Author: Yoichi Funabashi

I was in Washington, DC recently while congressional hearings were held into the massive recalls announced by Toyota Motor Corp. I sensed that public sentiment in the United States was rapidly becoming critical of the auto giant, which is now a synonym with lemons.

An article published in the New York Times on February 21 under the headline, ‘Doubts raised on book’s tale of atom bomb’, drove home the point to me. The newspaper noted that the author of ‘The Last Train From Hiroshima,’ Charles Pelegrino, used quotes from an individual who falsely claimed he was a last-minute substitute on an observation plane that accompanied the Enola Gay on its mission to destroy Hiroshima by atomic bombing. An expert is quoted in the article as saying, ‘This book is a Toyota. The publisher should recall it, issue an apology and fix the parts that endanger the historical record.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU

While no reasonable person would shed too many tears for the passing of the Tamil Tigers (except for the number of civilian deaths involved), we should, perhaps, shed some tears for Sri Lanka itself.

A generation ago, Sri Lanka had an ambition to become another ‘Asian Tiger’.  And it had every prospect of so doing had not the vicious civil war intervened. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Japan Airlines went into receivership. JAL is the stately matron of Asian flag carriers so while its struggles with high costs and overheads were familiar news to the heavily business-class patrons of the old dear, it came as a shock to most of us who had loyally racked up JAL Mileage Bank points over the years – even if they did evaporate if you did not use them rather quickly!

JAL may be a leader of sorts – a prototypical example of what’s wrong with the major established international airlines today – but what’s wrong with JAL is not untypical with the challenges facing a bunch of the majors all over the world. British Airways is in trouble and other European majors have already succumbed. As Christopher Findlay explains in this week’s lead, the international system of air transport regulation might have tried to suppress the highly competitive forces that have been shaping huge adjustments in the business, but that was a loser’s game. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Geremie R. Barmé, ANU

The year 2009 marked a series of important anniversaries for China. Some were commemorated in the official media but others, the ‘dark anniversaries,’ passed with a wave of heightened alert and anxiety.

The ‘dark anniversaries’ recalled quelled protests, social unrest and state violence, events such as the 1959 rebellion in Lhasa, the shutting down of the Xidan Democracy Wall in 1979, and the tragedy of the 1989 protest movement. These events challenge the official Party-state narrative of modern China, and understanding them helps us appreciate how China’s strong unitary state has evolved over the past decades. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: William Maley, ANU.

With Afghanistan’s presidential election underway, the political temperature is beginning to rise notably. A suicide bomb blast outside NATO-ISAF headquarters in the heart of Kabul on Saturday August 15 pointed to the capacity of Taliban militants to strike at heavily-protected targets, and a ‘night-letter’ (shabnamah) posted near mosques in Kandahar on 16 August signaled a direct threat to polling places in Afghanistan’s south. The Taliban seem to be keen to strike at Afghanistan’s election where they can. But the exact nature of the outcome that they are seeking remains obscure. Their aim may be to wreck the electoral process as a whole, but it might also be to strike a direct blow against President Karzai.

The presidential election will be conducted using a variant of the French system. If no candidate secures more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first round of voting (scheduled for 20 August), then a second round (notionally scheduled for 1 October) will be held between the two candidates who did best in the first round. President Karzai won only 55.4 per cent of the vote in the October 2004 election, when according to Asia Foundation polling, 64 per cent of respondents believed the country was going in the right direction. It would be astounding if in 2009, when the most recent Asia Foundation polling suggests that only 38 per cent of respondents believed the country was going in the right direction, he were still able to win more than 50 per cent. In all the circumstances, a run-off seems highly likely; a first-round Karzai victory would likely trigger a rish of fraud allegations.

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Author: Peter Drysdale

An important international consequence of the Stern Hu affair has been to shine a more intense spotlight on the political system and the way in which it interacts with the market and the judicial system in China. This week’s lead from Dr Cheng Li, of the Brookings Institution, examines the political contest between two major coalitions (or factions) within the Chinese Communist Party and the prospects for political change in China. He argues that political tensions are on the rise and China’s political system does not seem capable of finding sound, safe and sustainable ways to handle these challenges. These tensions have their origins in a number of important factors, but three stand out. One is the uncertainty of sustaining economic growth in the face of the challenge of adjustment in the global financial crisis. Another is the sensitivity to the sharp rise in external economic dependence, on energy and resources, crystallised in the brouhaha around the political anxieties that the hike in iron ore and other commodity prices have generated. A third, of course, is the elevation of ethnic tensions, most recently in Urumqi. Despite, perhaps because of, these pressures, there is no sign of a multi-party (or a more transparent and representative) political system emerging in the near future. The Chinese Communist Party will continue to have strict control over the army, media, legal and judicial system. Although there are these continuities, several important factors are now influencing change in the conduct of Chinese politics.

