Losing patience with Pyongyang

WikiLeaks: China May Be Fed Up With North Korea

AOL News

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Dec. 3) -- U.S. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks appear to confirm what many suspected: China is just as fed up with North Korea as the U.S. and other countries, despite its reluctance to speak out publicly.

Beijing is seen as the only government with influence over an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable regime in Pyongyang. It has come under sharp pressure from the U.S. to take a harder line, but so far has appeared reluctant to do so.

The leaked cables appear to show that part of China's strategy is to privately bemoan North Korea's behavior while publicly maintaining a studied neutrality. That has frustrated South Korean and U.S. officials, who want a stronger response to Pyongyang's provocations.

North Korea's recent shelling of a South Korean island near the maritime border shocked the international community, pushing tensions on the Korean peninsula to the brink of war. The attack killed two civilians and two South Korean marines. But Beijing only called for calm from both sides.

And earlier this year, China refused to join the U.S. and other nations in condemning North Korea for an attack on a South Korean navy vessel that killed 46 sailors. A multinational probe pinned the blame on Pyongyang, but China never accepted those findings. Beijing continues to block any action against North Korea at the United Nations.

Experts have long said that China's paramount concern is stability on the Korean peninsula, because it fears a flood of refugees in the event of a North Korean collapse, and also fears the prospect of a U.S.-allied unified Korea on its borders.

However, quotes from Chinese and South Korean diplomats and officials in recently leaked U.S. State Department cables suggest a more complicated picture: China is also growing exasperated with Pyongyang and has carefully studied the possibility of regime change and what a unified Korea might look like.

"Beijing has already set up a study group to look at the unification of Korea," said Antonio Chiang, a Taiwan-based commentator for that country's Apple Daily newspaper. "They are exploring all kinds of possibilities, because it [North Korean collapse] could come at any time. It's a very serious strategic dilemma, challenge and risk."

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In one leaked cable, a Chinese official compares North Korea to a "spoiled child." And a cable from February this year reports a South Korean official saying, "The PRC [People's Republic of China] would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a 'benign alliance' -- as long as Korea was not hostile towards China," according to reports.

Brian Bridges, an expert on East Asian politics at Hong Kong's Lingnan University, told AOL News that the leaked cables showed "the evident Chinese frustration with North Korea." That's something he and other observers had guessed was increasingly the case in the past few years. "The 'spoiled child' quote is a very nice one, and I shall be using it in my own writing, but it doesn't surprise me," Bridges said.

He said one of the most interesting details was the suggestion that some Chinese officials could live with a unified Korea under South Korean control. "If that is really the case, I find it a bit surprising," Bridges said. But he and others have cautioned that this was secondhand information (via a South Korean official) and not necessarily reliable.

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Japan besieged north and south

China, Russia muscle in on Japan-claimed islands

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (Nov. 6) -- Japan, which for centuries relished the security of being an archipelago, is being challenged in separate territorial disputes over small islands.

It's unclear whether the challenges -- from Russia in the north and China in the south -- are in any way coordinated. But analysts say they represent a diplomatic baptism by fire for Japan's year-old, center-left government, which is seen as inexperienced in world affairs.

Both rows are also seen testing the strength of the U.S.-Japan security alliance. That alliance has come under severe strain in the past year due to sharp disagreement over a relocation plan for a U.S. military base in Okinawa.

In both territorial disputes, the U.S. has urged bilateral talks between Japan and the other claimant, but neither China nor Russia is disposed to listen to Washington.

"China and Russia do not trust the U.S. enough to accept it as an honest broker and would likely view such an offer as U.S. interference," James Manicom, an expert on East Asian maritime disputes at the University of Toronto, said in an e-mail exchange. "I'm skeptical that U.S. mediation will be accepted by parties to either dispute."

China earlier this week rejected one U.S. offer to mediate its dispute with Japan.

Russia sparked a diplomatic spat Monday when President Dmitry Medvedev visited an island chain northeast of Japan's Hokkaido that has been controlled by Russia since World War II but is also claimed by Japan. Tokyo protested and recalled its ambassador to Moscow. (See a map here and a video report on the flap from Russia Today below.)

Called the Southern Kuril Islands by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, the islands have been contested since World War II, a dispute that has prevented the two countries from inking a formal peace treaty. Various offers and counteroffers have been made through the years, with little success.

Japanese media attributed Medvedev's provocative visit to his desire to burnish his nationalist credentials ahead of a power struggle with his rival and mentor, Vladimir Putin, for the presidency in 2012. The visit was also seen as a rebuke to Japanese foreign minister Seiji Maehara, who said bluntly last year that Russia was "illegally occupying" the islands.

Kimie Hara of the University of Waterloo said the visit was an affirmation of Russia's ties with China, too. "The Russian president's visit to the disputed island was also prompted by his meeting with his Chinese counterpart in late September in Beijing, where they celebrated the 65th anniversary of the Soviet-Chinese alliance in the war against Japan (1936-45) and confirmed their solidarity," Hara wrote in an e-mail.

A Chinese analyst suggested the same in comments to Global Times, saying "the strong message by Medvedev's visit to the island, to some extent, echoes China's firm stance on its dispute with Japan."

The dispute over islets on Japan's southern flank is seen as being more explosive. The uninhabitable islets, called the Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, have been effectively controlled by Japan since 1972 but are also claimed by China and Taiwan.

A collision between a Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard vessels in September near the islets sparked the worst diplomatic tensions in at least five years between the two Asian powers. The collision triggered large-scale, tit-for-tat nationalist protests in both Japan and China.

Now, Japan and China are both running regular, armed patrols near the islets. "The potential for miscalculation between such vessels is thus elevated," Manicom said.

"The probability of something really bad happening is pretty modest, but the consequences are very bad," Richard Bush, an expert on China-Japan security relations at the Brookings Institution, said at a recent forum in Washington, D.C. "The chance of some kind of clash between marine forces of the two countries is increasing because of competing interests in the East China Sea."

Bush warned that even a minor episode could spiral out of control because of poor crisis management capabilities on both sides.

"Institutional factors at play suggest that just because the two governments have contained these episodes and don't want a crisis doesn't mean that they can contain incidents in the future," Bush said. "Neither side wants a true crisis, but each may be hard pressed to avoid one in the event of a really serious clash."

In the northern dispute, by contrast, potential crises are seen as more manageable. Hara noted that a more serious incident occurred in the north in 2006, when a Japanese fisherman was shot dead by the Russian Coast Guard near the disputed islands.

"But the situation was handled more skillfully," Hara said, sparking no protests in either Japan or Russia. In the south, "the tension escalated this time because the case was mishandled by the young [Democratic Party of Japan] government."

Both disputes could potentially drag in the U.S. due to its treaty obligations. The U.S.-Japan defense pact obligates Washington to respond in the event of an attack on any territory under Japan's administration.

The U.S. said it backs Japan's claim in the island dispute with Russia. But Washington has also said the defense treaty doesn't apply because Japan does not control the islands, according to a Xinhua news report.

In the south, the reverse is the case. The U.S. takes no position on the sovereignty of the disputed islets. But it says the islets fall within the scope of the U.S.-Japan defense pact because they are administered by Japan.

On Monday, video of the Sept. 7 collision between the Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard vessels was shown to Japanese Diet members.

Purported excerpts were later leaked and posted to YouTube (See links at Japan Probe here, and an Al-Jazeera report below.)



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Chinese Internet no threat to regime

China's Internet Imperils Corrupt Officials, but Not Regime

AOL News

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Oct. 28) -- The Chinese Internet has been abuzz over a hit-and-run incident involving the young son of a high-level security official in Hebei Province, outside Beijing.

The episode shows how quickly outrage over abuses by privileged Chinese officials can come to a boil, as well as the power of Internet-fueled popular pressure in today's China.

Still, many experts caution that while the Internet has become an outlet for anger against local officials, it is not a significant threat to the Chinese Communist Party's grip on power.

What sparked the uproar was not only the hit-and-run itself, but the young man's lack of remorse and high-handed attitude. "Go ahead and sue me, I'm Li Gang's son," he reportedly said, just after the accident.

The Oct. 16 accident left one student dead and another injured, according to Chinese media reports translated at Chinahush.

The "human flesh search engine" -- a Chinese-coined term referring to the collective efforts of angry Internet users -- found and posted personal information on the young man, including photos. The police later arrested Li Qiming, the son of high-ranking public security official Li Gang, according to the Global Times.

Father and son have since both given blubbering apologies, but unsatisfied observers say they're crying "crocodile tears." Some have even posted running commentaries analyzing the duo's facial expressions to prove they were faking it. (See translations at EastSouthWestNorth here.)



