 trillion won in the five years to 2010 in development of new cars and technologies, expansion of production capacity at its Pyeongtak plant and strengthening its sales network.
"The investment will come from Ssangyong's own profits. If we lack funds, we could finance it from Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corp.," Ssangyong's chief executive Choi Hyung-tak said during his announcement of a five-year business plan.
SAIC holds a 50.91 percent stake in Ssangyong.
U.S. and China Agree on Keeping Nuclear Arms From Iran, but May Differ on How, Envoy Says
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: January 26, 2006
CHENGDU, China, Jan. 25 - China and the United States both want to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but their "approach may differ" on the best tactics to achieve that result, Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick said Wednesday after a round of meetings on the subject in Beijing.
His comments suggested that China, despite heavy lobbying, had left doubts as to whether it would back a proposal by Britain, France and Germany, supported by the United States, to involve the United Nations Security Council in deciding how to handle Iran's nuclear program, including whether to impose penalties.
[China confrontation]
China Reports Another Year of Strong (or Even Better) Growth
January 26, 2006 By KEITH BRADSHER
HONG KONG, Jan. 25 - China's economy surged 9.9 percent last year, government statisticians said in Beijing Wednesday, amid signs that growth may have been stronger still.
For a third consecutive year, China reported growth that nearly grazed the 10 percent mark. That left some economists wondering if the figures had been deliberately kept beneath that level to avoid drawing the anger of other industrialized nations and furthering calls for a higher yuan.
Over the last two years, China has shown a penchant for issuing quarterly and annual growth statistics barely under 10 percent, and then revising them upward many months later, when few are paying attention.
This month, China revised upward the growth in 2003 and 2004, previously set at 9.5 percent in both years, to 10 percent in 2003 and 10.1 percent in 2004.
The statistics for 2005, showing national economic output of $2.26 trillion, sent China soaring past France, Britain and Italy to become the world's fourth-largest economy, after the United States, Japan and Germany. Some economists, however, adjust China's figures for the low value of its currency and its modest domestic prices to suggest that at comparable prices, the actual value of China's output has surpassed Germany's as well.
Given the clumps of tall cranes that dot the skylines of Chinese cities; the shopping malls packed with buyers; and the containers full of exported shirts, toys and other goods that clog Chinese docks, the economy is growing so fast that some experts suggested Wednesday that China is perhaps again underestimating the true level of growth.
[Spin] [China confrontation]
Too Fast in China?
Stunning Growth May Have a Built-In Problem: Overcapacity
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page D01
SHANGHAI, Jan. 25 Led by surging exports, China's economy grew by 9.9 percent last year, the government announced Wednesday, underscoring the swiftness by which this once insular communist country has remade itself into a global trading power.
The rapid expansion appears to move China's economy ahead of those of Great Britain, France and Italy to become the world's fourth-largest, although many countries have yet to report their final 2005 economic data. Over the past decade, China's output has more than doubled in size as the country's transition toward capitalism has progressed, turning farmers into factory workers and linking the fortunes of its people to the appetites of shoppers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
Yet the news also increased concern that China could be growing too fast, despite measures aimed at cooling the hottest parts of the economy. Aggressive investment has produced too many factories, heightening trade tensions with the United States as China exports surplus wares such as steel, depressing prices globally. Chinese officials worry that unneeded plants could deliver a crippling era of deflation -- falling prices -- which hurts profits and reduces incentives for companies to invest. Such a syndrome kept Japan mired in recession and unemployment for much of the past 16 years.
U.S. Envoy Engages In Panda Diplomacy
Simple Hug Is Fraught With Symbolism
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 26, 2006; Page A16
CHENGDU, China, Jan. 25 -- Diplomacy is in large part symbolism, and the symbol was unmistakable. There was Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state assigned to manage U.S. relations with China, hugging a baby panda.
Zoellick, who was formerly a member of the advisory council of the World Wildlife Fund, had a natural interest in visiting the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base here in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province in central China. The appealing creatures, he pointed out during a two-hour tour Wednesday, have long been a symbol of joint U.S.-Chinese efforts to preserve the environment and protect wild animals.
But ever since President Richard M. Nixon opened contacts with the Communist government in 1972, pandas also have been a symbol of political cooperation between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese program of sending pandas as gifts, but more frequently on lease and loan, to zoos in Washington, Atlanta, San Diego and Memphis, has played a large role in de-icing diplomatic, commercial and public relations over the past 30 years.
Zoellick's gesture, in another reading, could also be seen as a signal of where he stands in the Washington debate about China. Interpreted that way, becoming a public panda-hugger was an eloquent endorsement of the view that engagement with Beijing is the best path for the United States and that China's emergence as an Asian power does not have to mean conflict in the Pacific.
[China confrontation]
Travel Alert Issued for Chinese Cities
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
The South Korean government issued a travel warning for Koreans traveling to several Chinese cities on Friday, citing continuing crimes against its citizens staying or traveling in the neighboring country.
The South Korean Embassy in Beijing said it has been receiving a growing number of reports about such serious crimes as murder, robbery and kidnapping targeting Koreans in the eastern Chinese cities of Qingdao, Shandong Province, and Shenyang, in Liaoning Province.
A China-Size Travel Delay
New Year's Trips Disrupted by Snow
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 21, 2006; Page A12
BEIJING, Jan. 20 -- Heavy snowfall in central China disrupted rail traffic Friday just as millions of Chinese headed home for Spring Festival family reunions, stranding countless travelers in frigid northern train stations.
The backup, although limited mainly to north-south travel, dramatized the huge volume of holiday travel during the festival, or Chinese New Year, which this year is celebrated on Jan. 28. Authorities have estimated that more than 2 billion trips will be made during the Jan. 14 to Feb. 22 vacation season, with more than 90 percent by car, bus or train. More than 700,000 buses will be on the road, they said, and 300 extra trains have been put into service to handle the crowds.
North Korea Reporting the Results of Chairman Kim Jong-il's Unofficial Visit to China
(Jan. 18, 2006)
1. North Korea, through the Central Broadcasting Station, the Pyongyang Broadcasting Station and the Korean Central News Agency, reported that Chairman Kim Jong-il paid an unofficial visit to Wuhan, Guangzhou, Zhu hai Shenzhen and Beijing in China at the invitation of Party Secretary-cum-President Hu Jintao, and held a summit talk with Hu Jintao. Chairman Kim Jong-il was accompanied by Premier Park Bong-ju, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Seok-ju, Director of the central committee of the Party Park Nam-ki, Ri Kwang-ho, and Vice Premier Roh Du-cheol
2. Evaluation
This time's visit to China by Chairman Kim Jong-il is the fourth one following his previous visits made in May, 20005, January, 2001 and April, 2004 each. He was not accompanied by military figures, which had a parallel to the visit to North Korea on Oct. 2005 by President Hu Jintao who was also not accompanied by Chinese military officials.
