This is a guest post from Nick Frisch, a writer based in Hong Kong:
"The outside world got a listen at North Korea's curious soundscape during yesterday's widely-covered funeral of Kim Jong Il. Like the Hermit Kingdom itself, the DPRK's aural heritage is a musical mishmash: bombastic or solemn Soviet anthems aped by the North's uniformed orchestras and Red Army-style choirs, but also deeply Korean, pan-peninsular folk classics like Arirang, an unofficial anthem on both sides of the DMZ. (It has also been expanded into an iteration of Pyongyong's infamous song-and-dance spectaculars, the Arirang Mass Games.)
As Kim Jong Il's coffin and cortege wended their way through Pyongyang's snowy streets yesterday, it wasn't just the route and imagery that sought inspiration and legitimacy from the 1994 funeral of Kim Il Sung, his still-revered father and predecessor. "Memorial Song of a Partisan," played in 1994, was specially re-recorded by a Korean People's Army Band and piped out to sobbing crowds. It evolved from a Russian folk song adapted by the WWII-era anti-Japanese resistance fighters who grew into North Korea's founding elite. With the original's lilting waltz meter and tempo rectified to a solemn march, a switch to a dour minor key made the transformation into "Partisan" complete; it is now a standard dirge for state occasions.
Similar music greets visitors to Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where the eldest Kim lies on display and his just-departed son lay in state until yesterday. As in 1994, the Song of General Kim Jong Il, which has "happy" and "sad" versions tailored to a given state occasion.
Not to be outdone, Kim Jong Un, North Korea's recently-anointed "supreme commander", was first introduced to his people and the world through song: as speculation mounted over Kim Jong Il's health difficulties and the elevation of Kim Jong Un, reports of a new song from the state's propaganda hit-machine began to circulate in 2009. Recounts scholar of North Korean propaganda B.R. Myers, "young North Koreans had been taught to sing a song glorifying a certain General Kim, whose vigorous stride (so the lyric goes) was making the very rivers and mountains rejoice. That this General was not the current leader, whose name is invariably invoked in its full three syllables, was clear enough, ergo the poem's subject had to be the successor to the throne."
Now, that throne is his.
Later today anyone who's anyone in Pyongyang will turn out for the funeral of Kim Jong Il. While Kim's death may have been unexpected, his mourning and burial process seems to be almost identical to that of his father sixteen years ago.
Both Kims underwent an initial mourning period of ten days at Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Overseeing the mourning, like his father, Kim Jong Un has been wearing almost identical clothing to his own father at Kim Il Sung's funeral - a dark grey Mao jacket. Four days after Kim Jong Il's death, the Korean Central News Agency reported that North Korea's successor was distributing food and drink at mourning stations throughout the country, just as his father did sixteen years prior. And KCNA released almost matching coroner's reports within hours of reporting the deaths. In 1994 and 2011, causes of death were similarly reported as "acute myocardial infarction", following "heavy mental strains" in Kim seniors' case, complemented by "a great ... physical strain" in Kim juniors' case. The goal: to show the deaths had been brought on by the toil of working to bring about improvement for the North Korean people.
Fast-forward a day or two past death, and reports in both cases emerged of natural wonders occurring throughout the country. In Kim Il Sung's case, violent storms at North Korea's legendary Mount Paekdu and "rivers that were crying because of the sorrow". For Kim Jong Il, news of similar "natural wonders" included a series of "blue flashes accompanied by thunder", unseasonal snowfall, and most recently, willows sprouting out of season in revolutionary sites. Will the funeral of Kim Jong Il follow the same formula as that of Kim Il Sung, complete with glass coffin, motorcade, and the world's largest display of uncontrollable grief? Stay tuned.
The outpouring of grief in North Korea over the death of Kim Jong Il -- captured in an FP slideshow today -- has many people asking the same question: Are the copious tears shed for the authoritarian ruler real, staged, or -- more unsettling yet -- a product of brainwashing?
We can't know for sure, of course. But there's plenty of speculation. Reuters notes that while grieving has been coordinated in North Korea, there have also been reports of spontaneous outbursts of sorrow at gymnastics competitions and village loudspeakers. The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott thinks many of the tears, like those following the death of Josef Stalin in Russia, are genuine -- the products of concern about stability and continuity, "mass hysteria," and the inability to "conceive of life without the Dear Leader."
Others are more skeptical, however. In an appearance on PRI's The World last night, British professor Hazel Smith, who lived in North Korea for two years, suggested that those doing the crying represent the minority who've benefitted under Kim Jong Il's rule, pointing to footage broadcast by North Korean state media of wailing students from Pyongyang's No. 1 Secondary School as evidence:
Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School is where the elites go to school and where they would have been filmed by the North Korean TV to show all this grief in order to put on a show for the world. So the main question is what about the rest of the people? Most people think that Kim Jong Il doesn't provide them with a decent life, enough food to eat, that they've suffered a calamitous degradation of their lives economically over the past 20 years.
So what has mourning in the impoverished country looked like? The first instance of public grief came on Monday morning in North Korea, when a television presenter dressed in black haltingly announced Kim Jong Il's death:
Over the past two days, the state-run Korean Central News Agency has released a series of videos showing the North Korean people -- mainly those in the capital -- "overcome with grief." In the clip below, employees of the Kwangbok Area Supermarket in Pyongyang -- which Kim visited during a "field guidance" tour only days before his death -- rush to a stage where the North Korean leader's picture is displayed, fall to the floor, and weep hysterically. One worker says she welled up with tears when she caught a glimpse of Kim's "haggard face" during his visit to the supermarket, according to a KCNA translation.
In another video released today, North Koreans young and old weep before a photo of Kim Jong Il at the April 25 House of Culture in the capital. "I can hardly believe his demise," one young woman shrieks. Another woman, the curator of the Jonsung Revolutionary Museum, adds that Kim "did not even allow the people to erect his statue and monument." She pledges fealty to Kim's revolutionary cause and to the leadership of his son and successor, Kim Jong Un.
KCNA is publishing article after article about the country's "veritable sea of mourners" (5 million strong in Pyongyang alone, per the news agency) whose "wailing voices are rocking heaven and earth." This Russia Today montage captures some of the other scenes that have been playing on North Korean television, including that shot referenced above of students from No. 1 Secondary School (at 1:00):
In another instance of grieving today, Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance since his father's death, visiting Kim Jong Il's coffin and saluting military officials in what smacked of a symbolic transfer of power:
What's perhaps most striking about all the images above -- the hysterical, collective weeping, the ascendant son visiting his father as he lies in state -- is how closely they mirror the scenes that came out of North Korea in 1994, when Kim Il Sung died and Kim Jong Il assumed power. Check out this footage from that period:
"He is the eternally immovable mental mainstay of the Korean people," KCNA declares today of Kim Jong Un. One can't help but feel like history is repeating itself.
