Archive for ‘Politics’

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23/08/2013

In Bo Xilai Trial, Some See Positive Signs for Legal System

WSJ: “Many China watchers see the trial of Communist Party insider Bo Xilai as scripted and staged, unveiling flaws of a closed Chinese judicial system. Yet amid the criticism, some are seeing positive signs emerge from Jinan, the northeastern Chinese city in Shandong province where Mr. Bo is facing corruption charges, including allegations that he took bribes with the aid of his wife.

The following are opinions of legal experts who have been following the trial:

Many Western critics of the Bo trial are comparing it to the stage-managed show trials of China’s past, including Jiang Qing [the wife of Mao Zedong] and victims of the Cultural Revolution. But this criticism misses the point. The Bo trial is exactly 180 degrees different in nature. In the show trials of China’s past, the politics would drive the criminal prosecution. In other words, the target would fall out of favor politically and then be legally persecuted as a result. In this trial, we have the opposite: the criminal prosecution is driving the politics. A towering and influential figure is being prosecuted in spite of his political influence, and the trial is driven primarily by the criminal allegations against him. Instead of being accused of serious crimes because his political standing has collapsed, his political standing has collapsed because he has been accused of serious crimes. –Geoffrey Sant, adjunct professor at Fordham Law School and special counsel at Dorsey & Whitney LLP

Despite the degree of supervision provided for the trial, there are nevertheless grounds for opening up the administration of justice to the supervision of the people. We’ve seen that in China there are many cases and trials that are not open, that attendance is constrained. Yet leaders have shown that they are willing to open up this case—to a certain extent—to the media, creating the perception that they are moving toward creating a more accessible judicial system.

Leaders are going farther than they could have to make the trial available. It’s a show trial, but not all trials are for show in China. To the extent that openness reveals shortcomings of the judicial system and promotes civil liberties is a positive thing. –Lester Ross a Beijing-based attorney with U.S. law firm WilmerHale.”

via In Bo Xilai Trial, Some See Positive Signs for Legal System – China Real Time Report – WSJ.

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22/08/2013

China makes big show of Bo Xilai trial, but it’s still just theatre

SCMP: “With detailed online transcripts carried by China’s version of Twitter, Beijing is making an unprecedented effort to show its people that the trial of ousted politician Bo Xilai is fair and above board, but the court case is little more than theatre.

bxl_live.jpg

Never before has the stability and unity-obsessed ruling Communist Party allowed the gritty and colourful details of such a sensitive trial to be publicised almost real-time to the population at large.

None of this means, however, that China has turned a corner in efforts to push the rule of law and official transparency.

Making a microblog public is just their ruse, it’s meaningless ZHANG SIZHI, DEFENCE LAWYER

Bo, the 64-year-old former party chief of the southwestern city of Chongqing, has been charged with illegally taking almost 27 million yuan (HK$34 million), corruption and abuse of power and will almost certainly be found guilty in China’s most political trial in decades.

The party is almost certainly preventing any really embarrassing outbursts from Bo from appearing, has banned the world’s media from the courtroom and is certainly not broadcasting it live on national television.”

via China makes big show of Bo Xilai trial, but it’s still just theatre | South China Morning Post.

See also: https://chindia-alert.org/2012/08/12/bo-xilai-scandal-gu-admits-neil-heywood-murder/

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22/08/2013

China develops revolutionary submarine with high speed of 100 knots

The arm race between China, India and Japan gathers pace. What a shame.

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21/08/2013

China, Japan, and India’s Asian Arms Race

BusinessWeek: “China and Japan managed to get past the Aug. 15 anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II without incident. For weeks leading up to the date, the question was, will he or won’t he? Will Shinzo Abe, the conservative prime minister who last year infuriated the Chinese by visiting the Yasukini Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates Japan’s war dead—including war criminals from World War II—go to the shrine on the anniversary?

Japan's 19,500-ton Izumo helicopter carrier is launched in Yokohama on Aug. 6

Abe has enough on his agenda without provoking another crisis with China, so he decided to stay clear. Three members of his cabinet did go to Yasukini, part of a group of 100 members of Japan’s parliament who prayed at the shrine. While Abe wasn’t one of them, the prime minister did make a gesture to his nationalist supporters, sending a cash offering to the shrine.