It's not the first time angry Chinese Internet mobs have targeted local officials and their relatives.

In the summer of 2009, millions of Chinese Web users rallied around a 21-year-old pedicurist in Hubei Province who stabbed to death a local official, claiming he was trying to rape her. Amid the outcry, her original charge of murder was changed to a lesser charge.

And in 2007, an online video game, in which players kill and torture corrupt local officials, became an Internet sensation.

Despite public outrage, though, corruption by local officials appears to be on the rise. The China Daily reported that prosecutors handled 6,375 cases of "malpractice" or "abuse of power" by civil servants in the year leading up to November 2009, a 6 percent increase over the previous year.

And observers caution that the central government is still able to keep a strong grip on the Internet to head off any organized challenge to its rule. If anything, the Internet has become a useful tool for helping Beijing monitor and purge bumbling local officials who hurt the party's image.

"China is pioneering a new kind of Internet-age authoritarianism," Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on China's Internet, said in testimony to Congress this year. "It is demonstrating how a nondemocratic government can stay in power while simultaneously expanding domestic Internet and mobile phone use.

"In China today there is a lot more give-and-take between government and citizens than in the pre-Internet age, and this helps bolster the regime's legitimacy, with many Chinese Internet users who feel that they have a new channel for public discourse," she said.

"Since the openness of the Internet allows the tracing of every online activity, fear of arrest and imprisonment ensures that the impact of that monitoring is likely to be strong," Junhao Hong, an expert on China's Internet controls at the University of Buffalo, told the Science 2.0 website. "So at the moment, at least, the Internet is not a real threat to authoritarian regimes."

According to the human rights group Dui Hua, China arrested an estimated 1,150 people in 2009 for "endangering state security" and imprisoned 1,050 of them -- a far higher number than most previous years, though a decline from the spike in such arrests in 2008, when China hosted the Olympics.

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Brother gymnast goes viral

'Brother Gymnast' Shows China's Road Risks

AOL News

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Oct. 21) -- A video of a motorcyclist miraculously walking away from a crash has gone viral on the Chinese Internet -- the latest of several spectacular accident videos to cause a stir.

The video, which had received 1 million hits as of today on Tudou (a Chinese YouTube clone), shows a helmet-less motorcycle rider slamming into the side of a small pickup truck, flipping through the air, then walking back, seemingly unscathed, to inspect his totaled bike.

AOL News could not confirm the authenticity of this or other viral Chinese accident videos. Hoaxes -- for fun or profit -- are widespread in today's vibrant and booming Chinese Internet culture.

Such videos show how the Internet is blasting once-trivial, local events across the Chinese Web, but they also highlight the dangers of China's anything-goes roads.

According to the posted videos, the accident occurred in Wenzhou. That city's police posted the video footage online on Oct. 20 in an attempt to locate the motorcycle rider, but he has reportedly not come forward.

The website Chinasmack, which posted the video with English translations of Internet users' responses, said viewers had dubbed the flying motorcycle rider "Brother Gymnast."



In a report by China's Zhejiang TV, the truck driver, identified only as Mr. Mei, says he lost control of the truck when the motorcyclist hit him. "I also thought I was finished," Mei said.

According to Mei, the motorcyclist asked him for compensation of 200 renminbi (about $30), a demand Mei rejected, saying the motorcyclist had hit him, not vice versa.

In May, another viral Chinese accident video purported to show a man -- dubbed "Brother Tricyclist" -- pedaling serenely through the mayhem of a high-speed, fatal Beijing car accident.

Videos of that accident have since been removed from Youku and other sites, but a news report is still viewable on YouTube. The report also shows "Running Brother," a man who narrowly avoids an accident involving a city bus and passenger car as he crosses the street.

"We would like to remind everyone to pay attention to traffic safety," the anchorwoman says at the end of the report.

Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 15 to 44 in China, according to the World Health Organization. Every year an estimated 250,000 people are killed and half a million more are injured on Chinese roads, the WHO says.

China's own official statistics report far fewer accidents, with about 68,000 killed and 275,000 wounded in 2009, according to the state-run Xinhua news service. Road deaths have declined since a 2002 peak, according to the Chinese government.

China had the world's highest number of road accidents and road fatalities in 2005, according to the Chinese government.

But measured by traffic fatalities per 100,000 people, China (at 16.5) is hardly the worst in east Asia, trailing Laos (18.3), Mongolia (19.3), the Philippines (20) and Malaysia (23.6), according to a recent WHO report.

Chinese drivers routinely ignore traffic lights and rules and do not observe "right of way." In 2009, a retired 74-year-old teacher became famous for trying to enforce a traffic light near his home in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, by hurling bricks at disobedient drivers' cars, according to a China Daily report cited by Agence France-Presse.

Police stopped him after he'd damaged 30 cars, but 80 percent of the 400,000 respondents in an Internet poll supported his efforts, the China Daily reported.

The WHO says China is improving on road safety, especially after the 2003 formation of a national road safety coordination committee and the 2004 passage of stricter seat-belt, helmet and insurance guidelines in a new road safety law.

But roads are also becoming far more crowded as car sales soar in line with China's economic growth. China passed the U.S. to become the world's largest car market by unit last year, with 14 million autos sold, according to the Facts and Details website. Car sales have grown 20 to 30 percent per year since 2005, the fact sheet says.

Ninety million vehicles traveled China's roads in 2005, and 140 million are expected on the roads by 2020, according to the fact sheet.

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Black hand of Beijing

Some See Beijing's Hand in Anti-Japan Protests

AOL News

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Oct. 19) -- Three days of rowdy and occasionally violent anti-Japan demonstrations in Chinese cities have left observers puzzling over whether the generally hyper-vigilant Chinese government was behind them.

For some observers, the answer is "yes" -- at the least to the extent that government censors allowed protests to be organized online.

China's normally heavy-handed Internet and mobile-phone controls seek to suppress exactly the type of large-scale demonstrations that took place over the weekend and into Monday in at least five cities in China. Usually, such controls are fairly effective.

But when the target of protesters' wrath is Japan, the picture becomes muddier. The Chinese government is believed to condone some anti-Japan activity as a way of letting off nationalist steam, sending a signal of its displeasure to Tokyo or -- if you're of a more cynical mind -- distracting Chinese citizens from their own government's shortcomings.

"This [the protests] is definitely no coincidence. It's a typical example of diverting attention," rights activist Pu Fei told Hong Kong's Apple Daily. "It's to shift the public and netizens' focus away from [Noble Peace Prize winner] Liu Xiaobo and [his wife] Liu Xia."

Still, the Chinese Communist Party government considers social stability a paramount concern and is fearful of letting large-scale protests spin out of control.

The latest round of anti-Japan protests began Saturday, ostensibly as tit-for-tat counter-demonstrations to anti-China protests in Tokyo, where right-wing Japanese surrounded Beijing's embassy. Japanese police prevented the protesters from coming too close to the embassy, according to Taiwan media reports.

Protesters on both sides are angry over tiny islets, called the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese, that Japan controls but both countries claim. Nationalists in both countries insist the rocky islets in the East China Sea are part of their country's territory; tensions flared last month when the Japanese coast guard detained a Chinese fishing boat captain near the islets.

In the latest protests, analysts differ on how active a role Beijing played.

"It is not at all clear that these demonstrations are orchestrated by the central government," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based professor of Chinese politics, in an e-mail. "Indeed, it is far more likely that these protests are driven by local organizers with experience and skills and who think that anti-Japanese sentiment is looked upon favorably by certain officials in Beijing."

A favorable -- if guarded -- view of the protests came from Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, who expressed sympathy with the demonstrators while urging them to follow the law.

"It is understandable that some people expressed their outrage against the recent erroneous words and deeds on the Japanese side," said Ma after Saturday's protests, according to Agence France-Presse. "We maintain that patriotism should be expressed rationally and in line with law. We don't agree with irrational actions that violate laws and regulations."

Others say the government clearly "allowed" the protests to be organized and go forward, and could have easily put a stop to them had it wished.

"If the government very consciously opposed or didn't want these demonstrations, if they resolutely didn't want them, then there would be nothing," Renmin University professor of international relations Shi Yinhong told The Associated Press.

On Saturday in China, protests erupted in the western Sichuan province capital of Chengdu, as well as Xian. One English-language blogger took photos and video of the Chengdu protests, showing hundreds of young Chinese thronging the streets, calling for a boycott of Japanese products, burning paper arranged in the Chinese characters for "Japan" and scuffling with riot police.

There were also reports that a woman was forced to strip by an angry mob who mistook her dress for a Japanese-style kimono.