Update: In an analysis on Wednesday, the New York Times notes that the convulsive grieving in North Korea is "an accepted part of Korean Confucian culture," a practice compounded by coercion and Kim Jong Il's cult of personality. "Not hewing to this tradition would invite social and state opprobium," the paper writes. Indeed, according to ABC News, a North Korean defector once wrote that in the wake of Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, "The party conducted surveys to see who displayed the most grief, and made this an important criterion in assessing party members' loyalty."
South Korea has a problem: Energy demand is outpacing energy supply, and the country could face debilitating electricity shortages this winter (a surge in consumption during an unseasonably hot September already caused widespread blackouts). But, fortunately, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who's already constructed additional power plants and imposed new power-saving regulations, has an unorthodox, deeply personal solution. In a radio address on Monday, Lee informed South Koreans that he has taken to wearing thermal underwear after lowering the thermostat in his office.
"Naturally, I had to wear warmer underwear which was uncomfortable initially," Lee explained, according to the Yonhap News Agency. "But after a while, I got used to it, and now I am very warm and comfortable wearing it." Having resolved any outstanding confusion over the comfort of his underwear, Lee issued a challenge to South Koreans:
We can save energy beyond our expectations if we lower the temperature in houses and offices a little, turn off unnecessary lights during the night and use high-efficiency electric appliances. I urge businesses, civic organizations and the general public to participate in this campaign voluntarily.
Lee may be thinking outside the box, but he has an intellectual forebear. In 1977, a cardigan-clad Jimmy Carter informed Americans that if they would only keep their thermostats at "65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night," America "could save half the current shortage of natural gas." Carter, who would later install solar panels on the White House roof, was trying to develop a national energy policy in the wake of an exceptionally cold winter that had depleted supplies of oil and natural gas.
But the exercise in lead-by-example, micromanaged energy conservation fueled ridicule more than anything else. In 2009, for example, an op-ed in the Tulsa World claimed that "Carter's sweater" was "haunting the discussion" of energy conservation, making it "permanently associated with malaise and discomfort." Here's some footage from Carter's 1977 speech (the part about thermostats comes right after the end of the clip):
Perhaps South Koreans will look back on Monday, November 28 as the day the country got serious about energy conservation. Or, of course, they may remember it as the day South Koreans started making fun of Lee Myung-bak's long underwear.
Noel Celis and Arnold Sachs/AFP/Getty Images
Money for clean energy is creating political messes all over. Of course, there are the Obama administration's ongoing troubles over loans to now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. Now comes a report from Reuters saying that green energy loans to bolster China's businesses may be in danger of defaulting, due to falling demand from Europeans, their biggest customers.
From the report:
State banks provide easy loans to the sector amid the Chinese government's push to develop clean energy. Provincial governments that have helped build solar companies are also pressuring banks to continue lending, which may add to the woes of the struggling industry.
The glut of production and swelling inventories of the panels that turn sunlight into electricity have already driven down prices by about 40 percent so far this year. Analysts expect prices to slide by another 10 percent by early next year.
"Over the next six months, there won't be profits to be made," said CLSA's solar analyst Charles Yonts. He expects some companies to start defaulting on loans and put themselves up for sale.
"Balance sheets across the solar sector are already stretched to breaking."
This comes on top of other setbacks for China's green energy aspirations this year. In September, the Chinese had to shut down a solar panel plant following protests against the its pollution. Other economic concerns including the rising number of "ghost cities" amidst the Chinese property bubble, are rattling the markets and prospects for growth.
The Guardian reported in September that in 2010, the China Development Bank gave out nearly $30 billion in loans to the top 5 manufacturers of solar panels. Several weeks ago, industry groups representing the U.S solar industry raised concerns to the U.S Commerce Department about possible dumping by Chinese manufacturers.
Despite the concerns, Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan announced a $1.7 trillion "strategic investment" today, which included money to be directed towards the alternative energy fields. Questions on how the banks will manage more green energy loans on their balance sheets still remain unanswered.
After all, as the in the U.S. case, a certain number of failures are inevitable in an alternative energy investment this big. And it's not as if Wang has to go in front of Congress to explain himself every time one of these deals doesn't work out.
Feng Li/Getty Images
Ulan Bator is funding a $730,000 ‘ice shield' initiative to counterbalance urban heat island effect and global warming and to lighten up the city's air conditioning bill. The experiment is sort of like a scotch on the rocks, except instead of scotch it's Mongolia, and instead of one cube or two it's the artificially super-frozen Tuul river. The hope is that a giant ice sheet -- known as a naled -- will store the winter's cold and cool the city through the hot months to come.
At the end of November, the engineers of the Mongolian ECOS & EMI firm will begin recreating the natural naled-forming process by drilling holes through the ice covering the river Tuul. This will allow water to rise through the ice sheet in the warmer daytime temperatures and spread across its surface. Then the new layers will freeze during the nights and create an ever thickening ice shelf.
While naleds have served industrial applications before, as military bridges in North Korea or as platforms for drilling in Russia, the Ulan Bator climate experiment is unprecedented. But if the Tuul successfully cools down the spring and summer as it gradually melts, providing water and a hospitable microclimate, the practice may become more common in places like Mongolia where the environmental conditions are right.
Worst comes to worst, with Winter Olympics only two years away, Mongolia's figure skaters have a new place to practice in the summer.
Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images
Next April, North Korea plans to partially open the Ryugyong Hotel, a quarter century after ground was first broken for its construction. The new opening date coincides with the 100th birthday of North Korea's founding father, the late Kim Il-sung.
The Ryugyong has been referred to in the international press as the 'Hotel of Doom' and "the worst building in the world". During its intitial construction phase, which began in 1982, the clunky but imposing outer space pyramid dwarfed its neighbors on the Pyongyang skyline and had been honored on stamps. But by 1992, continuing to mirror the state of North Korean affairs, the completed but empty 1,080 foot shell was underfunded, abandoned and airbrushed out of official photos.
Through the years of neglect, the 105-story Ryugyong's potential as the highest hotel in the world was surpassed four times by taller (completed) hotels and, though it once might have been the 7th largest skyscraper, it currently ties at #40.
The resurrection of the Ryugyong is said to come as a result of resumed funding by the Egyptian Orascom Group. It's been reported that new construction has already begun and that the forthcoming hotel might boast as many as five rotating restaurants. Critics may argue that North Korea could make better use of the 2 billion dollars it could cost to bring the Ryugyong back to life. But if all goes according to plan this time, the Ryugyong Hotel will soon be an enigma in a country not especially known for its hospitality industry.
Feng Li/Getty Images
It's been a very public few days for Kim Jong Il's 16-year-old grandson, Kim Han Sol.
