TAIWAN: Acer Founder Says US PC Makers May Become Extinct

2010-01-20

By: Michelle Maisto

The founder of Acer reportedly tells a Taipei paper that U.S. PC makers such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Dell may not be around in 20 years because they don't know how to get low-cost PCs to market.

PC makers Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple aren't likely to be pleased by the idea that they may not be in business in 20 years' time, due to their alleged inability to produce inexpensive PCs.

Stan Shih, founder of Acer, headquartered in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, shared this sentiment with the Taipei-based Commercial Times, according to French news service AFP.

"The trend for low-priced computers will last for the coming years. But U.S. computer makers just don't know how to put such products on the market," Shih told the Commercial Times, according to Jan. 19 reporting from AFP. Shih continued, "U.S. computer brands may disappear over the next 20 years, just like what happened to U.S television brands."

Analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates said he believes Shih has a point, and the remark could serve as a wake-up call.

"Even Apple has its devices made in Asia. But I certainly wouldn't count the U.S. industry out. Most useful innovation is still made in the [United States]," Kay told eWEEK. "If anything, we should take his words as a goad to double down and do more to ensure that our industry remains relevant in 20 years' time."

In the fourth quarter of 2009, as well as for the year overall, HP led shipments both worldwide and in the United States. Worldwide during the quarter, Acer grabbed the No. 2 spot, just ahead of Dell. However, worldwide for the year, it was Dell that held the second-largest share of the market, according to a Jan. 13 report from IDC. Following Dell were Asia-based manufacturers Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba.

PC sales figures in 2009 were helped by brisk consumer acceptance of netbooks, which are generally priced below $400. Overall, however, the low prices of netbooks are said to have negatively affected PC market revenue.

"Acer has had a great couple of years, much of it due to the popularity of netbooks and other low-cost products," Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, told eWEEK. "In addition, the company stands to profit as the demand for personal computing grows in rapidly developing markets like China. If PCs eventually become simplistic, appliance-like devices with little if any differentiation in the hardware, like DVD players or toaster ovens—then Mr. Shih's notions stand a chance of coming true."

However, King added, he doesn't expect U.S. vendors to relax their pace of innovation any time soon.

"I also believe that Mr. Shih's assumption that PCs will even be around in 20 years may be far off the mark," King said. "Given the continual pace of IT evolution, I expect that the personal computing devices we'll be using in 2030 will make Acer's current product lineup look like 1990 PCs with 286 Intel processors and the first version of Microsoft Office."

Analyst John Spooner, with Technology Business Research, also said he expects a far different 2030.

If Shih's remarks weren't taken out of context, "I also think that he's probably right in that the U.S.-based PC vendors will not exist in 20 years in the same ways they do today," Spooner told eWEEK. "I think they'll look and act much different. They've already begun laying the groundwork to increase their purview from hardware to hardware, software and services. Just look at what Hewlett-Packard has done in the last three years. They will continue to evolve and change from there."

Kay, also confident about the pace of U.S. technological innovation, added, "All you have to do is breathe the air in Silicon Valley and you know there'll be innovation coming out of here for years to come."

View Article in eWeek

CHINA: It's later than Mao thinks

From the archive

Oct 4th 1969
From The Economist print edition

Interesting flashback now that China has celebrated its 60th anniversary. -HHC

China needs pulling together more urgently than its ageing leader seems to realise. We discuss its problems on its 20th anniversary as a communist state.

Birthdays have a way of coming at the wrong time. The Chinese communists have had their moments of triumph during their 20 years in power. But these have tended not to be when the crowds were filling the Square of Heavenly Peace for a major national day. Peking evidently tried to brighten this week's event by a show of nuclear black magic. There is a strong suspicion that something may have misfired, for neither Monday's explosion in Sinkiang—reported by the Americans to be China's highest megatonnage yet—nor an underground blast monitored last week was officially announced. But even a bigger and better bomb could not have disguised the fact that this 20th anniversary was hardly China's finest hour.

A measure of the unhappy state of China today is how strikingly it parallels the situation on October 1st ten years ago.

Both decennials came in the wake of titanic mass movements intended to achieve instant revolutionary miracles. Then it was the great leap forward, which aimed at making an economic breakthrough by means of mass mobilisation. Now it is the great proletarian cultural revolution, which was designed to transform 700 million Chinese into militant maoists.

Both failed. And both left the country in an advanced condition of disruption, with the economy only partly functioning and the authority of the leadership seriously undermined. But the crucial difference between the two occasions is in the strangely strengthened position of the man who was personally responsible for it all—Mao Tsetung.

In October, 1959, Mao, as chairman of the Chinese communist party, was still the top-ranking leader in the land. But the spectacular failure of the great leap had cost him dearly. Nine months earlier he had relinquished his concurrent position as head of state which later passed to Liu Shao-chi. At the same time, possibly under pressure from his colleagues, he ended his day-to-day involvement in decision-making. Only a few weeks before October 1st, he had sustained the first frontal challenge to his personal authority since the beginning of his reign: a scathing attack on the great leap by his minister of defence, Peng Teh-huai. It became known that the fabulous production increases claimed for the leap had been wildly exaggerated. The policy was going to curb living standards instead of improving them. Mao still managed to line up a majority to overrule Peng and purge him. But by the time he stood on the rostrum at the tenth anniversary celebrations, Mao's image as the infallible leader had been badly tarnished. And, having seen his vision shattered, he himself seemed to be feeling disillusioned and directionless.

In 1969 Mao appears to have emerged from a crisis situation stronger than ever. His cultural revolution was as extravagant and costly an excursion into utopianism as the great leap was. But, unlike the leap, it actually reinforced his own position in the leadership. Through the sweeping purge of the communist party, he eliminated all his major rivals and raised reliable disciples, including his wife, to power alongside him. The downgrading of the Mao cult this summer may conceivably signify some diminution of his status since the peak of the cultural revolution. But the only visible threats to his pre-eminence at the moment are his age (nearly 76) and mortality.

The other source of Mao's present strength is his firm conviction that his revolution is set on a victorious path. The short-term failure of the cultural revolution is plain. The Chinese people are displaying the very opposite of revolutionary spirit in their current obsession with private profit-making and individual comfort. But Mao's perspective has shifted from the here and now to the indefinite future, and from the concrete to the highly abstract. The severe economic losses caused by the great leap could not be overlooked; they denied the validity of this approach to economic development. But spiritual lapses are much harder to measure. Mao would explain them away as a necessary part of the epic ideological struggle that may only be resolved after many decades and many more cultural revolutions.

This optimistic complacency of Chairman Mao, however good it may be for his own ego, could be a serious obstacle to China's efforts to recover a second time from the ravages of a maoist movement. It was precisely because Mao had been humbled in 1959 that the country was able to pull itself together again after the great leap. His party colleagues, untrammelled by his utopian vision, instituted immediate practical steps to rebuild the shattered economy. For the most part this meant an about-face reversal of previous policies: the restoration of material incentives and private plots, and the return to village-sized production teams as the basic production unit (instead of the newly formed conglomerates called communes). Recovery was slowed by bad weather and the withdrawal of Soviet aid in 1960. But by 1963, the new economic policies had begun to push China's economy back towards pre-leap levels. Economic advance and political stability would presumably have continued until today, had Mao not decided to throw everything into the melting pot again with his cultural revolution.

The two key factors in the post-leap reconstruction were a change in leadership, in the sense that Mao took a back seat, and a change of policy.

If Mao does not step back again—and his four months' absence during a hot Peking summer is not proof that he has any intention of doing so—will it still be possible for China to pull itself together? This is the central question as the Communist regime celebrates its 20th year.

