Around Asia

On Friday, Japanese media reported that the US and Japan will not hold a naval drill, scheduled for November 5th to 16th. The exercise, a rehearsal of the recapture of an island, was to take place on Irisunajima, an island in the Okinawa prefecture. Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency, stated the cancellation “reflects the opinion of the prime minister’s office.”

Tokyo reportedly pulled out of the drill to avoid further angering Beijing, which had been behind nationwide anti-Japanese protests—some of them violent riots—that shook Chinese cities last month. Beijing, through its aggressive actions, is challenging Tokyo’s sovereignty over islands it labels the Diaoyus. The Japanese, who actually administer these barren outcroppings in the East China Sea, call them the Senkakus. The US takes no position on which nation has sovereignty but has a treaty obligation to help Japan defend them because they are in fact under Tokyo’s control.

“Regrettable.” That’s the word both Japan’s finance minister and the head of the Bank of Japan used to describe their Chinese counterparts who canceled appearances at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this month. 

Why would high Chinese officials skip the two gatherings? State media initially referred to scheduling conflicts, but Beijing then went mum.

Yet it’s clear to most observers why Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren and central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan pulled out at the last minute and sent deputies instead. China wanted to register its displeasure at Japan, and the two meetings were held in Tokyo.

In recent weeks, President Obama and Governor Romney have, directly and through surrogates, sparred over Iran, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Each has, in different ways, told us how he would deal with terrorism. Both have talked about China when discussing jobs. On Monday, Mitt Romney gave his first major campaign address on foreign policy.

Yet there is one thing that both the incumbent and challenger have largely ignored. Neither of them has given the American public context, an explanation of why there are so many crises at this moment. Winston Churchill in 1946 supplied context with his Iron Curtain speech, and we need a speech of this kind for our times.

On Monday, an unnamed Obama administration official confirmed to Fox News that Chinese hackers had breached computers used by the White House Military Office. Bill Gertz of the Washington Free Beacon was the first to report the cyber intrusion, which occurred sometime last month.

The Military Office is responsible for, among other things, the “football,” the suitcase device that permits the president to transmit commands to the country’s strategic nuclear forces. “This is the most sensitive office in the US government,” a former American intelligence official, speaking to the Free Beacon, said.

On Tuesday, Foxconn Technology Group reopened its factory in Taiyuan after approximately 2,000 workers rioted, setting fires and overturning at least one government vehicle. Authorities brought in 5,000 police earlier in the week to quell the disturbance at the northern Chinese facility, which reportedly manufactures, among other items, the back plate to Apple’s iPhone 5.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, has been plagued by highly publicized labor troubles, beginning with more than a dozen suicides at another of its Chinese factories in 2010. Since then, the Taiwan-owned company—and Apple—have come under global scrutiny for harsh working conditions.

There are conflicting stories as to the origin of the disturbance in Taiyuan. Local authorities maintain that a brawl between workers from two different provinces caused the disruption, but bystanders say the fighting was triggered by company guards beating employees. Foxconn quickly issued a statement declaring that the origin “appears not to have been work-related.”

On Tuesday, Japanese officials spotted 12 Chinese vessels approaching the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea as part of Beijing’s continuing effort to aggressively challenge Japan’s claims of sovereignty over the barren outcroppings.   

Perhaps in a burst of bombast, Chinese state media is claiming that more than 1,000 Chinese fishing boats are heading for the islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyus. Tokyo says there is no evidence that a massive fleet is coming its way.

China analysts worry that Beijing might flood the waters around the Senkakus with small boats and land Chinese citizens or military personnel on the desolate islands. If China were to go ahead with a plan of that sort—as it may be doing now—the United States would likely become entangled in a diplomatic conflict with China, and perhaps worse.

Xi Jinping, slated to be China’s next leader, has gone missing. China’s vice president canceled appointments with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Singapore’s prime minister last week, and now he has completely disappeared from public view. Perhaps the worst sign is that on Saturday Xi missed an emergency meeting of the all-important Central Military Commission.

Officials say the cancellation of Xi’s sit-down with Clinton was due to a normal “adjustment of itinerary,” but no one is buying that line. There are competing outside explanations for his startling disappearance from public view. Xi, according to various assessments, hurt his back swimming, suffered an injury playing soccer, or had a heart attack. The latest theory is that he has developed Bell’s palsy, a nervous disorder.

On Saturday, the Communist Party announced that Ling Jihua, the principal aide to leader Hu Jintao, had relinquished his post as head of the General Office of the Central Committee and assumed the job as chief of the Central Committee’s United Front Work Department. The move is a demotion for the high-flyer, who this year had a shot at elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of political power in China.

Ling’s career troubles began immediately after the crash of a black Ferrari into a wall on Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road in the early morning of March 18th. Due to a gag order issued by the party, few details of the incident are known for sure, but it appears that Ling’s son, half-naked at the time, was killed. Two women riding in the two-seat car were severely injured, one paralyzed. One was found without any clothes, and the other was only half dressed. There is speculation that the trio was involved in a sex game at the time of the fatal crash.

On Saturday, Wen Jiabao said China will try to export its way out of its current economic troubles. The country’s premier suggested technical fixes, such as faster payment of tax rebates, but he did not refer to depreciation of the national currency, the renminbi.

