Due to to the severing of undersea cables near Taiwan, much of Asia is currently experiencing a severe loss of internet connectivity.

This site will be on a brief hiatus until internet service improves. While we hope that will happen quickly, reports have indicated that repairs may take as long as three weeks. Most international websites either cannot be accessed from Mainland China or take an excessively long time to load. Access to RSS feeds is also spotty.
The outage is — to various degrees — affecting most of East Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Technorati Tags: east asia

• CHINA - Top Ten Sex-related Incidents In China During 2006
  No further explanation is needed.
• “Their objection is more targeted towards the vulgarized and commercialized Christmas that seems to have overtaken the shopping malls and even the elementary schools, where everyone seems to get festive and kids seem to get into the act without really kno
• ” I like some Christmas songs. … So I get a kick out of hearing these songs sung in Chinese. Thinking that some of you may feel the same way …I decided to put together an album of Chinese Christmas music.”
• PHILIPPINES - Is the Philippine economy hollowing out?
  “These seem to be interesting statistics, except that when we look at the bigger picture we can see that the improvement in the jobless rate is significantly influenced by the fact that there were fewer people joining the labor force.”
• JAPAN - Kentucky Fried Christmas
  “Speaking of Christmas traditions, Japanese consumers partake of millions of fried chicken servings on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, a Yuletide practice that began sometime in the 1970’s courtesy of, not surprisingly, the fried chicken fast food chai
• SOUTH KOREA - Pass on the hookers, win a prize!
  “Only in Korea. In an effort to keep people from buying sex during the holiday season, the Ministry of Gender Equality is promising to hand out movie tickets and a cash prize to companies that can convince their employees to stay out of houses of ill rep

• SINGAPORE - ‘Mooching’ your neighbors Wi-Fi is a crime
  The Asian nation aiming to set up the first national Wi-Fi network is also the first nation to charge a person with stealing Wi-Fi signals.
• JAPAN - Why Michael Jackson cancelled his Xmas party in Japan
  “Phenomenal talent but unrelenting freakshow Michael Jackson saw himself back in the news this week when he cancelled a Xmas party that was to be held in Japan. ZAKZAK takes a closer look at what happened”
• “So it looks like YouTube is going another step further in warning Japanese uploaders about the risks of sharing Japanese clips on YouTube. Thankfully, it sounds like it’s just a verbal warning at the moment of uploading which never stopped anyone on th
• CHINA - Blogs and China correspondence - survey results
  “Last month I put out a survey of foreign correspondents who cover China to try and get a sense of how - and whether - blogs are impacting their coverage of China. Many thanks to the 70-plus journalists who took the time to complete at least part of the s
• NORTH KOREA - DPRK Watcher’s (Last Minute) Christmas Shopping Guide
  “Throw your dog a bone - or better yet, throw him this Kim Jong Il chew toy. Don’t have a dog? Chew on it yourself!”
• PHILIPPINES - Gloria Arroyo’s chief spook celebrates lavishly
  “AMID shouts of “Long Live the Emperor,” Armed Forces intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Delfin Bangit threw P500 bills, like they were candy, at the Isafp (Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines) Christmas party held on Wednesday nigh

• HONG KONG - Beware of the leopard
  “One of the better jokes in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is when Arthur Dent is informed that the plans for the (imminent) destruction of Earth were on display for nine months and no-one objected. It seems that the something similar happened with the government’s plan to demolish the Star Ferry Pier.”
• INDIA - Bombayisms
  “Here’s a partial glossary of Bombayisms translated to American English. Some are specific to Bombay and its history of organized crime, most are Indian English, some are by way of UK English.”
• CHINA - Wikipedia in China still ranks high
  “Despite still being widely blocked in China, Wikipedia still ranks high according to China Websites Ranking (中国网站排名). It’s the #1 online encyclopedia, and the #3 overall reference site.”
• CHINA - China jails researcher for 20 years
  “Reporters Without Borders condemned the 20-year prison sentence handed down by the Beijing No. 2 intermediate people’s court yesterday on researcher and media commentator Lu Jianhua for leaking state secrets in a case linked to that of Hong-Kongbased reporter Ching Cheong, who was sentenced in August to five years for “spying.””
• CHINA - Who has it in for China?
  “Global People (环球人物), a magazine under the People’s Daily group, promises to remedy that situation in its latest issue, which profiles the “China attackers” most closely-associated with a number of anti-China positions.”
• CHINA - eBay eJects from China
  “In fact, it’s a comment on the poor value of the eBay brand in China that it had to throw in any cash at all for a minority stake in an unproven joint venture with a second-rate China Internet power.”

