TAIWAN & CHINA: Trade talks this month

22/01/2010 01:22:00

Taiwan’s economic affairs minister confirmed yesterday the first round of talks on a major trade pact between the island and China would start late this month.

Shih Yen-shiang said the Taiwanese delegation would be led by Huang Chih-peng, head of the Bureau of Foreign Trade and who was the island’s top negotiator during the previous four rounds of informal talks, the state Central News Agency reported in Taipei.

Shih said the talks aimed at signing a trade pact known as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement would be held before the month’s end but was not specific on where they would take place, it said.

The Chinese side would be led by Tang Wei, director of the Department of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau Affairs under the Ministry of Commerce, according to Shih.

His remarks came after Taiwan’s Premier Wu Den-yih had said the first round of talks was due to kick off on January 20 in hopes of signing the pact in May.

Taiwan’s China-friendly government is eager to conclude the trade pact, which it says could lift growth and boost employment.  But the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, which favours independence from China, fears it would increase Taiwan’s reliance on China and imperil the island’s de facto separate status.

Relations have improved since Taiwan’s current administration assumed power in May 2008, pursuing a programme of stepping up economic ties.

View Article in Macau Daily Times

CHINA: Foreign Languages Fade in Class Except Chinese

Published: January 20, 2010

By SAM DILLON

WASHINGTON — Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.

But another contrary trend has educators and policy makers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.

Some schools are paying for Chinese classes on their own, but hundreds are getting some help. The Chinese government is sending teachers from China to schools all over the world — and paying part of their salaries.

At a time of tight budgets, many American schools are finding that offer too good to refuse.

In Massillon, Ohio, south of Cleveland, Jackson High School started its Chinese program in the fall of 2007 with 20 students and now has 80, said Parthena Draggett, who directs Jackson’s world languages department.

“We were able to get a free Chinese teacher,” she said. “I’d like to start a Spanish program for elementary children, but we can’t get a free Spanish teacher.”

(Jackson’s Chinese teacher is not free; the Chinese government pays part of his compensation, with the district paying the rest.)

No one keeps an exact count, but rough calculations based on the government’s survey suggest that perhaps 1,600 American public and private schools are teaching Chinese, up from 300 or so a decade ago. And the numbers are growing exponentially.

Among America’s approximately 27,500 middle and high schools offering at least one foreign language, the proportion offering Chinese rose to 4 percent, from 1 percent, from 1997 to 2008, according to the survey, which was done by the Center for Applied Linguistics, a research group in Washington, and paid for by the federal Education Department.

“It’s really changing the language education landscape of this country,” said Nancy C. Rhodes, a director at the center and co-author of the survey.

Other indicators point to the same trend.

The number of students taking the Advanced Placement test in Chinese, introduced in 2007, has grown so fast that it is likely to pass German this year as the third most-tested A.P. language, after Spanish and French, said Trevor Packer, a vice president at the College Board.

“We’ve all been surprised that in such a short time Chinese would grow to surpass A.P. German,” Mr. Packer said.

A decade ago, most of the schools with Chinese programs were on the East and West Coasts. But in recent years, many schools have started Chinese programs in heartland states, including Ohio and Illinois in the Midwest, Texas and Georgia in the South, and Colorado and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.

“The mushrooming of interest we’re seeing now is not in the heritage communities, but in places that don’t have significant Chinese populations,” said Chris Livaccari, an associate director at the Asia Society.

America has had the study of a foreign language grow before, only to see the bubble burst. Many schools began teaching Japanese in the 1980s, after Japan emerged as an economic rival. But thousands have dropped the language, the survey found.

Japanese is not the only language that has declined. Thousands of schools that offered French, German or Russian have stopped teaching those languages, too, the survey found.

To prepare the survey, the Center for Applied Linguistics sent a questionnaire to 5,000 American schools, and followed up with phone calls to 3,200 schools, getting a 76 percent response rate.

The results, released last year, confirmed that Spanish was taught almost universally. The survey found that 88 percent of elementary schools and 93 percent of middle and high schools with language programs offered Spanish in 2008.

The overall decline in language instruction was mostly due to its abrupt decline in public elementary and middle schools; the number of private schools and public high schools offering at least one language remained stable from 1997 to 2008.

The survey said that a third of schools reported that the federal No Child Left Behind law, which since 2001 has required public schools to test students in math and English, had drawn resources from foreign languages.

Experts said several factors were fueling the surge in Chinese. Parents, students and educators recognize China’s emergence as an important country and believe that fluency in its language can open opportunities.

Also stoking the interest has been a joint program by the College Board and Hanban, a language council affiliated with the Chinese Education Ministry, that since 2006 has sent hundreds of American school superintendents and other educators to visit schools in China, with travel costs subsidized by Hanban. Many have started Chinese programs upon their return.

Since 2006, Hanban and the College Board have also sent more than 325 volunteer Chinese “guest teachers” to work in American schools with fledgling programs and paying $13,000 to subsidize each teacher’s salary for a year. Teachers can then renew for up to three more years.

The State Department has paid for a smaller program to bring Chinese teachers to schools here, with each staying for a year.

In the first two years of its Chinese program, the Jackson District in Ohio said it had provided its guest teacher housing, a car and gasoline, health insurance and other support worth about $26,000. This year, the district is paying a more experienced Chinese guest teacher $49,910 in salary and other support, in addition to the $13,000 in travel expenses he receives from Hanban, bringing his compensation into rough parity with Ohio teachers.

Ms. Draggett visited China recently with a Hanban-financed delegation of 400 American educators from 39 states, and she came back energized about Jackson’s Chinese program, she said.

“Chinese is really taking root,” she said. Starting this fall, Jackson High will begin phasing out its German program, she said.

Founders of the Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where all classes for 200 students in prekindergarten through second grade are taught in Chinese and English on alternate days, did not start with a guest teacher when it opened in the fall of 2008.

“That’s great for many schools, but we want our teachers to stay,” said Mary Shaffner, the school’s executive director.

Instead, Yu Ying recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States by advertising on the Internet. One is Wang Jue, who immigrated to the United States in 2001 and graduated from the University of Maryland.

After just four months, her prekindergarten students can already say phrases like “I want lunch” and “I’m angry” in Chinese, Ms. Wang said.

A second-grade class at the Yu Ying charter school in Washington, where instruction in all subjects alternates daily between English and Chinese. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Experts attribute the surge in Chinese language classes to parents’ belief that fluency can open opportunities down the road. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The Yu Ying charter school has recruited five native Chinese speakers living in the United States to teach their classes. Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2010, on page A18 of the New York edition.

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: UK returns nuclear waste to Japan

Page last updated at 14:14 GMT, Wednesday, 20 January 2010

By Jorn Madslien
Business reporter, BBC News, Sellafield

The first shipment of highly radioactive waste from the UK has left the Sellafield nuclear site, the BBC has learnt.

It has been loaded onto a ship specifically designed to carry nuclear waste that will sail for Japan later.

The waste is a by-product of nuclear fuel spent by Japanese reactors that was sent to the UK for reprocessing during the 1980s and 1990s.

Some campaigners have criticised the shipments, saying they are dangerous.

"It is highly irresponsible for the industry to still be sending this kind of material across the world," said anti-nuclear campaigner Martin Forward.

But Sellafield spokesman Mike Johnson said the site was simply fulfilling its contractual obligations, and government policy, in transporting the waste safely.

Only two countries, the UK and France, have been engaged in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from power stations.

The process involves extracting reusable uranium and plutonium from the fuel, leaving behind a liquid waste.

