The sky’s the limit

EARLIER this week, Japanese politicos filled their Twitter litter boxes with tweets of chirping delight about their VIP preview visit to the Tokyo Skytree, which opened to the public on Tuesday. Now the world’s largest tower, Skytree will be used for television and radio broadcasts. As with the tower it replaces — the Tokyo Tower — it is also expected to become a tourist destination and a symbol of the city.

The Christian Science Monitor and others, however, couple the news with the observation that building projects of this immensity might also be an indicator of impending economic decline. It’s based on a theory called the Skyscraper Index, and they explain it this way:

The skyscraper index works because developers tend to make ambitious gambles with huge new towers at the point of the business cycle when interest-rate and price signals can get distorted, wrote Mark Thornton, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute, in a 2005 research paper.

On the Mises Institute website, Mr. Thornton adds:

It is a broadcasting and observation tower and so it does not qualify as a skyscraper and therefore it does not signal a global economic crisis. However, with regional records being set in the Pacific Rim, China, India, and Europe, as well as a new world record skyscraper in development in Saudi Arabia, it reinforces the warning signals from the Skyscraper Index.

Here’s the Wikipedia explanation, which in this case is acceptable as something other than a collection of links. When Mr. Thornton refers to skyscraper development in China, he’s talking about the developments described in this article, which contains the following quote:

Investors should therefore pay particular attention to China – today’s biggest bubble builder with 53% of all the world’s skyscrapers under construction…

China will complete 53% of the 124 skyscrapers under construction over the next six years, expanding the number of skyscrapers in Chinese cities by a staggering 87%. China’s skyscrapers are not only increasing in number – it now has 75 completed skyscrapers above 240m in height – but the average height of the skyscrapers that it is building is also increasing as past liquidity fuels the construction boom.

For a more visually arresting and concentrated report on the Chinese high-rise boom, try this video report from Reuters. (I wanted to embed the video, but couldn’t figure out how to appease the cranky WordPress software.) This is not your average uptick in construction activity.

That would explain the data points on this chart of cement consumption from Goldman Sachs via ZeroHedge:

*****

George Gershwin composed the theme music for this manic erection of phallic cement and steel long ago — little more than a year into the Great Depression. His working title was Rhapsody in Rivets, suggesting his inspiration was the skyscrapers sprouting in the rocky soil of Manhattan during the Roaring 20s. The final title was the Second Rhapsody.

Southern comfort

PATTERN RECOGNITION is crucial to the successful conduct of foreign policy. Identifying, recognizing, and then anticipating recurring behavior eliminates the need to speculate about another party’s objectives and facilitates decisions on ways to respond to those parties.

Though it should be obvious that pattern recognition is a survival skill, some people continue to survive despite an inaptitude at spotting patterns that repeat so often they might as well be on a tape loop. One group of American politicians, for example, is incapable of recognizing the two or three patterns employed by Russians over the past few centuries, regardless of whatever state format the rulers in Moscow happen to be employing at the time. The inability of others to recognize the one and only pattern from North Korea causes wonderment at how they manage to cross the street unaccompanied.

The Japanese have become adept at pattern recognition because their nationhood has been in a state of suspended animation since the end of the Second World War, their most amicable neighbor is a Drama Queendom whose leaders view hysteria as a diplomatic trump card, and they are still in the process of scraping off a Constitution that contains the uplifting buncombe of entrusting national security to the goodwill of the peace-loving peoples of the world.

Then again, that part was written by some of those Americans unable to recognize Russian behavioral patterns.

Japanese pattern recognition skills are especially useful in bilateral ties with South Korea. The realization that they’ve seen it all before and know what happens next enables them to skip a few steps in the diplomatic process — particularly because they realize that doing nothing works splendidly.

Those skills have been useful again over the past year, as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who entered office pledging a policy of realism and focusing on the future in foreign affairs, finally succumbed to the vapors in the penultimate year of his term. Perhaps he should be commended for resisting as long as he did.

Here’s how it started: During his first three years in office, Mr. Lee’s approval ratings settled in the 45-50% range, but started to side last year.

January 2011: 42.9%

February: 38.8%

March: 36.6%

April: 31.4%

June: Into the 20s

The figures were buoyed after the IOC announcement of 6 July that they had awarded the 2018 Winter Olympics to Pyeongchang, South Korea, but stalled around the 31% level. The Dong-a Ilbo commissioned a poll for this year’s April legislative and December presidential elections, which found that 48% of the respondents said they’d switch their vote from the previous ballot. People in their 20s supported the opposition Democratic United Party by 42.6% to 19.3%. More ominous for the ruling Saenuri/New Frontier Party was that even those 50 and older had switched allegiances.

The reasons were multitudinous and variegated. One was a severe outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease that resulted in the slaughter of 12％ of the nation’s pigs — some of which were buried alive — and more than 100,000 cattle. The losses from the unanticipated butchery were estimated at KRW 3 trillion (about $US 2.6 billion).

Another was that consumer prices rose 4.5% in February 2011, the highest increase since 2008, and continued to climb after that. The price of Chinese cabbage, essential for winter kimchee, skyrocketed by 94.6% in one year, while pork soared 35.1%, oil products 12.8%, and industrial goods 5.0%. Unemployment was at its highest level in 2010 since 2002; the official unemployment rate was 3.6%, but under the ILO standards used in Western countries and Japan, it was closer to 13%.

Wrote the Dong-a Ilbo on 7 March:

“The government is starting to hear criticism that it is amateurish, and they have no reply for that criticism”.

In addition, several large national projects boosted by the Lee administration were either defeated or abandoned, including a proposed canal across the peninsula (which would have partially traversed North Korean territory), and the construction of a new airport in the southeast part of the country. Further, a large oil development project in Kurdish Iraq has been de facto suspended, but not before a substantial amount of money had been invested in the enterprise.

The English-language media has been full of reports over the past year describing how some large Korean companies have overtaken their Japanese competitors, particularly in the field of consumer electronics products. Few of those reports examine the negative aspects of that story, however. Exports account for 43.4% of South Korean GDP, the highest percentage in the G-20, but the profits do not enrich the nation as a whole. Much of those exports are accounted for by inexpensive goods with low profit margins, and the real competitor nation is often China, not Japan.

The relative poverty rate for working class urban residents is 11.4%, up from less than 8% in the 1990s. A government-affiliated think tank estimates that 9.9% of households nationwide spend 40% of their income on debt repayment.

So: Widespread dissatisfaction due to the failure in domestic governance…the failure to respond to Pyeongyang’s sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of South Korean territory…the failure to improve the economy…

What is a South Korean government to do?

The Japanese have seen this pattern before. The South Koreans do what a failed South Korean government always does when its support craters:

Talk the comfort women talk!

*****

The groundwork for the Lee administration shift was laid in August 2010, when then-Prime Minister Kan Naoto, one of the luminaries of the local Blame Yourself First faction, slipped into his hair shirt and issued a statement on the 100th anniversary of the Japan-Korean merger:

“We again keenly reflect on our errors and (humbly) express our heartfelt feelings of apology for the immense damage and anguish we brought about through our colonial rule.”

Mr. Kan used the word “again” because the Japanese have repeatedly apologized to the Koreans, who repeatedly pretend they aren’t sincere. It is precisely what helpful Western commentators have repeatedly insisted that Japan should do to “heal the wounds” of a condition that lasted all of 35 years, ended 67 years ago, and was part of a world that no longer exists.

What the commentators repeatedly ignore, however, is the Korean response. One apology is enough in normal human intercourse, especially when it’s accompanied by the equivalent of 800 million 1965 U.S. dollars. Not on the Korean Peninsula, however — holding han grudges is more satisfying than forgiving and getting on with it. The Democratic Union Party response was not atypical: “It’s just a repetition of what they’ve said before, and nothing more than an apology for show.”

So much for Western commentators, and so much for Korean perceptiveness: Kan Naoto and his chief cabinet secretary at the time, Sengoku Yoshito, were the politicians most likely to give the Koreans what they really want — abject servility in perpetuity — and to congratulate themselves for that servility. They are also lilely to be the last leaders from Japan’s mea maxima culpa generation. That’s not looking gift horse in the mouth; that’s failing to recognize a gift horse when it nuzzles them.

President Lee was more conciliatory in those days. He praised the statement as a “step forward” on 15 August, though that praise presumes the Japanese are taking baby steps toward the servility sought. The same Koreans who think that Japanese apologies are insufficient also thought Mr. Lee’s response was insufficient. They asked if he was going to go along with the “phony apology”.

Two weeks later, at the end of August, it was announced that a Seoul-based group planned to build a memorial to the comfort women in front of the Japanese embassy. The construction was approved by the Seoul city ward where the embassy is located, on the recommendation of the health and welfare minister. The memorial depicts a young woman next to an empty bench. It is called The Monument of Peace.

Remember, this was after Mr. Kan apologized. Again.

That same month, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled the 1965 Basic Treaty between that country and Japan was “unconstitutional”, for whatever reason, though that has nothing to do with Japan. It’s just quasi-legal cover to repudiate a deal that legally stymies the rent-seeking of today’s leaders. Under the terms of that agreement, Japan paid South Korea $US 800 million, more than 600 million of which was an outright transfer of funds. The treaty specified that South Korea thereby relinquished the right of individual citizens to make claims on the government of Japan. President Bak Jeong-hui used part of the money to compensate some families whose property was confiscated by Japan, but gave no money to any of the comfort women.

The treaty also provides for the resolution of disputes by recourse to a neutral third party. If either side is dissatisfied with the terms of the pact, or with the response of the other party to their requests, they can employ a mechanism by which the dispute can be resolved by a neutral third party.

In September 2010, the South Korean Foreign Ministry asked the Japanese government to ignore the terms of the treaty and recognize individual claims. Yet in the 47 years since the treaty was signed, South Korea has never sought neutral third party resolution.

Such is the nature of the polity and political discourse in South Korea.

One year down the road, the foreign ministry said President Lee would broach the subject with Prime Minister Noda Yoshiko at their New York summit in September 2011. Mr. Lee seems not to have mentioned it then, but the South Korean government began preparations to have the matter discussed at the UN.

The next steps by both governments are as described in testimony in the Japanese Diet earlier this year.

Diet questioning

Yamatani Eriko, an upper house member of the opposition LDP, questioned both the prime minister and Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro in the Diet about the so-called Kono Declaration, a 1993 document that admitted state responsibility for the comfort women. It should be noted that in the following, Mr. Noda is speaking for himself, and Mr. Gemba is presenting the view of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Ms. Yamatani was once a member of the DPJ (the current ruling party), and was even in their Shadow Cabinet, but left after two years. She later served as an aide to LDP Prime Minister Abe Shinzo.

Yamatani: (The next question) is about the so-called “comfort women monument” that has been erected in New Jersey, in the United States. The problem of the military and sexual matters is an extremely vexing one for all countries in every era. We must be modest before history, but we must also clearly explain what is not true and disseminate that explanation. I beg your pardon, prime minister, but I would like you to read four lines from the foreign ministry’s provisional translation.

Gemba: You asked that it be read as is, so I will: “We will fix in our memory the more than 200,000 women and girls abducted by the armed forces of the government of Imperial Japan during the period from the 1930s to 1945, which resulted in the violation of the human rights for these women, known as the comfort women, which no one should overlook.”

We have filed an objection about the construction of the monument with the appropriate people involved. This monument is in a town (in New Jersey) of about 17,000 people, of whom about one-third are ethnic Koreans. It has the highest percentage of ethnic Koreans of any city in the United States. Therefore, we will continue to monitor the situation and respond appropriately.

Yamatani: This question is addressed to the prime minister. The more than 200,000 women abducted on the intent of the Imperial Japanese government, is it a fact that they were abducted by the military?

Noda: More than 200,000 women abducted by the military…I do not think there any grounds (for this claim), including the numbers and the circumstances.

Yamatani: The only one without lobbyists in Washington is Japan. The South Koreans are tireless. (We should conduct) diplomacy by clearly explaining the facts as part of our foreign relations strategy. There is a statue of a girl in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, called the Monument of Peace. The weekly Wednesday demonstrations in front of the Japanese embassy to resolve the sexual slavery issue of the Japanese military began on 8 January 1992. The 1,000th demonstration was held on 14 December 2011. This peace monument was built to commemorate the spirit of the Wednesday demonstrations over their long history.

Diet members from the DPJ (i.e., Mr. Noda’s party) have taken turns participating in these Wednesday demonstrations. Private sector businesses at the time (during the war) submitted advertising in mass market publications that solicited comfort women. They specified the monthly salaries, the destinations, and the ages of the women sought. But there were no abductions, and there were no sex slaves. Answer, prime minister — was there Japanese military sexual slavery?

Noda: There are different explanations about the circumstances and the conditions, but if you ask whether this is an accurate record, I think there is a great divergence (from the facts). I also asked the president (Lee) to quickly have this monument removed.

Yamatani: But President Lee, during the Japan-South Korea summit in Kyoto on 17 December, said there would be a second and a third memorial. What explanation did you give him?

Noda: It is true that the president expressed his concerns about the comfort women issue to me, but I would prefer to refrain from commenting on what and how much he said. I clearly conveyed to him the Japanese position that the matter has been legally resolved.

Yamatani: That’s the Basic Agreement between Japan and South Korea. But morally speaking, we have provided money to the women from the Asian Women’s Fund. Successive prime ministers have apologized. Is your recognition of this state of affairs the same?

Noda: Successive governments have consistently said that the issue has been legally resolved with the 1965 treaty. Beyond that, another perspective is that the women have received private sector cooperation as humanitarian assistance under previous governments through the Asian Women’ Fund. It is a fact that follow-up efforts continue to this day.

Yamatani: No documents have been found indicating forced removal by the military or the authorities. A cabinet official testified to that effect in 1997, and a member of the government gave the same testimony in the Diet in 2007. Is the present Noda Cabinet in agreement with that?

Gemba: Basically, the government conducted an investigation. And (our position) is basically in view of the results of that investigation. As you say, no evidence has emerged, but I think we just can’t repudiate it.

Yamatani: What’s that supposed to mean?

Gemba: Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono’s statement says that businesses were subcontracted by the military to recruit the comfort women, and that is chiefly what happened, but there were many cases in which the women were gathered against their will, through cajolery or coercion. Also, the authorities and others were complicit in this. The Korean peninsula was under our rule at the time, and in general, the solicitation, transport, and management of the women were done in opposition to their will, through cajolery or coercion. That is my understanding of the Kono statement.

Yamatani: So there’s no proof, but you won’t repudiate it. That’s a strange answer. If this government is going to create all sorts of cabinet ministers, how about creating a minister for recovering the national honor?

Gemba: The government’s basic position is as recorded in the Kono statement.

The brass tacks

Ms. Yamatani didn’t mention another key part of the story. The South Korean government told the South Korean comfort women that anyone who accepted compensation from the Asian Women’s Fund in Japan would thereby become ineligible for South Korean government assistance.

One reason the foreign ministry is hesitant to disavow the Kono declaration — based in part on evidence that was found to have been fabricated — is that they realize the corrupted Western media will not report that half of the comfort women were Japanese, who certainly weren’t abducted. Nor will they report that the evidence is tainted when they can have and eat their J-school cake by dabbling at tabloid journalism on the legit and flashing the phrase “sex slaves”.

Journos that they are, they prefer the much larger 200,000 figure, though it is an estimate at the high end of the range, and the person who came up with it gave 50,000 as the low end of the range. (In other words, no one has any idea how many there were.)  Nor will they mention that the US Army knew all about the system in 1944.

This year

Kuroda Katsuhiro, the Seoul correspondent for the Sankei Shimbun, wrote an article for the April edition of the monthly Will in which he asserted that the recent South Korean conversion of the surviving comfort women into dashboard saints has rendered any solution to the issue impossible. No South Korean politician is capable of crossing the anti-Japanese elements in South Korea, which includes that country’s industrial mass media. The essence of his piece is that they have been made “sacred” and elevated into heroes of the independence movement against Japan.

Mr. Kuroda cited several examples. First, it will require special permission to remove the so-called Monument of Peace, which will not be forthcoming. All the comfort women who die now get full-scale obituaries with photos in the South Korean papers. President Lee gave a special address on 1 March, the Independence Movement Day holiday, which included attacks on Japan. This year, he also sent individual letters for the first time to the roughly 60 surviving comfort women. The letter said the issue was addressed “from the start to the finish” during the Kyoto bilateral summit meeting. The South Korean president referred to this issue as “more urgent than any other foreign policy question”. That would mean he considers it a matter of lesser urgency that North Korea shelled his territory and sunk a naval vessal during his term of office, killing both civilians and military personnel. But that was before the North Koreans began jamming the Global Positioning System of commercial and military air and sea traffic.

That would also mean his countrymen either agree with him or are too unconcerned about the truth to object.

Mr. Kuroda said he was startled to receive a call early one morning from a female reporter at the Munhwa Ilbo (Culture Daily). She informed him that the Dong-a Ilbo had attacked him the day before in an editorial titled, “Japan – Take Part in Discussions about the Comfort Woman Problem”. Half of the editorial, he said, was rehashed Japan bashing using comfort women as the stick. The other half was Kuroda bashing. He had already been savaged on the Korean Internet; one person thought the article was “another absurdity from Kuroda, the absurdity machine”.

Mr. Kuroda spoke to the reporter for half an hour, explaining both the official Japanese position and his view that the real problem is the activist groups and mass media who use the comfort women to brainwash the people and promote anti-Japanese sentiment.

She must have believed him. The woman’s next article for the Munhwa Ilbo had the following headline:

It’s South Korea’s Fault the Comfort Woman Issue Isn’t Resolved

The text noted that Japan had prepared financial compensation and apologies, including those from prime ministers, but the government of South Korea refused to accept them. Yet Mr. Lee still wants an apology.

She concluded:

“Hardline anti-Japanese sentiment caused this country to miss its chance.”

Mr. Kuroda concluded that she had more sense than the president of South Korea.

Reasonable people will say that allowances should be made for Mr. Lee in view of the difficulties of navigating the sometimes surreal, hothouse nature of public debate in South Korea. Until one reads this bit of guerilla theater pretending to be news:

South Korea wants Japan to take steps to address long-running grievances of elderly Korean women who suffered as sex slaves. Lee has strongly urged Japan to resolve the issue, stressing it is becoming increasingly urgent as most victims are well over 80 years old and may die before they receive compensation or an apology from Japan.

No allowances should be forthcoming for a politician who frames an issue in shrouds of mendacity.

The three issues

Lee Myung-bak publicly states there are Three Great Issues for the Korean People: Historical Awareness, Takeshima, and the Yasukuni Shrine.

Taking those from back to front, whatever happens at Yasukuni is the business of no one but the Japanese. Takeshima was Japanese territory illegally seized by force because the Koreans couldn’t convince the Allies it was theirs when the Treaty of San Francisco, which disposed of the conquered Japanese territory, was drawn up. The courageous sons of Jeoson knew they could safely snatch it because the Japanese/American Constitution prevented a Japanese response. Refer to the two articles on the masthead for more information.

Finally, let us agree with the South Korean president when he insists on Historical Awareness, because that is the real issue. Koreans themselves are all too aware of their history, and Mr. Lee must deconstruct it, revise it, and turn it inside out, because accepting that history would be emotional hemlock for the nation.

The Koreans know that some of their mothers and grandmothers were willing prostitutes for Japanese Imperial forces. How could they not? The newspaper advertisements for a then-legal activity still exist. So do articles in Korean newspapers in which Japanese authorities warn the public of unscrupulous Korean brokers.

They know the Japanese were the ones to bring them out of their Hermit Kingdom spider hole into the 20th century. They know there was a pro-Japan faction during the merger period, inspired not by the base motive of “collaboration”, but by a desire to join the modern world. They know some of their great-grandparents saw it as their version of the Meiji–period opening of Japan.

They know that roughly 90% of the Koreans who went to Japan did so voluntarily to seek a better life in same the way that Europeans emigrated to the United States in the previous century.

They know that some of their grandparents fought willingly in the Japanese armed services during the war, and that some even volunteered as kamikaze pilots.

They know that had Japan not stepped in when it did, it is possible they would all be speaking Russian now. They know another possibility is that they would have spent several more decades in darkness as black as the North Korean night, but without the gulags.

But at least their cousins in the north provide public education for girls. They know that was another Japanese innovation on the peninsula, too.

Perhaps most galling of all, they know that they were incapable of achieving independence on their own and owe it to the Japanese defeat in the war.

The intensity of contemporary Korean anger toward Japan is not derived from what Japan did or did not do. It is derived from what Korea did and did not do. The emotion is all the more intense because it is self-anger projected onto contemporary Japan.

As the Munhwa Ilbo reporter now understands, the issue of comfort women and all that it represents is no longer a Japanese problem. It is a Korean problem.

Indeed, in some ways, it always has been.

Afterwords:

* It would seem that the attitude toward international agreements south of the 38th parallel differs from the attitude in the north only in degree, not in kind.

* Nathaniel Branden wrote the following in Six Pillars of Self-Esteem:

“In addition to the “adult-self” that we all recognize as “who we are”, there is within ourselves a “child-self” — the living presence of the child we once were….But we may have repressed that child long ago, repressed his or her feelings, perceptions, needs, responses, out of the misguided notion that “murder” was necessary to grow into adulthood. This recognition led to the conviction that no one could be completely whole who did not reconnect with and create a conscious and benevolent relationship with the child-self. This task is especially important for the attainment of autonomy. I saw that when this task is neglected, the tendency is to look for healing from the outside….Does it need to be argued that we cannot have healthy self-esteem while despising part of who we are?”

Perhaps that book needs to be translated into Korean.

* Mr. Lee’s party wound up doing a lot better than everyone expected in the April elections, but only because party leader Bak Geun-hye (President Bak’s daughter) politically disowned him. The opposition picked up 47 seats, falling a whisker short of a majority. The ruling party wound up losing two more seats in post-election horse trading, eliminating the majority.

* Geopolitical affairs in Northeast Asia are much too complex for drive-by commentators, particularly the industrial mass media and its four-panel comic strip approach to the world. But it would be too much to expect them to leave well enough alone. They have to sell all that advertising space somehow.

For example, we cannot overlook the difficulties level-headed people in South Korea face when they try to do something sensible. Japan and South Korea are on the verge of signing a pact to achieve military cooperation. It is in the interests of both nations to do so. But:

A Seoul analyst said military accords with Japan would spark strong opposition from China and North Korea.

“China would consider it as an expansion of (the US-led) alliance in the Northeast Asian region,” Baek Seung-Joo, of the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses, told AFP.

“South Korea also faces unfavourable public opinion at home over any military agreements with Japan, regardless of their contents,” he said.

There are more subtexts to relations in the area than found in Moby Dick. The recent trilateral summit in Beijing resulted in a pledge by the leaders of Japan, China, and South Korea to pursue a free-trade agreement:

A “milestone” investment agreement between China, Japan and the Republic of Korea was signed in Beijing yesterday, after years of negotiations, while the leaders of the three nations announced that talks focusing on a free-trade agreement (FTA) would be launched within the year.

Aside from substantial economic benefits, experts said that the FTA, if realised, could help ease regional tension and possibly lead to a more integrated Northeast Asia.

