Rezwan has further details - and many questions - on the yesterday’s bombings in Bangladesh.:

When around four hundred small bombs explode in 63 districts out of 64 districts of a country simultaneously it shows what kind of network the attackers possess (imagine 50 states out of 51 in US). The mostly hit city was the capital Dhaka with around 30 bombs explosions including key installation like the Zia International Airport, Supreme Court, Secretariat etc.
The casualties and injured numbers are so far incredibly much less (2 deaths and 150 hospitalized). The question may be why is that. The bombs were confirmed as small IEDs (Improvised explosive device) containing not much explosives. From the TV reports of the unexploded ones I have seen that each contained four batteries and some small devices and a switch attached to the bomb by red tape. Most probable the switch activated the delay device and it exploded sometime later allowing the carrier to leave it and flee away. The most remarkable thing of these bombs is that they contained wood saw dust instead of splinters. That is why there are fewer casualties although they were exploded at manned places. Actually many received minor wounds of saw dusts hitting the body with the power of explosion and went home after emergency medical attention. If these were loaded with more explosives and deadly splinters, we could have seen thousands of dead people.

Gateway Pundit has a news and blog roundup of the blasts, including a video link, and he notes a claim from authorities that there were 500 blasts.

Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice also has an excellent roundup, featuring an array of regional and international media sources.

Further posting at Chapati Mystery and Sepia Mutiny.

Gordon at the Horse’s Mouth has just asked me if I can still access his blog-city site from Shanghai. I can’t. Nor can I access other Blog City sites such as Kevin in Pudong or  Middle Kingdom Stories.

I ran a trace route and it seems that all of the sites are blocked at the Great Firewall of China.

 

Danwei reports that it’s now officially OK to be gay in China, with Shanghai’s Fudan University launching a gay studies course and state-owned Xinhua’s biweekly Globe.running a feature article on the troubles of China’s homosexuals. Bingfeng reports that it’s also Ok to be lesbian.

Nitin ponder’s the difference between Manmohan Singh and Junichiro Koizumi.

Amit Varma points to an editorial concerned with the competition between India and China - but in diplomatic and not economic spheres.

We in India are not paying enough attention to the steady accrual of Chinese soft power. There is a complacent view that this is an area where India is stronger and will continue to be so for a long time. India is banking on its open society, its lead in higher education, and its relative advantage in English. We are profoundly mistaken if we think that this will keep us ahead of China. Already, in an intellectual field that we thought we had a comfortable lead in, namely International Relations, we have fallen behind.

As Amit notes elsewhere, India and China seem to be able to come to terms with each other in economic cooperation.:

Indian and Chinese oil firms will sign agreements aimed at bidding jointly for foreign oil and gas projects and reducing cut-throat competition, a top Indian official told Reuters on Tuesday.
The energy-hungry Asian giants, which have stretched global supplies and contributed to the record rise in oil prices, are competing for stakes in foreign oil and gas projects to secure supplies.

Also at the Indian Economist, Reuben Abraham notes that India is making major progress in the pharmaceutical industry, securing the second-highest number of patents after the US.

Blogs are becoming a business in China, soon your blog may be outsourced!

I lived in Singapore for five years. It usually passes for a normal country. But it has its quirks. One is that the state media is occasionally as blatant as the North Korean Central News Agency in its obsequiousness. For example, here is Channel News Asia’s apprasial of the presidential ‘election’ where the People’s Action Party disqualified all but one candidate.

But this time around, Mr Nathan will emerge an even stronger winner backed by a sterling six-year track record, where he served with distinction and won the hearts and support of Singaporeans from all walks of life.

Jacob at Omeka Na Huria has other thoughts.

Imagethief has a message for the China Daily: Cell phones do not attract lightning! (see bottom paragraph of this Snopes item).

Tokyo is having a property bubble.

Kenny Sia has set up an app for translating websites into Benglish.

Malaysian plantation owners are denying any complicity in causing the haze.

OneFreeKorea has a roundup of Liberation Day, a date that will live in irony.

 

Over 100 small explosives have been reported detonated across Bangladesh, Channel News Asia is reporting.:

A total of 111 explosions occurred near bus and train stations, courts and administrative buildings, various police officials said, adding they appear to have been caused by small, homemade devices.
Police in some affected cities said leaflets - apparently from a recently banned Islamic extremist group calling for the implementation of Islamic law - were found near the scene of the blasts.
Some were written in Arabic and others in Bangla.
"There are bomb blasts all over the country. We have reports of some injuries but no fatalities yet," said Abdul Kaiyum, Bangladesh’s Inspector General of Police.
In addition to Dhaka and Chittagong, police reported nine explosions in the southern town of Barisal and at least six in the southwestern town of Khulna.
Police chiefs in 11 other towns and districts reported a further 61 blasts.

The report does not mention any casualties.

UPDATE: Rezwan has more.

The Big Yuan points to a profile on China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan, noting the increased influence of the People’s Bank of China and how the governor is being groomed for higher office.

Zhou has an engineering degree from Beijing Chemical Engineering Institute and a doctorate in economic engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to the central bank’s Web site. He speaks fluent English and is the first central bank chief with a doctorate degree.
Zhou began advocating step-by-step changes toward a fully convertible yuan as a means to promote economic growth, says Guan, the lawyer. In academic journals in 1995, he wrote that the first move should be to give trading companies and "weak" industries like steel making greater access to foreign exchange, Guan says.
"Many people felt the yuan should be free-floated but disagreed on how it was to be done," Guan says. "Zhou’s voice was a pioneer in the debate back then."

Further illustrating the governor’s rise, Simon points to a Jamestown Foundation brief on China’s bank bailout, which notes that the PBoC - and thereby Zhou - is now running the show.:

With the formation of Huijin, however, the PBOC stands to regain substantial clout in the appointment arena. Huijin itself is directly answerable to the Central Leading Group on Reforming State-Owned Commercial Bank, and the person running the daily affairs of the Leading Group is none other than Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the PBOC. Moreover, most of Huijin’s management comes from the PBOC/SAFE bureaucracy and dares not anger Zhou Xiaochuan. As Huijin becomes a majority shareholder of an increasing number of financial institutions, it can weaken if not deprive altogether the appointment power of rival agencies.

Not everyone is pleased about the PBoC’s increasing influence, as the Jamestown brief author notes on his blog, the National Development & Reform Commission isn’t happy. Logan Wright has more.

Survived Sars also points to a People’s Daily item on China’s potentially slowing export growth.:

Second, export growth is likely to see a remarkable slowdown in the
second half year, which will impose heavy pressure on the economic
growth in the short term. It will be seen in two aspects: first,
industrial growth to be pulled down, leading to falling employment
growth and slowed GDP growth; second, slowed growth of the production
of export goods combined with accelerated release of the output
capacity of products in excessive supply constitute greater pressure of
deflation. These will not impose a big impact on China’s economy in the
long run. Favorably, slowed export growth will force domestic
enterprises to improve the quality of their products for export and
their performance.

Software piracy isn’t really hurting Microsoft in China, Tyler Rooker argues, because it is preventing the emergence of domestic competition.:

…from one point of view, is that by continuing piracy, Microsoft is able to sustain its monopoly in China. There are no Chinese operating systems. There are none even in the works. Why? Because they will be pirated as well. Piracy undercuts Microsoft but it also undercuts would-be Chinese entrepreneurs who could (undoubtably) create a Chinese proprietary operating system that could sell for 200 yuan ($25). That is the threshold price that would keep Chinese entrepreneurs profitable and return their investment costs. But why doesn’t Kingsoft, the Microsoft of China, attempt it? Piracy.
Piracy, in the case of China, does take profit from Microsoft. But I would argue that Microsoft also benefits, and even profits (as the proverb predicts) from piracy. Without piracy, 100 operating systems, like Chairman Mao’s flowers, would bloom. They would undercut and eventually end Microsoft’s monopoly over the operating systems.

At the Globalization Institute blog, a reports that European retailers are being punished by the EU’s protectionism.

The Wall Street Journal today reports that some European retailers are being left stranded without clothes they have paid for thanks to EU quotas on textiles:

In June, countries with large textile industries, led by Italy, pressed for and got a quota to restrain the impact of a huge surge in imports that followed the removal of global trade barriers on textiles in January. However, the quota for trousers and sweaters already was filled by August, leaving some European retailers without clothing they had paid for. Since then, nations in northern Europe with large retailers have protested.