Japan has storage facilities in place already, having received 12 shipments of high level nuclear waste from France in recent years.

Over the next decade, high-level waste will also be returned to European countries.

Profitable shipment

Returning waste to countries that have benefited from nuclear energy production is in line with both global agreements and UK government policy.

For Sellafield, it is also a source of revenue, as the company - which runs the site under a contract with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority - is being paid by the government for meeting targets set as part of a complex contract that involves the decommissioning, reprocessing and waste management at the site.

"This is a performance-based milestone," Mike Johnson, executive director of Sellafield's waste and effluent disposition, told BBC News. "This is one of the ways we earn our fees."

Sellafield declined to reveal the payment details.

Revenue loss

Sellafield's high-level nuclear waste storage is one of the most concentrated sources of radioactivity anywhere in the world.

When measured by volume, 65% of Britain's total waste is stored there, though it accounts for about 95% of the waste when measured by radioactivity.

It is also widely seen as the most complex nuclear facility in the world, because its waste is derived from a broad range of weapons and energy production - in the UK and abroad - during a period in history when the focus was more on quick solutions than on how to deal with their aftermath.

For the UK, the shipment goes one step towards reversing the country's reputation as the nuclear dustbin of the world - although, over time, it will also lead to a fall in revenue from nations currently paying for their nuclear waste to be stored at Sellafield.

TRANSPORTING NUCLEAR WASTE

The UK plans to return 1,850 flasks of waste over the next 10 years, averaging about one shipment per year.

Each flask contains 28 stainless steel canisters of Highly Active Waste (HAW) in solid glass form.

They will be sent by rail to Barrow in Furness and from there shipped to Japan via an undisclosed route, arriving before the end of March 2010.

Domestic challenge

In about 10 years, high-level nuclear waste, equivalent to the waste created by the nuclear fuel received, will have been returned to all Sellafield's foreign customers.

Afterwards, the UK will nevertheless be left with waste from decades of weapons programmes, research and energy production, which means the repatriation of waste will do little to provide a solution to the waste management challenge facing the UK.

Current nuclear waste storage facilities have evolved during the past 50 years, though they are still defined as temporary solutions.

Plans for the construction of an underground repository have been discussed for decades, but as yet, no firm decisions have been made.

In the meantime, the nuclear shipments will open up space in the current storage facilities, which have been designed to cope with much more high-level waste than is currently there.

Made in the UK

In simple terms, nuclear reprocessing involves cutting up spent nuclear fuel rods into small bits that are dissolved in acid.

Uranium and plutonium is extracted from the mix, and this can be reused to make new nuclear fuel, which is then returned to nuclear power plants.

The remainder is then waste in a liquid form.

This is kept in evaporation and storage tanks for long periods, eventually being reduced to a powdery substance that is then dissolved in liquid glass heated to some 1,100C.

This cocktail is then poured into steel canisters that resemble milk churns.

In the case of Sellafield, the high-level waste canisters are then stored in a massive building that looks like an ordinary warehouse from the outside.

Inside, the canisters are stacked on top of each other and the radioactivity is contained by about 10ft (3m) of concrete shielding and two-feet thick concrete lids.

In the future, the plan is to start treating spent fuel from nuclear power plants as waste, rather than trying to extract and reuse the plutonium and uranium to create new fuel.

Many in the nuclear industry seem convinced that this is not a sustainable way of working, given anticipated shortages of both these valuable chemical elements.

View Article in the BBC

THE KOREAS: Koreas close talks empty-handed

Page last updated at 05:21 GMT, Thursday, 21 January 2010

Some 40,000 North Koreans are employed at the Kaesong complex

North Korea and South Korea have made no significant progress in two days of talks about their jointly-run Kaesong industrial park.

They were expected to plan development of the project and set an agenda for future talks, but failed to do so.

No date was set for a future meeting, after the North wanted wage rises for the North Korean workforce on the agenda, South Korean officials said.

The industrial estate is intended as a symbol of cross-border cooperation. But it has also long highlighted differences between the two countries.

Unrest prediction

More than 110 small- to medium-sized South Korean companies use cheap North Korean labour at the factory park, just north of the border, to make products such as cooking pots, clothes, shoes and watches.

The complex has remained fully operational despite a range of disputes between the neighbours, providing the impoverished country with a key legitimate source of hard currency.

This week's meeting came amid fresh tensions over the North's threat to break off dialogue and attack Seoul in response to its reported contingency plan to handle any unrest in the North.

A South Korean think tank, the Korea Institute for National Unification, had predicted unrest and a military coup, popular uprising, a massacre or mass defections after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies.

Mr Kim, who turns 68 next month, is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008. The think tank said he was not expected to survive past 2012.

Meanwhile, South Korea's Defence Minister Kim Tae-young called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if there is a clear indication the country is preparing a nuclear attack.

He made similar comments in 2008 when he was chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, which prompted the North to threaten to destroy the South.

Multinational efforts are under way to persuade North Korea to return to six-party talks on ending its nuclear programme, so far in vain.

View Article in BBC

CHINA: China's latest scandal is counterfeit condoms

January 21, 2010

By John M. Glionna, Reporting from Beijing

Sex shop owner Wang Yunsu wondered how so many competitors could suddenly undercut her low prophylactic prices.

Now she thinks she knows: The other condoms are counterfeit.
"Some manufacturers are cutting corners," she said, stocking a shelf with a domestic brand whose name translates as Forever Love. "And it's all about profit."

Health officials warn that inferior contraceptives can spread the diseases they are supposed to protect against. Some of the brand-name knockoffs have reached the U.S.

It's China's latest knockoff scandal -- inferior contraceptives that health officials say provide little protection and may in fact spread infectious diseases, tarnishing the axiom that condoms mean safe sex.

In November, investigators in Hunan province provided details about a July raid on an underground workshop where they found laborers lubricating condoms with vegetable oil in unsterile conditions, passing off the counterfeits as high-quality-brand products.

It wasn't the first such bust. Police in 2008 raided an illicit factory in Zhejiang province, seizing half a million knockoff condoms.  In another case, workers recycled used condoms into hair bands in southern China.

"People could be infected with AIDS, [genital] warts or other diseases if they hold the rubber bands or strings in their mouths while weaving their hair into plaits or buns," a dermatologist told the state-run China Daily newspaper.

The practice poses yet another disease threat in the world's most-populous nation, where more than 2 billion condoms are used each year, supporting an estimated $530-million industry.

China mass-produces countless fake brand-name consumer goods, from shoes and handbags to DVDs and iPods, even beer. But after tainted milk killed six Chinese children and sickened about 300,000 in 2008, the spread of counterfeit condoms further demonstrates that unscrupulous manufacturers will stop at nothing to turn a profit.

Authorities estimate that up to a third of the contraceptives used in some parts of China are counterfeits, despite improvements in state food and drug oversight. None of the counterfeits are properly sterilized, and others are of such inferior quality that they could rupture during use. Authorities say they're all dangerous.

"The quality of the knockoff condoms cannot be guaranteed, and they can easily break," said Cheng Feng, director of the group Family Health International, China. "Such condoms definitely cannot play the role of contraception and disease prevention."

But counterfeit condoms aren't being sold only in China.  In 2008, officials in the New York area confiscated knockoff Chinese-made goods, including millions of phony Trojan-brand condoms that were sold in small discount stores in New York, Texas and Virginia.