Seoul Eyes Reform in North After Trip
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's trip to China could herald a major change in Pyongyang's economic policy, as well as helping to progress in the multilateral talks on the North's nuclear weapons programs, a senior Seoul official said on Thursday.
``There has always been an important change in North Korea's economic policy after Kim visited China in the past,'' Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo said in a briefing at the ministry.
China's hope for 'stability' in North adds twist to visit
January 20, 2006 ? China's state-run Xinhua News Agency followed the lead of North Korea's press agency and broke its silence Wednesday night on the visit to China by the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The coverage of the visit by the Chinese agency was similar to that of the Korea Central News Agency, with one exception that caught North Korea analysts' eyes.
"The Chinese government and the people," Xinhua said, "sincerely hope for political stability, economic prosperity and people's happiness in the DPRK." It was referring to the abbreviation of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Although there have been increasing numbers of defectors from North Korea in recent years and sporadic reports of dissidence inside the country, there has not been much to suggest that the country's political stability was in question.
Nam Seong-wook, a political scientist at Korea University, agreed that it would be a mistake to read too much into the incidents and conclude that the regime was in danger.
"I would say that is stretching it a little," he said. "Kim Jong-il is in charge and there is no one to question it." He added that if there was any difference of opinion between Beijing and Pyongyang, it would be Beijing's view that the North should reform aggressively. He said that except for minor incidents reported by North Korean defectors here about painted anti-Kim slogans on portraits of the Dear Leader, not much was going on. There appears to be no unrest in the military, he continued, the essential support for Mr. Kim.
Hopes have risen after the visit that the six-way nuclear talks may be able to resume despite the howls of protest from Pyongyang about sanctions Washington has imposed on some of its trading companies and warnings to banks about cooperating in North Korea's alleged attempts to distribute counterfeit currency.
A senior Korean government official said yesterday that China, the Netherlands and Switzerland are carefully monitoring North Korea's financial transactions with their nations' banks.
"It seems that because China has entered international financial markets," he said, "even it has given Pyongyang the cold shoulder in regard to the counterfeit money issue."
Other observers have noted that the North Korean reaction to the sanctions has been limited to a refusal to return to the six-way talks, and has not included any of the customary thunderous rhetoric about an imminent U.S. attack or the retribution that the United States would suffer when it attacked.
by Brian Lee, Chae Byung-gun
Kim Jong Il Pays Unofficial Visit to Central and South China
Pyongyang, January 19 (KCNA) - Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, paid an unofficial visit to the People's Republic of China, from January 10 to 18 at the invitation of Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People's Republic of China. He was accompanied by Pak Pong Ju, premier of the DPRK Cabinet, Kang Sok Ju, first vice-minister of Foreign Affairs, Pak Nam Gi and Ri Kwang Ho, department directors of the WPK Central Committee, and Ro Tu Chol, vice-premier of the DPRK Cabinet.
Party and state leaders and people of China warmly welcomed Kim Jong Il visiting China again at the outset of the new year for the purpose of boosting the DPRK-China friendship and accorded him cordial hospitality with utmost sincerity.
He toured the central and southern parts of the PRC.
The first leg of his visit was Wuhan and Yichang cities of Hubei Province.
Huang Ju, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice-premier of the State Council, kindly greeted Kim Jong Il in Wuhan upon the authorization of General Secretary Hu Jintao and the CPC Central Committee.
Also present to greet Kim Jong Il were senior party and government cadres of Hubei Province and Wuhan City including Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CPC Yu Zhengsheng, Governor of Hubei Province Luo Qingquan, Secretary of the Wuhan City Committee of the CPC Miao Yu and Mayor of Wuhan Li Xiansheng.
Kim Jong Il met and conversed with Huang Ju.
Huang Ju, on behalf of General Secretary Hu Jintao, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, warmly welcomed Kim Jong Il on a visit to Wuhan City which President Kim Il Sung visited several times.
Huang said that the visit of Kim Jong Il to Wuhan City associated with the history of Sino-DPRK friendship is greatly conducive to further glorifying the friendly relations between the two countries provided by the leaders of the old generation.
Pointing out that thanks to the leadership of Kim Jong Il the DPRK has made signal achievements in the building of a great prosperous powerful nation and various other fields, Huang sincerely congratulated him on them.
Kim Jong Il said he was pleased to visit Wuhan City, expressing his thanks to leading officials and people of Hubei Province and Wuhan City for their warm reception.
Huang Ju hosted a grand banquet in honor of Kim Jong Il.
Those present at the banquet raised toasts to the stronger friendly relations between the two parties and the two countries and to the health of the leaders of the two parties and the two states.
Kim Jong Il visited the Changfei Optical Fiber and Optical Cable Company and Fenghuo Communications Co., Ltd. in company with Huang Ju. He also visited the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Yichang, Hubei Province, guided by Yu Zhengsheng, Wang Jiarui, head of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee, and Luo Qingquan, Wu Donghe, Chinese ambassador to the DPRK, and leading officials from Beijing and the province.
The world's leading power station now under construction is a gigantic structure to be recorded in the Chinese history, he said, adding that this is a striking manifestation of the resourcefulness and strength of the Chinese people.
The next leg of his visit was Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen of Guangdong Province.
Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, greeted Kim Jong Il in Guangzhou. He was also greeted by Zhang Dejiang, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPC, Huang Huahua, governor of Guangdong Province, Lin Shusen, secretary of the Guangzhou City Committee of the CPC, Zhang Guangning, mayor of Guangzhou, and other leading party and government officials of Guangdong Province and Guangzhou City. Kim Jong Il met and had a cordial conversation with Li Changchun.
Hu Jintao, who sets great store by the Sino-DPRK friendship, dispatched me to Guangzhou to specially receive Kim Jong Il, Li said, warmly welcoming his Guangzhou visit on behalf of the central collective leadership of the CPC.
Li, recalling with deep emotion his unforgettable Korea visit in 2004, once again expressed greetings of profound thanks to Kim Jong Il for showing profound care and benevolence for him.
Kim Jong Il's four visits to China in the new century are events of historic significance in improving the relations between the two countries, Li said, highly praising him for making a great contribution to boosting the Sino-Korean friendship.
Kim Jong Il said he was deeply impressed by the changes that have taken place in the Guangdong province, hoping that it would further prosper. Li Changchun gave a grand banquet in honor of Kim Jong Il.
