AsiaPundit welcomes a the new Small Things video blog, with a promising first post on The Children of the Killing Fields.

Technorati Tags: asia, cambodia, southeast asia

Via tdaxp, US Army deserter Charles Jenkins gives 60 minutes an account of his time in North Korea, including horror stories of beatings, forced sex and primitive tattoo removal techniques.:

That life included forced studying of the writings of the communist dictator Kim Il Sung. He says he and three other American deserters were forced to study eight hours a day for seven years. The studying was imposed by communist government handlers called "leaders." They also assigned him a Korean woman, with whom he was supposed to have sex twice a month. "The leaders almost tell her when to do it, and I got in a big fight one time over it," recalls Jenkins. "I told [the leader], ‘It’s none of his business if I want sleep with her. She wants to sleep — we sleep.’ ‘No — two times a month’" He says he was severely punished for talking back. "That’s the worst beating I ever got — over that," he tells Pelley, showing a scar where he says his teeth came through his lower lip.

Worse still, says Jenkins, was the pain he endured when someone saw his U.S. Army tattoo. He says the North Koreans held him down and cut the words, "U.S. Army," off with a scalpel and scissors — without giving him any painkiller. "They told me the anesthetic was for the battlefield," says Jenkins, "It was hell."

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, korea, north korea

Unlikely Kudos to Beijing’s space program come from Imagethief and B J Black.:

So China’s two astronauts have just returned from four days in orbit to heroes’ welcomes, and China has just announced plans for a spacewalk by 2007 and a female astronaut.

Imagethief would like to take this moment to applaud the Chinese space program for two reasons. First, as a professional spin-doctor, I appreciate that a nation indifferent to repairing the sink-holes in
the sidewalk outside my apartment can muster the drive to fire
astronauts into outer space.
It goes to show you that China’s priorities are, quite correctly, set on propaganda. I don’t say this lightly. Space programs have long served as diversions from other, more pressing matters, such as, say, Southeast Asian wars. Furthermore, recent rallying points in China have largely revolved around the heinous Japanese, so it’s good to see some national symbolism that is more positive, if still phallic and potentially military in deployment.

Second, China’s ability to casually broadcast its citizens into orbit it brings this world something we have sorely lacked since, arguably, 1969: a space race.

Via China Challenges, the second analyst in this VOA report discusses why China’s space program may be a good thing for Taiwan and its allies.:

China’s second manned space launch has ignited a new round of debate over the implications of the PRC’s burgeoning space capabilities. “China is serious in investing” in space capabilities that have “significant military applications in the future,” retired Air Force China specialist Mark Stokes tells Voice of America.

“Space assets, as well as countering… the U.S. use of space or other countries’ use of space, are important force multipliers that can help to even the playing field when you are going up against a technologically  superior adversary.”

According to Stokes, the space launch constitutes “a stepping stone for a longer-range program to make them a significant player in military space in the  future.”

Others, however, take a different view. The Chinese “already have so many other programs to weaponize and militarize space that would be more effective in a shorter time,” says Larry Wortzel of the Heritage Foundation.

“I would rather see them go ahead with the manned space program and use the money on that because I think in the near term, it makes the United States, Taiwan, and Japan safer.”

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy

Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead is set to debut in China.

Ayn Rand’s more tolerable tome, The Fountainhead, hits Chinese bookstores in November. 700 pages, 800,000 characters, the story of Howard Roark’s individualist triumph over the forces of collectivism will arrive in cities whose architecture he would probably have had difficulty preventing himself from dynamiting.

Why is The Fountainhead getting translated? Numbers, for one thing. Most early reviews note Rand’s vast audience, with Atlas Shrugged selling second only to the Bible. It’s certainly not because of any literary value. The Beijing News, in a review casting it as a work of utopian fiction, calls it “long, dull, and unbalanced, with no sense of rhythm,” but says that as a work of philosophy, “we really shouldn’t use the standards of literature to evaluate it.”

Writing in The Economic Observer Review of Books, reviewer Shi Tao pinpoints why this book might appeal to today’s Chinese readers:

In Rand’s view, you need not abase yourself to pursue wealth, but you should be ashamed of yourself if you lack creativity. The IT elite who came along later highly praised this ideal.

Or it could just be that the “virtue of selfishness” is just the philosophy China’s rich need to explain away such unpleasantries as the wealth gap and social duties.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia

Wikipedia, the web’s open-source encyclopedia, has been blocked in China.

On the main page on Wikipedia in Chinese, a sentence appeared:”Some users in mainland China are finding accessing problem temporarily for unconfirmed reasons”. It also asked the users who can visit the page to report their region and ISP in order to have some further judgement of the situation.

As Dan at the Shanghaiist says You Bastards! Wikipedia inaccessible in Shanghai:

Online do-it-yourself encyclopedia Wikipedia, every lazy blogger’s best friend, will not load in Shanghai without the aid of a proxy server. The site worked yesterday. Most assume the free information source has been blocked by the Chinese government. We can’t imagine why. Shanghaiist hopes this is just a temporary glitch, but then we just read this and now wonder if we should care

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, censorship

Most of Asia still retains poor rankings in the Transparency International (TI) annual corruption index.