In the Hunan case, police told state news media that four people were arrested at a back-street factory in the city of Shaoyang, where an estimated 2 million unsterilized condoms carried labels of popular brands such as Durex, Rough Rider and Love Card.
Authorities have yet to track down more than 1 million condoms they believe have been distributed nationwide, lubricated with vegetable oil and stored in metal drums.

In China, more than 300 manufacturers produce condoms under 1,000 brand names. Health officials say the spread of the counterfeit condoms is linked to a diverse market in which the products are sold not just in pharmacies and healthcare shops but at roadside stalls and bars.

Online middlemen also peddle second-quality condoms produced at legitimate Chinese factories.

"The quality is a little bit better than the counterfeits," said one seller who uses the moniker Feiran Zhicheng, or "Extremely Trustworthy."

"They're not the best-quality ones, but there's not that big a difference," he said of his product, which sells for a third the price of name brands. "It's just that they didn't meet the standard for export. So they were left behind. It's like those 'slightly imperfect' products from the assembly line."

Authorities are also pursuing the factories that are recycling condoms into hair bands sold in beauty shops for about 3 cents a package.

"These cheap and colorful rubber bands and hair ties sell well, threatening the health of local people," said the story in the China Daily.

Although shoddy and dangerous goods still flood the market, consumer protection here is improving, analysts say.

"Given the vast size and complexities of the society, it is not surprising that there continue to be problems with product quality," said Zha Daojiong, a professor at Peking University's School of International Studies. "Back in the early 1990s, the Chinese government repeatedly launched 'strike hard' campaigns -- throwing those involved in producing and selling below-quality products to years in jail."

But, he added, proper monitoring systems cost money, resulting in higher prices.

"It's impossible to have enhanced surveillance on the cheap," Zha said. "A genuine dialogue [needs] to take place between the government and the populace at large [about] the costs the average consumer is prepared to pay."

Vendors such as Wang say the government should do more to protect consumers.

"We need to market better-quality products," she said. "Chinese people deserve them."

john.glionna@latimes.com
Tommy Yang and Nicole Liu of The Times' Beijing Bureau and special correspondent Lily Kuo contributed to this report.

View Article in The Los Angeles Times

JAPAN: Ozawa's deep involvement in shady land deal emerges

(Mainichi Japan) January 21, 2010

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa was deeply involved in a questionable land deal that led to the recent arrests of his aides, it has emerged.

Ozawa's former aide Tomohiro Ishikawa, 36, told the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office that he consulted with Ozawa before borrowing from him the funds to purchase a land lot in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward in 2004.

"I could have scraped up enough money to purchase the land, but since such an arrangement would make Rikuzan-kai (Ozawa's fund-management organization) lose its operating funds, I consulted with Mr. Ozawa and borrowed 400 million yen from him," Ishikawa was quoted as telling prosecutors.

Ishikawa, a DPJ member of the House of Representatives, also told prosecutors that he consulted with Takanori Okubo, 48, a state-paid secretary to Ozawa, over the issue. Both Okubo and Ishikawa have been arrested on charges of violating the Law to Regulate Money Used for Political Activities in connection with the land deal.

According to sources close to the case, Ishikawa was asked by Okubo in the fall of 2004 if he could raise 400 million yen to purchase the land through Rikuzan-kai and other sources. Ishikawa replied that he could gather the amount, but that such an arrangement would make Rikuzan-kai short of operating funds. "Let's consult with Mr. Ozawa," the two agreed, and eventually borrowed 400 million yen from him, the sources said.

Prosecutors have so far confirmed that Okubo found the land lot near Ozawa's residence in Setagaya Ward, which Ozawa confirmed during a walk and instructed Okubo to purchase it. Ishikawa then took over the accounting procedures for the land deal. The land is currently home to a dormitory for secretaries to Ozawa.

Ishikawa used the 400 million yen he received from Ozawa to purchase the land, costing some 352 million yen, but failed to report the money flow in Rikuzan-kai's political funding report in 2004. Meanwhile, 400 million yen was placed in a term deposit, an amount combining Rikuzan-kai's funds and some 180 million yen funneled through three political organizations. The deposit was used as collateral to borrow 400 million yen from financial institutions under the name of Ozawa, and the amount was listed in Rikuzan-kai's political funding report in 2004 as a loan from Ozawa.

Sources including a former executive of mid-ranking contractor Mizutani Kensetsu have reportedly told prosecutors that they handed over 50 million yen to Ishikawa in return for winning a subcontract for the construction of Isawa Dam in Iwate Prefecture around the same time.

Prosecutors are apparently questioning Ishikawa over the intricate accounting procedures and whether the funds provided by Mizutani Kensetsu were included in the financial sources for the land deal.

Click here for the original Japanese story

View Article in The Mainichi Daily News

RUSSIA: This Day in History Vladimir Ilyich Lenin dies

21/01/2010 01:33:00

In Moscow on the evening of January 21, 1924, shock and near-hysterical grief greets the news that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the radical socialist Bolshevik movement that toppled the czarist regime in 1917 and head of the first government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), had died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Influenced early on by Karl Marx’s seminal text Das Kapital, Lenin was radicalized further by the execution of his older brother, Alexander, for conspiring to kill Czar Alexander III in 1887.

The brooding, fiercely intellectual Lenin married the principles of Marxist thought to his own theory of organization and the reality of Russian demographics, envisioning a group of elite professional revolutionaries, or a “vanguard of the proletariat,” who would first lead the agrarian masses of Russia to victory over the tyrannical czarist regime and eventually incite a worldwide revolution.

He laid out this theory in his most famous treatise, What Is To Be Done?, in 1902. Lenin’s insistence on the necessity of this vanguard led to a split in Russia’s Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903 between his supporters—a small majority that was thereafter known as the Bolsheviks—and his opponents, the Mensheviks.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Lenin—then living in Switzerland—urged his Bolshevik supporters in Russia to turn the “imperialist” conflict into a civil war that would liberate the working classes from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and monarchy. With the success of the February Revolution and the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March 1917, Lenin managed, with German help, to travel back to Russia, where he worked with his deputy, Léon Trotsky, to orchestrate the Bolshevik seizure of power from the unsteady provisional government that November. Lenin declared an immediate armistice with the Central Powers and acted quickly to consolidate the power of the new Soviet state under his newly named Communist Party; to that end, in a brutal civil war, his supporters, the “Reds,” had to combat “White” rebellions that sprung up all over Russia.

In his six years in power, Lenin struggled with the difficulty of implementing his utopian vision within the borders of the Soviet state as well as the failure of his predicted international revolution to materialize.

Together, Lenin and his circle of advisers, or Politburo—which included Trotsky, his faithful henchman during the civil war, and Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party—worked to ruthlessly and systematically destroy all opposition to Communist policies within the new U.S.S.R., proclaimed in 1922. Instruments in this repression included a newly created secret police, the Cheka, and the first of the gulags, or concentration camps, that Stalin would later put to even more deadly use.

Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922; a second one, in March of the following year, effectively ended his political career. At the time of his death, Stalin worked quickly to control the situation, encouraging the deification of Lenin—who before his death had called for Stalin’s dismissal—while simultaneously working to discredit (and eventually destroy) Trotsky and the rest of his rivals in the Politburo. By 1930, Stalin stood alone at the head of the Soviet state, with all the terrifying machinery Lenin’s revolution had created at his disposal.

View Article in Macau Daily Times

CHINA: What Hillary Clinton, Google can do about censorship in China

By Caylan Ford

Wednesday, January 20, 2010; 2:14 PM

Google announced last week that it is no longer willing to censor its Chinese searches and may soon be closing its offices in China, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be rolling out a new policy initiative concerning internet freedom on Thursday.