In some important respects, Mao himself has already sanctioned a decisive shift in policy. He did so by calling the ninth party congress last April, which put a formal end to the purge of the bureaucracy and the officially sponsored violence of the previous three years. But he remains committed to the grand theory of cultural revolution, and is now in process of implementing a number of radical economic and political policies which flow from it. Some of these are legacies of the great leap forward: like the attempts to decentralise economic decision-making and to create self-sufficient industrial/agricultural units at the local level. Some of them have been a subject of years-long conflict with the now-purged pragmatists in the party: like the plan to put manufacture, repair and ownership of farm machinery in the hands of local communities. Some are old maoist policies carried to a new extreme: like the cultural revolutionary programme to shorten the term of education, combine study with practical work and infuse all kinds of study with maoist thought.

None of these policies, if carried out with caution, need prevent the Chinese economy from getting back into gear. There may be short-term inefficiencies where inexperienced local officials take over the management of factories; and there may be long-term deficits like a shortage of adequately trained technicians and scientists. But there are real advantages for a developing country as huge as China in reducing the bureaucratic distance between the administrator and the unit he administers. And there is much to be said, especially in a country with a heritage of long-finger-nailed mandarins, for reducing the barriers between mental and manual labour.

There is, however, one maoist economic policy which is likely to stick in the Chinese gullet, and could well bring a recovery programme to a halt. This is his opposition to material incentives.

So far there have been few signs, apart from routine rhetoric, that Mao actually intends to eliminate existing incentive systems such as piecework and private plots. But the threat is there; if Mao is not wise enough to avoid it, he may well be confronted by large scale passive resistance or even active rebellion.

Popular resistance to unpopular policies really could get moving in China today. Not only has the authority of the leadership been undermined, as it was also after the great leap; leadership does not really exist at local levels. There are the revolutionary committees, of course; but the recent evidence of widespread indiscipline and continued factional fighting indicates that they have not yet established themselves as forces in command. And the rebuilding of the communist party, promised at the ninth congress, has not progressed at all.

Mao himself may be altogether unconcerned about the speed with which a new party organisation is set up. What matters to him is that it should be the right kind of maoist party, made up of the right kinds of maoist people, however long that takes. But even maoist policies—except for incendiary instructions like “revolution is justified”—require a network of responsible officials to carry them out. So a compromise will have to be made somewhere, if China is not to drag along indefinitely in its current state of demoralised disorder. China can ill afford to wait to make that compromise until after Mao vanishes.

View Article in The Economist

JAPAN: Japan In Jeopardy

01.22.10, 12:01 AM EST

Gordon G. Chang

Nothing seems to be going the country's way at the moment.

Does anything work in Japan?

Certainly not the floundering economy. Analysts think it may have contracted by as much as 6% last year. If so, China's economy, which grew by 8.7% according to numbers released Jan. 21, zoomed past Japan to become the world's second largest.

How about Japan's biggest companies? Japan Airlines ( JALSY - news - people ), the nation's flag carrier, filed for bankruptcy Jan. 19.

It's no mystery how the once-mighty corporate giant, commonly known as JAL, collapsed. For one thing, Tokyo bureaucrats forced the airline to service little-used airports. A third of its 151 domestic routes had load factors below 50%. Load factors on only 11 of those routes exceeded 70%. JAL, in short, was used to keep local airports--and local economies--going. Eventually the carrier, in reality a social welfare agency with landing rights, could no longer stand the financial strain.

In one sense JAL's bankruptcy is a sign of progress. Instead of keeping the airline going indefinitely with additional government subsidies--in other words, instead of subsidizing a subsidizer--the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama decided to permit the bankruptcy. Yet Tokyo is still guiding the process. As a part of a complex prepackaged reorganization to shrink JAL, the Japanese government is providing $10 billion, two-thirds of which will be in credit lines and a third in a cash infusion.

"This is not the end of JAL," said Transport Minister Seiji Maehara on the announcement of the reorganization. "Today is the beginning of a process to keep JAL alive." Is that what Tokyo should be trying to do at this time? Japan, after all, needs one fewer airline.

Among other things. The country, unfortunately, is shrinking. There are 127 million Japanese today. Due to one of the world's lowest fertility rates, Japan is in a "death spiral." Projections indicate the population will fall to 89 million by 2055.

The Washington Post put it this way: "Japan is on course for a population collapse unlike any in human history."

Whole regions are being depopulated with nature reclaiming abandoned villages. The largest cities seem to be thriving, but that's about it.

So JAL will not be the only company forced to adapt to a shriveling customer base.

Japan, as it makes the painful adjustments to a smaller society, will need an effective political system, but the country's politics are not working either. There was great optimism last August when the Japanese people, fed up with just about everything, ditched the Liberal Democratic Party, which had governed since 1955 with only one short interruption. Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan, which had captured the upper house of the Diet in 2007, rode into power with a resounding majority in the lower one.

Yet this, unfortunately, was not change the Japanese could believe in. Not long after taking over the DPJ stumbled, looking unsure and unsteady.

Worse, the party was soon caught up in the money politics that had tarred its predecessor. Ichiro Ozawa, who as the DPJ's secretary-general is the organization's nominal No. 2 official, is now embroiled in a political funding scandal involving a parcel of land in Tokyo. Prosecutors have raided his office and arrested three former aides, the last one on Jan. 15. Ozawa, known as the Shadow Shogun for being the most powerful politician in Japan, denies wrongdoing. "I will stay on to fulfill my given duty," the kingmaker of Japanese politics said at the end of last week.

So far Hatoyama is supporting the wily Ozawa. But that endorsement may not mean much, because the prime minister has his own scandal to fight off. Two former aides have been arrested for trying to hide the source of $4.4 million in campaign funds, some of which came from Hatoyama's mother. The prime minister, incredibly, denies knowledge that his mom was making donations. That may be good enough for the Tokyo Prosecutors Office, which has stated it will not go after Japan's leader, but it is not sufficient for others.

There have not surprisingly been calls for him to resign. "Talking about whether I will stay or leave would be tantamount to abandoning my responsibilities to the public," Hatoyama said at the end of last month. In the meantime, his popularity--and that of his government--declines.

DPJ politicians say the investigations of their top leaders have been motivated by bureaucrats resisting reform efforts. Maybe they are right, but that is no excuse for indulging in the type of behavior they campaigned so hard against. Is it too much to expect Hatoyama to change the ingrained culture of Tokyo's elite? Perhaps, but that is besides the point.

What's important is that nothing seems to be working in Japan at the moment. At a time when the country needs especially forceful leadership, the DPJ is distracted by scandal.

Hatoyama appears to be waiting for the Upper House elections, when he hopes to win a clear majority and thereby end his party's reliance on pesky coalition partners. But once those elections occur this July, the prime minister will have run out of excuses not to act.

Japan needs to completely restructure itself--from its economy to its corporate giants to its society to its politics. And despite its ability to take things slowly, the country is reaching a point where it can no longer defer the change that must occur.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.

View Article in Forbes

JAPAN: US-Japan relations clouded by Okinawa

Published: January 19 2010 06:40 | Last updated: January 19 2010 10:50

By Daniel Dombey in Washington and Mure Dickie in Tokyo

The US and Japan on Tuesday hailed the 50th anniversary of one of the world’s most successful alliances – but left unresolved a dispute over a controversial marine base relocation plan clouding ties between the Pacific foes-turned-friends.

A joint declaration on the golden anniversary of the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security made no mention of the differences over the plan to move the Futenma air base on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa.  Instead, it celebrated "shared values" and "common interests", promised to further build an "unshakeable alliance" and "intensified" dialogue.

The lack of any direct mention of Futenma highlights a shared desire not to let the dispute fuel doubts about a partnership that has been a pillar of regional stability.

Indeed, since Tokyo’s new Democratic party government last month shrugged off heavy and sometimes brusque US pressure to push ahead with the planned move of the Futenma Marine air base, Washington has responded not with rhetorical escalation, but with a marked softening of its diplomatic tone.

After a meeting with her Japanese counterpart last week, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, made clear that Washington still wanted Futenma moved to a new site in Okinawa’s scenic Henoko Bay, but took pains to be polite about the DPJ administration’s decision to spend months considering possible alternatives.

