The China Thread

[Neil]

They just make themselves look bad with their revisionist antics. 

could have been worse. They could be claiming all the seas up to the Phillipines

Japan's shame regarding their vicious past is worse than China's total lack of shame regarding their vicious present.

[Sheilbh]

Saw an interesting comment by a journo in Japan today that Japan's very friendly with Turkey and he thinks there's parallels. Erdogan and Abe, in his view, both want to fundamentally change their political cultures - for Erdogan that's Kemalism and for Abe it's the 'pacifist' constitution. Which doesn't mean that Japan's going to go on mental and start invading people, they're a nation of pensioners after all.

Also I think it's interesting that Japan's faced with a difficult relationship with China. From a distance it's striking how much their nationalist/pro-military rhetoric seems to be about the past, rather than talking about how they can face China and help deal with China it largely seems to be about redeeming Japan's WW2.

In terms of cui bono, I don't know about the 731 thing but with the shrine I think an obvious bonus is if Abe wants to fundamentally change the constitution he can do that cause the Chinese (and Korea) to release bellicose statements that strengthens his argument that Japan needs to fundamentally change her 'pacifist' constitution. It helps that the US has no ally in the region who can be nearly as useful as Japan, so despite them heavily leaning on him not to go, he doesn't have to listen. For a nationalist in domestic politics it's not that different from the way Chinese politicians behave. Do something provocative to your neighbours, when they respond point to it and say 'see, this is why we need a bigger army.'

[DGuller]

Saw an interesting comment by a journo in Japan today that Japan's very friendly with Turkey and he thinks there's parallels.

Well, they both seem a little touchy about the naughty things they did in the past.

[Josquius]

In terms of cui bono, I don't know about the 731 thing but with the shrine I think an obvious bonus is if Abe wants to fundamentally change the constitution he can do that cause the Chinese (and Korea) to release bellicose statements that strengthens his argument that Japan needs to fundamentally change her 'pacifist' constitution. It helps that the US has no ally in the region who can be nearly as useful as Japan, so despite them heavily leaning on him not to go, he doesn't have to listen. For a nationalist in domestic politics it's not that different from the way Chinese politicians behave. Do something provocative to your neighbours, when they respond point to it and say 'see, this is why we need a bigger army.'

There could be something to this.
Also a factor is that to the vast majority of people in Japan foreign policy is utterly irrelevant in who they will support.  For the far right however (much less than 10% of the population, I don't even know where to begin with an accurate guestimate) its practically the only thing that matters. Just like the Republicans in the US with abortion right wing Japanese politicians have to appeal to the loony right to secure their position.


On the plane issue...
Definitely true that unit 731 is a pretty obscure reference.  I saw a humerous comment elsewhere that people in Korea got so worked up about it because the papers told them it was a big deal that they should get worked up about.
Odd that the Blue Impulse leader would coincidentally have the same number...but that would appear to be the reason he chose that plane.
Still, I wouldn't put it past Abe to have done it deliberately. There's no way for him to lose. The people in Japan who would be really upset about such a thing already aren't going to support him, to the majority in the middle it is meaningless, meanwhile it gives the far right a giggle at how Abe is doing as he promised and playing the Chinese and Koreans at their own game of trying to wind up their neighbours.

[jimmy olsen]

Nikkei is up 57% this year.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/japans-nikkei-closes-out-year-57-percent-its-biggest-annual-2D11819011

Surely that should be enough to get people to votes for him? He doesn't need to do this shit to get elected, he does it because at the least he's sympathetic to it.

[Josquius]

Nikkei is up 57% this year.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/japans-nikkei-closes-out-year-57-percent-its-biggest-annual-2D11819011

Surely that should be enough to get people to votes for him? He doesn't need to do this shit to get elected, he does it because at the least he's sympathetic to it.

Taxes are being increased quite drastically (rarely a right wing vote winner), prices are rising and the yen is weak which isn't helping everyone. Domestic companies for instance continue to struggle. His approval rating is on a downward trend.
http://news.asiaone.com/news/asia/abe-cabinet-approval-rating-drops-55-cent

That things are generally looking up is indeed bringing him a lot of  support but what politician would turn town a few free percentage points more of the vote.

[Eddie Teach]

but what politician would turn town a few free percentage points more of the vote.

Some third world dictators would. Getting 101% of the votes might cast doubts about their legitimacy. 

[Agelastus]

Odd that the Blue Impulse leader would coincidentally have the same number...but that would appear to be the reason he chose that plane.

The lead plane of the Blue Impulse display team rotates - that particular plane has had the numbers "5" and "7" (IIRC) as well as "1" on its tailplane in recent years; now, if you can find evidence that the rotation was changed so that that particular plane was used for the photoshoot I'll believe there was a conspiracy. Otherwise, it's just a coincidence that probably wasn't even noticed before the fuss started.

