A freshly baked open thread for all your weekend commenting needs…

From guest blogger Martyn…

I read with sadness this letter in today’s South China Morning Post from, apparently a Hong Kong Chinese gentleman. The letter raised two excellent points that I found both fascinating and largely true. Read on:

Save our children from a hatred of Japan

During the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war this month, the public focused on the hideous crimes that the Japanese committed. This focus synthesised hatred among several generations in the invaded countries. In a condescending tone, these countries asked repeatedly for a formal apology.

The Japanese people are tired of the incessant apologies that they have had to make. This has contributed to the recent growth in rightists in Japan. They feel that Japan should give up its timorous policies on international issues, including relations with neighbouring countries.

The mistake was not learned. After Germany’s defeat in the first world war, the allies required it to pay heavy reparations “for causing all the loss and damage to which the allied and associated governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them …” (Treaty of Versailles, Article 231).

This weakened Germany’s economy, but united the people under a powerful leader, Adolf Hitler. They were distressed to be suppressed by the allies, and hatred raged through the country. Germany set out on an aggressive path.

It is a history we should reflect on. In Asia, the invaded countries, primarily China and Korea, have asked many times for a formal apology from the current Japanese government. Hatred has deepened among the people of these countries over generations. Soon it will overwhelm us. Save our children from this consuming hatred.

WAI LEE, Taikoo Shing

All readers of this site are aware of the details surrounding the current China-Japan relationship and therefore I am loathe to initiate a further debate on whether Japan has apologized enough, the textbooks which skim over Japanese wartime atrocities etc. I would instead cite the two points from SCMP reader Mr. Lee which I find so interesting.

Firstly, he claims that the demanding and unforgiving attitude adopted by China towards Japan only serves to inflame and consequently drum up support for the Japanese right-wing. This, I firmly believe, is true. Every time China wags a finger at Japan for perceived slights and inability to atone for wartime excesses, I can imagine the right-wing Japanese press going into overtime with articles shouting, “enough is enough!” Recent shifts in Japanese public opinion would suggest that this is accurate.

The second point compares feelings towards Japan today to the aggressive attitude of the Allies towards post-WWI Germany, a stance viewed by many historians to have significantly contributed to the conditions that allowed the rise of Germany’s WWII government.

When Koizumi recently called for new general elections in Japan, commentators everywhere speculated whether he would visit the Tokyo shrine that so inflames Japan’s neighbours. The fact that, on the anniversary of Japan’s WWII surrender, Koizumi did not visit the shrine probably had something to with a recent opinion poll that showed a majority of Japanese do not approve of the visits. However, the figure of 37% of Japanese people that do approve of the visits will only increase as long as China maintains its current attitude towards Japan.

This attitude also serves to push Japan further into the US-camp, a result that further confirms China’s fears of a containment policy towards it. In 2006, Japan will come completely under the US anti-missile security umbrella and US Aegis anti-missile warships will permanently patrol the Sea of Japan. It is not only the errant thread of North Korea that has caused this but also China belligerent attitude towards Japan.

From guest blogger Other Lisa, cross-posted on her blog, The Paper Tiger…

Mike Davis is an autodictat, a MacArthur Genius grant recipient, an unrepentant leftist, a great drinking buddy and an incredibly prolific author. His books range from social histories of Los Angeles to the global phenomenon of slums to children’s adventure stories. Mike has always been fascinated by the relationship between human society and natural ecosystems – in particular, how this interaction translates into disasters. Who else would write about tornadoes in Los Angeles? Who else even knew we’d had tornadoes in Los Angeles? In the same book, Ecology of Fear, Mike not only makes the case for “letting Malibu burn,” but devotes fifty pages or so to “the literary destruction of Los Angeles” – all those books and films in which LA is gleefully destroyed by some thing or another, and what this destruction signifies in the popular imagination.

So it was no great surprise to me that Mike has turned his attention to bird flu – and that what he has to say is not exactly optimistic. Tom Dispatch has posted a short excerpt from Mike’s new book, one which underlines how human arrogance and stupidity has left us woefully unprepared for an entirely predictable disaster:

The avian flu outbreak at Lake Qinghai was first identified by Chinese wildlife officials at the end of April. Initially it was confined to a small islet in the huge salt lake, where geese suddenly began to act spasmodically, then to collapse and die. By mid-May it had spread through the lake’s entire avian population, killing thousands of birds. An ornithologist called it “the biggest and most extensively mortal avian influenza event ever seen in wild birds.”

