As a China resident, AsiaPundit takes great care when buying products for his child, generally avoiding foods or toys designed for the local market. While overseas, AP generally trusts that ‘Made in China’ products do meet a higher level of safety standards. Most of the time…

“Just in the last month, a ghoulish fake eyeball toy made in China was recalled after it was found to be filled with kerosene..”

We are not shocked by lead-paint being used on toy trains. But Kerosene-filled fake eyeballs? Designed for children three-and-up? That’s truly a product worthy of Irwin Mainway.

Consumer Reporter: … Well, we’d like to show you another one of Mr. Mainway’s products. It retails for $1.98, and it’s called Bag O’ Glass. [ holds up bag of glass ] Mr. Mainway, this is simply a bag of jagged, dangerous, glass bits…

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia

As China is faced with a WTO complaint alleging that the country is being deliberately lax in enforcing copyright and intellectual property rights, AsiaPundit knew that a crackdown was in the air.

And that was even before there were any noticeable toxic emissions:

China sets fire to pirated goods in latest crackdown
BEIJING (Reuters) - China launched a new nationwide crackdown on pornography and pirated tapes and DVDs on Saturday, setting fire to 42 million offending items, Xinhua news agency said. . .
Of the items destroyed, smuggled and pirated audio/video, software, electronic publications made up 30 million, and pirated and illegally published books and magazines totaled 11 million

If AsiaPundit were still a reporter he may ask: ‘Were any environmental impact studies done on the effect of burning 30 million discs?; ‘How toxic were the fumes for those unprotected officials and laborers in the above Reuters photo?’; ‘How will this adversely impact the achievement of Premier Wen’s emission reduction target?’

Torching 10 million books that could have been recycled is bad enough, but burning CDs is a spectacularly bad idea.

CDs and DVDs are made from mainly plastics and metals, such as aluminum, polycarbonate (a type of plastic made from crude oil and natural gas), lacquer made from acrylic, gold, chemical dyes partially made from petroleum products, and numerous other materials such as water, glass, silver and nickel. When they are manufactured and eventually disposed, they can release chemicals that contribute to global warming and create environmental and health problems.

We suspect that the WTO complaint is a deliberate attempt at making China an even more difficult place to live by simultaneously reducing entertainment options and worsening air quality.

The Colbert Report’s Chinese New Year special report is indeed some of the best television reporting we have seen on China in some time.:

• PART 1: Happy Chinese New Year.
• PART 2: Know your ‘Frenemy’
• PART 3: Q&A on China
• PART 4: Sheryl WuDunn on ‘the Frenemy’
• PART 5: Get Busy America!

Even though the official Asian launch date for the Apple iPhone is not until 2008, users of China’s Taobao auction site can already buy the ‘revolutionary’ phone. No wonder Taobao could beat eBay in the China market:

Prices for the iPhones range from 3,999 to 9,999 yuan, but caveat emptor.

Meanwhile, Boing Boing report that those who cannot wait until June for an iPhone can buy an Apple classic model.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, iphone, northeast asia, apple, taobao

Confirming AsiaPundit’s own experience in Shanghai, Andrew Lih reports from Beijing that Mainland China’s international internet access is still exceptionally bad.:

International access to the Internet from Beijing has been poor since January 1, and seems to have gotten worse, likely due to folks returning from vacation and swamping existing links. Some friends mentioned that access to their corporate VPNs routed over the public Internet were virtually unusable from Beijing.

Google Mail is inaccessible half the time, or runs too slow to function. Skype is largely unusable. Downloading podcasts takes half a dozen tries through Apple iTunes, requiring a few different VPNs and SSH tunnels. I feel like I’m in the Internet Gulag.

Performance tends to be better in the early morning. I got a few hours of zippy performance from 4:30 am on, but by 7:00 am, the net was slowing again.

Meanwhile, Gemme finds the situation similar in Shanghai:

The Internet in China is still at snail speed and for some weird reason it gets worse in the evening.

Is everybody trying to play games after 18:00? Is the available bandwidth less in the evening to cut cost for China Telecom’s use of satellite back ups or is there another explanation for this?

The news is that it will take until the end of the month to make the great leap back to 2007 but it wouldn’t surprise me if we may linger a bit longer in 1997.