On Friday, the United World College's (UWC) Bosnia-Herzegovina campus, one of 13 UWC international schools globally, announced Kim Han Sol's acceptance. Board chairman David Sutcliffe explained that the decision "understandably generated surprise and comment, some of it critical." But, echoing the school's mission statement, he went on to say that the UWCs "exist in order to cross new frontiers in international education.… The opportunity of taking a first step in bringing North Korea into the international community, through youth, is one to be cherished."
Three days after the UWC announcement, the Korean Daily News discovered what's believed to be Han Sol's Facebook page as well as the page of his father, Kim Jong Il's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam. If it is really him, then one picture shows Han sporting dyed blond hair and posing with a girlfriend. His favorite movie, according to the page, is Love Actually. Notably for the grandson of one of the world's most brutal tyrants, the page includes an encyclopedia definition of democracy. He also reportedly polled his friends on whether they preferred it to communism, as he did.
In this way, Kim Han Sol would resemble his father, whose talk of reform within North Korea (and being caught with a fake passport with the name "Fat Bear" en route to Tokyo Disney Land) cost him his position in line for the throne. Kim Jong Nam has lived in exile in China and Macau since 2001. What's believed to be his own Facebook page criticizes both his father and the North Korean establishment including his half brother, heir apparent Kim Jong Un.
In any event, it doesn't seem like there's much future for Kim Han Sol in the family business.
Photo by Gawker.com
The Dalai Lama shook up 370 years of tradition last March when he announced that he would step down from his post as the political leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Over the weekend the Nobel laureate shook things up again, saying: "When I am about ninety I will... re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not."
But Beijing and Dharamsala don't see eye to eye on much, and reincarnation is no exception. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told journalists on Monday that "the title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the central government and is illegal otherwise... the reincarnation of any living Buddha, including the Dalai Lama, should respect the religious rules, historical standards and state laws and regulations." China claims authority over this process based on the histories of its ancient emporers, whereas Tibetan's believe in finding the manifestations of the continuous mindstreams of their leaders.
Recently, China has asserted itself on the issue by appointing its own successors to Tibetan positions. Today's Panchen Lama, currently nominated for the Chinese version of the Nobel prize, was appointed by the Chinese government days after they arrested the Dalai Lama's own appointment (who hasn't been heard from since 1995.)
In handing off political power, the Dalai Lama hoped to prevent any instability his death and reincarnation might bring to Tibet. But China seems intent not to let him off that easy.
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
Chinese ambitions in Africa have been no secret to Western policymakers. In the past 7 years, Beijing has devoted over $14 billion dollars to Africa, through a mixture of aid for resources packages and direct investment. However, the outcome of this weekend's Zambian presidential election could be an indication that the policy is beginning to backfire. Four-time candidate, and former train station sweeper Michael "King Cobra" Sata, was confirmed as the winner last Friday.
The Global Post reports:
Sata referred to Chinese investors as "infesters." He called for Chinese migrant workers to be expelled from Zambia. And he described Taiwan as a country, breaching Beijing's obsessive "one China" policy, which considers Taiwan a rogue province rather than an independent nation. China threatened to cut ties with Zambia if Sata won.
China responded to Banda's defeat with the same pragmatism as it had toward the loss of friendly regimes in South Sudan and Libya: It tried to befriend the new boss.
"As a friendly country of Zambia, China respects the Zambian people's choice and would like to work with Zambia to promote friendship and expand mutually beneficial cooperation across the board," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.
But privately, the Chinese government must be worried. Sata has said he may implement capital controls aimed at keeping foreign-exchange earnings in Zambia, Africa's biggest copper producer and a country that has seen strong economic growth averaging 6 percent over the last three years. Foreign-exchange controls would prevent Chinese companies from sending their profits home to China.
China relies extensively on its investment and foreign aid apparatus to bolster its soft power on the continent. A white paper released this past April by the Chinese government went into more detail about the different components and extent of their operations. A significant portion of the monies are channeled through various Chinese state owned corporations and banks to the countries that they have ties with, including resources hubs Angola, D.R Congo, Sudan, and Zambia.
It will also trouble China Inc., as the election served as a vote of no confidence against their existing projects within the country. As the Economist covered in April, the reputation of Chinese companies has been slowly crumbling with the regular reports of poor working conditions, routine bribery and environmental damage. In Zambia, a Chinese built road was washed away by rainfall.
While Sata's election will not deter the Chinese from further investing in Zambia, it could signal the beginning of a trend in African politics for candidates to run on anti-Chinese platforms. Much in the way that prominent Latin American leaders such as Hugo Chavez ran on U.S-bashing platforms, African countries could see the beginnings of a similar type of movement to protest the wider abuses stemming from Chinese involvement. How it affects further economic relations will be seen in the coming months.
THOMAS NSAMA/AFP/Getty Images
The recent Solyndra debacle involving U.S government subsidies towards a now bankrupt solar energy startup has dominated headlines in the U.S. But China is facing a more serious solar crisis.
After four days of protests at the Jinko Solar Holding, an NYSE listed company based out of Haining, Chinese officials have shut down the plant and apologized to citizens over alleged dumping of toxic waste into the local river. The protests come after a large number of fish deaths from what are perceived to be high levels of fluoride in the water. The Los Angeles Times' Jonathan Kaiman reports:
The decision is an indication of the growing power of environmental protesters to sway government policy in China. As many as 500 villagers participated in the protests near Haining, an industrial city of 640,000 in coastal Zhejiang province.
The plant's operator, JinkoSolar, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, issued a public apology Monday.
"We cannot shirk responsibility for the legal consequences which have come from management slips," Jing Zhaohui, a company representative, said at a news conference.
Company officials are claiming that recent rainfall, and poor containment of solid waste at the factory contributed to runoff which fed into the river system. While there have been no human casualties as of yet, much of the toxins that killed the animals, including lead, are linked to human neurological conditions as well. Jinko's shares also took a hit today from the news, declining by nearly 10 percent in today's trading.
As the Guardian's Jonathan Watts reported, the clash is also indicative of the types of challenges that China faces as it struggles to move away from a primarily coal-based energy portfolio toward one including cleaner tech. Furthermore, the protest will bring further questions about the extent to which China's support of solar manufacturers can last.
As the AFP noted, China's extensive use of "cheap labor and state support" has bolstered the industry into producing nearly 70 percent of the world's supply. FP's Clyde Prestowitz recentlyfurther into detail on how China's aggressive policies are eating into production from countries including the United States.
Of course, the burgeoning sector isn't going to go very far if clean tech proves prone to toxic accidents.
SIMON LIM/AFP/Getty Images
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il traveled to Russia this week, his first visit to his country's former Cold War ally in nine years. Kim rode an armored train to eastern Siberia to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, crossing the Russian border on Sunday, Aug. 21, touring the Bureyskaya hydroelectric power station, and meeting with Medvedev on Wednesday. Medvedev flew 3,500 miles across Russia to a Siberian military base for the meeting.
