NORTH KOREA: Dennis Rodman Meets Kim Jong Eun (photos)

Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman hung out with North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun during his improbable journey to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters with the leader and later drinking and dining on sushi with him.

RUSSIAN FAR EAST: 6.9 magnitude earthquake strikes off Kuril Islands, eastern Russia

There are no reports of damage.

It's the second quake to hit the Kuril Islands this year. A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck the Isles on January 1. TheIslands were also hit with two earthquakes in November 2012, whichmeasured magnitudes of 6.8 and 5.3.

The Kuril Islands are located 90 kilometers (56 miles) fromSevero-Kuril'sk, Russia. Tokyo is located 2,204 kilometers (1,369miles) away from the Isles.

The population of the Islands is around 19,000 people, and thetotal land area is about 15,600 square kilometers (6,000 squaremiles).

CHINA: Carrier Liaoning arrives at QINGDAO home base

China's sole aircraft carrier arrived yesterday at its permanent base in the eastern port city of Qingdao, Shandong province, home to the navy's North Sea Fleet that oversees waters surrounding Japan and the Korean Peninsula, according to state media.

The arrival of the vessel, named the Liaoning, appeared to indicate that the nation's first carrier base is operational after four years of construction.

CHINA likely to appoint expert on NORTH KOREA, JAPAN as foreign minister

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is likely to appoint an expert on Japan and North Korea as its next foreign minister, three independent sources said, in a measure of Beijing's resolve to improve difficult relationships with two of its closest neighbors.

JAPAN: "Emperor" The Movie

A gripping tale of love and honor forged between fierce enemies of war, “Emperor” unfolds the story inspired by true events of the bold and secret moves that won the peace in the shadows of postwar Japan. After the war was one, the battle for peace began. Click here to watch the trailer.

MACAU: Activists call for UNESCO intervention to protect Macau heritage

A group of activists submitted a petition to the government to restrict the number of visitors, whom they said are not only overwhelming the city

SOUTH KOREA: In Seoul, Gangnam Frugal Style

The Gangnam district, newly famous thanks to the hit song, is known for its opulence. But there are bargains to be found beyond the bling.

RUSSIAN police launch criminal inquiry into US death of adopted child

Fomin came to the US with his biological parents in 2005. Threeyears later, after his father had died from cancer and his motherwas unable to care for him, allegedly due to her mental disease,Anton was placed under the legal guardianship of US citizen SlavikSinchuk.

In May 2012, the boy was killed in a fire at the home of hisguardian in Davey, Nebraska. His guardians were away at the time ofthe accident.

Initial reports suggested that Anton was locked in the basementwhen the house caught fire, but Sinchuk denied the claim, sayingthe boy was sleeping in his room in the basement and they haddecided not to wake him up as they were leaving for a shorttime.

US police found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and nocharges were filed against Sinchuk or his wife. Shortly afterwards,Russian Children’s Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov urged Russianauthorities to launch a criminal investigation into theaccident.

Russian officials have requested more information on Anton'sdeath. The US reportedly pledged to cooperate with Moscow and share“all available information.”

News of the investigation came amid the unfolding case ofanother adopted Russian child who died in the US: Maksim Kuzmin,adopted by the Shatto family, died in Texas in late January. Aninvestigation into the death is ongoing.

Last year, Russian lawmakers signed the 'Dima Yakovlev law,'banning all US citizens from adopting Russian children. The lawcame into force on January 1 as a response to the deaths of Russianchildren adopted by American families, as well as US reluctance tocooperate with Russian authorities in investigating the cases.

Yakovlev was a Russian boy adopted by an American family fromVirginia, who died after his adoptive father left him locked in acar on a hot summer day. He was 21 months old at the time of his death.

NORTH KOREA: U.S. ex-basketball player Rodman arrives in North Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) - Retired U.S. basketball player Dennis Rodman arrived in North Korea to film a television documentary on Tuesday with representatives of the Harlem Globetrotters celebrity team, North Korean state television reported.

ASIA’s 50 Best Restaurants Unveiled

Les Créations de Narisawa, a Tokyo restaurant that applies French technique to local Japanese ingredients, topped the inaugural S. Pellegrino Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, announced Monday night in Singapore.

NE ASIA: Permanent Dokdo Exhibition to Open in Beijing

A permanent Dokdo exhibition will open at the Korea Center in downtown Beijing early next month to publicize Korea's sovereignty over the islets.

Korean overseas missions and cultural centers have distributed PR booklets on Dokdo, but this is the first permanent exhibition.
The mov...

AUSTRALIA: Sydney's small bar scene takes off

Leave the big pubs to the gamblers. Drinkers looking for an intimate Sydney watering hole have more choices than ever

TRAVEL: Air travel and the sequester

THE sequester is looming. Big cuts to America's federal budget are set to take effect automatically on Friday March 1st, unless Congress can agree on a new budget deal. If it does not, $85 billion will be cut from the 2013 budget and $1.1 trillion over the next decade. The axe will fall mainly on the defence budget, from which 8% will be chopped, but 5% must also be found from non-military programmes. One of those, says the government, is air travel. Last week Ray LaHood, President Obama's transportation secretary, warned Americans that the sequester could lead to massive air travel delays across the country.Mr LaHood said that about 10% of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which monitors air traffic safety in America, would be given a day off without pay ("furloughed") on any given day after the sequester hits. The FAA faces around $600m in cuts over the rest of the fiscal year, and would be forced to eliminate midnight shifts at over 60 air traffic control towers around the country. The FAA is even considering closing many other facilities entirely.Many of the facilities that would be closed, or where midnight shifts would be eliminated, are not crucial transit hubs. Air traffic control at New York's JFK, Chicago's O'Hare, Washington's Dulles, and many other enormous airports would be unaffected. But many business travellers rely on small ...

JAPAN: Post-Summit Decisions for Prime Minister Abe

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, returned to Tokyo this weekend after his first summit meeting in Washington, DC, with President Barack Obama. Post-summit, Abe faces two important economic decisions. The first is his nomination for the next governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ). The second is whether Japan’s prime minister will urge his party onwards to participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). To succeed, Abe now has to confront some political hurdles at home.

The lack of a majority in the Upper House will mean Abe needs to ensure his BOJ head passes muster with his political opposition. Nominations for a new BOJ governor require approval from both houses of parliament. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has a firm majority in the Lower House after its sweeping victory on December 16, but the last time the LDP sought to replace the head of Japan’s central bank it ran into paralyzing opposition in the Upper House. In 2008, the LDP sought to replace then retiring BOJ governor Toshihiko Fukui with Toshiro Muto, a former vice minister of finance, but the opposition-controlled Upper House voted him down. This forced then prime minister Yasuo Fukuda back to the drawing board, and in the end, the current BOJ governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, then a vice governor at the BOJ, became the acting head.

This time round Japanese and global media have been full of speculation ever since the prime minister publicly called for a much more aggressive use of monetary instruments to end Japan’s deflation. Inflation targeting by the BOJ is one of Abe’s preferred policy goals, a core idea in what is now widely referred to as “Abenomics.” Kikuo Iwata, a professor from Gakushuin University, was seen as a bold choice for Abe, according to Bloomberg, since he has called for “a ramping up in Japan’s monetary base to end deflation.” But the name that has recently emerged as the likely pick is a man that was also a contender in 2008, Haruhiko Kuroda, the current head of the Asian Development Bank. Kuroda served in the Ministry of Finance where he managed currency policy from 1999 to 2003, and is on record arguing then that the BOJ should introduce inflation targets. Interestingly, even when LDP-DPJ bickering was at its worst, Kuroda managed to still attract DPJ support. The political calculus may win out, however, as leading media reports emanating from Tokyo today suggest that a compromise solution of picking the more experienced and internationally well-known Kuroda as governor, while nominating the more academic and policy aggressive Iwata as vice governor, is the most likely.