[Berkut]

Odd that the Blue Impulse leader would coincidentally have the same number...but that would appear to be the reason he chose that plane.

The lead plane of the Blue Impulse display team rotates - that particular plane has had the numbers "5" and "7" (IIRC) as well as "1" on its tailplane in recent years; now, if you can find evidence that the rotation was changed so that that particular plane was used for the photoshoot I'll believe there was a conspiracy. Otherwise, it's just a coincidence that probably wasn't even noticed before the fuss started.

The "fuss" says a lot more about the mindset of the people who are fussed than it does about Japan.


If people who know, like Mono, are telling me that this is going to have traction even though it is 100% clear to anyone who is capable of even a modicum of reasoned thinking, then I suppose that means I should be aware that in any future conflict or issue that is perhaps not as obvious, at least the Chinese mindset will be driven by irrationality and paranoia. So if nothing else, the incident is a useful indicator in that sense.

[jimmy olsen]

Thought this was interesting, didn't realize the Chinese were already so involved in securing the sea lanes.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/07/why-chinas-gulf-piracy-fight-matters/?hpt=wo_r1

08:36 AM ET
Why China's Gulf piracy fight matters

By Andrew S. Erickson and Austin M. Strange, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Andrew S. Erickson is an associate professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Austin M. Strange is a research associate at the China Maritime Studies Institute. The views expressed are the authors' alone.

December 26, Chairman Mao's birthday, is always a significant date for China. But last month's 120th anniversary came at a time when his legacy is increasingly subject to vigorous debate among the Chinese public, media, academia and even officialdom. And it also established a new landmark in contemporary Chinese history, an unprecedented milestone in Chinese foreign policy that Mao would surely be proud of: the 5th year anniversary of China's naval anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

To honor the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)'s contributions to maritime security off Somalia, the China Maritime Museum, located in Shanghai, opened a special exhibit that runs into March, and which features photos and actual mission mementos. Chinese media outlets continue to roll out a flurry of articles commemorating the occasion. But what is the actual significance of Chinese anti-piracy activities? And what has China accomplished there over the past five years?

First and foremost, China's naval foray into the Gulf of Aden, beginning in 2008, is a resounding response from Beijing to threats against its overseas interests. Chinese people and economic assets continue to disperse throughout the world at record pace nearly four decades after Deng Xiaoping's opening up reforms. As a result, nontraditional security breaches outside of China, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks (and, in this case, maritime piracy) pose growing threats to Chinese national interests.

The ocean is at the center of China's "Going out" policy: China relies on seaborne shipping for the vast majority of its trade, and PLAN is emerging as China's most prominent service. Both Beijing's calculated, resolute response to Somali pirate attacks on Chinese citizens, as well as its steadfast commitment to protecting Chinese and foreign ships over the last five years, signal China's staunch commitment to ensuring safe conditions for Chinese overseas.

Statistics accumulated over the past five years make clear Beijing's commitment to security sea lines of communication (SLOCs). According to state media, the PLAN has dispatched 15,000 personnel over 16 escort taskforce flotillas since 2008, averaging three per year. Taskforces, which usually consist of China's most advanced frigates, destroyers and amphibious ships, have escorted 5,463 Chinese and foreign commercial ships – over 1,000 ships per year. PLAN forces have also thwarted more than 30 potential pirate attacks, rescued over 40 commercial ships, and escorted 11 vessels previously taken by pirates. Moreover, the fact that such information is actively recorded and publicized demonstrates the state's desire to derive maximum domestic and international publicity benefits from the missions.

Besides safeguarding national interests, China's investment in Gulf of Aden security continues to sharpen the abilities of PLAN personnel, platforms, and institutions. Operational achievements such as improved logistical supply chains, intra-navy coordination breakthroughs and greater focus on sailors' morale are a few highlights of the mission that have real consequences for broader Chinese military development. Chinese sailors have, to put it bluntly, used Gulf of Aden operations to grow from "maritime rookies" to "confident seadogs."

These lessons are readily apparent to China's navy and the rest of the world. Yet the PLAN's Gulf of Aden five-year anniversary is a milestone for reasons beyond the military domain. For those interested in China's role in 21st century international society, five years off the coast of Somalia have allowed the opportunity to observe China in its first protracted, direct operational role within the context of international security outside of East Asia. The PLAN has embodied the spirit of "creative involvement" off Somalia, operating independent of but in parallel with Western and other naval forces.