Singapore, Hong Kong retain solid low-corruption rankings and of the 159 states surveyed they are the only Asian states among the top-20 least corrupt nations. Japan almost makes the top-20, but shares 21st place due to a tie with Chile. Taiwan and Malaysia are the only remaining nations to score above the mid-way point for corruption while South Korea hits the median five points.

The results largely correspond with wealth of each country, with the developed states performing better than the developing states - and with high-growth China being seen as less corrupt than India, despite the latter’s more-developed justice system and democratic institutions.

Still, TI notes that wealth is not a prerequisite for control of corruption, singling out my native Canada for some targeted criticism.:

Wealth is not a prerequisite for successful control of corruption. New long-term analysis of the CPI carried out by Prof. Dr. Johann Graf Lambsdorff shows that the perception of corruption has decreased significantly in lower-income countries such as Estonia, Colombia and Bulgaria over the past decade.

In the case of higher-income countries such as Canada and Ireland, however, there has been a marked increase in the perception of corruption over the past ten years, showing that even wealthy, high-scoring countries must work to maintain a climate of integrity.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, hong kong, india, korea, singapore, corruption, south asia, south korea

North Korea’s mass games are something to behold every year, but this year as citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea celebrate the 60th anniversary of Kil Il-sung’s victory over Japan, they’ve truly gone all out. Dan Schorr reports.:

The performance was called “Arirang” - an ultra-patriotic and nationalistic telling of Korean history. Photos and video just can’t do justice to the scope and intensity of Mass Games - a socialist art form in which individuals come together in mass.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, north korea, korea

Via the New Economist, Deutsche bank has issued a study comparing development in India and China through visuals.:

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, india, northeast asia, south asia

Michael Turton has a long piece on how a strike on Taiwan by China could take place ahead of the 2008 Beijing Games. Politically, this still strikes me as a flight of fancy, though still a good read.

AsiaPundit sees a strong probability that the EU would sit on the sidelines of any conflict. However, an assault on Taiwan would probably give the upper hand to the Continent’s protectionist forces. Snapping up Chinese goods would be unlikely.

In the last few years a consensus that the China threat might be greatest prior to the 2008 Olympics has emerged among many of us armchair analysts in the Blogosphere. Brian Dunn at the Dignified Rant has a an argument for a pre-Olympic invasion here, and a Taiwan invasion scenario to go with it. Commentator Wendell Minnick has published a fascinating account of an invasion as well. Here’s a bit of fantasy for your enjoyment…

Diplomatic Offensive

One important goal for China is to keep foreign intervention down to a minimum. There is no fear that Europe will actually do anything, though there will be expressions of solidarity and public protests, after which everyone will promptly go home and snap up Chinese goods, just as they made no material responses to the illegal US invasion of Iraq that might have required sacrifice on their part. The main diplomatic goal will be to keep the US, Japan, Canada, Australia, and other non-European powers who might have an interest in a free Taiwan from actually intervening. For the US and Japan, a speedy military victory is the most important lever for doing this. For the other nations, the invasion will come at a time when Chinese diplomacy has been putting on a charm offensive, spending money, promising markets, and engaging in pro-active diplomacy.

Expect a rebuttal from Mei Zhong Tai and possibly Sun Bin.

Via Curzon at Coming Anarchy, a display of military and relief agency rations of the world. There have been some suggestions that  Taiwan soldiers would either not fight or would side with mainland China in the event of a conflict. Perhaps a display of the meals that await in the event of unification would dissuade him.

The gruel of the People’s Liberation Army.

The Taiwan military’s canned food spectacular.

For those who worry about China’s military modernization, note the refugee rations look better than what the PLA receives.

(If food were more of a factor than nationalism in military matters, let it be noted that AsiaPundit would quickly shun the Canadian military for what looks like some rather tasty German chocolate.)

Via Boing Boing, Hu Yan has built a site featuring 500 photographs and commentary on Shanghai homes.:

Chen Mengjia (Shanghai, Corporate Chairman)

I have many hobbies and a rich life. I play golf, swim, go to concerts, have coffee and chat with my friends and go traveling. I dream to have a manor and a horse. I enjoy riding horses and having a carefree life. Human relations are too complicated in China and I’m stressed. It’s tiring to have your own company

Meng Rushun (Shanghainese, Retired Worker)

Zhu Fengying (Shanghainese, Retired Worker)

We hope our children be successful in their jobs and we can have a good health.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, northeast asia, shanghai, east asia

In what should be the final word on the Benjamin Joffe-Walt reportage on the beating of activist Lu Bangli, the UK Guardian newspaper has issued one of the strongest criticisms of a reporter that I have seen. Not only was his report grossly inaccurate, readers’ editor Ian Mayes says, but the reporter was suffering from temporary insanity.The paper also explains how the report slipped through more rigorous editing, and notes that Joffe-Walt was recalled to London (not, as earlier said, that he had left China for security reasons):

He filed only an hour before deadline, which left little time for interaction with the desk. He was not specifically questioned by the desk in London about some of the details in his description. He was not asked how far he was from Mr Lu when the latter was being beaten. He was not asked how clearly he could see the things he was reporting he had seen. At the same time Joffe-Walt failed to communicate to the desk the condition he was in then and was still in at the time of writing. He was still convinced at that time that Mr Lu was dead. I shall come back to that.

