Category: China

Assorted news updates

Jenkins’ hometown reacts with rage, indifference to visit

“I would have liked to have seen him lined up and shot like a traitor. I don’t care how old he is. He still did it,” said Vera Outland, who had considered lining Main Street with protest signs for Jenkins’ return.

In the end, she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble.

“If you ask me, he was a coward,” said retired U.S. Army Col. Earl Daniels, who went to school with Jenkins and served a combat tour in Vietnam. “I hope I don’t meet him on the street, tell you the truth, because I don’t know how I would react.”

Not exactly the reception that Jenkins has been getting in Japan.

For Chinese, Peasant Revolt Is Rare Victory
I had mentioned when it first happened, back during the anti-Japan protests, but the Washington Post has a very good, long article on it. Well worth reading.

Khmer Rouge trial to get more funds

PHNOM PENH (Kyodo) Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said Japan is prepared to cover the $11 million shortfall in funds for a tribunal to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice, Cambodian government sources said.

In a meeting Friday with Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, Machimura said Cambodia could use an already allocated Japanese grant to meet the shortfall, according to a senior official who attended the meeting.

Rightists thwart Yasukuni rally by Taiwanese

A group of indigenous Taiwanese gave up an attempt Tuesday to stage a rally at Yasukuni Shrine because they didn’t want to clash with rightists.

They had hoped to protest Yasukuni’s enshrinement of their relatives who died fighting for Japan in the war.

About 50 descendents or relatives led by indigenous legislator Kao Chin Su-mei arrived near the shrine in central Tokyo in the morning on two buses. They decided to scrub the protest after police told them the shrine was surrounded by 100 rightwingers, Kao Chin said.
[…]
Up to 150 officers, including riot police, were mobilized to prevent a confrontation between the two sides.

It’s pretty sad that the rightwingers managed to drive off the protesters after coming all the way from Taiwan. According to a Taipei Times report right-wingers had been threatening the aboriginal protesters before they even left Taiwan.

May Chin said last week her office had received “countless phone calls” warning her group against making the trip.

She said she had also been sent an anonymous postcard which threatened in Mandarin: “I will wait for you in Japan on June 13 so that you can come to Japan and return lifeless to Taiwan.”

You might think that 150 police officers may sound like adequate protection, but I wouldn’t count on Japanese police to keep me safe from anything.

Xinjiang Put Out Big Old Fire from Qing Times

Xinjiang Put Out Big Old Fire from Qing Times
An old big fire rampaged since the Qing times (1644-1911) on Mt. Xiaohuang, a coal-field in Xinjiang, has been lately completely put out, and up to now all the five major fire areas in the place have been stamped out.

Xinjiang is richly endowed with coal resources, but it has become in turn a place long plagued by most serious coal-field fires known to the world, with over 10m tons of coal being senselessly burnt away every year.

Under the direction of late Premier Zhou Enlai, a special fire-fighting center was set up in 1958. By now, altogether 17 big fires have been entirely eliminated in the region.

Henry Kissinger doesn’t know Chinese history (or maybe just lies about it)

I’ve seen a few blogs point to this new opinion piece by Henry Kissinger, where he conclusively proves that he has absolutely no knowledge of history, and is willing to spout whatever fiction he needs to make his point.

His basic argument is quite simple, that we should stop worrying about China. They are in no way a potential threat, militarily or economically, and people who bring up the possibility of conflict with China are just misguided. Here is some of his logic.

China’s emerging role is often compared to that of imperial Germany at the beginning of the last century, the implication being that a strategic confrontation is inevitable and the United States had best prepare for it. That assumption is as dangerous as it is wrong. Military imperialism is not the Chinese style. China seeks its objectives by careful study, patience and the accumulation of nuances.

It is also unwise to apply to China the policy of military containment of the cold war. The Soviet Union was the heir of an imperialist tradition. The Chinese state in its present dimensions has existed substantially for 2,000 years.

Ok, let’s consider his claim for a second. The comparison is amazingly easy to make. Here is a map of China’s Han dynasty, which lasted from 206 BC to 220AD, contrasted with the modern borders of the Chinese and Mongolian states. For those weak at arithmetic I will point out that 2000 years ago is smack in the middle of this period.

han dynasty china

So how do the borders line up? It seems to me that China is about twice as big now as it was then. Let’s note some of the territories controlled the People’s Republic of China that were not part of the Han Dynasty. Well, missing from the map of Han I see:
Tibet
Xinjiang
Manchuria
Mongolia (inner and outer)

And there are also a number of areas that we could consider China proper that weren’t part of the Han state, particilarly the provinces north of the Great Wall, as well as a large region in the south-west near-oh, and of course Taiwan itself!