Beware of the chirpiness in that article, however. The Chinese are trying to blunt the effect of the Americans’ TPP proposals on Japan. South Korea is more interested in a bilateral agreement with the Chinese to narrow the gap between their companies and the Japanese in the Chinese market. They’re not as interested in a bilateral FTR with Japan because they have a JPY 2 trillion trade deficit with the Japanese and continue to rely on Japan for advanced electronics parts and materials.

Meanwhile, President Lee brought up the comfort women yet again (or said he did) with the Japanese at the summit, while the Chinese complained about the Tokyo Metro plan to purchase the Senkakus from their private owners (they’re getting a lot of volunteer funds to pay for them, too), and the Uyghur conference now being held in Japan:

Beijing yesterday lodged strong protest over Tokyo’s permission for the separatist World Uygur Congress meeting to be held in Japan, and slammed Uygur separatist Rebiya Kadeer’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

Fancy that. Japan’s doing more for human rights in China than the U.S. or Europe. Imagine the American self-congratulation if the Congress were being held in Los Angeles.

To his credit, Mr. Noda diplomatically deflected them both. He even politely told Mr. Wen where to get off:

In their meeting in Beijing, Wen took up the issue of the Senkakus, reiterating China’s claim that the islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times, according to a senior Japanese official who briefed journalists about the talks.

Noda stated Japan’s position that the islands, which China calls Diaoyu, are an integral part of Japanese territory, the official said.

Noda called for China to respond in a “cool-headed” manner on the issue, citing China’s growing activity in waters near the Senkaku Islands, which has provoked the Japanese public.

Considering that public contributions to purchase the Senkakus have likely passed the million-dollar mark by now, it would be more accurate to say that the Japanese public has woken up, rather than been provoked.

*****

Percy’s not the only one who could stand some comforting.

 

¿What are these people thinking?

IT’S impossible to scan the news articles either on paper or in pixels without seeing several that make one wonder, “¿What are these people thinking?” “These people” can refer either the subjects or the authors of the reports, and often both. Here are three examples involving Japan from the past week alone.

Socialism in action

Japan on Tuesday warned French president-elect Francois Hollande to keep the nation’s fiscal discipline in place amid worries that the new leader will overspend in a bid to boost the economy.

Of course no one can expect the capital-S-socialist-and-proud-of-it M. Hollande to have the first idea of how an economy functions — even socialists know that’s not the point of socialism. But the last thing the French need is advice from a news reader-turned-politician serving as the Finance Ministry press secretary, who knows less about finance than a teachers’ union apparatchik selected at random from a May Day parade, and who represents a government that wouldn’t know fiscal discipline if it walked up to them wearing a name tag that read, “Hello! My name is Hayek”.  The Noda administration managed to avoid a third consecutive record-high budget this year only because they shifted some expenditures to “special accounts”. Government debt instruments still account for half their revenue.

He’s worried about the French overspending? That’s all the DPJ’s been doing since they took office in 2009.

In Tokyo Finance Minister Jun Azumi told a regular news conference…”We want (France) to do what has been decided so far, and I’d like to tell them about that if there is the opportunity,” he added, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

The Dow Jones Newswires did not report if there was any snickering among the reporters present.

“I don’t know whether Mr Hollande will immediately act on what he has said in heated debates during the election campaign…

Now Mr. Azumi is talking about a subject on which he has some expertise — the winning party in a national election reneging on the campaign promises that got them voted into office.

“…but realistically, I think it is impossible (for European nations) to give up on fiscal-rebuilding efforts,” the finance minister said, adding that he was “convinced (Hollande) will respect this movement.”

Realistically, it is very possible that several European nations will give up on “fiscal-rebuilding efforts”, whatever it is he means by that term.  Any conviction he has about what M. Hollande might or might not respect is derived entirely from the script his Finance Ministry aides wrote for him.

Hollande ousted conservative Nicolas Sarkozy from the Elysee Palace on a platform promising growth rather than further cuts, which has worried many European leaders who fear it will lead to another region-wide crisis.

Growth? ¿What are these people thinking? Economic growth would be an excellent way to solve France’s — or anybody’s — fiscal problems, if it were real growth created by the private sector.  The Europeans and the people reporting on them seem to have created a new political pidgin in which “austerity” means something other than what it really means — not spending so bloody much — because French government spending has risen every year from 2002 (€816 billion) to 2011 (€1.1 trillion). It has a budget deficit closer to that of Spain than to Germany.

What they are pretending is “growth” is the public-sector spending of borrowed money of the mind on infrastructure projects. The new French president also wants to hire 60,000 new teachers, 1,000 new police a year, and create (Abracadabra!) 150,000 state-funded “jobs” for youth.

In other words, he thinks Mr. Obama’s policies worked out very well for the United States and wants to try them in France.

Well, to be fair, those policies did work out, if hobbling private enterprise and the free market was the goal. Considering the backgrounds of the two men, that cannot be dismissed out of hand.

For example, what Mr. Hollande means by “raising revenue” in the new political pidgin is to place a tax on financial transactions and increasing the tax on dividends and rich people, thereby ensuring there will be fewer of all of them. He’s got to conjure up some kind of revenue to pay for this government spending, to which will be added the bill for rolling back a Sarkozy reform and reducing the retirement age to 60 from 62.

And he thinks this will result in an extra €29 billion? No wonder people are worried. Especially Japan:

But Japan and China — which hold huge amounts of European debt — raised concerns about the region’s future policies.

By huge, they mean:

Tokyo bought 13.0 percent of the eurozone rescue fund’s bond sale in December, worth about 260 million euros ($338.0 million), while purchasing 10.0 percent, or 300 million euros worth, in November. That was lower than the average 20.0 percent purchased in three other bond sales from the start of the year.

There’s been a lot speculation about why the Japanese and Chinese bought all that European debt issued to allow taxpayers the privilege of bailing out European banks. The people at Seetell wonder if Japan’s real objective was to prop up American banks, rather than European ones.  That explanation would work just as well for the Chinese too.

Meanwhile, what are all of these people thinking?

In communist China Monday the state-owned Global Times, which is known for its nationalistic tone, said the anti-incumbent results in France and Greece bore out the dangers of democracy running to “extremes”.

If you’ve read anything in the Global Times, you know that the newspaper’s tone is better described as jingoistic rather than nationalistic. Media consumers also know that a presumed connection between nationalism and a criticism of democracy is a non sequitur, but newspapers are full of those, starting with “All the news that’s fit to print”.

And what would anyone at the Global Times know about democracy, much less what constitutes an extreme form of it? But then the Chinese have a political pidgin of their own.

Still a colony after all these years:

Japan Post Insurance Co., one of the key arms of the government-backed Japan Post Holdings Co., will delay its entry into the cancer insurance field amid the U.S. industry’s misgivings about such a move, a Japan Post official said Wednesday.

Japan Post’s envisaged entry into the domestic cancer insurance market, which is dominated by U.S. insurers, “must not obstruct” Japan’s participation in U.S.-led multilateral talks on joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade pact, the official said. Participation in the TPP talks requires consent from all countries involved.

So: A Japanese enterprise, partially owned by the Japanese government, chooses not to sell a product in the Japanese market because the government of the companies now dominating that market won’t like it and might not let Japan participate in discussions that Japan hasn’t officially decided it will participate in?

¿What are these people thinking?

This time we have a good idea what they were thinking. The DPJ needed the votes to get bills passed in the upper house after they formed a government in 2009, so they created a coalition government with two small, incompatible parties. One of them was a reactionary splinter group that thinks only the government is capable of delivering mail, offering savings deposits, and selling life insurance, and that city dwellers should pay higher prices for mail delivery to offset the costs of delivering it to people who choose to live on out-of-the-way islands.

Well, that and using the money in those accounts to buy 20% of Japanese government debt so it isn’t sold overseas at higher interest rates and really screw up the calculations of Azumi Jun’s tutors.

Also, some people pretended to be concerned that foreigners would buy a controlling interest in the bank (even though government approval would be required), which would mean foreign countries would have an unacceptable presence in the Japanese financial and insurance sector.

You know, like if they dominated the cancer insurance market…

Given the situation, Japan Post Insurance will concentrate on improving its educational endowment and other existing policies for the time being, according to the insurer. The arm has extensive nationwide access to potential customers in the over-the-counter market.

And it will voluntarily relinquish that extensive nationwide access in one sector to prevent the Americans from raising their voices.

On April 27, the Diet enacted a law to rethink the full privatization of government-backed postal services. The revision to the 2005 privatization law stipulates that the banking and insurance entities can launch new services after the government sells half of its shareholdings.

Which they have no intention of selling. The politicos’ “rethink”, by the way, is of a policy that won its advocate, Koizumi Jun’ichiro, 70% approval ratings.

Neo-Luddism

Last weekend, the last operating nuclear plant in Japan shut down for regularly scheduled maintenance, meaning no nuclear plants were operating in the country.  It was easy to see what many in the media were thinking from their choice of language and focus on one aspect of the closure. This from the Independent in Britain:

Activists celebrate as Japan is nuclear-free for first time in 42 years

Will they celebrate after an extended period  of “nuclear-free” power generation results in several other –free conditions, namely “economic growth-free”, “prosperity-free”, and “employment-free”?

Those neo-luddites just got to be free!

Thousands marched through the streets of Tokyo yesterday to celebrate the closure of the last of Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors. The switch-off meant the country, for the first time since 1970, was being electrified without the use of atomic power.

Campaigners said it was fitting that the day Japan stopped using nuclear power coincided with the nation’s annual Children’s Day, because of their concerns about protecting children from radiation, which Fukushima Dai-ichi is still releasing into the air and water.

Yoko Kataoka, a retired baker and grandmother in a T-shirt with “No thank you, nukes,” handwritten on the back, said: “Let’s leave an Earth where our children and grandchildren can all play without worries.”

Since they’re only children, their play won’t be disturbed by having to worry about coming up with the average 10.28% increase in household electricity bills for those receiving power from Tokyo Electric, starting in July. Or that the replacement for nuclear energy at Japanese power plants is oil, which produces nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, methane, mercury compounds, and other air enhancers that are not healthy for children and other living things. The tots also won’t be the ones who have to work nights or weekends at factories rescheduling their shifts to reduce large-scale demand at peak periods.

Before the crisis, Japan relied on nuclear power for a third of its electricity needs. The crowd at the rally, estimated at 5,500 by organisers, shrugged off government warnings about a power shortage. Activists said the shutdowns had proved the country could live without nuclear technology.

True, all but 30 countries live without nuclear technology, but most of them in the industrial world are small and/or functional economy-free, such as Portugal, Greece, and Italy. The singular exception is Australia, a continent with a widely dispersed population roughly that of metro Tokyo-Yokohama.

And even then, the organizers — if they are to be believed — thought it was a mighty big deal that 5,500 celebrants from the megalopolis showed up to rejoice and congratulate themselves for royally screwing up everyone else’s lives. They added:

Electricity shortage is expected only at peak periods, such as the middle of the day in hot weather, but critics of nuclear power say the proponents are exaggerating the consequences to win public approval to restart reactors.

We’ve already seen that noxious pollution, significantly higher electric bills, and social disruption are some of the consequences of a nuclear-free Japan. That last is unlikely to bother most of the demonstrators. If any of them are working nights, it’s at convenience stores rather than factories.

There’s more, however: Kyushu Electric Power just announced a loss of JPY 166.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 2012, after recording a profit of JPY 28.72 billion the previous year. Kyushu Electric attributed the loss to the delay in restarting the idled nuclear reactors and the additional fuel costs for operating their thermal power plants. The costs associated with the idled nuclear reactors runs to several billion yen per day. As a result, the utility’s stock price is below JPY 1,000 for the first time since 1984.

Even then, summer temperatures at 2010 levels could cause power shortages of as much as 10%, the utility said last week. (The figures for the Kansai area are even worse.)

Combine that with a continued high yen, as economic craziness continues to masquerade as sanity in the United States and Europe, and even more Japanese companies will find it in the interests of their survival to shift production overseas.

Meanwhile, an article appeared on the same day in the Yomiuri Shimbun that suggested the youth of Japan will have more to worry about than the absence of fatalities from a once-in-a-millennium combination of circumstances:

More than 80 percent of people aged 15 to 29 are very concerned about whether they can earn enough money or receive public pensions after retirement, according to a draft of an annual government report.

The draft of the government’s white paper on children and young people for fiscal 2012 shows that younger generations are not optimistic about the future due to unstable employment conditions amid the nation’s aging population.

Also:

Although the overall unemployment rate was only 4.5 percent in 2011, it remained disproportionately higher among young people. The jobless rate was 9.6 percent for people aged 15 to 19, 7.9 percent for people aged 20 to 24 and 6.3 percent for people aged 25 to 29.

A few years ago, WHO compiled a report on the deaths attributable to the Chernobyl accident, which was much worse than the one at Fukushima. They found:

As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.

There were also 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer found as a result of the accident, but the survival rate is 99%.

In contrast, the death toll from the Fukushima accident now stands at one: a worker cleaning up at the plant who collapsed from overexertion.

More important, the report also stated:

Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in “paralyzing fatalism” among residents of affected areas.

The problem with the 5,000 or so Tokyo celebrants is the opposite. They weren’t suffering from a paralyzing fatalism last Sunday. Their excitement stemming from a belief in the myth of nuclear danger rendered them oblivious to the potential paralysis of their country.

¡What are these people thinking!

*****

After all the lights go out, this will be about the only thing left.

Duds

SOME wise guys in China think they know the reason for the failure of the North Korean missile launch on Friday after seeing a Chinese news agency photo of the North’s control room. Here’s the photo, which shows a computer monitor at the top, and an enlargement below of what they suspect is the logo visible at the bottom left hand corner of the monitor.

The first four characters are 家電下郷. That’s the name of a Chinese stimulus program for providing subsidies to people living in agricultural villages to purchase consumer electronics equipment. The phrase on the enlarged sticker identifies the location as a designated shop selling that equipment.

Some on the Chinese Internet wondered whether it was aggressive salesmanship on their part or aggressive purchasing on the Koreans’ part. As you might expect, the comment sections became Comedy Central:

* “So, North Korea is a Chinese agricultural village?”

* “North Korea is China’s largest agricultural village.”

* “North Korea is part of a Chinese agricultural village that can’t be subdivided.”

* “Ah, so it was Chinese-made. Now we know why the launch failed.”

* One person replaced the character for village or township (郷) in the logo 家電下郷 with the characters for North Korea: 家電下北朝鮮

* “The rocked was launched with Chinese tax money.”

Some people in Japan also saw the humorous aspects of the situation. The political cartoonist in my local newspaper replaced the North Korean missile with a caricature of Kim Jong-eun and showed him veering off course after being launched.

Most Japanese, however, were angry rather than amused. The following timeline explains the reason.

7:38:55: The missile was launched.

7:40: The missile exploded and fell into the sea. This was confirmed by an American early warning satellite. The American confirmation of the launch was communicated to the South Koreans and the Japanese before the missile failure.

7:42: The failure was immediately relayed to the crisis center in the Kantei (Japan’s White House), and to Prime Minister Noda and Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura Osamu in the prime minister’s office.

7:50: South Korean television reported the launch and its failure.

8:03: The Japanese crisis center issued its first report, which was sent to local governments using the Em-Net system: “We are unable to confirm the launch of the missile”.

Yonemura Toshiro, deputy chief cabinet secretary for crisis management, was assigned responsibility for making all official government announcements. It was his decision to send that message with that content. For some reason, he thought there was confusion between the information received internationally and that received domestically, so he decided to be cautious. He didn’t tell Mr. Fujimura what he did.

8:10: The South Korean government announced the failed launch.

8:16: The Defense Ministry reported the launch to the crisis management center.

8:23: Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki suddenly appeared before the media and read a short statement announcing the failed launch of a “flying object”. He left without taking questions.

Had the missile not failed, it would have taken about 10 minutes to enter Japanese airspace. Mr. Fujimura later explained they were “double-checking”. That’s what they had decided to do in advance before making any statements.

The crisis management center personnel complained of delays in receiving radar information from the Self-Defense Forces. Noted the Yomiuri Shimbun:

“The process was designed so that the center would be notified only when all necessary pieces of information became available. As a result, the government missed the opportunity to use the J-Alert system, which instantly transmits emergency warnings across the country, as the system cannot be activated until the information is received by the center.

“Though the J-Alert was considered an important tool for the government to quickly warn the public, the utilization of the system was hampered.”

Shortly after 10:00: Mr. Noda was angry, and he has a reputation for keeping his temper. He told aides, “We need to be more clear,” especially because they received the proper information promptly.

But the government was prepared for any eventuality. Here’s a photograph taken in Tokyo at 10:56, about three hours later:

The excuses started not long thereafter. Tarutoko Shinji, acting DPJ secretary general, said,

“It probably fell before it came into view of Japanese radar. This happened before it could have had an effect on Japan, so our initial response was not delayed.”

Said Mr. Fujimura:

“We had to verify it, including what content we should release and whether it should have been released.”

He added that they were being cautious because the government relayed info on Em-Net after North Korea’s previous missile launch in 2009, though the information hadn’t officially reached them yet. Finally, he explained that:

“The principle is to provide information when there’s danger of damage to Japan.”

No one was relieved.

Mr. Tanaka spoke to the media on evening of 13th:

“The defense ministry and the SDF performed its mission to protect the lives and property of the people against the launch.”

The Defense Minister didn’t show up for work on the 14th, as he had no official duties. It was left to Deputy Defense Minister Watanabe Shu to submit to interviews by six television programs. The most likely reason Mr. Watanabe was sent to make the rounds is that Mr. Tanaka is already viewed as buffoon by the opposition politicians and the media alike. (He was chosen for the post because his wife Makiko is an ally of Ozawa Ichiro, and Mr. Noda thought preventing a split in the party was more important than competence.) After a series of misstatements that revealed his ignorance of security matters, he’s been refusing invitations to deliver speeches.

Mr. Watanabe explained they weren’t able to eliminate all the possibilities right away, including the firing of a different, short range missile. He also said there were concerns that the North might fire off more missiles, and that a crisis could result if South Korea tried to recover the missile parts and the North tried to block them.

Despite those concerns, the government ordered the withdrawal of the recently assigned Land Self-Defense Forces from Okinawa with a swiftness that surprised the military men on the ground.

The reaction at the Seetell website summed up the national sentiment:

“The Japanese government spent the better part of 3 weeks preparing for the launch of a North Korean rocket, cancelling an annual cherry blossom party this weekend, ringing Tokyo with anti-missile batteries and positioning Self-Defense Forces on land and sea, all the while telling the public to remain calm. It even created one of its infamous but, apparently, ineffective expert panels for the event. Yet, despite this advanced preparation and hype, and in an inept replay of its failure to use the SPEEDI system to warn the public about the spread of radiation from Fukushima just one year ago, the government botched it.”

It’s even worse than that: Those were Aegis-equipped ships and Patriot anti-missile systems deployed in Tokyo and Okinawa to prepare for the launch. But:

“While the government was “double-check(ing)” the event was already over. While the government was “double-check(ing)” the rocket was fulfilling its destiny. It is only fortunate for this inept, elitist, consensus-driven, and always politically opportunistic government that the rocket disintegrated minutes after liftoff, falling harmlessly into the sea.

“The end result is that all this preparation was for nothing. All the hype was for nothing. All of the wasted money was for nothing. The government wanted to be seen as organized, commanding, and ready to defend the nation while sending a strong message to neighboring nations that Japan could not be bullied. Instead, the Japanese government got about the same result as the North Korean government, a failed attempt at political chest thumping.”

LDP Diet Affairs Chairman Kishida Fumio wants to conduct an investigation in the Diet to determine what happened. He discussed that with his counterpart Jojima Koriki of the ruling DPJ. Mr. Jojima told him:

“No parts from the missile fell into Japanese waters, so there’s no need for a Diet review.”

Others slammed the government’s continuing preference for keeping secrets about serious matters from the people, as they did during the Senkakus incident with China and the nuclear accident at Fukushima.

Here’s Seetell again:

“The evidence shows that this government, from politicians to bureaucrats, is not capable, either because of lack of intelligence or lack of ability or lack of a moral compass or simple unwillingness, to protect the Japanese people. The truth is that the greatest danger facing the Japanese people is not the Chinese red menace or the isolated North Koreans, but the Japanese government itself.”

Indeed, one could make a case that the DPJ government might think the greatest danger is the Japanese people. The National Police Agency on the morning of the 13th instructed all of its headquarters nationwide to be on the lookout for any “right-wing activity”. They were given three instructions:

1. Gather information related to right-wing activities and Chongryon (the North Korean-affiliated organization for Korean citizens living in Japan.

2. Reinforce the surveillance and defense of government offices, particularly the Kantei and the foreign and defense ministries, and

3. Promptly report public disturbances.

The cops had a slow day that day.

Matsubara Jin, the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and perhaps the DPJ’s most prominent right-winger himself, tried to cover for the government by saying the prime minister issued three instructions:

1. Be on the alert and gather information.

2. Strive to provide information to the people, and

3. Strengthen communication with the countries involved.

He added that the police agency made every effort to respond to the prime minister’s instructions.

The overall response also contained elements of the surreal. Social Democratic Party Secretary General Shigeno Yasumasa weighed in with his party’s views. He began by expressing the party’s opposition to the North Korean missile launch, but continued:

“Using the North Korean threat as an excuse to installing and reinforcing the missile defense system and using the defense of the southwestern islands (Senkakus, et al.) as an excuse to build up the Self-Defense forces in Okinawa can only amplify the tension in Northeast Asia.”

It helps to know that the party called themselves Socialists during the Berlin Wall days and sponsored annual peace cruises to Pyeongyang. They also favor unarmed neutrality, and use Costa Rica as an example to be emulated.

Malcolm Muggeridge sussed it all out decades ago. It’s the great liberal death wish (though the term liberal is of course a euphemism).

Both the LDP and Your Party say they want to censure Tanaka Naoki for committing buffoonery in the conduct of his duties. But it was obvious that serving as a Cabinet Minister was beyond his capabilities before his appointment, and they should really consider censuring Mr. Noda for selecting him for such a critical post to begin with. Defense ministry officials have let it be known to the media off the record that the sooner the better would be fine with them. Thus, it shouldn’t be long now before he returns to the status quo ante of anonymous irrelevance.

The first thing a visitor to the DPJ’s English-language website sees is their slogan:

Putting people’s lives first.

If it weren’t a laughing matter, that would be the biggest joke of all.

*****
Drunken Sailor Watch

From an AFP report:

Japan is considering lending about $60 billion to the International Monetary Fund to help strengthen a global firewall against contagion from the European sovereign debt crisis, Kyodo news agency said on Sunday…If realised, Japan’s contribution could be one of the biggest by a member nation, Kyodo quoted an unnamed government official as saying.

*****
How low has the DPJ government sunk in the estimation of the people? So low they’ve got the Bottom Blues.

The non-person at the New York Times

As statesman-like as Henry Kissinger, as environmentally conscious as Al Gore, and almost as beloved by the public as Princess Diana
- author Chen Zufeng in a commissioned hagiography of Bo Xilai, as cited by Li Cheng in “China’s leaders: The new generation”

IS there a more curious newspaper in the Anglosphere than the New York Times? Whenever they write about Japan, they behave as if they’re a big-budget edition of the weekly Ho-Ho-Kus New Jersey Shoppers’ Gazette staffed by high school journalism trainees: Getting pwned by a pop artist and being convinced that a goofy costume is a sign of rising crime; conveniently garbling the statements of a prime minister they didn’t care for to get him in trouble (they didn’t); and exhibiting no ability whatsoever to produce a competent article on current political conditions.