When it became clear that Mr Lu was alive and his injuries were not consistent with what had been described, relief among readers over his survival was mixed with serious concern about the grave flaws thus revealed in the report. The Guardian recalled Joffe-Walt to London, via Hong Kong where he was interviewed by the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Ewen MacAskill, who had been sent there for the purpose. MacAskill and Watts, who had been recalled from leave, have spoken to all the people who were with Joffe-Walt in Taishi, including Mr Lu. The Guardian arranged for Mr Lu to have a medical examination and scan. They revealed no serious injuries.

…

I urged (Joffe-Walt) to contact Mark Brayne of the Dart Centre (see below), a former BBC correspondent, now a psychotherapist specialising in journalism and trauma (Joffe-Walt had already been examined at a clinic at the suggestion of the Guardian). Exceptionally, I had Joffe-Walt’s permission to talk to Mark Brayne, with the latter’s agreement, after their interview. Mr Brayne has no doubt that the situation, the mixture of fear and shame with which Joffe-Walt witnessed Mr Lu being beaten while he himself was locked in the car, contributed to a state of traumatic distress which he was still experiencing when he wrote his account. Mr Brayne said, "The intensity was quite unusual but in Benjamin’s particular context it does make sense." In this state, he said, Joffe-Walt had lost touch with reality.

UPDATE: The Travellers’ Tales blog views the temporary insanity defense with some skepticism:

The Guardian’s readers editor has responded
to the furore over Benjamin Joffe-Walt’s Oct. 10 dispatch from Taishi.
It’s impossible to read this without feeling at least some sympathy for
the reporter in this situation. But it also creates an uneasy
sensation. This is clearly an appeal for sympathy, rather than just an
admission of error with an explanation of extenuating circumstances.
The resort to a pseudo-medical diagnosis is reminiscent of the defense
of criminals who introduce expert witnesses to show that their behavior
was beyond their control. Wouldn’t it have been better simply to lay
out what happened, and let readers sympathize or not? Or are we being
too harsh?

Simon, as well, isn’t satisfied:

Ian Mayes concludes The
Guardian clearly has to protect its reputation. It also recognises a
duty of care to Mr Joffe-Walt. The two things are not incompatible.
No, they’re not incompatible at all. Where the Guardian has fallen down
was throwing a 25 year old novice into one of the more dangerous
reporting assignments without adequate care or supervision. If we’re
sharing out blame, it’s the Guardian itself that needs to shoulder a
significant part of the responsibility. Don’t hold your breath.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, joffe-walt, taishi

This should be included in a China Economic Roundup, which AsiaPundit hopes to resume soon, but the Economist article noted by Mark Thoma very much relates to the incident in Taishi and is worth reading now for context.:

China’s leaders may finally be readying themselves for a change in the mercantilist, growth-at-any-cost model that has prevailed for decades. The Communist Party leaders’ annual meeting on economic policy ended on Tuesday with word of a strategic shift: from now on, there will be more emphasis on redressing the inequality and social disruption that market reforms have left in their wake. The most immediate worry for China’s leaders is social unrest. Last year, the government documented more than 70,000 demonstrations, attended by some 3m protesters. … It needs the export sector to continue booming, in order to absorb surplus labour from the countryside and moribund state-owned companies. But it is aware that the rapid growth of recent years has opened fractures that could grow even wider.

… details are sketchy, it seems improbable that China’s move towards more balanced economic growth will be anything like the kind of radical leap that foreign observers would like. There are some brands of wealth redistribution that would make foreign investors very jittery, such as higher taxes. Hu Jintao, China’s president, is still consolidating power; even if he had a radical vision of a China less dependent on the cravings of the American consumer, it would have to wait until his command of the party was firmer. More importantly, it would have to wait until Chinese consumers became sufficiently confident in the social safety-net and the provision of affordable health care and education that they were willing to save less and spend more. … And though the rising tide of China’s economy undoubtedly has the power to lift all boats, there are worrying rigidities in the system, caused by the under-development of its financial system and the fact that economic reform has not been accompanied by political reform. Officials rightly fret that further economic changes could undermine the stability of the party’s rule. Amid all the talk of addressing the wealth gap, the party’s plenum reiterated a commitment to rapid growth by restating a goal of raising China’s GDP to double its 2000 level by 2010…

While China could use a more egalitarian system of wealth distribution to support a consumer culture and domestic demand, AsiaPundit is concerned that Hu Jintao’s attempts to bring this about will be through a tightening of central planning rather than a loosening.