Chinese scientists, meanwhile, were horrified by the virulence of the new strain: when mice were infected they died even quicker than when injected with “genotype Z,” the fearsome H5N1 variant currently killing farmers and their children in Vietnam.

Yi Guan, leader of a famed team of avian flu researchers who have been fighting the pandemic menace since 1997, complained to the British Guardian in July about the lackadaisical response of Chinese authorities to the unprecedented biological conflagration at Lake Qinghai.

“They have taken almost no action to control this outbreak. They should have asked for international support. These birds will go to India and Bangladesh and there they will meet birds that come from Europe.” Yi Guan called for the creation of an international task force to monitor the wild bird pandemic, as well as the relaxation of rules that prevent the free movement of foreign scientists to outbreak zones in China.

In a paper published in the British science magazine Nature, Yi Guan and his associates also revealed that the Lake Qinghai strain was related to officially unreported recent outbreaks of H5N1 among birds in southern China. This would not be the first time that Chinese authorities have been charged with covering up an outbreak. They also lied about the nature and extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic, which originated in Guangdong but quickly spread to 25 other countries. As in the case of SARS’ whistleblowers, the Chinese bureaucracy is now trying to gag avian-flu scientists, shutting down one of Yi Guan’s laboratories at Shantou University and arming the conservative Agriculture Ministry with new powers over research.

That’s just the negligence on the Chinese side. There’s plenty of blame to go around:

The new U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told the Associated Press in early August that an influenza pandemic was now an “absolute certainty,” echoing repeated warnings from the World Health Organization that it was “inevitable.” Likewise Science magazine observed that expert opinion held the odds of a global outbreak as “100 percent.”

In the same grim spirit, the British press revealed that officials were scouring the country for suitable sites for mass mortuaries, based on official fears that avian flu could kill as many as 700,000 Britons. The Blair government is already conducting emergency simulations of a pandemic outbreak (“Operation Arctic Sea”) and is reported to have readied “Cobra” — a cabinet-level working group that coordinates government responses to national emergencies like the recent London bombings from a secret war room in Whitehall — to deal with an avian flu crisis.

Little of this Churchillian resolve is apparent in Washington. Although a sense of extreme urgency is evident in the National Institutes of Health where the czar for pandemic planning, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warns of “the mother of all emerging infections,” the White House has seemed even less perturbed by migrating plagues than by wanton carnage in Iraq.

As the President was packing for his long holiday in Texas, the Trust for America’s Health was warning that domestic preparations for a pandemic lagged far behind the energetic measures being undertaken in Britain and Canada, and that the administration had failed “to establish a cohesive, rapid and transparent U.S. pandemic strategy.”

That increasingly independent operator, Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), had already criticized the administration in an extraordinary (and under-reported) speech at Harvard at the beginning of June. Referring to Washington’s failure to stockpile an adequate supply of the crucial anti-viral oseltamivir (or Tamiflu), Frist sarcastically noted that “to acquire more anti-viral agent, we would need to get in line behind Britain and France and Canada and others who have tens of millions of doses on order.”

The New York Times on its July 17 editorial page, a May 26 special issue of Nature and the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs have also hammered away at Washington’s failure to stockpile enough scarce antivirals — current inventories cover less than 1% of the U.S. population — and to modernize vaccine production. Even a few prominent Senate Democrats have stirred into action, although none as boldly as Frist at Harvard.

The Department of Health and Human Services, in response, has sought to calm critics with recent hikes in spending on vaccine research and antiviral stockpiles. There has also been much official and media ballyhoo about the announcement of a series of successful tests in early August of an experimental avian flu vaccine.

But there is no guarantee that the vaccine prototype, based on a “reverse-genetically-engineered” strain of H5N1, will actually be effective against a pandemic strain with different genes and proteins. Moreover, trial success was based upon the administration of two doses plus a booster. Since the government has only ordered 2 million doses of the vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, this may provide protection for only 450,000 people. As one researcher told Science magazine, “it’s a vaccine for the happy few.”

Thanks to Susan Hu of the Booman Tribune and Dem from CT of The Next Hurrah for their invaluable assistance. For comprehensive and constantly updated information about all forms of flu and what is and isn’t being done, check out the Flu Wiki …and for an informed and refreshing take on world events, I highly recommend the Booman Tribune and its sister site, the European Tribune…

From guest-blogger Other Lisa, cross-posted in her blog, The Paper Tiger…

The invaluable China Digital Times has pulled together several articles that illustrate both the great lengths to which the Chinese government has gone in its attempts to control cyberspace and the surprisingly vigorous public debate that these efforts have provoked.

