http://newskini.serveftp.net/news-01-Economist_Asia.htmlNewsKini RSS Feeds for Economist_AsiaSun, 21 Mar 2010 12:47:40 GMTNewsKini RSS Custom FeederSee http://newskini.serveftp.nethttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580130&fsrc=rssIndia’s Maoist guerrillas carry out two slaughters, then offer a truce SHORTLY before midnight on February 17th residents of Phulwari, a village in India’s northern state of Bihar, were roused by gunfire, explosions and a shrieking mob. It was led by a few of the Maoist guerrillas encamped on a wooded ridge outside the village. Wearing camouflage-green uniforms, they carried assault rifles and explosives. Around 100 rival villagers, of the locals’ own Kora tribe, came with them, with bows and arrows and a few small children. Peeping from his mud hut, Kashi, a middle-aged tribal, considered loosing off a few retaliatory arrows, dipped in poison. “But there were too many,” he recalled this week, standing beside the heap of fine, grey ashes that was his home. His aunt and nephew were incinerated inside it. Kashi’s brother—their husband and father—was shot dead while trying to flee with him. In all, 12 villagers were killed that night and around 30 houses destroyed. ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15546095&fsrc=rssThe economy is booming and politics stable. Yet China’s leaders seem edgy “THE forces pulling China toward integration and openness are more powerful today than ever before,” said President Bill Clinton in 1999. China then, though battered by the Asian financial crisis, was busy dismantling state-owned enterprises and pushing for admission to the World Trade Organisation. Today, however, those forces look much weaker. A spate of recent events, from the heavy jail sentences passed on human-rights activists to an undiplomatic obduracy at the climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen last December, invite questions about the thinking of China’s leaders. Has their view of the outside world and dissent at home changed? Or were the forces detected by Mr Clinton and so many others after all not pulling so hard in the direction they were expecting? ...Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:42:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15612245&fsrc=rssWorries about renewed overheating DURING Tet, the lunar new year holiday, money is everywhere in Vietnam. It is dished out to children, gambled in roadside card-games, and splurged on gifts, feasts, and trips to home villages. This leads to an annual bump in inflation. And this year’s spike in the consumer-price index, which rose by 2% in February, seemed bearable at a time of rapid growth. GDP grew by 5.3% last year. It came, however, among some more worrying signs. On February 10th, just before Tet, the central bank devalued the currency, the dong, by 3.4%, following a devaluation of 5.4% in November. The aim was to entice holders of dollars to buy dong. A dollar shortage has been starving Vietnam’s exporters of the currency they need to purchase imported parts and materials. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15612179&fsrc=rssPoliticians vie for poor-Muslim votes FIFTEEN years after he migrated with his family to the bright lights of Delhi, Muhammad Naushad has little to show for it. An illiterate 20-year-old weaver, he earns 2,000 rupees ($43) a month, half of which he sends to his mother in the poor state of Bihar. Amid the evening babble of Nizamuddin, a fly-blown Muslim quarter in the heart of India’s capital, Mr Naushad says his only ambition is to get a better job. It is hard to guess what that might be. He is all too typical of India’s 160m Muslims. Found mostly in its northern and eastern states, poor giants such as Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar and West Bengal, they are among the country’s poorest and least educated people. According to a 2006 government-commissioned report, Muslims are almost as badly off as dalits, Hinduism’s former “untouchables”—a finding made tragic by the dashed hopes it represents: many Indian Muslims once converted from Hinduism to escape that reviled low-caste status. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15579841&fsrc=rssTo understand North Korea, look not to Confucius or the Soviet Union, but to fascist 1930s Japan THE face that North Korea presents to the world is widely held to be unreal. Kim Jong Il once told Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, that the bombast in honour of himself and his late, great father, Kim Il Sung, was so much nonsense. Bruce Cumings, an historian, wonders what Mr Kim can be thinking, “standing there in his pear-shaped polyester pantsuit, pointy-toed elevator shoes, oversize sunglasses of malevolent tint, an arrogant curl to his feminine lip…and a perpetual bad-hair day? He is thinking, get me out of here.” The notion that North Korea does not always believe what it is doing colours even diplomacy, which may soon start up again after months of tantrums on the part of the North. The aim is to get North Korea to give up its nuclear programmes as a prelude to normalising relations on the Korean peninsula. Many policymakers in America believe—against the evidence—that Mr Kim can be persuaded to do a deal. Some think that behind his antagonism lurks a desire for accommodation—and even an alliance. ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580840&fsrc=rssThe right to eat cats and dogs is under threat AT THE National People’s Congress (see main story), the Communist Party decides what laws to draft and when they get passed. But public pressure is beginning to count, too. An attempt to persuade the Congress to ban the eating of dog- and cat-meat has captivated the Chinese press and caused an uproar. A proposed animal-rights law, circulated in draft last September by Chinese activists and legal experts, would be the first of its kind in a country where animal welfare rarely seems a priority. Pigs destined for slaughter are often seen crammed excruciatingly tightly in cages on the backs of lorries. In safari parks visitors happily pay to dangle live chickens into lions’ dens, or even to have a live calf dragged by its legs behind a jeep past ravenous tigers. But a fast-growing middle class, despite enjoying gory outings, is also fond of pet dogs and cats. ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15612253&fsrc=rssSome scent compromise; more fear a looming showdown IN THAILAND politics has long been about compromise rather than conviction. Political parties run on expediency, not ideology, which makes it possible to cobble together all manner of oddball coalitions. But in recent years pragmatism has given way to more rigid loyalties. Rival camps rally their base with fiery talk of an all-out struggle for the nation’s soul, all the while tugging relentlessly at its seams. Might compromise yet make a comeback? Some scented a whiff of detente on February 26th, when the Supreme Court ruled on the family fortune of the former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. But that still seems wishful thinking. The nine judges found Mr Thaksin guilty of abusing his powers while in office to favour Shin Corp, his family-owned telecoms group, which was sold in January 2006 to Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund. The court decided to seize $1.4 billion of the $2.3 billion in proceeds from that sale, which had been frozen after the army deposed Mr Thaksin in September 2006. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580824&fsrc=rssLife gets harder for Thailand’s guest-workers THEY sew bras, peel shrimps, build blocks of flats and haul fishing-nets. In return, migrant workers in Thailand are paid poorly, if at all, and face exploitation and abuse at the hands of employers and the security forces. Up to 3m migrants, many undocumented and mostly from Myanmar, fall into this category. So a scheme to start registering this workforce and bring it into the legal fold sounds like a step forward. Migrants have been ordered to apply to their home countries for special passports so that they can work legally in Thailand and, in theory, enjoy access to public services, such as health care. But the plan has run into practical and political difficulties, mostly among workers from Myanmar, who rightly fear their awful government and do not want to return home, even temporarily. Many are unaware of the registration drive. So the first applicants have come mostly from migrants from Laos and Cambodia, where the authorities are more willing to help. ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15606295&fsrc=rssAfter a hard-won battle, President Yudhoyono has a chance to start again FEZ-WEARING members of Indonesia’s parliament called each other transvestites, yelled and scuffled. Outside, the police turned water cannon on protesting students. The climax this week of a parliamentary investigation into a government bail-out of a private bank in 2008 superficially recalled 1998, and the chaos surrounding the fall of the dictator Suharto. But this time the stakes were smaller; the government of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was never going to fall. At issue was how well it could govern. The Bank Century scandal had riveted the press for months. But most of Indonesia’s 240m people have preferred chat shows and Hollywood movies, content that the economy has been doing well, growing by 4.5% last year. Inflation last year was just 2.8%, unemployment is down, and consumer confidence booming. That, however, did not deter Mr Yudhoyono’s enemies from plotting to embarrass him and paralyse his government. They managed to do both. Yet he still enjoys an approval rating of about 75%. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15549053&fsrc=rssAfter the massacre, the show goes on IN THE Philippines politics is always local and often thuggish. Small-time politicians aspire to be warlords, using hired muscle to deter rivals and rustle up votes. But few could boast the wealth, firepower and sheer audacity of the Ampatuans, the dominant clan in the southern province of Maguindanao. The massacre of 58 people there last November, allegedly ordered by the clan’s patriarch—and former governor of the province—Andal Ampatuan senior, shocked the nation and brought the declaration of martial law in the province. On February 9th prosecutors charged 197 suspects, including Mr Ampatuan senior, with multiple counts of conspiracy to murder. Charges of rebellion, over the clan’s maintenance of a militia, are pending. But it would be premature to write off the Ampatuans. The reach of “the old man” is too strong, says a local businessman, who predicts an eventual comeback. Ordinary people are careful to toe the line. “The Ampatuans are our political leaders. We’re not afraid of them,” says Noriah Dalamba, a village official, with a sideways glance. Indeed, the Ampatuans have not gone away. At least 50 candidates standing in local elections on May 10th are clansmen, 23 of them directly related to the old man himself, who is running for vice-governor from his jail cell—common Philippine practice. Several other candidates hail from the rival Mangudadatu clan, whose womenfolk were among those massacred in November. Such deadly rivalries make for a nervous campaign. ...Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:42:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580253&fsrc=rssHamid Karzai’s shenanigans make the going even harder for NATO EVER since the aftermath of last year’s disastrous presidential election in Afghanistan, Western diplomats have been talking tough about the need for thorough reform of the country’s rotten electoral system. Never again, the envoys said, would foreign governments pour cash into a machine that was controlled by the president, Hamid Karzai (right), oversaw fraud on an epic scale and handed a propaganda coup to the Taliban. They promised that foreign support for the next parliamentary election, due in September, would depend on a cull of dodgy officials from the Independent Election Commission (IEC), the body that organised the voting. Most felt that Mr Karzai should lose the right to appoint its chairman and leadership board. ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15607496&fsrc=rssTo a sitting room, mobile telephone or supermarket screen near you soon ON MARCH 1st China Daily got its biggest makeover since the newspaper was launched in 1981 as China’s first English-language daily. As well as a new look, the paper is boosting the number of its foreign correspondents. With a new investigative-reporting feature, China Daily said that it was aiming to “set the news agenda instead of just follow it”. So far, this agenda seems unlikely to set foreign pulses racing. Next to this bold new feature China Daily splashed an “exclusive” interview with the foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, under the headline “FM: China is doing all it can in foreign affairs”. Still, the makeover marks a departure for the vapid broadsheet. And China Daily is only the latest Chinese media organ to revamp itself in what President Hu Jintao calls an “increasingly fierce struggle in the domain of news and opinion”. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15579893&fsrc=rssThe DPJ is finding that it needs to befriend its bureaucrats, as well as bash them YOSUKE KONDO, 44, is one of those Young Turks in Japan’s five-month-old government who took office eager to rein in Tokyo’s illustriously educated cadre of senior civil servants. What distinguishes Mr Kondo, however, is that he seems poised to succeed in this goal. So far the rest of the government has seemed more inclined to work with the bureaucracy than against it. For Mr Kondo’s first target, he aimed high. He took on a man he refers to as “the Last Samurai”, Kazuhiko Takeshima. Mr Takeshima is the epitome of the well-rounded establishment figure. An economics graduate from the prestigious University of Tokyo, he has headed the tax agency and since 2002 has run Japan’s Fair Trade Commission. Mr Takeshima has made a good name for himself as a trustbuster. But for years he has resisted efforts to allow firms to appeal in court against punishments for antitrust violations. In effect, the commission acts as prosecutor and judge. As Mr Kondo notes wryly: “It’s an antitrust authority, but it keeps all the authority to itself.” ...Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15663372&fsrc=rssIn a sea of international opprobrium. But a compromise may be at hand IF YOU’RE tempted by a slab of meat gristle which surrenders little but an ooze of grease when chewed, then you’ll love whale. Add to the sensory experience the accumulated mercury to be found in whale meat. Consider the suffering caused by the hunt to these intelligent mammals; and a military-industrial approach to their extermination. Japan going a-whaling is, to borrow from Oscar Wilde, the unspeakable in pursuit of the almost uneatable. As with foxhunting in Britain, views seem irreconcilable. Since 1986 the International Whaling Commission (IWC) has imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling. Yet every Antarctic summer, Japan sends a whaling fleet south to catch hundreds of whales for “research”. And every year at the IWC’s meeting, pro- and anti-whaling camps gather in sullen deadlock. On the whaling grounds the Japanese fleet encounters the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The ocean warriors hurl rancid butter on Japanese decks, use warps to foul propellers and attempt citizen’s arrests of the whaling captains. Early this year a Sea Shepherd boat sank after a collision. Now an American film has turned a spotlight on Japan’s coastal hunt for cetaceans. “The Cove”, shot largely in secret, shows the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, a village on Japan’s main island. This week it won an Oscar. ...Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:55 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15675628&fsrc=rssThe generals leave nothing to chance THE junta ruling Myanmar has had 20 years to digest the lessons from the country’s most recent election. It was trounced by the National League for Democracy, even though the opposition’s charismatic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was already under house arrest. This year on an unnamed date (perhaps its astrologers cannot agree) the junta will hold another election. It will not lose this one. Election laws published this week do not quite spell out the result. But a “political-parties registration law” bars Miss Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, of whom there are more than 2,000, from belonging to a party because of their criminal convictions. Cut off from politics by her house arrest, Miss Suu Kyi is anyway barred from office as the widow of a foreigner. Her party now has to expel her and other detainees. The law also bans civil servants from joining parties, along with monks, who led anti-government protests in 2007. ...Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:55 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15675618&fsrc=rssTechnology complicates life for vote-riggers and counters alike RIGGED elections and the instability they create have been the bane of the Philippines for much of its democratic history. Filipinos are fervently hoping that the computerisation of the vote-counting in May’s presidential, congressional and local elections will solve the problem. But faith in the technology is less fervent. Many fear it is no solution. In past elections voters had to write down the names of their preferences for up to 32 national or local positions on blank ballot forms. Their votes were tallied by hand at the precinct, municipal, provincial and finally national levels. Definitive results could take weeks to emerge, giving ample opportunity for vote-padding and shaving. Vote-rigging by President Ferdinand Marcos led to his downfall in 1986. The incumbent president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, has had a shaky grip on power since she was accused of rigging her election in 2004. ...Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:55 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15731374&fsrc=rssPakistan wants a say in ending the war, and it knows how to ask A HIGH-LEVEL delegation of Pakistanis is due to sweep into Washington for the restart on March 24th of a “strategic dialogue” with America. The Pakistanis have muscled their way to the table for what looks like a planning session for the endgame in Afghanistan. The recent arrest of the Taliban’s deputy leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and a clutch of his high-ranking comrades, has won them a seat. The Pakistani team, led by the foreign minister, will include both the army chief and the head of the army’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). America has upgraded its own representation at the talks, last held in mid-2008, from deputy-secretary to secretary-of-state level. The dialogue is supposed to cover the gamut of bilateral issues, including help for Pakistan’s fragile economy, and even, on its ambitious wish-list, civil nuclear technology. ...Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:42:43 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15670860&fsrc=rssThat some liberals want and local governments fear A GRANDMOTHER killed trying to stop developers flattening her home; university graduates forced to live in crowded slums: China’s ebullient property market has generated many tales of woe, and a promise from the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, to “rein in” the speculators. But calls for this to be achieved with a new property tax have put the government in a bind. In the past year property prices have surged to new highs in some places, helped by a torrent of carefree lending from state-run banks. Mr Wen made his pledge on March 5th, in a speech to China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), launching its annual ten-day session. The NPC is filled with party loyalists. But some have fretted openly about property bubbles. The government says house prices in 70 cities rose 10.7% in February compared with a year earlier, the fastest rise in 20 months. There are early signs that this is denting sales. In both January and February the volume of housing sales fell sharply from the previous month. ...Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:55 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15612171&fsrc=rssThe defining battle of Lee Myung-bak’s presidency nears its climax ODDLY for a politician, South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, has never hidden his loathing of politics. During his successful presidential-election campaign he vowed to “take politics out of Youido”, a reference to the island on the Han river that houses the National Assembly in Seoul. Mr Lee’s hero is the dictator Park Chung-hee, architect of South Korea’s rise from basket-case to industrial powerhouse. Much like him, Mr Lee believes politicians are impediments to his country’s progress. Unlike Park, however, Mr Lee has to operate in a robust democracy. He is making rather a hash of it. In a bitter twist of fate, his nemesis is Park’s daughter, Park Geun-hye. She was the rival Mr Lee defeated in 2007 to become the presidential candidate of the Grand National Party (GNP). The two have never been reconciled. Mr Lee believes his election entitled him to rule without opposition within the GNP. But Miss Park has never accepted her defeat and still commands a group of as many as 40 loyalists in parliament. ...Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:17:23 GMThttp://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15663562&fsrc=rssAn historic change in the offing; but India’s ruling party may be overreaching itself YELLING dementedly, seven lawmakers mobbed the chairman of the Indian parliament’s upper house on March 8th and tore at the document, containing the women’s reservation bill, he was reading from. Yet the bill passed the next day, with the two-thirds majority needed to change India’s constitution. With broad political support, including from the Congress party that leads India’s coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the bill could soon clear the lower house and win the support it needs in at least 15 out of 28 state assemblies. The president would then sign it into law: imposing a 33% quota for women in India’s federal and state assemblies. This would be momentous, especially for India’s half a billion, badly served women. Today’s Lok Sabha, or House of the People, as India’s lower chamber is known, contains 58 women, a record number, but fewer than 11% of the seats. By greatly boosting women’s membership of India’s legislatures, the proposed amendment, its supporters say, will also begin to make a dent in their more grievous suffering—in a country where female fetuses are often aborted, where wives are battered and women earn on average $1,200 a year, less than a third of the male average. A woman can take credit for this: Sonia Gandhi, Congress’s leader, who has pushed the long-mothballed bill against a furious band of dissenters—of a kind that persuaded previous BJP- and Congress-led governments not to touch it. ...Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:43:54 GMT