On TPP, the politics seem more precarious for the prime minister. In an unusually terse Joint Statement after the Abe-Obama meeting, the two governments confirmed their understanding of the terms of Japan’s participation:

Recognizing that both countries have bilateral trade sensitivities, such as certain agricultural products for Japan and certain manufactured products for the United States, the two Governments confirm that, as the final outcome will be determined during the negotiations, it is not required to make a prior commitment to unilaterally eliminate all tariffs upon joining the TPP negotiations. [The full statement is available here.]

While it leaves much to be desired in terms of syntax, it was apparently enough for most of Japan’s media to believe that their prime minister had just received a major concession from the White House. All of Japan’s major newspapers reported forward momentum coming out of the summit meeting for the prime minister’s TPP decision-making, and a meeting with coalition partner Komeito president Natsuo Yamaguchi on Monday suggested this interpretation was an accurate reflection of LDP intent. Moreover, on Monday evening (Tokyo time), Prime Minister Abe received his party’s approval for his government to make the final decision on when to participate in the TPP. Expectations now are for an announcement at the beginning of March.

Whereas the BOJ nomination may provide some short-term political feuding, it is unlikely to be a protracted conflict, and indeed may offer little dispute at all. The DPJ leadership has already indicated it understands the public will not be forgiving if politics were to leave the BOJ position unfulfilled for any length of time. The real political risk will be the prime minister’s decision on TPP. With an Upper House election in July, the broader question is what cost could accrue to the prime minister and his party at the polls when some key supporters, most notably the agricultural cooperatives that benefit from government protections for their activities, remain adamantly opposed.

Opinion polls suggest that anywhere from 60 to 65 percent of the Japanese people support participation in TPP, and the prime minister is gaining in public support (70 percent and rising after his Washington trip). Japan’s business leaders also openly call for Japan’s participation, and Abe seems buoyed by the stock and currency markets’ response to his “Abenomics.”

In Washington, Mr. Abe declared that “Japan is Back!” It may be too early to declare economic victory, but politically, he has certainly changed the tenor of Japan’s domestic debate. With a TPP decision seemingly forthcoming, it seems Mr. Abe is gambling on boldness. Let’s see if he can carry his nation—and his party—with him.

VLADIVOSTOK: At Least 17 Amur Tigers Dead in Russia's Far East in 2012

At least 17 Amur tigers died in Russia’s far eastern territories over the past year, most of them due to human actions, local wildlife experts said on Monday.

CHINA: The Bo Xilai Saga Continues

Disgraced former Politburo member Bo Xilai has refused to cooperate with Chinese authorities and has staged two hunger strikes, Reuters reported on Thursday citing two independent sources with ties close to the Bo family.

Once seen as a rising star and future Politburo Standing Committee member, Bo was ousted from the Communist Party last year after his recently dismissed police chief, Wang Lijun, sought asylum in a U.S. consulate, telling American diplomats there that Bo’s wife had murdered British businessman Neil Heywood. As the drama unfolded a series of other allegations emerged against Bo and his family, including that he wiretapped the phones of senior CCP officials.

Although Wang and Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, have both been tried and convicted of their crimes, Bo himself has yet to be formally charged but is presumed to be in CCP custody. He was last seen in March of last year.

According to the Reuters report Bo is causing party officials nearly as much trouble in detention as he was causing them in power. Both sources confirm he has gone on a hunger strike with one saying “He was on [a] hunger strike twice and force fed." Although he had not been tortured, according to the source, Bo had apparently grown so weak while in custody that at one point he was hospitalized in Beijing.

One of Reuters’ sources also said that Bo had refused to shave while in detention and now had a chest-length beard. The source went on to say that he was refusing to cooperate.

This would be wholly consistent with how Bo acted throughout his career. The Princeling son of Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Immortals who ruled China during the Deng Xiaoping era, the younger Bo is said to have, like many Princelings, seen it as his birth right to rule China. Bo's rapid rise through the CCP was partly attributable to his father's myriad connections. These included, among many others, General Secertary Jiang Zemin whom the elder Bo had helped come to power after he played a role in ousting his two immediate predcessors– Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang.

From the time he was mayor of Dalin in Northwest China, the younger Bo flaunted CCP protocols against self-promotion and personal extravagance. On Bo’s time in Dalin, John Garnaut has written, “It was his personal trophy town. It wasn’t long before he could control the colour of the water fountains and the accompanying soundtracks.”

Later, as Mayor of Chongqing, Bo shrouded himself in neo-Maoist populism as concentrated power in his office. His so-called “Chongqing Model” achieved high rates of economic growth but his personal governing style and disregard for the party hierarchy and the law made Bo a lot of enemies, including Premier Wen Jiabao. In stark violation of CCP protocol, for instance, Bo often seemed to be publicly campaigning for a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, which he had been passed up for in 2007.

So while Bo’s current antics may come off as Martyr-like given his current state of limbo in CCP detention,  they are little more than Bo’s life-long sense of entitlement and superiority in a new guise.
Particularly revealing was how one of Reuters’ sources described Bo’s actions towards his interrogators: “He wouldn't answer questions and slammed his fist on a table and told them they were not qualified to question him and to go away [emphasis added].”

Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.

TAIWAN: Ang Lee wins Oscar for best director

Taipei, Feb. 25 (CNA) Taiwanese director Ang Lee on Sunday (L.A. time) won the 2013 Academy Award for best director,

HONG KONG: Soaring Above the City on Foot

"Cities Without Ground," a quirky guide to Hong Kong by a trio of architects, offers a roadmap on the best way to explore the vibrant Asian hub—on foot, and high above the concrete streets.

KOREAN PENINSULA: First Female South Korean President Faces North Korea Crisis

(SEOUL, South Korea) — Park Geun-hye became South Korea’s first female president Monday, returning to the presidential mansion where she grew up with her dictator father. Park’s last stint in the Blue House was bookended by tragedy: At 22, she cut short her studies in Paris to return to Seoul and act as President Park Chung-hee’s first lady after an assassin targeting her father instead killed her mother; she left five years later after her father was shot and killed by his spy chief during a drinking party. As president, Park will face stark divisions both in South Korean society and with rival North Korea, which detonated an underground nuclear device about two weeks ago. South Koreans worry about a growing gap between rich and poor, and there’s pressure for her to live up to her campaign suggestion that she can return the country to the strong economic growth her strong-man father oversaw. North Korea’s atomic test will also present a challenge to her vow to soften Seoul’s current hard-line approach to its northern rival.

Pyongyang, Washington, Beijing and Tokyo are all watching to see if Park pursues an ambitious engagement policy meant to ease five years of animosity on the divided peninsula or if she sticks with the tough stance of her fellow conservative predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. Park’s decision is important because it will likely set the tone of the larger diplomatic approach that Washington and others take in stalled efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. Park technically took over as the clock struck midnight. Her swearing-in ceremony later Monday was to be attended by tens of thousands, including dignitaries such as U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso. South Korean superstar PSY, who rose to surprising global fame last year with his song “Gangnam Style,” was set to perform. Park’s first weeks in office will be complicated by North Korea’s warning of unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity,” a

CHINA: Xi gets off to good start in first 100 days but drastic reforms are unlikely

China's new leader Xi Jinping has certainly lit up enough "fires" to generate exciting chatter at home and abroad about himself, his new administration and the future direction of the mainland economy since he officially took over the reins of the Communist Party on November 15.

TIBETAN Man Burns Himself, Protesting CHINA’s Policy in Tibet

Reports just coming out of Tibet say a Tibetan man sets himself on fire  at about 8 PM local time February 24, 2013 in Haidong  Prefecture in Qinghai Province, Tibet.

Phakmo  Thondup, who is about 20-year-old, protesting China’s repressive policy in Tibet, set himself ablaze in Ja Khung Monastery in Hainan  Prefecture in Qinghai Province.

Reports say the monks of the Ja Khung Monastery took him right away to a local hospital and is being treated for burns.  There is ...

BRUNEI police probe death of woman found in concrete

Brunei police are probing the death of a Malaysian woman found encased in a block of cement in her friend’s garden, in the latest violent death to shock the sultanate.