Asked by the blogger why he showed up, one protester cited the Diaoyu islands and said, "China's territory cannot be separated." Asked how he'd heard about the demonstrations, the protester said "tieba" -- referring to Internet message boards.

Such bulletin boards, like the popular Baidu Tieba, are strictly monitored by government censors, who delete inappropriate content, including attempts at unsanctioned political organization. Baidu Tieba deletes 1 million posts every day, mostly spam, according to a company official quoted in a Chinese report.

Protests continued Sunday in Mianyang, also in Sichuan province, then spread to Wuhan in central Hubei province and Lanzhou city in Gansu province on Monday, according to Hong Kong and Taiwan media.

Students carried signs saying "Kill 'little Japan'" ("little Japan" is a favorite term of reference for Chinese nationalists) and "China's most important task is to wipe out Japan"; overturned Japanese-brand cars; and smashed windows at Japanese stores.

At least seven Chinese students as well as a Hong Kong TV crew were arrested and taken away in Wuhan, according to Taiwan's Apple Daily. Police put students on tour buses and returned them to their campuses.

Mainland Chinese media have blacked out the protests, with no mention in either English- or Chinese-language news sites.

The last round of anti-Japan protests, at the height of the fishing boat dispute in mid-September, were quickly quashed by police. Then, Internet postings attempting to organize protests were rapidly deleted.

At that time, according to Japan's Asahi Shimbun, Han Han, one of China's top bloggers, complained that anti-Japan protests were a "game engineered by the [Chinese] government." His post was itself quickly zapped by censors, the Asahi said.

More anti-Japan protests are planned for Saturday in Sichuan province's Deyang City, and three protests are planned in Chongqing next week, according to Japanese media cited by the Apple Daily.

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North Korea's PR-challenged leader

North Korean Heir Apparent Is No PR Hit

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Oct. 15) -- Despite having finally made his first public appearance this week at a military parade, North Korea's heir apparent Kim Jong Un appears to be missing the mark so far in winning over the populace.

Some 12,000 soldiers, tasked with building a new, lavish estate for the dictator-in-waiting, have been angering locals by raiding nearby farms for food, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Local farmers who complained were beaten up, according to the South Korea-based Research Institute for North Korean Society, cited by the Times.

It remains unclear whether news of the conflict has spread within North Korea's highly regimented society, where gauging public opinion is notoriously difficult.

But outside the country, Kim Jong Un is also taking hits from the entourage of his older half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who spends most of his time in China and Macau. He and his alleged "associates" have let loose with a tabloid-worthy stream of criticisms about Jong Un.

The family feud looks set to complicate a delicate power shift in the nuclear-armed, Stalinist state, just as the younger Kim tries to get his footing.

The latest accusations came from an anonymous "associate" of the elder brother in China, to South Korean broadcaster KBS. The associate claimed that the older brother met with his father at the Kim Jong Il's Beijing hotel room in August and complained about his little brother.

He claimed that Jong Un, believed to be about 27 years old, orchestrated the attack on the South Korean navy ship on March 26 that killed 46. Jong Nam told his father to rein in Jong Un's behavior, according to the KBS report.

A government official dismissed the latest report as unconfirmed rumor, KBS reported.

The associate also claimed that the younger Kim plotted to kill Jong Nam in China this past summer over his outspoken ways and said Jong Nam still has a power base in China and North Korea, the KBS report said.

That followed a South Korean official's claim that China forced the younger Kim to drop plans to attack his older brother, claims reported in Chosun Ilbo.

In an interview with Japan's Asahi TV that aired in Japan Monday, Jong Nam questioned the hereditary succession that put his younger brother in power.

But he had a few good words too, telling Asahi TV, "I hope that my younger brother Jong Un would do his best so that North Koreans could live a comfortable life," and "I'm always ready to support my brother overseas whenever he requests."

The elder half brother Jong Nam, 39, is something of a black sheep in the family. He is believed to have had a falling out with his father over his flamboyant, jet-setting ways, including an alleged attempt to enter Japan with a fake passport in 2001 to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

The stunt wasn't exactly in keeping with the austere, disciplined image the Kim dynasty wants to project.

Jong Nam is believed to have been born of a different mother -- a dancer who died in Moscow -- than his two younger brothers.

Jong Nam lives with his wife and two children in Beijing and Macau and reportedly receives an annual allowance -- variously pegged at $500,000 to $800,000 -- from Pyongyang, the Telegraph reported.

On Sunday, the younger Kim made his first public appearance at a military parade, standing in full military regalia beside his father. Two weeks prior, he was promoted to four-star general and got a top political post.

Korea-watchers said the promotions and appearance at the parade confirm that he's on track to succeed his father, 68, who is believed to be in poor health after a stroke in 2008.

Little is know about the younger Kim, except that he is thought to have attended a boarding school in Switzerland.

However, a German expert on "facial research" told Germany's Der Spiegel that there was a "high probability" that the young man in an official photo and a photo from his Swiss boarding school days are not the same person.

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China-Japan spat rattles nerves

China-Japan Spat Rattles Nerves in Asia, US

(Sept. 28) -- Relations between the world's No. 2 and No. 3 economies are in tatters even after Japan released the captain of a Chinese fishing boat four days ago.

Commentators from Japan, China and the West had sharply different takes of who was to blame, and who had emerged from the feud the "winner."

But one common theme was alarm over how a minor dispute had blown up into a major showdown, and surprise at the unusually shrill rhetoric and harsh, unilateral sanctions from China's side.

Zhan Qixiong, center, the 41-year-old Chinese captain of a Chinese fishing boat, is led by Japan Coast Guard personnel to disembark from a coast guard boat at a port on Ishigaki island, southwestern Japan.

Meanwhile, tensions around the disputed islands where the Chinese captain's boat collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels showed few signs of easing. Taiwan and Hong Kong media reported that China had begun regular, armed patrols near the islets for the first time, and that Japan had already lodged a formal protest.

On Friday, in line with China's increasingly strident demands, Japan released the Chinese fishing captain, Zhan Qixiong, whom it had accused of ramming two Japanese coast guard vessels. But China's reaction sparked another round of verbal sparring.

Beijing on Saturday demanded an apology and compensation from Japan. Japan quickly rejected that, and in turn said it would seek compensation for the damage to its two patrol boats, saying "the ball is now in China's court," according to The Associated Press.

Japanese media reported a domestic firestorm of protest against Tokyo's decision to release the captain, with harsh criticism coming from both opposition and ruling party members of parliament, the Asahi Shimbun reported. One outspoken Japanese nationalist, Shintaro Ishihara, slammed China for tactics he compared to "what yakuza mobsters do," according to Agence France-Presse.

Chinese commentators in state-backed publications directed their harshest criticism not at Japan, but at the U.S.

"The Diaoyu Islands incident could be seen as a direct result of the recent series of Sino-US confrontations, from US-South Korea joint military drills to the US challenging China's core interests in South China Sea," wrote Ni Lexiong from the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law in a commentary for Global Times.

"The background to the incident is that the US has been provoking China and taking advantage of conflicts between China and its neighbors to contain China recently," he wrote. Other Chinese commentators made similar points critical of the U.S. (see here and here.)

Western commentators tended to express alarm at the severity of China's response, particularly its apparent willingness to use its growing economic clout for political ends.

Last week, traders in the rare earth minerals industry reported that China had halted critical rare earth mineral exports to Japan; the Chinese government denied any official embargo. China accounts for 93 percent of rare earth elements used in key military applications like missiles, hybrid automobiles and wind turbines, according to The New York Times.

Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University's Japan campus, told USA Today that China had "overplayed its hand."

"It's a revealing moment, and the rest of Asia is looking on and saying 'uh-oh,'" Kingston told the newspaper. "[Beijing's] 'soft-power diplomacy' -- that a rising China is not a threatening China -- has all gone up in smoke."

The Economist made a similar point, saying, "the ferocity of the Chinese response has harmed China ultimately, by undermining confidence in China as a responsible stakeholder in the region."

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper on Monday quoted Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming again denying that China had placed an official embargo on rare earth minerals to Japan, but adding that the government wouldn't interfere with the behavior of Chinese companies, suggesting they may have acted on their own to impose a freeze.

The daily also reported that beginning this week, China would begin regular armed patrols near the disputed islets to protect its fishermen.

On Tuesday, Taiwan's China Times reported that on Sept. 24, the Japanese coast guard encountered two armed Chinese fisheries vessels in waters just off the disputed islets, called the Senkakus by Japan and the Diaoyu by China. Japan lodged a formal protest against the incursion near what it sees as its territorial waters, the Times reported.