The late Michael Crichton had a rule of thumb for the print media — Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus, which ought to replace All the News it’s Fit to Print on the Times masthead. It makes no difference whether they write about Japan or Uruguay, George W. Bush or Barack Obama. They’re in the business of manufacturing plausible falsies pitched a certain way for certain readers who lack the time or the interest in fact-checking.

But now it gets worse with the Times’ struggle to make sense of the recent power struggle in China. The newspaper has been serializing the tale of the rise and fall of Bo Xilai, the former party secretary of Chongqing, and the implication of his wife Gu Kailai in the murder of a Brit speedo who ingratiated himself with the local elites and seems to have been relegated Chinese-style after he began playing out of his league.

Here’s the Times’ speculation about what might have happened with Bo Xilai:

“…a titanic power struggle between Mr. Bo’s neo-Maoist left and the more liberal and market-oriented right; infighting among ruling cliques; a seizing of the moment by Mr. Bo’s many highly motivated political enemies.”

Seeing the Times describe people who are both “liberal” and “market-oriented” as being on the “right” is jolly good reading, isn’t it?

Especially when they and the neo-Maoist left are all members of the Chinese Communist Party!

How to precisely describe Mr. Bo seems to have stumped them. The passage above refers to him as a “neo-Maoist”. But then they say:

“In a Western system, Mr. Bo might be called a populist. In China, where lockstep unity is a foundation of the party’s claim on power, he was a fearsome unknown.”

Mark my words, that’s a journalist who’ll graduate to writing scripts for cable TV documentaries before long.

“Mr. Bo is mostly identified as the charismatic darling of China’s new left, the intellectuals and policy wonks who argue that China should use state power to assure social equality and enforce a culture of moral purity and nationalism. Mr. Bo’s policies in Chongqing, from the mass singing of Mao-era songs to his pitiless anticorruption campaign, were conceived with the help of leftist theorists at the government-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.”

National socialism…moral purity…mass singing…in a system that allows private ownership of business only as long as it is in the service of the state….

The Chinese communists apparently have German antecedents other than Karl Marx.

Here’s populism Chinese style:

“To waves of favorable publicity, his government rewarded citizens who reported rude taxi drivers and fined those who uttered unpleasantries like nao you bing, or, roughly, ‘numbskull’.”

In most places, an irked passenger would complain to the company after a cabbie called him a numbskull. Here the passengers make it an issue of hate speech and complain to the government, which rewards the whistle blowers and fines the drivers, all to public acclaim. And this is one of Bo Xilai’s praiseworthy achievements.

Interesting place, this China.

But Mr. Bo finally came a cropper:

“In a governing elite that makes big choices by consensus, experts say, Mr. Bo might well have vaulted onto the Standing Committee with the support of sympathizers, had Chongqing’s police chief, Wang Lijun, not fled to the American Consulate in Chengdu, in nearby Sichuan Province.

“Mr. Wang carried papers that he said implicated Mr. Bo’s family in a criminal inquiry of the death of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, an acquaintance of the Bo family. Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang are now said to be confined in Beijing while party officials investigate those and other claims.”

Another article in the series describes how his wife is being tarred for suspected foreign connections. That’s to discredit man and wife with the policy wonk neo-leftists who would enforce moral purity and nationalism. It’s also against the rules for Chinese bigwigs to have foreign residency permits. A third article features more details on the alleged murder of the Englishman and the involvement of Ms. Gu (Mrs. Bo). It also mentions briefly that Bo had ties to Mao Zedong.

The newspaper doesn’t provide any details on those Mao ties, but that’s not surprising. The ties don’t seem to have been binding ones, if they existed at all. His father, Bo Yibo, was booted out of the Chinese Communist Party in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution because he was a counterrevolutionary rightist. Bo Xilai himself was jailed for five years and wasn’t released until after Mao died. That was 36 years ago, when Bo was still 27. But now he’s a neo-leftist with Mao ties.

Finally, here’s a Times article that tries to unscramble the loose ends:

“The maximum sentence for murder in China is execution. On its face, Mr. Chen said, the Heywood murder case appears “pretty grave, because it involved a foreigner, and because it has had such a negative impact” politically.

When Mr. Bo knocks a few Falun Gong heads together and some fatalities result, well, these things happen. But when the case involves a foreigner and has negative political repercussions, it becomes murder-murder instead of murder.

“The disclosure of the charges against the Bos was carefully scripted, and apparently timed, to dispense with Mr. Bo well ahead of a planned turnover of Communist leaders at the 18th Party Congress this autumn.”

But it’s curious that nowhere in these articles do the Times writers explain how Bo Xilai rose as high as he did, apart from being a charismatic darling. Since the Chinese aren’t allowed to elect their leaders, all that darling charisma and a few yuan will buy him a cup of tea. More curious still is that the pertinent information on Mr. Bo is available all over the place. Just not in the New York Times.

“The reform-minded faction of China’s ruling Communist Party, led by Wen Jiabao, prevailed over the conservative faction led by former president Jiang Zemin to bring about the sacking of Bo Xilai from his post as Communist Party chief of Chongqing municipality, according to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily.”

Why did the New York Times drop the former president’s name from these articles and turn him into a non-person? Is this is what they mean by news that isn’t fit to print?

This article continues:

“China is essentially ruled by a nine-member Politburo Standing Committee comprising President Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, next president Xi Jinping, next premier Li Keqing, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang.”

But in one of those Times pieces:

“Some Chinese leaders clearly hope that this year will mark another milestone in China’s rise under authoritarian rule: the first time that a whole new slate of leaders is chosen largely by consensus among the political elite, not handpicked by a powerful strongman.”

In other words, the leaders will be chosen not by one strongman, but by nine strongmen. The New York Times finds someone who thinks this is a milestone, but can’t find anyone who thinks this is an oligarchy.

“Wu Si, a liberal intellectual and editor based in Beijing, said in an interview: “What in actuality are the rules of transferring power at the highest levels now? It’s not clear.”"

Sure the rules are clear. They’re called The Law of the Jungle.

“The Jiang Zemin faction saw the Wang Lijun incident as an internal matter, while Hu Jintao, Wen and Li Keqiang insisted that Bo be dealt with according to the law. He Guoqiang, who had been seen as pro-Jiang, shifted his position to support Wen. At the last minute Xi Jinping also sided with Wen to tilt the balance in favor of reformists….”

The Japanese widely assume that Xi Jinping is another Jiang Zemin acolyte, and they therefore expect the Chinese to adopt a harder line in the region after he becomes president later this year. Mr. Xi also seems to have developed his political instincts and a fine sense of survival if he jumped “at the last minute” away from his patron.

“The struggle between the Hu-Wen clique and the so-called Crown Prince Party comprising “princelings” Bo Xilai and Jia Qinglin began years ago, noted independent Beijing scholar Gao Yu. Jiang Zemin and some of his cronies became unhappy with the direction taken by Hu and Wen, providing an opening for the princelings to seek to make their move for this year’s leadership change. But now that Bo has fallen, the center of power has clearly shifted to the more reform-minded Hu-Wen faction.”

Those three sentences contain more useful information than the four Times articles about neo-leftism, populism, numbskull taxi patrons, and fearsome unknowns threatening the lockstep unity.

Another article provides even more detail:

“Jiang Zemin moved Bo up rapidly. While continuing to serve as mayor of Dalian City, Bo was appointed as acting governor of Liaoning Province in 2000 and then as governor in 2001. In 2002, Bo was appointed to the Central Committee of the CCP. In 2004, he was made Minister of Commerce….

“…Bo has been sued 14 times in 13 countries on charges of torture, murder, genocide, and crimes against humanity. In 2007, this record sidetracked his brisk rise through the Party hierarchy.

“When Jiang Zemin’s faction put Bo forward to be vice-premier, and thus in line to succeed Wen Jiabao, Wen objected that, given the international lawsuits brought against Bo, he was not an appropriate choice, according to a U.S. State Department cable released by Wikileaks. Bo was shunted to be Party secretary in the central-western megalopolis of Chongqing instead.”

Here’s the New York Times’ explanation of the same circumstances:

“Mr. Bo’s ambition and abrasive style made some enemies in the elite, notably Mr. Wen. His posting in 2007 to Chongqing, deep in China’s interior, was seen by some as an effort to sideline him.”

So, the Chinese Communist Party accepts leaders who walk on the wild side of torture, murder, genocide, and crimes against humanity, but woe betide if you’re from a competing faction and your wife poisons a Brit who pulled some strings to get your son into Harrow.

None of this is new information, however. The Bo family – Jiang connection has been known in the West for at least a decade, after Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley explained that Xilai’s father Bo Yibo helped Jiang Zemin succeed Deng Xiaoping and consolidate his power in the 90s in their book, China’s New Rulers: The secret files.

The Japanese have also been keeping a close watch on developments among the Chinese ruling class. That’s only natural — those developments have a direct impact on them. For Manhattan sophisticates and America’s politico-academic-journo complex, those developments are little more than breakfast table infotainment.

Shi Peng, a Chinese who is now a naturalized Japanese citizen, offered his perspective in an article in the December issue of Seiron. Mr. Shi was stunned by a 27 September 2011 article in the Global Times newspaper, which is owned by the People’s Daily, which is owned by the Communist Party.

The article was written by a man identified as a strategic analyst from a group whose name translates as the China Energy Resource Fund Committee. It was titled, “The time has come for China to use military force in the South China Sea,” and the theme was that China should not hesitate to initiate conflict to achieve its geopolitical ends.

Mr. Shi notes that the article presents China as the victim and the neighboring countries as the aggressors, which, he says, is what the Chinese always do. (The “peace-loving Soviet people” had a taste for that approach as well.) He quotes this passage:

“China has devoted itself to economic development and is most desirous of stability in its environment. We seek neither the internationalization of the South China Sea problems, nor do we seek to bring about an international conflagration. That is why we have acted in unparalleled good faith.”

But the neighboring countries are “preparing for a world-scale war,” and the United States is “pouring gasoline on to the flames by selling weapons, and is also preparing for military intervention.”

“Our response to other countries encroaching on our maritime territory and drilling for oil should first be to extend all possible courtesy (and warn them to stop). If they don’t stop, they should be blocked by the use of military force…We must not be afraid of a small war. That is the best way to release martial energy.”

See what I mean about German antecedents?

The author of the Global Times article believes that victory is certain. He mentions there are thousands of oil wells in the sea, none of which are Chinese and all of which are potential targets. Also:

“The U.S. has not yet extricated itself from its war against terror, and they are still closely involved with Middle East issues. They have absolutely no margin for opening a second front in the South China Sea. The Americans’ hard-line stance is a false front.”

Therefore the Chinese must:

“Fix our objective on The Philippines and Vietnam, which are causing a terrible commotion.”

Mr. Shi was astonished because it is extremely rare in China for any media outlet to call so assertively for war. He says that even though the media has gained a degree more freedom, the government retains the exclusive right to express views on certain topics that others cannot independently express. War is one of those topics.

He was astonished for other reasons, too. He writes:

“To diffuse the international community’s sense of caution, (China) always dons the mask of peace and limits their belligerent words and acts. It is their hunting tactic to retract their claws, hold their breath, and approach the prey.”

He suggests that if the article was unsanctioned, it would be a challenge to the central government’s authority and it would harm their international “hunting tactic”. Mr. Shi thinks this is neither official government policy nor an article authorized by the government. While President Hu Jintao certainly supports the overall geopolitical strategy of achieving dominance in the South China Sea, he and his supporters will refrain from such belligerence while the U.S. still has maritime military dominance.

Finally, Mr. Shi notes that when Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visited Beijing in October, President Hu proposed that the two countries jointly develop the maritime resources at dispute. The Japanese media thought this was an indication of Chinese concessions, especially in light of the trouble they caused with Vietnamese shipping in the latter country’s EEZ last summer. Rattling the sabers ruins all that diplomacy and their quiet advance strategy.

So who wrote the article?

Mr. Shi says it had to come from someone with the political clout to publish an article in a newspaper whose parent company is the CCP that directly confronts authority and implicitly criticizes the current leadership’s geopolitical strategy. It had to be someone who wanted to reveal the weakness of the leadership and impress the military with his strength.

He fingers Jiang Zemin and his Shanghai clique.

Mr. Jiang has been maneuvering for power behind the scenes for nine years, and his biggest success was having his ally Xi Jinping tapped as the next president. To counteract those moves, Mr. Hu has been gathering young party members and placing them in positions of authority in the central and regional governments to serve as a counterbalance to Xi Jinping. Mr. Shi reports that his efforts have been very successful.

Speaking of the hard line, the Global Times also published an article to remind its readers of the Manchurian Incident on its 80th anniversary on 19 September. The article mentions the “rise of the right wing in Japan” and states:

“It is entirely possible that Japan expects to achieve again a military success after its failure, and Japanese militarism has already been revived.”

This will come as a surprise to everyone in Japan. Considering that Tanaka Naoki is serving as defense minister, it might even generate a few laughs.

Mr. Shi reminds his readers that Japan-bashing of this sort was a feature of Chinese journalism under Jiang Zeming, but has been toned down by Hu Jintao. Mr. Hu continues to use historical issues as a weapon against Japan (if only domestically), but Mr. Shi says the reference to a revival of militarism places the article in another dimension altogether.

So it would seem that what is happening in China is this: Two competing factions at the highest level of government are playing hardball in a power struggle. There are “carefully scripted charges ahead of a party conference” in which one of the bishops on the political chessboard and his wife are removed from their positions of authority and held in confinement, though there has been no formal confirmation. Bo Xilai is now a running dog on the road to becoming a non-person, after Chinese authorities removed his name from messages on the local Internet.

We’ve seen all of this before in People’s Democratic Republics ruled by a communist party. It’s called a purge.

But that’s another word the New York Times couldn’t fit into their version of the news.

Afterwords:

The most important aspect of the Bo Xilai story is his link to Jiang Zemin and what the purge means in the overall power struggle. Has the New York Times mentioned a connection before? If they couldn’t be bothered to mention it in four straight articles this week, two of which are summaries of the situation, yet can make an unexplained reference to ties between Bo and Mao that no one else sees, I can’t be bothered to check.

If Shi Peng is wrong about the source of the Global Times articles, it would mean that President Hu is more hardline than people think.

In other China news, inflation is becoming a problem, and unfortunately for everyone else, their solution is Keynesian. Then again, the American and European solution is also Keynesian.

Hit the internal link in the article to the author’s first article to get a sense of CNN’s economic illiteracy. It’s not just CNN, either. It was CNNMoney.

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The end of the LDP

When your ideology has become rigid, you have checked your brains at the door. If you want proof of that, just look at today’s liberals. Their ideology has been extinct for years and they are walking around like the living dead, trying to preserve the welfare state and the vision of Lord Keynes while the whole world crumbles around them.
- Former leftist/liberal Roger L. Simon

SOME people are born with numb skulls, while other people have to shovel away at the irrigation ditches for years to get all that water onto the brain. No one works longer or more assiduously to obtain a black belt in cretinhood than the world’s political class, as a glance at any newspaper on any day in any country will demonstrate. Japanese politicos share the same defective DNA, but only their parents know whether the members of the established political parties here are congenital lackwits or shed all those IQ points after years of keeping their foreheads to the whetstone.

During his 5.5 years in office, Koizumi Jun’ichiro led the politicos by their nose on The Shining Path to landslide elections and real structural reform of government. A lower house election called specifically as a referendum on privatizing Japan Post rewarded his government with a historical mandate and solidified the prime minister’s poll ratings at 70%. It was one of those happy but rare occasions when the popular will intersected with sensible reform to exclude the entrenched parasitic interests. It should all be as obvious as a wet mackerel in the face.

There is never a reason for a government to own a bank or an insurance company, and there is no longer a reason for them to own post offices in the age of e-mail and private sector express delivery companies, and everyone knows it. To be sure, it’s possible that the victory was due in part to a gratitude vote: Sheer delight by the electorate because a politician actually asked for their opinion and staked his career on it. From the time he stepped down in 2006 until he left politics in 2009, Mr. Koizumi consistently topped the list of polls asking the public who they thought would make the most suitable prime minister. That’s too long to be called an afterglow.

The Democratic Party ran the classic bait-and-switch scam when they promised reform pre-election to gain control of government. One of their “reforms” was to stick a finger in the electorate’s eye and roll back the changes at Japan Post. While the DPJ couldn’t be expected to catch the plot if they ran that finger over the pages and mouthed the words, some members of Mr. Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party should have been unwilling to step into the mudboat. It turns out there are — three.

The LDP held a general meeting on the 27th and gave their formal approval to a proposal they worked out with New Komeito to amend the Japan Post law, thus neutering their signal policy achievement of the past decade. They and the DPJ will submit that proposal to the Diet. Instead of forcing the government to divest itself of Japan Post stock by 2017, the new law requires the government to “endeavor” to sell the stock “quickly”. There you have the perfect example of how reform is deboned by the butchers in the government and bureaucracy. If the law stands, they’ll still be “endeavoring” to sell the stock when all the girls of AKB48 are grandmas.

LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu signed the original Cabinet resolution calling for privatization in 2004, so he was for it before he was against it. Last week, however, he said:

“The DPJ continues their indecisive politics, but we will present a serious resolution.”

That’s not inbred stupidity. He had to cultivate it.

Koizumi Shinjiro, the former prime minister’s son and successor to his Kanagawa Diet seat, was one of the three people to object to the party’s decision. He objected in particular to Mr. Tanigaki’s…statement, for lack of a better term:

“To say that (the DPJ’s) indecision is unacceptable, but that this proposal is decisive, is irrational.”

Suga Yoshihide was more statesmanlike:

“(Seven years ago) we had a great debate in the party and concluded that this country will be in trouble without structural reform. We won a major election victory on the Japan Post issue. Retreating from this principle is unacceptable.”

But more to the point was the party’s former secretary-general, Nakagawa Hidenao:

“It is the beginning of the end of the party.”

LDP General Council Chairman Shionoya Ryu seems to have a hearing disability in addition to being beef-witted. After the meeting voted to accept the proposal, he declared:

“It’s unanimous.”

But it wasn’t, and the opponents threatened to vote nay when it comes to the Diet floor. In a post-conference briefing, Mr. Nakagawa blasted the party for changing a policy ratified by popular mandate without another election. “If that’s how we’ll do it,” he said, “we’re the same as the DPJ.”

Now that’s a low blow.

The interview continued:

Q: The people supporting the amendment said, “The Koizumi reform era is over,” and “Times have changed.” What do you think?

Nakagawa: I don’t know who said that, but the recent history of our party includes an extremely important administration that lasted five years. After that, we had a series of very short administrations, and then became the opposition party. In that sense, we brought about today’s circumstances because we didn’t value our first principles, so we will continue to bring about the same circumstances in the future.

On the outside looking in, Your Party Secretary-General Eda Kenji didn’t say it was the end of the party, but he did say the party’s reversion is complete. The word he used for reversion was “atavism”.

Mr. Eda’s objections were practical as well as philosophical, noting that the problems were the obligation for JP’s financial companies to provide universal service and the government’s financial stake. He said that any attempt by the companies to enter new business sectors before the stock is sold would violate most financial regulations around the world, and the governments of those countries would object. (Good luck in the TPP negotiations.) He stated the obvious when he said that government ownership means fair competition in the banking and life insurance sectors is unlikely. He also knows the shares are unlikely to be sold. Where else is the government going to come up with the domestic cash to buy those deficit financing bonds?

He concluded:

“Your Party is of course opposed to this bill, which is a change for the worse.”

More than being the beginning of the end or a textbook example of political atavism, however, it would be more accurate to say that the three parties have now congealed into a largely indistinguishable mass of foul-smelling sludge that fills the moat around the Castle of Vested Interests. When the people leading the revolution of the regions against the center blast the “existing parties”, they’re talking about those three.

It is as if they were 18th-century barbers drilling holes into their own skulls to release the vapors. Now hear this: LDP Secretary-General Ishihara Nobuteru announced the LDP would consider voting for the DPJ’s consumption tax increase if the DPJ dumped Ozawa Ichiro. In a rare display of common sense, Deputy Prime Minister Okada Katsuya told him to mind his own business.

Taxation is a policy matter, and a politician has to look at the numbers — all the numbers, including the Finance Ministry’s secret money stash — to decide. The membership standards of a political party, no matter how lax, are unrelated to policy issues, and should not be a factor in another party’s collective position on any policy issue.

The three political stooges will eventually run the Nagata-cho Choo Choo off the rails, soon or late. The only solution is for the passengers to detach as many of the cars from the locomotive as possible before that happens. It’s a matter of life and death.

Afterwords:

One month after the DPJ formed a government, then-Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio appointed Saito Jiro to head Japan Post. Mr. Saito is a veteran of the Finance Ministry, and was his era’s equivalent to Katsu Eijiro today.

Mr. Katsu was sent over by the Finance Ministry to serve as an aide to Prime Minister Noda. Many consider him to be the PM’s puppeteer and the man brainwashing the Cabinet into ever-escalating consumption tax increases. The size of the government doesn’t matter to the ministry as long as the size of the tax revenue is to their satisfaction. His fellows in the Finance Ministry hail him as a star bureaucrat of exceptional skill and talent.

Mr. Saito served in a similar capacity during the first non-LDP administration of Hosokawa Morihiro. He teamed with another backroom string-puller: Ozawa Ichiro, the man Mr. Ishihara wants the DPJ to dump. In those days, Mr. Ozawa and Mr. Saito came up with a scheme to introduce a 7% social welfare tax. The public didn’t like that either.

When Mr. Hatoyama appointed Mr. Saito to serve as Japan Post head several years after he had left the Finance Ministry, the prime minister tried to deflect the outrage by saying he had been out of the public sector so long his perspective had changed. With Mr. Hatoyama, there were so many eye-rolling moments the nation turned swivel-eyed.

Eighteen years later, Ozawa Ichiro is trying to bring down the Noda government for doing the same thing, with the same sort of Finance Ministry allies, that he himself tried do during the Hosokawa government.

The person who recommended Mr. Saito to Mr. Hatoyama was Kamei Shizuka, the head of the People’s New Party, then the DPJ’s junior coalition partner. The PNP is a single-issue party formed to turn back the Japan Post privatization. Mr. Kamei tapped Mr. Saito because he thought it would please Ozawa Ichiro.

Mr. Kamei used to be one of the bigger enchiladas in the LDP. He is said to have been the ringleader of the LDP machinations to bring down the Hosokawa administration, which was a coalition of eight small parties. He coaxed the Socialist Party to leave and join an LDP coalition by playing on their dislike of Mr. Ozawa’s dictatorial habits. He disliked them too, and he sometimes referred to Mr. Ozawa as a “fascist bastard”.

Kamei Shizuka last week left the governing coalition because he’s opposed to the tax increase. He’s conferring with Tokyo Metro Governor Ishihara Shintaro and others about forming a new old guy party. Earlier this week he talked about working out a cooperative arrangement between the new party and the fascist bastard himself, Ozawa Ichiro.

If Japan weren’t a civilized country, these people would wind up hanging from meathooks.

UPDATE: When China moves in the right direction, and that direction is the opposite of yours, that’s a sure sign you’re in trouble with a capital T.