Our own Shanghai experience differs very little. At the office, access is painfully slow during the day. In the evenings access from home is near impossible. We had initially assumed that was because the corporate subscriber service had higher priority than our residential service. But it could be time-of-day related, as Andrew and Gemme suggest.

Several of the services we find vital at home — including Skype and BBC World Service streaming audio — have been almost completely inaccessible since the December 26 earthquake.

Although we have found office access moderately better, it remains unsatisfactory. Basic research takes far longer than it should and in some cases is impossible. And the economic tally of this must be vast. We know of newswires that have been unable to deliver services, merchants who are cut off from customers and have noticed that advertisements are not displaying on sites that are dependent on them.

Certainly, the Taiwan earthquake was an act of God for which China Telecom cannot be held responsible, However the length of time that it has taken to repair Mainland connectivity reeks of sheer incompetence. Apologies and compensation should be offered.

As a Mac zealot, AsiaPundit thinks punitive damages should be provided simply for causing us to miss the MacWorld keynote.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, internet

One of Asia’s staple food products is a health risk. A commentator for the conservative US site World Net Daily has warned that “a devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals.”:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

A comment AP has received from a friend in Canada debunks the article:

There are a host of things wrong with this article. The assumption that being gay is bad, and should be curtailed. The anecdotal presentation of unnamed scientific studies as fact (cite them, darn it, and check literature reviews for other research). The assumption that sexual preference is connected to hormones. (If it makes penises smaller, it must make men gay!) The logical contradiction provided in his conclusion, when he says some soy is okay. The avoidance of contrary evidence - if soy is more prevalent now than in the past, and causes gayness, then one would expect population studies to show this. Where is “today’s rise in homosexuality” that he talks about? Television sitcoms? Same-sex legislation?

AP had already disregarded the validity of the article due to the use of “devil food’ in the headline. As we are of Irish ethnicity, we reject the idea that Soy milk is the devil when another beverage can make a claim that is much more solid. And this site will not speculate about what high soy content in a national diet may mean for penis size (commentors can fire away).

That said, Rutz — to his credit– does note that there is no risk from the consumption of soy sauce or other products that contain fermented soy. With that, readers can rest assured that neither natto nor stinky tofu will cause shrinkage or impotence (although the associated bad breath may limit attractiveness)..

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, southeast asia

No, China has not yet decided to dump its Treasury bonds… but give it time.

AsiaPundit closely tracks both the Chinese currency and the US dollar. However, we don’t pay nearly as much attention to global prices for base metals. As such, we are a bit late in bringing you details of a global currency meltdown that is so severe that the United States is passing new capital control measures.:

WASHINGTON — People who melt pennies or nickels to profit from the jump in metals prices could face jail time and pay thousands of dollars in fines, according to new rules out Thursday.
Soaring metals prices mean that the value of the metal in pennies and nickels exceeds the face value of the coins. Based on current metals prices, the value of the metal in a nickel is now 6.99 cents, while the penny’s metal is worth 1.12 cents, according to the U.S. Mint.
…
Under the new rules, it is illegal to melt pennies and nickels. It is also illegal to export the coins for melting. Travelers may legally carry up to $5 in 1- and 5-cent coins out of the USA or ship $100 of the coins abroad “for legitimate coinage and numismatic purposes.”

For those who, like ourselves, are deficient in mathematics that means that a US nickel is worth almost 40 percent more melted down than it based on its denomination. Chinese demand for base metals is generally cited as a prime reason for rising prices.

And it is not just the US. This is indeed a global currency meltdown. As this 2003 article notes China has been seeking European coins for melting. Within Asia, there is massive smuggling of the Philippine peso to buyers in China.:

MANILA : With a face value of less than two US cents the humble Philippine one peso coin may be worth next to nothing at home but in metal-hungry China it spells big bucks.

So much so that smuggling of the coins has become something of a growth industry in the Philippines and a major headache for the central bank.

According to local media reports, the coins are sold in China for 1,000 pesos (US$20) per kilogramme and the metal derived from melting them down is used in the manufacture of electronics goods like mobile phones.

As we have not heard any reports of the melting of the Chinese yuan, we assume that either the nickel-plated steel material is worth more in coin rather than base-metal form or that owners of blast furnaces in China are betting on further appreciation of the local currency.