CHINA Lantern Festival in Pictures

Lantern Festival marks end of Chinese New Year

CHINA & JAPAN: 9 chats with top true-crime authors

A con man extraordinaire who fell for an epic Big Con. A killing – along with a blimp crash, race riot and transit strike – that turned Chicago upside down. The brutal murders of beautiful young British women in 2000 Japan and 1937 China. And the legacies of the worst school massacre in American history (not Newtown) and of that horrific day at Columbine High. The pointless and immensely tragic assassination of a now-forgotten president. The eternal fascination of Alcatraz. Plus a man named Roosevelt who tried, in vain, to turn back the violence and vice of New York City in the 1880s and 1890s. Over the past year, I interviewed authors who have tackled each one of these topics. With a couple exceptions, their books were published in 2012. And with no exceptions, all are great – if sometimes harrowing – reads. Here are excerpts from our chats. Click on the links to read the full interviews.

JAPAN & US: The anatomy of an alliance | Video

As Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prepares for his first meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Reuters looks at the current state of ties ...

TRAVEL: Cuts a ‘calamity’ for air travel

The Obama administration is heightening its warnings about looming budget cuts by emphasizing an area the traveling public already dreads: gridlock in the skies.

The White House rolled out Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday to warn that sequestration would bring “calamity” to air travel by forcing the FAA to close dozens of control towers and eliminate overnight shifts at others, in turn prompting airlines to cancel or delay flights. Delays would be as much as 90 minutes, he said.

JAPAN: Abe vows to revive Japanese economy, sees no escalation with China

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Americans on Friday "I am back and so is Japan" and vowed to get the world's third biggest economy growing again and to do more to bolster security and the rule of law in an Asia roiled by territorial disputes.

Stripping off the Mask: Jane Park Wells and the Ascent of Korean Women by Meher McArthur

Asian Accents:  This article is part of an ongoing series that explores the diverse range of artistic influences from Asia in the arts and culture of Southern California.

On February 25th of this year, Park Geun-hye will be sworn in as South Korea's first female president. Although being the daughter of former president Park Chung-hee gave her a considerable leg-up in the December 2012 elections, the fact that 51.6% of the Korean population voted for a female president (who emphasized her gender in her campaign) is huge in a country where the role of women has traditionally been very limited. Probably the most Confucian of Asian cultures today, Korean society has not encouraged female participation in the realms of business or politics. Until recently, the primary role of a Korean woman has been to provide her husband with children -- and ideally, sons . . .

Stripping off the Mask: Jane Park Wells and the Ascent of Korean Women by Meher McArthur

JAPAN: Press Briefing on the Visit of Prime Minister Abe of Japan, February 2013

Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes held this conference call with National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Danny Russel and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Mike Froman, to preview Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's visit to Washington, on February 22, 2013.

JAPAN's Abe Aims to Forge Deeper Ties on U.S. Visit

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to show President Obama that he has the clout and endurance to strengthen economic and security ties.

JAPAN: Donald Richie: 1924-2013

The passing of Donald Richie – writer, painter, filmmaker and Tokyo flaneur – marks the end of an era. Richie, who died Tuesday in Tokyo, was far and away the West’s foremost interpreter of things Japanese. American author Tom Wolfe called him “the Lafcadio Hearn of our time”.
Born April 17, 1924, in the small Midwestern town of Lima, Ohio, Richie first arrived in Japan in 1947, as a 22-year old typist with the Allied Occupation forces. His eyes were soon opened to the country that he would choose to call home for most of his life.

“If I had stayed in Lima, Ohio, I think my life would’ve been endless, like two thousand years,” Richie told Kyoto Journal in 1999, in a superb interview still online here. “But here, everything is so interesting, every day has something new you can do, people you can meet. Everyday you wake up and think ‘What am I going to learn today?’ And, of course, that’s what kept me here, and what made things go so fast."
Aside from a stint at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1953, and a period working as film curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Richie spent roughly half a century in Tokyo, documenting and delving deeply into Japanese art, society and culture.

When he first arrived in Japan, the country was in ruins and still seen as the enemy. But Richie found himself driven to understand and connect with Japanese on an individual, human level.

“Donald was a great humanist. Though he fraternized with the rich and famous, he wrote about everyman, the invisible. He elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary in this way,” Leza Lowitz, a Tokyo-based author, editor and personal friend of Richie, told The Diplomat. “For him, writing was a way of life. It was built into the way he lived: Observing, questioning, learning. He was always open to seeing. And in seeing, he was able to transform an ordinary experience into something extraordinary and sometimes transcendent.”

As an observer and writer, “prolific” is an understatement for Richie’s output. Throughout the course of his long life he produced some 40 books, on themes ranging from travelogues and historical novels to collections of short fiction and his renowned tomes on Japanese film scholarship. Volumes on flower arranging, the art of the Japanese tattoo, aesthetics, sympathetically written portraits of individuals and a riveting memoir also fill his bibliography.

Yet even this fails to capture the true extent of Richie’s contributions as a writer. In the introduction to The Inland Sea, his classic autobiographical travelogue of a journey through Japan’s Seto Naikai (Inland Sea) – the shallow, picturesque sea bounded by Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu – author Pico Iyer writes: “It is, in fact, an injustice to call Richie a writer on Japan; really, he is a writer on artifice and time and death, on being human. And most of all he’s a writer on the particularly modern art of learning how to be a foreigner.”

In the introduction, Iyer goes on to place Richie in the company of literary figures such as Graham Greene, Jan Morris, Paul Bowles and Somerset Maugham. He continues: “The only problem with Richie’s writing, in fact, is that it’s never been easy enough to find around the world, in part because people, knowing him to be a writer in Japan, assume that he’s a writer on Japan. And as a pure, reflective writer of a kind that seems all but antique, he has done nothing to sell himself to the world or to dress himself up with gestures or high concepts.”

This humility and approachableness are very evident in his writing. Even readers who never met him are afforded an intimate glimpse in much of his writing of Richie as a human being.

Picking up on this, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea in 1992, which is narrated by Richie. The movie works on two levels. On one, it explores the geographical body of water and the traditional aspects of Japan disappearing around it. But more deeply, it dives into the metaphorical “Inland Sea” within the author himself.
Ultimately, Richie is best known for his association with film. Indeed, he almost single-handedly introduced the West to Japanese film, starting with his landmark 1959 study The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, co-authored with Joseph L. Anderson.

In The Japan Journals: 1947-2004, edited over the course of a decade by Lowitz, Richie tells the story of a trip to a film studio in the late-1940s when he met a director and “someone I guessed was a star” in “a loose Hawaii-shirt”. The duo turned out to be legendary director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune. In similar fashion, Richie had a knack for meeting people in high places and telling us about them

Richie later did the subtitles for three Kurosawa films and penned books on the director. He also became a great lover of Yasujiro Ozu’s films and introduced him to the West in another lauded study.
“His many publications on Japanese film were the touchstone from which all of us English-language critics on the subject sprang,” Rob Schwartz, Tokyo Bureau Chief of Billboard Magazine and reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, told The Diplomat. “As a friend he had a loving human warmth and deep generosity of spirit that is very rare in this world. This deep humanism informed his analysis and writing on film.”

Ultimately, it was Richie’s humanism, remarked upon by all who knew him, that defines his life and work, and helps explain the outpouring of tributes since his death.

“I loved his curiosity, compassion, sensuality and edgy wit…. He was gracious and generous.… I was in awe of his talents. Once, when he called a suggestion ‘brilliant’, I was over the moon,” recalled Stewart Wachs, a former associate editor of Kyoto Journal who edited Richie’s work over the years. “But with time I also grew humorously puzzled by his mangled spelling, and sure enough when I asked him about it he just laughed and said he trusted his editors to fix that and other minor blemishes while he rode the alpha waves that enabled him to be prolifically creative.”