Kim promised Medvedev a moratorium on the production and testing of nuclear weapons, a move that could help restart nuclear disarmament talks, stalled in 2009. North Korea has been isolated both economically and diplomatically since March 2009, when it conducted a second nuclear weapons test. Both the United States and South Korea demand concrete action from North Korea before they return to the six-party talks.
Kim's weeklong trip to Russia is also expected to focus on trade talks and gaining economic and political support from Russia. North Korea is facing chronic food shortages and factory closures thanks to punishing international sanctions. Russia pledged 50,000 tons of wheat to North Korea and also discussed energy and infrastructure projects, including a pipeline carrying Russian gas to South Korea through the North.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, Kim is also concerned about the downfall of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and Middle East unrest in general. While North Korean media has not been reporting on the Arab Spring, news of the uprisings has been spread through radios and word of mouth from people who have illegally crossed into China and back. "That dynamic is probably much more alarming to Kim Jong Il than anything else," Lee Jong-min, dean of international studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, told the Monitor. "He's prompted by the need to bolster his power."
Kim has visited China five times since 2002, the year of his last trip to Russia, when he met with then-President Vladimir Putin.
More photos below the jump:
A deep freight train rumble struck South Korea's capital as a series of landslides engulfed entire villages. Screams resounded from buildings as they were dragged down mud rivers. Drivers scrambled to their car roofs as entire portions of the highway were swept away.
Relentless rains have crippled the region, with some reports placing the death toll at 67. Thousands of police officers, firefighters and soldiers are scrambling to aid victims and search for potential survivors. But in some areas, rescue missions have been stalled due to another potential disaster: landmines. Between 1999 and 2006, the South Korean military dug up mines from the Korean War on Wumyeon Mountain in southern Seoul, but ten could not be located. Residents have been warned that these land mines could have been knocked loose by floods and debris. Authorities hope that a concrete wall resting near the mountain will hold back the missing mines.
While an army official told reporters that the lost ammunition posed no real danger, as the grenades are stored in wooden boxes and the mines are detached from their fuses, similar instances have resulted in deaths in the region. In 2010, floods carried a North Korean landmine into a river close to the border. Two South Korean men, who were fishing in the area, came across the mine. One instantly died, the other was wounded. Officials reported more than 30 mines had been swept into South Korea. The Demilitarized Zone -- the two and a half miles dividing North and South Korea -- is littered with mines. Many unsuspecting villagers have come across the deadly weapons, losing arms, legs and, sometimes, their lives.
Both North and South Korea experience an annual rainy season, but this year's rains have proven to be the worst in a century. North Korea's widespread deforestation makes it even more vulnerable, with few trees to stop the powerful landslides. Aid and supplies have been distributed quickly around Seoul, but rescuers expressed concern over potential electrocution in flooded parking lots and construction sites. Over 4,500 people have been driven from their homes.
The water bombs, as some are calling the pounding rain storms, have stopped for now, but here's hoping the real explosives won't bear their ugly heads.
YANG HOE-SEONG/AFP/Getty Images; PARK JI-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images; JANG SEUNG-YOON/AFP/Getty Images; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images; JANG SEUNG-YOON/AFP/Getty Images
The fallout from this weekend's Chinese bullet train crash -- in which 39 people died when a train was immobilized after being struck by lightning on a bridge, then rammed by another train from behind, derailing several cars -- continued today. The government fired three senior railway officials and is reviewing safety on the country's four-year-old high-speed rail system. While there was justifiable anger at Chinese officials for trying to keep details of the accident out of the public, China's rail safety is far better than that of its fellow emerging economy -- India.
Journalist Lloyd Lofthouse, compared the numbers going back to 2007 for India, China, and the United States. He found that out of the 177 rail accidents during that period, 20 percent of them actually occurred in the United States, 15 percent occurred in India, and only 4 percent occurred in China. But the death toll in India was far greater.
In the period Lofthouse reviewed, 66 people were killed in U.S. train accidents, about 141 in Chinese accidents, and "hundreds" in Indian rail accidents.
Last year alone, there were at least 17 crashes in India. And, in the past month, three incidents killed more than 100 people. According to Bloomberg News:
In the early hours of July 7, 38 people were killed and at least as many injured when a train collided with a bus carrying members of a wedding party at an unmanned level crossing in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Then, on July 10, at least 68 people were killed and more than 250 injured when 15 bogies of the Howrah-Kalka Mail careered off the tracks, again in Uttar Pradesh, while the train was travelling at more than 60 miles per hour. That evening, six coaches of the Guwahati-Puri Express derailed in Assam after a bomb was set off on the tracks, injuring more than 100 people.
India has one of the largest railway system in the world, carrying about 19 million passengers every day on about 7,000 trains. It's called the "lifeline to the nation." Unfortunately, that often means trains are jam packed.
Given the spate of recent crashes, anger has mounted against the government-run system. Newspapers have editorialized about the system's persistent safety failures and "systemic decay."
The Deccan Chronicle, an Indian paper, said the increasingly accident-prone system could be blamed on the addition of "more trains on nearly every route, mainly to suit the whims or political compulsions of railway ministers, and raising their speed without commensurate upgrading of tracks and other equipment needed to bear the extra load." The Times of India wrote that the railway authority "failed to meet targets it had set for itself in the corporate safety plan ... indicating the low priority it gave to passenger safety." According to the Indian Express, "There is a real danger that the frequency of train accidents in India might soon desensitize people as ‘yet another' instance of what has become thoughtlessly, mind-numbingly commonplace."
Part of the problem is politicians have tried to keep fares as low as possible to keep voters happy, which has turned the system into a "financial disaster," according to the Indian Express, meaning trains are old and not properly cared for -- a deadly combination.
AFP/ Getty Images
Last week, when confronted by reporters, a manager of a knock-off Apple store in Kunming, China said, "There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."
Technically, he wasn't correct -- Chinese law does prohibit businesses from copying the "look and feel" of other companies, but China is often accused of failing to enforce the law. And, after Chinese officials investigated the store -- and several others in the city -- it is still open. A blogger first wrote about the carbon copy business last week, leading to a flood of terrible publicity. Chinese officials said over the weekend they would investigate "all the city's electronic stores." Today, they announced they were closing two fake Apple Stores (out of at least five in the city). However, the reason had nothing to do with their brazen flouting of copyright laws. The businesses didn't have the proper permits.
"Media should not misunderstand the situation and jump to conclusions. Some overseas media has made it appear the stores sold fake Apple products," Chang Puyun, spokesman of Kunming government's business bureau, told Reuters. "China has taken great steps to enforce intellectual property rights and the stores weren't selling fake products."
According to CNET News, China and Apple have a complicated relationship.