Oh, but according to Kissinger:

ll major countries have recognized China’s claim that Taiwan is part of China. So have seven American presidents of both parties, none more emphatically than President George W. Bush.

Yes of course. Thank you for the correction. Let’s look at the most recent public statement President Bush has made about Taiwan.

When asked in an interview with the Fox News TV Channel, “Do we [the US] still stand by an agreement, Mr. President, that if Taiwan is ever invaded, we will come to the defense of Taiwan?” Bush said: “Yes, we do. It’s called the Taiwan Relations Act.”

Let’s look at another example of brilliance from Mister Kissinger.

America needs to understand that a hectoring tone evokes in China memories of imperialist condescension and is not appropriate in dealing with a country that has managed 4,000 years of uninterrupted self-government.

Oh yes, China’s 4000 years of uninterrupted self-government. That would include such self-government as the:
Liao Dynasty 907-1125 established in what later became Mongolia by the Khitan tribal leader Abaoji. Liao’s territory included a great deal of Chinese land and people south of the Great Wall region (ancient the Wall itself had crumbled at this point-the modern one was built several centuries later to replace the ancient Han dynasty structure)

Jin Dynasty (1115-1234)-an empire ruled by the Jurchen people, who invaded from the northeast and conquered the entire northern half of the Song dynasty

Ok, so neither Jin nor Liao actually took over all of China, you may be thinking. Well, out of the three final dynasties that ruled China before the Republic of China finally defeated the old Imperial state, twoof them were governments ruled by foreign invaders!


Yuan Dynasty (1271 to 1368)– aka the Mongolian empire. Genghis Khan (Timüjin)begins the conquest of north China, and his grandson Kublia Khan finally finishes the job, making the vast Chinese empire only a part of the vast Mongol empire. Under Mongol rule, ethnic Chinese (often called ‘Han’ in memory of their glorious ancient empire) were legally second class citizens in every level of society.

After the Yuan government in China collapsed native Chinese rule was restored by the Ming.

In 1616 the descendants of the earlier Jurchens, who had recently renamed themselves the Manchu tribe, invaded part of north China and established a dynasty called the Later Jin, which in 1636 became the Qing dynasty, that like the earlier Yuan was a so-called conquest What is meant by this term is a dynasty in which an invading minority establishes control over territory, much like colonialists throughout the recent pre-modern history of most of the world.

So why exactly does Kissinger use utterly false information about Chinese history to make his argument? Well, he does admit

Before continuing on this subject, I must point out that the consulting company I chair advises clients with business interests around the world, including China. Also, in early May, I spent a week in China, much of it as a guest of the government.

at least he isn’t concealing his interests. If he had any subtlety about him then his BS might just be a little less transparent.

Thanks to Danwei for pointing out the article.

Japan and China United in Pedophilia: the unlikely diplomacy of Saaya Irie

I had heard about this a few days ago but was originally too disgusted to report on it. The very existence of this girl as a sex object makes me question my whole involvement with Japanese society. It looks like, however, she is helping to quell anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Here’s the story:

Busty child reported to ease anti-Japan tension in China

By GEOFF BOTTING
Shukan Bunshun (May 19)

The wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in China continues, more than a month since the first round of demonstrations against the Japanese government’s approval of a controversial school textbook flared throughout the country. Diplomats and politicians on both sides have been trying to diffuse tensions in a flurry of meetings and shuttle diplomacy, but so far these methods have had only limited effect.

At this point, it might seem that a miracle is required to put bilateral relations fully back on track.

Saaya Irie, an 11-year-old Japanese girl, may not be that miracle, but she has clearly played a part in pacifying a certain segment of China’s population, according to Shukan Bunshun.

If anything about Saaya is miraculous, it’s her body — she wears an F-cup bra, though she has yet to reach her teens. So when a photo of her in a bikini was posted on a Chinese Internet forum called “100,” she immediately caused a sensation.

The pic was accompanied by message — rendered in mock Marxist rhetoric — reading: “An 11-year-old Japanese girl with large breasts has a proclamation for all Chinese people! Dear elder brothers, a beautiful young Japanese girl is beseeching you.