China’s state banks make money “too easily” and their monopoly on financial services has to be broken if cash-starved private enterprises are to get access to capital when they need it, state media cited Premier Wen Jiabao as saying on Tuesday.

Wen’s comments, carried on China National Radio, come days after Beijing gave the go-ahead for financial reforms in Wenzhou — known as the country’s cradle of private enterprise — that will encourage private investment in local banks…

Private investors in Wenzhou will be encouraged to buy into local banks and to set up financial institutions such as loan companies and rural community banks, the State Council said in a statement posted on the government’s website last week.

*****
Then again, Sakamoto Ryuichi composed The End of Asia more than 30 years ago, and that hasn’t happened yet. Recreations of renaissance music haven’t ended after several centuries, either.

Read it in the news

STILL dealing with an influx of work, but in the meantime here are some links providing an update on the state of the industrial media in the U.S.

One Free Korea examines the working relationship between the Associated Press and the North Korean government. No one else will.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is now on the payroll of the Chinese government.

As Harry Truman once said, I feel sorry for the man who reads the newspaper at the breakfast table and thereby thinks he has an understanding of what is happening in the world.

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Legs

IT seems the Chinese waste just as much time on websites speculating about Japanese people as Western folks do, with roughly the same result: readers learn more about the writers than anything else.

Some Chinese language-fluent Japanese found a thread on a message board associated with the Baidu search engine titled, “Japanese women can really withstand the cold”. The thread’s original poster included photographs of younger women wearing short skirts on cold days. They thought some of the comments and interpretations were interesting enough to translate into Japanese, and here they are in English (along with a link to the photos).

* Japanese women wear school uniform skirts from primary school through high school except for physical education classes. Universities have no uniforms, so they wear skirts all year round to be fashionable. I don’t think it’s so difficult for them even when it snows and is very cold. In South Korea it was popular to wear long stockings above the knee, but the Japanese are very strict about enforcing the rule on socks below the knee. That exposes their thighs and knees to the cold. Aren’t Japanese women cold? Have they evolved to a level beyond the Chinese?

(N.B.: Most primary school girls don’t wear uniforms at all, much less skirts. The university I’m most familiar with does have a non-mandatory uniform for women. It’s an attractive black pantsuit with a white blouse. The fad last year was short cutoff jeans with long black pantyhose-type stockings. I didn’t have a problem with that at all.)

* They do that from the time they’re small. They’re probably cold, but they’re used to it.

* (Original Poster) Here’s the latest information! Japanese men also don’t wear many clothes. Most young company employees in the Kanto region don’t wear long underwear because they think it’s for old guys.

* They have really big legs.

* Japanese women have such big legs because they like to play sports from a young age.

* They’ll get sick when they get older. Like with rheumatism.

* Where I am the junior high school girls wear stockings. (I think that’s the usual practice.)

* It’s all culture. Generally, women who think they’re beautiful wear skirts. (Is that the general opinion?)

* They’ll have to be careful about arthritis. They shouldn’t damage their bodies just to try to look good.

(N.B.: If female arthritis is a problem in Japan, it’s escaped my notice.)

* Cold, cold! I’m cold just looking at them!

* They have big legs because they sit in seiza for a long time.

(N.B.: Not any more they don’t.)
*****
Here’s the Chinese page with the photos they were commenting on.

It used to be the practice of parents to have their children (until junior high) run around in short pants throughout the year because they thought it was a healthful practice that built up their strength. (At least here in Kyushu, where it’s not as cold as elsewhere.) That doesn’t happen any more, though short pants are the rule for boys at the one primary school in my city that requires uniforms. (Full-length dresses for girls.)
*****
Those thighs don’t look fat to me.

Peace-loving peoples

We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationships and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.
- From the Preamble to the Japanese Constitution

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
- Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution

The United States has some 70 bases — in Japan. This (state of affairs) is not that of an independent country. I want to eliminate this abnormal state of affairs, and have Japan capable of defending Japan. Absent that concept, how can we conduct discussions with other countries?
- Yamada Hiroshi, former chief municipal officer of Tokyo’s Suginami Ward

(A)n editorial cartoon published during the war years in London’s Daily Mail…shows a neat little man in a bowler hat unhappily shaking hands with a dishevelled colossus. The caption reads: “Ah, Mr. Policy, young Side Effect here has been anxious to meet you …”
- George Jonas

ONE use to which the late author, student of psychology, and man of the world Idries Shah put his many books was to convey certain perspectives on form, function, and how they are frequently misapprehended. Shah held that forms have limitations, and that among those limitations are time, place, culture, and language. If they are neither changed nor discarded, they become fossilized, becoming both museums and exhibits. Some choose to become attached to a form rather than its content. They are unable to make the distinction between the container and its function, and assume the fossil still functions as it did in the past.

The creation of the Japanese Constitution as a way to bend the nation’s behavior is an excellent illustration of the perspectives on form and function Shah wished to convey.

Consider the language of the preamble shown above, which some Japanese find more objectionable than Article 9, the “peace clause”. The nation is supposed to rely on the “justice and faith” of the “peace-loving peoples of the world” for its security and existence. Pluralizing the word people, assuming that peoples are peace-loving, and proclaiming that national survival can be entrusted to their goodwill identifies the sort of people who wrote it, their worldview, and the general time period in which it was written. It belongs in a vitrine in a corner of the museum near the quill pens and dialed telephones, rather than as the first statement of principle atop a document that would express the national consensus for the survival of the state.

In retrospect, it’s curious that people expected a Constitutional requirement in that form to function at all. The authors knew well that the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact also prohibited the use of war as an “instrument of national policy”, so only an ideologue would have thought the Japanese Constitution in isolation would succeed. By 1945, technology had enabled the Europeans to realize the objective inherent in centuries of behavior and turn the continent into a smoldering ruin of a charnel house. Justice and faith in the love of peace were not the motivation for the Western world’s colonization of East Asia. Nor were they the motivation that impelled them to eliminate the East Asian nation that would usurp their position. Such were the high ideals controlling the human relations of the age.

Further, there is no real consensus on what Article 9 even means. Some people claim it was to make Japan a pacifist nation, but that’s difficult to see when the commonly accepted meaning of pacifism is applied. Here’s a brief description of how the Constitution was put together:

Although an American directive allowed him to order reforms “only as a last resort,” with the first postwar general election just two months away and with an 11-nation commission due to take over the issue of a constitution, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Allied Commander, intervened.

He ordered his own 24-member Government Section staff to draft a constitution, and on Feb. 4, his aide, Brig. Gen. Courtney Whitney, convened a meeting and declared: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a historic occasion. I now proclaim you a constitutional assembly.”

Lieut. Col. Charles Kades, who had been in Japan since a week before Japan’s formal surrender the previous summer after taking part in the invasion of France in 1944 and serving on the War Department’s General Staff, was put in charge of the steering committee and told to produce a constitution by Feb. 12.

But Kades denied that it was strictly pacifist in intent when Japanese journalist Komori Yoshihisa visited him at his Wall Street office in New York in April 1981 and spoke with him for three hours:

“I myself wrote Article 9, including the section about the renunciation of war. I was given a page from a yellow legal pad by Whitney with instructions on three or four main points. I think they were notes he took from a conversation with MacArthur. But every nation has the right to its own self-defense. That’s why I thought (the part prohibiting self-defense) was illogical, and I took the liberty to remove it.”

The references to military forces, war potential and the “right of belligerency” were as written on the paper he was given. Kades admitted, however, that he didn’t understand the meaning of the “right of belligerency”. He said that if Japan had objected to that phrase, he intended to remove it.

“The intent of this Constitution was at first to keep Japan disarmed forever, but that had the effect of tying America’s hands in bilateral relations with Japan, and for the United States, that created a situation that was ill advised.”

Now there’s the unanswerable question: how is a nation disarmed forever supposed to defend itself? By some interpretations, Japan is ranked ninth worldwide in military strength, yet to take the language of the Constitution at face value would mean that it has the world’s largest and most potent police force.

The Constitution also enables the United States to use Japanese territory for its own ends. Here it is from the horse’s mouth. In this case, the pony is Kevin Maher, the former director of the Office of Japan Affairs at the US State Department:

“I don’t think Article Nine of the Japanese constitution should change. If the Japanese constitution was changed the United States would not be able to use Japanese land to advance US interests. The high host nation support the Japanese government currently pays is beneficial to the US. We’ve got a very good deal in Japan.”

Regardless of what one thinks of the Japanese left, their caricature of their own country as an American aircraft carrier has some justification.

Another function of the Constitution has been to contribute to the neutering of the Japanese political class. With domestic policy largely in the hands of the bureaucracy and foreign policy outsourced to the Americans, the Japanese political class has devolved into a group of parasites engaged primarily in emitting gusts of hot air, concocting Byzantine power struggles, and consuming the nation’s time and money.

Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki

Typifying the problem is that the Noda Cabinet has already had two Defense Ministers since its inception five months ago. The criterion for their selection was to balance intraparty factions rather than their ability to oversee the national defense. The first, Ichikawa Yasuo, was known to be aligned with the Agriculture Ministry and had little expertise about defense matters. Mr. Ichikawa insisted this inexperience was the ideal demonstration of civilian control of the military. He was replaced four months and a half-dozen verbal pratfalls later, though he blamed it on bureaucratic backstabbing.

His successor is Tanaka Naoki, another AgMin zokugiin. He is distinguished only as the husband of former Foreign Minister Tanaka Makiko, who knew as much about diplomacy as her husband knows about national defense. Mr. Tanaka stepped in it even more quickly than Mr. Ichikawa. During a live interview on NHK the first weekend after his selection, he confused a question about relaxing the standards for the use of weapons by self-defense forces overseas with the reexamination of weapons export prohibitions. Asked specifically about the first by the NHK moderator, he talked about leaving behind construction equipment after participating in peacekeeping operations overseas. Struggling to rescue Mr. Tanaka, the interviewer asked him whether he had a positive attitude about the use of weapons by self-defense forces. The Defense Minister answered that it was neither positive nor negative.

The one function the Japanese Constitution has not performed, however, is the one it was created for: to prevent the “peace-loving peoples” in the neighborhood from piecemeal attacks on the country to seize or attempt to seize Japanese territory outright. Meanwhile, the Americans either declare it isn’t their business and look the other way, or have been actively complicit in that seizure.

Who indeed are the peace-loving peoples in Northeast Asia?

* The peace-loving people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Persons of sound mind can stipulate that the North Korean government neither qualifies as a member of the region’s peace-loving peoples nor can be trusted to behave as if they were. Persons of sound mind also know there are some who will disagree with that characterization, but taking them seriously isn’t worth the time or trouble.

While North Korea has no apparent designs on Japanese territory, they have, for reasons that make sense only to them, threatened to turn the country into a sea of fire. They also occasionally fire missiles in a direction where only Japan exists. (To be sure, Pyeongyang actually attacks only South Korea, but in an erratic manner that gives the Americans an excuse to bug out on their promise to defend South Korea as well.)

* The peace-loving people of the People’s Republic of China

It would be possible to agree with the Chinese assertion they are peace-loving people if we overlook their post-WWII invasions of the Korean Peninsula, India, and Vietnam, and their current buccaneering from southern Japan to the South China Sea.

The Chinese boosted their defense budget by 12.7% in FY 2011 to roughly 601.1 billion yuan. That was a resumption of 22 consecutive years of double-digit defense budget increases, a string that ended briefly in 2010, when defense expenditures were limited to a single-digit rise. In contrast, the Japanese Finance Ministry wants to cut the 155,000 members of the Land Self-Defense Force to 141,000. Japan is the only major country whose defense budget has continually declined since reaching a peak in 2002.

The Chinese cited as their reason increases in equipment and military training, personnel training/education, and salaries and benefits for the military.

When asked by reporters whether the increase was to apply pressure to neighboring countries, a government spokesman replied it was still less than 2% of GDP and lower than that of many countries. He also said that China was pursuing defensive policies and would not threaten any country.

Shortly thereafter, the Chinese had their first trial flight of a new stealth fighter. Here’s a look at some more of their new defensive infrastructure.

They didn’t behave as a peace-loving people in the fall of 2010, when they were the belligerents in the Senkaku islets , which they and the Taiwanese recognized as Japanese territory until seabed resources were discovered circa 1970.

This behavior should not have been unexpected. Noted Shimizu Yoshikazu in the monthly Chuokoron:

President Hu Jintao said at the Communist Party Conference in March 2009 that the country will staunchly defend its sovereignty, security, and territory. He also said the country would be more assertive in defending its maritime interests. Mr. Hu modified the dictum of Deng Hsiao Ping, who said, “Hide our abilities, build our strength, and move forward little by little.” The new policy is “Maintain hiding our abilities and building our strength, but be more aggressive diplomatically.”

Mr. Shimizu said that few people noticed because the full text of his address was not published. A senior official in the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it meant the country would perform a more aggressive role in international affairs.

Here’s what the Chinese mean by their “maritime interests”:

“Japanese government officials are weighing China’s intent after the People’s Daily, the newspaper of the Communist Party, called the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea part of Beijing’s “core interests.”

“…The People’s Daily article said Japan’s plan to name uninhabited islands near the Senkakus, known in China as the Diaoyu Islands, “is a blatant move to damage China’s core interests.””

The Chinese also refer to Tibet and Taiwan as part of their core interests.

Chinese newspaper editorials reflect a similar peace-loving attitude. For example, Hu Feiyue was one of four “experts” who presented views in a one-page special on the Senkakus dispute in the China Daily:

“Since Japan has been continually strengthening its control over the Diaoyu Islands (Senkakus), it is not enough for China to only send patrol boats to the islands. Instead, China should continue to modernize its navy. Considering Japan’s actions and the effect of China’s countermeasures, Beijing should think of employing another strategy,”

He also referred to the Japanese arrest of the Chinese fishing boat captain after ramming two Japanese Coast Guard vessels as “Tokyo’s affront”.

More specific was this from the Dongfang Ribao (Oriental Daily) in Hong Kong on 5 April last year:

There will not be peace between China and Japan unless China shows the resolve to use nuclear weapons. Japan is the only country in the world to have been attacked with nuclear (weapons) in the past century twice. The first was when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb, and the second was during the Fukushima nuclear accident. The Japanese are extremely sensitive to nuclear issues, and China is not without the means to employ this means…For most Japanese, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a nightmare that can not be forgotten, and it has wounded their spirit. The uneasiness and dread due to the nuclear accident has paralyzed Japanese officials and the public, and politicians continually spout nonsense.

Japan can say no to China, but it cannot say no to nuclear weapons. For China to gain Japan’s respect it must refer to these weapons and present an attitude of not renouncing their use…Japan is a country with a high degree of self-regard, and it bows only to those who defeat it. Even though it lost to the U.S. in World War II, it does not think it lost to China, and pressures China with this strong approach….Now it challenges China through its textbooks on the Senkakus issue. Why should China promise a country such as this that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons?

China is thought to have deployed 300 nuclear warheads, by the way.

This rhetoric has been backed by the Chinese military harassment of Japan, which began in the Senkakus long before the 2010 incident.

In September 2005, the Chinese sent five naval vessels, including a guided missile destroyer, to the vicinity of the Chunxiao gas field. That’s four kilometers into the Chinese EEZ, but the Chinese have been using it as a platform to siphon off gas from the Japanese side. One of the ships aimed a gun at a Japanese P3-C surveillance aircraft.

A day before the resumption of Japanese-Sino talks on the status of the gas fields, China revealed it had established a “reserve vessel squadron” in the East China Sea capable of “fighting during wars” and equipped to “eliminate obstacles at sea.”

They’ve been engaging in similar activities near or in Japanese air space, particularly in the past five years. From April to December 2010 alone, Japanese Air Self-Defense Forces scrambled 48 times against Chinese aircraft. That was the highest total of the past five fiscal years (starting in April), and did not include the January to March figures. More recent incidents have involved a refusal to provide identification after entering the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). The Chinese military aircraft used to stay outside the ADIZ, but that changed in October 2010.

Last March, a Chinese State Oceanic Administration helicopter flew to within 70 meters of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) destroyer Samidare. Then-Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi said, “It was an extremely dangerous act.” That was countered by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu, who replied that China’s right to claim the islands was “indisputable” and that its actions were in accord with international law.

On 30 December 2010, the Asahi Shimbun reported on People’s Liberation Army planning to land on and seize the outlying islands of other countries. The envisioned operations would include the use of bombers and amphibious vehicles.

On 2 January 2011, a commenter in the Communist Party-run Global Times claimed that the Japanese were just trying to worsen relations and suggested the Asahi ran the article at the government’s request.

*****
More troubling still is the Chinese interest in Okinawa. Some in China are now calling for the establishment of a Ryukyus Autonomous District. In other words, they think it’s Chinese manifest destiny to swipe the islands from Japan. Here is a public announcement of an apparently well-funded group to work toward that objective:

Former National Police Agency investigator Bando Tadanobu translated into Japanese an essay that appeared in the Chinese media calling for such a scheme as part of the PRC’s launch of a national strategy — the so-called Ryukyus Millennium.

“The Ryukyu islands must be recovered and a Ryukyu Autonomous District of the People’s Republic of China established for the millennium development of China. The law guarantees China sovereignty of the Ryukyus under the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration. It must be turned into a forward base facing the Pacific Ocean….China will build the Ryukyus, the Japanese and American military shall depart from the East Sea (i.e., what everyone else calls the East China Sea) and the Ryukyus will be a breakwater for Chinese security.”

The essay also asserts that the time to seize Okinawa is now, and the Ryukyu Islanders, who are part of the Chinese people, also seek this. Mr. Bando reminds his Japanese readers that the Chinese government insists the Senkakus are Chinese territory and that senior PLA members openly discuss planning for an invasion of Japan.

This is not an isolated phenomenon. The same argument has also appeared in other Chinese media sources, including three times in the Apple Daily and once on the Boxun News website.

Tang Chungfeng, a specialist in Japan research at the Chinese Ministry of Commerce who also served in the Chinese embassy in Japan, has championed the cause in the aforementioned Global Times, as well as the Ifeng.com news site (for Phoenix TV). Mr. Tang claims that the real Japanese objective is not to maintain control of Daioyutai (Senkakus), but to legalize its “illegal control” of the Ryukyus.

He lists four reasons for this.

1. The Ryukyus become the starting point for Japanese territorial waters.
2. It is a strategic move to obtain maritime resources and to keep northern Taiwan in check.
3. It draws their territorial line in the East China Sea.
4. It wipes away the shame of having been defeated in World War 2 by an “inferior race”, the Chinese. The Japanese still say they were beaten by the Americans and the Russians, not us.

Mr. Tang says this is the signal flare for the resurgence of Japanese militarism, in which Japanese bushido will again rule the world. It is a psychological demand of the Japanese right wing, which is more important than natural resources.

With two university professors, Mr. Tang wrote a similar article for the Global Times of 10 November 2010. In the same newspaper two days before that, he urged China to support the Okinawan “independence movement”.

Demonstrations were held in Chengdu in October 2010 after the Senkakus Incident of 7 September. Student leaders said they had been organized a month before with the help of the government. Some of the demonstrators carried signs saying, Recover the Ryukyus, Free Okinawa.

Occasionally the well-meaning superficialissimos of the Western mass media and thinktankeria get nosey and parade their wonderfulness by advising the countries involved it would be so much better if everyone got along and shared the wealth of the sea near the Senkakus instead of fighting about it. The Japanese have always been amenable to that. Now to get the Chinese to match their behavior with their words:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters Wednesday that Japan protested to China after a flare was seen Tuesday at a Chinese structure at an undersea gas deposit. Japan has made similar complaints several times in the past.

“We have detected a flare, a sign that it is highly likely that there is a gas development going on,” Fujimura said. “Any unilateral exploration is unacceptable.”

The deposit, known as Kashi in Japan and Tianwaitian in China, sits near a median line of the two countries’ overlapping exclusive economic zones.

Japan and China agreed in 2008 to suspend unilateral digging in that field while continuing talks, but talks have stalled since 2010, following a diplomatic spat stemming from a maritime collision near disputed southern islands claimed by both countries, as well as Taiwan.

Two (back-translated) comments allow us to draw conclusions from all this. The first is from Dean Cheng, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. (The emphasis is mine.)

China has of course warned that Japan is positioned as part of the American alliance, but we must recognize that is not the only point. I interviewed a general with the People’s Liberation Army, who said, “We might be able to achieve accommodation and cooperation with the U.S., but that will not happen with Japan. For China, Japan will likely remain a military threat”. There is a special historical animus towards Japan.

Meanwhile, Dan Blumenthal, current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, said:

In China, there is a memory and anger at Japan based on history, and an intense awareness of revisionism. That awareness is strengthened and inflamed by Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Now, the Chinese think this should be rectified, even with military force, by becoming superior to Japan, and having the ability to threaten Japan.

* The peace-loving people of Russia

Japan and Russia signed the Treaty of Commerce, Navigation and Delimitation on 7 February 1855. The treaty both established official relations between the countries as well as their borders. The Russians confirmed that the islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, and Shikotan, and the Habomai Islets (just seven kilometers from Hokkaido), were Japanese territory, distinct from the Kurile Islands.

Article 2 of the treaty states:

“Henceforth the boundary between the two nations shall lie between the islands of Etorofu and Uruppu. The whole of Etorofu shall belong to Japan; and the Kurile Islands, lying to the north of and including Uruppu, shall belong to Russia.”

Kunashiri, Shikotan and the Habomai Islets are to the south of Etorofu. They were not mentioned in the treaty because they were understood to be part of Japan.

They stayed part of Japan until after World War II ended. The Soviet Union renounced its neutrality treaty with Japan and declared war on 9 August 1945, three days after the Hiroshima nuclear bombing. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally on 15 August, and on 18 August the Soviets started occupying what Japan calls the Northern Territories. That process lasted until 5 September, three days after the surrender documents were signed.

For reasons impossible to explain, the English-language mass media finds it impossible to simply state these facts. Though the Soviet occupation of the islands occurred after the Japanese surrender, Reuters uses the expression “near the end of the war”. Even though the Japanese position is that the islands are not part of the Kuriles, based in part on the 1855 treaty language, the New York Times accepts the Russian formulation and calls them the South Kuriles. (Then again, the Times thought it was copacetic for the Americans to write the Japanese Constitution, as the text at the above link about Charles Kades shows.)

The Soviets occupied the islands because American President Harry Truman allowed them to. Stalin wanted the entire island of Hokkaido to create a Communist North Japan, as he did with North Korea and East Germany. Truman made a deal to prevent that by tossing Stalin the four smaller fish. This has been confirmed by historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (an American citizen) from diplomatic cables and detailed in his book Anto. (That can be translated as Secret Strife or Hidden Battle).

Thus, the Soviets chose to exact their revenge for losing the 1905 war by kicking Japan when it was down. In the 1956 agreement between the two countries that ended the state of war between them and restored diplomatic ties, the Russians agreed to give two of the islands back as part of a future peace treaty. They show no signs of fulfilling their promise.

The Russians saw that the Democratic Party-led government of Japan flinched badly in its confrontation with China in the fall of 2010. Should it be surprising that one thug state would imitate another? Their own military testing of Japan’s territory and defensive posture began almost immediately thereafter and continues to the present.