First comes a report from the pioneering Nanfang Daily (which those of you fluent in Chinese can read in its entirety) detailing the width, height and breadth of the Great Firewall:

“Since 1996, 14 bureaus and departments including the Central Propaganda Bureau, State Council Information Office, Public Security Bureau, Ministry of Culture, and the Administration of Press and Publications have all participated in managing the Internet. All together, they have issued close to 50 laws and regulations, creating the world’s most abundant and comprehensive system of rules to manage the Internet?An expert who studies Internet law told a reporter from this paper that the effectiveness of our government’s emphasis on Internet security and management, ‘is very rare in the world.'”

Which I guess you could interpret as a criticism or further validation of China’s unique historical circumstances…

According to Radio Free Asia, the Chinese government continues to strengthen and broaden its control of China’s cyberspace. On top of recent requirements for Chinese bloggers to register their sites with the government, many universities are requiring that BBS users provide their real names in order to post, and residents of Shenzhen wishing to use instant messaging technology have also been ordered to have their real identities verified by the IM company providing the technology. The goal of all this?

“The sole purpose of the real-name registration system is to impose severe controls over public opinion in cyberspace and to further a surveillance society in China,” U.S.-based dissident-turned-blogger Xiao Qiang said in a recent commentary broadcast by RFA.

Xiao said national security and propaganda departments had also trained a network of on-line “commentators” to manipulate public opinion as expressed in Internet forums, BBSs and message groups.

“On one hand, the Chinese government forces netizens to expose their real identities to facilitate government supervision, while on the other, it pays to train Party publicity personnel to hide their identities to fabricate false public opinion,” he said…

…Zhou said the Web site registration requirement–now apparently being taken up by Tencent in Shenzhen–gave the government instant control over the relatively small number of its citizens who organized instant message groups, or QQs, or other on-line discussion media.

Self-censorship was the ultimate goal, he said.

“It means organizers have to scrutinize the speech themselves for fear of getting into trouble, because postings that are offensive to the authorities often appear on the QQ sites,” he said.

But the Net Nanny’s stifling hegemony is starting to chafe, and not just among fringe cyber-dissidents:

Liu Ze, an official at the Beijing Cultural Center who follows developments on Internet controls by the government, said he thought that compulsory real-name registration was going too far.

“I support or advocate certain appropriate restrictions. I advocate Internet real-name system but it should not be mandatory,” Liu said.

Government attempts to censor the Web have drawn the strongest reaction from China’s otherwise docile university students, many of whom were angered by the closure of high-profile BBS discussion boards like Beijing University’s Yitahutu last year.

“There are many things to be exchanged, whether it is technology or other things,” a university student in the northern coastal province of Shandong told RFA reporter Yan Ming.

“The Internet is an educational platform. Even though it does not affect us, we still feel uncomfortable [about real-name registration] because people have their privacy,” the student said.

I don’t really know if market liberalization leads to dem0cracy or not, or if it’s true that Chinese people really don’t value dem0cracy nearly as much as they do stability. But I have the sense that as China joins the world, as her people develop expectations of privacy and self-expression, that they will not be so willing to passively submit to the Net Nanny’s smothering form of baby-sitting.

From guest-blogger Martyn…

This site has previously countered many of the abundant myths surrounding the idea of the “China threat,” a threat seen in terms of China’s increasing economic power and military build-up. But what if China stumbled badly? What if the world is focusing too much on the problems of China’s success and too little on the problems of its potential failures? As this article relates, China currently faces a multitude of both internal and external pressures, any or all of which could spell potentially catastrophic trouble for not only China but the rest of the largely unprepared world.

While China’s surge certainly may continue, it’s also possible that the awakening giant may stumble badly, a notion not on enough radar screens in Washington. And a failed China could damage American interests to a greater extent than a strong China. That’s hardly the conventional wisdom, but it’s worth examining.

Ironically, it’s the superheated growth fueling China’s economic miracle that also threatens China’s future:

The Pentagon report projects that, based on past growth rates, China’s economy could reach nearly $6.4 trillion by 2025. That would put China roughly on a par with Japan, but well below the U.S., with an expected figure of $22.3 trillion. China’s military would be an expected beneficiary of the country’s economic expansion.

But with surprising candor, the Defense Dept. acknowledged that such growth would be a challenge for China. And that’s precisely what gets insufficient attention. Kenneth Lieberthal, a veteran Asia hand who toiled at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration before returning to teaching at the University of Michigan, has thought long and hard about the Middle Kingdom. What he sees are enormous strains plaguing China — pressures that could mean trouble for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

While it’s smart to watch China’s military modernization, it also would be wise for Washington to prepare for another outcome — a China on its back. Riots on a regular basis and such incidents as the recent drowning death of more than 100 miners suggest the ruling regime is indeed fragile, as laborers rebel against the government’s callousness to workplace safeguards and political rights.