The European Commission has no business interfering with the textiles trade. In a year supposed to be about making poverty history, it seems odd that the EU should protecting Italian and French special interests at the expense of the world’s poor - and at the expense of European consumers, too.

Brad DeLong posts a review of a book on economic change in pre-Communist China (1900-1950).

Finally, the World Bank has joined the growing consensus that the Chinese economy will see a slowdown in 2006 (Bloomberg, Xinhua via CDT). The full report can be accessed here.

Ben Muse notes that 80% of China’s oil has to travel from the Malacca Strait. Noting that the nation would be at risk from a conflict with India or an incident in the Straits would be a problem. This should be an area of mutual concern for the US and China. The former has long been arguing with Malaysia and Indonesia that Straits security is a global concern. Only Singapore has agreed to allow non-littoral states to engage in anti-piracy patrols.

Via BoingBoing, Piracy kills creativity.

In China, even cats know kung fu.

An editor at the China Youth Daily has written an open letter blasting new appraisal regulations that erode editorial freedom. ESWN translates. That an 26-year veteran editor of a Communist Youth League-owned paper should be openly criticising moves to create a more dogmatic paper is impressive. But Ian Lamont at Harvard Extended  notes that the desire for press freedom by Chinese journalists isn’t new.:

Kelly Haggart, on Chinese journalists during and after Tiananmen:
"There is pride among Beijing journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. … For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction." [page 50]

 

The Eclectic Econoclast points to a site offering Suduko-generating software. Wikipedia notes that the Japanese number puzzle has this year gained global popularity.

If Shappell Corby, the Aussie tourist  sentenced to 20 years in a Balinese prison for drug smuggling, is released on appeal… she could be in the money.:

Men’s magazines will rush to sign-up Schapelle Corby for a raunchy photo shoot if she is freed. And the convicted drug smuggler could earn up to $500,000 for a sexy bikini shoot, according to reports.
FHM magazine has revealed Corby polled strongly in its 100 hottest women vote but editors decided against including the former beauty student, fearing a public backlash.
"At the time she was on trial and potentially could have been executed . . . so it may have been in slightly poor taste," FHM editor John Bastick was quoted as saying in The Courier Mail.

Brand New Malaysian points to the hazards of overplanning photo sessions.:

How corny does that look? At best, it shows the over-enthusiasm of this senior academic to portray, perhaps how attached and devoted he is to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as to put the book on a pedestal.
At worst, he comes off looking like a brown-nosing hypocrite that set up the placement of the book for the photography session.

Japan isn’t just importing cheap manufactured goods from China, Japundit notes that New Tokyo has imported a beach.

The Marmot doesn’t trust a new poll that finds South Koreans would overwhelmingly side with the North .

The survey by Gallup Korea of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989 also found a marked shift in attitude to North Korea and the South’s traditional ally, the U.S. Some 65.9 percent responded they would take North Korea’s side if it was at war with the U.S., while 21.8 percent said South Korea must stand with the U.S. and the rest were undecided.

Singaporean scientists have invented a device that could help solve China’s chronic power shortages. With 1.3 billion people here there is a lot of urine that could power this device.

Taiwan’s first iPod-related crime almost sparks a diplomatic incident.:

A 12-year-old girl tried to threaten her friend to get her iPod back, but accidentally dialed the Swaziland ambassador. The kind ambassador has decided to forgive the twerp who called her up in the middle of the night. Lucky for that girl it was the Swaziland ambassador she accidentally called, and not the ambassador from a certain Central American nation that bitched me out in front of everyone at a Far Eastern Hotel cocktail reception once.

A look at representations of aboriginals in Taiwanese baseball, and the origins of the image on the 500 Taiwan dollar note.

Arms Control Wonk notes that reports of the number of Chinese-government front companies operating in the US are consistently overestimated.

The existence of “3,000 Chinese front companies” is one the most persistent claims about China floating around. The number is often attributed to the FBI, but as far as I can tell that’s wrong too. Or it used to be.

Finally, scientists have determined what an average Korean looks like.

ThaRum has an excellent post on Cambodia’s emerging blogosphere.

James Hamilton at Econobrowser takes a look at the supply-demand imbalance in China’s oil market.:

Chief among the questions here are: (1) how could Chinese oil demand have grown 17% in 2004 despite a 35% increase in the price of crude oil; (2) how could this demand growth suddenly be reduced to a 1.4% growth rate in the first half of 2005 despite real output growth continuing at 9.5%; and (3) what do these trends imply is going to happen to Chinese oil demand over the next year?

In the wake of Baidu’s blistering IPO and Yahoo!’s big deal with Alibaba, The Big Yuan takes a look at China’s new media companies. Meanwhile, Fons notes a potential cultural and legal clash of intellectual property rights, pointing to a nicely titled Forbes article: ‘Alibaba’s Thieves threaten Yahoo.‘ DotCom-bust survivor Imagethief is experiencing Deja Vu:

There is no mistake so colossal, so notorious, that people won’t make it again. In fact, the opposite is probably true. The bigger, the balder, the more idiotic the situation, the more likely it is to be repeated. How else to explain that China is whipping up Internet speculation frenzy version 2.0?
I lived through the first one. I started doing professional Internet work in 1995, joined an e-commerce firm in 1997 (in Singapore) and rode the rise and fall of the bubble. The day the CFO took me through my stock option letter is gouged into my memory. “You’re going to be a millionaire,” he told me, after walking me through the numbers in a meeting in 1999. Richard Li had put US$25 million into our company, and the investment bankers were sniffing around. So I believed I was going to be rich. We all did.
I can say with total authority that, to this day, I am not rich. Nor are any of my ex-colleagues from that company. We went from 220 people to 10 in a heartbeat. I remember; I fired forty of them myself.

Logan Wright says that pressure for China to further revalue will continue, noting that the 2.1% revaluation hasn’t placated DC’s lobbyists.:

A coalition committed to maintaining a strong U.S. industrial base today released data reflecting that China has managed to maintain a flat exchange rate following the People’s Bank of China’s long-awaited July 21 announcement of a change in currency policy. The
change, involving a minuscule 2% appreciation of the yuan and the adoption of a basket of unidentified currencies to determine the yuan’s value, potentially incorporated a flexibility mechanism that could steadily increase the value of the yuan over time to a level that would reflect underlying economic fundamentals.

Thomas Barnett spots the buried lead on China’s revaluation, the end of Bretton Woods II.:

In effect, the emerging markets of Developing Asia had, by and large, replicated the same sort of currency stabilization strategy that America used in its post-WWII resurrection of the West (better to peg than to float).
Most economies there had, by now, moved off strict pegs and allow some level of controlled float. With China joining that dynamic, the synchronization of Asia’s internal economic rule sets with the global economy’s growing rule set will be accelerated.
In many ways, this is a real tipping point in Asia’s progressive integration with globalization’s more mature Functioning Core of the West. In effect, Asia reached the point of diminishing returns with that pegged strategy, meaning it achieved a level of economic development in which more control is to be had through allowing the currency to float than keeping it fixed, presuming the economy has the necessary institutions needed to offset that float dynamic. Done well, your economy will self-correct better, avoiding either overheating or hard landings.

The Times of India has picked up, and hyped, the Business Week series on India and China, with an article titled "India is a better model than China." Gerald Hibbs suggests the article is a touch too optimistic from the Indian perspective.:

Alright, now the guy did qualify this statement as “over time”, that slack being cut let me state that this is pure piffle. At the beginning of the 20th century America had 70% of its workforce working in agriculture by the 21st century that figure had dropped to less than 1%. China is still sowing and reaping by hand (peasants’ hands) and has a huge backlog of people who can’t wait to leave the farm and go to the city to lead the “noble life” as the magazines portray it. Add in that China is just beginning to utilize all the talent of Chinese women who are taking the colleges by storm. Sure, sure. . .over time. But that time is a long way off.

Is Taiwan a renegade province, independent country or a US protectorate?

… Japan renounced its sovereignty over Taiwan, but did not turn over that sovereignty to either the PRC in Beijing or the ROC in Taiwan. Neither the PRC nor the ROC were invited to the San Francisco treaty conference, and neither was a signatory to the treaty.
This means that the USMG remained the sovereign legal authority in Taiwan. Article 4(b) of the treaty states this in recognizing the authority of "the United States Military Government in any of the areas referred to in Articles 2 and 3," as does Article 23(a) recognizing "the United States of America as the principal occupying Power."
This treaty is still in effect. In the opinion of a number of scholars of international law, Taiwan is neither a province of China over which the PRC has legitimate sovereignty, nor is Taiwan a sovereign state of itself. It is, rather, an overseas territory of the U.S.