One of the reasons China is suffering from unequal wealth distribution is because the state still holds far too many of the economic levers (i.e., 66% of domestically listed companies are state-held and private ownership of land does not exist). Part of the reason wealth is not distributed equally is because, as in many third-world countries, power is held by a political elite and not a meritocracy.

This has been changing, especially in coastal cities such as my home in Shanghai, but when you move outward and inland the disparities worsen. I cannot think of any way the problem can be easily solved. A punitive ‘wealth’ tax that upsets the newly ‘rich’ would possibly be more politically risky than allowing the dissatisfaction among the rural poor to fester. An angry and over-taxed Shanghai or Hangzhou could be far more attention grabbing than the beating of any peasant activist.

The Jiang Zimen/Zhu Rongji tag-team wasn’t perfect, not by a long-shot, but I’m concerned that the Hu/Wen Jiabao team may be damaging for China. This is not a comment on politics - neither Jiang/Zhu nor Hu/Wen are or were democratic reformers - but the former, in terms of both rhetoric and action, seems a less-interventionist and more-reformist team economically.

Private wealth and a relatively more-equal system of wealth distribution exists in the cities because it has been allowed to. There is no government policy enforcing it. In the villages and towns, wealth is often concentrated because it is not permitted to be distributed beyond those who head the CPC ’s fiefdoms in those areas.

I have some hope that central government figures realize this. Some government people I have met have been more market oriented than many US Republicans I have encountered (though the latter are running double deficits and sponsoring protectionist bills in Congress, so that shouldn’t be surprising).

While I would testify that the central bank is far more market-oriented than the NDRC, factions in ministries are easier to spot than the thoughts of those at the top. I’m not really sure where Hu’s economic influences lie.

A while back, on the basis of an unsourced item, I expressed some hope that Hu would reverse a mistake of Jiang. Today, I’m worried that he will make it worse.

As the economist said, “it seems improbable that China’s move towards more balanced economic growth will be anything like the kind of radical leap that foreign observers would like.”

AsiaPundit, a foreign observer, awaits the next five-year plan.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, economy, puppy

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, northeast asia, puppy

Forget century eggs, forget the CPP’s claims to have invented soccer and the flush toilet… Again via Boing Boing, the New Scientist endorses a far more believable claim, that an Asian nation invented noodles.:

Who invented the noodle is a hotly contested topic - with the Chinese, Italians and Arabs all staking a claim.

But the discovery of a pot of thin yellow noodles preserved for 4000 years in Yellow river silt may have tipped the bowl in China’s favour. It suggests that people were eating noodles at least 1000 years earlier than previously thought, and many centuries before such dishes were documented in Europe.

“These are undoubtedly the oldest noodles ever found,” says Houyuan Lu at China’s Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing. His team found the noodles buried 3 metres deep in flood-plain sediment at Lajia in north-eastern China after lifting out an upturned bowl. The “spaghetti-like” noodles, up to 50 centimetres long, sat atop a mound of silt which had sealed them in the bowl following a major earthquake and flood.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, food, northeast asia

China, with its shed loads of foreign reserves and booming economy, can afford to buy expensive technologies to keep its netizens in the dark. It naturally offends my libertarian sensibilities that it chooses to do so. But for Burma/Myanmar spend its limited cash on net-censoring technologies is not only offensive in terms of liberty, it strikes me as deeply wrong economically. (link via Boing Boing):

Myanmar “employs one of the most restrictive regimes of Internet filtering worldwide that we have studied,” said Ronald J. Deibert, a principal investigator for the OpenNet Initiative and the director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto.

Myanmar now joins several nations, including China, Iran and Singapore, in relying on Western software and hardware to accomplish their goals, Mr. Deibert said.

Microsoft, Cisco and Yahoo, for example, have all come under fire recently for providing technology or otherwise cooperating with the Chinese government to enable it to monitor and censor Internet use.

I would argue with the reporter that Singapore, unlike China and Iran, does not rely heavily on technology to limit Internet freedom. The number of sites the city state blocks is limited to a handful of symbolic targets such as Playboy. Singapore authorities exercise control via good-old-fashioned libel law and the sedition act.

With its periodic bans of blog-hosting sites, the free and democratic South Korea is much more guilty of blocking websites than Singapore.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, burma, china, myanmar, censorship, singapore

Shanghai-based Michael Ohlsson has started a great but - pardon my cultural relativism - totally gross new food blog: WeirdMeat.com. Since its conception, Michael reviews regional delicacies North Korean ox knee plus Philippine cuisine such as chicken embryo in shell and fish crap noodles

Yesterday I did lunch at a food court in midtown Cebu City, Philippines. There’s about 8 Filipino food counters with a wide selection of fast foods. Next to the Pizza Hut counter was Sugbahan Food Counter and that’s where I got to try two bizarre seaweeds. In between these seaweeds was another green thing that looked like Japanese "green tea" cold soba noodles. You’ve probably seen those thin green noodles. But these turned out to be something other than soba. I asked the ladies behind the counter what each of these items were, but they were lazy and annoyed with my obviously silly and tedious questions. They just nodded and yawned when I asked if the green noodle things were noodles or not. So I just ate some as a side dish to the other weird stuff I had here. They tasted and acted like any other noodle.

