70.5% of South Koreans think #China will be the economic superpower. More on #SouthKorea's outlook: http://t.co/eZxPHcc3yL by @Snydersas
— Council on Foreign Relations (@CFR_org) May 4, 2015
Pigs can fly: Chinese May Day celebration criticised for pushing pigs off bridge http://t.co/X4Yr2uquKp pic.twitter.com/KEUP4k00OU
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 4, 2015
Here we go again with North Korean soldiers allegedly murdering Chinese civilians:
China verified three Chinese nationals were killed on Saturday, in a region bordering North Korea, as some Chinese and South Korean media outlets reported the suspects were desperate North Korean soldiers.
The victims included a 55-year-old man with the surname Zhao, his daughter, 25, and a 67-year-old man with the surname Sun, reported South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Two of the victims died immediately and one died while receiving treatment at a nearby hospital, according to locals in Jilin province.
China’s Beijing News reported three suspects wearing North Korea military uniforms entered northeastern China’s Jilin province. There, they killed the three Chinese nationals residing in a sub-district of Helong, a city with an ethnic Korean majority less than 25 miles from the North Korea border.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Hong Le said Beijing has confirmed the killings and the police were investigating, reported The New York Times.
The incident is the third of its kind in this region closest to North Korea.
Last September a North Korean civilian who crossed into China killed a family of three while attempting a robbery, and in December an armed North Korean soldier killed four Chinese citizens because he was hungry – which drew formal complaints from Beijing.
Military personnel in North Korea are given food priority but low-level soldiers go hungry, making prosperous China an easy target for desperate North Koreans. [UPI]
You can read the rest at the link.
Chinese media has sought to extract maximum propaganda value from the withdrawal of China's citizens from Kathmandu. http://t.co/HI472iP4bO
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) April 27, 2015
China’s AIIB and the US Reputation Risk http://t.co/tHLizY2tfg pic.twitter.com/VmBd0sNfgI
— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) April 16, 2015
Is China getting ready to pull off a “Crimea” like scenario in Asia?
https://twitter.com/ThielsChristian/status/586261219578904576
Here is the latest on the comfort women front:
A congressional delegation led by U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi met with Korean leaders including President Park Geun-hye on Thursday in Seoul, where they discussed regional and bilateral issues, particularly the outstanding historical issues between Korea and Japan.
The bipartisan congressional delegation arrived in Korea for a two-day trip, part of its five-nation Asia tour. The 10-member team included Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel and Sander Levin and Republican Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.
During their meeting at the Blue House, President Park explained to the delegation the urgency of resolving the issues concerning Korea’s “comfort women,” a term used for the women Japan coerced into sexual slavery during World War II.
Park pointed out that the victims are now elderly – some reaching 90 years old – and that the clock was ticking, a Blue House official said.
Pelosi replied that the issues needed to be resolved for the sake of women’s rights, the official said.
Tokyo’s refusal to officially apologize for forcibly recruiting thousands of young women, mostly Koreans, into military brothels during World War II has long been a key point of contention between Seoul and Tokyo. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link,but I wonder if these representatives know that the Japanese government has already apologized multiple times in regards to the comfort women issue. Here for example is the apology that Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato made back in 1992:
The Government again would like to express its sincere apology and remorse to all those who have suffered indescribable hardship as so-called “wartime comfort women”, irrespective of their nationality or place of birth. With profound remorse and determination that such a mistake must never be repeated, Japan will maintain its stance as a pacifist nation and will endeavor to build up new future-oriented relations with the Republic of Korea and with other countries and regions in Asia.
As I listen to many people, I feel truly grieved for this issue. By listening to the opinions of people from various directions, I would like to consider sincerely in what way we can express our feelings to those who suffered such hardship. [Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan]
I wonder if this Congressional delegation knows that Abe already apologized over the comfort women issue all the way back in 2007 as well in Newsweek magazine:
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday expressed regrets that his country’s military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II.
The remark, made in an interview with a weekly U.S. news magazine on the eve of his visit to the United States, may have been aimed at mending fences. The premier has been criticized by many countries for claiming there is no evidence that the Japanese military took any part in the forced recruitment of the so-called comfort women to serve its troops who invaded Asian countries.
“As Japan’s prime minister, I’m extremely sorry that they were made to endure such pain,” Abe told Newsweek. The Japanese leader reiterated that his government respected and stood by a statement by former Chief Cabinet Minister Yohei Kono in 1993 that apologized for the Japanese military’s involvement in the use of women as sexual slaves.
There is no argument from me that Prime Minister Abe and some of the people around him have made insensitive comments in the past in regards to the comfort women, but they have maintained all prior apologies made by the government of Japan. Is the standard now that every Prime Minister in Japan has to apologize for World War II crimes when they take office? Even when they take office for a second time like Abe has after already making a prior apology? This is why the Japanese public I think has reached apology fatigue and support Abe on this issue. .
If the people criticizing Japan really cared about women’s right they would instead be directing their outrage towards China which currently maintains a modern day comfort woman system using North Korean refugees who are coerced into becoming prostitutes. Likewise if Abe was serious about resolving the comfort women issue he would make Japan into a champion of women’s rights by advocating for the North Korean refugees currently being used as a modern day comfort women. Instead 10 years from now the same people will probably still be arguing over who needs to apologize for what while the modern day comfort women system continues.
That is what the below Diplomat article discusses which is based on a Chinese news media article:
During the Deng Xiaoping era, China’s foreign policy was characterized by the phrase “tao guang yang hui,” generally translated as “keeping a low profile.” In recent years, however, observers have begun to question whether this strategy still holds sway in Chinese diplomacy, particularly in light of Xi Jinping’s recent exhortation for China to practice “major power diplomacy.”
Chinese media just turned that debate over on its head, by positing that it’s Washington, rather than Beijing, that is entering a period of “low profile” foreign policy today.
An article in Xinhua, published online Wednesday, posits that the U.S. has turned inward and is entering its own period of tao guang yang hui. The article argues that America’s “confidence and power” to “interfere” in external affairs has weakened over the past six years, with President Barack Obama preoccupied with domestic economic development. The lede cites Obama’s philosophy of “don’t do stupid stuff” as evidence.
The piece interviews Chinese experts who agree, as Xinhua puts it, that the U.S. inward-focus is growing “more and more obvious” and that “for the last two years of Obama’s term, [the U.S.] may enter an American-style period of ‘keeping a low profile.’”
One of the experts who contributed to the debate is scholar Wang Jisi of Peking University, who notes that although the U.S. isn’t in an irreversible decline, “U.S. influence on global political affairs has obviously declined.” The reason for this, Wang says, is a combination of weakening influence and power among U.S. allies (notably in Europe and Japan) and the rise of developing countries like China. Wang and another expert, Xu Changyin of Xinhua’s own World Affairs Research Center, both argue that Obama will try to focus on internal economic issues for the remainder of his term. [The Diplomat]
You can read the rest at the link, but one way to look at this is that the Chinese government knows that now is the time to push hard on issues of contention knowing the US will do little about it. An example of this appears to be happening in the South China Sea where the Chinese continue to claim sovereignty over the entire sea while the US pushes allies in the region to do more. The South China Sea issue is actually small compared to if China tries to use this time frame to push militarily on the Taiwan issue. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