In South Korea, video games have been linked to two deaths.

The Communist Party of China have banned Sister Furong. XiaXue won’t miss the competition, though an alliance would benefit the Sister more than a competition. She could do with more of Wendy’s  photoshopping.

The long-delayed Khmer Rouge trials may soon begin, and they will be blogged.

There’s an in-house argument at Coming Anarchy as Curzon reacts to Chirol’s earlier post on North Korea. Curzon says, Nuke it!

Meanwhile some in South Korea have started to act more French. On top of appeasing, now there is a move to rid the language of Japanese cognates.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister was assassinated on Saturday. Munir at Diplomatic Review and Manish at Sepia Mutiny wonder if the Tamil Tigers have returned to their old ways.

But if Sri Lanka returns to war, perhaps we will be fortunate that Aceh, Indonesia, may finally find peace.:

A Leap of Faith That’s the peace accord between the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed today in Helsinki. The deal centers on a decommissioning of the GAM rebel movement, in exchange for participation in the political process, and a withdrawal of the Indonesian army and police forces from the troubled region, to be completed by the end of the year.

Not everyone is happy about the new agreement, Gateway Pundit reports on protests in Jakarta over the fact that the peace deal provides for peacekeepers.

Indonesian protesters raise their fists as they shout ‘Allahuakbar!’ (God is great) during a protest in Jakarta, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2005. Hundreds of Muslims staged the rally rejecting the presence of non-Muslim countries, especially the United States and European Union, in the troubled province of Aceh to participate in the monitoring of the peace accord between the government and the separatist rebels which will be signed in Finland on Monday.

Yes, yes, in conservative majority-Muslim Indonesia protests can be expected from the Islamists, they even protested the "Miss Waria Indonesia 2005" contest. (Agam’s Gecko via FriskoDude).

So the other night, #7 was a story on "Miss Waria Indonesia 2005". And
I thought to myself, "Wow, those are some brave girls… er, guys." For
you see, waria in Indonesia is the same as kathoey in Thailand — although for obvious reasons, not as generally well accepted as part of the local fauna. The word waria
– in line with the Indonesian propensity for making new words out of
cryptic abbreviations for any and everything — is a combination of wanita (woman) and pria
(man). In Thailand, the transvestite cabaret shows are very popular
with locals and tourists alike. Huge venues like Calypso and Alcazar
are world famous for their shows, and are packed every night. For many
foreign visitors, attending a "ladyboy" cabaret is a must-do when in
the Kingdom. They are really quite amazing.

But, protesting ladyboy contests are expected, threatening to boycott Proctor & Gamble because they use this hottie as a model is just plain weird.

But no matter how odd nationalist Chinese netizens can be,

the Japanese can be even stranger (not porn, but nsfw).

Bruce at Naruwan Formosa brings us an Aussie open letter to China’s Premier Hu Jintao.

It seems that China continues to try to emulate Singapore, it’s testing out a state-sponsored matchmaking program for the PLA.

Single 25 year old officer looking for politically reliable, progressive thinking woman of upright conduct to be lawfully wedded spouse. Must be 23 years or older and prepared for extra one week holiday to celebrate our union.
Please apply immediately to my unit’s commissar.

 

In an effort to make up for any disturbance the katooey pic may have caused, I feel obliged to include another photo of an actual woman. The Sarong Party Girl is featured in an interview at Capital Region People (via Tomorrow.sg).

This may be a first, the Wanabe Lawyer has fisked a podcast.:

The ‘podcast’ starts off with a rant against the PAP, using the same old accusations and assertions that attempts to stir up anger and hate. The really funny part was when CSJ immediately went on to claim that they would offer alternative policy proposals, rather than just criticising the PAP, because ‘they believe in being constructive’.
I believe these proposals are rubbish, and I will explain why, and thus provide the reasons why I hold the SDP with particular disdain.

For Indian readers Happy National Day! For Koreans, Happy Liberation Day! Remember, .

 

Constructive reading via Howard French, a Foreign Affairs item called “The Myth behind China’s Miracle.”

Washington need not worry about China’s economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world’s exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing’s one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West.

On a related note, Simon points to a letter in this week’s Economist noting that the magazine was guilty of serious hyperbole in saying that China rules the world.:

SIR - You propagate the canard that, economically, China now rules the world ("From T-shirts to T-bonds", July 30th). It does nothing of the kind. In real dollar terms (purchasing-power parity valuations are at best controversial, at worst misleading) China has made a continuously declining contribution to global GDP growth from 10% of the total growth registered in 2001 to an estimated 6% in 2004-its share of real global GDP was an estimated 2.2% for 2004. There is also some quantitative flaw in your argument that cheap Chinese exports kept global inflation down, as China’s share of global trade (an estimate unencumbered by PPP considerations) stood at 6.6% of global exports and 6.2% of global imports in 2004.
It is the speed of the rise of China’s share in global economic and trade flows, as well as the growth of its demand for commodities, that has obscured the fact that China consumes, for example, less than 10% of the global output of oil. So what is truly special about China? Its average position in the scheme of things is still very small, although its absolute speed of growth and its opening economy are a harbinger of growth to come. But all of this is a far cry from controlling the world economy.

Great discussion at the Becker-Posner blog on the risks that Chinese ownership of US companies may bring through  several  posts . Here Gary Becker outlines a possible benefit, Chinese investment on the US may limit - rather than increase - security risks.:

Chinese ownership of American companies may not be sufficiently important "hostages" to discourage a military attack on Taiwan or elsewhere. But the point I tried to make on this issue is that China, not America, bears the economic risk from ownership of American assets, since these assets would be taken over by the US in the event of any military conflict, the way German assets in the US were taken over during world War II.
There is evidence, in studies by Solomon Polochek and others, that trade does reduce the probability of conflict between nations, but many other factors are also relevant. So a few examples are not decisive, whether they go in one direction or another. I believe that even the quantitative studies by Polochek and others are far from decisive, but they are the best we have so far.

With a merger of Anshan Iron & Steel Group Co Ltd and Benxi Iron & Steel Group confirmed, the Business China blog reproduces a Xinhua item in which an industry representative argues the necessity of consolidation for the industry in China.:

Although the prices stabilized to some extent recently, Yang maintained that the industry was still facing a gloomy future, predicting that the small and less competitive manufacturers would be put into a tight corner.
So it is urgent for them to be regrouped with bigger and stronger ones, Yang noted.
In addition, many international iron and steel producers have invested heavily in the country’s industry over the past years.

At Destructonomics, a look at what China’s growing grain shortage may mean for global commodity markets.:

…it’s rather remarkable that China’s been able to feed 20% of the world’s population with 7% of the world’s arable land for as long as they have. However, the dynamic has now changed as China’s production is now lower than consumption. China’s economy is in transition. As a result of this growth, China will simultaneously be growing less grain and consuming more.

It was a positive for free trade that the Bush administration was able to secure approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (Cafta), but it will be a negative for China’s textile producers. The Big Yuan says it’s payback time.:

Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., said he changed from opposing the free trade deal with six Latin American countries to supporting it because of commitments the administration had made to provide relief to the U.S. textile industry. “Not until the administration said it would work with the industry on the issue of exploding imports from China was I able to support (CAFTA).”
The administration has been handling quotas on a category by category basis since a comprehensive trade deal ended last Jan. 1, but China is currently on pace to export $24 billion of textiles to the U.S. (a 60% increase over 2005).
From the article: Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, said he estimated that a comprehensive agreement limiting a broad array of Chinese clothing imports could raise U.S. clothing prices by $6 billion annually, or about $20 for every American. Consumers have been benefiting from falling clothing prices over the past year, reflecting a big surge in cheaper-priced Chinese products.

Sun Bin argues that China has an advantage over India in that it’s more of a meritocracy (due to the absence of a caste system), and one where women have greater opportunity to work.:

Fair play is the fundamental of capitalism. China is still far from perfect, it is hardly the model for fair play. Singapore is. There are so much more that China needs to do. But China learns about fair play very fast and practices it better than other developing countries. The unfairness in India and those other countries is so enormous that it makes China looks like a saint. Such unfairness is sociological and cultural, rather than political or policy driven.

On a related note, Barbarian Envoy
points to an excellent Business Week series of articles from its newest
edition on China and India and offers summaries of several notable items.