He, in company with Li, visited the Weichuangrixin Electronics Company, the Lianzong Stainless Steel Company Ltd., the Guangzhou International Conference and Exhibition Centre and a metro and cruised the Zhu River aboard a sightseeing boat to be briefed on the construction in Guangzhou City. He visited Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen cities, guided by leading officials from Beijing and the province including Zhang Dejiang, member of the Political Bureau of the C.C., CPC and secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPC; Wang Jiarui, head of the International Liaison Department of the C.C., CPC; Huang Huahua, governor of Guangdong Province; and Wu Donghe, Chinese ambassador to the DPRK. While staying there he visited different units including Zhongshan University, Xinghai Conservatory and the Dongsheng Farm Company Ltd. in Guangzhou, the Software Development Centre of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Gree Air Conditioner Production Company and the Eastcompeace Smart Card Co., Ltd. in Zhuhai and Yantian Port, Huawei Technologies, and the Dazu Laser Science and Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen. He was accorded whole-hearted warm welcome by the Chinese people wherever he went.
During his stay he enjoyed a music and dance performance specially prepared by artistes from Beijing and Guangdong Province together with leading officials of the province and Shenzhen city including Zhang Dejiang, secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CPC, and Huang Huahua, governor of the province.
The artistes put on the stage colorful numbers including orchestra "Prelude to Celebration", children's chorus "Wanlihua", Urheen solo "Horse Race", ballet "We Sing of Huang He River", display of national dresses "Beautiful Rainbow in the East", song and dance "To Greet Friend from Place Far Away" and Korean songs "Soldier Lives Near the General", "The Flower Girl" and "Balloonflower."
Kim Jong Il sent a floral basket to the performers, congratulating them on their successful performance.
Zhang Dejiang hosted a banquet in honor of Kim Jong Il.
While making a long journey from the central part of China to its southern part, he learned in detail with the thoughts and feelings of the hard-working and resourceful Chinese people and the economic, cultural and all other fields.
The unofficial visit paid by him to China in the beginning of the new year for the purpose of steadily boosting the DPRK-China friendship proved successful thanks to the special care and cordial hospitality of Hu Jintao and the party and government of China.
Kim Jong Il expressed satisfaction over his fruitful visit and thanked for the cordial hospitality accorded to him by the leading officials of the party and government of China.
His historic visit to the central and southern parts of China will be recorded in the history of the DPRK-China friendship as one more event that provided an occasion of bringing about a fresh turn in boosting this traditional friendship.
Kim Jong-il's China visit
[EDITORIAL]
It is anyone's guess why North Korean leader Kim Jong-il made a futile attempt to shroud his recent China trip in total secrecy. It was bound to be discovered, and indeed it quickly was. The global news media were alerted to the trip shortly after his border crossing by train on Jan. 10.
If his goal was to add mystery to his trip by playing hide-and-seek with the news media and thus attract maximum coverage, then the ploy must be deemed to have been a success. He also appears to have succeeded in getting his message across to both domestic and foreign audiences without uttering a word in public, if the message is that Pyongyang will soon embark on a second economic reform.
The economic reform message became self-evident when Kim retraced the footsteps of Deng Xiaoping, who, back in 1992, conducted a tour of the rapidly growing special economic zones in southern China. Deng, who launched economic reforms in 1980, restarted them during his "southern expedition." He renewed his call for reform and opening up, further silencing what was left of the opposition to his so-called market-inspired socialist economic policy.
The southern tour is now considered to have been one of the major contributions Deng made to policymaking in China before he died in 1997. It also proved to be a watershed in China's progress towards becoming a world economic powerhouse to be reckoned with - one that generates growth at an annual rate higher than 9 percent.
As Kim witnessed, Deng's policy has turned Shenzhen, a nondescript fishing village a quarter century ago, into a bustling industrial complex with countless factories churning out high-tech products. Such change is not limited to Shenzhen. Other areas in the southern province of Guangdong, such as Zhuhai and Guangzhou, have undergone a similar transformation.
If Deng had to accelerate economic reform, so Kim needs to speed up the proposed change toward a market-oriented economy. In this process, Kim may have to override opposition that could come from conservatives, including military leaders who accompanied him on the tour.
[Economic reform]
Kim Jong Il's China Trip May Be Plan for Open Economy)
(Update2
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il may be seeking to further open up the economy of one of the world's most isolated nations, North Korea analysts said, citing his nine-day visit to China that ended yesterday.
``Kim Jong Il wanted to see for himself the effects of an open economy, and also show it to his closest aides,'' said Jun Bong Geun, a researcher at South Korea's state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. ``China was also eager to show the North Korean leader as well.''
Kim visited China's central and southern provinces of Hubei and Guangdong to see economic boom towns such as Wuhan, Yichang, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen, China's official Xinhua news agency said. North Korea's Korea Central News Agency described the towns as being ``where the cause of modernization is being successfully carried out.''
China is North Korea's biggest economic, political and social ally and trade with China comprised nearly half of North Korea's international commerce in 2004, according to South Korea's state-funded trade promotion agency, KOTRA. As many as a third of North Korea's 23 million people are starving after a decade of drought, famine, floods and economic mismanagement, South Korea's government estimates.
North Korean exports to China grew 48 percent in 2004 to $586 million from the previous year, Chinese imports to North Korea also grew 27 percent to $800 million in the same period, the South Korean trade agency said.
Economic Opportunity
China regards North Korea as ``less of an economic burden and more of an economic opportunity for trade and investment,'' Peter Beck, Seoul-based director of the Northeast Asia Project for the International Crisis Group, said during an interview yesterday with Bloomberg television. ``Trade and investment is booming between China and North Korea.''
[Opening] Economic reform] [Spin]
'Kim visit raises hope for North Korea'
By Annie I. Bang
South Korean officials have expressed the hope that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to China will have a "positive effect" on the North's economic policy, inter-Korean relations and efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis on the peninsula.
Kim has just concluded a highly secretive week-long visit to China at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao. A North Korea-China summit between the two leaders was described as "meaningful" with both sides agreeing to push for peaceful settlement of nuclear dispute, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told reporters yesterday.
"Both sides have reaffirmed their commitment to progress in the six-party talks, and it is believed that Kim expressed a strong desire for (the North's) economic reform," Rhee said.
"We anticipate these moves will have a positive effect on South-North relations as well."
Noting that there have been significant changes in the North's economic policy each time Kim has visited China, Rhee said he expects even more changes in policy after his latest trip.
"I don't know for sure how this visit to China will result in any changes in policy," Rhee said. "But since Kim Jong-il toured Chinese special economic zones, I can only assume he will increase his interest in the North's own special economic zones."
Kim visited the southern part of China, including Shenzhen, a Chinese model of a market economy just across the border from Hong Kong.