“We are respectful of the process that the Japanese government is going through,” Ms Clinton said, adding that the US had an “appreciation” for the difficult issues faced by the DPJ and Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s new prime minister.

Such comments contrast sharply with those of Robert Gates, US defence secretary, in October when he testily told Japanese hosts it was “time to move on” with the Henoko move, which is widely unpopular in Okinawa and among DPJ members.

They also lack the urgency of the demands for “expeditious” implementation of the move voiced by Barack Obama, US president, in Tokyo in November.

One senior US official told the Financial Times that the administration is ready to listen if Tokyo’s review comes up with alternatives to moving the base from the centre of a busy city to less populated Henoko.

“We will not dismiss out of hand anything they come to us with simply on the basis that we have [already] negotiated an agreement,” the official said.

The softer tone comes amid concern that dispute over Futenma could undermine the wider relationship founded on the 1960 treaty, under which the US essentially agreed to defend Japan in return for the right to base its forces on the archipelago.

While arguing that the relationship will remain strong no matter the outcome of the dispute, Washington says that neither it nor Tokyo wants the Futenma affair to define the future of their alliance.

However, the US official insisted that willingness to listen does not mean any change to the US view that the planned site in Henoko, located in Okinawa’s Nago City, was the “best option”.

Some of Mr Hatoyama’s own cabinet colleagues agree, but pressure against the move within Japan may well grow in the weeks to come, especially if an anti-base candidate wins next week’s Nago mayoral election.

Some DPJ members are keen to push alternatives, with party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa recently offering the surprise proposal that Futenma could be moved off Okinawa to the much smaller Shimoji Island hundreds of kilometres south.

Many in Japan doubt that the new government will be able to come up with a credible alternative to the concluded Henoko deal, part of a wider “alignment” of US forces under which around 8,000 of the around 18,000 US marines on Okinawa would be relocated to the US territory of Guam.

And any further Japanese delays would exacerbate longstanding annoyance in the US defence and diplomatic establishments, where some already feel their primary Asian partner has been enjoying something of a security free ride.

“It’s important that allies and partners accept that they are going to have to bear some burdens for an alliance to work,” said the senior US official.

View Article & Video in the Financial Times

CHINA: Comment on Chinese Rights Lawyer Adds to Mystery

January 23, 2010

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — The Chinese government made its first official comments on Thursday about a prominent human rights advocate who disappeared nearly a year ago, but its remarks left his fate shrouded in mystery.

At a regular news conference on Thursday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman answered a question about the advocate, Gao Zhisheng, saying that he “is where he should be.”

That the spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, even acknowledged the question was widely interpreted as an indication that Mr. Gao was alive and in captivity. But the remarks’ disturbing overtones left open questions about his physical and mental state.

Fears for Mr. Gao — a combative lawyer who defended Falun Gong spiritual practitioners and published an account of being tortured by state authorities — peaked last week when his brother told The Associated Press that he had tracked down a Beijing policeman who detained Mr. Gao last February, and that the officer said Mr. Gao had gone “missing” in September.

The Chinese government had until Thursday declined to acknowledge that Mr. Gao had been detained or that anything out of the ordinary had happened to him.

Earlier this week, a report in The Sydney Morning Herald, citing a source with ties to a Chinese security agency, said that Mr. Gao was still alive. That report prompted the question at the Thursday news conference.

Mr. Ma responded, “The relevant judicial authorities have decided this case, and we should say this person, according to Chinese law, is where he should be.”

He added: “As far as what exactly he’s doing, I don’t know. You can ask relevant authorities.”

In August 2006 Mr. Gao was arrested and charged with subversion, convicted at a one-day trial and placed under house arrest. In a memoir, Mr. Gao described in graphic detail acts of torture performed on him by security forces, including his genitalia being burned with cigarette butts.

In January 2009, Mr. Gao’s wife took their son and made a harrowing overland flight to Thailand, then to the United States. In interviews afterward she said that Mr. Gao had had no idea of her plans to flee and seek asylum. He was detained the next month.

In the last year, the Obama administration has said it would not make human rights a priority in its dialogue with China. But the Chinese government has stepped up its persecution of rights advocates in China.

It detained a well-known lawyer, Xu Zhiyong, last year, then released him. A court in December gave an 11-year prison sentence to Liu Xiaobo, who circulated an online petition for constitutional reform called Charter 08.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: Mayor of Hiroshima meets President Obama in D.C.

January 21, 10:45 PM

By Joshua Williams

President Obama at the US Conference of Mayors. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba was a guest speaker. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Japanese Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima City met U.S. President Barack Obama at the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Jan. 21st. During their brief exchange President Obama expressed to Mayor Akiba an interest in visiting the Mayor’s city in Japan.

Mayor Akiba attended the opening of the 78th winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors as a special guest speaker, along side First Lady Michelle Obama. The same day Mayor Akiba had a chance to greet President Obama face to face, the first time an acting Mayor of Hiroshima has met a U.S. president on U.S. soil since the city was bombed in WWII, the Asahi reported.

Upon shaking hands, Mayor Akiba invited the President to his city, to which Obama replied, “I would like to come,” Mayor Akiba told Japanese reporters.

However, how likely the President will visit Hiroshima is questionable. Obama had previously mentioned having an interest in visiting the city, but did not during his short first visit to Japan last November. Mayor Akiba and his staff delivered to the White House a formal written request for a Presidential visit to Hiroshima, but no specific timeframe was mentioned in it, according to the Asahi.

Sankei News was also quick to point out that such a visit by a sitting U.S. President could result in a severe backlash among veterans and other Americans who see the use of the atomic bombs as the main reason for the end of WWII and Japanese aggressions. 

Mayor Akiba showed an understanding of this by mentioning, “I want to create an environment where the President’s visit could be appreciated by all,” Sankei News reported.

Mayor Akiba has been hopeful since last year to work directly the President Obama on ridding the world of nuclear weapons. He has previously coined the term “Obamajority” in relationship to this subject, and spoke on the topic in his speech in D.C.

View Article in the Examiner

RUSSIA: Russian journalist dies after beating by police officer

January 21, 2010

By Megan K. Stack

Reporting from Moscow

A Russian journalist who was thrown into a Siberian drunk tank and savagely beaten by a young police officer died Wednesday, in a case that has sparked a national conversation about the latent alcoholism and casual violence that wind their way through life in this winter-hardened land.

Human rights officials warn that the case is just one small story in a tapestry of alcoholism, police brutality and expectation of impunity for authorities that bedevils today's Russia.

Konstantin Popov was a little-known journalist who specialized in writing about economics. A few days into the new year, in the thick of a 10-day Russian holiday known for its debaucheries, the 47-year-old was arrested and placed in the police holding cell reserved for the drunk and disorderly.

He was taken home the next day, but he had been beaten so badly that his wife grew alarmed and took him to a hospital. His internal organs had been damaged, and he soon lapsed into a coma.

Attacks on journalists are not uncommon in Russia, and Popov's death drew national attention. News conferences were called. The Tomsk drunk tank was closed down. The deputy police chief resigned, along with the supervisor of the holding cell. The police chief apologized. The young officer was arrested and confessed.
But human rights activists warn that the case is just one small story in a tapestry of alcoholism, police brutality and expected impunity for authorities that bedevils today's Russia.

"The only thing different about this case is that he happened to be a journalist, so it became a high-profile public case. But the same thing happens every day," said Svetlana Gannushkina, a human rights lawyer and chairwoman of Russia's Civic Assistance committee. "Usually the cases are just closed down because there's no evidence, nobody testifies, and it's impossible to get to the bottom of it."

There's no indication that Popov's death was the deliberate killing of a journalist. He had worked for years as a spokesman for the now-bankrupt Yukos oil company; more recently he had opened a publishing company and printing plant, and wrote columns about economics.

"Anybody could be beaten like that," said Konstantin Karpachyov, editor of the Tomsk edition of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. "He was not a high-profile journalist and he was not publicly known. We can't say he had a big name in local journalism."