Japan, China and Taiwan all claim the tiny islets as their own, allowing them to in turn make claims on energy and fishing resources in surrounding waters.

Sam Bateman, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies' maritime security program in Singapore, said in a phone interview that one way forward would be to side-step the territorial dispute by establishing joint zones for fishing and energy.

Similar zones have been established by Australia and East Timor, as well as China and Vietnam, he said, and have helped defuse harmful territorial spats.

"Ideally you could establish a joint fisheries zone and joint hydrocarbon zone, in the vicinity of the Senkakus, and set aside the sovereignty dispute," Bateman said.

"The sovereignty dispute over tiny specks of land blows things up disproportionately, and you get this rabid nationalism that springs up and distorts the situation."

See a creative depiction of the China-Japan dispute from Taiwan's Next Media Animation below:




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Chinese Twitter clones

Twitter Clone Helps Chinese Family Thwart Authorities

AOL News

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Sept. 21) -- It was a typical case of property seizure, like those that happen nearly every day in China, but with a key difference.

This time microblogs blasted the story across the Chinese Internet, causing an immediate outpouring of sympathy this month for the Zhong family at the center of the dispute, and outrage against the local officials that tried to evict them.

By the end of the Internet drama, eight local officials had been removed from their posts or were under investigation, according to Chinese media reports. And the Zhong family's home remains standing.

The Zhongs' story shows how powerful social media have become in China as citizens turn to Twitter-like services in the absence of effective legal recourse, government help or a free media.

The drama unfolded in a small town in Jiangxi Province, according to a Southern Metropolis Daily article translated at the popular blog EastSouthWestNorth.

The local government had planned since 2007 to build a bus depot and was relocating residents, the report said. The Zhongs, who owned a three-story home on the planned site, were the last hold-outs -- and one of several families unhappy with the government's compensation offer.

In May the government cut off the family's electricity. Then, on the morning of Sept. 10, scores of local officials and police officers came to evict them by force.

In the struggle that ensued, the mother, Luo Zhifeng, an elderly male friend of the family, Ye Zhongcheng, and a daughter, Zhong Rujin, doused themselves with gasoline and lit themselves on fire in protest. The daughter, Zhong Rujin, tumbled out of the second floor to the ground outside the home like a "human fireball," according to the Southern Metropolis Daily, a scene caught in graphic photos taken by a neighbor.

All three were taken to a burn center; the man later died of his injuries.

Two other daughters of the family, Zhong Rujiu and Zhong Rucui, then attempted to take a plane to Beijing to petition the central government -- a common, if often ineffective, recourse for Chinese who feel local governments have violated their rights.

Local officials surrounded them in a ladies' restroom at the airport, forbidding them to go to Beijing. And that's where the microblogs -- weibo in Chinese -- came in.

A reporter for Phoenix Weekly "tweeted" about the restroom showdown on a microblog at Sina.com and posted local officials' cell phone numbers -- posts that quickly got over a million views, before Sina.com contacted the reporter to ask him to delete his posts.

The two sisters then launched two microblogs of their own to plead for help and support and to post the latest developments of their case.

In her first post on a Sina.com microblog on Sept. 17, one sister wrote, according to Chinabroadcast.cn: "How are you? My name is Zhong Rujiu. I am the youngest daughter in the family involved in the self-immolations in Yihuang county, Fuzhou city, Jiangxi province. I have seen how everybody on the Internet has been concerned about my family. I am very grateful."

Her posts notified net-users of each new development in the real-life drama, including the arrival of scores of local officials to seize her uncle's body, despite the family's protests. Later, when officials took the sisters and other relatives away on a bus, a picture of Zhong Rujiu pressed against the window was posted and re-posted on the Internet, faster than censors could delete it.

The case shows how social media is becoming an increasingly influential force in the lives of many Chinese, as well as a source of breaking -- if not always 100 percent accurate -- news.

According to a count from one social media consultant earlier this year, there are 221 million blogs and 176 million social network users in China, out of a total Internet population of 420 million.

In a recent poll by China Youth Daily reported at China Daily, half of survey respondents, most of whom were under 40, said they browse microblogs frequently, with more than 94 percent saying microblogging is "changing their life." More than 73 percent view microblogs as an important news source.

Sina.com hosts China's most popular Twitter clone, or microblog, with 20 million users since its launch just over a year ago, according to the website micgadget.com. Twitter itself is blocked in China.

In July, several Chinese microblogs were briefly inaccessible, fueling speculation that the government was tweaking them to allow them to be more easily blocked or censored when necessary. When the sites relaunched, all links to websites outside China were blocked.

Chinese authorities recently decided to require microblogs to appoint "self-discipline commissioners" responsible for censorship, according to the media group Reporters Without Borders.

China maintains a vast army of Internet censors who rapidly delete content deemed subversive from chat rooms, or block entire sites and blogs.

Forbidden content includes excessive criticism of the central government, promotion of Tibet or Taiwan independence, and discussion of the banned religious group Falun Gong.

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Plane baby sparks debate

Was Plane Baby's Migrant Mother a Victim, Too?

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (Sept. 19) -- The sensational case of a Filipina migrant worker who gave birth on a flight from the Middle East and dumped her newborn in the trash highlights broader problems facing migrant workers, activists say.

The case gripped the Philippines and global media in recent days, after plane-cleaning staff found a baby in the trashcan of a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Manila.

On the Internet, outrage over the mother's behavior was mixed with Facebook cooing over the baby -- dubbed George Francis for the airline's flight code, GF -- and offers to adopt if the mother didn't come forward. Gulf Air staff looked after the infant at the Manila hospital where he was sent.

But on Thursday, the story took a dramatic twist when a Filipina migrant worker came forward and confessed to being the baby's mother. She told a Philippines lawmaker that she had worked in Qatar as a maid and was raped by her employer, according to The Associated Press.

When her pregnancy was discovered, her employer forced her to return to the Philippines, she said, according to Rep. Lani Mercado, the AP reported. She abandoned the baby out of fear for what her family would say.

The woman had been identified as the possible mother through the passenger manifest after blood was found on her seat on the plane, 40D, according to ABS-CBN News.com.

The woman has come in for plenty of criticism. But migrant workers activists say people shouldn't be so quick to judge. In many cases, migrant workers are justifiably worried that seeking justice for sexual or other abuse can backfire.

"I'm sure one of her reasons for not complaining is because in many cases if you complain, you are the one who will be in prison," said Eni Lestari, chairwoman of the Hong Kong-based International Migrants Alliance. "And in many cases, these women are not being protected by their own governments.

"In some countries, there will even be a threat of being accused of agreeing to have sex with the boss, when they didn't," she said. "In the eyes of the law, they can become a criminal, not the victim."

Lestari said most Asian migrant workers, like the Gulf Air mother, are women who work as maids. Often they have few or no days off, and suffer from physical or sexual abuse. In Hong Kong, she said, the legal burden is on the migrant worker to prove, through physical evidence, that sexual abuse occurred.

"Many such cases are unreported, leaving migrant workers dealing with the whole trauma and effects of sexual abuse, even while they have the responsibility of being the bread-winner of their family," Lestari said.

Some 11 million Filipinos live and work abroad because they can't find work that pays a living wage at home. They're part of a global migrant workforce estimated at 214 million. According to the website of the rights group Migrante International, about 2,000 Filipinos leave the country every day bound for 182 countries worldwide.

"The abuses and exploitation they experience in their place work are prevalent. These range from contract violations, rape, sexual harassment, mysterious deaths, among others," the group says. "Women migrant workers in particular are most vulnerable to abuses and maltreatment."

A 2009 U.S. State Department human rights report said foreign workers in Qatar had disputes with employers over leaving the country. "In some cases, sponsors sexually harassed and mistreated foreign domestic servants," the report said. "Most domestic servants did not press charges for fear of losing their jobs."

The report cited one unnamed foreign embassy in Qatar that reported 700 cases of sexual harassment against maids in 2008 alone. "When the domestic employees brought harassment to the attention of authorities, the employees were often deported, and no charges were filed against the employer."

But an Amnesty International staffer said Qatar and the Middle East shouldn't be singled out for poor treatment of migrant workers. "It's a worldwide phenomenon," said Wilnor Papa, Amnesty's campaign coordinator for the Philippines. "What we see here is not enough protection given to migrant workers."

Papa said the plane baby case likely reflects migrant workers' low levels of education, poor awareness of rights, and lack of sufficient legal protection from countries hosting migrant workers. "It's really sad that because of her fears of how family and the law would treat her, she would rather give birth and leave her child there [on the plane]," Papa said.