North Korea has four special economic zones, including Gaeseong, Mount Geumgang, Shinuiju, Najin-Sunbong.
"There is a need to closely watch what kind of policy changes will be made in relation to the economic zones," Rhee said.
The two Koreas opened an economic working-level meeting in Gaeseong yesterday to discuss ways to implement ideas to improve inter-Korean economic cooperation.
The main issues on the table are suggestions that were initially agreed to during an economic cooperation meeting last July. They include opening or at least conducting tests and inspections on inter-Korean roads and railways, in particular the western Gyeongui Line connecting Seoul with Pyongyang and the eastern Donghae Line leading to North Korea's scenic Mount Geumgang.
Last July, Seoul agreed to provide Pyongyang with raw materials for the production of clothes, shoes and soap. In exchange, Pyongyang agreed that Seoul would have the right to jointly exploit North Korea's natural resources such as coal, magnetite and zinc.
But Pyongyang later insisted the two projects should be separate and demanded that Seoul's economic assistance should be considered as aid.
{Economic reform} [Special Economic Zones]
'NK Tries to Revive Sinuiju as Special Economic Zone'
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Park Jae-kyu
Former unification minister
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's secret visit to China is aimed at reviving its special economic zone in Sinuiju, former Unification Minister Park Jae-kyu said at a seminar in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.
His remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars came as Pyongyang is expected to come up with major economic reform measures in the near future, following Kim's tour of China's booming commercial south.
``After his visit to Shanghai (in January 2001), I heard that Kim instructed his officials to develop Sinuiju as an IT-oriented industrial area,'' Park said. ``I think Kim's visit was intended to get China's help to jumpstart his special economic zone projects in Sinuiju and the Rajin-Sonbong region.''
Right after Kim's return from a trip to Shanghai in January 2001, Pyongyang underlined ``new thinking'' in its state affairs, and began to carry out a number of economic measures, including price and wage reforms in July the next year.
Pyongyang also named Sinuiju, a northwest city bordering China, as a special administrative region in September 2002.
But the plan has failed to make progress since Yang Bin, a Dutch-Chinese millionaire whom Pyongyang designated as the region's first chief executive officer, was arrested in China for fraud and bribing the next month.
End of Kim Jong-il's Trip
Timing of North's Return to Nuclear Talks Draws Global Attention
As anticipated, North Korea leader Kim Jongil's activities during his week-long visit to China have been steeped in secrecy, forcing global media to produce reports built on guesswork. Kim's apparent return to Pyongyang early Wednesday brings with it concerns about his meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao at China's state guesthouse Diaoyutai in Beijing, Tuesday. It is generally reported that the two leaders discussed the promotion of economic cooperation between Beijing and Pyongyang, and the six-party nuclear negotiations, stalled since last November.
Though hard to verify, the main purpose of Kim's trip was reportedly aimed at putting vigor into his country's ailing economy, after the model of the rapid economic development in China. Thus, he stayed in Guangdong Province, China's most economically developed southern region, until he arrived in Beijing on Tuesday to meet with Hu and other Chinese leaders. He and his entourage spent most of their time visiting Shanghai and Shenzen, a high tech city just north of Hong Kong. It is speculated that, based on his inspection of the two Chinese cities, Kim will open a new special economic zone near the border with China. He tried to open such a zone in Shinuiju, following his trip to China in 2004, but failed because Beijing arrested a Chinese businessman whom Kim awarded the exclusive right to develop the border city.
North lifts veil on Kim's China trip
January 19, 2006 ? North Korea's state-run media have confirmed Kim Jong-il's visit to China, and say he has returned to Pyongyang. The announcement came yesterday evening through the Korean Central News Agency.
The government-run news agency said that Mr. Kim promised Hu Jintao, China's president, to work closely with him to break the deadlock in six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons
Kim Jong Il Pays Unofficial Visit to China
Pyongyang, January 18 (KCNA) -- Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, paid an unofficial visit to the People's Republic of China from January 10 to 18 at the invitation of Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People's Republic of China. He was accompanied by Premier of the Cabinet Pak Pong Ju, First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Sok Ju, Department Directors of the WPK Central Committee Pak Nam Gi and Ri Kwang Ho and Vice-Premier of the Cabinet Ro Tu Chol. The party and state leaders of China warmly welcomed Kim Jong Il who came to it again at the outset of the new year, carrying with him the profound friendly feelings towards the fraternal Chinese people and accorded him cordial hospitality with utmost sincerity.
A meeting and talks between Kim Jong Il and Hu Jintao were held in Beijing.
Speech of by Kim Jong Il at Banquet
Pyongyang, January 18 (KCNA) -- Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People's Republic of China, hosted a grand banquet at the Great Hall of the People in honor of Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, on visit to China. Kim Jong Il said in his speech:
We have visited the southern part of the People's Republic of China as our first political itinerary in the new year at the kind invitation of you esteemed Comrade General Secretary Hu Jintao.
Our visit provided us with an opportunity to get familiar with peculiar and diverse aspects of the Chinese nation in natural, social, cultural and various other fields in the vast land of China. We were deeply impressed by the shining achievements made in the high-tech field, in particular. Warm hospitality accorded to us by Chinese comrades in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Shenzhen and every other place we went and the warm southern climate pleased us away from intense cold of mid-winter though for a short time.
The progress made in the southern part of China which has undergone a rapid change and the stirring reality of China, in particular, deeply impressed us.
Still fresh in my memory is my visit to Shanghai five years ago that has changed beyond recognition.
Speech of Hu Jintao at Banquet
Pyongyang, January 18 (KCNA) -- Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People's Republic of China, gave a grand banquet at the Great Hall of the People in welcome of the China visit of Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defence Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Hu Jintao said in his speech:
You Comrade Kim Jong Il, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission, have visited China again with the deep feelings of the Party, the government and the people of Korea toward the Party, the government and the people of China with the approaching of the lunar New Year's Day, a traditional holiday of the two peoples.
In this place I warmly welcome you General Secretary Comrade Kim Jong Il on behalf of the Chinese party, government and people and sincerely wish you sufficient successes in your visit.
I extend New Year's greetings to you General Secretary Comrade Kim Jong Il and the Korean people.
During my visit to Korea in October last year, I witnessed new noteworthy successes gained by the Korean people in shaping out a road of development suited to the specific conditions of Korea, rallied close around the Workers' Party of Korea headed by you General Secretary Comrade Kim Jong Il. We, as your close neighbor, friends and comrades, sincerely hope that Korea will steadily develop and grow strong and prosperous and wholeheartedly wish the Korean people an affluent and happy life.