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Author: Tejaswini Patil, University of South Australia and South Asia Masala

The recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne that left at least two students seriously injured caused widespread outrage among various sections of the Indian community. The media frenzy that ensued, with headlines such as ‘Australia, land of racism‘ and ‘Down under and Down right racist‘, further inflamed the outrage. The Indian Government’s reaction was equally strong, with Indian Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna describing the attacks as ‘appalling’ and ordering the Indian High Commissioner to Australia, Sujatha Singh, to visit Melbourne and assess the situation. Even Bollywood actor Amir Khan weighed in, arguing, ‘It was most disturbing to hear about racist attacks on Indians living in Australia.’ The Australian Federal Government and the Victorian Police were quick to condemn the attacks and dispel the notion that they were racially motivated. The reaction to these attacks by state and non-state actors, in terms of managing, controlling and sustaining the post-production discourses raises two important issues:

1. Does setting up the discursive context of the debate in the language of ‘race attacks’ and ‘racism’ contribute to the understanding of these attacks?
2. How does the debate reflect on the troublesome aspects of identity and nationalism within the Indian and the Australian contexts?

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Author: Peter Drysdale

Amid the good news of China’s strong economic recovery as it posted a 7.9 per cent growth rate this week, the continuing detention of Rio Tinto executive, Stern Hu, in Shanghai on allegations of ‘espionage’ has sent shock waves around the commercial and official world, not only in Australia. There is evidence that Chinese business and other international players have also been stunned by the affair. This week’s lead from Peter Yuan Cai examines the chaos in the Chinese steel industry as context in which the Hu detention appears to have been instigated. This issue will be important for a long time to come. We shall seek to explore other aspects of it, including the legal framework under which Hu’s detention has taken place, in the weeks ahead.

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Author: Rajiv Kumar, ICRIER

This is a pragmatic budget which takes in to account the ground realities, is carefully crafted and transparent in its estimates. The most important issue it seeks to tackle is of course to reverse the growth cycle and get the economy back to its potential growth rate. I compliment the Ministry in being realistic about the GDP growth rate for 2009-10 and pitching nominal growth at 10.05 per cent. I read this as comprising 6.5 per cent real GDP growth rate and 3.5 per cent inflation. May be a better estimate would be 9 per cent with GDP growth at 6 and inflation at 3. But that is perhaps quibbling! This should come as a dose of realism to those who pronounce on the Indian economy from their perches in Singapore and New York and who already saw the Indian economy on a new high growth trajectory!

The budget, by hiking up the fiscal deficit to 6.8 per cent and the revenue deficit to above 4 per cent, takes the approach that the public sector bears the principal responsibility for stimulating the economy. The finance minister could not risk being dependent on the fabled PPP or private investments and consumption for generating the economic upturn. Given the weakening private investment sentiment since the third quarter of last year, this is again pragmatic. Whether additional public expenditure ‘crowds out’ or ‘crowds in’ private investment is determined by prevailing ground conditions and cannot be assumed to act in any particular manner at all times. The private sector weakness is revealed in falling exports, declining trend in non-food commercial bank credit and falling capital goods output in recent months. Thus, we could expect that extra public expenditure will have a net crowding in impact at this stage. But the important questions of course are if private investment will in due course perk up and if the investment environment is being improved.

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Author: Sunny Tanuwidjaja, CSIS, Jakarta

Quick counts show that Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Boediono won the election with a landslide with around 60 percent of support, followed by the Megawati Soekarnoputri-Prabowo Subianto pair with around 27 percent of votes, and Jusuf Kalla (JK)-Wiranto winning around 13 percent of votes.

Many have said that SBY’s achievements as president, his charisma, and his style, which are considered by many as presidential, are the key factors in explaining this landslide. However, we should not forget that the result of this election is also a function of the other two candidates.