However, if anyone knows differently please comment — AP may yet consider requesting that our employer pay us in coins.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, northeast asia, philippines, money, southeast asia

If you are going to crack down on graft and abuse of public funds, what better way to illustrate that you are serious than by renting out an entire mansion… where deluxe suites cost US$905 per night. Via the CSM:

SHANGHAI, CHINA – With its rooftop turrets and fancy brickwork, the Moller Villa is a throwback to the Roaring ’20s, when the treaty port of Shanghai, China, was a byword for speculative excess. Built by an Englishman, the Norwegian-style hotel now rents luxury suites to foreign bankers lured by the promise of China’s new bull market.

 

 

 

But since August, when it abruptly closed its doors to the public for “refurbishment,” a different kind of drama has unfolded behind its high walls. Investigators from the Communist Party’s disciplinary committee have turned the hotel into their temporary headquarters as they probe a blossoming financial scandal that has already snared Shanghai’s political boss and some of his closest business allies.

Room rates are here.

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

We were tempted to link to Despair Inc’s Motivational Poster Generator in our daily links, but decided against it as it was not really Asian content.

We hope the below posters rectify that problem.

     

     (Found via IZ)

There is a debate on whether or not the Lonely Planet China and Taiwan editions of the popular travel guide are banned from the mainland. Bingfeng notes that he has several LP editions that were purchased in China.

AsiaPundit will note that the state-owned bookstore that is across from his office does sell the Lonely Planet Shanghai city guide, and several other editions of the guide for other Asian locations. However, there are no editions for Taiwan, China or Greater China.

Marc Van der Chij’s, in an item linked to here earlier, noted a conversation he had with a clerk at Shanghai’s best English-language bookstore.:

I could not find the China guide, so I assumed it was sold out. Then I looked for the Beijing guide, and did not find it either. The Tibet guide maybe, as as preparation for next year’s bike trip? No luck. I asked the shop assistant, and he explained to me that in China it is not allowed to sell the Lonely Planet guides for China, Beijing and Tibet.

Fons describes the ban as an “urban myth.” AsiaPundit does not believe that to be the case. Mainland authorities are very sensitive to maps that depict Taiwan as a separate state, and there is a general ban on maps that do so. This is old news.

If there is an urban myth, it is the myth that that the CPC Censorship Machine is efficient.

There are massive gaps in the Great Firewall of China through which ’sensitive’ information is available on the internet (even without the use of proxy servers). AsiaPundit has picked up locally published expat magazines that have addressed the ‘question of Tibet.’ We expect that more than 90 percent of satellite receivers are illegal. And, of course, none of those pirated DVDs that can be picked up at the neighborhood shops or street-stall vendors are state-approved (though some may be made by state-owned enterprises).

Most of this, it should be said, happens in the margins and in the black-market economy. But even in the heavily regulated world of state-run bookstores things will get through. The state-run SBT Bookstore near AsiaPundit global headquarters, and various other outlets throughout the city, are still selling copies of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans.

China does ban maps that display an independent Taiwan. And if the Lonely Planet does display such maps it would be included under such a ban. However, the CPC Censorship Machine is a rickety and incompetent beast and it misses more material than it catches.

We are incredibly thankful for this.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, jung chang, media, northeast asia, lonely planet

If there were an Asia Blog Awards category for best foot-fetish blog feet | man | seoul would probably win.

This was a day to truly be remembered, as I got to meet an interesting girl and very likely model for the site, if she agrees. This post will need to be full of some feedback, if you please.

If only because there aren’t any known competitors.

Photo and text from here.

Technorati Tags: asia, asia blog awards, east asia, south korea

AsiaPundit has been known to criticize the reform of China’s banking sector. For instance, many of the bad assets held by state banks have been shifted to state-held asset management companies (AMCs) and still remain liabilities for the central government. Still, even in our criticism, we have been guilty of paying too much attention to the major state lenders and AMCs.