In China, Kim Vows Commitment to Talks
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 19, 2006; A14
BEIJING, Jan. 18 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il finished a secretive nine-day visit to China on Wednesday after reaffirming his government's commitment to six-nation talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons program and pledging to work with the Chinese to "overcome the present difficulties" in the negotiations.
The Secret's Out: North Korea's Leader Did Visit China
New China News Agency, via Associated Press
Kim Jong Il, right, North Korea's leader, at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing on Tuesday with China's president, Hu Jintao, center. Mr. Kim also toured high-tech factories, ports and a dam.
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: January 19, 2006
BEIJING, Jan. 18 - Kim Jong Il , the North Korean leader, completed an eight-day visit to China on Wednesday that was notable for his intensive focus on China's booming economy and for the enigmatic air of secrecy that enshrouded his every move.
Chinese and North Korean state media made nearly simultaneous announcements of Mr. Kim's visit late Wednesday afternoon after more than a week of rampant speculation in regional media about the North Korean leader's itinerary, which both countries repeatedly declined to confirm or deny.
N Korea confirms Kim's China trip
Chinese TV showed Mr Kim (left) with President Hu Jintao
North Korea has ended a week of feverish speculation by finally confirming that its secretive leader Kim Jong-il has been in China.
Mr Kim, whose overseas visits are usually announced once they are over, held talks with President Hu Jintao, North Korea's KCNA news agency said.
NK Leader Committed to Nuke Talks
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Great Hall of the People in Beijing in this photo captured from Chinese television, Wednesday. /AP-Yonhap
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il asked for a joint effort with China's President Hu Jintao to overcome ``difficulties'' in the six-party talks, the North's official news agency reported on Wednesday.
The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) confirmed that Kim, who was in China on an ``unofficial visit'' at Hu's invitation from Jan. 10 to 18, held a summit with Hu in Beijing on Tuesday.
Official news media in China and North Korea did not report whether the summit agenda included Washington's financial sanctions against North Korea.
North Korean Leader Completes 8-Day Visit to China
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: January 18, 2006
BEIJING, Jan. 18 - Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, completed an eight-day visit to China today that was notable for his intensive focus on China's booming economy and for the enigmatic air of secrecy that enshrouded his every move.
Chinese and North Korea state media made nearly simultaneous announcements of Mr. Kim's visit late this afternoon after more than a week of rampant speculation in regional media about the North Korean leader's itinerary that both countries repeatedly declined to confirm or deny.
Both sides termed the clandestine trip unofficial, but gave no reason why they chose to use that term. China's main national television news detailed Mr. Kim's schedule, which it said included separate meetings with President Hu Jintao and all other eight members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee as well as high-profile tours of two Chinese provinces, the trappings of an elaborate state visit that would normally involve extensive media coverage.
North's leader adds luster to his reputation as recluse
January 18, 2006 ? BEIJING ? The hunt for Kim Jong-il continues. An entourage of 40 cars, believed to be conveying the North Korean leader, was seen entering the Diaoyutai State Guest House yesterday, and the Foreign Ministry's spokesman, Kong Quan, suggested that a meeting between China's president, Hu Jintao, and Mr. Kim was to take place.
Mr. Kong told the press yesterday that the Chinese president was expected to meet with "another country's leader." The press here continued its silence on the question.
Kim's China trip longest thus far
January 17, 2006 ? BEIJING ? The much highlighted trip of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to China is becoming by far the longest trip of the reclusive leader to his ally, in what some observers say is proof that the North's regime is under the firm grip of Mr. Kim.
It has been a full week since initial reports surfaced of the North Korean leader's trip. Until now, his trips lasted three to five days. With reports that Mr. Kim is now expected to leave Shenzhen and travel to Shanghai or Beijing, his stay is expected to last for 10 days.
Some analysts say that Mr. Kim's confidence in his power in the North is the main reason for his long stay. "It was the norm for Mr. Kim not to leave Pyongyang for more than a week," said a diplomatic source familiar with the North's regime who added that possible threats from within had encouraged the North's leader to abide by this unwritten rule until now.
After an explosion in April 2004 in Yongchon, North Korea, just after Mr. Kim's train had passed through the city on his return from China, North Korea has been tightening its grip on its internal security. International phone connections were mostly shut down and most Internet access was also blocked. Beijing-based experts say that a security crackdown on the North's citizens also took place then in order to weed out any potential threats to the regime.
A series of measures to cement Mr. Kim's grip on power also took place at the beginning of 2003 when Jang Song-taek, who was then second in line to Mr. Kim, was relieved of his duties and disappeared from public life. Analysts say that having cemented his power in the North, Mr. Kim is now trying to learn from China's reform in order to rescue the communist country's ailing economy.
Meanwhile, the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday that Mr. Kim had left Guangdong and was heading North by train.
DPRK Government Delegation Leaves for China
Pyongyang, January 14 (KCNA) -- A delegation of the DPRK government headed by Minister of Agriculture Ri Kyong Sik left here today to participate in the International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza to be held in China. The delegation was seen off at the airport by Mun Ung Jo, vice-minister of Agriculture, and Guan Huabing, Chinese charge d'affaires ad interim here.
Reviving the China Threat
By Gregory Clark
"I recognize that it (China) is becoming a considerable threat."
--Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso
For some of us in the China-watching business (I have been there for more
than 40 years), there has always been a China "threat." It began with the
1950-53 Korean civil war, which initially had nothing to do with China.
[China confrontation]
Kim Jong-il 'inspects' China boom
Beijing usually reports the visit after Mr Kim has left the country
North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, has reportedly been touring hi-tech firms in Shenzhen, the city at the forefront of China's economic boom.
Japanese TV has broadcast secretly filmed footage showing a man resembling Mr Kim leaving a hotel in Shenzhen.
The visit has prompted speculation that China is advocating market reforms for Pyongyang and could also urge it to rejoin stalled nuclear negotiations.
Long March in China
Kim Should Strive to Revive Country, Not Regime
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is currently touring China's southeastern region, following the same route the late Deng Shaoping took. It is not certain whether Kim would also open up his country and reform its economy as the respected Chinese reformer did. But it is imperative that he tries to save his country from total collapse and stabilize the population that can explode anytime. The extreme secrecy of Kim's moves even while visiting his closest ally shows this.
Japanese TV films North's Kim in China
January 16, 2006 ? SHENZHEN/BEIJING ? A Japanese TV crew captured North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on camera in Guangzhou over the weekend. Sources state that Mr. Kim is likely to visit Shanghai next.
A Japanese television channel reported that a summit meeting between Mr. Kim and Chinese President Hu Jintao took place on Wednesday in Beijing.