The Russian navy sent 24 ships through La Pérouse Strait, which separates the southern part of Sakhalin from the northern part of Hokkaidō and connects the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. This was the largest group of Russian ships to make this passage in 10 years, and included cruisers, destroyers, supply ships, tank carriers, and hospital ships.

In September 2011, the Russians conducted their largest military exercise off Kamchatka after the end of the Cold War — with 50 ships and 50 aircraft — to maintain the defense of their continental shelf area. One never knows when the Japanese or the Canadians are going to attack. It is curious that Russian exercises of this sort pass with little or no comment overseas, but the Japanese dispatch of an airplane to observe Chinese provocations is the signal for Western academics to write papers calling for the joint peaceful development of resources.

In early December 2010, Russian maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft flew directly above a joint U.S.-Japanese military drill. The main sea drill continued, but the air drill was halted to prevent the exposure of any tactics.

Though it is natural to observe military drills of neighboring countries, the Russians chose to be obnoxious in their observation and their justification afterwards. Said fleet spokesman Roman Markov:

“The area is our zone of responsibility. The airplanes carried out a planned flight in an area of the Russian Pacific Fleet’s regular activity.”

That was a month after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made the first visit of a Russian/Soviet head of state to the islands since they became Russian territory. Previous leaders had refrained from doing so to avoid antagonizing the Japanese, but discretion in bilateral relations is no longer a priority. A more recent visitor was Nikolai Patrushev, former director of the FSB (the new KGB) and secretary of the Security Council of Russia. This visit, also seen as out of the ordinary, was ostensibly to check on border security and economic development. These two men were followed by the first deputy premier, the regional development minister, and the defense minister.

One reason cited for Mr. Medvedev’s visit was to boost his image of strength before elections. That is standard operating procedure for the countries of East Asia — if the national government’s popularity needs a tonic, bash the Japanese. That’s been the drink of choice of Chinese and South Koreans for more than 60 years.

The timing was also right. Japanese defense policy at the time called for a shift in focus from defense of the north and a reduction of equipment and personnel in Hokkaido to upgrade security around the Nansei Islands of Okinawa and in the East China Sea.

What was then-Prime Minister Kan to do? He and his government had already been flayed for their mishandling of the Senkakus incident, and now the Russians were capitalizing on his demonstrated weakness. But Mr. Kan had to trust “in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world”. He lacked options for dealing with people who are ambivalent about peace and act with injustice and in bad faith. Having only a single dimension as a politician, he reached into his bag of trick and reverted to his origins as a street-corner loudmouth by criticizing Mr. Medvedev’s visit as “an unforgivable outrage”. (He got away with that sort of language in Nagata-cho for years because no one took his New Left grandstanding seriously.) He also said it was “an act of violence”.

The Russians, knowing all about shouting shoe-pounders in diplomatic venues, easily swatted that one away. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded that the Japanese prime minister was being “undiplomatic”. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko noted:

“The Russian president independently selects routes of his domestic trips. Any recommendations from abroad are inappropriate and unacceptable.”

The time for using the phrase “unforgivable outrage” came that summer after Mr. Medvedev signed a law passed by the Duma making 2 September an annual holiday to celebrate the Soviet victory over Japan. In other words, it took the Russians 65 years to commemorate their week-long struggle in 1945, their postwar seizure of the Northern Territories, and their postwar use of 600-700,000 Japanese servicemen as slave labor from 1946 until 1956 (though most were released by 1949). An estimated 10% of those Japanese died in Soviet captivity.

Why now? Don’t look to Reuters or the New York Times for an explanation.

Mr. Kan might also have chosen to take a stern view when the Russians conducted Vostok 2010, their operational/strategic military exercises, from 29 June to 8 July in the Kuriles over Japanese objections. Or when the Russians established three new artillery and missile testing areas near the Kuriles and the Kamchatka Peninsula.

But it’s too late for that — especially now that there are signs of an anti-Japanese alliance among the peace-loving peoples of the region.

On 8 September 2011, Air Self-Defense Force jets scrambled to meet Russian *and* Chinese military aircraft approaching Japan. Two Russian TU-95 bombers flew around Japan accompanied by refueling aircraft. They started flirting with Japanese airspace from the Tsushima Strait off Nagasaki prefecture, passed south of Okinawa, and then swung up along the Pacific Ocean coast northward to an area near the Northern Territories. It was the first confirmed circumnavigation of Japan by Russian military aircraft, and it was obviously intentional. They passed Fukushima Prefecture in the Pacific at precisely the time Prime Minister Noda was there to view the damaged nuclear plant. The entire flight, including refueling, took 14 hours.

While the Russians were still airborne, a Chinese Y8 intelligence-gathering airplane flew across the dividing line between China and Japan in the East China Sea and came within 100 – 150 kilometers of The Senkakus.

(The Russia must have enjoyed their aerial tour of Japanese territory, as military aircraft made another circuit just outside Japanese airspace last month. Foreign Minister Gemba Koichiro called his Russian counterpart to ask for self-restraint and more information; three days later it was reported that his call hadn’t been returned.)

One year before, on 27 September (shortly after the Senkakus Incident), Mr. Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao met in Beijing to sign a joint statement calling for “mutual support for each other’s core interests, including national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.”

It also contained these passages:

“During the war (World War II), people in China and Russia sustained major aggressions from the fascists and militarists, and they endured the cruelest ordeals and suffered the heaviest casualties…The fascists and militarists schemed to conquer and enslave us two nations, other countries, and the whole continent. China and Russia will never forget the feat of those who checked those two forces…

Most telling of all was this sentence. It’s worth reading twice:

The glorious history, imprinted with the friendship the people of the two countries forged in the war and their mutual help, has laid a sound foundation for today’s strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia.

The Russians have even teamed up with the North Koreans. When the late Kim II visited Russia in August 2011, they finalized an agreement for joint military exercises, an unusual step for Pyeongyang. Kim suggested full-scale military maneuvers, including offensive exercises, but that was too much even for the Russians. They also did not respond to requests for aircraft and parts. Meanwhile, the North Koreans kept interaction with Russian forces at a minimum for lower-ranking soldiers. That limited the initial exercises to pilot rescue operations.

It is not clear what peace-loving purpose the Russians — whose navy obtained access to a Sea of Japan port through a 2010 agreement with the North Koreans — think this serves. Only allies conduct joint military operations, after all.

* The peace-loving people of South Korea

Birds of a feather, they say, flock together, so one might assume that South Korea, the only other nominal free market democracy in Northeast Asia, would think its best interests lie in an alliance of some sort with the Japanese. That assumption would be mistaken.

The Japanese suspect that when Chinese pushing comes to shoving, the Koreans will accommodate themselves to the Chinese, regardless of the specifics of the situation. An example is the language in an editorial from the Joongan Ilbo of South Korea. They’ve noticed that today’s Chinese are acting like the Imperial Japanese a century ago. They’re also aware that Chinese behavior could cause nearby countries to behave as Finland traditionally has toward its Soviet Union/Russian neighbor. But that was fine with them:

“(We) must act judiciously. China’s existence is a threat to our security, but essential for us economically. Therefore, for several decades at least, we must ride the wave of an economically prosperous China. That will require South Korea to stay neutral in the struggle between Japan and China.”

They seem to have overlooked that the struggle in East Asia is not between Japan and China, but between China and everyone else in the region with territory the Chinese claim.

Not that the South Koreans are immune from junior grade militarism of their own. They’ve already chosen to stick their saber in the face of the one country that won’t fight back. As detailed by two posts on the masthead here, South Korea seized the Takeshima islets by force after they failed to convince the United States to include it in the San Francisco Peace Treaty specifying what would and would not be Japanese territory. So, despite having ignored the rocks for centuries, they took the islets while the taking was good — knowing the Japanese were relying on the justice and faith of peace-loving peoples.

As this post describes, some South Koreans have their eyes on Tsushima too, and senior members of their military use the invisible Japanese military threat to Takeshima to urge the expansion of their military capabilities. Meanwhile, the North Koreans are the ones who are actually sinking their naval ships, shelling their territory, and murdering their tourists.

But Seoul is buckled up and ready to do battle with the Japanese. On 5 July 2006, their Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs sent a ship to survey ocean currents in Japan’s EEZ near Takeshima. Japan responded by sending a Coast Guard patrol boat to monitor the ship, contact it by radio, and ask them to stop. The Koreans ignored the Japanese request and dispatched their own Coast Guard vessel, which sailed between two ships. Nothing untoward happened, but the Japanese prime minister at the time, Abe Shinzo, said at a symposium in the fall of 2010 that the Japanese government was told the Korean captain had been given permission by South Korean President Roh Mu-hyon to fire on the Japanese ship. The expression used was “attack with the intent to harm”.

Mr. Abe consulted with the Foreign Ministry and the Coast Guard and decided not to stop the Korean ship by abordage. He later explained:

“With China, we would understand what they’re going to do because diplomacy to them is completely a game. One side can predict what the other will do if one does certain things…Roh, however, was strange and even other Korean officials and military men found him somewhat confusing. We didn’t know what he would do, because there seemed to be no logical thought or calculation of profit and loss, and the situation could have escalated beyond imagining.”

Of course, that’s not how the South Koreans remember it. (The emphasis is mine.):

Roh Moo-hyun instructed the military to destroy unauthorized Japanese ships heading for Dokdo while in office, a close aide to the late President said Friday.

This indicates that President Lee Myung-bak’s predecessor braced for the worst possible diplomatic relations with Japan to thwart the neighboring country’s territorial ambitions of Korea’s easternmost islets.

The revelation came amid escalating criticism of the government’s stance of dealing with the issue in a low key manner.

Kim Byung-joon, a former senior presidential secretary for policy planning, said in an article posted on the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation’s website, “In April 2006, when Seoul-Tokyo relations were chilled by Japan’s territorial claim of Dokdo, President Roh instructed his secretaries to consider destroying Japanese ships crossing into our territorial waters without permission.”

Among considered measures for destruction was using a Korean military ship to ram the targeted vessel from Japan, Kim recounted.

What to do?

Many Japanese have always known what this situation requires. When the Liberal-Democratic Party was formed in 1955, its new charter called for Japan to rewrite the Constitution. The members eventually found it easier to indulge in the more profitable political activity of pork distribution, and turned into the Japanese version of RINOs in the bargain. The LDP could have served as the role model for the American GOP to become stealth social democrats.

Somura Yasunobu, then a professor of international politics at the Tokyo University of Science, wrote an op-ed for the January edition of Keizai Orai in January 1991. It was rendered in English by the Translation Service Center Asia Foundation and run in the 23 April edition of the Japan Times that year. (That predates the Internet as we know it today, so it is not online.).

Prof. Somura said then all that needs to be said. Note how one passage echoes the statement of Charles Kades.

During the Persian Gulf War, Americans accused Japan of hiding behind the postwar Constitution to avoid involvement, while liberals here claimed the administration of Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki was ripping it up in an attempt to send troops overseas. The Americans were right and our poor, pacifist Constitution was both more controversial and ridiculous than ever.

The document was foisted upon Japan when it was still under the thumb of the US occupation (1945-1952). Common sense tells us that the policies pursued by even the most benevolent of conquerors are not designed entirely for the benefit of the conquered. By the same token, a national charter adopted when Gen. Douglas MacArthur ruled Tokyo is irrelevant today.

When Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952, all legislation imposed by the Occupation should have become null and void. Anyone who still wants to preserve this Constitution in effect favors perpetuation of American rule….

…Until recently, many people have justified retaining this made-in-USA instrument as expedient, and in terms of realpolitik, Japan’s most advantageous option. I admit that I have not been among those clamoring for revision. Patchwork reform of a document so fatally flawed makes no sense…

…The heart of the Constitutional issue is the famous war-renouncing Article 9, which says in part, “the right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.” From the standpoint of international law, this makes no sense.

…In the old days, the concept of a belligerent party was used, for example, regarding rebel separatists. It provided the basis for subsequent recognition of a group as a legitimate government or the territory under its control as an independent nation. The 1947 Constitution did not even accord this minimum standing to Japan.

When Japan regained its pro forma independence in 1952, we entered into a mutual security treaty with Washington that left national defense and internal security in the hands of the U.S. military. The pact was later revised, and the Japanese government assumed the latter responsibility.

Nevertheless, the treaty made Japan, for all intents and purposes, a U.S. protectorate. Any Japanese eager to maintain this relationship after all this time is like a middle-aged man who still wants to be breast-fed by his mother.

Of course, the notion of a right to wage war has been rendered absurd by weapons of mass destruction, nuclear and conventional. The only just wars are those of self-defense; the right of belligerency simply means that a nation can protect itself.

It is contradictory to argue that Japan has the right of self-defense but not the right to wage war….This anachronistic document belongs in the national archives, not on the books as the supreme law of the land.

What to do? The Japanese should rip up the American neo-imperialist document dashed off in less than a fortnight and become a nation again.

After all, based on actions rather than words, they’re the only peace-loving peoples in Northeast Asia.

Afterwords

* It is easy to identify the peace-loving peoples of the world even at international sporting events.

Japan has hosted the Olympics in exemplary fashion three times. It is beyond the realm of imagination that the incidents in Seoul and Hangzou could have happened anywhere in Japan. It is inconceivable that a Japanese crowd would boo another country’s national anthem, boo a national team throughout a sporting event, throw garbage on players and fans, and behave so badly the army is required to keep them in line. International sporting events in Japan have never been cancelled due to public health concerns. And no Japanese officials have ever thrashed a judge from another country because they were unhappy with the decision.

* Here’s a report of how American soldiers in Japan keep in training.

* The drive-by academic, Walter Russell Mead, drove by again:

“Japan, Russia Build Ties As Asian Balance Shifts”

Note that he calls the islands the Kuriles and says nothing about how they were occupied. Does he know? His wishful thinking is based on a few quotes in one Kyodo report that could have been recycled by every Japanese and Russian foreign minister for the past half-century.

He missed this in the rearview mirror as he drove away:

Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said on Saturday that a heated, decades-long territorial dispute with Russia was far from solved even as they agreed to boost security and economic cooperation.

Gemba said the territorial issue must be solved before Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, invests further in the islands and Russia’s underdeveloped Far East region.

“We would consider joint business activities if it helps solve the sovereignty issue,” Gemba said.

“But we must not violate Japan’s legal stance…In that sense, the positions (between Japan and Russia) remain far apart.”

*****
The day the other countries in the region can produce an indie band like Kiwi and the Papaya Mangoes is the day they reach the level of Japanese internationalism.

On their previous album, KPM did a Brazilian forro tune with Indian percussion and a flute. The Korean writing seen briefly in this video spells out the name of the Japanese national anthem.

By jingo

At the moment, we lose, but in ten years, the U.S. will lose. We can be more patient than a U.S. administration,
- Shen Dingli, a professor at the Center of American Studies at Fudan University

The tremendous defeat at Hawaii was first ascribed to treacherous Japan, launching an attack at the very time that the American government was trying to lead the erring war lords of Nippon into the ways of peace. The administration conveniently forgot to remind the American people of the part played in bringing about the result of December 7 by its campaign of economic warfare, its secret diplomacy, its covert military alliances, the submission of demands which Japan found “humiliating,” and its own complete abandonment of neutrality in favor of non-declared war.
- George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War

THE world is entering a new age of imperialism, according to a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official in an article written for a monthly magazine currently on the newsstands. Perhaps the term he should have used was neo-imperialism. Just as today’s neo-socialist eschews such overt efforts as the nationalization of industry in favor of subtle and incremental changes to the economic and cultural wiring behind the walls, the modern neo-imperialist no longer works through trading empires or the combination of colonialism and mercantilism favored by the Europeans and later imitated by others, including the Japanese. There is a preference instead for the semi-subjection of satellite states in which the hegemons exert their power and manipulate those states for economic and political advantage without having to assume direct administrative control of their neo-fiefdoms. Both past and present, however, the justifications and self-congratulation are the same.

That China is exhibiting many of the symptoms of the neo-imperialist syndrome is apparent to the casual observer and need not be explained. But the Japanese commentator was referring to an “age” inhabited by more than one neo-imperialist actor. What was apparent to the commentator, but less so to the casual observer, is that the United States is presenting the same symptoms as well.

Consider: Again the world is sinking into the quicksand of Depression, and again the Americans are sticking pins in the heads of rattlesnakes in East Asia. The strategy of the current occupant of the White House is to focus on economic issues while outsourcing cultural and foreign policy matters to others in government. As a result, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is moving along the same rails laid down by his gloriously initialed predecessors FDR, JFK, and LBJ, and, to a lesser extent, the more singular and sober W. It isn’t just Asia, either — in addition to making the Middle East safe for Islamicism last year by leading in Libya from behind and encouraging the Arab Sprung, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate dispatched 100 troops to Uganda in October. Imperators need not trouble themselves to obtain Congressional approval when issuing commands to the legions for overseas operations.

As troubling as the behavior is the enthusiasm with which that behavior is hailed by the court heralds. Again, the Chinese taste for hegemony and their belief in the local version of Manifest Destiny is apparent to the casual observer and need not be examined. What is now becoming apparent, however, is the American enthusiasm for the mission.

More troubling still is that some members of the credentialed American “opinion leaders” are serving as willing cheerleaders for Team USA’s feats on the geopolitical gridiron while either grossly exaggerating or ignoring the facts.

One of those now shouting through a megaphone is Walter Russell Mead. Prof. Mead has a wall covered in credentials — he serves in an endowed professorship at Bard, teaches at Yale, is the editor of American Interest, and writes for all the Big Top journals, magazines, and newspapers. He also wrote an article for a website in November with the incongruous title of Softly, Softly, Beijing Turns the Other Cheek — For Now. Its tone is so extreme one wonders if the point of the exercise were to lead the underclassmen in cheers of Yay, Eagles!

Take a deep breath:

The cascade of statements, deployments, agreements and announcements from the United States and its regional associates in the last week has to be one of the most unpleasant shocks for China’s leadership — ever. The US is moving forces to Australia, Australia is selling uranium to India, Japan is stepping up military actions and coordinating more closely with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, Myanmar is slipping out of China’s column and seeking to reintegrate itself into the region, Indonesia and the Philippines are deepening military ties with the US: and all that in just one week. If that wasn’t enough, a critical mass of the region’s countries have agreed to work out a new trade group that does not include China, while the US, to applause, has proposed that China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors be settled at a forum like the East Asia Summit — rather than in the bilateral talks with its smaller, weaker neighbors that China prefers.

Does he — or anyone — really think China’s leadership was “shocked” by any of this? The Chinese were building dynasties long before people in the West were numbering their years; an understanding of this behavior is inherent in the East Asian version of the classical education. Considering that the timeline of “ever” for unpleasant shocks encompasses everything China’s been involved with for the past 60 years, including great leaps forward, cultural revolutions, and massacres at Tiananmen Square, it is unlikely to have caused little more than a raised eyebrow in Beijing.

Let’s examine the specifics of the American counteroffensive.

The Marines in Australia

The initial deployment is 250 troops this year in the tropical north, rising eventually to all of 2,500. The mission of Marines is not to serve as defenders, much less defend Australia. Their mission is to attack, and the only reason for stationing them here is to threaten an attack if the Chinese behave unacceptably in the South China Sea. The status quo is therefore a faceoff of the neo-imperialists: the Chinese claiming “indisputable sovereignty” over the region, and the United States, through Secretary of State Clinton, countering with the new idea that international law in the South China Sea is a matter of American national interest. In other words, Globocop holds that the Monroe Doctrine now extends to the other side of the world.

As Sam Spade observed to Casper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, however, the threat of force is meaningless unless the other party believes the threat is real. That is by no means a given in this situation, if only because the Americans are threatening a country larger than itself that can inflict serious damage on it in return. Now then: Does anyone think this American saber swishing is credible? Does anyone believe that Marines in Australia will make the Chinese reconsider? It’s been a while since anyone seriously thought the Americans would come to the defense of Japan in the event of an attack, and the American military infrastructure here consists of nearly 40,000 troops at 100 installations. The Chinese are unlikely to become alarmed about the possibility of a robust American military response to their behavior in the South China Sea.

It makes one wonder how much thought was invested by the people responsible for the American policy. The Marines are a formidable force, but 2,500 of them are insufficient to either deter China beforehand or push them back afterwards. They’re certainly not meant to serve as a tripwire in Australia, either.

As for the Australians selling uranium to India, the Indians have had nuclear weapons since 1974. Will they not buy uranium from somewhere?

Indonesia

By the “deepening” military ties with Indonesia, Prof. Mead seems to be referring to the dispatch of 24 F-16s to that country. Rather than being one of the bold new initiatives in a geopolitical That Was The Week That Was, it represents an ongoing development that gained impetus after Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s visit in the summer of 2010.

Congress cut off military training assistance to Indonesia in 1992 after Indonesian security forces shot and killed East Timorese demonstrators in November 1991. The restriction was partially lifted in 1995, but military assistance programs were suspended again after violence and destruction in East Timor following an Aug. 30, 1999, referendum favoring independence from Indonesia. Though normal military relations between the United States and Indonesia have resumed, the issue of providing training for Kopassus remained unresolved until earlier this week, the official said.

“I was pleased to be able to tell the president that as a result of Indonesian military reforms over the past decade, the ongoing professionalization of the [Indonesian armed forces], and recent actions taken by the ministry of defense to address human rights issues,” Gates told reporters after his meeting with Yudhoyono, “the United States will begin a gradual, limited program of security cooperation activities with the Indonesian army special forces.”

If wading into the surf up to the calf is your idea of deep, then these are deepening ties. This again is unlikely to have jolted the Chinese, even taken in combination with the assignment of the Marines to a pleasant duty station in Oz. In fact, that combination may not have had the desired effect in Beijing at all — especially after the Indonesian foreign minister said the announced deployment of Marines to a neighboring country could create “a vicious circle of tension and mistrust”.

Japan

Assertion: Japan “is stepping up military actions”. Reality: Japan will assign some Land Self-Defense Forces to the small island of Yonaguni, the westernmost part of the Japanese archipelago, 110 kilometers from Taiwan. Rather than being a part of a grand strategic mosaic, it is a move the Kan administration began talking about last February after the contretemps with the Chinese in the Senkakus in September 2010.

Placing troops on the island had been under discussion for some time, as then-Prime Minister Aso Taro made a reference to it in July 2009. The Japanese have been carefully monitoring that part of their territory for years. When serving as foreign minister in 2006, Mr. Aso told local government officials from Yonaguni that the Japanese government had dissuaded Taiwan from conducting a planned naval artillery exercise west of the island. Concerns about Taiwan began as early as 1996, when the Taiwanese navy began moving their exercises northward. Local fisherman complained that the artillery was scaring away the fish.

Myanmar

Is Myanmar really “slipping out of China’s column”?

Myanmar vowed on Saturday to address concerns raised by President Barack Obama, outlining far-reaching plans to make peace with ethnic rebels, gradually release all political prisoners and relax controls on freedom of expression.

But its government, fearing an Arab Spring-style revolution if it moves too quickly, stressed reforms must be gradual after nearly a half century of isolation and authoritarian rule that ended when the army handed power in March to a civilian parliament stacked with former generals.

Mr. Obama himself said only that the country, which has a border with China, was making “flickers of progress”. Again, someone forgot to tell the Chinese that they were supposed to be shocked:

Vice President Xi Jinping of China welcomed the leader of Myanmar’s military on Monday in a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and called for closer military ties between the countries, in what appeared to be a response to the visit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Myanmar later this week. (Emphasis mine)

Mr. Xi, the heir apparent to President Hu Jintao, met Min Aung Hliang, the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military, and said that China would “work with Myanmar to further bolster the comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation,” according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.