Occasionally, we are reminded that problems are even worse for the rural banking sector.:

BEIJING: A village cashier in west China lost 12,500 US dollars of public money after it was eaten by goats.
The incident occurred last May, when the village cashier surnamed Zhang and his wife in Linjiawan village in West China’s Shaanxi province were stunned by the scene when they saw their ten goats chewing the money, the state media reported on Wednesday.
The couple immediately slaughtered the goats and put together the cash debris taken out from the animal’s stomach, saving 297 pieces of notes worth 12.5 US dollars each, reported the Xi’an Daily on Tuesday.
“We are considering exchanging more damaged cash for Zhang and will treat it as a special case after reporting the incident to superiors, in view of reducing farmers’ economic burden,” director of the currency issuance section of the apex bank, People’s Bank of China, Hengshan County branch, Li Shengyang said.

Imagethief comments:

Question: What was a “village cashier” doing hiding money by burying it in a goat pen? Does this strike anyone else as suspicious behavior? If I was thiking about secure places to store public money I don’t think “goat pen” would be the location that leaps to mind. I might consider “banks”, or “enormous steel safe” or even “locked trunk guarded by my shotgun-toting henchman, ah qiang and a brace of rottweilers”. But probably not “goat pen”.

Per “banks” as an option, that seems particularly useful to me. If Hengshan county has a branch of the People’s Bank of China, they probably have retail baking too. Could banks in Shaanxi be so hopelessly corrupt that they can’t even be trusted with deposits? If so, China’s banking system has further to go than I thought.

While this an incident of concern, we do note with relief that the PBoC does seem to have some deposit insurance in place. This should help prevent a full-blown systemic crisis should any individual animal pen be declared insolvent.

(Above image of 2003 goat coins stolen from here.)

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

AsiaPundit is pleased to report that government-blocked websites such as the BBC’s news portal and HRI China can be accessed on mobile devices in China with the installation of the Opera Mini browser.

While phones with WAP capabilities have built-in browsers, these have to go through the same firewalls that plague China’s conventional internet. The Opera Mini, however, “uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone.”
From the Opera Mini Wikipedia entry:

Unlike normal web browsers, Opera Mini fetches all content through a proxy that runs the layout engine of the Opera desktop browser. The engine on the proxy server reformats webpages into a width that is suitable for small screens using Opera’s Small Screen Rendering. The content is compressed, then delivered to the phone in a markup language called OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language). When the content reaches the phone it has been reduced in size by typically 70-90%.

This was designed to improve loading speed and rendering of content for the small screen. However, the end effect is the same as what can be achieved using proxy servers or web-based services such as Anonymouse and Virtual-Browser. Unlike the Anonymouse service, which is disabled by the Great Firewall’s keyword filtering, the Opera Mini was able to load one particular banned website without any time-out errors.

Viewing web pages through a WAP connection is a slow and expensive process, so this will not bring freedom of information to the masses. The government could also mandate a block on Opera’s server should use of the service become widespread enough to be considered a problem.

Still, AsiaPundit expects that in a few short years more Chinese will be accessing the internet through mobile devices than through PCs (the organic evolution of mobile technologies is a more important revolution than the $100 PC). With that, the discovery of a small chink in the armor should be welcome.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, internet, northeast asia, opera

Last week was the anniversary of the US lunar landing. While nothing in the subsequent 37 years has come close to capturing our coollective imagination as much as Neil Armstrong’s immortal words, mankind continues to look to the stars.

And space no longer just the domain of the US and Russia.

China is planning to put a red flag on the red planet.:

China will start planning Mars probes in 5 years, state media reported. “China will, on the basis of its moon probes, plan deep-space exploration, focusing on lunar and Martian exploration,” said Sun Laiyan, chief of the China National Space Administration.

A senior scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering said Chinese rockets are capable of sending a satellite to orbit Mars, adding that if the government made up its mind to start planning now, a Martian probe could be sent in three to five years. The Chang’e 1 probe will be launched in 2007 with plans for it to orbit the moon for a year. Plans are also for China to send a vehicle to “soft land” on the moon and explore the surface around 2012.
(image stolen from NASA.)