Popov wound up in one of the many drunk tanks that exist across Russia, holding pens for people who have drunk themselves blind, beaten up their wives or girlfriends -- or both.

The tanks are notoriously harrowing places. People who wash into police custody during the wee hours are sometimes beaten, forced into cold showers or lashed to cots; they often lose their wallets or cellphones for good.

The 26-year-old police officer told investigators that he lost control of himself because of stress, a Tomsk investigator said at a news conference Wednesday, according to the Interfax news agency. The policeman, Alexei Mitayev, will undergo a battery of psychiatric tests next month.

The investigator told reporters that Mitayev was suffering "a lengthy, traumatizing situation" because he had fathered young children with two different women.

"Essentially, he lived between two families," investigator Andrei Gusev told reporters. "He says the stress is due to family problems."

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

CHINA: China Says U.S. Criticism of Its Internet Policy Harms Ties

January 23, 2010

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — The Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed out Friday against criticism of China in a speech on Internet censorship made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling on the United States government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations.”

Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement posted Friday afternoon on the ministry’s Web site that the criticism leveled by Mrs. Clinton on Thursday was “harmful to Sino-American relations.”   “The Chinese Internet is open,” he said.

The statement by the Foreign Ministry, along with a scathing editorial in the English-language edition of The Global Times, a populist, patriotic newspaper, signaled that China was ready to wrestle politically with the United States in the debate over Internet censorship.

President Obama promised last year to start a more conciliatory era in United States-China relations, pushing human rights issues to the background, but the new criticism of China’s Internet censorship and rising tensions over currency valuation and Taiwan arms sales indicate that animus could flare in the months ahead.

Mrs. Clinton’s sweeping speech with its cold war undertones — likening the information curtain to the Iron Curtain — criticized several countries by name, including China, for Internet censorship. It was the first speech in which a top administration official offered a vision for making Internet freedom an integral part of foreign policy.

The debate over Internet censorship was brought to the fore in China last week when Google announced it might shut down its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, and curtail its other operations in mainland China if Chinese officials did not back down from requiring Google to censor search results.

Until now, the Chinese government had been trying to frame the dispute with Google as a commercial matter, perhaps because officials want to avoid having the dispute become a referendum on Internet censorship policies among Chinese liberals and foreign companies operating in China. On Thursday, He Yafei, a vice foreign minister, had said the Google dispute should not be “over-interpreted” or linked to the bilateral relationship with the United States, according to Xinhua, the official state news agency.

But in the aftermath of Mrs. Clinton’s speech, that attitude could be changing. Mrs. Clinton pointedly said that “a new information curtain is descending across much of the world” and identified China as one of a handful of countries that had stepped up Internet censorship in the past year. (Starting in late 2008, the Chinese government shut down thousands of Web sites under the pretext of an antipornography campaign.) She also praised American companies such as Google that are “making the issue of Internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions.”

The State Department had invited at least two prominent Chinese bloggers to travel to Washington for Mrs. Clinton’s speech, and on Friday the United States Embassy here invited bloggers, mostly liberals, to attend a briefing on Internet issues.

A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Friday that “all we are looking for from China are some answers.”

In its editorial, the English-language edition of The Global Times said Mrs. Clinton “had raised the stakes in Washington’s clash with Beijing over Internet freedom.” The American demand for an unfettered Internet was a form of “information imperialism,” the newspaper said, because less developed nations cannot possibly compete with Western countries in the arena of information flow.

“The U.S. campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy,” the newspaper said, adding that the “U.S. government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.”

Articles on the Chinese-language Web site of The Global Times asserted that the United States employs the Internet as a weapon to achieve worldwide hegemony.

One big question is whether ordinary Chinese will, to any large degree, accept China’s arguments justifying Internet censorship. Although urban, middle-class Chinese often support government policies on sovereignty issues such as Tibet or Taiwan, they generally deride media censorship. That feeling is especially pronounced among those who call themselves netizens.

China has the most Internet users of any country, some 384 million by official count, but also the most complex system of Internet censorship, nicknamed the Great Firewall.

Except in the western region of Xinjiang, which is only starting to restore Internet access after cutting service off entirely after ethnic riots in July, canny netizens across China use software to get over the Great Firewall while chafing at the controls.

Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: Seed plants found at warming Mt. Fuji peak

Jan 21 09:45 PM US/Eastern

TOKYO, Jan. 22 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Researchers said Friday they have found at the summit of Mt. Fuji grass and other seed plants that used to be unable to grow there, probably because the permafrost at Japan's tallest peak is ebbing due to rising temperatures.

The 3,776-meter summit could only grow moss about 20 years ago, but Takehiro Masuzawa, a Shizuoka University professor on plant physiological ecology, and his team recently found plants usually seen at an altitude of about 2,500 meters growing there.

Permafrost at Mt. Fuji was found at an altitude of around 3,100 meters at the lowest in 1976 and at around 3,200 meters in 1998, but the team found its edge further went up and was even partially lost around the summit in 2009.

With low temperatures, strong winds and ultraviolet light as well as soil lacking water and nutrients, the mountaintop environment has been thought to be too harsh to allow the growth of seed plants.

Masuzawa's team will report their findings on Sunday at the University of Tokyo.

View Article on Breitbart

TRAVEL: Insurance against H1N1

November 22, 2009

By Jane Engle

MORE FOR YOUR MONEY

Mounting infections, government alerts and quarantines of foreign visitors: The drumbeat of bad news about H1N1, or swine flu, never lets up. Which leaves travelers among those who worry about protecting themselves.

Besides taking the usual health precautions, travelers should consider buying trip insurance. But don't expect it to cover every situation.

In fact, after the World Health Organization on June 11 declared H1N1 a global pandemic, several big trip insurance providers stopped covering it, said Peter Evans, executive vice president of InsureMyTrip.com, an insurance comparison site and agency based in Warwick, R.I.

Now it appears those providers have reconsidered. Evans said earlier this month he was not aware of any big trip insurers that still enforced a so-called pandemic exclusion for H1N1.

Here's a Q&A on general industry practices on H1N1 for bundled policies, which typically cover the costs of trip cancellation and interruption, medical care and some other situations.

Question: If I cancel a trip because I contract H1N1 before I leave or my traveling companion or a family member contracts it, can I get back my nonrefundable deposits?

Answer: Generally yes, if you provide documentation of the illness.

Q: What if I cancel my trip because I am afraid I will get swine flu or be quarantined at my destination?

A: Generally, no. Insurance companies say their standard policies are designed to insure against unforeseen events, not a state of mind.

It is possible, however, to buy coverage even for a state of mind if you pay extra for a cancel-for-any-reason rider, usually sold as an optional addition to a standard policy.

Here's how it works: A standard policy covers you only for losses incurred if you cancel a trip for one of the covered reasons, such as illness or job loss. A cancel-for-any-reason rider expands the list to just about any cause. The trade-offs: The rider can boost the premium, typically about 4% to 8% of the trip's cost, by half or so, and it may pay less than 100% of losses you incur for reasons outside the standard policy.

Q: Does it matter if a U.S. government agency issues a warning that urges Americans to avoid visiting my destination or advises of risks of travel there? For instance, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert Sept. 25 saying it had received thousands of reports of American visitors being quarantined by China for suspected H1N1 infection. As of Nov. 10, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said pregnant women, the elderly and some others at high risk for H1N1 complications might "want to consider postponing travel."

A: Generally, no. A government warning is typically not a covered reason for trip cancellation, Evans said.

Q: If my tour operator cancels my trip because of fears related to H1N1, can I get back my nonrefundable deposits?

A: Maybe. Representatives for several insurance companies I contacted said they would expect the tour operator to issue refunds in this case. If that doesn't happen, some insurers may decline to cover your losses because fear is not a covered reason, Evans said.