Wachs continued, “Being Donald, he had actually put this too humbly, for his submission drafts were routinely extraordinary. He revised them extensively, making them a formidable challenge for any editor to improve.”

What turned out to be one of Richie’s most interesting works were his own journals, edited by Lowitz and published by Stone Bridge Press as The Japan Journals: 1947-2006.

Stone Bridge Press publisher Peter Goodman told The Diplomat he “was totally floored by what was there (in the Journals). I guess I had been expecting a linear and comprehensive account, but it was more like dipping in and out of a stewpot. There are time gaps and threads never followed to the end, but the palpable sense of time passing, a man aging, and an old postwar world fading away is astonishing. His life seemed so full of meetings, conversations, and travels, punctuated now and then by a celebrity or by an ordinary but engaging person.”

The Journals are interspersed with accounts of Richie’s encounters with some of Japan’s biggest movers and shakers, as well as artists and dignitaries visiting from abroad. Yukio Mishima, Toru Takemitsu, Truman Capote and Somerset Maugham make appearances, among many others.

Goodman added, “While he (Donald) indicated to me that they were expurgated, they are certainly not tame and reveal a penchant for adventure and exploration that some readers have found a bit shocking. So while I was expecting a more mannered ‘overview’, we got — thank goodness — a very full-blooded portrait of a man and the world he inhabited, and not entirely as the observer he became most famous for being.”

Lowitz said Richie was equally generous as a mentor. “Donald was an incredible inspiration to young writers such as myself. He was diligent and committed to writing – he did it every day, no matter what.”
She called him “a master of form”, explaining that “his work in the Japanese cinema informed his understanding of narrative. The films of Ozu, among his favorites, were exemplary because in a good film, the end is built into the beginning. He said ‘To become aware of form is a liberating experience’.”

This need for structure and form in order to achieve freedom was a recurring theme for Richie. It comes up time and again in his writing and recorded conversations and, indeed, was part of the very reason he chose to make his home in Japan, where he could never fully belong.

In 1999, he told Kyoto Journal, “I think you can only get freedom within bounds. I don’t know who said that — Sartre? . . . But I believe it. You set your own boundaries and then within those you find freedom.”

GUAM: U.S. Gov’t to Air-drop Toxic Mice on Guam Snakes

(ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam) — Dead mice laced with painkillers are about to rain down on Guam’s jungle canopy. They are scientists’ prescription for a headache that has caused the tiny U.S. territory misery for more than 60 years: the brown tree snake. Most of Guam’s native bird species are extinct because of the snake, which reached the island’s thick jungles by hitching rides from the South Pacific on U.S. military ships shortly after World War II. There may be 2 million of the reptiles on Guam now, decimating wildlife, biting residents and even knocking out electricity by slithering onto power lines. (MORE: Marines’ Move to Guam: Just the First Step) More than 3,000 miles away, environmental officials in Hawaii have long feared a similar invasion — which in their case likely would be a “snakes on a plane” scenario. That would cost the state many vulnerable species and billions of dollars, but the risk will fall if Guam’s air-drop strategy succeeds. “We are taking this to a new phase,” said Daniel Vice, assistant state director of U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services in Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Islands.

“There really is no other place in the world with a snake problem like Guam.” Brown tree snakes are generally a few feet (1 meter) long but can grow to be more than 10 feet (3 meters) in length. Most of Guam’s native birds were defenseless against the nocturnal, tree-based predators, and within a few decades of the reptile’s arrival, nearly all of them were wiped out. The snakes can also climb power poles and wires, causing blackouts, or slither into homes and bite people, including babies; they use venom on their prey but it is not lethal to humans. The infestation and the toll it has taken on native wildlife have tarnished Guam’s image as a tourism haven, though the snakes are rarely seen outside their jungle habitat. The solution to this headache, fittingly enough, is acetaminophen, the active ingredient in painkillers including Tylenol. The strategy takes advantage of

NORTH KOREEA to Allow Mobile Internet for Foreigners

(PYONGYANG, North Korea) — North Korea will soon allow foreigners to tweet, Skype and surf the Internet from their cellphones, iPads and other mobile devices in its second relaxation of controls on communications in recent weeks. However, North Korean citizens will not have access to the mobile Internet service to be offered by provider Koryolink within the next week. Koryolink, a joint venture between Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt‘s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE, informed foreign residents in Pyongyang on Friday that it will launch a third generation, or 3G, mobile Internet service no later than March 1. (PHOTOS: Kim Jong Il as First Among Equals) The announcement comes just weeks after North Korea began allowing foreigners to bring their own cellphones into the country to use with Koryolink SIM cards, reversing a longstanding rule requiring most visitors to relinquish their phones at customs and leaving many without easy means of communication with the outside world. The two changes in policy mean foreigners in North Korea will have unprecedented connectivity while living, working or traveling in a country long regarded as one of the most isolated nations in the world. However, wireless Internet will not yet be offered to North Koreans, who are governed by a separate set of telecommunication rules from foreigners. North Koreans will be allowed to access certain 3G services, including SMS and MMS messaging, video calls and subscriptions to the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper — but not the global Internet. The lack of Internet access in North Korea has put the country at the bottom of Internet freedom surveys. Though North Korea is equipped for broadband Internet, only a small, approved segment of the population has access to the World Wide Web. During a visit to Pyongyang early last month, Google‘s executive chairman pressed the North Koreans to expand access to the Internet. Eric Schmidt noted that it would be “very easy” for North Korea to offer Internet on Koryolink’s fast-expanding 3G cellphone network. “As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean

CHINA: 4.8-magnitude earthquake hits Guangdong, felt in Hong Kong

A 4.8-magnitude quake hit northeastern Guangdong province at 11:34am on Friday, according to China's Earthquake Networks Centre.

Hong Kong residents have reported feeling shocks from the earthquake, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.

The observatory said it was analysing data on the quake and would release more information later.

SOUTH KOREA Country Specific Information

Republic of Korea

COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The Republic of Korea (South Korea or ROK) is a highly developed, stable, democratic republic with powers shared between the president and the legislature. Korea is a modern economy where tourist facilities are widely available. English is rarely spoken outside the main tourist and business centers.

You can find more information about tourism in the ROK through the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) website (in English) or by calling 1-800-868-7567 from the United States and Canada. The KTO also operates a telephone information service within the Republic of Korea, that you can reach by dialing 1330 (02-1330 from cell phones) anywhere in the country. The KTO telephone service has English speakers and is available 24 hours every day of the year. The Seoul Global Center (SGC) assists foreigners with an English-speaking help line at (02) 1688-0120. The SGC is open from 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Read the Department of State's Fact Sheet on South Korea for additional information . . .

CHINA's Bo Xilai not cooperating on probe, been on hunger strike: sources

BEIJING (Reuters) - Disgraced former senior Chinese leader Bo Xilai is refusing to cooperate with a government investigation into him and has staged hunger strikes in protest and at one point was treated in hospital, sources with knowledge of the matter said.

JAPAN: Mr. Abe Comes to Washington

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. today ahead of his meeting with President Barak Obama at the White House on Friday. The summit will be the first between the two leaders since Abe returned to power in December.

Abe had initially sought to make the U.S. the destination of his first overseas trip as Prime Minister but was reportedly rebuffed by the White House who said a trip would not be possible until after President Obama’s inauguration last month. As a result, the Japanese leader traveled to Southeast Asia instead as Tokyo looks to use common concern over China to strengthen ties with ASEAN member nations.
Abe’s trip comes at a time when Tokyo is facing a tougher regional security environment. Japan remains locked in a tense standoff with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, with few signs of a resolution in sight. The summit also takes place just a week after North Korea conducted its third nuclear tests, withmany speculating that it plans to undertake at least one more test in the near future.

The nationalistic Japanese leader has long been a strong proponent of strengthening the U.S.-Japan military relationship. Even so, the Chinese and North Korean challenges have made closer military ties with the U.S. a far more urgent matter for Tokyo.