That’s a rather large omission considering the circumstances. Why? Because his primary plan, evident over the course of the last several months, has been to force down the value of the currency to make Chinese products cheaper on global markets. 

Some analysts believe the yuan, as the renminbi is informally known, is undervalued by as much as 40 percent against the dollar. That’s possible, but we do not know the market value of the Chinese currency. The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, essentially fixes the value of the yuan by buying and selling currencies so that it stays within a predetermined band. The renminbi has depreciated against the dollar by about 1 percent this year after it climbed—due to Washington’s pressure—4.7 percent in 2011.

Over the weekend, anti-Japanese protests erupted in major cities across China. The noisy demonstrations followed the return of 14 activists who had sailed to Uotsurishima, one of the islands of the Senkaku chain in the East China Sea. Seven of them landed and planted a Chinese flag on August 15th, the 67thanniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second World War. Tokyo deported the intruders two days later, after Beijing demanded their release.

The Senkakus, called the Diaoyus by China, have been at the center of a series of incidents between the two nations in the last several years. The US returned the islands to Japan in 1972, a year after China laid a claim to them. Previously, Beijing had, in effect, acknowledged Japanese sovereignty.

On Tuesday, Beijing signaled full backing for Pyongyang’s recently rumored economic reforms by announcing an agreement with its ally regarding the development of two areas in North Korea, the Rason Economic Trade Zone and the Hwanggumphyong and Wihwado Economic Zone. At the same time, Vice Commerce Minster Chen Jian, writing in the official People’s Daily, stated that priority will be given to the two zones. “We will support big Chinese companies that are willing to invest in North Korea to broaden the economic and trade cooperation with North Korea, to push the two sides to upgrade two-way trade and investment structures and study the feasibility of cooperation on big projects,” he stated.

Chen’s words came just hours after Pyongyang’s most influential power broker arrived in the Chinese capital for almost a week’s stay. Jang Song Thaek, married to Kim Jong Il’s sister, led a delegation of 50 officials to seek Beijing’s assistance for Pyongyang’s development plans.

China’s trial of the century begins Thursday in a backwater provincial capital. Gu Kailai and assistant Zhang Xiaojun have been charged with the “intentional homicide”—better known as murder—of Neil Heywood, a British businessman.

Heywood’s body was found in a run-down state-run hotel in Chongqing last November. He is believed to have been poisoned, cyanide forced down his throat. At the time, the official explanation was that the 41-year-old Briton had died of a heart attack. We will never know the truth: Heywood’s body was cremated soon after discovery.

Why would Gu want Heywood dead? The state implies that Heywood threatened Gu’s son, Bo Guagua. A more likely explanation is that Heywood, a Mr. Fixit, had sought an excessive fee to smuggle out of China hundreds of millions of dollars for Gu. There is also the possibility that Gu wanted to cover up an illicit sexual relationship with him.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a destitute and reviled state, yet it endures. Despite periodic foreign predictions of imminent collapse, the Kim family regime manages to carry on from one year to the next.

How can the world’s worst government continue to exist for more than six decades? The standard explanation has been that its rulers, three generations of the Kim family, have been able to wall off their society. As a result of the isolation, Kim Il Sung, who founded the miserable state, was then able to convince his subjects that he had mystical powers.

God in the human form of Kim Il Sung created a new reality. He convinced the Korean people he could control the weather, arrange bountiful harvests, and transcend both time and space. “We were told that he crossed the river on a bridge of leaves and then he threw pine cones and they turned into grenades,” says Ahn Hyeok, a North Korean and former political prisoner. “We heard this over and over, and we really believed that. So naturally we idolized him.” The charismatic Kim exploited his people so well they did not feel oppressed.

The Global Times, the newspaper run by China’s Communist Party, ran an editorial this month suggesting that Beijing challenge Japan’s control of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu island chain.

Why would China want to start a fight over Okinawa? At the moment, China, Taiwan, and Japan are engaged in a particularly nasty sovereignty dispute in the East China Sea over five islands and three barren rocks called the Senkakus by the Japanese and the Diaoyus by the other claimants. The disputed chain is north of the southern end of the Ryukyus and about midway between Taiwan and Okinawa.

The Senkakus are administered by Japan, which appears to have a stronger legal claim to the chain than the other two nations. The United States, which takes no position on the sovereignty issue, returned the islands to Tokyo at the same time it gave back Okinawa in 1972. The People’s Republic of China made no formal claim to the Senkakus until 1971. Until then, Chinese maps showed the islands as Japan’s.

How much is a life worth? In Ankang City, in central Shaanxi Province, the answer is 40,000 yuan, or about $6,300. That’s the amount Feng Jianmei did not have when population control officials demanded the amount as a fine for a second birth. As a result, no fewer than 20 officials went looking for the 22-year-old woman. When they found her, they forced her into a car. When she resisted, they beat her. Then, they detained her for three days. 

On June 2nd, officials forced Feng to undergo an abortion. Afterwards, they laid the blood-soaked, seven-month-old fetus next to her on her bed. A photo of the mother with her dead child circulated online, causing national outrage. “This is what they say the Japanese devils and Nazis did,” a comment on the website netease.com said. 

Eventually, family planning officials paid Feng 70,600 yuan to settle the matter. Deng Jiyuan said he and his wife still want another child.