But if the State Department and internet giants really want to promote free access to the Internet worldwide, the most effective thing they could do is to support the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF).

GIF is a small outlet run by a group of Chinese-American computer scientists. Over the last ten years, they have developed a suite of censorship-circumvention software that allows users to safely evade internet firewalls and surveillance.

They have no offices or funding. Their scientists work day jobs and pay for their operations out of their own pockets. Yet in spite of their obvious limitation, they are responsible for approximately 90 percent of all anti-censorship internet traffic in China and Iran.

When protests erupted in Burma in 2007 and its military junta moved to violently suppress demonstrations, it was GIF software that activists used to relay images, video and information to the rest of the world. When riots erupted in Tibet in 2008, GIF's traffic from the region rose by 300 percent. And when Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate against suspected election fraud in 2009, over 1 million Iranians per day were using GIF software to communicate with the outside world. Without GIF, there could have been no "Twitter revolution.

But GIF servers, which can currently support only 1.5 million unique users per day, nearly crashed in the aftermath of the Iranian election. With a small amount of funding or with private donations of server bandwidth, GIF could increase its capacity to support 50 million users.

Of course, even with more resources, anti-censorship technology can still be thwarted. Governments can simply restrict access to the Internet altogether, as Iran did last summer, or as Chinese authorities did in Xinjiang province recently. China's "green dam youth escort," an unwieldy pre-installed software that censors politically sensitive information in individual computers, could also significantly undercut the efficacy of circumvention tools.

But in a country such as China, whose economy is now deeply tied to the Web, shutting down the Internet or crippling computers with "green dam"-like software is enormously unpopular and expensive. For every dollar spent on censorship-circumvention, repressive regimes must sacrifice hundreds or thousands of dollars to counter it.

Even so, GIF hasn't received a penny of funding from either the U.S. government or private corporations. That could be because the software engineers behind GIF are adherents of Falun Gong, a Buddhist spiritual discipline that is banned and brutally repressed in China. Since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong believers have been sent to forced labor camps and tortured, and the Communist Party has blocked information about Falun Gong on the Internet and in the media. GIF engineers began their work largely so that their compatriots in China could access and share information about the persecuted spiritual practice. In a Washington Post article last week, an unnamed U.S. official was quoted as saying that "the Chinese would go ballistic" if GIF received government funding.

But any truly effective measures to promote Internet freedom will irk dictatorships. If the U.S. government wishes to promote internet freedom, it must be prepared to cope with the blow-back.

The United States already devotes considerable resources to promoting democratization, press freedom and human rights initiatives every year. For a small fraction of that budget, America can provide free access to information to tens of millions of people.

Caylan Ford is a graduate student in international affairs at the George Washington University. She is a volunteer editor and analyst with the Falun Dafa Information Center, though the views expressed in this article are hers alone.

View Article in The Washington Post

JAPAN: Japanese Housewives’ ‘Secret Savings’ Fall 20%, Survey Shows

Last Updated: January 20, 2010 03:08 EST

By Takahiko Hyuga

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese housewives’ “secret savings” fell about 20 percent last year as many were forced to tap these reserves to cover living costs after family income dropped, a Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. survey found.

The value of so-called hesokuri, the cash, stocks and real estate that Japanese housewives stash without telling their husbands, fell to an average 3.7 million yen ($41,000) from 4.6 million yen a year earlier, according to the report published yesterday.

Women traditionally handle family finances in Japan, collecting their husbands’ paychecks and handing back pocket-money to cover the cost of lunches, coffee and drinking sessions with colleagues.

The portion of winter bonuses returned to husbands as allowances dropped 34 percent to 73,000 yen, enough to pay for three or four weekend golf rounds at the Hon Chiba Country Club, forty-five minutes east of Tokyo.

Japanese consumers, whose spending accounts for more than half of the economy, are paring outlays amid rising unemployment and falling wages.

Some 3.3 million people were looking for jobs in November, up 750,000 from a year earlier. Workers’ wages slid for an 18th month. Half of those who responded to the survey said they may cut luxury-product purchases, the report said.

“From the micro point of view, research on housewives could show us the reality of the nation’s economy and provide a glimpse of what lies ahead for business conditions,” said Minoru Sugiyama, a spokesman at Sompo Japan.

More Bean Sprouts

The research conducted by Sompo DIY Life Insurance Co. from Dec. 10 to Dec. 14, was based on responses from 500 housewives. Their average age was 39.7.

Seventy-two respondents said among steps taken to make ends meet was serving more bean sprouts, while 40 said they were cooking more tofu.

About 38 percent of housewives said lower household incomes forced them to reach into their savings to pay for one-time expenses including hospital charges, travel and dining out, the report said.

Consumer spending probably dropped 0.2 percent in the three months ended December, according to Nomura Securities Co. in Tokyo, after advancing in the two previous quarters. The Cabinet Office will release gross domestic product figures on Feb. 15.

To contact the reporter on this story: Takahiko Hyuga in Tokyo at thyuga@bloomberg.net

View Article in Bloomberg

TRAVEL: Travelers can now shoot decent videos at a fraction of what it cost just a few years ago

January 19, 2010, 11:00 pm

Your Trip Is Ready for Its Close-Up

By MATT GROSS

Clockwise from left, the Flip MinoHD, the Sony ECM-MS908C microphone, the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1010 and the GorillaPod.

Last week, as I walked through B & H, the giant electronics store in Midtown Manhattan in search of a strap for my wife’s camera, I made a quick stop in the video department to check on the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1010, the camera I bought a little over a year ago to record my Frugal Traveler adventures, like my family trip to Italy and several days of eating at Portland’s street carts.

Back then, the camera had cost around $600 — hardly frugal, but it was tiny, lightweight and could shoot full high-definition video. (Also, it was what The Times’s video department told me to get.) Now, it was selling for $319.99, just over half the price.

Sure, a tough break for me, but good news for other frugal travelers who can now shoot decent videos at a fraction of what it cost just a few years ago. It’s now possible to spend well under $200 on a camera that will not only fit in your pocket but also shoot in high-def.

Which means budget travelers are now primed to become travel videographers. The first thing they’ll need is equipment. If I had to shop all over again, what would I buy today? My needs haven’t shifted: I want great image quality and flexible controls, and since I’m traveling I need something small and lightweight. So, to figure out what I needed to know now, I spoke with Bill Horn, the manager for technology at The Times’s newsroom video desk, and the go-to guy for all things technical there.

“You should look for cameras that are a good match for your level of interest and engagement,” he said. “For someone that doesn’t like to worry about technology and doesn’t want to fiddle with it at all, you really want the simplest one- or two-button kind of operation.”

That pretty much sums up the extremely popular Flip. With 120 minutes of high-definition recording time, built-in editing software and a price tag around $150, the pocket-size Flip MinoHD is ideal for travelers who just want to shoot without having to think about how. My friend Robert Reid, Lonely Planet’s United States travel editor, has been using a Flip to produce his weekly “76-Second Travel Show,” with fairly good results.

There is, however, a big drawback to the Flip: audio. “The cliché, and I think it’s fairly true, is that 50 percent of the video experience is really the audio,” Mr. Horn said “Most consumer cameras have fairly poor microphones.”

The solution, then, is to get a camera with a microphone input. But that will cost you more, both for the camera — the Flip doesn’t have one — and the microphone itself. There are two kinds: a shotgun mic, which attaches to the top of the camera (like my Sony ECM-MS908C, about $70) and the kind that clips to a lapel.