If the tour operator offers to reschedule your trip and you don't want to do that, insurers may refuse to pay because their policies exclude "failure to provide bargained-for travel arrangements," said Bob Chambers, director of operations for CSA Travel Protection.

If you bought a cancel-for-any-reason rider, though, you should be covered for this situation.

Q: If I contract H1N1 on my trip or am quarantined on suspicion of H1N1 infection, will I be compensated for any losses I incur?

A: If you get sick, you're probably covered. But if you're not sick, maybe not. Under the policy of Access America, an insurer based in Richmond, Va., for instance, "individuals who are quarantined even though they are not infected with the H1N1 virus are not eligible for coverage," said spokesman Mark Cipolletti.

My advice? If you're investing a lot of money in your trip, buy travel insurance and pay extra for a cancel-for-any-reason rider. The peace of mind can be worth the added expense.

travel@latimes.com

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

MACAU: A Gambling-Fueled Boom Adds to a Church’s Bane

Macao Journal

Published: December 26, 2007

By DONALD GREENLEES

The Rev. Lancelot Rodrigues can name just about everyone in the sparsely populated pews at St. Anthony’s Church on Sundays. Paul Hilton for the International Herald Tribune

MACAO — At morning Mass in St. Anthony’s Church on Sunday, Lancelot Rodrigues, an 84-year-old Roman Catholic priest, can name just about every member of the congregation in the sparsely populated pews listening to his sermon in Portuguese. He keeps the service short, to about 30 minutes. He knows from years of practice that brevity brings better crowds.

There are as many casinos as churches on Macao today. The New York Times

Even two days before Christmas, there were only a few dozen people to hear Father Rodrigues say they should open their hearts to Christ on his birthday. Nearly all those seated in the church have been coming for many decades; they are either middle-aged or as silver-haired as the priest.

“It is sad,” Father Rodrigues said. “The fervor of the people has now diminished.”

In Macao, the birthplace of Catholicism in China and East Asia, the ornate beauty of the centuries-old churches bears testament to its past. During the Ming Dynasty, Mateo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit and mathematician, became the first to carry Catholicism from Macao to Beijing, where he is buried.

But 450 years after the Portuguese established Europe’s first settlement here on the China coast, bringing missionaries who spread Christianity to China, Japan and Korea, Catholicism in the place the Portuguese called “City of the Name of God” is in crisis.

For the past 30 years, the number of Roman Catholics and their proportion of Macao’s population have been in steep decline, a stark contrast to the 45 percent increase in the number of Roman Catholics worldwide over the same period, according to the Holy See in Rome.

The church in Macao now counts only 18,122 adherents, less than half as many as 30 years ago, and the share of Macanese who call themselves Catholic has now fallen to less than 4 percent, compared with about 15 percent in the 1970s.

There are fewer baptisms. Priests complain that many Roman Catholics are not even married in the church anymore.

“It’s very rare for my friends to go to church,” said Jessica Marques, who at 27 was about the youngest person to come to Sunday Mass in St. Anthony’s. “I don’t think their parents go.”

The decline is also affecting the priesthood. The average age of a priest in the Macao Diocese is over 60. No priest has been ordained by the diocese in 15 years.

Still, the churches here are plentiful. There are 28 chapels and churches in the 11.5 square miles of this semiautonomous region of China, which was vacated by Portugal in 1999.

But Macao’s gambling-fueled economic boom has posed an unexpected challenge to the religion, as many Macanese chase quick riches in the glitzy casinos. Today there are as many casinos as churches, and unlike the churches, the casinos are full and quickly growing in number. The MGM Grand, the latest of many new huge gaming complexes, opened on the waterfront last week.

Father Rodrigues, a jovial priest who has a taste for an occasional fine glass of whiskey against doctor’s orders and admits to having made the odd wager himself in earlier days, said the casinos were both a blessing and a bane.

“In Macao, we were not prepared for this avalanche of money coming in,” he said, adding, “After all, the state and the casinos give us all the benefits we have here, and we forget about the religious benefits. The church, God, has been forgotten.”

Historically, Catholicism has occupied an uneasy place in China. It was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. When restrictions were relaxed in 1976, the official Beijing-controlled church on the mainland had trouble accepting the notion that the Vatican should have the right to appoint bishops, although there have been recent signs of a thaw.

Rome, too, struggled to adapt to Chinese culture. In the 18th century, Augustinian and Jesuit priests were expelled from Macao in a dispute with the Vatican over the practice of allowing Chinese converts to Catholicism to maintain the tradition of ancestor worship.

Cheng Hing Wan, a researcher in religious philosophy at the University of Macao, said Buddhism and Taoism in Macao had remained strong, even as Catholicism declined. “They have a natural affinity with Chinese culture,” he said of these beliefs. “This is something the Catholic Church can never have.”

Yet elsewhere in China, the mainland church, while relatively small and kept under tight rein by the Communist government, has been flourishing. The size of the Beijing-authorized church is estimated at 7 million practitioners, but the underground church lifts that to at least 10 million, according to religion scholars.

Hong Kong has won converts, perhaps because of its high-profile cardinal, Joseph Zen, who has openly sided with the city’s democracy movement and marched in the streets in solidarity with democracy advocates. Dominic Yung, the director of social communication for the Hong Kong Diocese, said having a “very outspoken” cardinal undoubtedly helped recruitment.

Bishop José Lai of Macao, the second Chinese cleric to hold the post, is far more reticent about politics. A day before thousands of Macanese marched in protest this month over government inaction on democracy and corruption, Bishop Lai said in an interview, “I am not political.”

To find priests, Bishop Lai said he had taken to searching for recruits abroad, persuading four South Korean priests to fill the gaps of his aging clergy. Still, he added, “As a diocese, we have to get our own local priests.”

That is likely to remain a difficult goal. The rapid growth of Macao has given the young a dizzying array of leisure and work choices. The average casino job is lucrative enough to enjoy a spendthrift lifestyle.

The answer, some priests say, might come in emulating the promotional flair of the casinos. Father Rodrigues criticized priests for becoming too distant from the people they seek to serve.

“What we need here are priests with public relations attitudes, like the casinos,” he said.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: Local Vote Could Decide Japan Base Issue

January 23, 2010

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Few Americans have ever heard of Yoshikazu Shimabukuro or Susumu Inamine, or even the tiny Okinawan city of Nago, where the two men are candidates in a heated race for mayor.

But this seemingly minor election could, in an indirect way, have major consequences for the United States’ ties with Japan, Washington’s most important Asian ally. Depending on the outcome, political experts say, the vote on Sunday could widen a diplomatic rift with Japan, and possibly even add to pressure to reduce the 50,000 American military personnel stationed in the country.

Nago is where the United States and Japan agreed four years ago to relocate a busy Marine helicopter base in a controversial deal that took a decade to complete — largely because it was so hard to find a community that was willing to accept the Americans.

Now Nago, a city of 60,000, may be about to reconsider its acceptance of the base, with its runways built on landfill in pristine turquoise waters near Henoko, a sleepy fishing village administered by Nago. The question of whether to reject the 2006 deal has emerged as the dominant issue in Sunday’s vote, which pits the pro-base incumbent, Mr. Shimabukuro, 63, against Mr. Inamine, 64, the chairman of the city’s education board, who opposes the base.

In Tokyo, the election is being closely watched as a crucial referendum on the 2006 deal that could sway the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, who has yet to state clearly whether he supports or opposes the plan. Mr. Hatoyama has raised the ire of the Obama administration by putting off the relocation issue until May, when he will decide whether to support it or name a new site for the base.

Mr. Hatoyama is caught between the demands from Washington that he honor the agreement and domestic pressure to make good on his campaign promises to review the deal. But Mr. Hatoyama has said he will heed voters on Okinawa, who overwhelmingly backed his party in last summer’s historic national election, which ended the half-century leadership of the Liberal Democrats. Sunday’s election in Nago is widely seen as an important barometer of public opinion on the island.