Logan Wright notes that China is getting serious about possible inflation, or is at least talking about it.:

Lin Yifu, director of China Center for Economic Research (CCER)of Beijing University, said that owing to the overproduction in most manufacturing sectors since 1998 and the to-be-overcapacity from over-investment in some sectors in 2003 and 2004, China is expected to see deflation caused by overcapacity in the latter half of 2005.
    Evident deflation is apparent to appear in the fourth quarter this year, said Wang Jian, deputy secretary general for the Economic Research Institute under State Development and Reform Commission, predicting overcapacity to take place likely in 2007.
So deflation in the latter half of 2005, or the latter half of 2007, or never.  One interesting fact is that Chinese economists are now repeating the "overcapacity" mantra more frequently than before; maybe they’re just reading Andy Xie and trying to sound cool for their domestic media, but maybe the problem is more fundamental and structural, and it’s become okay to talk about it publicly, to shift the balance of domestic priorities toward controlling the problem.

The Lost Nomad, Jodi at Asia Pages and others are reporting that in South Korea blogs hosted on Typepad and Blogger are not accessible. Nomad writes:

This
is odd.  I can’t get to any of the blogspot or typepad blogs.  Well,
none of the typepad blogs that use "typepad.com" in the URL…the
typepad blogs that use the "blogs.com" are working ok.

In China, Typepad blogs that have the "blogs.com" extension are blocked while "typepad.com" sites are available. I expect this means that Asiapundit, a domain-mapped Typepad site, has now been blocked in South Korea.

South Korea had blocked blog sites in 2004 to prevent the download a video showing the beheading of Kim Sun-il, who had been killed by terrorists in Iraq.

Comments on Jodi’s site indicate that this isn’t nationwide, so we can hope that it’s just a glitch.

Thailand has allowed gays in the military… and ladyboys! No word yet on what changes this will mean for the uniforms, but I expect stilettos.

Japundit looks at Koizumi’s dissolution of the Lower House. Good news, it’s looking less like a suicide and more like a showdown.

This article from the Daily Mainichi reports on the latest polls, revealing that support for his Cabinet has climbed 9 percentage points to 46 percent. It is not uncommon for the LDP to do well in elections despite a Cabinet approval rating of less than 50 percent, and these polls show a substantial upswing. Voters also supported Koizumi’s decision to dissolve the Diet by a margin of 54 percent to 36 percent.

John Ziemba has more, plus an item on China’s militaristic past.:

A former Secretary General of Taiwan’s National Security Council reports that South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun made the following comment to George W Bush in June.  From RealClear Politics:

During his visit to the US in June, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun told  President Bush that China had invaded Korea over 100 times in history. His remarks shocked China, which views itself as the victim of invasions (most humiliatingly, by the Japanese) and has forgotten its own history of bullying its neighbors.

The Lost Nomad reports that South Korea has not fallen under the spell of the iPod.:

The iPod may dominate the MP3 player market in almost every country in the world, but one nation is holding out against Apple’s onslaught.
Yes, South Korea, home of a number of contenders to the iPod’s title, favours local product over all that ‘designed in California’ stuff.
According to market watcher GfK’s Korean subsidiary, Apple’s share of the South Korean MP3 player market is a mere 1.8 per cent - enough to put it in 13th place.

 

At China Era, the last chapter in a six-part essay "The Rise of a New Power":

For all its talk about market magic, China’s overpopulated state sector is a massive job bank compared with western governments, which leaves some of the Beijing’s byzantine ministries woefully inefficient. One Indian software supplier, for instance, tried to sell the Chinese government a program to automate parts of the state-owned railroad industry, which employs 20 million people. The idea flopped. "Greater efficiency creates a social problem," explains an executive for a major American software company. "Yes, 20 million are inefficient, but a more efficient system lops off heads."

Sun Bin offers a fine extended post on the Yuan’s guidance basket and an illuminating item on China’s distorted oil prices:

The gasoline prices are RMB4.14-4.62/liter in a middle tier city like Chongqing on Jul23 (after the RMB revaluation), for RON 90-97 (Research Octane Number, corresponding to Pump Octane Number PON 87-93 in US); Using conversion factors of 1Gallon=3.785L and 1USD=8.11RMB, the gasoline prices translate into USD1.93-2.16/Gallon
According to eia.doe.gov, average price in US is US$2.289/Gallon on July 25th
If we factor in the un-tradable cost in operating a retail gas station, we could say the prices are pretty much the same in these two countries
The lack of competition should mean higher retail price and less efficient operation, which might have annihilate any cost gap in labor and rent costs
This means China, being a country of much less access to oil fields domestically and internationally and one that car travel is not a survival essential as in US, is as generous as US in oil tax/etc. It surely has one of the lowest price for oil for a net importer.

Again, the next time someone mentions that China’s environmental regulations are better than those of the US, remember to mention that China subsides the use of fossil fuels.

And that includes Coal:

Meanwhile the death toll (from mining disasters) continues to rise, while people such as me benefit from cheap power, 2/3 of which comes from coal. I figure my wife and I pay about 1200 yuan a year for electricity in Beijing, or about $150 bucks. And we have a big fridge and TV, air conditioning and a washer/dryer. In Singapore I typically had US$100 monthly bills. Singapore had to import all its energy, and I’d expect prices there to be higher for other reasons as well.

China’s economy in 2005 is not what it was in 2000.:

China always has depended on export-led growth.   It is a core reason why China has been so successful.  China is just trying to hold on to the core of its success in the face of political pressure from Washington DC
China always has saved a lot.  It is cultural - all of East Asia saves a lot.
I hear those arguments a lot.
I think they miss a key point.  Even by Chinese standards, China is now exceptionally dependent on exports.  Exports are now about twice as large a share of China’s GDP as they were in 2000.  And even by Chinese standards, China now saves a lot.  By my calculations, savings are up by more 15% of GDP relative to 2000.

The Big Yuan has further reaction to the aborted CNOOC bid for Unocal, including this noteworthy quote.:

From the article: One executive summed up how some in the oil industry felt about political involvement. Lee Raymond, chief executive for Exxon Mobil, said early in the takeover battle that it would be a big mistake” for Congress to interfere with the Cnooc bid because it might backfire for American companies seeking to do business abroad. “If you start to put inefficiencies in the system, then all of us pay for that,” Raymond said.

Simon has further updates on China’s currency basket, something that David Atig calls another step forward,

Via India Uncut, a Hindustan Times item on defeating Maoists with pizza and Pepsi:

The extremist Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), which has virtually ruled the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh in southcentral India for 15 years, is fighting to save its fiefdom against a gastronomic offensive by the state government.
For the first time since the early 1990s when Maoists gained ground in Kanker, Bastar and Dantewada districts, the rebels have been facing a serious revolt thanks to the pizza and Pepsi showered by the home department in poverty-stricken Maoist bastions.
And it is working far better than the various strategies and millions of rupees invested in tackling the menace. So much so that the home department is trying to increase the supply of these fast food favourites heavily in the forest belt.

Imagine, Danwei is a Beijing based blog that covers media and advertising in China. A few decades ago there wouldn’t even be advertising in China. I guess that means that the Cultural Revolution is finally over.

Ian lamont at Harvard Extended steps away from media content research to muse about history.

“In every decade since the communist victory in 1949, China has been shaken by an unforeseen political upheaval.”- Robin Porter’
As a student of modern Chinese history, I have long believed that a similar pattern has existed, but for far longer: Since the late Qing, China has experienced local or widespread upheavals caused by a variety of domestic and external factors. Starting in 1900, and up until 1989, China has experienced a major upheaval affecting multiple urban areas and/or provinces about every 10 to 25 years. In 1900 it was the Boxer Rebellion. In 1911, the Republican revolution. In 1930s, civil war and the Japanese invasion. In the late 1940s, the Communists coming to power. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath. In the mid-1960s, the Cultural Revolution. In 1989, student protests in Tiananmen and other major cities.

A joint truth commission for East Timor and a pullout of troops in Aceh, perhaps Indonesia’s military is finally slipping into peace mode. Or perhaps not.

Tom Legg has good coverage of the situation surrounding Ching Cheong, the Straits Times journalist charged by China for alleged spying.