Other than that, Mr. Horn recommended a tripod, calling a stable image “the single biggest differentiator between video that looks like home video, and video which looks a bit more professional.”

It doesn’t have to be expensive. The Gorillapod that I use cost about $40, is small and light enough to throw in a bag, and its flexible, multijointed legs let me prop the camera on counters, perch it in tree branches or simply brace it against my chest for added stability.

But Michael Rosenblum, a television producer who runs the Travel Channel Academy, which offers four-day, $2,000 boot camps for aspiring travel videographers, says he never uses a tripod — ever. “To me, it’s a big thing to drag around for no reason, and in all honesty the camera weighs eight ounces, so any idiot can hold still for 10 seconds,” he said. “It’s a total waste of time.”

Frankly, buying camera equipment is the easy part. Actually shooting compelling travel videos — now that’s a challenge. Everyone from Mr. Rosenblum to my producers at The Times says to focus on two things: characters and their stories. That is, find interesting people to watch and talk to, and then talk to them and watch them.

As the Frugal Traveler, I’ve tried to focus on my own adventures as little as possible, instead hoping to meet characters who will illustrate the life of the destination. At times in my video-making travels, I’ve gotten lucky — like with the kids of Greensburg, a small Kansas town that was devastated by a tornado in the summer of 2007. As they showed me around the wreckage of their home, they were by turns funny and heartbreaking, and when, at the end of the video, they smashed a damaged guitar they’d found in a trash pile, you could feel their frustration.

Other times, it’s been tough, especially in Europe. Europeans just seem to be more reluctant to appear on camera than Americans, and whenever I pulled out the Sanyo on my Frugal Grand Tour, people would shy away. Or they’d come up and ask me where I got this amazing device, which made me feel pretty cool. (It doesn’t take much to make me feel cool.) But I’d rather have felt less cool and found more unself-conscious subjects.

In the absence of easy-to-find characters, I’ve had to turn the camera on myself, which almost always makes for a less-exciting video — see my trek across the Harz Mountains in Germany for an example. Perhaps this is because when you turn the camera on yourself, you double your responsibilities — you’re producer, director and star. I don’t know how Clint Eastwood does it.

I have, however, picked up a few minor tricks along the way. First, and this comes from both Mr. Rosenblum and my producers at The Times, is:

Don’t move the camera. Figure out what you’re going to shoot, set up the shot, and hit record — that’s all you need to do.

If you’re watching someone or something interesting, it will come through without elaborate pans. Save the shaky-cam for the next Jason Bourne movie.

Second, if you’re shooting crowd scenes or want to spy a particularly fascinating person, set up your shot, hit Record and then look away, as if you’re trying to find something better to look at.

They won’t know they’re being watched and will continue to act naturally.

Finally, plan things well. Make a list of the shots you’d like to get, and scratch them off one by one as you take them.

It’s an easy way to stay organized. (Actually, I’ve never done this, but I know I should!)

Frankly, shooting video can be a chore, but it’s nothing compared with what I do when I get home. In order to assemble a video for The Times, I then re-watch everything I’ve recorded, labeling files and transcribing dialogue so that I can eventually produce a script of the final three- or four-minute video. It’s not fun, but at least afterward I get to hand the package off to a producer/editor at The Times, who’ll then cleanly cut everything together.

For amateur travel videographers, though, the process can be much simpler.

When it comes to editing, you don’t need expensive software like Final Cut. Free editing software like the Mac-only iMovie is perfectly adequate for assembling travel videos. “A 9-year-old can operate iMovie,” Mr. Rosenblum said.

And since your audience is likely to be family and friends rather than The Times readership, you don’t need to go through an elaborate logging-and-scripting process. “You’re not going to do fancy video editing, because you’re not a video editor,” said Mr. Horn, “but you can do an assembly and say, ‘Here’s the three minutes of interesting stuff from the boat trip, and here’s the three minutes from the beach, and here’s the two minutes from the airport because we’re being funny, and I can show my friends that and send it to my uncle.’ That’s really all you want to do.”

But maybe you should consider your audience a little bit, since you’re likely to upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo or Facebook, where potentially millions of people may see it. At the end of 2006, I was on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, hanging out at a beach that happened to be right at the end of the airport’s runway. When a plane was about to take off, I pulled out my still camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1, to record the action. Unfortunately I hadn’t realized the plane’s jet engines would kick up a massive sandstorm that sent me running for cover.

When I got home, I uploaded the video to YouTube under the heading “Beach + Airport = Chaos!” It’s not great, image-wise, there are no memorable characters, the story is pretty minimal, and the viewer comments tend to be scathing (“GET A TRIPOD” is the most recent), but to date more than 425,000 people have watched it, and Google contacted me about setting up an AdSense account so I can make some money off it. It might only be pennies, but pretty soon that’s what a great camera will cost.

View Article in The New York Times

MACAU: Macau is 20th freest economy in the world

21/01/2010 01:02:00

Macau’s economic freedom score in the Index of Economic Freedom was 72.5, making its economy the 20th freest in the 2010 world Index and the 6th in the Asia–Pacific region, with an overall score well above the world and regional averages.

For over a decade, The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation – a Washington think tank – have tracked the march of economic freedom around the world with the influential Index of Economic Freedom.

According to the research, Macau is an open and service-oriented economy, with its services sector accounting for almost 90 percent of GDP and over 70 percent of total employment.

“Investment in resort and entertainment projects and related infrastructure has transformed the local economy into one of the world’s leading gaming destinations,” the research says.

The study measured the degree of economic freedom of 179 economies by assessing their business, trade and fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labour freedom.

The Heritage Foundation recognised Macau’s low and efficient tax regime, respect for property rights and flexible labour market, as well as equality among nationals and foreigners wishing to invest in the territory.

It also acknowledged Macau as the world’s leading gaming destination that has attracted more foreign investment, spurring tourism and overall consumption.

In addition, Macau’s overall regulatory environment is transparent and efficient, as it takes three to four weeks to incorporate a company with a one-stop shop assisting investors with company registrations and other relevant procedures.

In the study, Hong Kong has been named the world’s freest economy, scoring 89.7 points this year, well above the world average of 59.4, while Singapore remained in second place and Australia came third in the study that covers 179 economies worldwide, in which mainland ranked 140th and Taiwan 27th.

According to the research, economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please, with that freedom both protected and unconstrained by the state.

In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital and goods to move freely, and refrain from coercion or constraint of liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself.

To analyse and rank the economies in the study, researchers measured ten components of economic freedom, assigning a grade in each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. The ten component scores are then averaged to give an overall economic freedom score for each country.

View Article in Macau Daily Times

CHINA: China’s Growth Puts Status as World’s No. 2 Economy Within Reach

January 20, 2010

By REUTERS

BEIJING, Jan 21 (Reuters) - China easily beat its 2009 growth target after a blistering performance in the fourth quarter that forms a powerful springboard for it to jump over Japan this year to become the world's second-largest economy.

Gross domestic product expanded 10.7 percent between October and December, compared with a year earlier, below market expectations of 10.9 percent but up sharply from a revised 9.1 percent in the third quarter.

"Obviously the month-on-month growth momentum is very strong," said Xing Ziqiang, an economist at CICC in Beijing. "So I think the chances for us to see an interest rate rise in the first quarter are increasing."