An equally large problem, political experts say, is the fact that Nago was the only community that Tokyo could persuade to take the base, the sprawling Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, now situated in the middle of a crowded Okinawan city, Ginowan. Losing Nago as an option leaves few realistic alternatives, analysts say. These could include merging the Marine base with a nearby Air Force base, or moving it off Okinawa altogether, most likely to Guam — options that have been resisted by Washington.

“If Mr. Inamine wins, it becomes very hard to do the current plan,” said Takashi Kawakami, a professor specializing in security issues at Takushoku University in Tokyo. “It will feed calls for moving the base out of Okinawa or out of Japan.”

In Nago, current popular acceptance of the base stands on a fragile consensus that it will bring much-needed jobs and investment. But last summer’s election victory by Mr. Hatoyama’s Democrats stirred up hopes for a reduction in the military burden for Okinawa, the southern island where many of the American military personnel in Japan are located.

A group of antiwar and environmental protesters has erected a large tent on the beach at Henoko to stage a continuing sit-in against the planned base, which they say would destroy one of the last habitats of the endangered dugong, a large sea mammal related to the manatee.

These sentiments have helped give Mr. Inamine, the anti-base challenger, a slight lead in recent polls by local newspapers. Another factor, revealed in interviews late last year with Nago residents, is a growing irritation with the constant delays in construction, and the stress this has caused their community.

“The base has divided our community, and even families have been split,” said Shoji Gishitomi, 35, a fisherman in Henoko. “We want to get this past us, one way or the other.”

Indeed, political experts and local residents agree that Mr. Hatoyama’s decision to delay action on the base, apparently made out of a desire to find a solution to please both Washington and Okinawa, may end up only angering both.

“The United States doesn’t know if it can trust Hatoyama or not,” said Hiroshi Ashitomi, one of the protesters staging the sit-in in Henoko, “and neither do we Okinawans.”

View Article in The New York Times

CHINA: China plans carrots for cruises

2010-1-22  

By Ding Yining

CHINA is planning incentives for its cruise industry including direct sailings between the mainland and Taiwan while the Shanghai World Expo is also expected to see a rise in cruise liners and passengers arriving in the country, a senior official at an industry association said yesterday.

"We are working on a draft plan for direct cruises between China's mainland and Taiwan and will propose it to the Ministry of Communications and Transportation by the end of this year," Zhen Weihang, secretary general of China Cruise and Yacht Industry Association, said at a press conference.

A pilot program to set up China's own cruise company and a passenger ship manufacturer is also under discussion.
The Shanghai Expo is also set to lure more cruise liners and visitors.

More than 74 cruise ships will berth at Shanghai's cruise terminal during the Expo to be held from May to October, and the number of visitors arriving on international cruise liners at coastal ports in China is likely to reach 600,000 in 2010, according to an estimate by the China National Tourism Administration.

"Shanghai's economic development has provided the cruise industry with a solid base of travelers who are willing to take a trip on a cruise liner," said Zhen Hong, secretary general of Shanghai International Shipping Institute.

Shanghai will see 68 cruise liners using it as a home port this year, more than double the 32 in 2009. Travelers departing from China's port on international cruises totaled 380,000 last year, compared with fewer than 10,000 in 2005.

The State Council, or the Cabinet, said in a blueprint in March that Shanghai should regulate its cruise industry and encourage overseas cruise companies to launch routes to the city.

View Article in Shanghai Daily

JAPAN & N. KOREA: A Korean Japanese woman's arduous journey

January 22, 2010

By John M. Glionna

Reporting from Osaka, Japan

COLUMN ONE

Ethnic Korean Ko Jong-mi's family was lured from Japan to North Korea when she was a toddler, forbidden from returning. Her mother's painful regret inspired Ko to strive to find a way back.

Ko Jong-mi can still see her mother lying on her deathbed in a shabby North Korean village.

"I'm sorry," the old woman said, her voice weak. "I'm the one who brought you to this life. Please, please forgive me."

Now 49, Ko long ago forgave her mother for becoming an unwitting victim of North Korea's covert Homecoming Project. Under the slogan "Let's go back to the fatherland!" the campaign persuaded more than 93,000 ethnic Koreans and their families living in Japan to immigrate to North Korea from 1959 to 1984.

A widow supporting her three children with work at an Osaka cardboard factory, Ko's mother fell prey to alleged North Korean operatives who told her about a "heaven on Earth" that provided free education and health benefits.

The recruiters, activists say, were members of the General Assn. of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chosen Soren, whose Tokyo headquarters acts as North Korea's unofficial embassy. Chosen Soren has denied any connection with the program.

It was 1963. Ko's mother had heard rumors that volunteers could leave after three years if they were unhappy. Because she knew of no returnees, she assumed no one wanted to come back -- not that they weren't allowed to.

Ko recalls her mother repeating, "I never dreamed that they would never let us return."

Hoping for better benefits as a family with a combined five children, Ko's mother quickly married a Korean Japanese man and boarded the 111th Emigration Passenger Ship for North Korea. Ko was 2 years old.

Ko's family realized their mistake even before they arrived in the North Korean port of Chongjin.

"My mother said my 15-year-old stepbrother could feel that something wasn't right," Ko recalled. "When he asked to be sent back to Japan, guards took him away. Our family never had a dinner together in North Korea."

Five years later, Ko saw her stepbrother for the next and last time, on a family visit to the mental hospital where he'd been taken.

"There were dirty people with long hair kept in iron cages like in a zoo," she said, wiping away tears. "I hid behind my mother, but I could see them. Many crawled on their hands and feet like animals. All my life I've had to live with that image."

After that, her parents changed, Ko recalled. Her stepfather often brooded and her mother never again mentioned her stepson, who died in the asylum, still a young man. Ko suffered her own despair.

She was often bullied at school, labeled a panjoppari, a slur meaning half-Japanese. Classmates ripped her Japanese-made clothes, considered too colorful compared the drab military-style garb worn by most children.

The teacher lashed out at Ko, telling the class that her mind had been polluted in Japan. "Homecoming members were the lowest rung of the ladder. We were like untouchables," Ko said.

At age 10, she obsessed about killing herself. "But I decided that I couldn't do that to my mother," she said.

Kim Il Sung's communist government came to view many of the newcomers as potential spies, banishing them to concentration camps. They extorted money and goods from the prisoners' families in Japan and elsewhere to keep them alive and support the dictatorship.

The Ko family was banished to the border town of Sinuiju, across the Yalu River from the Chinese city of Dandong. Ko's stepfather eventually worked his way up to a managerial position in a machinery factory.

Her parents sought ways to raise Ko's social standing and finally secured the 14-year-old a spot on the ping-pong team at a local school.

The young girl excelled at sports and competed nationally. "I knew if I worked hard, I was equal to the others," she said. "It changed my life."

Ko entered a local university and eventually became a professor there. She married and had two children. But life remained oppressive. Her parents aged prematurely; her stepfather was arrested and interrogated.

Finally, Ko received the order from officials that convinced her she had to flee North Korea: to secretly dispose of the bodies of neighbors who died during the 1990s famine.

 
"I was dumping these bodies into the river at night and thinking, 'What is this country doing to us? I could end up like this one day.' "

By the end of World War II, 2 million ethnic Koreans lived in Japan -- from intellectuals and migrant workers who went voluntarily to those forcibly delivered there by an Imperialist Japanese government during its rule over Korea.

Facing discrimination, many wanted to return home in the years that followed, but after the partition of Korea, they felt their allegiances divided. Chosen Soren propaganda books and posters that circulated in Japan suggested that North Korea was their true homeland, describing it as "a place where laughs and songs flow like a poem through joyful labor and happy life."

But Ko eventually came to see North Korea as the big lie. Instead of the utopia her mother sought, all she knew was misery and famine.

Her life was spiraling downward. Her mother died in the early 1990s and her stepfather years later -- to the end both yearning for their lives back in Japan.