Considering that the goal of JK and Mega was to make this election go to a second round, we can say that Mega’s team has done their job while JK’s has failed. The failure of JK and his team to get adequate support to push this presidential election into a second round is due to several factors.

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Guest Author: Nina Hachigian, Center for American Progress

By all accounts, planning for the Group of 8 Summit-polooza in Italy was disastrous. Complex logistics were one problem. After Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi decided to allow PR considerations to trump sanity and move the location of the summit to earthquake-stricken L’Aquila, tremor measurements and evacuation plans dominated the news coverage.

Another cloud was Berlusconi the man, who has been plagued by multiple scandals, the most recent involving very young women with very few clothes. But the underlying trouble is the G-8 itself. The world simply needs a different set of countries at the high table of global governance to tackle today’s challenges.

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Author: Anthony Garnaut, Melbourne University

A video of lethal, apparently racially-motivated, bashings, which triggered an official investigation that uncovered no ‘racist’ motives, that in turn sparked off deadly rioting, arson and looting, which all ended with a downtown curfew imposed by a hefty police presence. It might sound like a page from LA’s recent history, but this was the sequence of events on Sunday in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang region, when a vicious riot grew out of what had been a peaceful demonstration that afternoon calling for a fresh investigation into the provocative video. In Urumqi we do not yet know how the police and armed forces restrained the mob, we do not know whether the sounds we hear on the video of the peaceful demonstration were in fact gunfire (because the Chinese media stated that the demonstrators were armed only with knives and clubs), and we do not know how many of the 156 people killed on Sunday were victims of either mob or state violence.

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Guest Author: David G. Timberman

The re-election of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known in Indonesia as ‘SBY’) to a second five-year term is a positive development for Indonesia. With the election over, the question becomes, can SBY and Indonesia ‘up their game’? For Indonesia to achieve its potential as one of the world’s largest middle income countries, it will need to ratchet up the pace and scope of reform.

The election was Indonesia’s second direct presidential election and, as with the first, it was largely devoid of controversy or violence. Indonesian voters once again demonstrated their sophistication, with about 60 per cent (based on early, unofficial ‘quick counts’) voting for a leader they feel is honest and who has brought tangible improvements to their lives. The April parliamentary elections and Wednesday’s presidential election continue a process of evolution of political parties in Indonesia– a process marked by the decline of Soeharto-era parties and the inability of Islamic parties to expand their appeal beyond about a quarter of the electorate.

However, two aspects of the elections were less positive.

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Author: Hadi Soesastro, CSIS, Jakarta

By now a number of Indonesian polling agencies have perfected their method to do quick counts of the election results. The public has accepted their counts as being close to the official final result. In just a few hours after the closing of the voting booths Indonesians have a pretty good idea of the outcome of an election. This happened on 9 April 2009 with the legislative elections and again on 8 July 2009, the day Indonesians cast their vote to elect their President and Vice President for the period 2009-2014. This is a remarkable development.

The final, official count will be known in only about 10 days to two weeks. But at about 4pm on the day of the election, just three hours after the booths were closed in western Indonesia, it was clear that the incumbent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), was the winner. By about 6.30pm when the quick counts have covered 90 to 99 per cent of the sample, there was no doubt that SBY and his running mate, the economic technocrat Dr. Boediono, won the election in the first round. There is no need to have a second round like in 2004.

It is a landslide victory. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Chung-in Moon, Yonsei University, Seoul.

At the historic North-South summit in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000, there was a sense that lasting peace on the Korean peninsula lay just around the corner. I still cherish that moment when I was witness to a foundation of mutual trust being built through the expansion of cooperation and exchange between the two countries. The dismantling of the Cold War structure that had haunted the peninsula for decades never seemed more achievable.

As we reach the ninth anniversary of that hopeful event, the Korean peninsula is caught by a dramatically different vision, one in which the hard-earned progress of recent history has unraveled and left us worse off than where we began.

Given the success of the Clinton years and the diplomatic posture promised by President Obama, I anticipated that the new administration would adopt a more progressive policy towards North Korea based on the Clinton-Kim Dae-jung model.  Yet, a number of major domestic and international issues including the economic crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Palestine rendered North Korea a low policy priority for the Obama Administration.

That was until the April 5 rocket launch. Read the rest of this entry »