Indeed, at Japan’s request the two sides announced they would consider revising their military treaty last November while Abe’s predecessor, Yoshihiko Noda, was still in office. At the time, Japan had said that revisions were necessary because of “qualitative changes in the security environment” since the last time the allies revisited the treaty in 1997. Working-level talks began the following month.

The U.S. has long pushed Japan to increase its security role in the region by upgrading its military forces and loosening restrictions on what types of operations they can participate in. These views are shared by Abe and, as a result of Chinese and North Korean actions, a growing number of Japanese. However, Abe’s eagerness to expand Japan’s defense role has reportedly unnerved some U.S. officials, who— while insisting they still would like the Self-Defense Forces to embrace “collective self-defense”— worry Abe’s defense policies will further worsen tensions with China and other regional powers like South Korea.

In revisiting the defense treaty, Washington will undoubtedly seek to resist Japan pressure to make a more explicit commitment to the defense of islands that Japan disputes with its neighbors. So far, the U.S. has adopted a characteristically ambiguous policy towards the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, affirming that the Islands do fall under its defense treaty with Japan, while insisting it does not take sides on territorial disputes.

Abe’s visit will also have a strong economic component to it, as the Japanese leader seeks to revise a sluggish economy that also faces long-term structural issues. Abe will want reassurances from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support his aggressive monetary policies that have come under fire from some of Tokyo’s trade partners. Abe will also seek to convince Obama to support exports of America’s natural gas to Japan, which remains highly dependent foreign energy imports.

President Obama, on the other hand, will be most concerned with getting Abe to commit Japan to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the cornerstone of Washington’s economic agenda in region. The high free trade standards the TPP requires have made it the target of certain powerful interests groups inside Japan, especially the heavily subsidized Agricultural sector. Given the leverage the U.S. has over Japan as a result of Tokyo’s standoff with China, it should not be difficult for Washington to overcome this resistance to the TPP.

Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He is on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
The post Mr. Abe Comes to Washington appeared first on Flashpoints.

CHINA: Today in history, February 21

 

February 21
On this day. 1972: In what was arguably the most dramatic trip ever taken by a president of the United States, Richard Nixon arrived in China for an eight-day visit. The announcement that Nixon, a lifelong hardline anti-communist, would visit China stunned the world. The United States and China had been foes for a quarter-century, but Nixon recognized the need for better ties — which would also help the U.S. in its Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. During his week-long visit, Nixon met with Mao and Zhou En-Lai; it is seen today as the beginning of China's drive to modernize...
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JAPAN: Sony thinks outside the PlayStation 4 box

No details are given on where the device will be sold, or at what cost, as Sony attempts to turn the PS4 into a wider entertainment device

CHINA: TIBETAN teens die in rare double self-immolation

Two Tibetan teenagers died after they set fire to themselves in protest at Chinese rule, reports and Western rights groups said, in a rare instance of a double self-immolation in the restive region.

The former primary school classmates were named as 18-year-old Sonam Dargye and a 17-year-old identified by US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) only as Rinchen.

They died on Tuesday in Aba prefecture, a Tibetan area of Sichuan province in southwestern China, RFA said, where a wave of the gruesome acts have occurred.

ASIA: Obama 2.0 Confronts Asia

President Barack Obama begins his second term with a new national security team in the making. Although at this time only John Kerry has been confirmed, its seem likely that most, if not all of his key nominees (former Senator Chuck Hagel, John Brennan and Jack Lew) will secure Senate confirmation in the coming weeks.

Obama has clearly resolved to make Asia his priority region on the foreign-policy front. He has spent more time in East Asia than in any other foreign region. Most Asian leaders have welcomed Obama’s reelection, though the political transitions in China, Japan and South Korea increase uncertainties over how long such views will prevail.

During its first term, the Obama administration managed to make progress in resolving some important issues and exploiting valuable opportunities regarding both traditional U.S. allies (such as Japan and South Korea) and emerging partners (ASEAN). In other cases, as with Russia and India, the results have been mixed. But during the next four years the administration faces major challenges in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and above all China—for which no easy solutions are available.

The Pentagon has been able to expand defense cooperation with Southeast Asia, especially Singapore (preparations are currently underway for the basing of U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ships at Changi Pier), Indonesia (new arms sales and joint training and education opportunities), and Vietnam (expanding engagement to encompass port visits, joint exercises, and defense dialogues).

Another core element of the Asia Pivot is bolstering local militaries’ capacities to deal with lower-level threats. For example, the Obama administration wants to enhance the air and naval capabilities of friendly maritime states so that they can help protect international waterways from pirates and other threats to freedom of the seas, allowing the U.S. Navy to focus on higher-end threats. To further this goal, the United States is selling 24 F-16C/Ds to Indonesia and coastal ships to the Philippines.

Similarly, the United States is helping countries build stronger ground forces to suppress local terrorists and insurgents. Border security programs also extend to encompass the potential movement of nuclear and other dangerous materials to global markets. All these capabilities promote the security of the international air and maritime commons, which serve as the foundation of the global economy.

The Obama administration launched a sustained and largely successful diplomatic campaign to reenergize U.S. relations with ASEAN leaders, who complained that they were being neglected under the previous administration. Obama’s decision to accede to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation was received very positively by ASEAN leaders, who also benefited from regular meetings with their U.S. counterparts. They also welcomed the administration’s successful outreach effort regarding Myanmar.    

Economic ties between ASEAN and the United States made major progress when, in November 2012, Obama hosted talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) initiative at meetings of the East Asia Summit and ASEAN in Cambodia. They set October 2013 as the date when they would like to reach an agreement creating a comprehensive regional trade agreement.

Given the complex technical, economic, and divisive political issues this endeavor would entail, the October 2013 timetable for signing a TPP agreement appears overly optimistic. But the rival Beijing-backed projects must also overcome major differences among their proposed members in terms of their resources, competitive advantages, and stages of development. A more serious problem is that, though the TPP initiative has come to symbolize renewed U.S. economic leadership in East Asia, its economic impact will remain modest unless Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and other strong economies besides the United States join it.

Furthermore, ASEAN remains a relatively weak institution. Unless a strong country occupies the annually rotating chairmanship, the association will not be able to accomplish much. This problem was particularly evident last year under the Cambodian chairmanship, which was marked by ineffectual leadership and Beijing-tilting policies that prevented the association from adopting a strong stand on maritime sovereignty issues. For now, if the United States wants to promote any major initiatives in the region, it must do so primarily through its bilateral alliances and partnerships, or through less formal multilateral coalitions of the willing, rather than through ASEAN.

Fortunately, after years of strain, relations with formal U.S. military allies in the Pacific have improved during the Obama administration’s first term. President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard renewed the U.S.-Australian alliance in November 2011, when they announced an agreement to place 250 U.S. Marines in Darwin, marking the first stage of a rotation plan that will see as many as 2,500 U.S. Marines rotate through northern Australia as well as other augmentations to the U.S. military presence in Australia.

By the end of the first Obama administration, the bilateral security relationship with Japan had rebounded from earlier tensions over local opposition to the Futenma Marine Air Station in Okinawa, and the new Japanese government’s desire to pursue a more balanced policy between Washington and Beijing. The United States has also stood in solid opposition to North Korea’s missile launches and China’s maritime assertiveness.

The Obama administration’s strong support for the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the face of the 2010 provocations of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)–the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and its shelling of Yeonpyeong Island—made the United States popular in South Korea, particularly compared to China, which refused to condemn Pyongyang for its actions. Meanwhile, outgoing ROK President Lee Myung-bak has stood behind the U.S. demand that the DPRK end its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development programs.

The Philippines has welcomed the Obama administration’s strong interest in Southeast Asia and ASEAN, of which the Philippines is a leading member. The administration has strengthened the U.S.-Philippine security alliance by enhancing security and stability in the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea), modernizing the Armed Forces of the Philippines, supporting the peace process in Muslim areas of Mindanao, and promoting broad-based economic growth and democratic development in the Philippines.