• CHINA - Beijing is dirtiest city in Asia
  Ahead of the Olympics, the capital captures the gold for most-polluted air.
• NORTH KOREA - Pyongyang Rock City
  “Kim, a 40-year-old father of three and former correspondent for North Korea’s largest newspaper, Rodong, said 62 bands from 20 countries have signed on so far, but aside from one Norwegian death metal band he’s reluctant to provide any details as yet.”
• The Big Mac poverty index
  “How do you measure poverty? Probably because they have to grab a Big Mac in between filing stories, Reuters reporters have come up with a new metric on poverty. Interesting to know that Indonesia is behind only South Africa and Egypt in this reckoning.”
• JAPAN - Love Hotel Photo Gallery
  A collection of unique hotel rooms from a unique country.
• PHILIPPINES - Newsbreak editors decry Arroyo libel suit
  “FIVE editors of the award-winning fortnightly magazine Newsbreak decried the issuance by a Manila prosecutor yesterday of a resolution approving the filing of libel charges against them in connection with an article on Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of Glor
• CHINA/KOREA - China weighs covert ops to overthrow North Korea’s Kim
  “China has begun drawing up plans to attack North Korea, according to the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter. Hu Jintao, head of the Central Military Commission, has ordered the Chinese military to draw up the attack plan as a move “deliberately m
• CHINA - eBay retreating from China, says self-proclaimed “disgruntled employee”
  “EBay now abandons China and us, the loyal workers….I am one of the many disgruntled Eachnet employee. I have suffered through the incompetence of Ebay leaders for many years. I admit I am greedy. I stay for money. But Ebay has screwed up our Company an
• CHINA - Sex, Prostitutes, Rule of Law, Lines of Power, Unintended Consequences and Bull Connor
  “A morally vapid redneck racist helped advance civil rights in the United States and some dumb power-hungry bureaucrats in Shenzhen may very well end up doing the same thing for China.”
• CHINA -How China is making me into a worse person (#1 in a series)
  ” I realize that, in addition to pulverizing me in a physical sense, this China stint is making me worse as a human being.”

• MALAYSIA - Government signals crackdown on bloggers
  “Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm that Malaysia could introduce repressive legislation on the Internet after Science and Technology Minister, Kong Cho Ha, said the government planned new rules to block its malicious use and prevent bloggers posting news jeopardising social harmony.
• CHINA - Open Season: Foreign Banks Eye China
  A good look into China’s opening of its banking sector.
• CHINA - The sex industry is everywhere but nowhere
  What’s the fastest-growing industry in China? ….anecdotal evidence is the best one can do for a field such as this, but a bet could be placed on the sex industry. Yes, prostitution.”
• XINHUA - Elizabeth Hurley hot bikini pictures
  A photo spread presented by China’s state news agency and credited to chinadaily.com.cn. Although clearly scanned from a lad mag.

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

• KOREA - Diplomats Apparently Allowed to Drive Drunk in Seoul
  “The problem I see with this is that a diplomat would allowed to drive drunk! Not being charged is one thing, but what if they drove off and killed someone? I mean besides a payment of a couple million won to the family of the deceased?”
• THE KOREAS - The World’s Most Expensive Photo-op
  “President Roh understands Kim Jong-il won’t denuclearize or make any major concessions, but that isn’t what a second inter-Korean summit is about. It is all about the photo-op of him toasting Kim Jong-il. I think that would be a fitting legacy for

• CHINA - Old fables retold: The Tortoise and the Hare
  “If a turtle was bureau chief, here’s how the race between the tortoise and the hare would have gone.”
• “Perhaps, after all, the Mao generation is more selfish than China’s Me Generation…”
• TAIWAN - Things I’ll miss about Taiwan
  “I know there will be moments in Beijing when I will look back longingly and wonder, Why on earth did I ever leave Taipei, where you can wear a short-sleeved shirt and no jacket in December, and where people walking in the pedestrian lanes aren’t consider
• HONG KONG- Top Editor Forced to Resign at South China Morning Post
  “Staff turmoil claims the scalp of the business editor inside one of Asia’s biggest and most respected newspapers

  The turmoil inside Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post continued Monday with the forced resignation of the paper’s business editor,

• JAPAN - i-doloids! Love Dolls for Japan and the rest of the world
  “Today I stumbled across i-doloid magazine, which is Japanese Playboy Magazine for love dolls…”

• CHINA - Top 10 nudities in 2006
  State news agency Xinhua offers a pictoral of the Top-10 nude promotional photos of the year.