Then Ko's husband died and she soon lost her university job, banished to perform common labor in a nearby village. "I was back to zero despite my parents' sacrifices," she said.

A decade ago, after Ko and her children were caught trying to defect, she was beaten so severely that she still remains on disability, unable to work.

In 2005, a second defection attempt succeeded, landing Ko and her children in Osaka. She was finally a free woman -- four decades after her family boarded their ship to the so-called promised land.

Today, her children are flourishing in Japan. Her son works as a deliveryman and her daughter is studying to become a doctor.
A slight woman with mournful eyes, Ko has worked to create a new life. She learned to speak Japanese and has made new friends. But she constantly rubs her neck and shoulders, soothing the dull pain that is the legacy of the beatings.

"The North Koreans broke my body," she said. "But they could not reach my soul."

In 2007, Ko was approached by human rights activists here who wanted to sue Chosen Soren for allegedly conspiring to send tens of thousands to North Korea. They wanted Ko to be their plaintiff.

"The defectors are so traumatized they are afraid to speak out," said Fumiaki Yamada, an Osaka University economics professor and member of the Society to Help Returnees to North Korea. "We needed someone to step forward."

Ko knew that family members who remained in North Korea could face retaliation. Yet after months of anguish, she became the first North Korean defector living in Japan to file suit against Chosen Soren.

When she signed the papers, she thought of her mother.
"She lived her entire life in regret," she said. "I don't want any more regrets."

In November, a district judge in Osaka dismissed her case against Chosen Soren over a statute of limitations issue, ruling that she had been back in Japan for too long before filing her claim.

Recently, Ko went to the group's Tokyo offices and banged on the door. "You have to apologize," she demanded, "for what you have done to us."

Chosen Soren officials refused to comment. "We had nothing to do with that," an officer said of the Homecoming Project.

Ko's lawyers have appealed the judge's decision. She also is pursuing ways to sue North Korea in international court.

Although Ko's mother has been dead for nearly two decades, she still recalls their final talk -- and that heartbreaking apology.

"Mother, I have to thank you," a teary-eyed Ko recalled insisting. "You were always there for me. You helped me."

But her mother refused to forgive herself.

"No," she said, "I helped ruin you."

john.glionna@latimes.com

View Article in the Los Angeles Times

HONG KONG: HK Expat Makes Final Appeal

JANUARY 21, 2010

American Convicted in Hong Kong Killing Seeks a Reversal

By JONATHAN CHENG

HONG KONG—A lawyer for Nancy Kissel, an American expatriate sentenced to life in prison for murdering her investment banker husband, made a final appeal for her freedom Thursday in a Hong Kong courtroom.

A decision is expected in a few weeks. In the event that her conviction is overturned, the prosecution said it would seek a retrial.

Ms. Kissel, a Michigan native, gained international notoriety after admitting to killing her husband, a senior banker with Merrill Lynch, in 2003. She has been in jail since her conviction in September 2005 after a widely publicized three-month trial that dominated conversation in Hong Kong's expatriate circles.

Prosecutors say Ms. Kissel served her husband, Robert Kissel, a drug-laced strawberry milkshake on the night of Nov. 2, 2003, before bludgeoning him to death with a statuette and rolling him up in a carpet. Ms. Kissel, now 45 years old, says she can't remember what happened—only that she may have killed her husband to protect herself after he came at her with a baseball bat during a domestic dispute.

Days after the murder, Hong Kong police found Mr. Kissel wrapped in the carpet and kept in a storeroom at the Kissels' luxury apartment complex.

During the original trial, Ms. Kissel's lawyers pushed for an acquittal, arguing that she acted in self-defense. Ms. Kissel described her husband as a violent cocaine user who forced her to perform abusive sexual acts that took a heavy toll on her psychological health.

The prosecution said Mr. Kissel was furious that his wife had an affair with a repairman who lived near the couple's vacation home in Vermont.

An earlier appeal by Ms. Kissel was rejected in October 2008. The current appeal is her last legal recourse.

Ms. Kissel's lawyer, Gerard McCoy, spent much of his time during the seven-day hearing in Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal arguing that prosecutors improperly used "impugned evidence" and that the judge in the original trial misdirected the jury on several key points.

Mr. McCoy argued that prosecutors relied on hearsay evidence to suggest that Mr. Kissel suspected his wife had been trying to kill him for some time—evidence that Mr. McCoy argues shouldn't have been allowed during the proceedings.

Public prosecutor Kevin Zervos, arguing the appeal in court Thursday, called Ms. Kissel's depiction of her husband "character assassination," and said Ms. Kissel "sought refuge in a claim of memory loss" about the events on the fateful night.

Ms. Kissel, her hair tied back, was brought to the court in a wheelchair because of an apparent problem with her leg. She appeared to follow the proceedings closely, and at one point greeted her family members—some who had flown in from the U.S.—with winks and smiles. Some of her friends also attended, as well as the Catholic priest who played a role in her jailhouse conversion.

Speaking outside the courthouse Thursday, Ms. Kissel's mother, Jean McGlothlin, said she had hoped for a final resolution that day but remained optimistic.

"I don't think the verdict will be upheld, I'm very confident about that," Mrs. McGlothlin said. "What they do next, though, I can't say."

Hong Kong chief justice Andrew Li is leading a bench of five judges who will make a final ruling. Among the judges' options are an overturning of the original verdict and the ordering of a retrial.

The trial has already spawned at least two books and a 2008 Lifetime TV movie starring John Stamos as Mr. Kissel's brother, Andrew Kissel—who, in a separate incident, was murdered a year later in Greenwich, Conn., while under house arrest in relation to a number of fraud cases.

The Hong Kong murder became a sensation there because of the peek it offered into the lives of the city's expatriate elite.

Though the family lived in Parkview, one of Hong Kong's most exclusive communities, the Kissels were "a dysfunctional family, and had been for a long time," Mr. McCoy said in his closing arguments Thursday.

Nancy and Robert married in 1989, and moved to Hong Kong in 1998 so Robert could take up a job with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. He jumped over to Merrill Lynch, where he rose to become managing director and head of the investment bank's Global Principal Investments unit in Asia-Pacific.

The couple moved in high circles, appearing at a banquet for former U.S. President George H.W. Bush just before Mr. Kissel's death.

Write to Jonathan Cheng at jonathan.cheng@wsj.com

View Article in The Wall Street Journal

CHINA: Clinton Urges a Global Response to Internet Attacks

January 22, 2010

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — Coupling a salute to Internet freedom with a carefully worded caution to countries like China and Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that countries that engaged in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation.

“In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all,” she said in a speech in Washington. “By reinforcing that message, we can create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comments came in a speech in which she announced a new $15 million effort to help more young people, women and citizens groups in other countries communicate on the Web.

“Given the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing, we need people around the world to pool their knowledge and creativity to help rebuild the global economy, protect our environment, defeat violent extremism and build a future in which every human being can realize their God-given potential,” she said, according to the advance text of a speech at the Newseum in Washington.

Her remarks came at a time when Internet controls have drawn increasing public attention. Limits on Internet searches led to a dispute made public this month between Google and China, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which played a critical role in helping protesters in Iran spread news and images of violent crackdowns on antigovernment demonstrations, have been blocked by the authorities in Tehran.

Foreign companies and millions of Chinese Google users have been watching the matter with keen interest.

Google announced on Jan. 12 that it was “no longer willing to continue censoring” search results for its Chinese users, pointing to breaches of Gmail accounts held by human rights activists in China. Tens of other companies had also been targets of hacking, the company found. Google has taken a cautious approach to the dispute, avoiding placing direct blame on the government in Beijing, and the Chinese government has sought to describe the situation as strictly business.

None of the proposals Mrs. Clinton mentioned focused specifically on China or Iran, and the financing is relatively modest.

Still, Mrs. Clinton made an unmistakable allusion to Google and China when she said, “Countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation.

She did not suggest what the consequences should be, though.