Apple's business is intertwined with China, creating a love-hate relationship. Nearly all of the company's products are born in huge factory complexes in the country's interior, some as large as midsized cities, and Apple has started to move into China's retail market, with four official Apple stores in the sprawling country. But China has also been the source of numerous leaks, cheap knock-offs, piracy and other headaches for Apple. The fake Apple stores have been one of the most impressive such violations to date in their attention to detail.
The U.S. Trade Representative's office
says counterfeiting and intellectual property theft in China cost
U.S. businesses an estimated $48 billion in 2009.
In a challenge to China's controversial one-child policy, a regional leader has asked for permission from the central government to relax the policy in his area. Earlier this month, Zhang Feng, the head of Guangdong's population commission, requested that some families be allowed to have a second child (specifically families in which one of the parents is an only child). Surprisingly, a similar baby-step implemented two years ago in Shanghai -- under which parents who were both single children were allowed, and even encouraged, to have two children -- did not lead to a surge in additional kids. Many parents cited financial and time concerns as their rationale for limiting themselves to one child. Even Zhang Feng admitted in an interview with the Southern Metropolis News, a state-run paper in Guangdong, that "to allow the new policy will have little overall impact on population growth."
With a population of more than 104 million, Guangdong is currently China's most populous province. Officials proposed this change in order to combat problems associated with a population that is rapidly aging. Zhang Feng explained that "the increase in population is still a big problem affecting our social and economic development...But in the long-term, aging will also be a problem."
Guangdong also has an important role in a very different method of circumventing the one-child policy. A growing number of mainland mothers use intermediaries -- many of whom are based in Guangdong -- to arrange for them to travel to, and give birth in, nearby Hong Kong, where the one-child policy does not apply. According to government statistics, in 2010 47% of the babies born in Hong Kong were the children of mainland mothers.
In addition to avoiding fines imposed for disobeying the one-child policy, mothers who give birth in the territory reap a variety of other benefits. For example, their children are automatically considered residents of Hong Kong (although most children return to the mainland with their parents anyway), and as such, can travel abroad more freely. All of this doesn't come cheap however, with prices at public hospitals (where approximately a quarter of the mainland babies are born) between HK$39,000 and HK$48,000 (approximately US$5,000 and US$6,150). Prices at private hospitals are even higher.
Officials in both Hong Kong and mainland China have expressed concern over this trend. In April, worried that the record influx of mainland mothers would overload their healthcare system, Hong Kong announced that for the rest of the year mainland mothers will be prohibited from signing-up to give birth in public hospitals. The Hong Kong government has also recently restricted the number of spots available to non-locals at public hospitals, from 10,000 in 2011 to only 3,400 for 2012. The government has also considered raising the rates charged at public hospitals. And in Guangdong, members of the family planning committee recently ruled that second children, even those born outside the mainland, must be registered as "additional."
If Guangdong, however, is given permission to enact the proposed reforms to its one-child policy, Hong Kong's moves to say "bye, bye, baby" may not be quite so necessary any more.
PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images
What would you do if you bought a shiny new Apple computer (from what looked to be a shiny Apple store) only to find out that the store that sold it to you was a total fraud? We're guessing there would probably be some screaming involved. For customers in the Chinese city of Kunming, the revelation that their city's Apple hub was a counterfeit (albeit, a damn impressive counterfeit), has led to angry customers demanding refunds.
‘When I heard the news I rushed here immediately to get the receipt, I am so upset,' a customer surnamed Wang told Reuters, near tears. ‘With a store this big, it looks so believable who would have thought it was fake?'
Wang, a petite, 23-year-old office worker who would not give her first name, spent 14,000 yuan ($2,170) last month buying a Macbook Pro 13-inch and a 3G iPhone from the Kunming store. She wasn't issued a receipt at the time, with staff telling her to come back later.
‘Where's my receipt, you promised me my receipt last month!' Wang shouted at employees, before being whisked away to an upstairs room.
On Wednesday, an American blogger living in Kunming first wrote about the store, which popped up in her neighborhood:
They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks ... We struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple.
The store said its products were genuine Apple computers and were being sold at the same price as you would find on Apple's website. And staff said they were angry by all the media attention the blog has caused.
"The media is painting us to be a fake store but we don't sell fakes, all our products are real, you can check it yourself," one employee told Reuters. "There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."
Clearly, the best part of yesterday's tense parliamentary session with Rupert and James Murdoch was when Wendi Murdoch leapt up to defend her husband after a spectator splattered a foam pie in his face. She literarily jumped over people to slap the man.
Here's the account of an eyewitness in the room:
What you might not have seen is the full instinctive and furious reaction of Mr Murdoch's wife, Wendi. Having sat through the evidence unsmiling, she moved faster than anyone else. First, she swung a slap at her husband's attacker. She followed up by picking up the plate and trying to strike him with it. And then she moved back to her husband. Sitting on the table before him, she started to clear the foam from his face, sometimes embracing him, holding his bald head in her arms.
If you feel like watching her moves repeated in an endless loop, check this out.
Before today, when most people wrote about Mrs. Murdoch, descriptions like "much younger," "third wife," and "social climber" were pretty much de rigueur. And, along with those phrases came negative connotations, of course. Wendi Murdoch, 43, was born Deng Wen Ge in an isolated eastern Chinese city. Her father was a manager at a nearby factory. She left for the United States in 1987 after meeting an older American couple in China who agreed to sponsor her. She moved in with them in California and attended college (she also eventually married the husband and became an American citizen).
That marriage fizzled, as did a subsequent one, before she met Murdoch when she was 30 and he was 68. Though she's remained busy -- even producing a movie in China -- her public persona has mainly been the woman standing by Murdoch's side at various events.
So, it was interesting to see some of the reaction in China, where her slap quickly became the number one trending topic on a popular micro-blogging service.
The Nanfang website posted a few translated tweets.
It's not easy getting information out of Burma. The man who snapped this photo hid the camera's SD card in his sock in order to sneak it across the border.
The image shows a 105 meter bridge in eastern Burma reportedly destroyed by the army on June 30 with heavy artillery.
It's in an area of the country dominated by the Shan ethnic group, the largest minority in Burma, who have been at war on and off with the government for decades.
Many Shan have fled to neighboring Thailand, claiming human rights abuses by the Burmese.
"This bridge was strategic," said Jaden McNeely of the NGO Global Refuge. His group distributed cameras to Burmese people to obtain evidence of abuses like this. "It moved everything from animals to tools for local villagers." He said the army has destroyed a number of bridges in the area.
According to McNeely, the Burmese army suspected the Shan army of using it to move supplies across.
Internet death rumors have (falsely) claimed the lives of everyone from teen hearthrob Justin Bieber to poor Jeff Goldblum (who was reported to have fallen off a cliff in New Zealand).
Given that less-than-stellar track record, the press is taking a very cautious approach to the latest rumors that former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin has died.