The Haze has prompted Malaysia’s government to declare states of emergency in select areas. Jeff Ooi says AFP seems to have jumped the gun.

points to a chasity campaign that seems to involve kidnapping.:

Concerned social organizations have announced a campaign to guard the chastity of teenagers at holiday resorts along Korea’s East Coast. The conservative groups including Hwalbindan, the Korea Dokdo Green Movement and the Senior Citizens Association of Jumunjin, Gangwon Province have been prowling beaches and entertainment places since Aug. 6 with the slogan, "Lose your virginity in a moment’s carelessness and immoderate merrymaking, regret it for the rest of your life."
At night, they plan to snatch girls seen drinking with strangers in the entertainment districts of downtown Sokcho and Gangneung from the teeth of disaster.

A true rarity, a protest in Singapore. (UPDATE 21:35) That didn’t last long:

SINGAPORE, (AFP) - Riot
police broke up a rare demonstration by four people demanding greater
transparency and accountability in Singapore’s state-managed pension
fund and other government-linked agencies.
A
dozen anti-riot police wearing helmets and knee-high protective gear
and carrying shields and batons formed a phalanx outside the offices of
the Central Provident Fund (CPF) as a commanding officer approached the
demonstrators.

Could there be a potential military alliance between India and Taiwan in the cards?

"Apart from its manufacturing and
hardware might, Taiwan is strategically important for India as it
controls the Itu Aba otherwise called the Taiping Island. The island
can have military installations and forward bases. The Indian Navy can
only operate with the help of Taiwan to conduct exercises", says Dr
Kondapalli.
Indian strategic experts feel Taiwan has the best intelligence on
China. "India doesn’t know anything about China. There may be a handful
who know about China in India. And Taiwan is the only way through which
we can know about China. This realization has dawned on the Indian
establishment", says a retired senior intelligence officer.

Via the Tanuki Ramble an insightful Spiegel interview with Asia’s smartest statesman Lee Kwan-yew, touching on the coming collapse of North Korea, the coming collapse of Germany’s social contract and China’s military threat to the US.:

Their modernisation is just a drop in the ocean. Their objective
is to raise the level of damage they can deliver to the Americans if they
intervene in Taiwan. Their objective is not to defeat the Americans, which
they cannot do. They know they will be defeated. They want to weaken the
American resolve to intervene. That is their objective, but they do not want to attack Taiwan.

 

This speech by Richard Fisher, president and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve, is one of the most cited in the English language Sinoblogosphere today. With good reason, it’s one of the finest presentations on the benefits of Chinese economic growth I’ve seen and it avoids pitfalls about the ‘China threat.’ Read the whole thing.

…even if China were to reach the knowledge-driven rung on the income ladder of nations, there is no reason to assume that China will overtake the United States in size and influence. Do the math. Were China to keep growing at 9 percent and the U.S. to keep growing at, say, 3.5 percent, it would take them nearly four decades to catch us in terms of GDP.
Thirty-eight years to be exact, starting from their base of $1,300 in per capita GDP (the Little China view) and ours of $40,000. It would take 83 years if their growth slowed to an average rate of 6 percent, well over a century if it slowed to 5 percent, a more probable trajectory for growth. Even then, it’s not certain to happen. Remember that Japan grew much faster than us for three decades after World War II, then slowed as it converged to U.S. per capita GDP levels. Same for Germany, same for Korea. There’s a good reason for that. It’s one thing to run down the path already cut by the leader, a whole other one to become the leader yourself.
If you’re not willing to eliminate protectionism, reduce red tape and regulation, encourage free markets for capital as well as goods and services, live by the rule of law, punish public corruption and corporate malfeasance, if you’re not willing to let old jobs go by the wayside and otherwise unleash the competitive forces that make an economy nimble, you won’t keep pace with the leaders.

China has revealed the currencies, but not the weightings, for its guidance basket for the yuan. Simon has a great roundup, and also asks:

At the same time the PBoC have liberalised financial markets, allowing more participants in the spot forex market, introducing interbank forex forwards and allowed the trading of yuan swaps. Below the fold is a Reuters article on these changes. But at the same time, the PBoC announced it is tightening its supervision to ensure a "stable, orderly market". Liberalising with one hand, but tighter supervision with the other. How can you tighten supervision when previously the market was Government controlled or banned?

Huawei Technologies is offering $1 billion for Marconi, while I disagreed with the ’security threat’ assessments over CNOOC’s bid for Unocal, HK Dave notes that there may be greater reasons for worries with this bid:

Marconi has a rich history of not only being in the telecommunications business, but being a major contractor over the years for defense industries - its employees played crucial roles in defeating the Nazis in World War II. Its founder, in fact, invented the radio. And today, Marconi sells as part of its product line the Ovum-RHK series of networking encryption technology used by the US military and its intelligence agencies. So what, you might ask? Well, here’s the problem - Huawei Technologies was spun off from the People’s Liberation Army.

Via China Digital Times, the FEER is this month offering a must-read item from economist Stephen Greene which argues that - should reforms be effective - China may produce the next Alan Greenspan.:

So, here are three questions: First, why does monetary policy not work that well in China at present? Second, is the pegged exchange rate really causing the authorities serious monetary problems, as standard macroeconomic theory predicts? And what will a China with “free” interest rates and a more flexible currency look like?

China’s two-percent solution to demands that it revalue hasn’t placated critics in the US Congress, but the Treasury seems pleased:

Yesterday I posted about a renewed congressional push to impose flat tarrifs on Chinese imports, and today the Treasury Department officially announced that they approve of the method that China is using to value its currency.
The Washington Post quotes Tim Adams, Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, “I think you have to argue that the change in currency regime is a significant step and one of which is the beginning of a long-term process which I think is appreciated in this building and is probably appreciated more on the Hill (Congress) than many want to admit.”

The Paper Tiger looks at China’s energy crisis and how it is in part due to decades of communism.:

Making steel in China in 2003 consumed 10 percent more energy per unit than in the United States, according to state statistics. China’s electrical generators consume one-fifth more energy per unit of output than American plants, said Long Weiding, an expert at Tongji University in Shanghai. Chinese air conditioners — now the fastest-growing draw on power — are roughly one-fifth less efficient than the world average, Long said.

The reason for this striking wastefulness is "the hybrid nature of its economy, which is caught between its communist roots and a free-market future, experts say. More and more of the demand for energy comes from companies that operate on market principles, but the majority of the supply is generated by state-owned monopolies forged in the time of central planning and with little incentive to increase efficiency."

(UPDATE 19:25) Bill Bishop has some good analysis of the one-billion-dollar Yahoo Alibaba deal:

Yahoo is now the most entrenched US media company in China. Forget Viacom, Disney, Time Warner and News Corp and their small deals for programming sales and the like. Yahoo, which in the end is a direct competitor of those guys, has done a much more comprehensive job of getting into China. What remains to be seen is whether the price they just paid was worth it, or whether they are just another Western company that got stuck with a China premium by a very savvy local operator. The Yahoo guys are very sharp too, so it must have been an interesting negotiation.
This deal is potentially disastrous for Ebay in China. Taobao was eating its lunch on a small budget; now they have the backing of Yahoo to ramp up their efforts several notches. Some people thought if things got really bad for Ebay they could always buy up Alibaba (Ebay is rumored to have offered Alibaba $1B a few months ago). Now that option is gone and there is not another auction player they can buy that would be meaningful. The Alibaba transaction may be the deal that leads Yahoo to ‘Japan-ning" Ebay again, this time in China.

Another Avian Flu Blog, H5N1, offers a look at computer modeling of how an epidemic may spread.

Both studies look at Thailand as the example source of an epidemic, in part because the Thai government has been more forthcoming with useful information than China and Vietnam (other locations of known human H5N1 infections), and in part because Thailand remains a hotbed of the virus. The Nature team took a case of a single rural resident of Thailand coming down with a human-transmissible form of H5N1, then calculated the patterns of infection across the nation. The results — visible in this movie (small .mov, larger .ram), with red representing flu cases and green representing locations where the disease has "burned through" the population — are sobering.

H5N1 also links to clips on how the plague could be controlled. Improvements in computer modeling  are fantastic. And even if we don’t face Armageddon, a pandemic option would be a great feature for any new Sid Meier game.

I recommend that the man in this photo get out of China as quickly as possible, he won’t be popular after this is transmitted through the SinoBlogosphere:

While it’s not clear if this is the gentleman in question, ESWN reports an Australian named Paul said, "I cannot believe that I would be on top of the Great Wall; and I can’t believe that I can piss a full load right
here."

Pissing on the only man-made object visible from space the Great Wall isn’t going to win you many Chinese friends, although Xinhua is remiss in labeling a rave an orgy. Still, if Binfeng is right the guy who couldn’t hold it may herald a new wave of Great Wall preservation.