“Please stop these anti-Japanese hijinks. If you don’t, I won’t like you anymore.”

At the end of the message, she states that her breasts would “rise up” if the people “unite for the sake of China’s democracy.”

According to an anonymous source described as an Internet expert, the message and photo were posted by someone involved in www.2ch.net, a Japanese online forum.

Thanks, 2ch, for helping bridge the gap. Here’s how the poor girl reacted when confronted with the news:

So how does Saaya feel about all the commotion? A bit frightened, actually, an official at her talent agency says .

“She had a worried look on her face and said, ‘I’m shocked. I wish they’d stop,’ ” the official quotes the starlet as saying when hearing the news. The official added that Saaya finds it hard to believe that she has played any kind of role to smooth bilateral relations.

But in a written message, Saaya says: “I would like to see good relations between Japan and China. If relations are good, I think everyone will be happy.”

Her very career should frighten her. I can’t express enough how sick this makes me. Her parents should be ashamed of themselves. She’s eleven freaking years old! (Here‘s a link if you must know what she looks like)

New Photo Galleries

Since I’m about to leave for Taiwan I thought I would finally upload some of the previous travel photosets that I had been meaning to post ever since I created the blog. Click each thumbnail for the corresponding gallery page.

beijing thumb
Beijing, 2004

great wall thumb
While in Beijing I of course had the visit the Great Wall.

opera poster thumb
This is a set of photos I took of the outside of an abandoned Beijing Opera house I found in a sidestreet. The decaying hand-painted posters are great, I only wish I could have somehow taken them down and saved them from the inevitable demolition.


urumqi thumb
Urumqi, 2003 and 2004

turpan thumb
Turpan, 2004 and 2004


kazak thumb
Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2004

Hey China, don’t ask Japan for any more apologies!

Last friday I had to go into Manhattan to　drop off my passport and visa application at the Taiwanese Consulate Taipei Economic and Cultural Center located near the corner of 42st Street and 5th Avenue, conveniently only about a block away from the New York City branch of the popular Japanese used book store Book Off to look around for a bit and spotted last year’s special March issue of the magazine Bungei Shunju (文藝春秋) containing the two stories that won the Akutagawa literary prize for new writers that year on sale for only $2, and having read the beginning of one of the stories (蛇にピアス / Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara) and I decided to pick it up to have something a little lighter to read for the five hour bus ride to DC than the books on Taiwanese history that I had brought with me. As it so happens, I was distracted by one of the more serious articles in the magazine, a piece by a Mr. Ma Li-cheng.

Ma Li-cheng was born in 1946 in the Sichuan province of China. He become a commentator for Hong Kong’s Phoenix Television in 2003, but in August 2004 quit that position and returned to Beijing. He has written several controversial pieces on Chinese/Japanese relations, one of which has been published in Japanese as Japan Doesn’t Need to Apologize to China Anymore (日本はもう中国に謝罪しなくていい）. The following article is a summary of that book’s argument, translated into Japanese and with commentary by Japanese journalist Satoshi Tomisaka. Mister Tomisaka’s comments will be in italics, and I will not put add any of my own, although I may post some of my thoughts after finishing the translation of the entire piece. I am not posting Ma Li-cheng’s article because I agree with everything he says, but I think that he does represent a different position from what is currently avaliable online in the English language, and that readers will find something interesting to think and comment on.

This post will be a centralized table of contents for the article, and as I translate each section I will post it in a new blog entry and update the table of contents below with a hyperlink to the appropriate post.

Hey China, don’t ask Japan for any more apologies!

By Ma Li-cheng
Edited by Satoshi Tomisaka

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: China has also invaded Japan
Part 3: Set aside the history probem
Part 4: Japanese nationalism
Part 5: The ‘Chinese Threat Theory’
Part 6: To a ‘Normal country’

Two interviews discuss Japan’s war apologies

The Asahi, one of Japan’s three major daily newspapers, has two contrasting Q&A format opinion pieces regarding Japan’s recent problems with China and Korea that some people may find interesting. The first is with a German freelance journalist Gebhard Hielscher, who was formerly Far East correspondent for the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Q: What was your reaction to the recent outrage against Japan in China and South Korea?

A: My impression is that all along, Japan has been deliberately not trying to face the past, and hoping that these issues would go away. Japan has been more concerned about its relationship with the United States.

Running away from the issue of compensation to the two countries that were the main victims of Japan’s aggression, the Japanese have had it (protest) coming for all these years.