The Internet rumors spread after the 84-year-old Jiang Zemin-- who held power for 12 years before handing control to President Hu Jintao in 2002 -- didn't appear last Friday at a celebration marking the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party's founding. According to the Daily Telegraph, TV stations and newspapers in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea all reported his death, but most outlets are being more careful.
Today, China's Xinhua News Agency quoted officials calling the reports "pure rumor." Interestingly, they didn't say he hadn't died, said David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.
Lampton, who made clear he didn't know whether Jiang Zemin was alive or dead -- and didn't want to speculate -- called China's response a "non-denial denial."
"It could be he is close to death and so they don't want to say anything," Lampton said.
Minxin Pei, director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College, agreed. "There must be something to the rumors, he must be ill, but I don't think he's dead yet," he told Foreign Policy. "The Chinese government has never made up lies of that magnitude -- saying someone is alive when they are actually dead."
So if it's true he passed away, why wouldn't they come out and say it?
Lampton said there are a number of possible reasons.
"The regime may be trying to orchestrate how to play his role to the populace," he said. "Because he was in power so long, there are lots of policy issues they need to work through."
"The media systems are less controllable than in the past," said Lampton. "They may want to get their propaganda ducks in a row before making an announcement."
Whatever the case, Chinese Internet censors have gone into overdrive, the Telegraph reports.
"Searches for ‘Jiang Zemin' in Chinese or simply ‘Jiang' ... drew warnings on Sina Corp.'s popular Twitter-like service that said the search was illegal," according to the paper.
Lampton pointed out that the party is also in the midst of planning for Hu Jintao's succession (presumably to Vice President Xi Jinping) and there could be a debate within the party about how to burnish Jiang Zemin's legacy.
"Each generational leader is always fearful of being overshadowed by his predecessor. They don't want to be diminished while you're praising their predecessor."
AFP/ Getty Images
Though the ruling regime in Burma freed political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest last November and relaxed restrictions on her -- she's met with foreign diplomats and given interviews -- they don't seem to be any less sensitive about the 66-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner. Apparently, even pretending to be Aung San Suu Kyi will get you kicked out of the country these days. Former Bond girl and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Michelle Yeoh was sent packing on June 22 after landing in Rangoon. She will play Aung San Suu Kyi in the upcoming film, The Lady.
Yeoh spent time with the recently freed opposition leader in December, when she traveled to Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi's son, Kim Aris, according to the Daily Telegraph.
"She did not have the chance to enter [Burma] again," said a Burmese official, according to the Telegraph. "She was deported straight away on the first flight after arriving at [Rangoon] International Airport."
"When it comes to being kicked out and deported, it's very arbitrary," said a writer who has traveled there frequently in the last few years, though has also been denied entry on several occasions. "Meeting with Suu Kyi is very on the edge, because it's clearly anti-government. If you go to her headquarters, there's a very good chance you'll be taken to the airport directly afterwards or they won't let you back in next time."
The writer, who didn't want to be named so as not to harm the chances of getting into the country in the future, said the Burmese authorities have a long blacklist of people they won't allow in.
Yeoh was likely placed on the blacklist because she is a high-profile celebrity and didn't hide the fact that she met with Aung San Suu Kyi on her last visit.
And of course she's making a sympathetic movie of Aung San Suu Kyi. Yeoh described the film as an "incredible love story that has political turmoil within." Presumably, she's referring to Aung San Suu Kyi's marriage to British historian Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999 in England. Aung San Suu Kyi could not visit him because she believed she wouldn't be allowed to return to Burma. In the last 10 years of his life, he and his wife had only seen each other five times.
Aung San Suu Kyi spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest. She was freed last November, just days after elections in the country that were criticized by the international community as a sham and which her party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted.
Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi testified before the U.S. Congress -- via video -- for the first time ever, urging the United States to do more to push Burma on the lack of democratic progress.
"We are seeing that the regime is not taking action against what Aung San Suu Kyi is doing and she is relatively free to attend meetings in her office and meet with whom she wants," said Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. "This is their way of reaching out to the international community, which has been putting pressure on them."
Din said the regime will inevitably crack down again.
"[The regime] has opened the door a little, but their way of opening the door is to say you have to accept and obey the system and work within it. They have done it in the past. Really, the door is not open."
Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor of Utah who crossed party lines to serve as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China, will stand in front of the Statue of Liberty tomorrow and announce he is running for president. Huntsman tends to get both foreign policy types and the cable news political punditocracy fired up -- He's moderate! He's friendly! He speaks Chinese! He worked for Obama! But is he an attractive candidate to anyone else-and most importantly, actual Republican voters?
The poll numbers would seem to suggest Huntsman has a long way to go. He finished dead last in the most recent Rasmussen poll of potential Republican candidates, with only 2 percent of likely voters saying they were inclined to cast their ballot for him. To put that into perspective, Mitt Romney got 33 percent of the vote. Herman Cain -- the pizza guy!-- got 10 percent. Even the option of "some other candidate" scored higher than Huntsman (8 percent).
Of course, this could all change once he's actively campaigning and participating in debates. But the rush to anoint him as a major candidate seems a bit premature. It doesn't help that the White House seems to be trying to kill him with kindness. Over the weekend Obama advisor David Axelrod told CNN "I think he's a very bright, fluent person." He said Huntsman's criticisms of the president were surprising because "he was very effusive about what the president was doing" when they talked in the past.
While Huntsman's ability to run the conservative gauntlet and seize the Republican nomination is still up for debate, China hands who have dealt with him and studied his tenure as U.S. envoy to Beijing give him high marks -- both diplomatically and politically.
"In terms of knowledge and diplomatic skills, I'd regard him as one of the best ambassadors we had," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution who met with Huntsman on several occasions in Beijing. "I thought he was very good. He related effectively to Chinese audiences. Part of that is he speaks Chinese well, but he also had a cultural sensitivity. I saw him when I made trips there. He was always on top of key issues."
Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China relations at the Asia Society, said he was also well-liked by the embassy staff.
"He is a very smart guy, quick on his feet, and he has a certain candor," he said. "We'll see if that remains when he starts campaigning."
Schell confirmed that his ability to speak Chinese opened doors for him in the country.
"He would go out in front of Chinese audiences-- he was a bit of a trained bear act. The Chinese adore anyone who can speak Chinese," he said.
If there was one discordant note to Huntsman's tenure as ambassador, it occurred when he got embroiled in a controversy about democratic reform in China near the end of his tour. There was a small pro-democracy demonstration outside a McDonalds in Beijing back in February and Huntsman showed up. He denied he was there to observe the demonstration, saying he was just in the wrong placed at the wrong time, but it caused some ripples in the Chinese government, which always suspected the United States was pushing a pro-democracy agenda, Lieberthal said.
His last public talk as ambassador in April on the topic of U.S.-China relations also caused some controversy due to his specific criticisms of China human rights cases. He referenced imprisoned artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and said, "The United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur."