Others offered a better perspective on this bilateral relationship than Prof. Mead:

Myanmar’s past isolation meant it sought friends only where it could find them. It became heavily reliant on China for weapons, international diplomatic support, trade and investment. But the relationship with China has never sat well with Myanmar’s military rulers. While some exploited the situation for personal gain, others became very concerned about Beijing’s growing presence and commercial influence.

It is unlikely that Naypyidaw intends to unilaterally ally itself with one great power over another. During its decades-long period of isolation and international condemnation, it has become adept at playing bigger powers off against one another, and has a long-established tradition of nonalignment in its foreign relations. The power games being played between Washington and Beijing, and also with New Delhi, are certainly not lost on Myanmar’s leaders.

Days before Clinton’s visit, military head General Min Aung Hliang travelled to Beijing in what was interpreted as a move to assuage Chinese fears of growing relations with the US. Despite a rift over the recent cancellation of the important Chinese-backed Myitsone dam project, the general held discussions with Vice President Xi Jinping, slated to become China’s leader next year, and chief of the general staff of the People’s Liberation Army, General Chen Bingde. Both sides pledged continued military cooperation and signed a new defense cooperation agreement.

Because the sincerity of Thein Sein’s reforms are far from certain, Clinton’s visit and concessions represent a diplomatic gamble.

The Philippines

Manila is also supposed to be deepening military ties to the United States, though Prof. Mead offered no specifics. A search of recent newspaper articles turns up one from the New York Times dated 16 November 2011, just before the East Asia summit. The first sentence reads:

During a high-profile visit to the Philippines on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stood on the deck of an American warship in Manila Bay and reaffirmed the strong military relationship between the United States and the Philippines.

That’s it.

Just as important, if not more so, were the last two sentences:

“The Philippines does not want to be the representative of the U.S. military in Southeast Asia,” (a local analyst) said. “I think the Philippine government wants to maintain its friendship with both these great powers and not become a ball in the middle being kicked by both sides.”

TPP

Prof. Mead refers to a “new trade group” that does not include China, by which he means the Trans-Pacific Partnership. What is new about the trade group is that the United States hijacked regional discussions among four smaller states to employ it as a double-edged sword. One side of the blade cuts against the Chinese, and the other stimulates the American economy while doing little for the other partners.

The American-decreed terms of the partnership make it unlikely China will be interested in participating. This letter to three U.S. Cabinet members signed by 257 academics offers one reason for that:

Many U.S. free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties contain provisions that strictly limit the ability of our trading partners to deploy capital controls. The “capital transfers” provisions of such agreements require governments to permit all transfers relating to a covered investment to be made “freely and without delay into and out of its territory.” Under these agreements, private foreign investors have the power to effectively sue governments in international tribunals over alleged violations of these provisions.

And this from a site in New Zealand:

Another secret document from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations has been leaked, the first dealing with issues other than intellectual property and medicines.

This follows yesterday’s leak of documents showing the US is pushing for rules on healthcare products that would give its pharmaceutical giants new tools to attack national drug buying agencies like Pharmac

“We warned the government that obsessive secrecy surrounding the TPPA negotiations would spawn more leaks, and that’s what is happening,” said Professor Jane Kelsey, a critic of the proposed agreement.

The leaked regulatory coherence text sets out the agencies, mechanisms and processes that governments should use when deciding on domestic regulations. This has never been included in a free trade agreement before.

“It is totally inappropriate for a ‘trade’ agreement to dictate how governments should structure their domestic bureaucracy and procedures”, said Professor Kelsey.

The way the TPPA is shaping up, large, mainly foreign corporations and powerful lobby groups will have the right to exert undue influence over New Zealand’s (or any country’s) policy and regulatory decisions and demand minimalist regulation. There would be no equivalent rights to public interest groups that may have contrary views.”

Speaking of healthcare:

“The US proposals would allow drug companies to challenge every Pharmac decision as not appropriately recognising the ‘value’ of patents – a dangerous and undefined standard. Adopting this standard would open floodgates of litigation against Pharmac and will ultimately raise medicine prices and ration access.”

What the New Zealand critics are referring to has also been a point of contention among opposition politicians in Japan: the ISD clause, or Investor State Dispute (Settlement). That allows entities in Country A to initiate dispute settlement proceedings against Country B under international law, rather than in the courts of Country B, as has been customary in the past.

As you might expect, the Americans see it differently:

The trans-Pacific trade pact that the United States is negotiating with eight other nations is not directed against China, a top White House adviser says.

The Obama administration has made the Trans-Pacific Partnership a key plank of its enhanced engagement in Asia. But it does not include the region’s largest economy and rising power, China, which Washington has criticized for its currency policy and support of state-owned enterprises.

Does this mean the U.S. won’t export GM autos to East Asia?

But:

In a commentary published Tuesday in the Indian daily, The Economic Times, Jagdish Bhagwati, a professor of economics and law at Columbia University in New York, criticized the U.S. trade policy, which he said aimed to marginalize an assertive China….

“A closer look reveals that China is not a part of this agenda. The TPP is also a political response to China’s new aggressiveness, built, therefore, in a spirit of confrontation and containment, not of cooperation.”

Froman recounted that Chinese officials at the November summit of Asia-Pacific leaders in Hawaii expressed concern that they had not been invited to join the pact.

“Our response is that TPP is not something you are invited to, it’s something you aspire to. If countries aspire to achieve these standards they’re welcome to (join) the TPP as well,” he said.

People understand that great powers behaving as neo-imperialists will try to stifle their adversaries. They understand that great powers will promote an international order tailored to their specifications with the primary benefits accruing to themselves.

What the Americans fail to understand, however, is that no one appreciates the arrogance of self-interest masquerading as the global gold standard of idealistic behavior.

Then there is the demand of one hegemon to another that the latter settle its claims in the South China Sea at a multinational venue, though the former makes no such demand of its client states. (e.g., the Japanese – South Korean dispute over Takeshima) But Prof. Mead does not stop there:

Rarely has a great power been so provoked and affronted. Rarely have so many red lines been crossed. Rarely has so much face been lost, so fast.

Rarely has a professor of foreign affairs indulged in such profligate exaggeration in three short sentences. The entire geopolitical and diplomatic history of nation-states is a cyclopedia of great power provocations, effronteries, and red line crossing. As for the idea that the Chinese lost face, it’s unfortunate that Westerners whose understanding of East Asian social concepts doesn’t extend beyond the words insist on parading a sophistication they don’t possess, but that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

Or are we to think that because “in your face” is a crowd-pleaser in the NBA, it will go down well when conducting foreign relations in this part of the world?

The timing turned out to be brilliant. China is in the midst of a leadership transition, when it is harder for important decisions to be taken quickly.

Harder for whom?

Prof. Mead is referring to Xi Jinping, who will become China’s general secretary next year and president in 2013. The former Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations does not mention this transition has been underway for almost three years. The Japanese knew he was to become the next Chinese leader when then DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro outraged many in late 2009 by breaching an informal protocol to finagle an audience for Mr. Xi with the Emperor. (He didn’t schedule a month in advance.) Mr. Xi has also toured Europe and Latin America.

He does not seem to be a man who is easily shocked. The Japanese consider him a hardliner who could shift from what they perceive as the softer line of the current leadership, though none of this has soaked into Western consciousness yet. Here’s a taste of Mr. Xi’s thinking:

“There are some bored foreigners, with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. First, China doesn’t export revolution; second, China doesn’t export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn’t come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said?”

Transitions in China might be quite different than those Prof. Mead and other Americans are familiar with. Four years before the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama was a part-time Illinois state legislator and part-time adjunct law professor. He needed a crash course to serve as the chief executive of government (and it shows). Xi Jingling won’t.

Back to Prof. Mead:

The (Chinese) economy is looking shaky, with house prices falling across much of the country.

Unlike the robust American housing market:

Lender Processing Services reports that the percentage of mortgages in foreclosure is at its highest level ever. “Foreclosure inventories are on the rise,” LPS writes, “reaching an all-time high at the end of October of 4.29 percent of all active mortgages.”

Now for the truly appalling:

The diplomatic blitzkrieg moved so fast and on so many fronts, with the strokes falling so hard and in such rapid succession, that China was unable to develop an organized and coherent response. And because Wen Jiabao’s appearance at the East Asia Summit, planned long before China had any inkling of the firestorm about to be unleashed, could not be canceled or changed, premier Wen Jiabao was trapped: he had to respond in public to all this while China was off balance and before the consultation, reflection and discussion that might have created an effective response.

…The effect of this passive and low key response (the only thing really, he could have done) is to reinforce the sense in Asia that the US has reasserted its primacy in a convincing way. The US acted, received strikingly widespread support, and China backed down.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth:

China and Japan pledged Wednesday to boost political trust between the two countries during Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba’s visit to Beijing…

…China is ready to make joint efforts with Japan to further advance their strategic relationship of mutual benefit in a sustainable way, Yang told his Japanese counterpart, Gemba.

At Yang’s invitation, Gemba was in Beijing to pave way for Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s planned visit to China in December. If his trip is made, Noda will be the first Japanese prime minister to visit China since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in 2009.

And:

The Chinese premier attended the 6th East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia on Saturday and put forward a five-point proposal for boosting the regional economy, such as carrying out and improving agreed free trade arrangements, advancing the building of new free trade areas and opening markets further.

Here’s a photo of the Chinese foreign minister backing down with the Japanese foreign minister a week later:

Finally, we come to the professor’s agenda:

That (i.e.; backing down) is in fact what happened, and it was as decisive a diplomatic victory as anyone is likely to see. Congratulations should go to President Obama and his national security team. The State Department, the Department of Defense and the White House have clearly been working effectively together on an intensive and complex strategy. They avoided leaks, they coordinated effectively with half a dozen countries, they deployed a range of instruments of power. In the field of foreign policy, this was a coming of age of the Obama administration and it was conceived and executed about as flawlessly as these things ever can be…(T)he effects of the President’s re-assertion of American primacy in the Pacific will reinforce the public perception that he has grown into the foreign policy side of his job. He looked very presidential in Asia; those things count.

Prof. Mead self-identifies as a Democrat and has stated that he voted for Mr. Obama in 2008.

You’ve heard of drive-by journalists, who make ex cathedra declarations on subjects they hadn’t heard of the week before? There are drive-by Thinktankers too:

But a successful opening is not the same thing as a final win. The opening American gambit in the new great game was brilliant, but China also gets a move. On the one hand, the sweep, the scope and the success of the American moves make it hard for China to respond in kind; on the other hand, the humiliation and frustration (and, in some quarters, the fear) both inside the government and in society at large over these setbacks will compel some kind of response.

China must now think carefully about its choices and to work to use all the factors of its power to inflict some kind of counterblow against the United States. Look for China to reach out much more intensively to Russia to find ways in which the two powers can frustrate the US and hand it some kind of public setback.

Two months before Prof. Mead drove by:

High-ranking military officials from China and Russia held talks here Friday, pledging to further step up bilateral military cooperation between the two countries.

During an official visit to Moscow, Guo Boxiong, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, met with Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov on bilateral military relations.

Guo noted that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the signing of the China-Russia Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation, adding that the China-Russia comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership have maintained the momentum of a robust growth.

He stressed that Chinese President Hu Jintao’s successful visit to Russia in June and the consensus reached by both countries’ leaders during Hu’s visit have determined the future direction of the development of bilateral ties and laid solid political foundations for the further promotion of military relations between the two countries.

But he got this prediction right:

Certainly any Chinese arguments against massive military build ups will be difficult to win. The evident weakness of China’s position will make it impossible to resist calls for more military spending and an acceleration of the development of China’s maritime capacity.

Sure enough:

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power.

The navy should “accelerate its transformation and modernisation in a sturdy way, and make extended preparations for military combat in order to make greater contributions to safeguard national security,” he said.

In a translation of Hu’s comments, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the president as saying China’s navy should “make extended preparations for warfare.”

…Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last month also warned against interference by “external forces” in regional territorial disputes including in the South China Sea, a strategic and resource-rich area where several nations have overlapping claims.

The Pentagon wasn’t surprised either:

“They have a right to develop military capabilities and to plan, just as we do,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little, but he added, “We have repeatedly called for transparency from the Chinese and that’s part of the relationship we’re continuing to build with the Chinese military.”

Transparency? When two card sharps play high-stakes poker, does one expect the other to show his hand?

Prof. Mead presses on:

Longer term, the conviction in the military and among hard liners in the civilian establishment that the US is China’s enemy and seeks to block China’s natural rise will not only become more entrenched and more powerful; it will have consequences…China’s military or factions within it could begin to take steps on critical issues that the political authorities could not reverse. Islands could be occupied, flags raised and shots fired.

Yet Prof. Mead lauds American efforts to publicly humiliate the Chinese as brilliant and a sign that the Obama Administration has come of age. Is he having second thoughts before the essay is finished?

An intense debate in China will now turn even more pointed. There will be some who counsel patience, saying that China cannot win an open contest with the US and that its only hope is to stick with the concept of “peaceful rise”: eschewing all conflict with the US and its neighbors, behaving as a “responsible stakeholder” in the US-built international system, and growing richer and more powerful until such a time as alternative strategies can be considered. That in my opinion is China’s wisest course.

That in my opinion is one of the most futile efforts at propaganda and wishful thinking ever delivered from a credentialed academic writing about serious international issues. China sees itself on the rise and the US on the wane, but its wisest course is to do as the Americans say in a US-built international hegemony with US rules that give the biggest advantages to its own companies?

What’s next? All your base are belong to us?

The Obama administration and its successors will now have to deal with a long term contest against the world’s most populous country and the world’s most rapidly developing economy. The Obama administration may not have fully counted the costs of the new Asian hard line…

True, in the midst of a brilliant diplomatic blitzkrieg announcing that you’ve come of age, it’s not hard to lose count along the way.

…for one thing, it is hard to see significant cuts coming in defense spending after we have challenged China to a contest over the future of Asia.

That prediction didn’t pan out. Note the concern from a client state:

A new, more austere U.S. defense strategy unveiled Thursday gives up on fighting major wars overseas and reduces active-duty troops from 570,000 to 470,000. The aim is to cut more than US$450 billion in defense spending over the next decade. The new strategy would make it virtually impossible for the U.S. military to fulfill a pledge to South Korea to deploy 690,000 troops on the Korean Peninsula in an emergency.

By this time, Prof. Mead is neck deep in The Big Muddy, but that doesn’t stop him:

Given where things now stand, follow through will be as important as the first steps; the US must now try to make it as easy as possible for China to accept a situation that, in the short to medium term at least, it cannot change.

What situation is it that China can’t change?

Beijing wants to open full negotiations on a free trade agreement with Japan and South Korea next year, Chinese state media said yesterday, amid growing rivalry with the United States.

The report in the Global Times daily follows efforts by US President Barack Obama to woo countries from across the Pacific Rim into a US-led free trade agreement, which China has so far not been invited to join…

…Yesterday’s report said China’s Premier Wen Jiabao had pledged to speed up work on the agreement with Tokyo and Seoul during a meeting on the sidelines of last week’s East Asia Summit on the Indonesian island of Bali.

And here we were told that Mr. Wen was stunned speechless in Bali.

“Wen proposed that joint studies by governments, industries and experts on the FTA from the three countries be completed by the end of this year and that formal negotiations on the trade pact begin next year,” it said.

South Korea, Japan and China said in January 2010 they would conduct a feasibility study within two years on creating a single free trade bloc grouping their three countries.

Rather than going for the blitzkrieg — which didn’t work so well in the end for Germany — the Chinese are taking the long view and combining both hard and soft approaches. For example, at almost the same time Mr. Wen was making this proposal, six Chinese naval vessels made a show of sailing between the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Miyakojima.

They’re taking another approach with the United States:

When we last checked in on the low-level trade war between China and the US, which was sparked by President Obama’s 35% tariff on Chinese tires, the Chinese government had ruled that American large cars and SUVs were being “dumped” on the Chinese market, but wasn’t doing anything about it. Now, Reuters reports that China is doing something about it, namely saying that it plans to impose tariffs of up to 22% on imports of American-built large cars and SUVs. And the “up to” is key: GM and Chrysler are being hit hardest (unsurprisingly), while American-made BMW, Mercedes and Acuras are receiving considerably lower tariffs.

In fact, however, what Prof. Mead presents as a new strategy by an administration coming of age is not new at all, but rather a limp extension of a strategy already in place. Here are excerpts from an article in Salon last year:

This summer, despite America’s continuing financial crisis, the Pentagon is effectively considering trading two military quagmires for the possibility of a third. Reducing its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as it refocuses on Asia, Washington is not so much withdrawing forces from the Persian Gulf as it is redeploying them for a prospective war with its largest creditor, China.

According to the defense trade press, Pentagon officials are seeking ways to adapt a concept known as AirSea Battle specifically for China, debunking rote claims from Washington that it has no plans to thwart its emerging Asian rival. A recent article in Inside the Pentagon reported that a small group of U.S. Navy officers known as the China Integration Team “is hard at work applying the lessons of [AirSea Battle] to a potential conflict with China.”

AirSea Battle, developed in the early 1990s and most recently codified in a 2009 Navy-Air Force classified memo, is a vehicle for conforming U.S. military power to address asymmetrical threats in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf — code for China and Iran….It complements the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a government white paper that precluded the rise of any “peer competitor” that might challenge U.S. dominance worldwide. The Planning Guidance is the Pentagon’s writ for control of what defense planners call “the global commons,” a euphemism for the seaways, land bridges and air corridors that are the arteries of international commerce. For a foreign power to challenge this American dominion is to effectively declare war on the United States, and that is exactly what China appears to be doing in the South China Sea, a resource-rich and highly contested waterway in Southeast Asia.

Also:

A U.S. mobilization in Asia is well underway, in faith with a spring 2001 Pentagon study called “Asia 2025,” which identified China as a “persistent competitor of the United States,” bent on “foreign military adventurism.” Three years later, the U.S. government went public with a plan that called for a new chain of bases in Central Asia and the Middle East, in part to box in the People’s Republic…

…Unlike America’s allies in Asia and Europe, however, China is not about to outsource its national security obligations to a foreign power, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea. There more than ever, and not without reason, Beijing identifies the U.S. not as a strategic partner but as an outright threat. In 2007, when China destroyed one of its weather satellites with a ballistic missile, it served as a warning to Washington after the ramming six years earlier of a U.S. spy plane by a Chinese fighter jet off the coast of Hainan Island…

…In March 2010, when a Chinese official was quoted by Japanese media as identifying the region as a “core interest” of Chinese sovereignty, the White House retaliated by declaring that freedom of maritime navigation is a U.S. “national interest.” As it turns out, according to the China scholars Nong Hong and Wenran Jiang, writing in the July 1 edition of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation’s China bulletin, the core interest to which the official referred was “the peaceful resolution” of the disputes in question.

The authors of this article in McClatchy agree:

The Obama administration pledge to shift American military strategy toward Asia overlooks a key fact: The United States never really dropped its focus on the region.

The authors are not blinded by the strategy’s brilliance, however:

But the current budget proposal that might flow from that pledge contains a potentially crippling contradiction: The plan might cut the big-ticket items the United States needs to increase its presence in Asia and counter China’s growing military capability.
The result, some analysts fear, is a muddled approach that could end up with a tough-talking United States saying it will do more in Asia but not committing the resources needed. That, they say, could leave America and its allies in the region exposed if China’s military moves aggressively in the future.

And that brings us to the most troubling aspect of this business that Prof. Mead calls a “game”:

U.S. alliances in the region have caused some in China, particularly in military circles, to charge that the United States is working to contain China’s rise. The phrase harkens back to the Cold War and the globe-as-chessboard strategy of “containment” toward the Soviet Union.

I submit that it harkens back to an even earlier era and a geopolitical game that required the expenditure of more blood than money to win: The American attitude and behavior toward Japan before Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s predecessor Herbert Hoover kept a contemporary account of what he viewed as American foreign policy blunders and FDR’s “lost statesmanship”, but he never published it. Edited by historian George Nash, it was finally released last year under the title, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath. It is 920 pages long and meticulously documented. Here’s a description of part of the contents:

Consider Japan’s situation in the summer of 1941. Bogged down in a four year war in China she could neither win nor end, having moved into French Indochina, Japan saw herself as near the end of her tether.

Inside the government was a powerful faction led by Prime Minister Prince Fumimaro Konoye that desperately did not want a war with the United States.

The “pro-Anglo-Saxon” camp included the navy, whose officers had fought alongside the U.S. and Royal navies in World War I, while the war party was centered on the army, Gen. Hideki Tojo and Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, a bitter anti-American.

On July 18, 1941, Konoye ousted Matsuoka, replacing him with the “pro-Anglo-Saxon” Adm. Teijiro Toyoda.

The U.S. response: On July 25, we froze all Japanese assets in the United States, ending all exports and imports, and denying Japan the oil upon which the nation and empire depended.

Stunned, Konoye still pursued his peace policy by winning secret support from the navy and army to meet FDR on the U.S. side of the Pacific to hear and respond to U.S. demands.

U.S. Ambassador Joseph Grew implored Washington not to ignore Konoye’s offer, that the prince had convinced him an agreement could be reached on Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and South and Central China. Out of fear of Mao’s armies and Stalin’s Russia, Tokyo wanted to hold a buffer in North China.

On Aug. 28, Japan’s ambassador in Washington presented FDR a personal letter from Konoye imploring him to meet.

Tokyo begged us to keep Konoye’s offer secret, as the revelation of a Japanese prime minister’s offering to cross the Pacific to talk to an American president could imperil his government.

On Sept. 3, the Konoye letter was leaked to the Herald-Tribune.

On Sept. 6, Konoye met again at a three-hour dinner with Grew to tell him Japan now agreed with the four principles the Americans were demanding as the basis for peace. No response.

On Sept. 29, Grew sent what Hoover describes as a “prayer” to the president not to let this chance for peace pass by.

On Sept. 30, Grew wrote Washington, “Konoye’s warship is ready waiting to take him to Honolulu, Alaska or anyplace designated by the president.”

No response. On Oct. 16, Konoye’s cabinet fell.

In November, the U.S. intercepted two new offers from Tokyo: a Plan A for an end to the China war and occupation of Indochina and, if that were rejected, a Plan B, a modus vivendi where neither side would make any new move. When presented, these, too, were rejected out of hand.

At a Nov. 25 meeting of FDR’s war council, Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s notes speak of the prevailing consensus: “The question was how we should maneuver them (the Japanese) into … firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”

“We can wipe the Japanese off the map in three months,” wrote Navy Secretary Frank Knox.

As Grew had predicted, Japan, a “hara-kiri nation,” proved more likely to fling herself into national suicide for honor than to allow herself to be humiliated.

That description was written by Patrick Buchanan, a notorious isolationist whose views I seldom agree with. I quote this excerpt because his review contains the most details pertinent to the issue available, and in any event, the sentiments are Hoover’s. Further, this is not to defend Japanese behavior before 1945 or Chinese behavior now. It is rather a historical comparison that must be made in view of American actions and the Veg-O-Matic salesmanship with which they are being plugged.