Five United States senators, led by Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, have urged Mrs. Clinton to move quickly to support organizations that have tried to make it easier for people in countries like China and Iran to sidestep government restrictions on Internet use.

The senators, in a letter written before the recent Google dispute, urged Mrs. Clinton to quickly spend $45 million earmarked over the last two years for Internet freedom.

Her announcement, while calling for spending just a third that amount, appeared to be otherwise in line with their urgings.

Mrs. Clinton said the new programs would help expand Internet access to women and other groups, put in place programs to train and support civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations in new media technologies; and support pilot projects to increase access, particularly among young people, in the Middle East and North Africa.

Mrs. Clinton paid tribute to the power of the Internet both for opening new forums for the exchange of ideas and for fostering social and economic development. “In this context,” she said, “the Internet can serve as a great equalizer. By providing people with access to knowledge and potential markets, networks can create opportunity where none exists.”

Brett Solomon, executive director of the group AccessNow.org, which promotes digital openness, praised Mrs. Clinton’s speech.

“This is a big couple of weeks for Internet freedom,” he said, mentioning both Google’s stand and Mrs. Clinton’s proposal. “Digital activists across the world may now increasingly see their demands for democracy and justice pierce the firewall.”

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: It’s a new experience every day

Published: 3:32PM GMT 21 Jan 2010

Find out about the delights in store for you when you visit Japan, whatever your taste, interests and budget.

In Japan you can experience something new everyday, no matter how long you stay. One day you can be eating sushi while cheering on sumo wrestlers and the next talking to robots in Tokyo’s electronics district.

Travel just an hour out of Tokyo on the bullet train to stay in a traditional inn and soak in a natural hot spring spa with views of Mt. Fuji. In Kyoto you can enjoy sake while watching geisha perform ancient dances and the next day step back to the samurai times with a visit to Himeji castle. Every day is a new experience in Japan.

Japan is a great value destination. In Tokyo you can get conveyor belt sushi from just 70 pence per plate and hotel rooms can be found from around £40 per night. So don't let the credit crunch put you off a trip to Japan!

The cherry blossom season in April and autumn leaf season in October and November is a beautiful time to see Japan's temple gardens and summer is a great time for beach holidays to Japan's subtropical Okinawa islands. For snow lovers, the Japanese ski season runs from December into May. Whenever you visit you are sure to love Japan.

View Article in The Telegraph

S. KOREA: Lee Byung-hun: Korea's leading man

January 20, 2010 10:45 p.m. EST

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• South Korean actor is star of many acclaimed Korean films
• Appeared in 2009 Hollywood film "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" alongside Sienna Miller
• Has been star of South Korean soap operas and TV series for around 20 years

(CNN) -- With over 20 years as an actor, Lee Byung-hun has a gained a serious on-screen persona. But when the camera is off, the 39-year-old South Korean is more joker than brooding artist.

Sienna Miller, his co-star in the 2009 blockbuster "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" -- Lee's first foray into Hollywood -- described Lee as not only incredibly talented and handsome, but also incredibly funny and silly.

It's perhaps an unexpected accolade for the star of films like "Joint Security Area" and "The Good, the Bad, The Weird."

Yet he admits that while he takes his work seriously, in "real life" he likes nothing more than having fun and relaxing with a bottle of wine.

For a bit of respite from the fame and adulation he faces daily in South Korea, and for a bit of fun, Lee once became a taxi driver for a few days.

"No one recognized me. It was a weird experience," he told CNN.

After returning the taxi back to a friend and playing with being anonymous, Lee was back into his real life, starring in hugely popular South Korean TV series and making a name for himself in Hollywood.

"Even a few years ago no one thought it would happen. It was just a dream for Korean actors," he said.

With "G.I. Joe" sequels to come, he could soon be hiding from an even bigger army of fans.

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CHINA: Single-Party Democracy

January 22, 2010

By ROGER COHEN

Globalist Opinion

BEIJING — I’m bullish on China after a couple of weeks here and perhaps that sentiment begins with the little emperors and empresses. In upscale city parks and rundown urban sprawls, I’ve seen China’s children pampered by grandparents, coddled by fathers, cared for by extended families.

Scarcity may explain the doting: China’s one-child policy makes children special. But there are deeper forces at work. The race for modernity has not blown apart the family unit, whatever the strains.

After witnessing the atomization of American society, where the old are often left to fend for themselves, China feels cohesive.

It’s seeing that most natural of conspiracies — between grandparents and children — flourishing. It’s listening to young women in coastal factories talking about sending half their salaries home to some village in Guangxi where perhaps it goes to build a second floor on a parental house. It’s hearing young couples agonize over whether they can afford a child because “affording” means school, possible graduate education abroad, and a deposit on the first apartment.

The family is at once emotional bedrock and social insurance.

“My” money equals my family’s money. All the parental investment reaps a return in the form of care later in life. “Children are a retirement fund,” a Chinese-American friend living here told me. “If you don’t have children, what do you do in old age?”

The Chinese, in other words, might be lining up to play karaoke after long factory shifts, but they’re not bowling alone American-style. They’re not stressing because they’re all alone. That’s critical.

There so much heaving change here — China’s planning to open 97 new airports and 83 subway systems in the next five years — the family strikes me as the great stabilizer (even more than the regime’s iron fist).

As Arthur Kroeber, an economist, said, “High-growth stories are not pretty. If you’re growing at 10 percent a year, a lot of stuff gets knocked down.” It sure does: China looms through the dust. But the family has proved resilient, cushioning life for the have-nots, offering a moral compass for the haves (rampant corruption notwithstanding).

After the emperors and empresses, in my bullish assessment, comes the undistracted forward focus. After a while in Asia, you notice the absence of a certain background noise. It’s as if you’ve removed a negative drone from your life, like the slightly startled relief you feel when the hum of an air conditioner ceases.

What’s in that American drone? Oh, the wars of course, the cost of them, and debate around them, and the chatter surrounding terror and fear.

There’s also the resentment-infused aftermath of the great financial meltdown, navigated by China with an adroitness that helped salvage the world economy from oblivion.

In the place of all that Western angst, there’s growth, growth, growth, which tends (through whatever ambivalence) to inspire awe rather than dread. The world’s center of gravity is shifting with a seismic inevitability.

I know, China has kept its foot on the gas of its stimulus package too long and there are bubble signs in housing and labor is no longer limitless, with resultant inflationary pressure. I also know there are tensions between state economic direction and market forces, with resultant waste. But my third bullish element is nonetheless an economy entering a 15-year sweet spot where rising disposable income will drive the domestic market.

Think of what Japan, Taiwan and South Korea went through decades ago, but with a population of 1.3 billion. Think of the 10 to 15 million new urban residents a year and the homes and infrastructure they will need. Think of all the stuff the world demands and can’t get elsewhere with the same quality, quantity and price. Think underlying drivers. They remain powerful.

Of course, political upheaval could unhinge all the above. Given that China’s open-closed experiment is unique in history, nobody can say how this society will be governed in 2050. Immense tensions, not least between the rage that corruption inspires and the difficulty of tackling it without a free press, exist. Still, my fourth reason for running with the Chinese bulls is perhaps the most surprising: single-party democracy.

It doesn’t exist. It’s an oxymoron (although a U.S. primary is a vote within one party). It can easily be the semantic disguise for outrage and oppression. But it just may be the most important political idea of the 21st century.

Rightful resistance is growing in China. Citizens are asserting their rights, not in organizing against the state (dangerous) but in using laws to have a say. Nongovernmental organizations are multiplying to advance agendas from the environment to labor rights. This is happening with the acquiescence of smart rulers.

“They know they cannot manage in the old way,” Ma Jun, a leading environmentalist, told me. “They cannot dam the water, but they can go with the flow and divert it to the places they want.”

Whether that place will ever resemble one-party democracy, I don’t know. But I no longer laugh at the idea.

Harmonious discord is an old Chinese idea. The extended Chinese family is a daily exercise in just that.

View Article in The New York Times