Finally, on November 15, 2012, U.S. Defense Secretary Panetta signed a joint vision statement with Thailand’s Defense Minister, renewing the Thai-U.S. military alliance. Panetta emphasized the U.S. willingness to help develop and modernize Thailand’s military. 

Although these are welcome developments in U.S. bilateral relations with ASEAN nations, a persistent concern remains that a major event will impart a systematic shock to America’s partnerships with these regional players, driving these relations downward toward their historical mean. With relations so good, on average they will tend to worsen without continued efforts to keep ties strong.

A war in Korea might inflict such a blow. North Korea has now detonated three nuclear explosive devices already and is striving to make small nuclear warheads that can be launched on the DPRK’s improving ballistic missiles. Although the DPRK presently lacks missiles capable of reaching North America, it already possesses many missiles that can attack targets in Japan, including the U.S. forces based there. Thanks to its continued testing of long-range rockets, experts calculate that the DPRK could have an intercontinental ballistic with sufficient range to hit targets in North America within five years or less.

The Obama administration achieved remarkable success in securing international sanctions against North Korea for its proliferation activities, but recent UN reports indicate that the sanctions are not being applied effectively, with some Chinese nongovernmental entities working to circumvent them. Most importantly, the United States has made no progress in eliminating North Korea’s nuclear arsenal or engaging with the DPRK.

The Obama administration has been willing to negotiate nuclear and other issues directly with the DPRK, within the Six-Party framework, but since Pyongyang has continued its intransigence, most recently by launching a long-range missile in December and now threatening a third nuclear weapons test, the United States and its allies have shunned the DPRK diplomatically and punished it with additional unilateral and multilateral sanctions.

Under its policy of “strategic patience,” the Obama administration has demanded that the DPRK give some concrete indication that it will make major nuclear concessions. But this policy of patiently waiting for verifiable changes in DPRK policies entails several risks. First, it provides North Koreans with additional breathing room to refine their nuclear and missile programs. Second, the DPRK might launch even more ballistic missiles or detonate additional nuclear devices to confirm and support this development process, or may do so simply out of frustration over being ignored. Finally, the strategy of waiting for the DPRK to introduce major reforms risks allowing a minor incident to escalate if the ROK’s implements its post-2010 proactive deterrence policy of retaliating swiftly and vigorously to any DPRK provocation.

Whether Park Geun-Hye, the new ROK president, will remain as firmly supportive of U.S. nonproliferation goals as President Lee remains uncertain given her desire to distance herself from her predecessor as well as initiate an outreach effort toward Pyongyang’s new leadership, which has shown a willingness to experiment with new domestic if not foreign policies.

Iran looks to remain another enduring nonproliferation problem for the new Obama administration. The United States and its allies have found themselves in a challenging position regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Economic sanctions have thus far failed to induce Tehran to renounce plans to enrich large quantities of uranium, potentially suitable for manufacturing nuclear weapons (at a higher level of enrichment). Yet, the United States and other Asian leaders recognize that using military force in an attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear program could easily fail and possibly backfire.

The lack of good options has generally kept trans-pacific differences regarding how to respond to Iran’s nuclear activities limited. Asian governments, including China and Russia, have generally adhered to some variant of a “two-track” policy that balances diplomacy with sanctions. Of course, as President Obama pointed out earlier, despite U.S. and other international efforts to negotiate a compromise, “It may be that their ideological commitment to nuclear weapons is such that they’re not making a simple cost-benefit analysis on this issue.”

The nature of the Iranian political system amplifies this problem. The intra-elite splits that have intensified since the disputed 2009 presidential election have complicated reconciliation efforts between Washington and Tehran. An unfortunate dynamic has arisen. Whenever Iranian negotiators have seemed to support a compromise deal regarding their nuclear policies or other activities, reformers as well as nationalists have attacked them for selling out Iran’s interests. An enduring U.S.-Iran reconciliation remains improbable until new political leaders emerge in Iran who enjoy genuine popular support and are capable of envisaging a genuine improvement in relations with the United States.

The Obama administration is striving to stabilize Afghanistan by the time it withdraws most U.S. combat troops, but whether it can realize such an achievement remains uncertain. At their meetings in Washington last month, Presidents Obama and Karzai agreed to accelerate the U.S. military withdrawal timetable. Obama justified the decision by citing the declared success of the U.S. military surge in Afghanistan in defeating al-Qaeda, weakening the Taliban, and building up the Afghan security forces. Obama later announced in his State of the Union address that 34,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn over the next year, ahead of all combat troops being out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Obama also discussed the nature of the post-2014 Afghan-U.S. military cooperation, but the two governments provided few details regarding how they planned to implement the Strategic Partnership that they signed last year in Kabul. Nor did the Afghan-U.S. discussions resolve uncertainties concerning how Afghanistan would ensure the holding of free and fair presidential elections in 2014, or achieve progress in the peace negotiations with the Afghan Taliban and their foreign sponsors in Pakistan.

In this regard, Pakistan might see, for the first time in its history, an elected civilian government transfer power to another team of elected civilians. Unfortunately, this spring’s national elections could bring to power politicians less supportive to U.S. interests than the current leaders, who have struggled to sustain minimum cooperation with the U.S. war on terror, especially the use of drone strikes, in the face of their citizens’growing hostility towards the United States. Whoever wins this year’s ballot will find it hard to rein in the elements within the Pakistani intelligence services that support the Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan and India. And the temptation will always exist in Islamabad to seek to squeeze Washington by suspending the Pentagon’s use of the ground supply lines through Pakistani territory that convey goods to the NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The administration’s Russian Reset actually helped NATO survive the year-long ban that Islamabad imposed for most of 2011, as the Pentagon was able to transport defense supplies through Russia and its Central Asian allies using the Northern Distribution Network that has been constructed during the Obama administration. Despite this promising improvement, Russian-U.S. relations remain strained over U.S. ballistic missile defense plans, while Washington has been unable to secure all the help it wants from Moscow regarding Iran.  The Russian government’s image among Americans has been deteriorating sharply since Putin’s return to the presidency, with the Pussy Riot scandal, ban on Americans adopting Russian orphans, and government crackdown on civil liberties. Russia’s weakening economy has decreased its global influence, including in Washington. On the other hand, Moscow was angered by the U.S. Congress passing, and President Obama signing, a new law that prohibits Russian officials thought to be involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky from traveling to the U.S. or accessing its banking system. The Russian parliament responded by passing a self-defeating measure limiting Americans’ ability to adopt Russian orphans.

Although the Russian government has been working on its own Asian Pivot, the Obama administration continues to treat Russia as an afterthought in most of its regional initiatives. Russia might be tempted to align closer to China to address common concerns about U.S. military policies and to get Washington’s attention. Russia and China recently announced that they would cooperate to counter U.S. missile defenses, which they see as aimed at negating their nuclear deterrent and global influence. They are also expanding their energy trade.

The main unresolved issue affecting the Obama administration’s Asian pivot, however, is how China will fit into the new framework. U.S. officials are divided regarding whether Beijing represents a potential partner or problem. The administration has yet to find a robust balance between deterring and engaging Beijing, as well as between assuring its allies and friends that the United States would neither abandon them to China’s growing might nor entrap them in an unwanted confrontation with Beijing.
The Obama administration has tried to avoid confronting China directly by emphasizing general principles—freedom of the sea, peaceful settlement of territorial disputes, etc.—rather than pursuing policies designed explicitly to counter China. Nonetheless, PRC policy makers accuse the United States of stirring up trouble in their backyard. They complain about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, U.S. missile defense deployments in Asia, and U.S. diplomatic interventions in Beijing’s maritime territorial disputes with Japan, the Philippines, and other countries.  Outside the PRC, Asian leaders have generally welcomed the renewed U.S. security presence and its increasing role in the region, but they have also taken pains to avoid being seen as siding with Washington against Beijing.