Another day, another crisis in the ongoing saga of the dispute between the two Asian powers over uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea. Today, China’s official China Central Television reported the People’s Liberation Army had started 10 days of live-fire military exercises in the waters near the islands, which Japan calls the Senkaku and the Chinese call the Diaoyu. In a highly symbolic move, one ship taking part in the exercises is the Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier.

The Liaoning is part of a three-way arms race involving the naval forces of China, Japan, and the other big Asian power, India. With China embroiled in territorial disputes with both Japan and India, all three countries are coming out with bigger and better warships to make sure they hold their own in the region.

For Japan, the big news is a 19,500-ton helicopter carrier called the Izumo, which the government unveiled on Aug. 6. It’s the third such warship in Japan’s self-defense force and the biggest Japanese-made military vessel since the end of World War II. That’s big for Japan but still small compared with U.S. aircraft carriers, which displace 97,000 tons when fully loaded.

Still, the Chinese are not happy about the Izumo’s launch. The helicopter carrier is a “symbol of Japan’s strong wish to return to its time as a military power,” the Global Times wrote the next day.

India, meanwhile, has launched its first aircraft carrier, unveiled on Monday. That’s a challenge to China, the Global Times editorialized. “China should speed up its construction of domestic aircraft carriers,” it said. “The earlier China establishes its own aircraft carrier capabilities, the earlier it will gain the strategic initiative.”

India has tripled military spending over the past 10 years and in February announced more spending, with a 14 percent increase in defense outlays. The border dispute between India and China isn’t as hot as the one between Japan and China, but it involves much more land: India says China is occupying 38,000 square kilometers of Indian territory in Jummu and Kashmir (the much-disputed region in the north of India that is also claimed by Pakistan). China says India is occupying 90,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory in Arunachal Pradesh (a state in northeastern India near Bhutan and Tibet).””

via China, Japan, and India’s Asian Arms Race – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Chindia Alert, Diplomacy, Foreign invasion, GeoPolitics, History, India alert, Neighbour conflict, Politics | 2 Comments »

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21/08/2013

China’s Xi “Lurches” to the Left, Promotes Maoist Revival

Meadia: “In a move sure to dismay the people inside and outside China who hoped Xi Jinping would begin a new era of democratic reform, China’s president has “lurched” to the left, as the WSJ reports, promoting a revitalized version of nationalist Maoism across the country. ”Our red nation will never change color,” Xi said during a ceremony at Mao’s old lakeside mansion in Wuhan, declaring that the villa should become a center to educate young people about patriotism and revolution.

“It isn’t just Mr. Xi’s rhetoric that has taken on a Maoist tinge in recent months,” the Journal reports. “He has borrowed from Mao’s tactical playbook, launching a ‘rectification’ campaign to purify the Communist Party, while tightening limits on discussion of ideas such as democracy, rule of law and enforcement of the constitution.”

Xi appears to have capitalized on some uncertainty at the top levels of the Party after the fall of Bo Xilai, a charismatic and popular leader who also led a Maoist revival campaign and became a threat to the stability of the Party leadership. “Many of Mr. Bo’s former supporters and several powerful princelings have thrown their weight behind Mr. Xi’s efforts to establish himself as much a stronger leader than his predecessor,” party insiders told the WSJ.

Xi’s nationalist streak comes as the country prepares for Bo Xilai’s trial and amid an economic downturn that has caused worry among investors and analysts. At the same time, China and other Asian powers are engaged in a dangerous and accelerating game of military one-upmanship. New ships and maritime units are being unveiled from India to the Philippines to Japan and territorial disputes are growing more intense. Across the region, this trend is driven in part by a rising nationalism among citizens—in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, India, elsewhere—who push their governments into increasingly aggressive and antagonistic positions against the neighbors. China is no exception.”

[Xi Jinping photo courtesy of Shutterstock]

via China’s Xi “Lurches” to the Left, Promotes Maoist Revival | Via Meadia.

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21/08/2013

Asia Needs ASEAN-ization Not Pakistanization of Its Continent: What China Wants in Asia 1975 or 1908?

