IV. International
(03-02-09)
. East Asia
flexed its collective
muscle in the battle against the global economic
slowdown with the head (Haruhiko Kuroda) of the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) saying he was confident that
shareholders would triple the bank’s capital & regional
finance ministers commit an additional $40 billion to a
regional liquidity fund.
.
East Asian economies
control $3.5 trillion in foreign reserves and have been
badly hit by slowdown in exports but they are willing to
commit substantial funds to multilateral action to
counter the financial crisis. ADB will increase its
annual lending from $9 billion to $13 billion.
.
Members from the 10 ASEAN nations as well as ministers
of China, Japan and Korea agreed to strengthen the
Chiang Mai Initiative, a series of bilateral
agreement to provide a backstop should any of the member
currencies be sharply devalued as occurred during the
Asian financial crisis of 1997.
.
The global financial
crisis is bringing out the worst in the trade
relationship between the US and China. In the
past few weeks, both have blamed the other for the
world’s problems. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
accused China of manipulating its currency. Vowing to
act aggressively to remedy the situation, China bashed
the Buy American as poison to the solution of the
global economic crisis.
. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton said she hopes to broaden the
bilateral dialogue to include climate change and human
rights, but it is the economic cooperation that will be
on many people’s minds. Both have railed against
economic protectionism, but so far both have been
guilty, according to the other, of practicing it.
.
Even as China’s exports have plummeted and it has
struggled with unemployment, it has seized opportunities
to build alliances and raise its position in a new
economic world order. It took the first steps to making
the yuan, which is not freely convertible into
other currencies, an international standard like the
dollar or Euro.
. Taiwan
and China have been
governed separately since 1949 when Nationalist Forces
fled the Communist takeover. China insists that Taiwan
has and always will be an inseparable extension of the
mainland, while Taiwan has maintained it is a
self-governing democracy.
.
Taiwanese president Ma
Ying-jeon took office in May on a platform of improved
relations with China which was a turnabout from his
predecessor (Chen Shui-bian) who routinely provoked
China and irritated the US. Although many groups in
Taiwan have enthusiastically backed Ma’s approach, they
have drawn passionate criticism from opposition parties
and some scholars.
.
Ma’s administration is hoping that investment from the
mainland (Taiwan’s economy is in recession) may provide
a boost. In addition, with China set to begin a
free-trade agreement with the 10-member of SE Asian
nations in 2010, Taiwan is under pressure not to be left
out.
.
What has Japan’s
“Lost Decade” to teach us? A year ago, this seemed an
absurd question. The general consensus was that the US,
UK and other heavily indebted western economies would
not suffer as Japan had done. Now the question is
whether the countries will manage as well as Japan did.
.
Most of the decline in Japanese private spending and
borrowing in the 1980s was due not to the state of the
banks but to that of their borrowers. This was a
situation in which low interest rates and Japan’s were
for years as low as could be. Debtors kept paying down
their loans.
.
Despite a loss in wealth of 3x GDP and a shift of 20% of
GDP in the financial balance of the corporate sector,
from deficits into surpluses, Japan did not suffer a
depression. The explanation was the big fiscal deficits.
When the Hashimoto government tried to reduce the fiscal
deficits in 1997, the economy collapsed and actual
fiscal deficits rose.
. South Korea
will retaliate if
North Korea attacks its naval ships in waters near the
countries’ disputed maritime border, Defense Minister
Lee Sang-hee told lawmakers in Seoul. North Korea
stepped up its war rhetoric in anger over South Korea’s
tough stance toward the North.
.
The won traded
near the lowest level in 11 years on concern that
sliding exports will curb the supply of dollars and
hinder the ability of local banks and companies to repay
overseas debt.
.
South Korea and Iraq agreed (2/24) to a $3.55 billion
oil-for development deal during a visit by Iraqi
president Jalal Talabani, said the presidential office.
.
A succession struggle
appears to be underway in North Korea and is
hampering efforts to restart talks on its nuclear
program, said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She
noted directly that if Kim Jong-Il died, there was the
prospect of heightened tension in NE Asia.
.
In August when Kim failed to appear at North Korea’s 60th
anniversary parade, US intelligence believed he suffered
a stroke that its media strongly denied as a cruel hoax.
He did not appear in public until recently. US officials
continue to believe he suffered some sort of medical
malady.
.
In recent weeks, NK has declared null and void a series
of agreements with SK while its state media have
unleashed angry blasts at the SK government, saying the
2 countries are close to war. There are also increasing
signs that NK is
preparing to test a long-range missile, which Japan and
SK would consider highly provocative.