The solution isn’t a U.S. effort to prop up a repressive regime. But Washington must start thinking about how to handle a health pandemic or widespread hunger or a province that becomes a haven for terrorists. Washington can’t be expected to tackle these issues by itself. An international effort would be needed. But the thinking and planning should start well before disaster strikes. We need to plan for both a 10-foot-tall China and one cut down to size.

Which will it be? A harmonious and economically strong China or a China in turmoil and on its knees? Now is the time to think about it as the cracks are already starting to show in both Chinese society and the economy. China was very much able to muddle through in the ‘90s as the economy was much smaller then and society was still very much in transition but in 2005, the stakes are much, much higher.

I will be on the road the next few days with little or no time to post. But fear not, guest bloggers are waiting in the wings, and there should be ongoing entertainment.

This trip could end up being one of those turning points in my life, and I should have more to report about that next week. Let’s hope it all goes to plan.

Meanwhile, here’s an open thread you can use to explore the answers to life’s persistent questions.

(From guest-blogger Other Lisa, cross-posted at Other Lisa’s blog, The Paper Tiger)

I once worked with a guy who had a PhD in Library and Information Science. One of his favorite nuggets of wisdom was “information wants to be free.” To which I once replied with a couple of lines about the role of entropy in communication. But I digress.

I think there’s a great deal of truth to that line – the one about information trying to wiggle its way out of whatever traps have been set to confine it. A recent uproar in the Chinese blogosphere is a case in point. In spite of a government policy to increasingly limit public debate and political discourse, information will often find its way around official limits.

The South China Morning Post published this account of a bitter struggle at China Youth Daily over press censorship and the intrusion of party propaganda into reporting:

A veteran editor of the outspoken China Youth Daily has taken the newspaper’s editor-in-chief to task for allegedly restraining editorial freedom and succumbing to party dogma.

In a high-profile move, Li Datong, who edits the Bingdian Weekly, an influential section of the paper that runs investigative stories every Wednesday, wrote an open letter to the paper’s staff questioning a new appraisal system which pegs journalists’ bonuses to praise by party and government leaders….

Most mainland reporters receive payments for their articles on top of their basic salaries. Some newspapers weigh the price of articles by their quality, while others go by their length.

According to Li Datong’s letter, reports would gain 50 credit points for being among the top three most-read articles, while 80 credit points would be given to those praised by the secretariat of the Communist Youth League.

Stories praised by state government bodies and provincial leaders would gain 100 points, while acclaim from the Communist Party Publicity Department would be worth 120 points.

ESNW provides a complete translation of Li Datong’s letter. It really is something that should be read in its entirety. Here are some highlights:

The core of these regulations is that the standards for appraising the performance of the newspapers will not be on the basis of the media role according to Marxism. It is not based upon the basic principles of the Chinese Communist Party. It is not based upon the spirit of President Hu Jintao about how power, rights and sentiments should be tied to the people. It is not based upon whether the masses of readers will be satisfied. Instead, the appraisal standard will depend upon whether a small number of senior organizations or officials like it or not…

As I read these regulations, I could not believe my eyes. When a report or a page received the highest accolade from the readers, only 50 points is awarded. But if a certain official likes it, there is at least 80 extra points up to a maximum of 300 point! Even worse, in the section on ‘subtracting points,’ points will be deducted when officials criticize it. What does that mean?

This means that no matter how much effort was put into your report, no matter how difficult your investigation was, no matter how well written your report was, and even if your life had been threatened during the process (and enough reporters have been beaten up for trying to report the truth), and no matter how much the readers praised the report, as long as some official is unhappy and makes a few “critical” comments, then all your work is worth zero, you have added zero to the reputation of the newspaper and your readers’ opinions is worth less than a fart — in fact, you will be penalized as much as this month’s wages!

The China Youth Daily is known for its aggressive reporting and its willingess to expose official corruption. What makes this controversy particularly intriguing is that China Youth Daily is the house organ of the Communist Party Youth League, one of President Hu Jintao’s bastions of support and power – and Hu Jintao is generally considered to have ordered the crackdown on media.

I don’t know that I’m able to make sense of that conundrum, other than to once again note that the opacity of Chinese politics often makes it very tough to determine with certainty the real goals of any particular actor.