Another offering from

Prof. (FH) Dr. Anis Bajrektarevic, Acting Deputy Director of Studies EXPORT EU–ASEAN–NAFTA

Professor and Chairperson

International Law and Global Political Studies

University of Applied Sciences IMC-Krems

Austria, EUROPE

http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/10/30/asia-needs-asean-ization-not-pakistanization-of-its-continent-what-china-wants-in-asia-1975-or-1908/

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20/08/2013

Critical similarities and differences in security structures of Asia and Europe

This post – http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/CommunityPosts/tabid/809/PostID/3535/CriticalsimilaritiesanddifferencesinsecuritystructuresofAsiaandEurope.aspx

is courtesy of:

Prof. (FH) Dr. Anis Bajrektarevic, Acting Deputy Director of Studies EXPORT EU–ASEAN–NAFTA

Professor and Chairperson

International Law and Global Political Studies

University of Applied Sciences IMC-Krems

Austria, EUROPE

 

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20/08/2013

Bombay mix: Party pooper’s move takes golden glow off festival of lights

The Times: “Festival season is fast approaching in India, with a feeling in some ways equivalent to the run-up to Christmas in the West, and, right on cue, a would-be Scrooge has stepped forward.

Buying gold is especially popular around Diwali and the Indian wedding season

Palaniappan Chidambaram may have little option, of course. The country’s embattled Finance Minister is struggling to shore up a collapsing rupee and revive a moribund economy, all with less than nine months to go before national elections.

So last week, as the rupee sank to fresh, record lows against the dollar — and with Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights looming in November — a panicking Mr Chidambaram wheeled out his latest package of measures designed to bolster the currency.

In a move that many Indians viewed as being distinctly short on seasonal good cheer, he slapped a ban on imports of gold medallions and coins, extending an attempt to curb the nation’s voracious appetite for the metal. Other measures included a reduction in the amount of cash that Indians and companies may remit overseas from $200,000 to $75,000 a year, a rule that Mr Chidambaram argued unconvincingly did “not amount to capital controls”.

Yet if the latter measure will not endear him to the millions of Indians with friends and relatives studying overseas, it is the gold ban that could prove a bigger issue. India’s lust for gold is undimmed and trying to temper it before the polls next spring — and before the wedding season that peaks around Diwali — could be catastrophic for the ruling Congress party.

The markets, certainly, were unimpressed by the minister’s efforts, sending the rupee crashing to new lows within hours of the announcement. The sell-off continued yesterday.

With the sliding rupee already forcing up the price of goods from petrol to food, Congress is desperately searching for new ways to head off a full-blown financial crisis as Indians prepare to vote. And while there is only so much that can be done to curb the nation’s demand for imported crude oil, the single biggest strain on India’s current account deficit, reining in India’s gold addiction may seem the next best alternative.

If his latest measures don’t work, and with that election due, it looks increasingly as if Mr Chidambaram’s days as Finance Minister may be numbered, one way or another.

As if policymakers didn’t have enough on their plates, India is in the grip of a new crisis. Last week, ministers held emergency talks to address a 36 per cent surge in the wholesale price of onions over a single weekend.

Onions are a key ingredient in virtually every Indian dish, so are viewed as almost as much of a staple crop as rice. Thus a fall in onion production prompted by poor harvests in the nation’s south has proved politically explosive. Shoppers have staged angry protests.

Yet there may be a welcome extra dish to this sorry tale. One option being considered by ministers is a loosening of trade restrictions with Pakistan, arch-foe and nuclear-armed rival, to start emergency onion imports.”

via Bombay mix: Party pooper’s move takes golden glow off festival of lights | The Times.

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19/08/2013

Japan’s Giant New Destroyer Sends A Clear Message To China, The World

Business Insider: “Sixty-eight years to the day of the Hiroshima bombing, Japan unveiled its new naval “destroyer” that happens to have a flat-top – dubbed “Izumo” — capable of carrying various rotary-wing aviation units, reports Eric Talmadge of ABC.

The Izumo has been in construction since 2009.

The new boat comes as Chinese officials say the country is in “no rush” to sign a code of conduct guiding military behaviour in the contested South China Sea.

From ABC:

[S]ome experts believe the new Japanese ship could potentially be used in the future to launch fighter jets or other aircraft that have the ability to take off vertically. That would be a departure for Japan, which has one of the best equipped and best trained naval forces in the Pacific but which has not sought to build aircraft carriers of its own because of constitutional restrictions that limit its military forces to a defensive role.

The “constitutional restrictions” refer to the American-written post-World War II Japanese Constitution which stipulated — among other things — a ban on the construction of certain military equipment. To this day, Japan euphemistically refers to its army as a Self-Defence Force.

