.
Lenovo has completed its
purchase of IBM’s personal computer division, creating the
world’s third-largest PC maker. The deal is expected to
quadruple Asia’s biggest computer maker.
.
Among the 9 Asian countries where HSN1 strain of bird flu in
poultry has been reported, Indonesia, Thailand &
Vietnam have been hit the hardest. Each has taken a
different approach to containing the disease, which can also
infect humans.
.
Thailand instituted culling and monitoring of unusual
poultry deaths by community volunteers. Indonesia has
begun massive poultry vaccination. Vietnam
established culling, a ban on hatching bird and raising
water fowl, and a ban on raising poultry in urban areas.
.
China
is trying to cool an
overheated property market in cities like Shanghai to
avert a bust that could set off social unrest. The average
sales price for residential property has doubled since 1997.
.
McDonalds plans to add at
least 100 restaurants a year in China, and may expand more
quickly if suppliers allow, said its CEO, who expects to
have 1,000 restaurants in the country by 2008 with the
Olympics.
.
The Bush administration will improve new caps on imports of
clothing from China, responding to appeals from US textile
companies for protection from a rising tide of Chinese
apparel after January 1.
.
Bush warned China it must
swiftly overhaul its currency system or face the likelihood
of being accused of manipulations to gain unfair trade
advantage, with economic sanction following after that.
.
The Chinese financial system is in shambles, and Beijing
needs the massive outflow of exports to support the system.
While cutting exports make political sense, it doesn’t make
economic sense.
.
Not only can China not reduce the export surge, Beijing
wants to increase it. It has its own sectoral and regional
problems. Unemployment has caused substantial unrest.
Exports keep people at work.
.
The US administration is not
in control of the situation, and neither are the Chinese.
Political pressure is mounting for Pres. Bush, and he is not
strong enough to resist it.
.
Beijing is not in control of the situation, so it cannot cut
exports or revalue the yuan easily. The 2 major
powers have limited room to maneuver.
.
China is studying harsher
minimal penalties for financial fraud following revelations
about theft from state banks.
.
Beijing’s Forbidden City and the Great Wall
now attract more visitors than Florence’s Uffizi Gallery
or the Leaning Tower of Pizza as China overtakes
Italy as the world’s 4th most popular tourism
destination.
.
China rejected Taiwan’s
invitation to Pres. Hu Jintao to visit and ruled out
official contact until the island drops a call for
independence.
.
Taiwan has arrested 17 military officers on suspicion of
passing secrets about the island’s intelligence capability
to China. China is still trying to entice Taiwan “to put
aside political differences and scrap the economic benefits
of the coming Chinese century.”
.
China opened a
foreign-exchange tracking system that lays the technical
groundwork for the liberalization of the currency regime.
.
The Bush Administration
increased economic pressure on Beijing for the third time,
moving to impose more restrictions on imports of
Chinese-made textiles & apparel.
.
Hong Kong
said it will introduce a cap on the local currency’s
exchange rate to the dollar.
.
Japan’s
economy expanded 1.3% during the January to March period,
making the strongest growth in a year, said the government.
.
After rejecting the request publicly, China has privately
offered to pay for damage done in recent anti-Japanese
protests, said a Japanese official.
.
By a vote of 202 to 14, the
upper house of Japan’s parliament passed the bill to give
the country a day off on Emperor Hirohito’s April 29
birthday. The lower house approved the bill last month.
.
The holiday will be known as
“Showa Day” after the official name for Hirohito’s reign,
which lasted from 1926 to 1989. It takes effect in 2006.
.
Many analysts saw the shift toward new assertiveness in
foreign policy is fueled by mounting security fears in
Japan. North Korea claims to have nuclear weapons,
and China is building its military might
.
Polls show the Japanese increasingly feel that their country
deserves a global role commensurate with its economic might,
including a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.
.