On the China blogosphere, we are being watched. Andrea notes an SCMP item on a lecture given by CCTV’s producer Hu Yong.:

"The mainland’s internet police are keeping a wary eye on messages posted by its 5 million bloggers, although most of them use cyberspace as a channel to express their desire for individualism, according to a leading network expert from the mainland."

Chirol at Coming Anarchy takes a quick look at the threat from the nutty nuke-wielding, shorter-than-average guy with a really bad haircut, noting that Clinton cannot be blamed for the current crisis.:

I take a dim view of those on the right who tend to immediately and anachronistically blame him for problems occuring during the present administration. Though the North Koreans indeed renegged on their agreement, it should firstly not come as a surprise nor as unprecendented. The Soviets broke almost every agreement we had with them but it was still better to have some sort of framework than nothing.

Not a surprise indeed, North Korea has not only reneged on any military agreement, it reneges on every agreement! It is a serial violator of trade agreements, even with friendly states such as the former USSR and China, and is a defaulter on its debt. It’s a nasty rogue state and should be forced to stand in the corner until it collapses.

Speaking of Rogue States, good news for Asia, the continent does not feature a single nation in the top-10 of Foreign Policy’’s Failed States index. Plus only three nations cracked the top-20: Afghanistan at 11, North Korea at 13 and Bangladesh at 17. Burma/Myanmar comes in 23rd,

A twisted tale comes from India Uncut, apparently the Congress Party has a problem with press freedom, although they still try to get press coverage when they organize a mob to attack a publication.

The group that came to the first floor roughed up the watchman, broke open the door and charged in shouting on the top of their voices.
This group broke computer keyboards, yanked out phone wires and one of them had even held up a chair to throw at the publisher’s glass cabin.

And here’s the bit I find most remarkable:

Ironically, other press had also arrived at the Mid Day office with the Congress persons, giving the indication that the ruling party had called the media in advance to flaunt their cowardly act.

From Sepia Mutiny, a study that damns public health care.:

Although doctors love to tell you that they work out of a sense of seva, and that the quality of care has little to do with the fee structure, it simply isn’t true. Surprising as it seems, the researchers find that you’re better off with a less trained private doctor than a better trained public doctor. Why? Because the private doctors try harder.

While not strictly Asia related, IndCoup of Indonesia notes an Egyptian report that states that French Kissing and Doggie Style are inventions of Islam. If this is true, I completely forgive the religion for inventing calculus.

After a lawmaker is reported dead after voting against Japan Post privatization, Joi Ito recounts a disturbing conversation with chairman of broadcaster NHK:

I remember him telling me that half of the officially reported suicides were actually political murders/assassinations and that the corruption went all the way to the top. If I had heard this from anyone other than the chairman of the largest broadcaster, life-long political reporter and behind-the scenes kingmaker, I would have thought it was a stupid conspiracy theory

Rajan says that Malaysians who are upset about the haze should SMS Indonesian president SBY. Jeff Ooi has more on the Air Pollutant Index, which was banned for eight years because it damaged tourism.

The Lost Nomad reports that Mamon is alive and well on the Peninsula.

LG Electronics Inc., South Korea’s second-largest consumer electronics manufacturer, said Monday it has begun selling a new three-door refrigerator encrusted with about 4,900 crystals from Austria’s renowned crystal maker Swarovski.
Only 200 of the refrigerators, which are available in South Korea for 3.99 million won (US$3,934), will be sold, LG said in a statement.

I hate it when this happens. In Singapore, quite possibly the only first-world country that (embarrassingly) isn’t a democracy, the ruling People’s Action Party is again acting like Iran’s Guardian Council. Why? A challenger may emerge in the presidential election:

But not in Singapore though. Like in Ayatollah-ruled Iran, interested candidates must first be prequalified by unelected guardians of the faith (the PAP faith in Singapore’s case). Only safe candidates can be presented to voters.

In the Philippines, Sassy says pork-barrel politics must end.:

There’s this lawyers’ group called Lawyers against Monopoly and Poverty (LAMP) that filed a petition with the Supreme Court to declare as unconstitutional the appropriation of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, otherwise known as pork barrel funds–PhP 65 million for each member of the Lower House and PhP 200 for every senator, annually. The total is PhP 8.23 billion.
Why unconstitutional? Because the job of the Legislature is to legislate. The job of developing the countrysides, including infrastructure projects, properly belongs to the executive branch. The Constitution says that the three branches of government–executive, legislative and judiciary–shall be co-equal but separate. Therefore, if one branch encroaches upon the functions of another, there is a violation of the Constitution. Furthermore, the pork barrel funds “pet projects” of legislators and are a source of corruption.

Indeed, if Gloria is ousted, there should be a Sassy for President campaign.

 

It’s burning season again in Indonesia, with the smoke coming from plantation clearing making things difficult for residents of the country and its neighbors. Malaysia’s blogosphere is buzzing with reports of the haze.

Looking at Brand New Malaysian’s above photo makes me glad that I’m living far from Indonesia, up here in sunny Shanghai.

(Shanghai actually has clean air and almost blue skies today, likely an after effect of the recent typhoon. The above image is lifted from here.)

Via the Avian Flu Blog, a map (pdf) of poultry and pig concentration and possible avian flu transmission routes from migratory birds.

It’s Singapore’s national day, Daniel Drezner asks ‘how long Singapore can remain an outlier?’.

Whenever people start talking about the interrelationships between regime type, the rule of law, economic development, and political corruption, the outlier is always Singapore.
Think that economic development inexorably leads to freedom of the press? Hello, meet Singapore.
Think that authoritarianism automatically leads to corruption? Have you met Singapore?
Think that no government can plug its country into the Internet while still retaining a vast web of censorship.

The Swanker also offers a National Day post, along with a motivational poster that will not likely grace many Singapore government offices.:

The city state’s people are far more fun than its gahmen, as mr brown’s ‘One Singapore Minute‘ photo meme . And Singabloodypore’s mention of protest punks, blogs and gay pride should dispell some of that myth of a conservative culture.

Away from a 40-year old nation… in another step at preserving a 5,000-year-old culture, China will ban lip synching from September 1.

I have just run across the State Council’s Regulations on the Administration of For-Profit Performances (营业性演出管理条例),
issued July 7, 2005 and effective as of September 1, 2005. Among other
things, lip-synching is now prohibited, and punishable by a fine of up
to 100,000 yuan

Mei Zhong Tai is outraged that ex-Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui considers defense spending synonomous with a different sort of protection money. Michael Turton, the Budding Sinologist’s regular sparring partner, meanwhile ponders whether Lee is on crack.

A study in South Korea has come up with a rather obvious conclusion, long hours at the office result in less active sex lives.

Atanu Dei says Mother Teresa was no saint.

Sepia Mutiny ‘uncovers’ the world’s longest strip tease.

The Indian girls in Toronto are busy making big bucks with sari stripping. They wear sari to attract traditional clients from getting rich India and strips in front of them.

Industrialists, politicians, Bollywood directors, actors and
producers all are heading towards Toronto to experience this massive
display of Indian sex!

The number of girls involved in sari stripping and sex market exceeds hundreds. They speak fluent Canadian English, are brought up in Canada and have Indian heritage.

Arms Control Wonk takes a look at obstacles to the recent US-India agreement on nuclear cooperation.

As well as Singapore’s 40th, there’s another anniversary today. I posted on Hiroshima on Saturday, today Japundit remembers Nagasaki.

Also from Japan, a legal argument that it’s not indecent to masturbate on public transit.

There’s a lot of bloggage on Japan’s failed Post Office reforms and snap election that I won’t post about. Tak notes that Wikipedia has it all.

NK Zone has a superb wrap of the Six Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. At OneFreeKorea, ahead of the anniversary of the peninsula’s liberation the author ponders ingratitude.

Welcome to the first of what will be a semi-regular feature, a roundup of blogging on China’s economy.

Via China Digital Times, Robert Reich in the American Prospect warns that the US housing bubble is being fueled by Chinese money

Here’s where the China connection comes in. A major reason why mortgage rates have stayed low is that there’s a lot of money around. And much of that money has been coming from abroad. China and the rest of Asia have been putting their spare cash into America, in order to prop up the dollar and make it easier for them to export to us.
But that’s about the change. We’ve been pressuring them to let their currency rise, and they’re getting the message. We don’t know yet how much they’ll let it rise. But the writing’s on the wall, in Chinese characters. And other Asian nations are following China’s lead.
You don’t have to be a zen master to see this means less Asian money flowing into the United States. Which in turn means long-term interest rates — including mortgage rates — will start to rise. It’s just supply and demand: less money around, and the cost of borrowing goes up.