A diplomatic source in Beijing said the summit meeting between the two leaders most likely took place before Mr. Kim's visit to Gwangzhou. Nevertheless, the source said that the summit meeting didn't take place in Beijing but at another venue.
While several reports on the reclusive leader's whereabouts have been making the rounds, a source said yesterday that Shanghai is likely to be the North Korean leader's next stop.
"On Wednesday, Mr. Kim's security personnel paid a visit to Shanghai. These procedures suggest that there is a high possibility that he will visit Shanghai," said the source.
Meanwhile, observers say that the expeditions inside China by Mr. Kim that have taken place so far suggest that the North's leader's main purpose for the trip is to take a look at the forefront of economic reforms that China has introduced. The large size of the entourage accompanying the communist country's leader also backs up that claim. Sources said yesterday that the North Korean delegation includes economic experts and that they, on Mr. Kim's orders, have been busy visiting various cities and companies in the South of China.
However, another source suggested that Mr. Kim's visit to China was more politically motivated.
"The current situation is sort of a crisis regarding the financial sanctions imposed by the United States," said the source. "Under these circumstances, a sudden visit by a grand delegation is a move to demonstrate the close ties with China.
ABC News
N. Korea's Kim tours Chinese boom town
Reuters
Jan 15, 2006 - By Alan Wheatley
BEIJING (Reuters) - The leader of isolated North Korea spent the weekend viewing China's economic boom, but Kim Jong-il is unlikely to go home without meeting Chinese leaders to discuss how to resume stalled nuclear talks.
Rumours began to swirl last week that the leader of the reclusive Stalinist state was making one of his rare overseas visits, but sightings in southern China have given way to more concrete speculation over why he is here.
Kim's choice of destination offers clues to the reasons behind his trip, only his fourth known tour to China.
On Sunday he was apparently visiting the boom town of Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, a day after a tour of Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, the fastest-growing corner of the world's most rapidly developing major economy.
Kim spent Sunday touring one of the high-tech companies in Shenzhen - the pioneer city for China's economic reforms - and visiting the Yantian port which is one of China's most advanced, computerised container ports, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
Kim Jong Il is reported on high-tech China tour
The Associated Press
SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2006
BEIJING Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, reportedly began another day of tours of high-tech companies in southern China on Sunday, part of what appeared to be a trip to study actions that could help the North's ailing economy.
Neither China nor North Korea has confirmed Kim's visit to China. News reports and intelligence officials have said the trip included stops at two cities in Guangdong Province: Guangzhou, the southern mainland business capital, and Shenzhen, a city with many technology companies next to Hong Kong.
The South Korean news agency Yonhap said Kim had planned on Saturday to meet the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, who was in Xiamen, a coastal city northeast of Guangdong and a short flight from Guangzhou.
Speculation rises over Kim's summit with Hu
As North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is reportedly paying a clandestine visit to China, speculation is rife about his possible summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao, which experts say would focus on Pyongyang's economic reforms.
Over the weekend, Kim was believed to have toured southern China, including Shenzhen, the communist country's model of a market economy just across the border from Hong Kong.
Hu also reportedly visited a Taiwanese investment zone in Xiamen, a coastal city northeast of Shenzhen and an hour-long flight from Guangzhou. Hu's rushed visit to southern China is believed to meet with Kim's.
Kim, who last visited China in 2004, reportedly left his country last Tuesday with no confirmation or denial from the Chinese or South Korean government.
China usually does not confirm Kim's visits until he leaves the country.
Over the weekend, Japanese broadcasting companies have claimed that they captured footage of Kim in China. Japan's NTV and TBS networks have broadcasted what they said were scenes of Kim's motorcade in Guangzhou and Kim with a mao jacket on a luxury boat on the city's Pearl River on Friday.
NHK showed blurred footage of a man with a bouffant hairstyle with dark glasses leaving a luxury hotel in Shenzhen early Sunday and getting into a black car.
Experts here say his visit will bring a positive impact on the future of the Stalinist state.
Kim in China to Attract Investment
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Ryoo Kihl-jae
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's trip to China, believed to have begun Tuesday, was intended to attract more Chinese investment to his impoverished country in the form of economic cooperation, a North Korea expert in Seoul said.
Ryoo Kihl-jae, professor of the University of North Korean Studies, said in an interview with The Korea Times that it is necessary to monitor whether the secret visit, the fourth since May 2000, will eventually lead Pyongyang to develop another set of economic reform measures.
Many experts speculate that Kim went to China to break a deadlock in its nuclear standoff with the United States, triggered by Washington's imposition of financial sanctions against the North for its alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.
Ryoo, however, stressed that Kim's recent maneuvers should be seen in the context of North Korea's efforts to resuscitate its sagging economy, though most local and foreign media are focusing a bit excessively on its political implications.
He said that North Korea might want help to get out of its vicious circle of stagnation; the lack of hard currency and raw materials consequently makes it difficult for Pyongyang to effectively carry out its market reform measures, implemented in July 1, 2002.
Right after Kim's return from a trip to Shanghai in January 2001, Pyongyang underlined ``new thinking'' in its state affairs, and started price and wage reforms in July the next year. A further step was taken in June 2003 when the regime promulgated a law, acknowledging the existence of farmers' markets for the first time.
But the result was unchecked inflation for many goods, especially rice, as there were virtually no corresponding supply-side measures to increase output, Ryoo said.
``It was a good attempt but the effects have been limited by the paucity of raw materials and the exhaustion of investment capital,'' he said. ``I think Kim Jong-il is now in China to remedy this situation. But China is not expected to give something for free as it did in the past. So the result will likely be in the form of economic cooperation.''
[FDI] [Economic reforms]
Rumors persist over N.K. leader's China visit
From news reports
North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong-il was reportedly visiting southern China's financial center of Shenzhen on Friday amid a news blackout by Chinese authorities.
China's refusal to comment on Kim's whereabouts has prompted speculation he could be anywhere from northeast China's Tianjin to Guangdong province, near Hong Kong.
Kim, who last visited chief ally China in 2004, reportedly crossed the border by train on Tuesday, although Chinese authorities have refused to confirm or deny that he is even in the country.
China usually only announces visits by Kim after he leaves.
Officials in charge of responding to media inquiries in Guangdong did not answer repeated phone calls on Friday.
'Kim-spotting' becomes an obsession in China
January 14, 2006 ? SHANGHAI ? More rumors and sketchy reports flew yesterday regarding the whereabouts of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who Hong Kong media have reported is visiting Shenzen in the Chinese province of Guangdong.
Sources in Beijing and Shanghai said that if Mr. Kim were visiting Shenzhen, it could mean the North has decided to push economic reforms. They noted that Shenzhen is a city where Beijing has implemented aggressive economic development and reform measures, thus making it a good example for Mr. Kim.