• INDIA - Aishwarya Rai sued by man offended by kissing scene in film
  “A lawyer in India has actually filed a lawsuit because an actress, Aishwarya Rai, kissed a man in a movie”
• “Chumby co-founder and Xbox hacker Bunnie Huang has recently returned from a trip to China, where he was arranging for manufacturing of his goods. He’s written an incredible narrative of the trip called “Adventures with the Venture Communist” “
• CHINA - When The Journalist Plays The Lede
  “No one ever knew Superman and Spiderman were journalists, and no one knew Clark Kent and Peter Parker were superheroes. But in real life it’s much easier for us to judge journalists who would be heroes. And when they’re from Henan, they seem to invite an
• CHINA - Ruyan: Chinese ‘fake’ cigarette
  ” Just a couple of months ago a homegrown Chinese innovation, the electroni fake cigarette Ruyan, still received an innovation award. But now the Chinese State Food and Drugs Administration says that after testing they found that the product is dangerous
• JAPAN - Things I’ve only said in Japan
  “Is cat poo burnable or non-burnable rubbish?”

• CHINA - Shenzhen’s public humiliation of sex workers provokes a backlash
  “For people who saw the event on television, the scene was a chilling flashback from 30 years ago: Social outcasts and supposed criminals, in this case prostitutes and a few pimps, were paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then t

• KOREA - Is Apple Korea Getting Stoopid?
  “Apple Korea – if you’re gonna stop supporting your pro users, then just stop selling the pro equipment, please.”
• CHINA - Online journalists in jail… and Chinese innovation…
  ” Th Committee to Protect Journalists has a sobering new report titled “Internet Fuels Rise in Number of Jailed Journalists.” The headline might be construed as blaming the Internet for the rise in journalist jailings, although that clearly isn’t the rep
• MALAYSIA - Will Al-Jazeera Change Malaysia?
  “The Middle East’s iconic broadcaster begins airing news in a country that has tamed its own news media.”
• MALAYSIA - Malaysia calls for the whipping of hookers!
  “Political sex scandals. Religious clerics group sex. Indah Kalalo initiating sex with a bule in public. Just what the hell is going on at the moment? And even the religious dudes seem to have been caught up in this wave of sexual hysteria.”

• “The Great Shanghai Cigarette Crisis – We reported on this last week, and as of today, there is no respite. Zhongnanhai and other Beijing Cigarette Company brands remain unavailable in Shanghai. The best theory so far is that there is an element of prot
• CHINA - Psiphon, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Screw the Nanny
  “Think of it as a roll-your-own Anonymouse, without all the recent advertisements of naked German women.”
• CHINA - ICBC doesn’t want to do the PBoC’s job
  “I don’t blame ICBC. Its deposits are mostly in (appreciating) RMB. Its loans are mostly in (appreciating) RMB. Why should its capital be in (depreciating) dollars? It isn’t ICBC’s job to help out the PBoC …”
• CHINA - More China toilet reports
  “I like to take pictures of toilet in China. I should say, I like to “compare” the toilets in different countries. Also, I like to wirte about the “developement” of toilet. ha ha.”
• CHINA - Military Weaponry for Kids
  “Among the Chinese vocabulary taught in the book are: machine gun, heavy machine gun, handgun, rifle, semi-automatic rifle, uzi, revolver, hand grenade, flame thrower, rocket launcher, smoke grenades, tank, aircraft carrier, bomber plane, fighter jet, gui