In other Asian aerospace news, not to be outdone by space kimchi, Japan’s space agency is developing a silkworm pupa space cookie.:

BEIJING, July 22 (Xinhua) — A newly-developed space cookie made of silkworm pupa powder is set to add more taste to astronauts’ diet.
Masamichi Yamashita, a researcher with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), released a recipe for the pupa cookies during the 36th scientific assembly of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).
The recipe comprises three to six grams of silkworm pupa powder,200 grams of rice powder, 50 grams of soy powder and 300 cubic centimeters of soymilk, with soy sauce and salt.
All these ingredients will be available in space as soybeans and wheat have been grown successfully in simulated space chambers and methods of raising silkworms in space are under development, said Yamashita.
Astronauts may blend these materials with water and divide the mixture into small pieces. “They will be flavor some cookies after being fried for 15 minutes in a 600-watt inductive heating machine,” Naomi Katayama, a renowned Japanese nutritionist and member of Yamashita’s group, told Xinhua.
(Silkworm image stolen from Ron Morris.)

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

The first three categories are open for public voting for Q1 Asia Blog Awards.

Best Indonesian Blog

Best Thai Blog

Best Asian Food Blog

Polling for these three categories closes on 31 July. E-mail registration is required to vote and you may only vote once per category.

First-quarter finalists in the remaining categories will be anounced in the coming days. Thanks for your patience.

 

AsiaPundit carefully monitors China’s state news agencies. However, the China Daily and Xinhua only contain a partial view of the thoughts of the Communist Party.

For instance, those who are reliant on the official media will not have received the notice that the Communist Youth League considers USB-powered interactive sex toys as “one sided” devices that do “not consider the welfare of the majority”

You would have to read the not-worksafe Asian-Sirens to know that.:

Where was I when they held the Sexual Culture Fair here in Guangzhou, China last year and designated this cyber-toy as an AIDS prevention product?

The rage of the show, these are sets of latex organs that can be plugged into a USB port and controlled remotely by your partner at the other end of the firewall. Interactive gaming just got interesting. It was intended for couples separated geographically by work or circumstance. Right!

The National Sex Studies Institute loved this item, but the The Communist Youth League (who also has it in for Voodoo dolls) considers the gizmo “one-sided” (I am not sure they measured the impact of that phrase,) and says it “does not consider the welfare of the majority” (Imagine that!) and that it is a “betrayal of thousands of years of traditional Chinese morality.”

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

The Korea Liberator (TKL) offers a sympathetic interview with Gordon G Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World and The Coming Collapse of China. Naturally, TKL focuses on events relating to the peninsula, although Chang also briefly reaffirms his belief that the Chinese Communist Party is collapsing.:

TKL: 10. Lastly, let’s have another prediction on where China will be in, say, 10-20 years? A decentralized capitalist, democracy? An aggressive mercantile oligopoly? Or perhaps even fragmentation?

Chang: Or all of the above [laughter].

I don’t believe that the communist party will be ruling China very much longer. I think it will fall from power by the end of this decade. But my crystal ball is not clear enough to provide a specific answer as to what happens next. Over the long term, China will develop representative institutions and a free economy, but perhaps not in the time frame you mention.

I don’t think China will fragment, but I do see Taiwan becoming recognized as the independent state that it actually is today. But apart from that, China won’t fragment. There will be a great period of uncertainty and turbulence in China, but 10 years are not enough to produce a democracy and the free market.

AsiaPundit has both of Chang’s books and would recommend them. While AP does not fully subscribe to to Chang’s view that the CCP will collapse — particularly in such a short timeframe — a deep economic correction would not be a surprise. Although there is hyperbole, even six years after publication Chang’s text still well illustrates the fragility of the modern Chinese state and, moreover, offers a welcome antidote to China hype.

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

There is only one decent English-language bookstore in Shanghai. It’s backed by Hong Kong money. There are numerous state-owned places but these have selections that are limited to language-training materials, photography books, travel guides and a handful of paperbacks. These are usually avoided by your correspondent.

Nevertheless, a lapsed subscription to the Economist prompted AsiaPundit to seek the newest issue from his local little-red bookshop. Upon entry to the small red-brick store on Hongqiao Lu, AP was shocked by what he discovered.

As shown in the bottom-left corner, Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was on prominent display at the bookstore. By prominent, we imply that it was face up and there were multiple copies (staff are not really trained at promotion, so that’s about as prominent as you will get for a state-owned bookstore).