Regarding reports that Mr. Kim met with Kim Won-ki, the South Korean National Assembly speaker, an official at the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai said that sounded unlikely.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that Mr. Kim visited Guangdong's capital, Guangzhou, and stayed at the five-star White Swan Hotel before going to Shenzen. Citing a hotel staff member, the paper said all hotel guests had been ordered to leave. The Associated Press said that all the hotel's rooms were booked at least until Monday, but a receptionist there could not confirm whether Mr. Kim was a guest.
In what seemed to be a heightened security measure, traffic in the area was stopped when a convoy of limousines and police cars drove up to the hotel.
Meanwhile, the Yonhap News Agency circulated a boast by Japan's N-TV, which said yesterday it had caught Mr. Kim on film. The Japanese network said a hotel staff member confirmed that Mr. Kim was the person caught on camera, although the footage was not clear enough to confirm the man's identity.
Security surrounding the reclusive leader has been stepped up compared to past visits to China. The North Korean entourage accompanying Mr. Kim has been seen with security personnel around Shanghai, although it was not clear that Mr. Kim was with them at the time.
Analysts and intelligence officials say the increased security measures are a reaction to an explosion in April, 2004, in Yongchon, North Korea, just after Mr. Kim's train had passed through the city as he returned from his previous trip to China. At the time, it was speculated that the explosion could have been an attempt on the life of the North's leader.
by Jin Se-keun
Korea-China Trade Exceeds $100 Billion
By Kim Sung-jin
Staff Reporter
South Korea's merchandise trade with China topped $100 billion in 2005 for the first time ever.
The Korea Customs Service said Thursday combined exports and imports to and from China reached $100.6 billion. China maintained its status as Korea's single biggest export market by absorbing $62 billion worth of Korean goods.
The United States is Korea's second-largest export market. The U.S. imported a total of $41.4 billion worth of products from Korea last year. The U.S. was trailed by Japan ($24.1 billion), Hong Kong ($15.5 billion) and Taiwan ($10.9).
By customs cleared imports, Japan was the largest exporter to Korea. Korea's imports from Japan totaled $48.4 billion in 2005.
Korea's annual bilateral trade deficit with Japan remained constant at $24.3 billion in 2005, similar to the 2004 $24.4 billion deficit.
China exported $38.6 billion worth of merchandise to Korea. The U.S. ranked third with exports to Korea reaching $30.5 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia ($16.2 billion) and the United Arab Emirates ($10 billion).
China emerged as Korea's biggest export market since 2003 and second-biggest exporter to Korea since 2004. The Middle Kingdom is also the only single market that Korea reaps more than $20 billion in trade surplus.
Korea's trade surplus with China snowballed from $13.2 billion in 2003 to $20.2 billion in 2004 and $23.4 billion last year.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday that Korea's exports to China are forecast to hit $74 billion in 2006, up more than 20 percent from 2005, largely attributed to brisk China-bound shipments of key export items such as microchips, mobile phones and flat panels.
Seoul Not Informed of Kim Jong-il's Trip to China
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Beijing did not notify Seoul of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to China, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.
Kim is believed to be in China, with Beijing keeping his visit secret because of security concerns.
Status on trade between North Korea and China from January to November 2005
Trade between North Korea and China from January to November 2005 totaled approximately 1billion 457million U.S. dollars which was a 24.0% increase compared to the same period last year. Exports to China totaled 462.1million U.S. dollars which was a 13.0% decrease compared to the same time last year while imports from China recorded 995.7million U.S. dollars which was a 54.6% increase compared to the same time last year. As a result of such transaction with China, North Korea made 533.5million U.S. dollars of trade deficit. During the same period of time inter-Korean trade totaled 975.5million U.S. dollars of which exports and imports to South Korea were 349.3million U.S. dollars and 670.5million U.S. dollars respectively. This was a 57.2% increase compared to the same time last year.
Seoul Not Informed of Kim Jong-il's Trip to China
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
Beijing did not notify Seoul of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to China, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.
Kim is believed to be in China, with Beijing keeping his visit secret because of security concerns.
Media Goes Wild Over NK Leader's Whereabouts
By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
The world's media appeared to be caught in a whirl of contradicting reports over the possible whereabouts of the reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il after it was first reported that Kim seems to have traveled outside his country in a specially armored train Tuesday.
Quoting unnamed sources in Beijing, Shanghai, and Seoul as well as in the region around the Chinese-North Korean border, news agencies churned out a heap of reports and speculations over where the secretive leader might possibly be, as government officials of South Korea and China remained tight-lipped, either unable or unwilling to confirm those reports.
Kim Jong Il Said to Reach Shanghai by Plane
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 12, 2006; A17
SEOUL, Jan. 11 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il toured Shanghai on Wednesday after reportedly arriving on a direct flight from the North Korean capital in what would mark the reclusive ruler's first overseas trip by plane, according to South Korea's semi-official Yonhap news service.
Quoting unnamed diplomatic sources, Yonhap said Kim was on a three-day trip to China's business hub, which he last visited in 2001 to see the city's vast economic expansion. Kim reportedly fears flying, and news agencies in Japan and South Korea said earlier that he had arrived in China aboard his private train and was perhaps en route to Russia.
But Yonhap said Kim had landed in Shanghai after a direct flight from Pyongyang and was likely to stop in Beijing for meetings with President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders before returning to North Korea.
South Korean officials could not immediately confirm Yonhap's report and North Korea's official media did not comment on the visit.
If the report is true, analysts said that Kim's visit could represent an effort to win China's support for lifting U.S. economic sanctions imposed late last year against North Korean companies believed to have ties to illicit activities, including currency counterfeiting. North Korea has said it would not return to six-nation talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear weapons program until those sanctions were lifted.
-- Anthony Faiola
[Media]
India's New Faces of Outsourcing
High-Level Technicians Lead a Transcontinental Shift in Business Culture
By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 11, 2006; A01
PUNE, India -- Before he supervised teams, wooed American clients over dinner or sat in a Northern Virginia boardroom alongside U.S. executives, Constancio Fernandes wrote computer code for a living.
That's how it started in the late 1990s -- American businesses ordered up software applications, and Indian programmers such as Fernandes dutifully delivered. But somewhere along the way, Fernandes became more confident and outspoken. He began questioning the Americans and suggesting cheaper, faster ways to run their businesses. They listened.
Kim Jong-il 'makes Chinese visit'
The North Korean leader rarely leaves the secretive state
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il travelled to China on Tuesday in a special armoured train, reports said.