But illustrating the difficulty of completely controlling information in the age of the internet, Li Datong’s letter was leaked to a Chinese BBS. Authorities yanked it, but by then the letter had spread throughout the Chinese blogosphere. And made its way to the English language, thanks to the sterling work of ESWN.

UPDATE: Here’s the latest, thanks to Dylan – I don’t have the URL for you yet but will try to get it later. Dylan posted the entire excerpt in the “comments” but here’s the upshot:

BEIJING, Aug 18 (AFP) – A leading state-run Chinese newspaper has scrapped a controversial appraisal system linking reporters’ pay to government approval after a high-profile protest by a veteran editor, sources said Thursday.

Li Datong, a senior editor at the China Youth Daily, launched a rare attack on his employer over the plan to link salaries and bonuses to how much praise journalists receive from government and communist party officials.

The unexpected move to dump the proposal was announced after the management held meetings to discuss concerns by Li and other editorial staff, said senior staff members who refused to be named.

“They have scrapped the appraisal system and will design another new plan,” a staff member close to the discussions told AFP.

From guest-blogger Martyn…

The IHT, in this op-ed, asks where it all went wrong. We all remember the many articles in the ‘90s telling us that China’s economic reforms would inevitably lead to a more open and free society. It was inevitable, or so a lot of people said. The reality in 2005 is that, as described here for example, the government has on the one hand continued economic reform but used the other to slap down dissent and further tighten its iron grip on society:

When Deng Xiaoping opened up China’s economy more than 25 years ago, the prevailing view in much of the West was that his reforms signaled the beginning of the end for the country’s authoritarian regime.

This prediction was not specific to China. Conventional wisdom at the time held – and to some extent still holds – that market liberalization is the most reliable path to democracy. Economic openness, it was reasoned, leads to the emergence of an educated and entrepreneurial middle class that over time, will start to demand more and more control over its own fate.

But something went wrong in China, Russia and other states where authoritarian regimes loosened the economic reins. Economic growth arrived but liberal democracy is still nowhere is sight. The reason is simple but disturbing: A new and more sophisticated breed of autocrat has discovered a strategy that permits them to enjoy the benefits of economic growth while postponing – often for decades – the emergence of authentic competitive democracy.

In order to understand the autocrats’ strategy for maintaining a near-monopoly on political power, we must first understand the process through which citizens are able to obtain political power for themselves, a process which the article’s authors call “strategic coordination – activities such as disseminating information, recruiting and organizing party members, selecting leaders, raising funds and holding meetings and demonstrations.”

To maintain political control, China’s leaders have learned to “ration carefully the subset of public goods that facilitate political coordination, while investing in others that are essential to economic growth. The ‘coordination goods’ that they need to worry about consist of things such as political and civil rights, press freedom and access to higher education.”

China has been extremely careful over the years to ensure that no independent groups emerge that are not directly under government control. To this day, there is a massive overlap between the political and economic elite within society. As well as The Three Represents theory attempting to open up party membership to the new entrepreneurial class in China, private entrepreneurs still lack the direct support of the government and the politically-driven state-owned banks as the government do not wish to create a rich and powerful, and independent, entrepreneurial class.

So, if the past policy of engagement with China has failed, the article asks: “What should Western governments make of these findings?”

First, they should recognize that promoting economic growth is not nearly as effective a way to promote democracy as was once believed. By limiting coordination goods, oppressive incumbents can have it all: a contented constituency of rich elites who benefit from economic growth; plenty of resources to cope with economic and political shocks; and a weak, dispirited political opposition.

Second, the World Bank and other donor organizations should broaden the set of conditions that they attach to loans to developing states, and start requiring that recipients increase basic civil liberties, political rights and other coordination goods. This does not mean placing less emphasis on economic growth or the provision of standard public goods. Both kinds of goods are necessary conditions for the realization of real democracy.

Such structural reforms by themselves tend to be more symbolic than real in autocratic states. Policy makers seriously interested in measuring democratic progress in the region should focus on the availability of coordination goods: on the number and variety of truly independent media outlets, for example, or on how easy (and safe) it is to hold a large antigovernment demonstration.

These are the kind of freedoms that make real democracy possible. Until they appear, the United States, the European Union, aid agencies and other donors and must keep exerting pressure for change.

Richard has asked me and some other “special guests” to sub for him while he’s en route to Asia. Though I won’t be able to match his productivity, I hope to at least tide you over with some fresh content until he can get back behind the keyboard.

If anyone has any suggestions for posts, shoot me an email at the usual place.

Other Lisa

See the open thread below – it sure sounds that way. I wonder what motivated this…