"She's not given that many options, and she doesn't know her options, and that's one of the problems," he said. "Not a lot of the migrants are educated, and not many know the law can protect them."

He said many migrant workers end up doing different work than they signed up for, and some even get trafficked into illegal brothels after being lured abroad with promises of legitimate jobs.

Papa said that while returning to the Philippines from London via the Middle East on a flight last year, he talked to migrant workers returning home -- including a nurse who'd been put to work as a maid, an engineer who'd become a driver, a woman whose hands had burnt because of a cleaning agent her boss forced her to use, and another woman who had been abused. "Stories like this happen on a regular basis," he said.

Papa said both sending and receiving countries needed to implement existing laws protecting such workers, and pass tougher ones. He noted that few hosting countries had signed or ratified the U.N. Convention on the rights of migrant workers. (Forty-three countries are party to the convention, including the Philippines, according to the U.N.'s website. Qatar is not among them.)

The International Migrants Alliance's Lestari said there are also ongoing discussions on a draft international convention for domestic workers, which could provide a mechanism to better protect migrant maids' rights.

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Japan's FM in the Fire

Japan's PM Out of the Frying Pan, but Fire Awaits

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (Sept. 14) -- Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan today survived a leadership challenge in a party vote.

The embattled leader's win could help stabilize his center-left ruling party as it struggles to guide Japan out of its long-running economic doldrums, at a time when the yen is at a 15-year high and debt is running at about 200 percent of gross domestic product.

But analysts cautioned that Kan now faces a tough battle in pushing his policies through a bitterly divided parliament.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan was re-elected as the president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan

"Now he's got to heal the party, roll up his sleeves and get to work on addressing Japan's real problems," said Jeff Kingston, an expert on Japanese politics at Temple University, Japan. "But I have to say, I'm not optimistic."

The ruling Democratic Party of Japan's poor showing in July Upper House elections resulted in a "twisted" parliament, meaning the DPJ controls only the Lower House and must engage in complicated coalition politics and horse-trading to pass measures through the upper house.

"Most likely we're going to see gridlock, politicians floundering and the public getting more frustrated," Kingston said.

He expects further pressure on Kan to step down next year and call new elections.

The challenge to Kan from the party's so-called "shadow shogun," Ichiro Ozawa, became a much-hyped drama in Japan's media, due to the two leaders' distinctive personalities and long, tangled histories.

Ozawa is deeply unpopular with the public and is seen as a consummate behind-the-scenes power broker and veteran of political intrigues. He's also a Karl Rove-esque strategist credited with successfully guiding the Democratic Party of Japan to power last year, ousting the Liberal Democratic Party in the first real transfer of power in Japan since World War II.

Kan, a hot-tempered former activist, has been seen as the poster boy for the DPJ's promise of change.

Both men back reforms to bring Japan's bureaucrats to heel and turn over more power to elected politicians, moves their party believes are needed to re-invigorate Japanese politics by making it more democratic and responsive to the public.

But Ozawa is associated with old-style, patronage politics and lavish public works spending (he backed new bullet trains and more road projects in his campaign, according to respected Japan-watcher Tobias Harris in comments on CNBC Asia earlier today).

Kan, by contrast, has emerged as a Bill Clinton-esque figure who has made fiscal discipline a priority. But he shouldered much of the blame for his party's poor showing in July elections, especially after he proposed a deeply unpopular hike in the consumption tax from 5 percent to 10 percent.

"Ozawa's goals may be good, but his style of winning elections isn't too pretty or clean -- that's the contradiction," said Tadahiro Ishihara, at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations in Taipei. "Naoto Kan is clean, but so far his performance isn't so good."

Many DPJ Diet members owe Ozawa favors, which had made today's race too close to call. Today's vote was limited to DPJ Diet members and other local party members.

One focus now will be Ozawa's next move. If the two party bigwigs reconcile -- perhaps by Kan tapping Ozawa and his supporters for top government posts -- the party could move forward more unified.

But some worry Ozawa could bolt the party and take his supporters with him, further destabilizing Japan's fractious coalition politics and stalling reforms. "There could be a party split, but it's not very likely," Ishihara said.

Kan's win boosts his mandate to pursue a pragmatic course that combines fiscal discipline with scaled-back versions of the generous social spending his party promised last year.

His victory avoids an outcome where Japan would have seen its third prime minister in less than a year and been governed by a man -- Ozawa -- whose public approval ratings hover near 20 percent.

"They dodged a bullet," Kingston said. "An Ozawa win would have been a disaster for Japan. But the problems facing Japan are huge, so Prime Minister Kan is certainly not out of the woods."

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Truman Show begins

For Chinese Activist, 'The Truman Show' Begins

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (Sept. 13) -- A famous Chinese rights activist, recently released after serving four years in jail, now faces constant scrutiny that human rights groups compares to a more sinister version of "The Truman Show."

Chen Guangcheng, 38, was let out of jail Sept. 9 only to confront a regime of round-the-clock video surveillance, constant plainclothes police presence outside his home and monitoring or blocking of his and his relatives' cell phones. If he is allowed to go anywhere, he'll have a plainclothes police "escort."

Such surveillance, called "soft detention" (ruan jin) in Chinese, is what happens to activists whom the Chinese state deems not dangerous enough for jail but too dangerous to be left to their own devices. The treatment can last years, even decades.

The methods are illegal according to China's own laws, Chinese lawyers and rights activists say, and show how far authoritarian China still is from protecting citizens' rights that now exist only on paper.

"Illegal detention; conviction based upon fabricated charges; unlawful imprisonment," said Li Fangping, one of Chen's lawyers, in a statement from the New York-based Human Rights in China. "The case of this blind rights-defense lawyer bears witness to the sad state of the rule of law and human rights in China."

Chen was blinded by fever as a small child, according to The Associated Press. He came to the authorities' attention for preparing a legal case on how local government officials in rural Shandong province, southeast of Beijing, allegedly forced some 7,000 women to be sterilized or undergo abortions as part of harsh "one-child policy" family-planning measures, Agence France-Presse reported.

Such measures have been taken before in rural, poorer parts of China, even as wealthy Chinese in places like Shanghai use their wealth, connections or both to have two or more children.

China instituted its one-child policy in the late 1970s as a population control measure, but it is applied very differently in different areas of the vast country. A Chinese family planning official said in 2007 that less than 40 percent of the population was subject to the policy.

Chen was put under house arrest in 2005 and taken into custody in 2006 on what Human Rights Watch called "trumped-up charges" of destroying property and inciting a crowd to disturb traffic. The latter charge came after his supporters rioted over the first one.

On Sept. 9, police escorted Chen back to his home in the village of Dongshigu. Associated Press reporters on the scene said local authorities installed six security cameras last week, and a dozen agents watched his wife go shopping.

His relatives' phone lines were blocked, and about a dozen plainclothes cops blocked the main road of the village with a van, six of whom ran after journalists who tried to enter the village, the AP said. "After a brief scuffle with the journalists, the men jumped into their van and chased the journalists' car at high speed as they left the area," the AP report said.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Chen said he had been beaten severely at the beginning of his jail time. "[The beatings] were really bad at the beginning -- extremely severe in 2007," he told RFA. "Now, apart from the diarrhea, I'm not too bad. But my voice went a couple of days ago."

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement, "Chen should never have been imprisoned in the first place. We expect that his full freedom will be restored and that the harassment of his family will finally cease."

But some analysts were pessimistic, saying that Chen would more likely face indefinite monitoring by the government.

"I am deeply concerned that following his release, Chen Guangcheng will be subject to this new form of low-visibility punishment, including round-the-clock and endless isolation enforced by government-hired thugs," said Jerome Cohen, an expert on Chinese law, in the Human Rights in China statement. (See a 2009 YouTube video of Cohen discussing Chen's case here.)

Chinese media made little or no mention of Chen's release, leaving the Chinese public typically in the dark about the sensitive news. An Internet news search using his Chinese name turned up only articles from Falun Gong-affiliated sites based outside of mainland China, as well as reports from the BBC and Deutsche Welle's Chinese-language sites.

Falun Gong, outlawed by China as an "evil cult," keeps up a steady drumbeat of criticism of China's human rights situation through its affiliated media based outside mainland China. See below a report from the Falun Gong-affiliated NTDTV on Chen's case.



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Chinese pilots faking it

Probe Finds Chinese Pilots Faking Flight Histories

Sep 8, 2010

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Sept. 8) -- A government probe has found that at least 170 Chinese pilots have falsified their flight histories, renewing concerns over China's air safety in the wake of an Aug. 24 crash that killed 42.