More broadly, the missions signal that Beijing appears willing to cooperate with the United States and other naval powers to tackle nontraditional security challenges placing all sides "in the same boat." Those calling on the Middle Kingdom to grow into a responsible stakeholder following persistent economic development and ascendancy in status can therefore cite Gulf of Aden anti-piracy as a modest but welcome example.

It may not be surprising to see states joining forces against nontraditional threats like piracy since there are clear economic and political incentives for cooperating rather than competing. But the fact that China continues to work actively with U.S., Japan and European navies off Somalia is unprecedented given choppy maritime relations between these states in the Asia-Pacific. The Gulf of Aden has played the foil to China's assertive reputation in the contentious East and South China Seas, where Beijing's behavior is increasingly perceived as counterproductive and downright dangerous.

True, while five years is a significant commitment, it would be unrealistic to suggest that the Gulf of Aden experience might directly impact maritime relations in other regions, such as the Yellow, East, and South China Seas – rife with tensions over core interests between Beijing and its neighbors. Yet China's global maritime engagement stretches far beyond the waters of East Asia, and the world will expect more genuine contributions from Beijing as its stake in international security grows regardless of the state of affairs in China's immediate neighborhood. Indeed, in the 21st century China's foreign policy is being pulled in different directions as Beijing strives to balance traditional principles with pragmatic needs.

Ultimately, while tensions remain close to home, five years of uninterrupted anti-piracy deployments in distant seas reflects a qualitative improvement in Chinese global security engagement, a development that should be welcomed by the international community. If China and other states can look to the Gulf of Aden as a model for pragmatic cooperation, it might encourage a more active yet more transparent Chinese presence in other areas of international security.

[jimmy olsen]

Disgusting! 

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/28/how-chinese-censorship-is-reaching-overseas/

How Chinese censorship is reaching overseas

By Sarah Cook, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Sarah Cook is a senior research analyst for East Asia at Freedom House and author of report The Long Shadow of Chinese Censorship, which was released October 22 by the National Endowment for Democracy's Center for International Media Assistance. The views expressed are her own.

The efforts of China's leaders to prevent its citizens from circulating information inconvenient to the ruling Communist Party are well known. But while censorship is a daily reality for media outlets inside mainland China, their counterparts abroad are increasingly finding themselves under pressure as well.

China's leaders, it seems, have become more ambitious in their attempts to control the news.

Take last year, when reports surfaced that China's ambassador to the United States met with Bloomberg's editor-in-chief to try to persuade the outlet not to run a story about the finances of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping's family. Last May, meanwhile, popular Taiwanese talk show host Cheng Hung-yi resigned after station executives allegedly tried to stop his program from touching on topics sensitive to Beijing. And back in 2011, reportedly at Beijing's urging, a court in Hanoi sentenced two Vietnamese citizens who practice Falun Gong to prison for transmitting radio broadcasts about human rights abuses and corruption from their farm to listeners in China.

These are far from the only examples of how the Chinese Communist Party's media controls extend past China's borders, in a push documented in a report published last week by the Center for International Media Assistance, which examines a range of media outlets based outside China, from major international media to local outlets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and elsewhere. And the findings are clear: the "China Factor" looms over newsrooms across the globe.

As the report notes, the pressure has sometimes been overt, with Chinese officials impeding independent reporting by barring foreign correspondents from the sites of significant incidents, pressuring senior executives not to publish content, or simply refusing to issue visas.

But more common – and arguably more effective – has been the carrot and stick approach that induces subtle self-censorship among media owners and outlets. Those perceived as friendly to Beijing might, for example, be rewarded with advertising, access to Chinese audiences, lucrative contracts for non-media enterprises, and even political appointments. Those deemed too critical can face not just visa restrictions for reporters, but lost advertising and blocked websites. As a result, some outlets have become increasingly wary over covering "hot button" issues such as the persecution of Tibetans, Uighurs and Falun Gong practitioners.

More from CNN: China 'employs 2 million to police internet'

Indirect pressure can also be applied via proxies, including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments, with out-of-favor outlets likely to be boycotted or have their transmission signals cut.

Thus, it has not only been media organizations themselves that have moved to restrict access to information. Earlier this month, CNN reported that Apple had been accused of "kowtowing to the Chinese government" after "pulling from its China App Store a product enabling users to circumvent firewalls and access restricted sites." This wasn't the first time since 2011 that Apple had removed apps that people in China used to access independent overseas Chinese media or bookstores.

A more extreme example of how Western businesses can get caught in the middle of transnational Chinese censorship occurred in 2007. Last year, a WikiLeaks cable suggested that Chinese security officials had summoned and interrogated NASDAQ's chief representative in China, U.S. citizen Lawrence Pan.