But later that night … I stumbled upon a remarkable and life-changing moment of truth about these innocuous green noodle wanna-be’s. A truth that will go down as one of the most memorable weird meat moments….

After several confirmations with the staff, we concluded these were definitely fish feces. These "green noodles" are actually fish poop! …

… It’s called "Lokot" in the local language, so now you know how to ask for it. I never dreamed of eating fish sh!t, but in the name of weird meat research, we soon had a plate of this crap and another bucket of beer. Besides, I’d already eaten it for lunch and thought it was fine.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, north  korea, northeast asia, philipines, food, blogs

Bingfeng has a very good roundup, of both blogging and blog commentary, on the beating of activist Lu Banglie outside of Taishi village and the controversy surrounding the reporting of accompanying Guardian correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Watt.

The Guardian, in the article linked to here from Howard French’s site, notes that Joffe-Watt was not the only one to have thought Lu was dead. While the paper’s credibility is being questioned, this is still worth noting.

A second witness to the attack, whom the Guardian cannot name to protect his safety, last night said that he believed Mr Lu had been left for dead. “A group of men attacked Lu with fists and legs. We thought he was dead,” the witness said. “An ambulance came [and] left without him. We were fearful for our lives; we thought they might kill us.”

Mr Lu told the Guardian there was nothing anyone could have done to help him.

To AsiaPundit, it seems the Anglo side of the Sino-blogosphere is more divided than usual on this matter - possibly driven by a split in knee-jerk CPC bashers and knee-jerk MSM bashers.

Optimistically, despite the divide and the distraction from the core issues in the Taishi dispute, I’m hopeful that this incident may produce results. I believe the Chinese public, and the central government, are taking notice more serious of the Taishi situation.

Why? For starters, this site, which also has a good roundup, stops loading in Shanghai if attempts to access it without a proxy are made. The stalling is more indicative of filtering than a block. A trace-route test showed access is allowed and proxies will allow full access. Without proxy, the site stops loading when the Taishi incident is mentioned. This is indicative of keyword filtering.

I haven’t yet confirmed filtering through sufficient testing - although attempts to load Simon World also briefly caused similar problems in the same manner - if filtering is (or was) in place that would mean that the central government was trying to prevent discussion of the issue. In turn, that would mean that it finally has Beijing’s attention.

I’m not a fan of the central government. However, the central CPC is better by far than the fiefdoms that litter the country, and an intervention in Taishi would be beneficial.

If other Sinobloggers can provide notice of possible filtering of Taishi/Lu Banglie it would be welcome.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

I’ve cross-posted an article on The Horse’s Mouth from BNW Magazine that claims the Chinese government has implemented an unofficial policy for refusing to grant visa extensions for Nigerian citizens.

I want to comment on the continuous detention of Nigerians in China as a result of the prohibition of visa extension on the Nigeria passport. Most of the people detained are innocent Nigerians. Their crime is that they have expired visas because their visas could not be extended like those of other foreigners in China.

As a result of this issue, most Nigerians are intimidated and are living in fear. A lot of people have used this opportunity to oppress and dupe Nigerians because they know that we cannot report to the police.

There are many cases where employers refused to pay us our salaries because they know that we cannot report to the authorities. They tell us to do our worst. Reporting to the police means detention and deportation.

First the good news. Lu Banglie, the Chinese activist who was beaten to near-death outside of Taishi village is alive. Whether or not he’s ‘fine’ has yet to be fully determined.

Lu, a People’s Congress representative who had fallen afoul of village officials, was beaten while escorting Guardian foreign correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Walt to the village. Joffe-Walt’s account of the incident is here.

Chinese blogger Michael Anti, in a translated post provided by ESWN, accuses Joffe-Walt of negligence and, in a round-about way, racism.

As for The Guardian’s Benjamin Joffe-Walt, how the fuck did he still have to nerve to write this kind of report? Perhaps he is young and does not yet know that reporting in certain areas of China is just like in a war zone. He should not have gone there against the advice of others, and he should not have brought Lu Banglie to the village. Since he was being taken out by the police, why didn’t he insist on rescuing Lu Banglie as well? It is alright to beg for mercy when it happened. But the more important thing is that you have a duty and you must assume responsibility for your companion. Or is that Chinese person just a guide dog?

Thus, we the Chinese people are treated like dogs by the government and we are also treated like dogs by certain arrogant and ignorant foreigners. I have no idea how this tragedy can be changed.

Full disclosure, I am a foreign correspondent in China and have a tendency to defend my brethren against accusations. I also have lower different ethical standards compared with most of those brethren - and most bloggers for that matter - so my comments should not be taken as representative as those of my profession or the English-language blogosphere.

