As the World Trade Organization is set to descend on Hong Kong protesters are preparing their usual antics to disrupt the talks. Simon Patkin is also organizing a protest, but in favor of free trade. Keen.

With the upcoming WTO summit, there will be a huge influx of up to 10,000 protesters from around the world — including around 1500 Korean farmers. The protesters (especially the farmers) have a reputation for violent protests to severely disrupt previous WTO meetings and cause damage to property (Melbourne, Seattle and Cancun). They now want to bring their extreme demonstration tactics to Hong Kong and someone needs to make a stand.

Capitalist Solutions is organizing a small rally this Sunday afternoon (Dec 11) in favour of free trade and to send a message to the protesters that Hong Kong is a great place that respects the rule of law. The rally will be held under the banner of "We love Hong Kong, We love free trade."

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, hong kong, wto, protests

A military hospital in Nanjing has developed face-transplant technologies. Given that a prime source of China’s organ transplants has been executed prisoners, AsiaPundit considers this a ripe source of material for a new John Woo movie.:

Operations similar to the world’s first partial face transplant in France last month could be set for China.

After experts from a military hospital in Nanjing announced earlier this week that they have the ability to perform such surgery, the hospital has been inundated with telephone inquiries, according to Chen Fang, a nurse with the General Hospital of Nanjing Military Commands in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

"We’ve been preparing for such operations ever since 2003," Hong Zhijian, director of the plastic surgery section of the hospital told China Daily yesterday.

"If there is a suitable patient at the moment, we can graft a new face for him or her," he said.

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

Disturbing:

A doujin soft group calling themselves “Game Programming Study Club” has created the most Japanese fighting game EVER. 行殺! Spirits (”Line-Kill Spirits”) is a 3D fighting game that features little girls beating up on each other; nothing new there. The kicker, however, is that any damage you do to your opponent will slowly regenerate unless… wait for it… you take a picture of her panties. Yes. A fighting game where panty-shots are the core mechanic. You don’t believe me, do you? Then watch the VIDEO.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia, twisted

Every year in China, the number of people who die in ‘public accidents’ is roughly the equivalent of the population of a medium-sized North American city, such as Saskatoon:

5 million “public accidents” occurred in 2004 alone, causing the death of 210,000 people, injuring another 1.75 million, and resulting in the immediate economic loss of over USD $57 billion (455 billion Chinese yuan). It is estimated that the direct annual cost of such disasters for China is more than USD $81 billion (650 billion yuan) on average, equal to six percent of the country’s annual GDP. To state the obvious: most of China’s economic growth each year is simply cancelled out by the immediate sacrifice of human lives and long-term damage to the environment.

(Via CSR Asia)

In related reading, Morgan Stanley’s Andy Xie argues that China should switch from Gross Domestic Product to Net GDP (net meaning GDP after deducting environmental and other costs). You know things are bad when the investment banks start calling for green GDP measures.

Recent environmental disasters suggest that China needs to find a better balance between growth and environmental protection. The obsession with GDP has led to a neglect of growth quality issues. I believe China should change how it calculates its economic output to reflect all the costs and so give the appropriate incentives to local governments.

China should include three costs to measure its economic output. First, free economic inputs, such as oil, cost, and land, should be deducted from GDP. Second, the costs of work-related deaths and injuries should also be deducted from GDP. Third, China’s EPA should assign environment cost to each province every year to be deducted from its GDP. The measure after subtracting these three items is net domestic product or NDP. Using NDP to measure local government performance will, in our view, improve China’s efficiency.

China’s economic output could be 6-7% less if the costs of natural resources and land are deducted (for example, 2 bn tons of coal/year, 3.5 mn bbl/day of crude, and 30% of property sales as land value). Another 6-7% could be deducted due to environmental and worker injuries (for example, 50 times annual wage per death). In additional, economic activities that generate bad debts should also be deducted. The bad debts peaked at 40% of the total in the previous business cycle. It is still too early to estimate the bad debts in this business.

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

Prior to engaging in journalism, AsiaPundit was considering a career in academia. And AsiaPundit has always considered eventually returning to academia, a la Joe Bosco, by taking up a teaching career in journalism. Unlike Joe, AP has no desire to do this while in China.

Thailand, however, has one of the strongest traditions of free journalism in Asia. Plus as this item from the Daily News illustrates, it also has some attractive campuses::

Extremely Short and Ridiculously Tight!

Are Thai female university uniforms just….a flirtatation..or…not?

Our nation’s female university students have been causing a storm in every direction for ages, all because of one thing in particular and that is the present day state of the ‘Thai Female University Outfit’.

It just has to be said that the uniform of today is rather far from orthodox!

In the eyes of Thailand’s grown-ups, the uniforms are precariously dangerous, hazardous and completely inappropriate. Yet in the eyes of the uni girls themselves, such attire is considered ‘fashion’.

A certain male student by the name of Mr Suthin had this to say on the matter, “ Men enjoy looking at girls in short skirts and ‘seu-a nom rabeurt’ (bomb-breasted shirts). Now, I don’t mind a look myself but there is no way that I would accept such a kind of girl to be my girlfriend!”

…

One uni girl we talked to by the name of Miss Kaew, came up with this for starters, “We have to dress like this! None of the shops in my local area selling trendy uni outifits stock any piece whatsover that actually fits properly. Every skirt and shirt on offer is sized either ‘SS’ (sexy small) or ‘SSS’ (super sexy small). Besides, all the shops which sell properly-sized university skirts or shirts are either doing dismal business or have closed-down due to ‘lack of sales’

(via Magnoy’s Samsara)

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, thailand, southeast asia