Prof. Mead continued his discussion in an article published in The Wall Street Journal (that requires a subscription). It plays the same notes, but in a different key. The first sentence reads:

The United States has quietly established a bipartisan Asia policy that may well be as influential on that continent as the Marshall Plan and NATO were in Europe.

If we examine the record and bet on form, the odds for this initiative (and other initiatives extrapolated into the future) are likely to favor a result more similar to the events of December 1941 than to a 21st century Asian version of the Marshall Plan and NATO (used in this case as triumphalist symbols of the Cold War victory). That would be a bet we should all hope to lose. It behooves us, therefore, to ignore the racetrack touts regardless of their academic credentials.

What are the Japanese to do if they are not to become a ball in the middle being kicked by both sides, as the Filipino analyst warned? Japan has the wherewithal to choose a course that is perhaps not available to The Philippines, but it is unlikely to do so until the status quo becomes untenable. That might happen sooner than we think.

But more on that in the next post.

Afterwords:

* From Global Security.org:

America has nearly twice as many aircraft carriers – 20 – as the rest of humanity combined – 12 – and America’s aircraft carriers are substantially larger than almost all the other’s aircraft carriers. The Navy likes to call the big Nimitz class carriers “4.5 acres of sovereign and mobile American territory” — and all twenty American carriers of all classes add up to nearly 70 acres of deck space. Deckspace is probably a good measure of combat power. The rest of the world’s carriers have about 15 acres of deck space, one fifth that of America’s.

At least ten of the American carriers are more than 100,000 tons, and the Enterprise is more than 90,000. The largest “for the rest of humanity” are the new Chinese carrier at more than 60,000 tons and the Russian carrier at more than 50,000. None of the others are even close.

That’s one reason the Chinese are focusing on submarines.

* Yan Xuetong, a professor of political science and dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, wrote in the New York Times:

I am a political realist. Western analysts have labeled my political views “hawkish,” and the truth is that I have never overvalued the importance of morality in international relations. But realism does not mean that politicians should be concerned only with military and economic might. In fact, morality can play a key role in shaping international competition between political powers — and separating the winners from the losers.

I came to this conclusion from studying ancient Chinese political theorists like Guanzi, Confucius, Xunzi and Mencius. They were writing in the pre-Qin period, before China was unified as an empire more than 2,000 years ago — a world in which small countries were competing ruthlessly for territorial advantage.

Prof. Yan was writing in Chinese for a Chinese audience that desperately needs to read it. It should also be required reading for the officials in Washington, but the Times’ translation will be wasted on them. They’re already convinced of their morality.

* The journos are joining the chorus, with their usual combination of ham-handedness and superficiality. Try the first paragraph of this piece by William Pesek in the Sydney Morning Herald and see if you can bother yourself to finish.

* Xi Jingling’s reference to people with “full stomachs” was a clever barb that might have gone over the heads of the porkers he was referring to.

*****
Here’s Peter “I’m a Different Species” Garrett and his band Midnight Oil of Australia performing live a song called US Forces. The lyrics start, “U.S Forces give the nod / It’s a setback for your country,” before falling down the elevator shaft of unintelligibility.

And here’s the lede of an article in The Telegraph of Australia following a speech by Barack Obama in that country last November as part of the Bali blitzkreig:

Labor minister Peter Garrett personally told Barack Obama his speech on an expanded US military presence was “inspiring” – almost three decades after he attacked the same armed forces in song.

Yeah, it’s the same Peter Garrett. Neo-socialists quite like neo-imperialism as long as it comes from another neo-socialist.

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Instructions

THE United States is displeased with Japanese behavior in financial markets, reports Reuters:

The report…criticiz(ed) Tokyo for its solo yen-selling interventions in August and October that followed a joint Group of 7 action in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake.

“The unilateral Japanese interventions were undertaken when exchange market conditions appeared to be operating in an orderly manner and volatility in the yen-dollar exchange rate was lower than, for example, the euro-dollar market,” the report said.

“In contrast to the post-earthquake joint G7 intervention in March, the United States did not support these interventions,” the Treasury said, adding that Tokyo should pursue reforms to revive its domestic economy rather than try to influence the exchange rate.

Isn’t that last sentence rich? One of the reasons for the yen appreciation is that the Americans are using a weak dollar to revive their own domestic economy. Who do these foreigners think they are, anyway?

There’s a reason Japan intervened:

Japanese exporters have complained that the ultra-strong yen puts them at a competitive disadvantage. The yen was trading at just under 78 to the U.S. dollar on Wednesday morning, about 3 percent weaker than it was on October 31, when Tokyo aggressively intervened to cap the rise.

That should read, “the ultra-strong yen puts them at an ultra-strong competitive disadvantage”. The exchange rate is forcing Japanese manufacturers to shift production overseas. The effect that will have on domestic employment and the economy should be obvious. Indeed, the yen has appreciated by more than 30% against the dollar since the fall of 2008 — just three years. Had those figures been reversed, the Internet would have collapsed from the pixel overload generated from the North American continent warning that the sky was about to fall.

The article notes the Americans also had sharp words for the South Koreans.

In short, the United States expects the Japanese and the South Koreans to act in the best interest of the United States rather than in the best interest of Japan and South Korea. The U.S. also expects Japan to conform to its expectations if it is to participate in the TPP.

Meanwhile, there was a report in Japan yesterday that the government will conduct serious talks with China and South Korea next year about a trilateral free trade agreement. Japan will also step up purchases of Chinese government debt, and the Chinese will facilitate Japanese yuan investment in China and Japanese corporate issues of yuan-denominated bonds. That shouldn’t be surprising:

* China is Japan’s largest trading partner.

* China is the country with the largest number of overseas Japanese subsidiaries.

* China in particular, and the rest of East Asia in general, is the primary focus of international expansion for Japanese SMBEs.

That’s not to mention such subsidiary elements of bilateral ties as the 70,000 Chinese students in Japanese colleges and universities.

The report did not seem to have the desired effect, however:

“This report does not make it more difficult for Japan to intervene,” said (a senior Japanese government) official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. “We are committed to doing whatever is necessary.”

Did the Americans notice that Prime Minister Noda visited India after leaving China? One could almost hear the NHK radio announcers and guest commentators drooling yesterday over the potential for the contracts to improve the Indian infrastructure.

It would behoove the United States to wise up and realize they no longer have the leeway to push their luck. In today’s climate, copping that Attitude isn’t going to win them friends or keep the ones they have. It’s getting old, faster than some people might think.

Afterwords:

The article about India states that the Japanese approach to that country began with Aso Taro. It actually started with Abe Shinzo, who outlined the idea in the book he published before becoming prime minister.

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Instructive

IT’s instructive to compare the Chinese print media’s response to the deaths of both Kim Jong-il and Vaclav Havel.

Poster Marc at the site One Free Korea provides the links to the China Daily’s obituaries of Kim and of Havel.

I also recommend reading Joshua Stanton’s post on Kim’s death at One Free Korea. The views of someone who pays close attention are more instructive than the generic drive-bys in the Western media.

For all the wailing in public, Mr. Stanton thinks that North Koreans generally despised him, and hold his son in even less regard. He writes:

Kim Jong Il had spent the decades before his father’s death cultivating relationships with his father’s generals. Now look at Jong-Eun’s eyes. There is cruelty and arrogance in them, but it’s the fear I see. That’s the sort of face a suburban sex offender wears to the exercise yard at Pelican Bay. No matter how many icons of him are placed in living rooms, classrooms, or lapel pins, he will spend the rest of his life stepping warily within a nest of vipers. The real power will stay with Kim Jong Il’s old comrades and relatives: Kim Young Il; Jang Song-Thaek, whose portfolio includes North Korea’s political prison camps; General Ri Yong-Ho; General O Kuk-Ryol, whose family controls the counterfeiting rackets; and Kim Jong Il’s sister (and Jang’s wife) Kim Kyong-Hui, who is said to have pushed hard for North Korea’s disastrous currency redenomination and confiscation last year. As a partial consequence of that, refugees report finding the night’s toll of the dead lying around the train stations each morning. That is why any hopes that this transition is a harbinger of reforms are probably false. The state isn’t interested in reform, and Kim Jong-Eun’s coronation won’t change that, because it is a sham. But that doesn’t mean that the regime can stop change forever.

Also:

Psychologically, so much has changed in North Korea. The regime was not really ready for this day. Its deification of Kim Jong-Eun has been uncharacteristically halting, even timid. The regime understands how volatile a moment this is. The Daily NK reports that it has closed its border with China, closed all markets, imposed a near-curfew, and filled the streets of at least one city with armed soldiers. This is not the reaction of a state that expects its subjects to erupt in spontaneous grief.

More videos on the public reaction from this North Korean site; you’ll still be able to figure it out if you can’t read Korean.

Observes Mr. Stanton: “Faking or not? In such a place as North Korea, it can’t be hard to find reasons to cry real tears.”

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Finis for the fins?

Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and remain silent.
- Epictetus

SOCIAL critic Miyazaki Masahiro offered some observations on recent trends in Chinese cuisine earlier this week. Here they are in English.

*****
With everything else being destroyed in China, is the core of their food culture also at risk? Shark fin soup, the sine qua non of sophisticated Chinese cuisine, has become a target of attack. This has surprised both the Chinese and the Japanese, who export shark fins to China. Activists have converged on Shanghai to strip the Chinese of their dietary culture by demanding that people stop eating shark fin on some pretext or other — environmental protection, ecological protection, anything will do.

Japan has been deprived of the whale. In China too, bear paws and dog meat are now de facto illegal. (Manchuria is an exception. There, dog meat restaurants still flourish.) Stewed bear paw has, for all intents and purposes, been banned for about two years. The primary reason cited was hygiene, and now there is mock bear. But bear paws are considered an indispensable part of elegant dining, though it took a month of stewing in a pot to soften them and remove the toxicity.

Whole grilled squab is popular in Guangdong, but the shops serving civet have disappeared from the main streets. A campaign promoting a trial tasting of dog meat had been scheduled, but was canceled.

Most people in Beijing no longer eat dog meat. Even in Guangdong, owl eyes, which had been a favorite of young women (because they were said to improve eyesight), are not as popular as they once were, and there are signs that grilled squab (doves) will be the next target. (Why it is that Japanese women’s groups don’t criticize the Chinese for eating the symbol of peace, I don’t understand.)

And then there is shark fin.

It’s said that 30% of the world’s shark species are threatened with extinction, and most of those have disappeared into Chinese stomachs. China imports most of its shark fin from Japan. It became so scarce after the Tohoku earthquake that local fishermen began receiving premium prices.

WildAid was held on 22 September 2011 in Shanghai, and many Chinese were surprised to see basketball star and national hero Yao Ming in attendance. Most Chinese love shark fin soup (N.B.: It’s traditionally served at wedding banquets), and a controversy erupted when Yao Ming and Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group, held a news conference to declare that eating shark fin was barbaric and should be banned.

I wonder — is this the first time Chinese food culture has come under simultaneous attack from inside and outside the country?

(end translation)

*****
The World Park Junkies have survived all these years, so maybe shark fin soup will too.

Is the truth a lie?

DURING the past week, a debate has been underway in Japan about whether the government promised the Americans they would join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or whether they promised only to hold discussions about joining negotiations. Wait, don’t fall asleep — I know that’s abstruse, but the Japanese national conversation, in which everyone is participating except the Noda Cabinet, involves more than just buying and selling. It also includes the questions of whether the TPP is an American attempt at economic hegemony in the Pacific to counteract the move of China to establish its own hegemony, and whether the Noda Cabinet is being honest with the Japanese public and the Diet on a matter of critical importance.

Prime Minister Noda and the foreign ministry swear that he never committed to joining TPP negotiations during the APEC summit last weekend. Perhaps they are telling the truth — and perhaps that truth is concealing a lie.

During that summit, Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister Edano Yukio met with United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk. NTV (Nippon Television Network) this week ran a video that it claims shows a binder with talking points prepared by the METI bureaucrats for Mr. Edano to use in the discussion.

Here’s a screenshot of the document:

Here are the talking points:

● Immediately before departing Japan, and following a national debate, a decision was made by the Noda administration to participate in TPP negotiations.

● There was discussion about why a decision (should) be made now, when recovery and reconstruction (from the Tohoku disaster) is our greatest priority, but it was resolved that Japan’s participation in TPP would be in Japan’s own interest.

● First, using the TPP to foster a regional order that can comply with sophisticated rules in the Asia-Pacific region, and our participation in that process, is in the Japanese national interest.

● Second, overcoming the trials of extensive liberalization will result in greater growth capacity for Japan.

● Japan is prepared to submit all categories and sectors to negotiation, including non-tariff measures. We intend to conduct a strong debate during those negotiations.

● We understand that the approval of all the nations concerned is required for our formal participation in the negotiations. We want to proceed with lively discussions with your country in particular and participate in negotiations as soon as possible. We would like to ask about specific ways for moving those discussions forward in the future.

In re: WTO – ITA

● Expanded negotiations for ITA (information technology agreements) are, with the TPP, one way to break through to trade liberalization in the future, and will be a good stimulus for the Doha Round. We want to continue to be closely linked to this in Japan.

No one other than those directly involved knows the specifics of the Edano-Kirk discussions, or whether Mr. Edano actually said what is written here. (Here’s what he said they said.)

But if this document is on the legit, it would explain the reason the Americans are sticking with their story (and not changing the report on the government website) that the Japanese promised to hold negotiations and to put all goods and services on the table. It would also demonstrate that the Noda government is, as is widely suspected, lying about it all.

One’s position on the TPP pro or con is irrelevant here. What is relevant is whether the government is lying to the people about a matter that will significantly change Japan. Also relevant is whether this decision is being made by the elected government or is in fact yet another decision made and executed by the unelected government of the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy, using politicians as their tools.

It should be remembered that many people, some of who are in the DPJ government, were upset for years because they thought the old LDP governments lied about allowing American naval vessels to bring nuclear weapons into Japan. One of the first things they did was to retrieve and make public documents showing that the LDP governments did, in fact, let the Americans bring nuclear weapons into the country. (The U.S. stopped in the early 90s. The public responded with a collective yawn at the revelations, however. It was an issue for people of an older generation.)

The LDP thought their actions were justified to maintain the alliance with the United States. How then does the current DPJ behavior differ in substance from what the LDP did?

Mr. Edano was in the studio during the NTV presentation (that’s him in the screenshot insert), and he kept insisting that Japan only committed to discussions leading to negotiations.

It should also be remembered that Mr. Edano was the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Kan Cabinet and began lying to the Japanese public with his boss from the first day of the Tohoku disaster. He’s had plenty of practice before this.

*****
During the recent Question Time in the Diet, upper house MP Sato Yukari made the point that the government’s own research shows the ASEAN + 6 free trade scheme would be more economically advantageous to Japan than the TPP.

In a similar vein, the Seetell website has translated into English excerpts from a Japanese-language article by Waseda Prof. Noguchi Yukio that appeared in the Nikkei Veritas (which requires paid registration to view). Prof. Noguchi is known for writing a book arguing that the reliance on/dominance by Japan’s bureaucracy in policy matters and affairs of state did not start during the LDP era, but dates back to 1940. He’s also pessimistic about a resolution of the government’s fiscal problems without a great deal of economic unpleasantness. Here are the excerpts from his article:

The Cabinet Office released estimates on Oct. 25 of the economic boost from the TPP. Real gross domestic product would go up 0.54%, or by 2.7 trillion yen, according to the projections. But that is the expected increase over the next decade or so, which means a yearly average of just 0.05%, or 269.5 billion yen. In other words, the TPP’s potential for growing Japan’s exports and expanding its economy is so small as to be negligible.

He also brings the Chinese into the discussions:

Japan’s biggest export market is China, which makes that nation’s response to the TPP an important element in Japan’s economic fate. Some say that if Japan joins the TPP, China will seek membership as well. That is not going to happen for two reasons.

First, China itself can expect little export growth from joining the TPP, putting it in the same boat as Japan. In China’s case, however, there is also the fact that its U.S.-bound exports will continue to grow even if it does not enter the trade pact.

The second reason China would not join is the investor-state dispute settlement provision. This is an agreement that lets companies sue member countries for damages caused as a result of national polices.

To understand why the ISD clause is such a big problem for China, just think about Beijing’s clash with Google Inc. If China loses in a dispute involving its censorship, for example, it would have a devastating impact that could threaten the very foundation of the country.

So, should Japan take part in the TPP while aiming for an FTA with China? That would be impossible. The TPP is an element of the U.S. strategy in Asia, which seeks to hold back China’s expansion. America is unlikely to tolerate Japan signing both the TPP and an FTA with China.

There is no way to know for sure how China would respond to the TPP. But Beijing clearly is not going to welcome a policy that seeks to exclude the country.

China could very well react by moving toward economic partnerships that do not include Japan, such as pursuing an FTA with the European Union. Because the EU maintains higher import tariffs than the U.S., China has an incentive to sign such an agreement. For the EU, particularly Germany, China is a major market, making a China-EU FTA perfectly plausible. Should that happen, there is a danger that Germany could sweep the Chinese market, bringing ruin to Japanese manufacturing.

Further, he recognizes some real benefits:

Of course, some aspects of the TPP would have desirable effects for Japan. Lower tariffs on farm imports would be good news for Japanese consumers. Domestic food prices are strikingly high from a global perspective. And among industrialized countries, Japanese have a considerably high Engel’s coefficient, meaning that they spend a high proportion of their income on food. Lowering food prices is an urgent matter. That being said, Japan can lower agricultural tariffs on its own, and there is no need to sign on to the TPP for that purpose.

Note that last sentence. There has been a shift in the arguments made by some pro-TPP supporters away from the economic benefits and toward the benefits accruing from a larger economic alliance with the United States. See, for example, the quote from Prof. Ikeda Nobuo in the last Ichigen Koji, which you can access from the top of this post.

When I first arrived in Japan, politics were still dominated by the LDP (and Tanaka Kakuei, for that matter). The DPJ, the current ruling party, did not exist. The primary opposition was the Socialist Party, which survives today as the greatly diminished Social Democrats.

Those Japanese interested in reform and uninterested in the Socialists (which had close ties with North Korea and kind words for Karl Marx in the party charter) viewed the United States government as Japan’s most effective opposition party. That didn’t mean they liked it; that was just how things were.

Is not the argument in favor of the TPP as a means to form an economic alliance with the U.S. in the Pacific, with the unstated but obvious premise of countering the rise of China, a remodeling of the old Cold War alliance model? Also, the argument that the TPP is necessary for domestic reform seems to be an updating of the logic of the Japanese reformers 30 years ago.

Prof. Noguchi and others argue that the Japanese can (or at least should) handle that on their own, and I agree. It’s time to slough off the old and ill-fitting garments handed down to the American stepchild.

Polls show that people in their 20s and 30s are those most opposed to Japan’s participation in the TPP scheme. Some say this is because they’re concerned about their employment prospects in a freer market, but I disagree. That age group never wore those hand-me-down garments to begin with. That too was an issue for an older generation.

Afterwords:
It’s possible that China’s exports to the U.S. may not grow significantly in the future, in contradiction to Prof. Noguchi. There are studies suggesting that rising wages in China mean such regions as the American South (Alabama, specifically) will become competitive for manufacturing and allow companies to shift procurement there before the end of the decade.

*****
So, which will happen by 2016: Japan officially joins the TPP, or this?

Japan, the U.S., and the TPP: You don’t know the half of it

A free trade environment is beneficial for Japan. That is the national consensus…On the question of whether the prime minister has the ability to negotiate, however, the people don’t think so.
- Former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo

Britain is a world by itself; and we will nothing pay for wearing our own noses.
- Shakespeare

IT didn’t take long for circumstances to expose the inadequacies of Japan’s new “prime minister”, Noda Yoshihiko. After a mere two crisis-free months, it’s obvious that he lacks the skills at either governance or politics demanded of a national leader. Indeed, it’s an open question at this point whether he is in fact the national leader.

When he took office, some touted the new choice as a safe Democratic Party driver after the vaporous insubstantiality of Hatoyama Yukio and the toxic cluster of erratic electrons that is Kan Naoto. But beyond a constitutional predisposition to ambling along at 45 on the expressway with his hands frozen in position on the wheel, this safe driver is now perceived as a chauffer for the dirigistes of the bureaucracy-that-is-the-government at home — particularly the Finance Ministry — and the delivery boy for governments overseas. Mr. Noda has compounded that problem by behaving as an inert gelatin too incurious to inform himself on the laws of his country or the policies of his own government beyond the instructions received over the horn from the back seat of the Brougham.

The events of the past week have created suspicions that this paleface is speaking to his fellow countrymen with the most forked of tongues about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. If those well-founded suspicions harden into belief, it could jeopardize Japanese participation in the TPP, as well as the survival of the DPJ government and the party itself.

ISD

The fun started hitting the fan last Friday on the afternoon of the 11th, when upper house Diet member Sato Yukari of the opposition LDP questioned Mr. Noda about the TPP. The “prime minister’s” performance was so inept that 30-minute clips of the session began circulating immediately on YouTube. (The industrial media, both in Japan and overseas, ignored it, but I belabor the obvious.)

Ms. Sato asked the “prime minister” about the possibility that domestic law would be distorted by the ISD clauses in a TPP treaty. She was referring to Investor State Dispute (Settlement), which allows entities in Country A to initiate dispute settlement proceedings against Country B under international law, rather than in the courts of Country B, as has been customary in the past.

The first treaty to allow developed nations this option was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, the United States, and Mexico. If the Party of The First Part has a beef against the Party of The Second Part in another country, they can demand arbitration under the Arbitration Rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law or the Arbitration (Additional Facility) Rules of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Entities in both Canada and the United States have already created some unpleasantness by employing this option against each other.

Here was Mr. Noda’s answer:

We will negotiate in order to enable a response under Japanese law.

First, note the word “negotiate”. The “prime minister” has been trying to buy time at home, particularly with the TPP opponents in his own party, by insisting that Japan hasn’t decided whether it will “negotiate”. It is only going to hold “discussions” with the related countries first.

At that point the sound shuts off on the video when two men approach the presiding officer for a discussion. (Their conversation is not recorded, and it resembles the scene in an American courtroom when attorneys approach the bench.)

Someone seems to have spoken to Mr. Noda during that time, because when the recording resumes, he adds:

The treaty takes precedence over Japanese law, so we will think of how to respond within the reality that we must respond to that.

A heckler, probably Nishida Shoji of the LDP, retorts:

What are you talking about? How are we going to be able to respond? The treaty takes precedence, so we can’t respond under international law.

The “prime minster” continues:

I didn’t have a detailed knowledge of ISDS, but treaties do take precedence over Japanese law. Therefore, we will not kill or destroy Japanese law to conclude a treaty.

In other words, when Ms. Sato first asked the question about ISD clauses, “Prime Minister” Noda had no idea what she was talking about.

She also presented a hypothetical example of a local government putting public works contracts to bid and restricting the bidding due to concerns about local employment or the hollowing out of the economy. That could generate a demand by overseas contractors for resolution in front of an international body. How, she asked, would you deal with a situation in which a local government puts the national government at risk?

Justice Minister Hiraoka Hideo was the picture of matter-of-fact, banal self-satisfaction when he answered for the government. Of course, he said, they had every intention of allowing international rules to apply, because it would be discrimination against other countries otherwise. Japan would be a good international partner.