The Obama administration’s economic vision for East Asia, embodied in the TPP, also competes with that of China, which is actively lobbying countries to enter rival free-trade agreements that do not include the United States. For its part, the Obama administration has not formally excluded China from joining the TPP, but Beijing would need to revalue its currency, end subsidies to state-owned companies, better protect foreign intellectual property, and take other steps that China has either long resisted or proved unwilling to implement.

But perhaps the most serious challenge for the Obama administration’s Asian policy lies at home. The United States faces a tight fiscal environment that will constrain the resources Washington needs to implement its Asian pivot.

Even more than further increases in the Pentagon’s budget the United States needs to “rebalance the rebalance”—in other words, to augment the non-military elements of the pivot by increasing the resources available to the U.S. civilian national security agencies.

The current public preoccupation with military rebalancing—asking how many U.S. ships and planes will be in the Pacific—has given some Asians the misleading impression that the Pivot is essentially a grand redeployment of the U.S. military to contain China. Greater emphasis on the role of U.S. civilian agencies in the Pivot will help dispel this misperception and make it easier to gain support from cautious Asian leaders seeking a greater U.S. role in their region but not at the risk of antagonizing Beijing.

CHINA & TIBET: Flames Of Protest & The History Of Self-Immolation

More than 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009 to protest Chinese rule, according to Tibetan advocacy groups. Self-immolations in Tunisia and Vietnam also gained international attention, but the motives and effectiveness of the practice are widely debated.

MALAYSIA's Economy Expands

Malaysia's economy expanded at a faster-than-expected 6.4% in the fourth quarter, but economists said the growth pace may not be easy to sustain as government and private investments show signs of tapering off.

CHINA says U.S. hacking accusations lack technical proof

(Reuters) - Accusations by a U.S. computer security company that a secretive Chinese military unit is likely behind a series of hacking attacks are scientifically flawed and hence unreliable, China's Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

CHINA: The Evidence in the Hacking Scandal

In an extraordinary story that has become depressingly ordinary, the New York Times reports that Chinese hackers “persistently” attacked the newspaper, “infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.” The attacks began around the time journalists were preparing a story on the massive wealth the family of China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has allegedly accumulated, but the methods, identification, and apparent objectives of the hackers have been seen before in previous attacks on defense contractors, technology companies, journalists, academics, think tanks, and NGOs. Bloomberg, which published a story on the wealth of the family of Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has also been reportedly attacked.  While just one case in a sweeping cyber espionage campaign that appears endemic, the attack on the Times does highlight both the willingness of Beijing lean out and shape the narrative about China as well as the vulnerability the top leadership feels about how they are portrayed.

As with many cases of cyber espionage, the break-in is assumed to have started with a spear-phishing email, a socially engineered message containing malware attachments or links to hostile websites. In the case of the attack on the security firm RSA in 2011, for example, an email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” was sent with an attached Excel file. Opening the file downloaded software that allowed attackers to gain control of the user’s computers. They then gradually expanded their access and moved into different computers and networks.

Once in, the hackers are pervasive and fairly intractable. The hackers involved in the attacks on the British defense contractor BAE Systems, for example, were reportedly on its networks for 18 months before they were discovered; during that time they monitored online meetings and technical discussions through the use of web cameras and computer microphones. According to Jill Abramson, executive editor of the Times, there was no evidence that sensitive information related to the reporting on Wen’s family was stolen, but in previous cases hackers encrypted data so that investigators had a difficult time seeing what was actually taken.

Evidence that the hackers are China-based in all of these cases is suggestive, but not conclusive. Some of the code used in the attacks was developed by Chinese hacker groups and the command and control nodes have been traced back to Chinese IP addresses. Hackers are said to clock in in the morning Beijing time, clock out in the afternoon, and often take vacation on Chinese New Year and other national holidays. But attacks can be routed through many computers, malware is bought and sold on the black market, groups share techniques, and one of the cherished clichés of hackers is that they work weird hours.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence has been the type of information targeted. The emails and documents of the office of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, defense industries, foreign embassies, journalists, and think tanks are not easily monetized and so would apparently have little attraction to criminal hackers. The information contained in them would be of much greater interest to the Chinese government.

Beijing is pushing its Internet power outside of China into the rest of the world. At home, it controls the flow of information on the Web domestically through censoring and filtering technologies as well as attempts to steer conversations or drown out opposition on social media sites by government-paid commentators, known in China as the 50 Cent Party for the going rate per posting. What the New York Times and other hacks demonstrate is the desire to shape international political narratives as well as gather information from those who might influence the debates on topic of importance to Beijing. The Times‘ worry that the hackers might take the paper offline on election night also reveals an attempt at intimidation as well as influence.

What will also be dispiritingly familiar in the aftermath of the attacks is the discussion about what can be done. Over the last several years, U.S. government officials have mounted an increasingly public campaign of naming and shaming China. But this has had little effect, and the Chinese response has been one of denial, calling the accusations “irresponsible,” noting that hacking is illegal under Chinese law, and pointing out that China is also a victim of cyber crime, most of it coming from IP addresses in Japan, South Korea, and the United States.

So what can be done? Private security experts and U.S government officials say they are getting better at attributing attacks to groups and individuals. If that is the case, then the United States may begin to think about targeted financial sanctions or visa restrictions on identified hackers. What might cause the most difficulty for Beijing, however, are private and government efforts to ensure that reporting of the caliber of New York Times and Bloomberg is made widely available within China through translation and efforts to circumvent the Great Firewall of China. U.S. diplomatic cables posted online by WikiLeaks suggested that the hack on Google in January 2010 was ordered by a member of the Politburo who “typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticizing him personally.” Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping might have had the same reaction.

Adam Segal is a senior fellow in China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. It was first published at Foreignpolicy.com.
© Foreignpolicy.com

TRAVEL: The Best and Worst International Airlines

(Click to download a larger PDF version)

Comparing international airlines is much more apples and oranges than it seems: Without a central governing agency t
...

Will CHINA Ever Be No. 1?

Graham T. Allison and Robert D. Blackwill explore Lee Kuan Yew's thoughts on China's economic future.

AUSTRALIA teens fuel 'Harlem Shake' dance craze

A group of Australian teenagers have sparked a Gangnam Style-like viral dance craze called the “Harlem Shake,”with their pelvis-thrusting moves inspiring tens of thousands of Internet copycat clips.

JAPAN: How America and Japan See the World

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe travels to Washington this week to meet with President Barack Obama. This will be their first meeting since Abe was chosen for the second time to be prime minister and Obama secured a second term at the end of last year. But how do ties stand between the two countries?

JAPAN: Writer Donald Richie dies at 88

Long-term Japan resident, writer and critic Donald Richie, who through dozens of books and articles published from the late 1940s until the last decade helped introduce Japanese film and culture to the world, passed away in Tokyo on Tuesday, according to his long-term editor, Leza Lowitz. He was 88.

Richie, who was born in Lima, Ohio, on April 17, 1924, first came to Japan with the U.S. Occupation force in 1947. He soon began working for Pacific Stars and Stripes, where he gained a reputation...

Keep on reading: Writer Donald Richie dies at 88

CHINA: One in three Chinese singles fear marriage, survey

  A recent poll has found that 33 percent of single Chinese are afraid of getting married. The report was released by China’s dating website Baihe.com before the Spring Festival. According to it, women were afraid of marriage mainly because they feared the third person-parties in marriage and domestic violence, while men were afraid of marriage generally because they didn't have houses or couldn't afford the fees for marriage, or to support a family.

CHINA’s Left Behind Children

Twelve out of the 18 children in Poqi Village, Guizhou province, were left behind with their relatives during the Chinese New Year. There are a total of 85 million left-behind children in China, according to an estimate by Deutsche Welle.(Weibo.com)

“I got up really early this morning to fix breakfast for my younger brother before he went to school,” wrote sixth grader Yang Haijiao in her diary recently. The government was distributing water on the side of the road, and she had to take the day off to collect it.

“The water has been gone completely in the past two days,” she wrote. “Grandma has been ill for days. I can’t expect her to get the water.”