Incidentally, Asiapundit warns that Shanghai’s property bubble is being fueled by speculative inflows.

In the wake of failed takeover bid’s for Unocal and Maytag, Horse’s Mouth anonymous guest blogger Martyn notes that China hasn’t been creating many world beaters even when acquisitions have been successful.:

Fortune 100 list 2004 of China’s top listed companies predicts that fewer than five will become global leaders ten years from now. However, George Baeder of international strategy consultants Monitor Group says, “That’s probably an optimistic view.” I would tend to agree with him.
Chinese companies have also, to date, made some horrific foreign investment decisions and not just related to paying inflated prices for extremely dodgy assets. TCL purchased French multinational Thomson last year, including America’s 86-year-old RCA. “We thought we could sell RCA as a premium brand, but in fact it had already deteriorated into pretty much a low-end brand,” says TCL’s Vincent Yan. TCL had forecast a turnaround at RCA by the second half of this year. That has now been moved back to the first quarter of 2006 and looks extremely optimistic.

The Big Yuan reports that China’s loans from the World Bank are coming under fire.:

The World Bank, whose charter aims to fight poverty in developing nations, continues to lend about $1 billion to China annually, and according to the International Herald Tribune, these loans are increasingly coming under fire. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, feels that while these loans are being used to develop roads and infrastructure the PRC is able to invest more into its own armed services. He says, “We have to be very vigilant.”

But, Talk Talk China muses that corporate China may have some advantages, although these stem from a lack of ethics.:

While the West is mired down in debates over globalisation and corporate social responsibility, conservative governments in the US restrict stem cell research, and EU governments dither over GM food safety, one begins to see a real opportunity opening up for China to take the lead in these areas, perhaps finally finding its own place in the world — and leaving the West behind in the dust, nursing its ethical qualms.

At the Economist’s View, a look at the winners an losers from China’s currency revaluation.:

If employment and manufacturing do increase, there are transitional costs to consider as the article notes.  Rising interest rates will cause less activity in sectors such as housing and more activity in other sectors such as (hopefully) computer chips.  But during the transition unemployment could potentially increase.  Nevertheless, to the extent that such rebalancing is healthy for the economy in the long-run, there is a long-run benefit that follows the short-run cost, but the cost does need to be acknowledged.

While a stronger yuan may cut into China’s manufacturing exports, there’s one export that might see an increase. After all, ill-gotten gains just became two percent more valuable. (Update: the five billion yuan figure was reported in the Standard, Xinhua is reporting the amount is 50 billion dollars) :

4,000 Chinese officials fled China last year with an estimated 5 billion Yuan [HK$4.80 billion-US$600 million] in graft money in tow. The currency figure seems a little low to me since this only amounts to US$150,000 for each of the 4,000 fugitives, not enough to even buy a house in Canada or the US. I figure that this figure is probably substantially understated since a higher number would imply that the problem is nowhere near under control.

Via Survived Sars, a link to an excellent brief from the Jamestown Foundation on the limits of Chinese Economic reform:

There have always been two Chinas: a maritime China, caught up in the economic growth of modern times and looking beyond her frontiers; and a continental China, agrarian, bureaucratic, conservative, and unaware of the economic advantages of international capitalism. It is this second China that consistently controls the political power within Beijing. Economic growth has mainly been concentrated in maritime cities, while the vast hinterland remains very unevenly integrated into a national economy. Given its size and rate of growth, this inequity between reformed and unreformed areas may greatly distort free-market trading systems.

A Lebanese blogger yesterday argued that the US shouldn’t be the primary target of al Qaida’s ‘jihad’:

If al Qaeda truly wanted to make the world a better place for Muslims,
the US would not be the first country they would attack. Muslims live
incredibly free and profitable lives in the United States. And Muslims
can be seen thriving in all areas of employment and life as
shopkeepers, doctors, artists, and professors.
But in China, this is not the case.  Muslims are horribly oppressed by the Chinese government.
The
Chinese government is officially atheist and has no problem toppling
every pillar of Islam. Chinese cuisine is packed with pork, and alcohol
is a popular commodity (okay, that’s not really a kep point). The
Chinese government indirectly supports the genocide of Muslims in
Darfur (albeit by other Muslims).

In an unrelated matter, which is still a creepy coincidence, yesterday a suicide bomber detonated himself on a bus in in Fuzhou:

The Horse’s Mouth reports:

One suicide bombing exploded on a bus in Fuzhou City, Fujian Provice, at around 2:30pm, August 8. According to official news, the explosion was caused by a 42-year old farmer who had cancer. But it is hard for police to reach such a conclusion so quickly. The news said there was one killed and dozens injured, it did not mention whether the bomber was killed.
What Witnesses Said
Anonymous
witness said there were at least five killed, some said more than 20.
Witness saw one body was removed and rescuers tried to find survivors
and picked up body parts.
Police confiscated the cameras who have taken pictures.

This , citing Xinhua, reports 31 injured and - assuming the word ’suicide’ in the headline means the bomber died - also one fatality.

ESWN has more.

Should this be reported on by Fox News it will be interesting to see if this is referred to as a ‘homicide bombing.’

The Taipei Times reports that former President Lee Teng-hui has spoken out about cross-strait relations, saying that it is "impossible" for China to attack Taiwan:

"Given the US nuclear submarines patrolling in the Pacific Ocean and all of their equipped nuclear warheads, China can’t move at all. It would take at least an army of ten divisions for China to attack Taiwan, which is an impossible mission," Lee told the members.

It is unclear how Lee arrived at his conclusion, given that the People’s Liberation Army is usually estimated to have at least 20 infantry divisions, 10 armor divisions, and five mechanized infantry divisions, not including its air, naval and special forces.

Lee said that Beijing was restrained by the US’ military deployments, so the best measure China could exert to influence the Taiwanese people was to arrange visits by opposition leaders, Lee said.

Lee also spoke against the proposed "Small Three Links" in the Penghu islands, and decried visits by KMT leadership to the mainland.

Lee’s pro-independence leanings are well-known, and he still remains active in Taiwanese politics.  Since he is no longer president, he is able to speak his own mind and say things that would be unacceptable coming from President Chen.  Indeed, President Chen has found that he has to be more tactful since coming to power in seeking to further his own agenda.

Via Peking Duck, a report of more village militancy in China but with a significant degree of escalation. Villagers reportedly were stockpiling "firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators and machetes."

This one sure sounds different. The villagers were apparently , with the local government trying to stop them. How’s that for a twist?

About 800 policemen clashed with armed villagers during a pre-dawn raid and arrested 47 people in southern China after residents resisted a crackdown on illegal mining and went on a rampage, a newspaper reported on Friday.
Police raided several villages in Hezhou in Guangxi province at dawn on Thursday and seized firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators and machetes, the Legal Express said.
It did not say if any policemen or villagers were killed or injured…

… sounds like these villagers were arming themselves to the teeth. Which makes me wonder, how many other villages are doing the same? Are they preparing for war against the government?

Sixty years on, the debate continues over whether the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified. Brad DeLong and Howard French both point to a Weekly Standard article that suggests that it was:

Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted
vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must
include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war
for the Asian populations trapped within Japan’s conquests. Newman
calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians,
overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued.
Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman’s decision can
highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor
nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant
civilians in the victim nations.

At Japundit however we are offered an essay that is less sure of the wisdom of the decision.:

Was it really necessary to drop an atomic bomb on a densely populated
city center just after 8 a.m. on a Monday morning when people had just
started their week? Was the United States simply trying to find out
what the bomb could do? Although Japan and the United States ended up
forming a close postwar alliance, we are left with uneasy feelings over
the atomic bombings.

Market Rant is unmoved by arguments that the bombing was justified.:

Do not let any of the 60th
Anniversary propaganda deflect you from understanding this one salient
fact - the dropping of the bomb did not hasten the end of the war. It
did not save a single American soldier; in fact the ‘2 million saved’
falsehood - spread by Truman after the war - is fully FIFTY TIMES the
official estimates he was given regarding likely US casualties during a
full-scale invasion of mainland Japan.And let’s not forget - any GI killed during an invasion would have been a combatant, as opposed to the quarter-million dead Japanese civilians on August 6th and 8th, 1945.
It was a War Crime, and anyone
who doesn’t think it was done primarily to scare RUSSIA is a dupe. They
should dig up Truman’s corpse, piss on it, set it on fire, and bury the
ashes on unconsecrated ground - the way the Catholic Church did to
Wycliffe 100 years after his death…

 

From SF Bay, an item that the horrors of the bombing have been suppressed.:

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago,
and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight
suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the
bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and
Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful
of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.
The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years,
and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades.