.
Suspected Muslim
insurgents ambushed a military convoy and beheaded 2
soldiers in S. Thailand in the second such attack
in February, police said. More than 20 gunmen armed with
automatic rifles ambushed a group of 5
pairs of soldiers
traveling on motorcycles after escorting teachers to
school in Yala province.
. P.M.
Abhisit Vejjajeva said 2/25 he would consider asking
China to extradite former premier Taksin Shinawatra to
Thailand, days before the fugitive former Thai leader is
scheduled to speak in Hong Kong.
.
The Thai
opposition is politicizing the omission by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton of a visit to the country during
her trip to Asia last month due to security concerns.
She plans a visit there in July.
. Burma’s
military government said (2/21) it will free more than
6,300 prisoners “with good conduct and discipline” but
there was no mention of political detainees being
released.
.
The league is headed by
Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who remains under
house arrest. Rights groups say only a small group of
those released are political prisoners, e.g. Zaw Myint
Maung who was elected to parliament in the 1990
elections and was given a 20-year sentence in 1991.
.
Over the past several
months, the government arrested some 600 people for
political reasons, including activists, bloggers,
lawyers and even comedians who have been handed long
sentences and incarcerated in remote jails. The releases
came after the 2nd visit of UN special
rapporteur on human rights, Tomas Ojea Quintana.
.
The perception of poor police performance caught the
attention of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT which
said that the negative image (lazy, rude, potbellied,
bribe-taker) created a stumbling block for effective
police work in India. The police protest the
depiction as unfair, saying they are overworked,
underpaid and subject to abrupt transfers that do not
allow them to know the neighborhood they pledge to
protect.
.
Under the program, they gave police officers one day off
each week, froze transfers, invited a community
volunteer everyday to the station to observe the police
work, rotated many officers and trained the police in
etiquette, stress management & scientific investigative
skills. It’s a 2-year pilot program to burnish police
image.
.
“Slumdog Millionaire”
won Best Picture and seven other Academy awards
on a night when the US movie industry embraced its role
in an increasingly global marketplace. The movie has
long swaths of foreign dialogue and no American actors.
Last summer the producers were struggling to find a
distributor for US theaters.
.
Authorities in a
Pakistani border province plan to arm villagers with
30k rifles and set up elite police units to protect a
region increasingly besieged by Taliban and al-Quaeda
fighters. Stiffer action in the NW Frontier Province
will help offset US concerns about a peace deal
negotiated in the Swat Valley, a Taliban stronghold.
. American
and Pakistani officials have repeatedly denied that the
US launched strikes from within Pakistan. Google Earth’s
current images of Shamsi airbase show a discreet
launching pad within minutes of Quetta, a known Taliban
staging post.
. More than
70 US military US advisors and technical specialists are
secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces
battle al Quaeda & the Taliban in the country’s lawless
tribal areas, American military officials said.
.
The arming of civilians
in rural areas shows how Sri Lanka’s government
has been able to push the separatist Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE) to the brink of defeat
after more than a quarter-century of sporadic fighting,
cease-fires and failed negotiations. But they must solve
the root cause of this war: discrimination
against many in the Tamil community.
.
There are an estimated 45k largely Sinhalese villages
which have joined the Civil Defense Forces, its
version of the National Guard, a paramilitary civilian
group whose job is to defend the villages, often in
areas that have been attacked by LTTE. After training,
they are given uniforms, guns and a monthly salary of
$140.
.
The government marshaled public opinion to their cause
by painting the conflict as a war against terrorism;
counted on China for weapons without restriction on
their use; and skirted dissent by journalists, aid
workers ad civil society groups whose public scrutiny of
government in its war efforts was denounced as
treasonous, human rights groups have charged.
.
Diplomatic border
guards, members of the paramilitary Bangladesh
Rifles, also known as BDR, who went on a shooting
rampage against their superiors (66 confirmed dead and
number expected to rise) in the crowded capital of
Bangladesh (Dhaka) agreed (2/25) to surrender after the
government promised amnesty, officials said.
.
The meeting was the first crisis for P.M. Sheikh
Hasima’s fragile government which came to power after a
powerful election in Dec, succeeding a military-backed
interim government. The surrender agreement was reached
at a meeting between Hasima and 15 top rebel soldiers at
her residence.
.
The conflict was triggered by pay issues. Troops (42,000
BDR) gathered inside their headquarters for an annual
conference. They chanted slogans for better salaries and
living conditions, the media reported. The army moved in
to try to stop the unrest, but heavy fighting continued
throughout the day.