• CHINA - Gordon Chang says “China in Revolt”
  Coming Collapse of China” author reports that China is still collapsing.
• JAPAN - Sexual harassment pub
  “Spotted and snapped by Japundit reader Alex Kane in the Ikebukuro District of Tokyo, where sexual harassment seems to have become a business opportunity.”
• JAPAN - Team Japan teaches cleavage to Musilms
  “Beach volleyball’s penchant for bikinis has touched off a bit of a cultural clash in this conservative Muslim city”
• “Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced its top ten list of finalists for the 2006 Robot Award The ten robots selected from 152 applications fall into four categories — service robots, industrial robots, public-sector robots, and small- to medium-sized venture robots.
• MALAYSIA - Kelantan town council bans Chinese traditional dress
  “The town council of KB has decided that women wearing clothes which are body hugging or emphasise the ass such as the cheongsam (Chinese traditional dress) are liable to a RM 500 fine.”
• CHINA — Glimpses Inside the Chinese Media by Ann Condi
  “Those outside of China often imagine hordes of Internet savvy Chinese Web surfers scouring the Internet for cracks in the Great Firewall, avidly downloading precious snippets of information blocked by the government …This image is largely a myth.”
• “This weekend, an editorial in China Youth Daily, a newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Youth League, said the debate over the proposed real-name Web registration system in China, while “animated”, had shown an unprecedented degree of civility, with emotions less prominent and more “reasoned criticisms approaching [the question] from a technological standpoint”.

• CHINA - Gutenberg.org Blocked by GFW?
  “Gutenberg.org, the website of Project Gutenberg, “the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks,” is blocked for me here at Beihang University in Beijing.”
• JAPAN - The Japanese Wii Safety Manual is Crazy
  “First, hitting your husband in the face with a Wiimote is not acceptable even if you’re pregnant. Do not blame it on your hormones.”

• HONG KONG/CHINA - When The RMB Dissolved Your Sense of Superiority
  “This is Tuesday and I picked up EastWeek magazine by habit. The front page story is about Hong Kong consumers going to mainland China and being stunned that their Hong Kong dollars are no longer being accepted by local businesses! “
• PLASTIC SURGERY - Caucasian Eye for the Asian Gal?
  ” a “new generation” of Asian-Americans is embracing a cosmetic procedure known as “double-eyelid surgery.”
• CHINA - How To Shoot an Airplane
  Scans of a pamphlet dated 1965, titled 怎样打飞机 (”How to Shoot an Airplane”).
• INDONESIA - Golkar’s extended foreplay on sex video
  “Golkar, the once ruling party of Indonesia has finally, after days of prevaricating, has finally taken a step toward taking a tion against Yahya Zaini, the senior party lawmaker caught on video romping naked with a dangdut singer.”

• INTERNET CENSORSHIP - Citizen Lab releases Psiphon
  “psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab … that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of state
• CHINA - Panda Site Brings Violence on Relocated Farmers
  “…plans to build a panda site in Sichuan’s Chengdu City have reportedly turned into violence against local villagers in at Huilong … where people refused to move due to the low compensations.”
• CHINA - How to stop news coverage
  What follows is the dialog “How to Stop Illegal News Coverage” that appears in a training manual distributed to Beijing policemen learning English in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games.

• JAPAN - The most-expensive Hello Kitty
  “Sanrio Co., maker of the popular Hello Kitty line, will offer a platinum version of the winsome cat for about $150,000 in Japan.”
• JAPAN - The Japanese Wank Machine
  “Here’s another reason why the Japanese are the most creative and innovative (and craziest) inventors: The Japanese Wank Machine”
• SINGAPORE - Rollertoaster
  “Singapore-based industrial designer Jaren Goh’s Rollertoaster just may revolutionize toast as we know it.”
• THAILAND - Thai toilet expo proves popular
  “It’s not the sort of exhibition you would think would be popular, but the World Toilet Expo has attracted hundreds of delegates from across host nation, Thailand as well as South East Asia”
• CHINA - Ipods For $50. PS3 For $75. Wii For $100. PS3s and Xboxes For $150.
  “Bottom Line: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone is offering to sell you big name brand electronics for way under market, that product is almost certainly either stolen, fake, or non-existent. There is no China price on these
• CHINA - Olympics mean a softer touch for foreign correspondents, maybe
  “When an emerging, baggage-laden country like China not only hosts the games, but intentionally makes them into a global coming-out party, every single issue in the country is automatically connected with the games.”