Like the Bay Area Blog, HK Dave at Simon World similarly links the bombing to the War on Terror, suggesting:

Is there any any to defeat
the terrorism emanating from the world’s Muslim cultures using just a
big stick? I would go one step further to say that for every stick we
use, a carrot must also be proferred. What is the carrot we use today
in the "War on Terror"? Is it only democracy? Judging from Iraq, that
doesn’t seem to be good enough.

Confederate Yankee also sees parallels, although comes down solidly on the more-stick, fewer-carrots side of the argument.:

Three-score years have passed since that fateful morning, and the
veil of time allows revisionists, apologists, and activists to portray
the Japanese people as innocent victims of horrible weapons they didn’t
deserve, and indeed, many individuals were innocent. Japan, however, was reaping what it had sown in Nanking, Bataan, and course, Pearl Harbor.
While our valued allies today, the military society that dominated
Japan sixty years ago was more akin to today’s Islamic fundamentalists
than most would comfortably admit. Fanatical Japanese soldiers were
expected to fight to the death, as were all able-bodied Japanese
civilians of any age or sex, many only armed with as little as
sharpened sticks.

Jodi at the Asia Pages recounts her recent visit to Hiroshima and the memorial museum.:

I must say one thing about the memorials and museum. It would have been very easy for the Japanese to turn such displays into an anti-American campaign but not once did I ever feel that there was a hatred toward Americans and the US military in regards to this tragedy. It was more of an anti-atomic weapons sentiment if anything and if there was any slight hint of bitterness, it would have been shown in museum displays’ excerpts of documents and diaries where U.S. officials wrote in their own words that they felt the decision to bomb was not needed.

The museum comes across in a less favorable light in this posting by the Flea.:

Ground zero in Hiroshima, meanwhile, symbolizes a view of the war long engraved in Japanese hearts: that of Japan as victim. Outside Hiroshima, there is the Holocaust Education Center to teach Japanese about Nazi atrocities. Its operators insist they make no connection between the Holocaust and Hiroshima, but the museum’s location resonates deeply with the Japanese view of the bombings as a slaughter of innocents.
And nowhere does the museum note that Japan was Germany’s ally, or that
Japanese soldiers, like the Nazis, perpetrated mass killings and
medical experiments on humans.

The White Peril restates his essay from 2004.:

When I think of people immediately after the bombings, their faces obliterated by heat, expending their little remaining energy to bow in gratitude for the water volunteers brought to their lips (one of the most famous A-bomb memorials is inscribed with 水, the character for "water," because that’s what so many victims cried out for), my heart aches. The same when…you know, bodies of water feature very prominently in Japanese literature, as they do the world over, as sources of refreshment and sustenance. Imagining people set afire, stampeding into rivers and lakes to cool themselves, only to find the water boiling hot, makes me cry. As an American who places the highest value on individuals, I wish we hadn’t had to cause such suffering to anyone at all who wasn’t irredeemably evil.
But we did have to….

20/20 Hindsight offers the most interesting site, combining historical sources with ‘live’ commentary and blogging as if it were 1945.

As we neared Japan, I began to detect the familiar
Japanese Early Warning Radar. Soon it was locked on to us. then another
radar picked us up. At the same time, but on frequences that we shared
with the Navy, I detected considerable activity off the coast. The
Fifth Fleet was in full operation that morning, and the radio chatter
of the pilots made for fascianting listening. As the range to Hiroshima
began to close, I made an intensive search in that part of the spectrum
where our proximity devices would operate. I found that area as clean
as a hound’s tooth.

Here is today’s round up of some of the blogs of South Asia.

Bangladesh:

Tanim laments on which jobs are deemed respectable and which are not in Bangladesh.

Sadiq finds that the practices of prostration and Submission to God are similar among the major religions of the world.

Asif of ‘Unheard Voices’ sepeculates a big world tour of 50 amateur Bengali musicians from Boston to promote Bangla Gaan (Bengali songs) across the world from USA to Bangladesh.

India:

Nitin Pai tries to find out what is the economics of espionage.

Amardeep of ‘Sepia Mutiny’ discusses the problems in the study of South Asian languages in US.

Dilip D’Souza’s writings on the chaos when a metre of rain came down on Mumbai (the recent Mumbai flood). More accounts of the trauma the citizens of Mumbai faced - by Mukta & Uma.

Nepal:

‘United we blog’ reports that authorities in Nepal have ordered an independent FM radio station in Kathmandu to immediately halt broadcasting news. In another post it depicts a battle between the police and college students. These shows the current turbulant poltical situation in Nepal.

Pakistan:

Dareecha reports that the Pakistani government has planned to set up 47 radio stations in various areas of the country to create awareness among the masses about socio-economic issues and their solutions including promotion of literacy.

Deevan muses on the importances of being desi.

Pakistani perspective links to the news of a revel ‘pub’ in Islamabad challenging the conservative society.

I’m back from vacation and now happily married. Thanks to all co-pundits for keeping the site active for the past three weeks.

While I was away…

China continued to strengthen its regime of open markets but closed culture. The NY Times has an item here and China Confidential notes:

China’s media regulators, including the Propaganda Department and Ministry of Culture, revealed an array of new regulations designed to stop additional foreign satellite channels from entering the Chinese market, while strictly controlling and seriously limiting the influx of foreign television programs, films, books, newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, video games, cartoons, and performing acts, including theatrical performances.

Meanwhile across the Strait, Taiwan regulators effectively shut down seven TV broadcasters. A situation JuJuflop doesn’t think is too terrible.

But Taipei isn’t just shutting down media organizations, Wandering to Tamshui notes that the Taiwan Daily is being kept afloat with the assistance of state-owned enterprises.

In lovely Singapore, it’s not enough to execute marijuana traffickers, police insist on banning  photographic displays noting that the trafficker ever existed.

Kenny Sia rips into the Sister Furong phenomena while Fons discovers a Brother Furong.

China’s wooing of despots justly gets unfavorable coverage at Traveler’s Tales and The Horse’s Mouth. But Glenzo notes that Mugabe didn’t get everything he wanted.

Jove Francisco has a roundup of the action at the Philippine mini bloggers summit.

Laowiseass is bugged about something.

There’s a nice description of one of my most remembered South Korean street stall dishes at Pharyngula, live octopus tentacle, Including a link to a (currently inaccessible) . On a related note, Preetam has an audiofile of the Bundgie Experience.

The Economist’s View offers an argument on why you should support your third-world sweatshop.

From Japan - the country that gave us the vibrating video game controller vibrator - now comes vibrating cinema seats.

Deeshaa points to a great article on India’s impending rise.

China and the US agree on something, though India and Japan won’t be happy about it.

As the Six-Party talks continue, barbarian envoy brings us a long and informative item from the Atlantic Monthly noting some terrifying scenarios on a conflict on the peninsula.

Japundit has a great two-part series on Koizumi’s post office reform here and here.

Cambodians are rapidly adapting to the mobile phone, although to spread pornography. Some are calling for a crackdown.

The Polish tourism board has developed an ad campaign in which a sexy nurse attempts to woo Japanese tourists. Personally I think this will be effective at wooing other nationals as well.

Jeff explains why you should never go to Busan Beach to relax.

Over at the Big Yuan concerns that China’s failure to secure Unocal will force it to increase its dealings with odious regimes to gain resources. As well, while Big Yuan is somewhat relieved by the deal’s collapse, the jingoism displayed in the US is a greater worry.

Meanwhile, the avidly anti-CPP D.J. McGuire of China-e lobby smells blood and is encouraged to make China an election issue.:

Rather than risk a political tangle that could last long enough for the anti-Communist right and the anti-Communist left to form a lasting alliance - and that is the one thing in the American political arena that scares Zhongnanhai more than anything else - they will pull back and let everything die down.

The Radioactive Chef thinks the ditching of the bid is to prevent the US from getting too riled up ahead of a Chinese move against Taiwan.

Thomas Barnett meanwhile brings us some sober reflection from Ben Stein.