I was also invited to the Guardian’s house-warming in Shanghai on the day of the Taishi incident — though I didn’t attend and have never met Joffe-Walt (ergo, this defense of his actions cannot be attributed to payola from free drinks. Not that such a thing has ever happened before … I’m in wires, so I always file before the free drinks.)

As ex-CNN china bureau chief Rebecca McKinnion notes in the first link in this post, there has been considerable criticism of Joffe-Walt in the SinoBlogosphere - much of it reflecting Michael Anti’s comments that he did not respect his ‘fixer.’ Fons is fence-sitting (or, in more respectful terms, contemplative), while Running Dog, a more opinionated but anonymous Shanghai-based journo (anon for good reason given the specific blocks on his website), does not discuss Joffe-Walt’s role but sees this as another failure of China’s central government.

Although I cover finance and would never likely be in a similar situation, AsiaPundit believes he would have done the same as Joffe-Walt in the same situation. Protecting sources is important, and I have in recent months, to my shame or credit, asked a Chinese-national source to review some of his on-the-record comments that were highly critical of the central government. He did and it almost ruined a great story, but I feared they were a risk to his livelihood, albeit not his life.

I would never put my staff at risk, but I’ve personally always ignored the most-sound advice and taken insane risks (usually with my own life and typically during leisure activities). And it seems from Joffe-Walt’s account that the risk was taken willingly by Lu and not taken at the correspondent’s request. Indeed, it was after his repeated objections.

There is a healthy debate on the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents’ Club mailing list about Joffe-Walt’s probable responsibility, and how to protect sources. The harshest post, which shall remain unattributed, is this:

Please tell Joffe-Walt and other foreign correspondents in Shanghai that I am shamed by his conduct. He risked the life of Lu Banglie and his own Chinese assistant, stood watching Mr. Lu being beaten so that he can fabricate a report about the beating and then he runs away to save his skin. He makes us excuse him for doing nothing because we do not know what we would have done in his place except that we won’t have been so stupid as to take a Chinese with us on sensitive assignments in the first place. My Chinese friends are asking me “How can you do something like that?”

But it seems clear to me that Joffe-Walt cannot be blamed in any way for this. Lu, who had his own agenda, was insistent about accompanying the Guardian correspondent, and Lu - likely more that Joffe-Walt - knew the risks involved.

I would never instruct any of my Chinese staff to take any political risks - they face penalty of jail while I, at worst, face deportation - and I will advise sources to remain anonymous or alter sensitive quotes rather than take what I deem unnecessary personal risks (though this is very rare as getting a decent comment in China financial journalism is like pulling teeth… with tweezers).

Lu did have an agenda to push, and was taking his own risks to achieve his goals. I’m largely sympathetic to these goals and, I actually believe most senior-level central government officials also are. However, this means Lu was a political figure and he cannot have the same status as an employee or even a trusted or coaxed source.

That said, this is not to put the responsibility on Lu.

Lu was beaten by hired goons! The responsibility for the crime is on the hired goons and their employer(s)!!

THIS SHOULD BE OBVIOUS!!!

Much thanks to GI Korea for all of the posts in my unexpectedly long absence, normal service will resume shortly, featuring more tabloid sensationalism, no introspection and fewer exclamation marks!!!!

UPDATE (12 October 19:12 Shanghai time):

Sun Bin posted in the comments that “the bigger controversy is about the ‘exaggeration’ or ‘inaccurate description’ of Joffe-Walt’s story.” I didn’t address this yesterday and I’m still reluctant to do so in definitive terms. I haven’t fully made up my mind on the matter and probably won’t until I see a thorough update on Lu’s physical condition or some sort of follow-up from Joffe-Walt.

I’m reserving judgement on the accuracy of the report until I have more information. By ‘accuracy’ I mean whether it is poor observation caused by panic or whether it was simply blatant exaggeration.

As well, for argument’s sake, I will suggest that it is possible that what Joffe-Walt says he witnessed may be a relatively accurate retelling of what he thought he saw. I haven’t seen many beatings, and no serious ones. However, I have had friends in such things as motorcycle accidents. Someone who looks near death can look almost normal after a quick cleanup in the hospital. Head wounds, because of the concentration of blood vessels, very often look much worse than they actually are.

An inspection of the apparently-not-lifeless body would have been helpful, as would have been a camera (though that may seem ghoulish). But given that there were allegedly 30 thugs standing around, it is understandable that he did neither of these things.

The primary thing that bothered me yesterday was not the report, but the matter of blaming Joffe-Walt for the beating, That is not a rational response. It’s not quite like blaming a rape on the dress of the victim - as Lu was the real victim - but to point accusing fingers at a bystander rather than the assailants shows a serious lapse of judgement.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, northeast asia

Via Boing Boing, a look at Malaysia’s heavy metal crackdown of the early 21st century:

It happened quite a while ago, in 2001. There was this big outcry over teenagers holding Satanic black metal concerts and stomping holy books and all that. Basically - imagine the whole Satanic Ritual Abuse hoo-ha with an added element of music.