Still, a restless Beijing patrolling more and more in the South China Sea, as well as an unpredictable North Korea, have caused alarm in some Japanese citizens. They’ve been pushing for more military spending, some say for fear that American sequester means a shorter reach for Washington in the island disputes.

Japan’s most recent defence white paper covered an increased budget and mentioned Chinese encroachment directly, “China has attempted to change the status quo by force based on its own assertion, which is incompatible with the existing order of international law.”

Two of the aims of Japan’s first increase in defence spending in 11 years were, according to the WSJ, “developing the ability to launch pre-emptive attacks on enemy bases abroad and the creation of an amphibious force similar to the U.S. Marine Corps.”

This even amid the widely touted U.S. “pacific pivot” and recent news of the Philippines sending a refurbished American Coast Guard cutter to join up with another used U.S. cutter in patrolling the contested seas.

China’s appetite for natural resources is growing though, so more Americans and cutters are unlikely to deter their claims. From Reuters:

Friction over the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important waterways, has surged as China uses its growing naval might to more forcefully assert its vast claims over the oil- and gas-rich sea, raising fears of a military clash.

Japan’s new flat-top doesn’t have slingshots for fixed wing aircraft — yet — but certainly the helicopters the boat carries will help patrol what Japan takes to be its sovereign territory.

Nonetheless, they say the boat is primarily for relief from natural disasters, something Japan has had no shortage of over the last few years.

In September, China will host the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for talks on a maritime Code of Conduct regulating passage in the South China Sea.”

via Japan’s Giant New Destroyer Sends A Clear Message To China, The World | Business Insider Australia.

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19/08/2013

El Indio: Seeking Symmetry

Jakarta Globe: ” The eminent academician Dr. Anis H. Bajrektarevic says that “there [can be] no Asian century, without the Pan-Asian multilateral setting.” The Americas, he says, have the Organization of American States (OAS), Africa has the African Union, and Europe has the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). There is no counterpart in the sprawling continent of Asia.

China

We do have multilateral settings, like South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), but these are in spots of a huge continent. Wide forums like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have no security mandate. I add: the Bali Principles of the East Asia Summit aren’t legally binding. To Bajrektarevic, the robust structures in Asia are bilateral and asymmetric: US-Japan, US-Singapore, Russia-India, Australia-Timor-Leste, etc.

Hence, the situation in Asia today, he says, is akin to that of Europe before World War II. Neither balanced nor symmetrical, it’s unstable.

That’s one more compelling reason why regional nations should support the proposal of Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa for an Indo-Pacific regional treaty of friendship and cooperation. The envisioned treaty would be something like the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in Southeast Asia, but this time covering the larger Indo-Pacific region.

Thus, the larger region would replicate the experience of Asean countries. Assured that the guns would remain silent, they could focus on building confidence and common security, and the pursuit of economic and sociocultural synergy.

The initial negotiating venue, says Marty, will be the East Asia Summit, which groups Asean with China, South Korea and Japan as well as the United States, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand. Since the non-Asean participants have all acceded to the TAC, they should have no problem committing themselves to old commitments.

So far, only the United States has committed itself in principle to supporting the proposal. All other foreign ministers concerned have taken official note of it. No one has voiced objection. Several Asean diplomats have expressed personal opinions favorable to the idea, taking care to belabor their views are not official.

Two Asean members that should be early supporters of the proposal are Vietnam and the Philippines. They’re on the frontline of the dispute over China’s voracious claim to the South China Sea. Late last week the foreign minister of Vietnam made an official visit to the Philippines. He and his Filipino counterpart talked about working with Asean for an early start of negotiations toward a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

Comments are mostly in favor, some affirming the need for the projected treaty while expressing fear there’s too little trust among relevant nations for it to see the light of day. One Australian pundit cast doubt if a divided Asean has the muscle to push it. There are the usual knee-jerk predictions that China will shoot it down.

The dilemma is that while progress toward the proposed treaty must be incremental — it has to be painstakingly crafted and chewed over — the need for it is urgent. Any time, any day, violent conflict could erupt in the region for three reasons cited by Marty: the trust deficit within and among nations, the unresolved territorial disputes all over the region, and the profound geopolitical changes taking place within it.

There is also that lack of symmetry in the bilateral alliances involving the regional nations. This can only be remedied by a comprehensive and binding multilateral structure that would give the region greater stability.

That can only be an Indo-Pacific treaty of friendship and cooperation.”

via El Indio: Seeking Symmetry – The Jakarta Globe.

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