Our (Germany’s) main victims, aside from the Holocaust, were the Soviet Union and Poland, and we have done a lot for them. I always leave out the Israel issue because it is not part of the comparison: Japan did not commit a Holocaust. But what we did in Poland, which is colonize it, can be compared to what Japan did in the Korean Peninsula.

Germany didn’t pay direct reparations to Poland, or the Soviet Union, but the Allied Forces took a lot of industrial property out of Germany as a form of reparation. Also, Germany gave up 24 percent of its traditional territory to these two countries, the two biggest victims. We saw that as one way to pay our moral debt.

The intreview given as a response to Herr Hielscher, which disagrees from what I would consider a rather moderate position, and not the extreme nationalist stance that has been irritating everyone, is by Keio University professor Tomoyuki Kojima an expert on Chinese and East Asian affairs.

Q: Do you think Japan has compensated enough for wartime aggression, compared with Germany?

A: In terms of state-to-state compensation, I would say Japan has done more through the process of normalizing relations with many of its neighbors.

While there are countries that did not demand compensation, for those countries that did, we have paid compensation.

In the case of China, both Taiwan, with whom Japan normalized relations first, and mainland China, declared they would forfeit claims for reparations.

Taking the example of forced labor, a court has ruled that the former employer of forced laborers from China and Korea pay damages. But the same court did not rule on whether the state was liable, as that issue has been settled through bilateral negotiations.

In the case of South Korea, for example, Japan agreed in 1965 to provide grants and loans to the country. There is a problem that it was not clearly referred to as “compensation,” but in reality both sides agree that is what it was.

There are individual issues pertaining to the war that remain unresolved, and that is undeniable. Definitely Japan must do something.

But my view is that it is not worthwhile to simply consider Germany a model and criticize Japan for lack of atonement for the past.

Japan not yet totally cut off from East Asia

The Mainichi’s English language Waiwai feature reports that not all of Japan’s international relations have been damaged beyond repair by recent diplomatic gaffes.

One intrepid reporter braved the frontlines of China to find out.

“Welcome, I’m Nana!” one of the older-looking hostesses in a black dress greeted him in Japanese. “Is this your first visit?”

“Are you participating in a boycott of Japanese goods?” the reporter then asks her.

“What you say? Me no understand?” she replies.

“Never mind. Tell me, what do you think of the recent controversy over Japanese history textbooks?”

“You know, your eyes have got a horny glimmer,” she counters. “It means you wanna do ‘rabu-rabu’ with me, right?”

“Um, okay, let’s move on to a different subject. How do you feel about the prime minister’s making visits to worship at the Yasukuni Shrine?”

“Hey, listen, if you no take me out, I’m really pitiful,” she nags. “I don’t make money hanging around this bar. You Japanese men are all lechers, but I’m good at doing ‘etchi.’ How about I give you nice blow job and then ride you on top?”

And another conducted similar field research in Korea.

There he is introduced to a hostess named Ruby, who croons a currently popular Korean tune, a stirring melody entitled “Tok-do belongs to us.”

“This song used to be banned, but these days you often hear customers in Korea singing it,” she explains.

“Should I take that to mean you intend to declare war on me?” the reporter asks.

“Shhhhhs,” Ruby whispers. “Our ‘mama’ told us to avoid discussing political problems here at the club.”

“You know actually,” the reporter thinks out loud, “I’d like to make that generous cleavage between your breasts my territory for a little while. What do you say?”

Teikoku Oil seeks rights to test-drill in disputed seas

From The Japan Times:

A Japanese oil company on Thursday requested test-drilling rights in the East China Sea, in disputed waters just a few kilometers from where China is preparing full-scale drilling.

Teikoku Oil Co. submitted an application to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to drill for oil and natural gas in three areas totaling 400 sq. km. Two of the areas lie flush against the Chun Xiao and Duan Qiao gas fields, where China’s drilling rigs are set up along the border of the exclusive economic zone claimed by Japan.

If Japan is going to piss off China by prospecting in contested waters, the least they could do is give the license to a company with a less offensive than than IMPERIAL OIL! If you look at any random Japanese article on this topic then you’ll see that ‘Teikoku Oil’ is written as ‘帝国石油’ – and that Teikoku(帝国) is the Japanese/Chinese word for Empire. It’s like they’re writing their China’s anti-Japan propaganda for them.