I was in school during the time and there was an announcement made in morning assembly about it. According to the announcement, the crackdowns started after a imam (Muslim priest) walked into the woods and stumbled onto a black metal concert where holy books like the Quran and the Bible were set on fire and stomped on (and other such "Satanic" stuff).

The story (it’s never really been verified) got picked up by Harian Metro ("HM"), a Malay tabloid, and they really made a big deal out of it. The government then got involved. There were crackdowns in schools, kids were stripsearched in some places, and there were posters and information everywhere about supposedly Satanic symbols - including pentagrams and the hand signs for "I Love You" and "Rock On". Merchandise from bands like ACDC and Limp Bizkit were banned; so were their music, for a while. People who wore black T-shirts were looked at suspiciously - one local radio station had a problem with this because their T-Shirts were black!

Thankfully, due to the crisis, Malaysia developed an herbal treatment for heavy metal addiction, as noted in this 2001 BBC report (also via BB).  I recommend it be developed for export and used on Gorogoth fans (they need some sort of treatment).

A state in Malaysia says it will give herbal medicine to 150 teenage rock fans accused of belonging to a Satanic cult.

Fadzil Hanafi, an official from the northern Kedah state told Reuters news agency: "This herb is to stimulate the brain so that students can concentrate on their studies."

Technorati Tags: asia, malaysia, music, southeast asia

The continuing saga involving Hyundai Asan Tours and the North Korean government has taken a new twist with rival South Korean conglomerate Lotte offering to take over the North Korean tourism project that Hyundai Asan has been exclusively operating since the late 1990’s:

The tourism arm of the Lotte Group is ready to take over from rival conglomerate Hyundai in running tours to the North Korean border city of Kaesong if Pyongyang decides to dump its long-term business partner, company executives said over the weekend.

“We plan to actively discuss it if the North contacts us again,’’ an executive at Lotte Tours said on condition of anonymity, referring to the troubled tour project currently headed by Hyundai Asan.

The announcement comes after Lotte Tours revealed last month it received a fax from North Korea inviting it to run the Kaesong tour project.

The dispute between North Korea and Hyundai occurred after an internal audit of Hyundai Vice-Chairman Kim Yoon-kyu revealed numerous accounting irregularities:

A Hyundai Asan source said, “Last July, during Hyundai Groups internal audits, Kim was accused of 10 instances of malfeasance including receiving kickbacks from construction in Mt.Kumgang, subcontracting corruption related to two joint construction projects and putting exorbitant sums of money on company expenses.”

The ill gotten money is believed to have been embezzled to North Korea continuing a disturbing trend of embezzling South Korean money to North Korea started by former President Kim Dae-jung in order to get Kim Jong-il to agree to the joint 2000 Inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang.   Hyundai Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun angered by the corruption fired Kim, and North Korea responded in kind by slashing the amount of tours available in North Korea and by even harassing Chairwoman Hyun during a business trip to North Korea to discuss the Hyundai and North Korean business relationship:

Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Monday publicly rejected a North Korean demand to reinstate Kim Yoon-kyu, the disgraced vice chairman of Hyundai Asan who had dealt with the North for many years in arranging their joint tourism projects. “I now seem to stand at a crossroads of whether to continue or quit our North Korea projects,” she said. Since Hyundai’s ouster of Kim, Pyongyang has applied pressure on the group by slashing the quota for the Asan’s Kumgang Mountains tours and blanking requests for negotiations on stalled projects to Kaesong and Mt. Baekdu. When Hyun visited the Kumgang Mountains, she says, authorities forced her to open her handbag, a gesture she interpreted as contempt, and she concluded, “I’ll choose honest conscience rather than opportunistic servility.”

This spat of course got the South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young to try and mediate the dispute between Hyun Jeong-eun and the North Korean government.  Chung is what I like to call one of Kim Jong-il’s useful idiots and unsurprisingly called for the corrupt Kim Yoon-kyu to be reinstated:

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young met with Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Sunday to discuss a spat between the company and North Korea over a tourism project Hyundai Asan operates in the Kumgang Mountains.

A source connected to the matter said Wednesday the two discussed North Korean demands to reinstate Hyundai Asan vice chairman Kim Yoon-kyu, who was ousted over corruption charges, but the differences in opinion were wide. That suggests Chung asked for the disgraced executive to be reinstated.

It was the following day that Hyun posted a statement on the Hyundai Asan homepage saying that Kim had been removed due to corruption and rejected calls to reinstate the man who had for many years coordinated the tourism projects with the North.

Let’s try to understand this.  The Korean government wants to have a corrupt corporate leader reinstated to continue his corrupt business activities because the North Koreans are unhappy that he was fired and are not receiving any more illegal kickbacks. 

For those not accustomed to the South Korean government’s handling of inter-Korean affairs this may seem silly, but this is in fact the standard operating procedure of the South Korean government.  The North Koreans make demands and throw a tantrum and the South Koreans give in and give them what they want to get them to behave.  In the recent past the South Korean government has given the North Koreans food, fertilizer, oil, and other goods with little to show for it all in the name of keeping the status quo on the peninsula.  The current six way nuclear talks is the macro example of this trend where the South Korean government has gone out of it’s way to assist the North Koreans during the negotiations to the point of even alienating their military ally the United States.