For all of the year, the economy grew 8.7 percent. That handily exceeded the official target of 8 percent, a goal deemed the minimum needed to preserve social stability and one that some sceptics dismissed as fanciful well into 2009.

Initial market reaction to the figures was muted. Shanghai shares  were up 0.3 percent in mid-morning.

The fourth-quarter flourish was flattered by a low base of comparison in the same period a year earlier, when China's export-orientated economy was dragged down by the global financial crisis, costing more than 20 million migrant workers their jobs.

But the double-digit growth is also testimony to the government's rapid response to the downturn, which reached its peak in the second quarter.

A 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) fiscal stimulus package was complemented by an unprecedented surge in lending by the nation's predominantly state-owned banks, ensuring that China was the first major economy to recover decisively from the credit crunch.

Indeed, banks have been lending so freely of late that policymakers have turned their attention to nipping inflation in the bud.

The National Bureau of Statistics, which released the GDP figures, also reported that consumer prices rose 1.9 percent in the year to December, a marked acceleration from November's reading of 0.6 percent.

INFLATION ALERT

Alarmed by a new burst of credit at the start of January, the central bank last week increased the proportion of deposits that banks must hold in reserve, rather than lending out, and followed through this week by ordering some of them to sharply curtail lending for the rest of the month.

After Thursday's batch of generally strong data, economists said it was only a matter of time before Beijing tightened monetary policy further.

"The overall macro picture is one of continued strength in activity growth and rapidly rising inflation. We believe further policy tightening measures over and beyond what has already been implemented are needed in order control inflation in the coming months," said Yu Song and Helen Qiao of Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) in a note.

So far China has resisted international pressure to let the yuan resume its rise after an 18-month pause, but expectations are growing that Beijing will relent in coming months.

"Yuan appreciation is likely to resume in March or April, though the rise will be gradual, say about 3-5 percent a year," said Xing at CICC.

A stronger exchange rate would damp down inflation and encourage domestic demand, thus helping to rebalance the Chinese as well as the global economy.

China has already taken a slew of steps to spur spending, including subsidies for rural buyers of domestic appliances and tax breaks on fuel-efficient cars, a measure that helped China to overtake the United States in 2009 as the world's largest car market.

Retail sales grew 17.5 percent in the year to December, accelerating from 15.8 percent in November and compared with forecasts of a 16.4 percent rise.

Industrial production growth slowed to 18.5 percent from 19.2 percent, undercutting market forecasts of a 20.0 percent increase.

Growth of 8.7 percent in 2009 fell short of the previous year's rate of 9.6 percent, but economists polled by Reuters expect a rebound this year to around 9.5 percent.

That would be enough for China to relegate Japan to number three in the world economic rankings.

Goldman Sachs expects China to eclipse the United States as the biggest economy in the world by 2027.

(Reporting ; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Ken Wills)

View Article in The New York Times

JAPAN: New Scandal Hits Japan's Ruling Party

Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010

By Coco Masters / Tokyo

Japan's ruling Democratic Party Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa is surrounded by reporters after attending the party's annual convention in Tokyo on Jan. 16, 2010 Yuriko Nakao / Reuters

After masterminding the historic electoral victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) last year, the party's co-founder and Secretary General, Ichiro Ozawa, has once again found himself in the national spotlight. But rather than basking in the glory of pulling off a successful election, Japan's so-called Shadow Shogun finds himself under investigation by the powerful Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of wrongdoing in a controversial land purchase.

Just days into the spring Diet session, Ozawa, probably the DPJ's most powerful politician, casts a shadow not only over Diet deliberations but also the competency of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's administration.

While scandals come and go in Japan, some observers wonder if the young government that swept the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) out of more than five decades of single-party rule is resilient enough to ride this storm, with the Upper House elections slated for July. (See pictures of Japan's relationship with the world.)

"Obviously, it's not good for the DPJ. They can't say that they're different from the old crooks," says Robert Dujarric, director of Temple University's Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies.

Business as usual is not what the public expects from an underdog party that just won the people's mandate on a platform of regime change. Dujarric, however, says that Ozawa is widely understood to be an "old-fashioned" politician. "If you want Mr. Clean, you're not going to date Ozawa," he says. "Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. That's his weakness."

Ozawa has had many run-ins with the Prosecutors Office over the course of his career, as have many of Japan's political élite. Last May, then DPJ president Ozawa stepped down from that post following the arrest of his top aide, Takanori Okubo, who is now on trial for accounting irregularities and illegal donations from a large construction company that allegedly wanted to win contracts in areas where Ozawa has political influence. Ozawa bowed to cries for his resignation from within the party just months before August's Lower House elections. That move, however, did not satisfy the prosecutors, an influential group of Japanese officials with the power to investigate any criminal offense. Takao Toshikawa, editor of political newsletter Tokyo Insideline, says that

Ozawa and his mentors have been fighting various battles with the office since the late 1970s. "At this moment, the Prosecutors Office and Ozawa are fighting the final war," says Toshikawa.

(See pictures of Japan in the 1980s and today.)

The office now wants to know to what extent Ozawa is mired in the tangled path of how a sum of 400 million yen ($4.4 million) came to be used to buy residential land in western Tokyo in October 2004 to build housing for Ozawa's aides. Rikuzankai, Ozawa's funds-management body, failed to properly report the sum and could be in violation of Japan's Political Fund Control Law for misreporting the funds, not logging the land purchase properly and concealing an illegal donation from the construction company. Ozawa has apologized to the Japanese people for any "misunderstanding" in misreporting the funds, saying there was no criminal intent. It is reported that Ozawa will submit to prosecutors' questioning this weekend and that he plans to tell them he had personally given at least 600 million yen ($6.6 million) to finance the purchase in question. So far, prosecutors have arrested three aides linked to Ozawa, including Okubo. Another is Tomohiro Ishikawa, a former secretary to Ozawa who is now a Diet member representing Hokkaido's 11th District. (See a TIME interview with Ichiro Ozawa.)

Some observers, including Ozawa himself, suggest that the Public Prosecutors Office could be flexing its muscle in a partisan show of force, as the office has long been controlled by the LDP. But that doesn't diminish the fact that similar investigations have occurred in the past.

Says Dujarric: "Prosecutors, from time to time, like to indict someone powerful. It was done in the era of LDP, and now Ozawa is getting a visit." Toshikawa says it's possible that a special investigation team will search Ozawa's home in early February. And depending on what they find, he says, it might lead to Ozawa's arrest.

However it unfolds, the imbroglio doesn't bode well for the DPJ — or for Hatoyama. Still building public confidence in his fifth month in office, Hatoyama is in the throes of trying to pass the second supplementary budget for the current year by the end of January, and the 2010 budget by the end of March.

"[Ozawa's] situation highlights Hatoyama's judgment," says Dujarric. "A lot of criticism has said that he's too indecisive. At first he supported Ozawa and then vaguely backtracked. That doesn't make Hatoyama look good."

After initially seeming to come out in public support of Ozawa earlier this month, Hatoyama has since taken more of a wait-and-see stance. It's not helping his falling approval ratings, which, at 41.5%, are now lower than his disapproval rate of 44.1%, according to a recent Kyodo News poll. Last month, news broke that contributions from Hatoyama's mother were recorded as political funds coming from other donors — some of whom were dead. Hatoyama has promised to pay hundreds of millions of yen in tax on that sum, but the damage control has been slow. Still, according to a recent survey in the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, the DPJ's approval rating is still 23 points higher than that of the LDP. But cries for Ozawa's resignation grow louder as each day moves the ruling party closer to July's election.