Why the shock? Here’s a passage from Jung Chang’s introduction to the book itself (pages xxiv-xxv):

…Wild Swans is not allowed to be published in Mainland China. The regime seems to regard the book as a threat to the Communist party’s power. Wild Swans is a personal story but it reflects the history of twentieth-century China from which the party does not come out well. To justify its rule, the party has dictated an official version of history, but Wild Swans does not toe that line. In particular, Wild Swans shows Mao to have criminally misruled the Chinese people, rather than being basically a good and great leader, as Peking decrees.
. . .
That is why publication of Wild Swans is banned in China. So is any mention of the book of me in the media. Although over the years many Chinese journalists have interviewed me or written about Wild Swans, all write-ups except a couple have bitten the dust as few editors dare to break the ban. The ban is particularly deterring because the toughly worded, top-secret injunction was co-signed by the Foreign Ministry, which, for a book, is most unusual, if not unique.

As noted, AsiaPundit would not have wandered into the Little Red Bookshop were it not for an expired Economist subscription. That’s mildly ironic, given that the two magazines subscribed to by AP both had issues banned in China simply because they contained reviews of Chang’s most-recent work.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, northeast asia, jung chang

Shao Xiaoshan, a Chinese woman who claims to have done nude scenes for Zhang Ziyi in the upcoming martial arts Hamlet adaption ‘the Banquet,’ has uncloaked herself.:

Shao Xiaoshan says that she was one of three Zhang Ziyi stand-ins and that her job was to do Zhang’s nude scenes. She’s miffed that she has received no credit in the movie and, further, that her work is going unnoticed. Speaking on her blog:

“I gave my body to the audience. I don’t care whether my name is on the credits but I just want to tell the public that I did the nude scenes.”

The Chongqing Evening News said that someone from the Huayi Brothers production company called Shao and threatened her after her statement went public and told her she had to tell people she wasn’t Zhang’s body double. But the chairman of the Huayi Brothers denies the phone call and says that Shao is promoting herself on the back of the movie and how could she know she’s not in the credits anyways since the movie hasn’t been shown to the public?

The reports do not state how well-matched the bodies of the three stand-ins are to Zhang, who has a very renowned figure on the mainland. The state-controlled Xinhua news agency has noted that the Oscar-nominated actress is well known for her flat bosom and fat bottom,

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

Although this item has been featured elsewhere, AsiaPundit is recommending that all readers take a look at this 1942 US Army Pocket Guide to China for its insightful lessons on “How To Spot a Jap.”:

After a review of the manual, you should have no excuse if you score poorly on AllLookSame.

With North Korea’s missile launch yesterday, debate has emerged as to whether China was either unwilling or unable to stop the launch. AsiaPundit believes there is some truth to both arguments, but the former is more probable.

Pyongyang cannot be prevented from doing anything — even something that goes against its own interest. As dependent as North Korea is on Beijing and Seoul, it is not a client state.

That said, if this Strategy Page report is to be believed, China’s influence over the rogue state is even less than AP had previously imagined.

…(Chinese) food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It’s no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem.
If the North Koreans appear to make no sense, that’s because they don’t. Put simply, when their unworkable economic policies don’t work, the North Koreans just conjure up new, and equally unworkable, plans. The Chinese have tried to talk the North Koreans out of these pointless fantasies, and for their trouble they have their trains stolen. How do you negotiate under these conditions? No one knows. The South Koreans believe that if they just keep the North Korean leaders from doing anything too destructive (especially to South Korea), eventually the tragicomic house of cards up north will just collapse. Not much of a plan, but so far, no one’s come up with anything better.
(via the Marmot, who notes that he has not seen any news stories corroborating this.)

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

Oh No!! North Korea launched ten, six, three, at least five, “a series” of missiles, including what is said to have been a test of its long-range Taepodong-2.

Start panicking now!

A U.S. State Department official in Washington told Reuters a long-range missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, failed 40 seconds after it was launched.
Experts say the Taepodong-2 has a possible range of 3,500-4,300 km (2,190-2,690 miles).
Daniel Pinkston, director of the East Asia non-proliferation programme for the California-based Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said the rocket’s failure would be a blow to Pyongyang.
“If there was failure that early on in the flight, there is no way they could make any claims of test-launching a satellite as they did in 1998. They will not be able to exploit the propaganda value of that after that type of failure,” he said.
The first time North Korea test-fired a long-range missile — in 1998 over Japan — it triggered a sharp increase in tension in the region and sent shockwaves through Far East Asian financial markets.
…
Experts say that Pyongyang is developing long-range missiles to have the capability one day to deliver a nuclear bomb, but that it is years away from acquiring such a weapons system.