Like many of estimated 85 million other “left behind children,” the young Guizhou Province student too often misses school to assume the responsibilities of an adult, while her parents live and work in a city far from home. This is the one of the prices of the Chinese regime’s economic growth model, which has brought astounding GDP statistics, but more than 30 years of fractured families and emotionally wounded children.

Struggling to support their families, millions of rural parents leave their villages to seek work in factories in the cities. Their children are left at home with their elderly grandparents, or other relatives, or even alone. The care of the children is often limited to basic living support and safety, while education, behavior, and psychological needs are often neglected.

“I could not help crying whenever I thought that when the bus arrives, my father will leave.” — Yang Haijiao

Because of their low income and the strict household registration system in China, which makes it difficult for children to attend school anywhere but in their hometowns, most migrant workers’ children cannot go with their parents, reports Deutche Welle. There are few local boarding schools for these children, and few schools for migrants’ children in the cities.

In Their Words

“The Diary of Chinese Left-behind Children” http://english.cri.cn/8706/2012/03/06/2381s685182.htm, a collection of reflections written by 26 children from southwestern China’s Guizhou Province, documents the plight of these children in their own words. Their teacher, Yang Yuansong, compiled and edited the narratives, which describe what statistics and studies could never convey.

Burdened with the responsibilities of an adult, Yang Haijiao missed school every other day to take care of her grandmother, or the family farm. “The weather is terrible. The drought has lasted for too long. If it rained, we’d have water and I would not have to miss school. I really don’t want to continue missing school!”

When it did finally rain, she had to plant corn.

The overwhelming responsibilities are accompanied by the sorrow of separation. Yang Haijiao writes of the misery she felt at seeing her father leave: “I could not help crying whenever I thought that when the bus arrives, my father will leave and we will be left with many chores at home, and we won’t know when he’ll be back.”

When her father asked why she was crying, she didn’t respond. He reminded her to “study hard.” Yang writes: “I kept crying until father got on the bus.”

Another student, Xia Min, wrote of Xia Congli, her classmate who was left alone at home, “One day on the way to school, Xia Congli told me her mom and dad are leaving to work at a far away place and she started to cry. I told her not to feel bad and said her parents must have felt sorry, too.”

The note continued: “We often played games with her when we went to her house and hoped she would forget about the sad things. But she can not. She is still feeling as sad as before. I feel so bad.” 

Psychological Problems

The daily pressure of this bitter life has left many children with psychological problems. According to a survey by Women of China, 57 percent of high school age left-behind children suffered from mental health problems. The longer their parents have stayed away from home, the more serious were the psychological problems the children developed.

The survey showed that most of the left-behind children are prone to psychological problems because of the lack of affection or family supervision and guidance. They become weak, introverted and exhibit low self-esteem. The separation from their parents often caused resentment and loneliness.

Learning disabilities are common in left-behind children. Frequent school absences and little, if any, help with homework coupled with the emotional trauma of the fractured family have left these children with few resources for gaining a proper education. The survey by the All China Women’s Federation reported that 45 percent of grandparents had never attended school, and 50 percent only had a primary education, and could not be expected to help the children with their schoolwork.

The left-behind children of Youji village of Guangxi are boarded at a primary school. School principal Lu Lipeng explained to Deutsche Welle: “The responsibility is immense. Their parents have all left for work and left their children at the school. Being a principal, their personal safety is my number one priority. Secondly, it is their room and board. They must be cared for like my own kids.”

Other left-behind children are not so fortunate, and must face difficult and even dangerous situations alone. Some of these vulnerable children even lose their lives. A 2005 flood in Hetang County, Hunan province killed 12 children, eleven of whom had been left behind.

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JAPAN: Marines Blasting a Cave, Iwo Jima, 1945

In April 1945, LIFE magazine published one of the most memorable cover images of its four-decade run as a major photographic weekly. The picture, made in March 1945 on the island of Iwo Jima by the great W. Eugene Smith, captures the deliberate violence inherent in all war as graphically as any photo ever published in LIFE. At first glance just another explosion in a war filled with millions of explosions, the picture grows more extraordinary the longer one gazes at it.
For its part, LIFE described Smith’s picture this way:

The scene of demolition on Iwo Jima symbolizes the saga of battle that in years to come will take on the epic quality of Roncevaux, Agincourt and Gettysburg. Blown up into this column of smoke is a blockhouse and some stubborn Japs who would not leave their hiding place, although invited by the Marines to surrender quietly.

Here, on the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Iwo Jima (Feb. 19 – March 26, 1945), LIFE.com presents not only the full, uncropped photograph, but an entire series of other photos — many of which never ran in LIFE — that Smith made on that sterile volcanic outcropping in the South Pacific, where thousands of men were fighting to the death as the long world war was winding to its grisly close.

W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The cover of that April 19, 1945, issue of LIFE is remarkable on a number of levels. For instance, aside from the LIFE logo and the most rudimentary information — the issue date, the price — there is no language, no text, no cover lines. Ninety-nine percent of the more than 2,000 LIFE covers ever published have at least some words letting the reader know what he or she is looking at, even if it’s something as straightforward as “Basketball,” or “Florida” or “Summer Fashion.” But the Iwo Jima cover has absolutely nothing but Smith’s picture.

No words. No descriptors. Nothing.

It’s almost as if, in April 1945, there was no need to let people know that the photograph was made on Iwo Jima. After all, was there anything else on most Americas’ minds that spring besides the war in the Pacific?

And then, of course, as with all of Smith’s photographs, there’s the sheer technical brilliance of the picture: the grim clarity of the scene, despite the chaotic nature of the explosion that serves as the thematic and visual center of the shot; the four Marines, barely visible at first, crouching behind a rock in the lower right of the frame; the terrible, blasted landscape that might have been the inspiration for stage directions in any number of Beckett’s plays — all of these elements cohere into a masterful, one might even say (through clenched teeth) a beautiful portrait of destruction.

LIFE, meanwhile, described the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the island itself, in words that, at times, sound weirdly reminiscent of Tolkein’s unforgettable depictions of the desolate land of Mordor in his Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Of all the places where American have fought, none looks so much like a poet’s nightmare of a battlefield as Iwo Jima, the bare, ugly, sulphurous spot of land where 4.700 marines were killed and missing and another 15,308 were wounded. In only one offensive action, Pickett’s Charge up Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, has so great a percentage of casualties ever been suffered by American fighting men. On the battlefield of Iwo Jima the Pacific War reached a peak of concentrated ferocity. It was a terrifying distillation of the kind of battle the Marines had learned to fight at Tarawa, Palau and other small but valuable Pacific Islands.

On eight-square-mile Iwo, men rediscovered, as Marine correspondent S/Sgt. David Dempsey wrote, “something that almost been forgotten: there are places where there is no use sending bombs and shells to do a job. Instead, you must send men, alone and willing to die.” The Japs were deadly earnest about keeping Iwo Jima. The Marines took it away from them because the Marines were even more serious about getting Iwo Jima.

After the fighting was over LIFE photographer W. Eugene Smith, who had covered the whole operation, went back over the island to record the famous places of this historic battlefield.

For a month Iwo was one of the most densely populated eight square miles in the world, with 10,000 men to the square mile. It then became one of the most densely populated cemeteries in the world, with 20,000 dead Japs and 4,100 dead marines. But Iwo has always seemed a place better suited to death than life. Its southern end is a sulphur-steaming volcano, about as high (546 ft.) as Little Round Top at Gettysburg. This runs into a bottleneck slag heap of fine volcanic dust, which rises toward a plateau about as high as Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, where a little kunai grass and a sickly salt bush grow. At the north end it becomes a jungle of tumbled stone wreathed in clouds of sulphur steam.

All this had been spotted by the Japs with invisible thousands of pillboxes, honeycombed caves and tunnels. Brave men had to go in after the Japs, trading lives for pillboxes. More than half the assault troops became casualties.

 

W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
LIFE's W. Eugene Smith, in Marine Corps garb, studies action in distance during Battle of Iwo Jima, 1945.