Could he have been setting himself up for a White House run by burnishing his bona fides on human rights issues and pushing a get-tough message? White House aides now say despite his past denials that he was considering a campaign in 2012, they suspect he had not always been straight with them about his political aspirations, according to the New York Times.
Beyond that, some critics say he has also already begun backpedaling on issues he once promoted, like climate change policy.
"My impression is he is an honorable man," said Schell. "We'll see whether the campaign will allow him to continue being an honorable man."
He does have one major thing going for him. In a sea of political bores, he is exciting. And people who have met with him say he has political skills that might surprise many.
"One time I brought a group of [Americans] to the embassy to meet with him,' said Lieberthal, who previously served in the Clinton administration. "There were seven people there besides me. He went around the table. It took him less than 30 seconds literally to establish some direct connection with each person. It reminded me of Clinton's skill on that level. He's the kind of politician who never forgets a name, never forgets a face."
A little Clinton magic couldn't hurt when you're at 2 percent in the polls.
China and its neighbors have been engaged in tit-for-tat muscle-flexing maneuvers in recent weeks over who controls areas of the strategically important and resource-rich South China Sea, causing headaches in the region and elsewhere, and raising fears of a more serious flare-up.
What's the fight about?
It's a territorial dispute that goes back decades, but has grown more heated as China has become bolder on the world stage. China claims it has the right to just about the entire South China Sea. Its neighbors, not surprisingly, dispute that claim and say China is using its power to bully them. Vietnam has been the most vocal in recent weeks, holding live-fire drills on the water and urging international mediation led by the United States.
Vietnamese leaders have been bolstered by popular outrage domestically at China's actions. But they are not alone. The Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei have all claimed a part of the territory.
"It would be as if [the United States] just declared the entire Atlantic Ocean was our territorial waters, and anyone else who tried to explore it, we could do what we want to them -- cut their cables, sink their ships," Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations told Passport. "They are not just going to let China take it over. China's claim is so enormous it would take up the entire sea. Their claims are absurd."
What's so significant about the territory?
For starters, it's one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. But more importantly, it's loaded with oil. No one knows quite how much, though, since exploration has been so difficult given the political climate surrounding it. China estimates there could be as many as 213 billion barrels of oil reserves, which would place it second in the world behind only Saudi Arabia. That might be vastly overstated; American scientists estimate it's closer to 28 billion barrels. The sea could also possess large quantities of natural gas reserves.
How tense is it in the region right now?
Kurlantzick and other experts are quick to point out that this is not the first time tensions have spiked in recent years. In 1995, after China built structures on the Spratly Islands, the Philippines was able to convince the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to issue a rare statement denouncing China's action. But this feels different, experts say, not least because China has grown so much more powerful and confident. And other countries are acting less restrained as well. On June 13, Vietnam staged live-fire naval exercises, and the Philippines announced late last week it would soon send its biggest warship to a disputed part of the sea.
Meanwhile, China has been stepping up its confrontational posture, and not just rhetorically. On May 26 and June 9, its boats cut the cables of Vietnamese oil exploration ships. In response to Vietnam's naval exercises, it sent one of its largest vessels to "patrol" the waters, and it promised to send hundreds more in the coming years, meaning the water dispute will become increasingly militarized.
What's Washington's position?
Vietnam has urged the United States to get involved and mediate a resolution. How likely is that? The United States has given no indication it wants a leading role, though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing last July at an ASEAN regional forum in Hanoi when she said, "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea," and she urged a binding code of conduct for the states involved in the dispute. But other American officials have played down her comments, according to Kurlantzick.
Last week, Sen. Jim Webb, a key congressional voice on Asia issues, said he would introduce a resolution pushing for China to enter multilateral talks over the disputed territory.
China's response came in the form of an editorial in its main military paper: "China resolutely opposes any country unrelated to the South China Sea issue meddling in disputes, and it opposes the internationalization of" the issue, it read.
How likely is this to escalate out of control?
Beijing has promised it won't use force against its neighbors over the dispute, and it would be an incredibly risky move for it to do so. Given that China relies so heavily on imported fuel from the Middle East -- most of which makes its way through the South China Sea -- a conflagration that shuts down that transit area would have devastating repercussions for the emerging world power. But, analysts say, all sides are acting aggressively. And the dispute is happening at sea, with ships that are increasingly less restrained. A small spark could set off a chain of events that leads to a real showdown, or worse.
In 2008, Yu Keping, the head of China's Central Compilation and Translation Bureau and a professor at Peking University, published an attention-grabbing collection of essays called Democracy is a Good Thing. Coming from a Chinese Communist Party official said to be close to President Hu Jintao, Yu's bold assertion that "democracy is the best political system for humankind" was striking. But so was the fine print: Yu argued in the book that while "it is the inevitable trend for all nations of the world to move towards democracy ... the timing and speed of the development of democracy and the choice of the form and system of democracy are conditional." Among other things, he has resisted the idea that a multi-party political system would be appropriate for China. All of which is to say that Yu is something of a sphinx: As a New York Times profile observed last year, "Even China experts have a hard time determining whether Mr. Yu is a brave voice for change or simply a well-placed shill."
Which makes Yu -- who is in Washington this week -- a particularly interesting person to ask about the current moment in Chinese politics, in which the Communist Party is managing the transition from Hu to his presumed presidential successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, while watching the sudden explosion of anti-government, pro-democratic sentiment in the Arab world with palpable unease. The Chinese government began cracking down on human rights activists, artists, and writers in March, and barred another prominent writer from leaving the country this week.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
North Korea won't tell its citizens this, but the Hermit Kingdom is broke. Luckily, ever-ingenuous Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il and his government have a new plan -- sell carbon offsets for cold hard cash. The isolated Stalinist enclave has a series of hydropower projects that it hopes to leverage with the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme, which allows developing countries to partner with typically richer countries looking to reduce emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The industrialized countries (or companies from such countries) earn carbon credits, while the host country gets cash from the sale of these credits.
Since 2006, over 2,000 projects have been approved -- according to the New York Times, 40 percent of the projects are located in China and most involve hydropower. In 2008, carbon credit transactions totaled close to $7 billion.
According to Reuters, North Korea is looking to get approval for three hydro power plants of 7-8 megawatts in the northeast part of the country.
North Korea -- currently facing sanctions over its nuclear weapons program -- faces serious challenges in selling carbon offsets. Aside from serious economic mismanagement, Reuters lists a whole host of reasons why these projects might not make it past the brainstorming stage:
"Even if they open up, who in the world wants to pay for North Korea that is blamed for its nuclear weapons programme?" said Choi Soo-young, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
Cho said the UN needed to prevent outside cash going into its nuclear development activities, while Luckock, of global law firm Norton Rose, said: "Their limited access to hard currency has to be a concern for buyers - the damages clauses will carry limited weight without some security there."