That crash of a Henan Airlines flight, during a landing at a foggy airport in northeastern China, was the country's first major air accident in six years.

A firefighter searches for victims near a burning Chinese passenger jet after it crashed in Yichun in northeast China's Heilongjiang province, Aug. 25.

But the finding highlights how administrative overload, corruption and nepotism are plaguing China's commercial aviation industry as rapid growth outpaces regulators' ability to properly screen personnel and ensure better air safety.

Regulators' inability to keep up with roaring growth in today's go-go China has resulted in a proliferation of fraud, quackery and graft by individuals and companies.

China's freight turnover and passenger numbers hit new records in July, as aviation sector profits grew to $950 million, a 364 percent year-on-year increase, according to a China Business News report cited by the People's Daily Online.

Passenger volume totaled 126 million in the first half of this year, up nearly 18 percent year-on-year, according to a Xinhua report.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced the findings on pilots' padded resumes at an Aug. 26 conference, but it was first reported by the China Business News on Sept. 6. The CAAC began looking more broadly into the issue of pilots' qualifications in its probe of the Aug. 24 crash.

The Global Times, citing that report, said that more than half of the pilots who inflated resumes in 2008 and 2009 were from Shenzhen Airlines, which holds a 51 percent stake in Henan Airlines.

China has about 13,000 commercial pilots, the report said. The Global Times quoted an anonymous employee at Shenzhen Airlines who said pilots bribed officials and tapped relatives in order to avoid scrutiny and get good posts.

The source said that some 170 pilots had fudged their flying histories, "But only three pilots were punished and suspended from flying, as Shenzhen Airlines was in desperate need of pilots in its developing period."

In a recent commentary, the Institute of Chinese Economics' Justin Li said several high-profile scandals in China's aviation sector showed that "endemic corruption within the aviation industry exposes the Achilles' heel of China's economic reform and development."

Li Jiaxiang, the director of the CAAC, said at the conference that the lack of qualifications of the pilot and captain were to blame for the Henan Airlines crash, Global Times reported.

The China Daily quoted one aviation expert saying that aviation officials had to do a better job of checking pilots' credentials.

"The civil aviation administration should have stopped those who falsified their flying histories. If not, they are also to be blamed for their relaxed inner controls and lack of supervision over the airlines," said Liu Weimin, aviation expert with the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China.

"The pilot's documentations to apply for a certificate to pilot commercial planes should be strictly audited by the administration. Random checks should be carried out by the authority to check on these pilots," he said.

A pilot who only gave his surname, Xu, told the China Daily that falsification of flying history was rampant, especially by former military pilots hoping to land cushy jobs in the commercial sector.

"The rapid expansion of China's civil aviation requires more commercial pilots, and the gap was usually filled up by those pilots who drive military aircrafts but transferred to commercial flights," he said, according to the China Daily.

"These pilots were very likely to falsify their flying history in the military since it is hard to track and verify. By doing this, they can get promoted more quickly in flying commercial airplanes," he told the Daily.

"The airline companies only keep half an eye on this since they are happy to see more pilots certified by the administrative agency," he said.

The problem of inflating or faking credentials is hardly unique to China's aviation sector.

Sponsored Links
The Xinhua Daily Telegraph recently reported on a well-known Beijing proctology clinic that the report alleges misrepresented itself in advertisements, falsified the resume of its head proctologist, and made other fraudulent claims. The Telegraph's report was translated at danwei.org.

Individuals who "out" fraudsters run the risk of retaliation. In July, thugs wielding a hammer and antiseptic spray attacked popular blogger Fang Zhouzi, who became famous for exposing academic and scientific fraud.

Fang's most high-profile achievements were exposing a sham "cancer preventation" drug and debunking a former president of Microsoft China's claim that he held a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.

The former Microsoft official later admitted his degree was actually from Pacific Western University in California, which the Christian Science Monitor described as "a diploma mill that sold academic credentials and required no classroom instruction," citing a 2004 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

In a bizarre twist, a doctor recently came forward alleging that Fang himself faked the hammer and antiseptic attack in order to promote himself and his books, according to a report in Global Times.

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Anti-Fils backlash

Anti-Philippines Backlash in Hong Kong After Rampage

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(Aug. 31) -- With anti-Philippines feelings running high in Hong Kong, the Philippines allowed police from the Chinese territory to inspect the bullet-riddled bus where eight Hong Kong tourists were gunned down last week.

Since the Aug. 23 shooting, Hong Kong and mainland China have sharply criticized the Philippines for the botched raid on the bus. The raid ended a daylong standoff after a former Philippine policeman armed with an assault rifle seized a busload of tourists in central Manila, demanding his job back. He had been fired over alleged extortion.

Photos of Philippine police and schoolgirls posing in front of the bus the day after the tragedy added fuel to the fire after they were posted on Facebook and other websites.

The tragedy has strained ties between the Philippines and Hong Kong, the semiautonomous Chinese enclave just across the South China Sea. The Chinese government has called on the Philippines to quickly wrap up its probe of the tragedy.

Hong Kong police on Monday examined the bus and inspected weapons used by police and the hostage-taker in the shootout, according to Agence France-Presse. The Philippines police command also issued a gag order on its cops before an official probe is complete, the news agency said, after one prematurely told the press Sunday that the assailant was likely responsible for all the hostages' deaths.

Some have questioned whether some of the hostages may have been accidentally killed by the Philippines police during the chaotic firefight aboard the bus in the final minutes of the showdown.

The Philippines government has already admitted to making errors. Today, it called on the media to work with it to restrain coverage of future stand-offs, according to AFP.

Philippines police were faulted for not better controlling media coverage of the hostage crisis. The hostage-taker was able to view live TV coverage from a monitor inside the bus, and began shooting hostages shortly after seeing on TV the police arresting his brother near the bus, according to AFP.

In Hong Kong, an anti-Philippines backlash was running high. One politician said she had fired her Filipina maid and encouraged others to do the same, according to a video posted to YouTube and translated at the EastSouthWestNorth blog. (More than 100,000 Filipinos work in the territory, most of them women working as maids.)

Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan came in for a hail of Internet abuse from Hong Kong nationalists after he "tweeted" remarks that were viewed as too sympathetic to the Philippines police, such as the following: "If they killed the guy (hijacker) sooner, they will say why not negotiate first? If they negotiate first, they ask why not kill the guy sooner? So sad."

Chan later apologized in a statement posted on his website, but insisted his remarks had been mistranslated.

Tens of thousands joined a march in Hong Kong on Sunday to mourn the victims.

Meanwhile, one of the surviving hostages wrote a first-person account of the ordeal, published in Hong Kong's Ming Pao weekly and translated by ESWN. In the account, Lee Ying Chuen says the hostages at several points mulled the idea of trying to overpower the gunman.

"Why did we waver?" Lee wrote. "Because we were afraid, because we thought that the gunman did not really want to kill anyone, because we thought that the matter would be peacefully resolved and, of course, our biggest mistake was to overestimate the capabilities of the local police."

The gunman had also spaced out the hostages two to a row, one on each side of the aisle, to prevent them from more easily banding together, Lee wrote.

Hong Kong's Apple Daily produced one of its infamous animated news clips of the hostage crisis, using details from news reports and a dramatic re-creation to show what may have happened on the bus.

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Reform, or hot air?

China Buzzes With Political Reform Talk -- or Is It Hot Air?

Aug 28, 2010

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Aug. 28) -- Is political reform afoot in China? Or did "Grandpa Wen" just forget to take his meds?

Popular Chinese Premier Wen Jia-bao, No. 2 in Beijing's political hierarchy, set the Chinese Internet abuzz this week with comments that China badly needs political reform.

The context was his visit to the southern boom town Shenzhen to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the city's founding as one of four "special economic zones" that have been on the vanguard in China's spectacular rise. But the folksy Wen dampened the festive mood when he said in unusually sharp and sweeping terms that China's political reforms had lagged too far behind economic reforms.

"Without political reform, China may lose what it has already achieved through economic restructuring, and the targets of its modernization drive might not be reached," said Wen, according to the Global Times, which is affiliated with China's state-run People's Daily.

China's communist autocrats remain firmly in the driver's seat, quickly quashing any organized challenge to their rule and often operating above the law. Several officials and commentators quoted by Global Times backed Wen's views, which followed similar eyebrow-raising remarks from a well-connected Peoples' Liberation Army general known for his maverick views.

"In the coming 10 years, a transformation from power politics to democracy will inevitably take place," wrote the PLA's Liu Yazhou in a Hong Kong magazine, according to a translation by the Australian newspaper The Age. "China will see great changes. Political reform is our mission, endowed by history. We have no leeway. So far, China has reformed all the easy parts, and everything that is left is the most difficult; there is a land mine at every step."