The demand that Kim be reinstated is just another example of this and allowing Lotte to run the joint tourism project will allow the North Koreans an opportunity to begin another business relationship that will undoubtedly feature more corruption and embezzlement to North Korea that will keep the elites in power and the North Korean masses starving all in the name of inter-Korean cooperation.  Chairwoman Hyun is one woman who has finally drawn a line against the North Korean’s provocations, however the South Korean government is not likely to follow suit.

Technorati Tags: asia, korea, north korea, east asia, northeast asia

Terrorists have struck again on the Indonesian tourist island paradise of Bali. Almost three years to the day the Islamic terrorists bombed Bali night clubs in 2002 the terrorists now struck a popular shopping and dining area on the island:

The blasts struck the seaside area of Jimbaran Bay and the bar and shopping hub of Kuta, 30 kilometers (19 miles) away at about 8 p.m. Saturday night (8 a.m. ET).

In addition to the 26 fatalities, hospital officials said 102 people were wounded. One of those who died was a 16-year-old Australian boy, officials said, while South Koreans, Americans, Japanese and Britons were among those wounded.

It is not official yet that this was an attack carried out by Islamic terrorists yet, but it is more than likely an operation carried out by the notorious Indonesian Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah:

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned Saturday’s bombings as an act of terrorism. There were no claims of responsibility.

But terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna told CNN that the attacks had the hallmarks of Jemaah Islamiyah — a Southeast Asian terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda.

"There is no other group with this level of capability," he said.

The 2002 bombings were blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah.

So why are the terrorists striking Bali? Bali is a mainly Hindu enclave in the world’s most populous Muslim country. The terrorists have no qualms killing Hindus and foreign tourists on the island. Plus terrorism on Bali dries up one of the main sources of tourist income for the Indonesian government. Less money the government has in it’s coffers means less money to keep a stable democratic government functioning.  The terrorists cannot stand 180 million Muslims living under a democratic government.

However, not everyone thinks that the attacks may have been carried out by Islamic militants. This from Chinese Xinhua News Agency:

Saturday night’s bomb blasts in Bali could have link with fuel oil price hikes which were felt by the people as a very heavy burden, the official news agency Antara quoted a political observer as saying.

"I think groups who are unsatisfied with the fuel oil price hike have been behind the explosions, not those who want to shift attention on fuel oil issues," Professor Budiatna, a political observer at the University of Indonesia, said here on Saturday night.

According to Budiatna, the unsatisfied groups thought protests in the form of demonstrations were no longer effective because the government paid no attention to it.
(…)

"They pressured (the government) by resorting to terrors. Their message is to lower the fuel oil price or else the terror acts will continue," the observer added.

Sounds pretty outrageous to me to resort to terrorism because of fuel prices. Why Xinhua would even give this theory credence is beyond me. However, it is going to be interesting to see if the Indonesian government is going to take the strong measures necessary to crack down on the Islamic militants within Indonesia. So far they have been using the kid gloves on them hoping they would just go away. It is clear now that the terrorists will not go away and will continue to strike within Indonesia to undermine and weaken the democratic government of the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

South Korea is likely to become the next Secretary General of the United Nations:

Ban, a 61-year-old career diplomat, has himself been tipped as the likely contender in South Korean media — a step he would not rule out if his government put him up for the job.

"If and when the opportunity is given to me or anybody else, then I think Korea can serve the effectiveness and advancement of the United Nations," Ban told Reuters in an interview when asked about the news reports.

If Minister Ban decides to run for the office he is going to face some stiff competition from two other prominent Asian diplomats:

Two Asian contenders have already declared their bids — Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and Sri Lankan peace negotiator Jayantha Dhanapala.

A South Korean candidacy could make it more difficult for Asian states to unite around a single contender, although Ban said consensus was important.

"There are already two very good candidates but, you know, when I was in New York last month I heard from many, many member countries that Asia needs to have a very good, credible candidate," Ban said.

Out of all the of the Korean President Roh Moo-hyun’s ministers, Ban Ki-moon is probably the most well liked within Korea and internationally.  A big plus for Minister Ban is that he is also well liked by the American government since he is a graduate of Harvard and has worked closely with United States diplomats during the six party talks with North Korea.  However, he is probably not liked enough for the United States to back him as the UN Secretary General.  Korea-US relations are probably at an all time low currently due to the current North Korean nuclear crisis and anti-Americanism effecting the US-ROK alliance.  Also don’t expect Russia and China to back a candidate from a country with a military alliance with the United States.  That leaves three of the permanent security council members against the nomination from the start.  Britain and France as well are not a sure thing to back a South Korean candidate.  Finally, if the UN is looking for a Secretary General that can clean up it’s history of corruption, South Korea is probably not the right place to turn to.