Had the Taepodong-2 not exploded shortly after launch, it would have altered the balance of power in Northeast Asia and had been a major global concern. Now, it should be of the greatest concern to the rocket scientists who designed the dud.*

The failure is also a setback for the writers at the Korean Central News Agency, who issued this this amusing threat on Monday:

North Korea would respond to a pre-emptive U.S. military attack with an “annihilating strike and a nuclear war,” the state-run media said Monday, heightening anti-U.S. rhetoric amid close scrutiny of its missile program.

The title of this post was stolen from Arms Control Wonk, who offers the following multiple-choice question.:

So who looks more foolish here?

A. Kim Jong-Il for staging a July 4th fireworks display that blew up in his face;

B. William Perry and Ash Carter for hyperventilating that we had to blow up this missile on the launch pad, instead of waiting for it to blow itself up 40 seconds after launch;

C. All those reporter who repeated the Pentagon palbum about how until the launch failure “we were ready to do what was necessary to defend the country,” as if the interceptors in Alaska had any chance of intercepting anything; or

D. All of the above.

*AsiaPundit does not have any detailed knowledge of the inner workings of North Korean bureaucracy, but he expects Kim Jong-il views failure in a similar light as do other evil overlords. If not, those North Korean guys are at the very least in for a serious razzing at the next rogue state propagandist convention.

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

Oh no! China is going to step-up its ongoing crackdown on weblogs and search engines.:

BEIJING - China’s Internet regulators are stepping up controls on blogs and search engines to block material it considers unlawful or immoral, the government said Friday.“As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control,” said Cai Wu, director of the Information Office of China’s Cabinet, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.
The government will step up research on monitoring technology and issue “admittance standards” for blogs, the report said, without providing any details.
China encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to obscene or subversive material. It has the world’s second-biggest population of Internet users after the United States, with 111 million people online.
China launched a campaign in February to “purify the environment” of the Internet and mobile communications, Xinhua said.
China has 37 million Web logs, or blogs, Xinhua said, citing a study by Beijing’s Tsinghua University. It said that number was expected to nearly double this year to 60 million.

This is shocking news, if only because AsiaPundit didn’t realize that the previous crackdown had abated.

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

Japanese Prime Minister Junichro Koizumi is about to make another controversial shrine visit. But unlike his trips to the Yasukuni Shrine, Mutantfrog notes that he will not be able to brush this off simply as a visit by a private citizen.:

The “King” never came to Japan, but Japan’s prime minister is making a pilgrimage to Graceland.
Elvis fan Billy Morokawa says Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will likely feel the power of Presley’s enduring energy when he tours the rock-and-roll legend’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, Friday with President Bush.

Did you see that? “Pilgrimage” There’s no way this visit is going to pass the church/state test, and visiting it alongside President Bush the “I was only going in my capacity as a private citizen” defense is never going to fly, particularly when considering his personal history in this cult.
Koizumi, 64, is an Elvis devotee who not only shares a January 8 birthday with his idol, but picked out his songs for a 2001 charity album, “Junichiro Koizumi Presents My Favorite Elvis Songs.” The prime minister appears on the album’s cover standing next to Elvis outside Graceland in a composite picture.

Back in 1987 when Koizumi was a mere lawmaker, he and his brother Masaya, now a senior adviser to the Tokyo fan club, helped raise funds to erect a status of Elvis in the Japanese capital to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death.
Three years ago the prime minister, an eclectic music lover whose favorites also include German composer Richard Wagner, sang his favorite Elvis hit—“I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”—with actor Tom Cruise, then in Tokyo to promote his movie “The Last Samurai.”

Unfortunately Koizumi’s album of Elvis hits is not available on Amazon — nor can AsiaPundit find any samples using Limewire. A track listing is here.

For those who wish to further develop a sense of Koizumi’s musical taste, this compilation of his favorite Ennio Morricone compositions is still available.:

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