The comments made some Chinese wonder whether the winds of political change are blowing -- or whether it's all just hot air.

Some cynical Chinese bloggers leaned toward the latter. Taiwan's Want Daily described their reaction as "the east wind blows again" -- an idiom roughly meaning "same old song."

"It's two steps forward and three steps back," one wrote. "The key point in promoting political reform is whether normal people get any benefit," said another. "Inviting everyone to criticize would mean having to arrest and lock up the whole country," wrote another wit. "How can we really have criticism and monitoring [of the government]?"

Only Small-Bore Reforms Likely

Analysts also cautioned not to read too much into Wen's remarks. His personal views aside -- and he's generally seen as a sincere supporter of reform -- China is now ruled by committee, and a highly conservative and cautious one at that.

"I think he [Wen] is willing to experiment, but the problem is, he functions within a gigantic bureaucracy and a system of collective leadership -- and the party is concerned about stability," said Dali Yang, head of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, in a phone interview.

"He speaks his heart, and that's what makes him endearing, but he's in his last two years as premier, and there's a limit to how much he can do," Yang said.

He said that China was already pursuing some political reforms that shouldn't be dismissed, such as experimental local elections at the village, township and even county level (though not yet for county chiefs); use of informal and formal polls to take the public's pulse on its leaders; and more competitive, open processes for civil service promotions in cities like Shenzhen to try to reduce bribery and nepotism.

But the reform process is likely to be incremental, slow and small-bore, and won't soon result in anything an American would recognize as democracy. Many reforms focus on how China's communist party functions internally, not on China's overall system.

It's not clear how much support Wen has in China's leadership, either. Party leader and President Hu Jintao has remained something of a cipher despite nearly eight years in power. His historical legacy is likely to be his key role in adopting a savvier, carrot-and-stick approach to Taiwan -- helping to make the Taiwan Strait more stable than it's been in decades -- rather than any meaningful reforms or his clunky slogans about creating a "harmonious society."

Xi's Gotta Have It?

Hu's most likely successor, Xi Jinping, doesn't promise anything sexier, either. Veteran China watcher Willy Lam, who is writing a book about Xi, said that Xi is a shadow of his father, who was a noted, high-ranking liberal in the communist party hierarchy.

"Xi Jinping is a conservative -- he has not been able to pick up the liberal genes from his father," said Lam at a talk in Taipei earlier this year. "Xi lacks charisma and a strong base in the party. ... He was picked as a compromise candidate accepted by all [party] factions. He's not seen as a person who has strong values."

Xi is expected to be appointed soon to a post on China's powerful Central Military Commission, according to the South China Morning Post, which China watchers say is a sign that he's on track to take over the reins from Hu in the fall of 2012.

If anything, the role of the People's Liberation Army within China's system may become more important than any reform drive by civilian leaders. "The PLA is a very dangerous institution," said Lam. "There are no checks and balances. The generals have too much power; they are not subject to scrutiny."

For that reason, PLA Air Force Gen. Liu's high-profile prediction of "great changes" were of particular interest, but analysts were left scratching their heads over what he meant. Lin Chong-Pin, a China watcher in Taipei, said he believed that Liu had been invited to Beijing around 2004 and "recruited" or co-opted by the leadership after similar, outspoken remarks early this decade. That makes his re-emergence in the Hong Kong press something of a mystery.

Varied Media Response

China's media have a typically schizophrenic response to all the talk of political reform. Southern Chinese outlets known for their more freewheeling ways ran enthusiastic commentaries, while central, state-run media buried Wen's remarks or didn't report them at all, according to The Economist.

China's state-run Xinhua news service quickly produced excerpts of a 2008 speech from Hu Jintao also calling for reforms, in an apparent effort to show that China's two top leaders were singing from the same songbook, according to Taiwan's Want Daily. And the Global Times even ran an English-language commentary warning foreigners not to get carried away. "Overseas analysts should not get over-excited about the prospect of major political reforms," it said.

"Chinese leaders have made it clear that China will never directly copy Western-style political systems. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the country will explore its own socialist path that fits its own domestic situation," the commentary continued.

That's the kind of typical line that makes skepticism the default position for most longtime watchers of China's political scene. "The CCP will muddle through, but it is incapable of greatness, self-reflection or self-correction," said Lam.

"Imagine a party with this manifesto: We just want to hang on to power, period."

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King coal = King jam?

Coal May Be Behind China's Monster Traffic Jam

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(Aug. 25) -- China's surging appetite for coal may be behind the nightmarish traffic jam outside Beijing that's now in Day 12.

The jam has seen thousands of vehicles backed up along a 60-mile-long stretch of road between Inner Mongolia and Beijing. Motorists have reported travel times of up to five days to get through the king-sized snarl.

The immediate cause of the jam is road construction on National Expressway 110 (G110). But those repairs were needed due to damage from a recent surge in jumbo truck traffic carrying coal and some agricultural products, the Global Times reported.

There is another route from northwest China to Beijing, but it's open only to trucks 4 tons or lighter and charges costly tolls that transporters prefer to dodge, the Times reported.

"We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs," a coal truck driver surnamed Wang told the Global Times. "The number of roads from northwest China to Beijing are limited. ... Why should I pay the toll fee?"

China depends on coal for 70 percent of its energy needs, and that appetite shows no sign of slacking amid the nation's breakneck economic growth.

After authorities closed thousands of dangerous coal mines in Shanxi Province, Inner Mongolia has become China's largest source of coal, Bloomberg reported, providing 21 percent of output compared with Shanxi's 18 percent in 2009.

That coal is transported mostly by truck because of a lack of rail capacity, the news agency said, and it quoted an expert who expected the situation to improve in "three or four years" after new rail lines are completed.

For now, much of Inner Mongolia's coal is moved by truck in the Beijing area to ports such as Tianjin, and from there is shipped to power plants in southern China, Bloomberg said.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that many of the trucks crawling through gridlock are carrying coal illegally mined in Inner Mongolia. Drivers are taking the G110 route because it's free of coal checkpoints that would require bribing inspectors to ignore the illegal loads, the Monitor said, citing a report in the Beijing News.

The Global Times said the jam was hardly new: a similar tangle in June lasted nearly the entire month. It reports that construction is due to last through Sept. 13 -- meaning potentially weeks more of traffic pain.

China's traffic woes go beyond coal trucks, though. A study by IBM released in June rated Beijing and Mexico City the world's worst cities on its "Commuter Pain Index," with a 99 out of 100 rating compared to Los Angeles' 25.

The 20-city survey found that 69 percent of Beijing respondents had canceled or changed their travel plans due to bad traffic in the last three years, the highest rate of any city polled. That's despite having one of the world's highest bus-use rates, at 44 percent.

Beijing has 4.2 million cars on the road, a number expected to increase to 5 million by the end of the year, according to the Global Times, and 7 million by 2015, according to a transport official quoted by the Xinhua state news agency.

That official said average driving speeds in Beijing would slow to below 9 mph by 2015 from 15 mph now if trends continue.

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Five bus hijackings

Five Bus Hijackings Less Deadly Than Manila's

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(Aug. 24) -- The Philippines police are under fire over a botched effort to end a Manila hostage drama on a tourist bus that left the hostage taker and eight Hong Kong tourists dead. Buses -- rarely subject to security controls and easily controlled by a single assailant -- have often been prime hijacking targets. But other incidents in recent years have ended without the death of hostages. Some examples:

June 22, 2009, China. An apparently deranged man wielding a knife boards a bus in Hunan province. As the cool-headed female driver argues with him, the passengers leave via the rear exit. After the hijacker stabs her seat, the driver takes him a short distance, telling him to "calm down" and "sit down and relax." The man later exits, and the driver continues her route. No one is injured.




March 28, 2007, the Philippines. Armed with hand grenades and guns, a disgruntled owner of a day care center hijacks a bus with 26 day care children and four teachers, demanding the government give free education to the students and housing to their families. After day-long negotiations, he surrenders and releases the hostages. No one is injured.

May 31, 2004, U.S. After imbibing tequila, Antonio Hernandez-Hernandez hijacks a Greyhound bus in Utah after attacking the driver with a knife. His goal: to drive to Nebraska for a showdown with his estranged ex-wife. He orders the passengers off the bus, then leads police on a chase. The driver stops the bus and flees when Hernandez-Hernandez goes to the restroom; he later surrenders to police.

April 25, 2003, Germany. A Lebanese man seeking the release of one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers seizes a bus with 16 hostages and leads police on a highway chase. Police stormed the bus and captured the assailant, whose gun fired only blanks. No one was injured. Two similar bus-jackings occurred in Germany in the same month, with no injuries.