Nokia Oyj, world’s #1 mobile
phone-maker, and the NBA agreed to expand their relationship
into China, marking the first time North American sports
league video will be available on mobile phones in China.
.
North Korea
fired a short-range missile into the sea after saying it
expects no nuclear accord while Bush is president.
.
The burgeoning business
relationship between the two Koreas has also become a symbol
of the divide between US & SK on how to handle Kim Jong Il.
.
US halted food aid to North Korea but insists it isn’t tied
to nuclear talks on bomb-test hints.
.
Currency markets were roiled
by comments attribute to a South Korean official for
the second time in 3 months.
.
Treasury Secretary John Snow named a special envoy
(Olin Wethington) to engage China on exchange- rate issues,
signaling a deepening commitment across the Bush
Administration to draw a harder line with Beijing.
.
Hyundai Motor Co. plans to
spend a record $100 million to advertise its new Sonata
sedan in the US starting on Memorial Day holiday weekend. It
just opened its first plant in Montgomery, AL.
.
South Korea’s economy slowed
sharply in Q1 as domestic demand failed to recover fast
enough to offset slowing exports.
.
For 381 years, the 2k-year
Indo-Malay culture of the Philippines had been
enriched with the introduction of Asian, European, Mexican &
American cultures. Strategically located at the crossroads
of SE Asia, RP has become the melting pot of all cultures.
.
RP has a 24-hour comedy presented by the government and a
huge reserve of comedians made up mostly of politicians &
bad actors.
.
Indonesia
researchers have found a strain of bird flu in pigs on the
densely populated island of Java, raising fears the virus
could more easily spread to humans, said the government &
scientists.
.
Indonesia lifted 2 years of
emergency rule in Aceh, but will keep soldiers in the
tsunami zone. A tourism recovery appears stalled.
.
Thousands of protesters across Indonesia marked the 7th
anniversary of the fall of former dictator Suharto by
burning his portrait and demanding his prosecution on
corruption charges.
.
On this forsaken stretch of
land on the West coast of Sumatra, a private relief
organization, Turkey’s International Brotherhood &
Solidarity Assn., is building 800 houses for tsunami
survivors, acting months ahead of government authorities.
.
The timber for the new houses is being logged illegally in
mountains which are home to monkeys, orangutans, tigers,
elephants and thousands of insects & plants. The forests of
Sumatra form one of the richest and most unique ecosystems
on earth.
.Indonesia’s
tropical rain forests are the third largest in the
world after Congo and the Amazon. They are
depleted by illegal logging, forest fires and conversion to
palm oil plantations at a rate of 3.8 million to 6.3 million
acres a year.
.
Burma’s
military junta suggested that CIA had funded terrorists
trained in Thailand for the string of bombings last month at
a supermarket and a convention center in Rangoon.
.
Shell and BASF are close to
an agreement on the sale of the Basell joint plastics
venture to a group led by India’s Haldia for more
than $5.14 billion.
.
The Indian government is to kick-start its staled
privatization program in a move that will lift morale among
reformers struggling to improve their agenda on dissenting
Communist coalition partners.
.
According to a senior
Congress Party leader, political parties worry about the
electoral impact of economic liberalization. Despite
sustained economic growth, voters have routinely ousted
incumbent governments.
.
Congress leaders say some people in the CPM, mainly from
West Bengal, believe a long-term-relationship with
Congress if possible. The coalition of Manmohan Singh,
India’s technocrat P.M., would probably struggle with
economic reform against Communist opposition.
.
Pakistan’s
interior minister said a recently captured al Quaeda figure,
wanted in the bombings targeting the president, was also
involved in a plot to kill the prime minister.
.
About 1500 protesters
marched through Katmandu to mark World Press Freedom
Day and demand an immediate end to government censorship and
release of colleagues since King Gyanendra seized power.
.
The Army
said soldiers rescued about 600 students who had been
abducted from their classrooms in Western Nepal in a
series of bold strikes by Communist rebels.