The train carrying the secretive leader passed through the town of Dandong on the Chinese border before dawn amid tight security, the reports said.
"The scene was quite similar to one in April 2004, when Kim Jong-il visited China by a special train," said South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Mystery shrouds Kim Jong-il visit
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is reportedly visiting China on a rare foreign trip amid the stalled multinational talks on North Korea's nuclear program.
But confirmation of the leader's visit is shrouded in mystery, despite an apparently reliable first report.
"We confirmed he went to China," a South Korean military intelligence official was quoted by the Associated Press.
But when contacted by the Korea Herald, military intelligence said they knew nothing about the quote other than what was reported in the media. The Chinese Embassy in Seoul was then contacted to confirm or deny Kim's visit but the trail ended after the question was referred to an official spokesman whose cell phone was switched off.
The mystery deepened further after the North Korean mission in Beijing denied outright that Kim was in China.
'Kim Jong-il Visits Beijing to Tackle Financial Sanctions'
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on Tuesday traveled to China by special train, reaching the Chinese border town of Dandong at 6:10 a.m., news agencies reported, quoting intelligence sources.
Officials in Seoul repeatedly said that the government was trying to confirm the reports.
Even if Kim is now in China, it is not surprising as he has occasionally visited his communist ally without giving any prior notice to other countries. It is his fourth visit to China since May 2000 and the first in 21 months.
Kim's visit does not look extraordinary either, given that Chinese President Hu Jintao, who toured Pyongyang Oct. 28-30, might have invited him to Beijing, following the formalities of diplomacy.
Under these circumstances, North Korea experts in Seoul told The Korea Times that what does matter at the moment is the purpose of his visit, which they believe is designed to show off the two allies' close relations and to jointly deal with several pending issues, including Pyongyang's alleged counterfeiting of U.S. dollars.
Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said the North Korean leader's travel to China has more to do with the financial sanctions imposed by the United States than the North's dire economic situation.
``We need to think of the fact that Hu Jintao visited Pyongyang only three months ago,'' he said, indicating that North Korea could have asked for economic aid at that time. ``So I think Kim's visit this time is closely related with the denuclearization talks and the United States' financial sanctions.''
China's Energy Options: national, regional and global consequences
By Jonathan E. Sinton, Rachel E. Stern, Nathaniel T. Aden, and Mark D. Levine
[Japan Focus 9 January 2006]
This "Evaluation of China's Energy Options" (ECEO) is a very important and informative analysis of China's energy-supply challenges. The ECEO was prepared for and with the support of the China Sustainable Energy Program. The Program links American and Chinese experts and is aimed at assisting "in China's transition to a sustainable energy future by promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy." The ECEO was itself written by an international group of experts on energy issues. They seek to augment the Chinese Development Research Centre's 2004 "National Energy Strategy and Policy 2020" (NESP), an assessment of China's current and future energy needs and how to satisfy them. The ECEO is thus a treasure trove of data and concise analyses of the structure of China's energy demand and supply as well as the relevant institutions and organizations.
But the importance of the issues addressed in the ECEO extends far beyond China. The backdrop of the analysis is the increasingly desperate global search for energy supplies.
[Energy security]
Koreans Lean Closer to China
By Reuben Staines
Staff Reporter
An increasing number of South Koreans believe building closer ties with China should be the focus of the country's foreign policy, survey results released on Sunday showed, signaling a shift away from traditional ally the United States.
According to a New Year's opinion poll commissioned by The Korea Times and sister newspaper Hankook Ilbo, 36.5 percent of the public said the relationship with China is the country's most important.
While 48 percent of South Koreans still thought the United States is more influential, the results revealed a clear swing toward economically surging China.
In a similar poll in October 2004, 53 percent saw the U.S. as the key nation in South Korea's foreign policy while just 24 percent picked China.
Experts attributed the shift to diplomatic strain between Washington and Seoul resulting from growing policy differences on how to deal with communist North Korea.
[Friction] [SK attitude]
Taiwan Chief Seeks More Arms, Not Better Ties to China
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: January 2, 2006
HONG KONG, Jan. 1 - President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan called Sunday for increased arms purchases and warned against greater economic ties to mainland China , in a televised speech that silenced months of speculation that he might soon seek to improve relations across the Taiwan Strait.
President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan spoke at the presidential palace before a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of China's first republic.
The speech was Mr. Chen's first major policy address since his Democratic Progressive Party fared badly in islandwide municipal elections on Dec. 3. His party favors greater political independence from the mainland.
One common worry in Taiwan involves growing economic dependence on the mainland and the extent to which the mainland economy now dwarfs Taiwan's. China's economy is expanding more than twice as fast as Taiwan's and is now six times the size of Taiwan's.
On Dec. 20, statisticians in Beijing raised their estimate of the size of the Chinese economy by an amount equal to the entire annual output of Taiwan, after an economic census found that small private businesses in service industries, like restaurants, had previously been undercounted.
Mr. Chen said Sunday that more than two-fifths of all orders placed with Taiwanese companies for manufactured goods were filled by factories elsewhere. The mainland accounts for 90 percent of these shipments from factories outside Taiwan, he said.
Premier of Chinese State Council on Boosting Sino-Korean Relations of Friendship and Cooperation
Pyongyang, December 27 (KCNA) -- It is the strategic policy of China to develop the friendly and cooperative relations with the DPRK and we will invariably maintain this policy to further consolidate and develop the friendly and cooperative relations between the Workers' Party of Korea and the Communist Party of China and between the two countries. Wen Jiabao, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC who is premier of the State Council of China, said this when meeting and conversing with the DPRK government delegation led by Vice-Premier of the Cabinet Ro Tu Chol in a friendly atmosphere at Zhongnanhai, Beijing, on Dec. 26.
Noting that the Sino-Korean friendly relations keep a continuously favorable trend of development and there are mutual visits of high-level delegations, Wen Jiabao said that leader Kim Jong Il's visit to China last year and President Hu Jintao's visit to the DPRK this year serve as the driving force of steadily boosting the friendly and cooperative relations between the two parties and the two peoples.
DPRK Government Delegation Visits Several Places of Beijing
Beijing, December 26 (KCNA) -- The DPRK government delegation led by Vice-Premier of the Cabinet Ro Tu Chol on a visit to the People's Republic of China visited the Beijing City Planning Exhibition on Dec. 25. The members of the delegation watched a video show introducing the history of the city and typical buildings under construction for 2008 Beijing Olympics before going round the exhibition.
The delegation also visited a personnel training center of the Foreign Ministry of China on the same day.
On Dec. 26 it visited a printer co. ltd. in the Beijing economic and technical development zone. The members of the delegation looked round the printer production processes, being briefed on the history of the company.