Nov. 17, 1997, Egypt. Islamic militants hijack a bus after massacring nearly 60 tourists at a top attraction near Luxor on the Nile River. The bus encountered a military checkpoint, and a firefight ensued. One terrorist was shot and wounded. The others escaped to nearby hills, but their bodies were later found in a cave, apparent suicides.

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Botched bus rescue

Philippine Police Slammed for Botched Bus Rescue

Aug 24, 2010

TAIPEI, Taiwan (Aug. 24) -- The Philippine police came in for a hail of criticism today after a botched raid on a hijacked bus left the perpetrator and eight of his hostages dead.

Critics leveled a litany of charges about Monday night's raid, faulting police for a chaotic command structure, failure to secure the crime scene, and allowing media to film the raid. There was also consternation that they had brought the hostage-taker's brother to the scene but then taken him into custody, and that they had no better means at hand to break into the bus than a sledgehammer.

Members of a Philippines police SWAT team begin their assault of the tourist bus seized by dismissed police officer Rolando Mendoza Monday at Manila's Rizal Park, Philippines.

The raid came 10 hours after Rolando Mendoza -- a 55-year-old former policeman disgruntled over having been fired -- boarded a tour bus armed with an assault rifle. Mendoza held the tourists from Hong Kong as hostages.

The Globe and Mail reported that when Mendoza boarded the bus there were 21 tourists and four locals aboard. During the standoff, he released some for medical and other reasons. When the police raid began, Mendoza was reportedly holding 15 hostages. Mendoza and eight of the hostages died in the final minutes of the siege.

The victims included Canadian-Chinese dual citizen Kam Wing Leung and his daughters, Song Yi (Jessie) Leung, 14, and Chung See (Doris) Leung, 21, according to the CBC.

In the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Hong Kong, flags flew at half-staff in mourning as residents voiced outrage over what was widely seen as a mishandled rescue operation. The Associated Press reported that demonstrators changed "You caused the deaths of Hong Kongers!" outside the consulate of the Philippines.

"It's disappointing that Hong Kong residents tried to make a pleasure trip to Manila and ended up with death and casualties," Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang told a news conference. "This is very tragic. And the way it was handled and particularly the outcome -- I found it disappointing."

Pete Troilo, director for business intelligence at Pacific Strategies and Assessments, a Manila-based security and political risk consultancy, said the fiasco reflected the Philippines' lack of sufficient police resources.

"The Philippines National Police and [the Army] have been plagued by a lack of training and equipment for decades, and there's really no movement to change that," said Troilo.

As one example, he said one strategy for storming the bus would have been to use a "small, controllable explosive" device to blow off the door of the bus, then a lightning entry into the bus by commandos.

Instead, police were televised live repeatedly trying and failing to bash their way in through the bus' windows with a sledgehammer. "The only thing that did was obstruct the view of what was happening inside the bus," Troilo said.

He noted, though, that a bus is "not the easiest target to assault" due to the nearly 360-degree view of the situation from inside the bus and the difficulty of penetrating into a narrow aisle where passengers can easily be used by the hostage-taker as human shields -- a strategy the perpetrator used Monday night, according to remarks by Philippines President Benigno Aquino III in a midnight press conference just hours after the raid.

Troilo said the botched raid highlighted a broader problem of poor handling of a range of crises, including kidnappings. "In the Philippines, these types of crisis-management situations typically turn into a frenzy," he said. "You have not only the media, but different politicians and power brokers trying to portray themselves as a leader in the situation, and you often have family members involved, which was the case here."

"So all of this turns into a sideshow, and it really detracts attention from the safety and security of the victims, and bringing the case to a quick resolution," Troilo said. "Unfortunately, in this case the melodrama cost lives."

One Filipino official told a local radio station that Mendoza was able to see police approaching the bus via footage he could view on a television inside the bus, according to GMA News. He also reportedly became agitated after seeing television reports showing police taking his brother into custody.

The official, Jesse Robredo, told Philippines media that protocol for media and crowd control in such crisis situations would be reviewed.

A police official told a local radio station that the hostage-taker turned belligerent after police attempted to arrest his brother, who was at the scene. He said the police lacked better equipment to penetrate the bus.

"In our inventory, the sledgehammer was the only thing we can use in the situation," he told a radio station, according to GMA News. "What we did not expect was the bus' windshield was strong enough to withstand blows from a sledgehammer."

Several Filipino congressmen criticized the police's handling of the hostage crisis, with one slamming the lack of a clear chain of command at the scene, according to Inquirer.net, and another saying that "heads must roll" after the tragedy.

The Philippines human rights alliance Karapatan faulted the police for bungling the hostage crisis, and for not addressing the hostage-taker's "legitimate" grievances earlier -- though it condemned the manner in which he aired those grievances.

"The [Philippines police] grossly mishandled the hostage drama that caused the death of nine people and the wounding of others," a spokesman for the alliance said, according to the Manila Bulletin. "They should have handled this more delicately considering that many lives were at stake."

President Aquino offered his condolences to China and the people of Hong Kong for the loss of life in an address today. He promised more training for police forces to better handle future crises, and a full review of the botched raid.

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China gets disaster-savvy

China Gets Savvier With Disaster Coverage

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (July 29) -- When a massive blast from a damaged gas pipeline rattled the Chinese city of Nanjing on Wednesday, killing at least 13 and wounding 120 more, the state-run media that might once have cooperated in a cover-up was all over it. But critics say what looks like a new openness is really part of the government's drive to stymie more troublesome independent news outlets.

Within hours of the explosion, Xinhua, the state-run news service, released a detailed account of events in both Chinese and English.

But when a local TV station tried to get video at the scene, an official stopped the crew, saying, "Who gave permission for you to conduct a live broadcast?" and making them turn off the cameras, according to a post on the popular blog EastSouthWestNorth. That exchange was aired on live TV and itself soon went viral on the Internet.

The unequal treatment shows Beijing's unique, narrow concept of "press freedom" these days, and highlights the increasingly complex media landscape in today's China.

Once ham-handed censors who employed sweeping news blackouts, China's government is now playing an increasingly sophisticated game of message control. It is allowing national state-run media much more leeway in reporting disasters, in order to get ahead of the Twitter-clones and other sites before the Internet rumor mill gets out of hand and causes public disturbances.

But at the same time, the government is limiting other, independent media coverage -- either blocking it outright or ordering journalists to use officially sanctioned reports from state-run media instead of their own reporting.

"We are not seeing more openness so much as much more clever management of disaster reporting," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based China watcher and scholar, in an e-mail. "Officials are becoming more adept at getting ahead of the notification curve -- the coverage on the Internet and through cellphones."

Greenpeace / AFP / Getty Images

The game played by officials has become increasingly complex as it seeks to balance the state's overriding interest in social stability with the desires of China's 420 million Internet users to express themselves more freely in chat rooms, blogs and micro-blogs, in line with China's modernization.

"Officials worry about too much information flying in different directions, so they want to control the message," said Dali Yang, head of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. "In the Nanjing case, they were worried -- especially with Twitter and all that -- that they would lose control of the message and let rumors get ahead of the facts."

Twitter is blocked in China, but similar services run by Chinese companies have recently boomed in popularity.

"So officials are trying to respond to the need for information, but also to restrain media by making them follow the lead of Xinhua and the China Daily," Yang said.

China has adopted that approach for a variety of bad news. When a recent spate of suicides at a factory in southern China drew widespread attention, for example, China at first gave the media a free hand. Journalists crowded the campus of the company Foxconn, where the suicides occurred.

But on May 27, according to the South China Morning Post, a directive came down from central and provincial propaganda units to local media outlets: There was to be no more independent reporting on the Foxconn suicides; use Xinhua reports instead.

In the case of another recent disaster, the situation is murkier. On July 16, two oil pipelines exploded in the port city of Dalian, on China's northeast coast, leading to massive fires and what Greenpeace China says is China's worst-ever oil-spill.

Yang Ailun, head of climate and energy for Greenpeace China, said in a phone interview that she didn't know if or to what extent the government had controlled media coverage, but that the accident hadn't received the press it deserved.

"We felt quite puzzled," said Yang. "With a disaster of this scale, there was not enough domestic media attention to this. It could be part of media censorship."

She said Xinhua was covering the story, but its reports were not sufficient in terms of warning the public which beaches and areas would be affected by the spill.

"For a disaster like this, you need daily reports to warn people," said Yang. "We noticed only a couple of state media, and [Communist] Party media were active. And other media were not as active."

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