Nation-Building

I've been meaning to comment on the Copenhagen conference, since the perspective from the Indian press is probably quite different from that in the US media. According to the papers here, Obama forced his way into a private meeting between Chinese premier Wen Jibao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh because he didn't want them "negotiating in private". China and India resisted all attempts by the US to make the Copenhagen draft legally binding, and fought monitoring and transparency tooth and nail. This plays well here as a strike against US/Western imperialistic moralizing, on behalf of the developing nations, whose champions are now... China and India? really? I am frankly disgusted. India and China - both nuclear powers and members of the UN Security Council - can no longer by any stretch of the imagination be considered "developing nations" and they are cynically using their endemic poverty as bargaining chips to benefit their industrial and economic elites. I...

A moving tribute and remembrance by banned Chinese novelist Ma Jian, of the events of June 4th, a date that will surely be as symbolic as July 4th someday in the annals of human freedom. I excerpt the beginning and the end; but the middle is what you must read. FOR three days last month, China’s national flag flew at half-staff in Tiananmen Square to honor the victims of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan. It was the first time in memory that China has publicly commemorated the deaths of ordinary civilians. Crowds were allowed to gather in the square to express sympathy for their compatriots. Despite a death toll that has risen to nearly 70,000, the earthquake has shaken the nation back to life. The Chinese people have rushed to donate blood and money and join the rescue efforts. They have rediscovered their civic responsibility and compassion. Their grief, shock and confused solidarity recall the hours that followed the Tiananmen massacre 19 years ago today, when the Communist Par...

The China Rises blog notes that the Beijing Olympic Games has constrained China's behavior in an interesting way: Looks to me like countries once reticent to invite the Dalai Lama are now doing so with open arms, and making a big show of it. They know China will come back and blast them for “severely hurting the feelings of the Chinese people,” threaten “severe consequences” and maybe even cancel some meetings. But foreign diplomats calculate that a window has opened to welcome the Dalai Lama. [...] Beijing has reason to be wary. It seems that with the Olympics looming, wherever the Dalai Lama travels, he is received in grand fashion. And Beijing’s warnings don’t carry much weight. After all, how can it retaliate against the West without harming itself? This is an intriguing development. I've been somewhat leery of the Olympics providing legitimacy to China's approach to human rights. However the reverse dynamic is also at work, whereby China must moderate its own behavior...

A Japanese political activist has been arrested after he cut off his little finger and posted it to PM Shinzo Abe's ruling party, according to police. Yoshihiro Tanjo said he was protesting against Mr Abe's refusal to visit a war shrine, on the 62nd anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. The Yasukuni shrine is the one in Tokyo that honors all the Japanese war dead - including those later convicted of being war criminals. Personally I think that while cutting off your finger is extreme, there's a pretty cogent critique of Shinzo Abe to be made here. It's worth noting that the previous PM, Junichiro Koizumi, made a point of visiting the shrine despite the outcry of protests. I think that it's appropriate for the PM to do so, for the same reason that Confederate soldiers are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC - they were soldiers who fought for their nation, and even if there are a handful of genuine criminals buried alongside there,...