According to the cable, the questioning focused on a journalist who had been reporting from the exchange's New York headquarters for New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV), an outlet founded by Falun Gong practitioners in the United States to broadcast news and cultural programming to Chinese audiences. The cable added that Pan, "to secure his release, may have pledged to Chinese authorities that NASDAQ would no longer allow" such access. Indeed, starting in February 2007, NTDTV's correspondent was suddenly barred from the building after reporting from there on a daily basis for more than a year.

Some international companies have been more proactive in their assistance to Chinese censors. In 2008, Reporters Without Borders released the transcript of a telephone recording in which a representative of the French satellite company Eutelsat admitted that the firm had cut the signal of that same television station to "show a good gesture to the Chinese government."

While some of these dynamics date back to the 1990s, they have intensified and expanded over the past five years. Physical assaults against foreign reporters in China have become more violent, while Beijing's efforts to influence newsroom decisions in Hong Kong have intensified, expanding to topics touching on the territory's internal politics. In Taiwan, meanwhile, self-censorship is increasing, as media owners seek new sources of revenue from mainland entities. And major Western news outlets have found themselves facing the kinds of restrictions – including wholesale website blocking and intrusive cyber-attacks – usually reserved for dissident Chinese websites.

The paradoxical combination of the Communist Party feeling emboldened internationally and insecure domestically has only fueled this trend. With more than half of China's population now accessing the Internet, and with some political content going viral despite domestic censors' efforts, the Party's nervousness of overseas news trickling in has increased.

These dynamics have a damaging real-world impact. For international audiences, the information targeted for censorship includes topics that have global implications, such as human rights abuses, high-level corruption, and environmental pollution. For Chinese, the stakes are even higher. Overseas media outlets offer a vital source of information on matters with life-or-death consequences and a precious forum for debating the past, present, and future of their country.

Still, there are clear limits to Beijing's reach. Media outlets around the world daily put out news that the Communist Party would likely prefer unreported, while journalists, activists, owners, and independent courts have pushed back against pressure and scored some important victories. The result is a complex and ever-changing negotiation over where the "red line" lies.

As China's international role expands, this transnational tug-of-war will become more important. Supporters of media freedom – be they journalists, policymakers, or news consumers – must therefore develop an open-eyed strategy for protecting and expanding the free flow of information about one of the world's most prominent nations.

[CountDeMoney]

Thought this was interesting, didn't realize the Chinese were already so involved in securing the sea lanes.

That's because you haven't been paying attention, peg leg.

Ultimately, while tensions remain close to home, five years of uninterrupted anti-piracy deployments in distant seas reflects a qualitative improvement in Chinese global security engagement, a development that should be welcomed by the international community. If China and other states can look to the Gulf of Aden as a model for pragmatic cooperation, it might encourage a more active yet more transparent Chinese presence in other areas of international security.

The Chinese are only going to be as "transparent" about their presence overseas as much as it plays into the orchestration of the big PR machine of a benevolent China.  Sea of Aden, sure.  Scarborough Shoal, not so much.

[11B4V]

Clone soldiers next?

China Has the World's First 'Cloning Factory'

(Newser) – Remember when a cloned animal was a big deal? Welcome to the brave new world in Shenzhen, China, where the company BGI is churning out 500 cloned pigs a year, reports David Shukman at the BBC. Shukman got a tour of the facility and even watched the surgical procedure in a not-so-sanitary operating room—two sows are implanted a day, with a success rate of about 80%. "The technology involved is not particularly novel," he writes, "but what is new is the application of mass production." In fact, one company scientist uses the phrase "cloning factory" to describe what's going on. The pigs are being produced not to eat but to be the subjects of drug tests; many have had their genes modified to make them, for example, more susceptible to Alzheimer's.

On the genetics front, the company has a staggering 156 gene-sequencing machines on site (Europe's largest gene-sequencing center has one-fifth that amount) and even bought a US company that makes them. What lucky animals make the cut? "If it tastes good you should sequence it," says BGI's chief executive. "You should know what's in the gene of that species." Also, "anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it." The company says it's all for the greater in good terms of food production and health care. "In many ways, that's pretty cool," writes Jamie Condliffe at Gizmodo. "This was supposed to be future, but it's happening here and now—but the sheer pace and questionable standards described by Shukman provide at least some cause for concern." (More wild cloning news: Scientists clone "unclonable" tree.)

http://www.newser.com/story/180749/china-has-the-worlds-first-cloning-factory.html

[CountDeMoney]

Also, "anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it." The company says it's all for the greater in good terms of food production and health care.

I bet.  Little yellow bastards.

[Monoriu]

I am a bit sceptical about this report.  Is the traditional way of raising pigs really that expensive or difficult as to warrant the commercial production of cloned pigs?