Another challenge is that North Korea would have to make public its energy consumption and generation data and disclose information on the amount of energy linked to the hydro project.
"Annual inspection, constant measurement and energy flow posting on the [UNFCC] website - all these things are new for North Korea," [Bernhard] Seliger [of the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany] said.
North Korea has a history of serious flooding disasters, although these might be better solved through fixing the country's drainage systems and reversing the effects of enormous deforestation.
Of course, enabling North Korea's nuclear program might be good for the environment in other ways: NASA recently used computer simulations to prove that a "limited" nuclear war might temporarily halt global climate change.
The most interesting moment in an otherwise subdued -- dare I say dull -- press conference by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao came when a Bloomberg reporter insisted that Hu answer a fellow journalist's question about human rights.
Hu, blaming the translation, claimed he hadn't heard the question (to audible titters among the assembled press corps). He went on to give China's standard answer on human rights, which is basically, "Blah blah we've always respected human rights (yet we're also improving), China faces unique circumstances as a developing country, we favor dialogue, etc."
He also said that "China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights," which caught the ear of New York Times reporter Michael Wines, who sees the remark as "a palpable shift for a government that has staged a two-year crackdown on internal dissent and imprisoned a Nobel laureate."
"Until Wednesday," Wines continues, "recognizing credos like democracy and human rights as 'universal values' had been all but taboo in Chinese political discourse, although China has signed theconvention that enshrines the principle of universal human rights."
"China respects the principle of the universality of human rights," the document states. But it adds: "Given differences in political systems, levels of development and historical and cultural backgrounds, it is natural for countries to have different views on the question of human rights."
That's almost exactly what Hu said. I suppose it's different when the president himself says so with all the eyes of the world upon him, but let's not kid ourselves about whether China has made some profound new commitment to human rights and democracy. For all its very real successes in promoting development, the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of relinquishing its stranglehold on political power anytime soon, if ever. Wake me up when they stop throwing political prisoners in jail, beating people in the streets, censoring the press, and generally evincing little regard for the Chinese people's ability to chart their own future.
LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images
Tajikistan has agreed to give up a chunk of its territory to neighboring China:
Parliament voted Wednesday in favor of giving up around 1,000 square kilometers of land in the Central Asian nation's sparsely populated Pamir Mountains region. There was no immediate information on how many people live in the territory to be ceded.
Opposition leader Mukhiddin Kabiri said the land transfer is unconstitutional and represents a defeat for Tajik diplomacy. But Foreign Minister Khamrokon Zarifi portrayed it as a victory, saying China had initially claimed more than 11,000 square miles (28,000 square kilometers).
The dispute dates to the 19th Century, when Tajikistan was part of Czarist Russia.
It seems a little bit petty of China to be engaging in a land dispute with a country that could fit inside it 67 times, but every little bit helps I suppose. The Pamirs are in quite an interesting spot geopolitically, running from eastern Afghanistan and straddling the Tajikistan-Pakistan border all the way to China.
This has been a week of expansionism for China, which was accused by India of sending troops into a disputed region of Kashmir earlier this week, although Beijing denies it.
Almost every day, there's a completely bonkers, factually dubious story in the South Korean press about North Korea (which admittedly is a pretty strange place). Today is no exception. Here's Joong Ang Daily with an article about how a train supposedly bearing birthday gifts for Kim Jong-un, the heir to the Kim family dynasty, went off the rails:
The train was comprised of more than 40 train coaches, and eight of them were derailed, the radio station [Open Radio for North Korea] reported. The train was filled with presents for Jong-un’s upcoming birthday, which falls on Jan. 8, including luxury goods such as wristwatches and televisions in bulk, it said.
And here's a story in Yonhap, the South Korean wire agency, about the latest consumer crazes up north:
Skinny jeans, blue crabs, pig-intestine rolls and even human manure were some of the hottest items among North Korean consumers this year, according to a South Korean professor who has interviewed recent defectors from the communist country.
Kim Young-soo, a political science professor at Seoul's Sogang University, said in a conference on Tuesday that adult movies, television dramas and instant noodle "ramen" made in South Korea are also selling "like hot cakes" in North Korea.
Taking a page from L'Académie française, China's state press and publishing body has banned the use of foreign words and acronyms - especially English - in newspapers, periodicals, books, and on the Internet.
The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) noted that the use of foreign languages, most notably the mix of English and Chinese known as Chinglish, has "seriously damaged the purity of the Chinese language and resulted in adverse social impacts to the harmonious and healthy cultural environment," according to the People's Daily.
While highly amusing to some, the Communist Party-run paper notes that "coined half-English, half-Chinese terms ... are intelligible to nobody." If words must be written in a foreign language, they must be accompanied by an explanation in Chinese.
Does this mean English speakers won't continue to find "fried enema" on Chinese restaurant menus? We'll just have to see how strictly this policy is actually enforced.
On Monday, the U.S. Senate, followed by the House on Tuesday, passed a groundbreaking shark conservation bill banning the practice of shark finning in the Pacific. The bill closes a loophole in earlier legislation that had banned shark finning off the coast of the Atlantic and in the Gulf of Mexico. The bill also empowers federal authorities to identify and list which fishing vessels come from countries with different shark conservation rules than the United States.
Shark finning is a brutal practice where sharks are captured, their dorsal fins are sliced off, and they are thrown back into the water to bleed to death. According to some estimates, shark finning alone is responsible for the deaths of up to 73 million sharks annually, resulting in shark populations that have been depleted by as much as 90 percent in the past few decades. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service reports that 1.2 million pounds of sharks were caught in 2009 in the Pacific, although it doesn't specify what portion were fins. Many species of sharks are highly endangered -- there are only about 3,500 great white sharks left in the world.
Shark fins are used in shark fin soup, a (not particularly tasty, in this blogger's opinion) delicacy across much of East Asia, used by upper classes to demonstrate wealth, taste, and prestige at wedding banquets and corporate feasts. With China's growing middle and upper classes eating more and more of this soup each year, activists and scientists worry that shark populations are being depleted beyond sustainable levels.
"Shark finning has fueled massive population declines and irreversible disruption of our oceans," Sen. John Kerry, the bill's author, said in a statement. "Finally we've come through with a tough approach to tackle this serious threat to our marine life."
While any effort to regulate this $1 billion a year industry is laudable, the trade in shark fins is extremely difficult to monitor and much of it happens outside U.S. waters. For example, the World Wildlife Fund estimates that 50 to 80 percent of the global market for shark fins is centered in Hong Kong. While many Americans are aware of the environmental implications of shark finning, that same consciousness has yet to hit the market that really matters -- China. Last year, for example, a Chinese wedding industry group survey found that only about 5 percent of couples choose shark-free menus at their weddings.
ANDREW ROSS/AFP/Getty Images
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