In the meantime, Toshikawa says the situation between Ozawa and Hatoyama is delicate. He says, "Hatoyama isn't enjoying Ozawa's frequent interference" on issues from the budget to what to do about the Futenma base relocation. But, he adds, Hatoyama needs Ozawa's support and that of the DPJ to pass the 2010 budget, which will require patience through the end of March.

Addressing the DPJ's annual party convention last week, Ozawa said, "During the 40 years of my political career ... I have carried out my endeavors with only one aim in mind, that is to see parliamentary democracy, a true democracy in which changes of government are possible, established in Japan."

The result of his questioning this weekend will likely fall somewhere between taking the entire DPJ ship with him and his ability to stage a great recovery.

View Article in Time

HONG KONG: Traditions may go on list in bid to safeguard living heritage

January 21, 2010

Intangible cultural heritage survey launched

Cultural heritage: Fapao production, a traditional craft in Hong Kong, is one of the survey subjects.

A territory-wide survey to compile the first inventory of intangible cultural heritage in Hong Kong has launched, the Leisure & Cultural Services Department said today.

The research items include oral traditions and expressions, such as the Wai Tau and fishermen's dialects; performing arts such as the Baak Fu or White Tiger ritual and fishermen's ballads.

They also include social practices, rituals and festive events such as praying mantis boxing, 'beat-the-petty-person ritual' and pun choi; knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe such as bone-setting and traditional Chinese medicine production; as well as traditional craftsmanship such as bamboo steamer making, and dried fruit and cured meat production.

The research team from the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology's South China Research Centre has been compiling an initial list covering the five domains through the study of existing publications, written records, videos and archives. They will also conduct interviews, observations and video recordings.

The first phase of the survey has been started in Yuen Long, Tuen Mun, Tsuen Wan, Kwai Tsing, Islands, Central & Western, Wan Chai, Eastern and Southern districts. It will be completed early next year.

The second phase will start later this year covering the North, Tai Po, Sha Tin, Sai Kung, Wong Tai Sin, Kwun Tong, Kowloon City, Sham Shui Po and Yau Tsim Mong districts.

Click here for survey details. For enquiries, call 2358 8026 or 2358 8939.

View Announcement from the Government of Hong Kong

CHINA: China Paints Google Issue as Not Political

Published: January 20, 2010

By EDWARD WONG, JONATHAN ANSFIELD and SHARON LAFRANIERE

BEIJING — The Chinese government is taking a cautious approach to the dispute with Google, treating the conflict as a business dispute that requires commercial negotiations and not a political matter that could affect relations with the United States.

Officials were caught off guard by Google’s move, and they want to avoid the issue’s becoming a referendum among Chinese liberals and foreign companies on the Chinese government’s Internet censorship policies,

say people who have spoken to officials here. There have been no public attacks on Google from senior officials and no angry editorials in the newspaper People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

Instead, most official statements and state media reports on Google’s surprise announcement that it intends to stop complying with Chinese censorship rules and might shut down its China operations criticized Google as trying to play politics and suggested that its business troubles in China were the real reason for the dispute.

“The Chinese government wants to handle the issue on a commercial level,” said Su Hao, a professor of Asia-Pacific studies at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.

The most direct official statement came on Tuesday, when Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference that Google was not exempt from Chinese law, implying that the company would have to continue self-censoring its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, if it wanted to keep doing business in China.

“Foreign enterprises in China need to adhere to China’s laws and regulations, respect the interests of the general public and cultural traditions, and shoulder corresponding responsibilities,” Mr. Ma said.

Some Chinese say the government is unlikely to escalate the dispute with Google unless the United States does. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver a speech in Washington on Internet freedom on Thursday that will be closely watched in China. Some Chinese experts say the tone of her comments could propel the Google dispute in a more ideological direction, spurring incendiary speech on one side about the quashing of media freedoms and on the other about Western neo-imperialism.

“If it were a simple matter of Google and China, obviously Google wouldn’t be conferring with the U.S. State Department,” said an editor for a Communist Party newspaper. “So the Chinese government is still waiting for Hillary to speak and for Google to make its final decision and so forth.”

The conflict exploded last week when executives at Google said it and more than 30 other American companies had come under sophisticated attacks from hackers. Those attacks were traced to mainland China, executives said. Google had also been monitoring a separate series of attacks against the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights advocates doing work on China.

In response, Google said it would negotiate with the Chinese government to put an end to an unwelcome requirement that it self-censor search results on Google.cn. If that led nowhere, Google said, the company might close down or curtail its operations in China.

People familiar with Google’s strategy say Google is prepared to shut down Google.cn, but wants to persuade the Chinese government to allow it to keep much of its local operations intact, including its Chinese engineering units, its nascent cellphone business and its sales force, which earns revenue for Google by selling Chinese-language advertisements that appear on Google.com.

Two Western officials in Beijing said there was no unity yet among Chinese officials on how to handle the matter. That indecision is fueled by the fact that Google has yet to change its operations — it still self-censors searches on Google.cn — or enter into serious discussions with Chinese officials.

Some Chinese officials seem to be aware that pushing back against Google too hard and too fast — like blocking Google.com or cutting off Gmail — could raise the ire of ordinary Chinese, especially liberals here who already bristle at censorship.

“The government was taken off guard and is still nervous,” said a well-connected Chinese media investor, “because all the international media are standing with Google, and even in China a lot of media people feel what they are doing is right. But all they can do is try to make the problem pass as quietly as possible.”

The investor said other big Internet companies with foreign investment had tried to approach the State Council Information Office, the lead government agency in charge of executing China’s media and Internet policies, to discuss the Google matter and its larger implications. But they were rebuffed, he said.

One liberal Chinese blogger said he got a call last Sunday from a low-level Chinese official who had been ordered by senior officials to collect suggestions on how to treat the matter. “It proves they’re still collecting advice because this is a confusing thing,” the blogger said, agreeing to speak on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his relationship with the official.

Patriotic Chinese writers and newspapers have called for China to stand up to Google, but the only real official editorial was a mild one on Monday in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. Titled “A Matter of Business,” it emphasized the government line that the dispute was all about commerce.

“Whatever the real cause for Google’s possible move, this case is purely business in nature and it should have nothing to do with political ideology,” the editorial said. “If this Internet giant has political values, it should never have been involved in such a business.”

Part of the government’s strategy to deflect Google’s accusations appears to be to present cyberattacks as common and the Chinese government as a victim, just like Google.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that in the week ending Jan. 10, 178 government Web sites were maliciously attacked, a fourfold increase from the previous week. The ministry described the state of Internet security that week as “generally poor,” according to Beijing News, a daily newspaper.

Li Bibo contributed research.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 21, 2010, on page A10 of the National edition.

View Article in The New York Times

Michelin Releases List of 3 Star Restaurants in Tokyo

 

The Michelin guide grants 3 star status, its highest award, only to the very best. 

 

The criteria includes:

• quality and freshness of ingredients
• technical skill and flair in preparation
• clarity of flavors
• value for money
• taste
• consistent quality

The criteria does not include:

• decoration
• service
• comfort level

Michelin deemed the restaurants below to have “exceptional cuisine, worth a  special journey”.

(Listed in alphabetical order):

• Esaki –  Contemporary Japanese cuisine located in Shibuya.

 

 

• Ishikawa –  Japanese cuisine located in Shinjuku.

 

 

 

• Joel Robuchon – French contemporary cuisine located in Meguro.

 

 

• Kanda – Japanese cuisine located in Minato.