Ms. Sato dismissed the idea that Japan could negotiate favorable terms for the treaty framework. Japan’s participation would begin in six months, she noted, and by then it would be too late to have an impact on the general structure.

As for the issue of ISD, she dismissed Mr. Noda out of hand:

Constitutionally, this is an elementary matter, so I’m flabbergasted that you couldn’t give an answer based on what is in the Constitution. To declare our participation in TPP without understanding this is to disrespect the people.

TPP supporter Eda Kenji, the secretary-general of Your Party, understood immediately that this line of attack presented a legitimate threat in the arena of public opinion. He attempted a counterattack on his blog this week by pointing out that Japan is already a part of 20 treaties containing such clauses, starting with a 1978 treaty with Egypt. He reported that no one has sought international arbitration against Japan stemming from those treaties.

Mr. Eda’s mention of Japanese-Egyptian trade is instructive, however, if only to vitiate his argument. Japan has a trade surplus with Egypt. The Japanese embassy in Cairo states that the primary Japanese exports to that country are transportation equipment and electric machinery, while the Egyptians export petroleum, petroleum products, cotton, and cotton textiles. Considering the relative economic development of the two countries, none of these categories is likely to generate a dispute of unfair access. He does not identify the other 19 countries Japan has such treaties with, though the United States is not one of them. Until demonstrated otherwise, it would be reasonable to assume that many, if not most, of those countries have trade relationships with Japan similar to those of Egypt; i.e., concentrated in a few sectors that supplement mutual needs.

That is unlikely to be the case in any treaty relationship with the litigation-loving Americans, however.

What country are you the prime minister of?

Fukushima Mizuho, head of Japan’s Social Democrats, is almost always a waste of air, water, and space in the enclosed hothouse of Japanese politics. But to give credit where credit is due, she was pertinent, direct, and relentless in her questioning of the “prime minister” following Ms. Sato on Friday. She pummeled him for not saying a word about Japanese participation in TPP negotiations in the Diet, yet promising to people overseas that Japan would participate.

You’re going to get on a plane to go to the APEC summit later today, but we’re here in the Diet now. Why aren’t you saying anything?

She added, with perfect justification:

* “Why won’t you make the declaration to participate in TPP in the Diet?”

* “You won’t make the declaration in the Diet, and at home you’re just like a dojo fish in the mud, so why can you go overseas and make that declaration?”

* “Just what country are you the prime minister of?”

* “For whose purpose are you conducting politics?”

The safe-driving chauffer, unwilling or unable to deviate from the road map, only repeated that the government was in the process of reaching a consensus, and that he would discuss it sometime later. A particular favorite was this word game:

We will participate in discussions with the related countries with an eye toward joining TPP negotiations.

That night, Mr. Noda met at the Kantei with Henry Kissinger, who stopped by on his way to Okayama to participate in a forum. The Japanese media reports said he conveyed to Mr. Kissinger his government’s policy of participating in TPP negotiations (not discussions). Mr. Kissinger was delighted to hear it.

APEC

Mr. Noda flew to the APEC summit in Honolulu and back last weekend, and well and truly stepped in some very deep poi. After discussions with President Barack Obama, the Americans announced that the Japanese “prime minister” had placed all Japanese goods and services on the negotiating table for TPP. The repercussions were audible on the other side of the Pacific.

Japan’s foreign ministry complained to the Americans that Mr. Noda said no such thing, and insisted that he had only committed to participating in discussions. The ministry claimed they filed an objection with the American government and received an informal acknowledgement of the error.

Question Time in the upper house resumed after Mr. Noda’s Hawaiian weekend. On Tuesday, Yamamoto Ichita of the LDP took up where the Sato/Fukushima tag team left off and amped up the voltage. If anyone thought the “prime minister” was capable of salvaging the situation, listening to his answers soon disabused them of that notion.

Mr. Yamamoto kept pressing for simple answers to simple questions, but never got one. He asked Mr. Noda several times about the discrepancy between the American and Japanese versions of the Japanese promise. He wanted to know why the Americans had not formally withdrawn and corrected their earlier statement. Mr. Noda robotically repeated that the U.S. government “recognized their error”. No, he would not demand that the Americans change their statement. No, he never said that to begin with. Japan would keep stating the truth about their negotiating position. How did the Japanese government intend to do that, Mr. Yamamoto asked. No clear answer was forthcoming.

It is already past the point at which anyone will believe a Japanese government “statement of truth” on the matter, however. Here was the headline on a 15 November piece on the Voice of America website:

Noda Pledge to Join Trans-Pacific Partnership

The VOA tried to soften it a bit in the body, but the intent is the same. Note how they mention that everyone has concerns about Japan without mentioning everyone’s mutual concerns about them:

Noda’s endorsement of joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership is merely the first step in a longer process that still must overcome opposition at home as well as concerns from the nine other TPP member nations involved in the talks.

Mr. Yamamoto asked several more questions — several more times for each — but Mr. Noda played talking Tar Baby:

Q: Why is the U.S. saying that you made that promise?
A: I haven’t said a word about that.

Q: Will you clearly state that non-participation is an option for Japan?
A: Nothing is 100% certain.

Q: Will rice be an exception in the treaty?
A: It will basically be an exception, but I can’t give a 100% guarantee.

Q: If the government is going to compensate farmers for opening the market, where is the money going to come from?
A:….

A slight note of hysteria arose in Mr. Noda’s voice on two occasions, but he soldiered on with a story that no one believes.

The White House isn’t bothering to pay attention. The WH website hasn’t altered its account of Mr. Noda’s statement. In fact, they’re not going to, either:

The White House said Monday it stands by an earlier press briefing on a Japan-U.S. summit Saturday and does not intend to revise it, despite a protest from Tokyo that the Japanese premier was misquoted in it over his position on the issue of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade initiative.

In response to reporters’ questions, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, “The readout that we put out was based on the private consultations that (U.S.) President (Barack) Obama and (Japanese) Prime Minister (Yoshihiko) Noda had. It was based also on the public declarations from Prime Minister Noda and other members of his administration.”

The statement is still accurate and “we don’t anticipate revising” it, Earnest said, while declining to clarify whether the White House has been asked to revise the statement.

The statement, available on the White House website, said Obama “welcomed Prime Minister Noda’s statement that he would put all goods, as well as services, on the negotiating table for trade liberalization.”

But the Japanese government said Noda had only explained the government’s basic policy in general on a comprehensive economic partnership and that the U.S. side misinterpreted it as an explanation of Noda’s stance on the TPP.

Who’s telling the truth?

Somebody’s lying. The United States government, regardless of the White House occupant, is certainly capable of that, particularly when it comes to squeezing an “ally” — but not this time. Here’s an excerpt from a Japanese Cabinet Decision rendered on 9 November 2010 following last year’s APEC summit in Yokohama. The emphasis is mine:

Basic Policy on Comprehensive Economic Partnerships

2. Concrete action to strengthen comprehensive economic partnerships
On the basis of the international and regional environment surrounding Japan, the Government of Japan will take the following concrete steps to strengthen comprehensive economic partnerships with major trading partner countries and regions.
With regard to EPAs or broader regional economic partnerships that are politically and economically important and will be of especially great benefit to Japan, the Government of Japan, while taking into consideration the sensitivity of trade in certain products, will subject all goods to negotiations for trade liberalization and, through such negotiations, pursue high-level economic partnerships.

“Prime Minister” Noda told Fukushima Mizuho in the Diet that the government was in the process of reaching a consensus when he should have known that the government’s own documents show the fix was in a year ago, unbeknownst to the public. (To be sure, the Senkakus incident was still dominating the news.)

Mr. Noda was serving in the Cabinet at the time as “finance minister”. One might expect that he would have read the decision of a Cabinet in which he was a key member, but let’s not forget whom we’re dealing with. This is the same guy who didn’t know the law about Bank of Japan purchases of government debt, and didn’t know about ISDs in international treaties.

So what’s going on here?

ASEAN +6

To find out what’s really at stake, let’s return briefly to Sato Yukari’s questioning of Mr. Noda in the Diet on Friday.

Ms. Sato presented a large chart with bar graphs and figures based on the research of someone affiliated with the Cabinet Office — in other words, someone in the government. The graphs compared the benefits of Japan’s participation in the TPP with the so-called ASEAN Plus Six. That’s an emerging free trade zone that would consist of the 10 ASEAN nations plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. (There’s also an ASEAN Plus Three that includes Japan, South Korea, and China only. ASEAN + 6 came about because the Japanese were worried about Chinese dominance of the +3 arrangement.) The chart also had a section showing the benefits that would accrue to the United States under TPP. America is not part of either ASEAN scheme.

As Ms. Sato explained using the chart, the Cabinet Office’s analysis clearly shows the benefits for Japan would be much greater with ASEAN + 6 than they would be with TPP. It also showed that America would benefit more from the TPP than Japan would.

Why then, Ms. Sato asked, is Japan not pursuing ASEAN + 6, but hot to trot with TPP? Mr. Noda tried to explain that the government had no preference for one over the other. He said they’re only “thinking about” ASEAN + 6 (kento was the word he used), but that TPP had already started, and they had to move on that one.

That’s another porkie, as the Brits would say. Ms. Sato pointed out that Japan will not be involved in TPP discussions for another six months, so it will already be too late to influence the structure of the talks.

But the Japanese government has been doing more than “thinking about” ASEAN + 6, and they’ve been doing it for a few years now:

At the second East Asia Summit (EAS) held on 15 January 2007 in Cebu, the Leaders of ASEAN and six other nations (China, India, Japan, S Korea, Australia and New Zealand, agreed to launch a study on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia (CEPEA) among EAS participants. An underlying ambition was the establishment of an ASEAN + 6 FTA.

A free trade zone has already been created in the region:

Starting the first day of 2010, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand can import and export almost all goods across their borders at no tariff.

As of 1 January, for ASEAN-6 an additional 7,881 tariff lines will come down to zero tariffs, bringing the total tariff lines traded under the Common Effective Preferential Tariffs for ASEAN Free Trade Area (CEPT-AFTA) to 54,457 or 99.11%. Additionally, with the reduction, the average tariff rate for these countries is expected to further decrease from 0.79% in 2009 to just 0.05% in 2010. In 2008, intra-ASEAN import value of commodities for these 7,881 tariff lines amounted to US$ 22.66 billion, or 11.84% of ASEAN-6 import value within ASEAN.

Also last year, ACFTA (the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area) came into effect between the 11 countries. It is now the world’ s largest free trade area by population and third-largest by trade volume (behind the EU and NAFTA). Tariffs were eliminated on 90% of all categories. They are near zero for trade between China and the six original ASEAN nations, and are zero among those six countries.

WTF is going on here?

The Mainichi Shimbun explained it succinctly in a Japanese-language op-ed. They think the U.S. is determined to obstruct any trade regime in Asia that it isn’t a part of, for both economic and security reasons. They are using trade and commerce as a weapon to fight the Chinese in the Pacific, and Japan is caught in the middle of the Great Game.

Chinese Ministry of Commerce sources say they prefer the ASEAN + 3 arrangement, but they’re flexible. They also understand that they and the U.S. are involved in a tug-of-war over Japan, and think the Japanese are using TPP to patch over the strains in the relationship with the U.S. that emerged over the Marine air base in Okinawa.

Further, they are concerned about Japanese participation because it would provide a fillip to Japanese growth, reduce their own economic strength, and tend to weaken their position in dealing with the U.S. As far as the TPP goes, the Chinese are biding their time as they watch whether all the nations involved will be able to work out their differences. Finally, they think the TPP is too ambitious and doesn’t take enough consideration of newly emerging countries with growth markets.

The Russians aren’t involved in either arrangement, but they have a similar view. Though the TPP was started by three countries (Chile, New Zealand and Singapore), and joined by Brunei shortly thereafter, they think the Americans took over the process because they perceived it as a useful vehicle for regaining the influence they’ve been losing in Asia and for blocking the Chinese.

Of course the Yanks are also in it for the money, as Japan’s Cabinet Office survey demonstrates. Some in Japan opposed to or doubtful of the TPP suspect it is to allow Americans to conduct trade in the region under their own rules, including their export taxes and tariffs. American agriculture is also heavily protected, and if they can push their own tariffs into the agreement as a base, it could wind up implanting protected trade in a new form.

Meanwhile, in talks with ASEAN, China has brought up the subject of using the yuan as the common regional currency. Indeed, the Chinese claim they already have the common Asian currency. In one of their occasional stabs at cleverness, Britain’s Economist referred to the yuan as the redback.

The pols and the polls

Noda Yoshihiko’s safe driving skills will be tested when he tries to steer any TPP treaty through the Diet, as is required by the Constitution. There are 480 members in the lower house, so 241 is the magic number for passage. A media outlet’s informal survey of lower house members last week found more than 220 members opposed the treaty, including nearly one-third of the ruling DPJ’s delegation. If those numbers hold, the treaty would still squeak through, but it’s not a lock when one considers how Mr. Noda has handled the political automobile so far. According to the Japanese Constitution, the lower house decision will be the final determination if the upper house rejects it.

It’s quite a different story in prefectural assemblies, however. The Asahi Shimbun conducted a survey that found 44 of 47 prefectures opposed to TPP, often by large margins. A recent vote in Chiba, next to Tokyo, was 72-22 opposed.

The results of public polls are fascinating. The industrial media is playing up the results of a recent Yomiuri poll, which showed a public thumbs up by a 51%-35% margin, but that’s the only one with majority approval. A recent Asahi poll had it at 46%-28%.

Other polls are not as positive. The NNN poll (TV) had it 43.7%-35.7%. FNN, another TV network, came in at 46.5%-35.2%, and the numbers from the quasi-public NHK were 34%-21%.

No, it is not beyond the inclination or the abilities of either the Asahi or the Yomiuri to doctor the questions or the composition of those surveyed to get the desired results — particularly if the Foreign Ministry let it be known what results they desired.

More intriguing are the numbers behind the numbers. The Asahi poll found that 84% of the respondents thought the government’s explanation was insufficient, while Yomiuri’s response for the same question was 86%. That means there’s a nation full of people unhappy about what little the government is telling them, which suggests the current poll readings for approval/disapproval are just skin deep.

In addition, the undecideds in the surveys range from a low of roughly 18% to as much as 38% in one poll. There’s a lot of potential for a major swing one way or the other, and we all know in which direction any swing is likely to occur.

Here’s another one— the NNN poll also asked the respondents whether they were uneasy or hopeful about TPP. The results:

Uneasy: 56.1%
Hopeful: 39.3%

Why should anyone take seriously the results of an up or down question in the face of nearly universal dissatisfaction with the government’s handling of the issue and a majority in one poll more worried than hopeful about the treaty? Refer once again to Mr. Abe’s quote at the top.

Of course the mass media — particularly the foreign media — is thrilled that the farmers have wiped the dirt and dung off their boots and driven the buckboard to town to protest. Colorful videos of a farmer demonstration are circulating. But FNN had the wit to actually poll by occupational sector (as well as age). Their survey found that people in the agriculture, forestry, or fishing industries were evenly split at 45%-45%. While there is strong opposition in that sector, it is not as strong as the media would want you to believe. (Is that because the indolent louts who write for newspapers can’t be bothered to reexamine their assumptions, or is it that they prefer that narrative and they’re just as unimaginative as Mr. Noda?)

And here’s one more: All these polls are conducted by random digit dialing (RDD) to fixed-line telephones. That eliminates many younger people who sleep with their cell phones but don’t have any of those old clunkers with wires going into the wall. The FNN poll broken down by age shows that people over 60 supported the treaty by 52.8%, but only 36.3% of those in their 20s backed it. Thus, the numbers might look quite different if the younger demographic’s views were better factored in. (Also, 54.2% of men were in favor but only 39.3% of women.)

You don’t have to be a psephologist to know which way the wind’s blowing for Mr. Noda’s support ratings. The NNN poll had it down to 40%, which is a Kan-like drop from the 60% after he took office in September. The non-support is climbing and is now up to 34.2% in that poll, 8.1 points higher than the previous month. FNN had the Cabinet support down to 42%, while a TV Asahi poll this week pegged it at 39.5%.

What do we know?

Here’s a partial list of the conclusions we can draw from all this.

* Noda Yoshihiko has no business being in a real Cabinet, much less being “prime minister”. When serving as “finance minister”, his position in opposition to BOJ purchases of government bonds was based on his ignorance of the law. As “prime minister”, he was ignorant of a critical aspect of the TPP treaty that would irrevocably change Japan.

Not that he would tell the public even if he did know.

* Custom and courtesy require that everyone refer to Noda Yoshihiko as the “prime minister”, but he seems to have little influence on the decision-making process or control over what the government actually does. He’s what the mob lawyers call a mouthpiece. Indeed, Japan’s position on TPP was determined a year ago. It’s already taxing his abilities just to drive the Miss Daisies of Kasumigaseki and keep the car on the road.

* He fairly lays himself open to the charge that he and his government give precedence to American economic growth in the TPP rather than to Japanese economic growth in ASEAN + 6.

* European MP Daniel Hannan of Great Britain observes that the French have the terms pays légal, which now refers to the group composed of politicians, civil servants, business leaders, and newspaper editors, and pays reel, which refers to everyone else. Since the former are making the decisions everywhere else, why should Japan be the exception? Also, as in the Western world, some people in the Japanese branch of the pays légal detest the concept of nation states. They will support any international treaties that require countries to subordinate domestic law as a necessary step on the royal road to global governance. Why do you think Kan Naoto was so taken with the idea of TPP?

* Mr. Noda has no problem lying about an issue that will have substantial domestic consequences either to the people or to the rest of the political class, in public at any rate. He’s not very good at it, either. During his wind-up-doll line of defense in the Diet, he came off as a talking life-sized cardboard figure of Col. Sanders at a KFC regional sales managers’ convention. But then he knows he dare not give the real explanation. Not that it makes any difference. Everyone in Nagata-cho knows what’s going on anyway.

* Another reason he can’t come clean is because of the strong opposition to the TPP in his own party. Coming out and saying what everyone knows could wind up destroying the DPJ. In fact, that’s the paramount reason the DPJ has no business as a ruling party in the first place. The potential for collapse is why they are incapable of taking a stand on any major issue. They’ve abdicated governance to the bureaucracy as a result. Some people in Japanese media circles outside the industrial core think bureaucratic control is more blatant now than at any time in recent history.

* All the talk about opening or closing the country, the opposition by farmers, the exclusive focus on TPP, blah blah blah woof woof, is so much vaudeville and just as passé. We’ve got bleacher seats for the early 21st Great Game, and it’s all about making Japan choose sides.

Predictions aren’t what I do, but here’s one anyway: Noda Yoshihiko will not handle this very well. Here’s another: If Japan doesn’t join the TPP, or his government falls as a result, watch the foreign media and the pretentious blogs get it all wrong in their commentary.

Regardless of what happens, however, even those supporters of free trade — and I’m one of them — have to admit that all the issues raised here are legitimate and cannot be waved aside with airy-fairy platitudes. Being a neo-liberal is one thing, but being a neo-conservative is another.

Afterwords:

* The bilingual website Seetell makes an excellent and often overlooked point:

(I)n order to join, Japan will have to be “approved” by the current TPP member nations. That poses few problems for Japan from any of the nations except the US. And because the US Congress will have the final say on whether Japan is allowed to join, Japan will be forced to concede most of its negotiating points to the US before the negotiations even begin…

Plainly stated, Japan will have to negotiate first with the US – and without input from other member nations – before it will be approved to join the pact. The bulk of Japan’s negotiations will occur before the official negotiations begin.

The US has totally usurped the TPP from the original nations as a vehicle to gain access and influence into the Asian economy. Now, it sits as the sole judge and determinant as to the terms of the agreement.

* Before becoming “prime minister”, Mr. Noda was best known for delivering political speeches at his local train station every morning for years to the morning rush-hour commuters. One has to wonder: What the deuce did he tell them?

* Only the merest of glimpses of the real issues are being afforded in the mainstream Western press. The New York Times this week ran a lengthy article about United States pressure on China. Here’s all they could find to say about the TPP:

Mr. Obama wants to appear strong in pressing Beijing. He made headway on an ambitious American plan to create a Pacific free trade zone, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that, for now, would not include China.

There was no mention of ASEAN + 6 in the article, but then we should all have seen through the tiresome fiction of full (or even intelligent) coverage from the New York Times by now.

It’s also noteworthy that the Times refers to the TPP as an “ambitious American plan”, when that certainly wasn’t how it started. Even the Times can be jingoists, it seems, as long as their Golden Boy is in the White House, rather than one of the evil, wicked, mean, and nasties of the other party.

* I listened to Yamamoto Ichita’s questioning of Noda Yoshihiko on NHK radio while working on a translation. Mr. Noda did not perform well. On NHK radio news that night, the announcer briefly mentioned one of Mr. Yamamoto’s questions without replaying it, and they ran a single, brief clip of one of the few times Mr. Noda gave a lucid and crisp answer.

Yes, there is media bias in Japan, too.

* It was puzzling to see that the Voice of America article was written by that well-known peddler of Weird Japan stories and FCCJ barfly, Justin McCurry. Justo is a Brit who, the last time I saw a sample from the cloaca that constitutes his body of work, was affiliated with The Guardian.

If it is the Voice of America, why do they speak through a Brit from an often anti-American newspaper? Do they think no Americans in Japan are capable of producing the same lukewarm dribble of the type at that link? Here’s one of the sentences from his piece on the TPP:

But it could mean stiffer competition for some domestic industries, especially Japan’s farmers who could struggle to compete against cheaper imports.

Yeah, I guess it “could”, couldn’t it? If the idea is to cook the gruel that thin, what’s the bleedin’ point other than filling website space?

* Now Canada wants to join the TPP discussions. They also want a bilateral trade deal with Japan.

* The Australian government says that TPP is an important priority for them, but they also have serious concerns about ISDS:

Some countries have sought to insert investor-state dispute resolution clauses into trade agreements. Typically these clauses empower businesses from one country to take international legal action against the government of another country for alleged breaches of the agreement, such as for policies that allegedly discriminate against those businesses and in favour of the country’s domestic businesses.

The Gillard Government supports the principle of national treatment — that foreign and domestic businesses are treated equally under the law. However, the Government does not support provisions that would confer greater legal rights on foreign businesses than those available to domestic businesses. Nor will the Government support provisions that would constrain the ability of Australian governments to make laws on social, environmental and economic matters in circumstances where those laws do not discriminate between domestic and foreign businesses. The Government has not and will not accept provisions that limit its capacity to put health warnings or plain packaging requirements on tobacco products or its ability to continue the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

In the past, Australian Governments have sought the inclusion of investor-state dispute resolution procedures in trade agreements with developing countries at the behest of Australian businesses. The Gillard Government will discontinue this practice. If Australian businesses are concerned about sovereign risk in Australian trading partner countries, they will need to make their own assessments about whether they want to commit to investing in those countries.

One Australian op-ed opposed to TPP made this point:

In its negotiations over the AUSFTA during 2003-04, the office of the United States Trade Representative focused in particular on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (which provides heavily subsidised access for patients to listed medicines under patent), its process of blood procurement (which for health and security reasons is not open to international competition) and its laws mandating minimum levels of local broadcast content on television. The USTR sees these policies as “protectionist” and wants them abandoned, regardless of Australia’s arguments that they are in our national interest.

The Australians have no trouble standing up for Australia. Does anyone think the Japanese government is capable of doing the same?

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