 

 

 

• Koju – Japanese cuisine located in Ginza.

 

 

 

• L’Osier – Contemporary French cuisine located in Ginza.

 

 

• Quintessence – Contemporary French cuisine located in Minato.

 

 

 

 

• Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten – Japanese sushi restaurant located in Ginza.

 

 

• Sushi Mizutani - Japanese sushi restaurant located in Ginza.

 

 

• Sushi Saito – Japanese sushi restaurant located in Minato.

 

 

• Yukimura – Japanese restaurant located in Minato.

JAPAN: Japan's High-End Distillers Are the Toast of Whisky World

JANUARY 20, 2010

By KENNETH MAXWELL

A Sake Scion Who Learned His Trade in Scotland Paved the Way for Blends That Would Make Robert Burns Proud

Strictly Japanese Whisky

In Paris, a shop called Strictly Japanese Whisky (no scotch inside). In contrast to the shrinking home front, overseas markets offer Japanese distillers a new market, for premium products in particular.

YOICHI, Japan—In 1918, Masataka Taketsuru, the son of a Japanese sake-brewing dynasty, sailed to Scotland to study chemistry—and he learned the craft of distilling fine Scotch whisky. Some 89 years later, a blend named after him prised something else from the Scots: the honor of being named best whisky in the world.

Japanese whisky maker Nikka boasts many prize-winning scotches, but most of their premium products are not available outside Japan. But now Nikka is targeting American customers.

But making expensive whisky is one thing, selling it another: Nearly three years after Nikka Whisky Distilling Co.'s 21-year old Taketsuru Pure Malt was named the world's best blended malt at the prestigious Whisky Magazine awards in Glasgow, the Japanese company is finally planning to launch a range of its prize-winning whiskies in the U.S. by the end of the year.

Nikka—owned by Asahi Breweries Ltd.—and rival Suntory Holdings Ltd. hope their premium branded whiskies can follow a long list of successful Japanese exports from autos to electronics, and from sushi to anime.

"The fundamental thing in premium whisky is the whisky itself and both Nikka and Suntory have, over the last two decades, proved that they can produce some of the best whisky in the world," says Christopher Bunting, founder of Japanese whisky blog Nonjatta, which translates as "drunk it all." "The Japanese distillers are taking it slowly and cautiously but there are definite signs that the foreign market is being taken very seriously. Times are changing."

Asahi/Nikka

Nikka Whisky's Pure Malt.

At the snowbound Yoichi distillery on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, little has changed over the decades in terms of the principles of whisky distilling, says production manager Koichi Nishikawa. The stills—the large vessels in which the core of the distilling process takes place—at the Yoichi distillery are fired using coal, a method long since abandoned in most other distilleries. It makes for subtle differences in the way vapors pass into processing pipes before starting the process that converts them into alcohol, says Mr. Nishikawa.

Fresh from a traditional New Year's blessing by a local Shinto priest, the distillery is preparing for the first coal-firing of the year set for Jan. 24—the day before Scots mark their traditional celebration of national poet Robert Burns with a hearty meal of haggis washed down with Scotch whisky. (Unlike whiskey from the U.S. or Ireland, Japanese whisky is spelled without the 'e' like Scotch whisky.)

Until recently, Japan's whisky industry has taken a conservative approach to sales too, focusing on relatively low-cost brews that first rose to popularity in the domestic market in the 1970s.

Ulf Buxrud, author of "Japanese Whisky: Facts, Figures and Taste", says Japan's whisky makers missed a big overseas opportunity in the mid-1990s, when young and affluent consumers in Europe and the U.S. developed a taste for premium whiskeys that had previously been the province of connoisseurs and older drinkers.

"The Japanese were almost absent [from international markets] until 2006-2007 and, hence, lost an opportunity to take a significant slice of the market pie," Mr. Buxrud says.

In recent years, Japanese distillers have had to face declining sales of whisky in the domestic market, which had been a mainstay of demand.

Naofumi Kamiguchi, general manager of the wines and spirits division at Asahi, says whisky drinking in Japan has fallen off the scale since the smoking salarymen heydays of the 1970s and 1980s. Consumers have drifted to novel products such as beers made without malt and pre-mixed fruit cocktails, as well as traditional Japanese brews such as sake and white spirit shochu.

Japan's league of whisky drinkers is now only about a fifth of what it was 20 years ago, says Mr. Kamiguchi.

Tax changes in the 1990s that made whisky relatively more expensive than other alcoholic drinks have also hurt sales.

In contrast to the shrinking home front, overseas markets offer Japanese distillers a new market, for premium products in particular.

Last month, in a traditional stone building off the Boulevard Saint Germain in Paris's tony 6th arrondissement, liquor distributor La Maison du Whisky opened a pop-up store selling a range of Japanese whiskies including Suntory's 12-year-old Hibiki. (Hibiki's 30-year-old whisky was voted best blended whisky in the world at the 2008 World Whiskies Awards.) Originally slated to close Jan. 16, La Maison du Whisky's manager for Nikka products Geraldine Landier says the store concept—devised by the French company—proved more popular than expected: Its four-week run was extended by a week and will now close on Saturday Jan. 23.

"We've built up some local custom in just that short time," says Ms. Landier, "as well as connoisseurs and even some tourists who came specially for the store."

While most customers have spent about €50 to €60 ($35 to $42) per bottle, those who want to really splurge can buy the highest-end Japanese whiskies that are on sale for €700 to €800, says Ms. Landier.

Paris also saw the opening last year of the only official Nikka bar outside Japan, in the cellar at the Curio Parlor cocktail club in the left bank just off the Seine river. The club hosts monthly "Nikka'fterwork" tasting events as well as funky club nights with guest DJs running into the wee hours.

Japanese distillers have also tested their wares in the U.S. The Nihon Whisky Lounge in San Francisco's Mission district—one of a relatively select band of U.S. outlets selling a range of Japanese whiskies—offers Suntory's flagship 12-year-old Yamazaki single malt at $13 a shot, while a Hibiki 12-year-old sets drinkers back $16 a pop. Bar staff say demand is rising, along with awareness of the existence of such a thing as premium Japanese whisky.

Nikka declined to disclose details of plans for the U.S. launch, including timetable and pricing, saying it is still finalizing terms of a distribution deal.

Takahiro Itoga, general manager of business planning for the spirits division at Suntory Liquors, says Europe and the U.S are a top priority for the company's whisky sales. Suntory launched its Hibiki brand in Europe and the U.S. last year, and saw overseas sales hit 6,000 cases. This year's target for Hibiki is 8,000 cases. Suntory has also targeted a 23% increase in overseas sales of its flagship Yamazaki brand to 31,000 cases from 25,000 last year.

Those numbers are a drop in the vat compared to the overall size of markets such as the U.S., where sales are worth well over $5 billion a year, according to the U.S. Distilled Spirits Council.

But growth targets of the Japanese distillers indicate their ambitions in Europe and the U.S.—they are also looking at potentially lucrative emerging markets for premium whisky such as India, China and Russia.

Whisky enthusiast and author Mr. Buxrud is optimistic Japan's distilleries can succeed overseas.

"For me, Japanese malt whiskies are another color on the global palette...Their exclusivity not only lies in being true to and preserving the scheme they adopted from Scotland, but also in the desire to experiment and carry the concept forward, for example, using Japanese oak for maturing vessels, and developing own strains of yeast cultures."

—Hiroyuki Kachi contributed to this article

View Article in The Wall Street Journal