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Sinositis
The United States may be the worlds richest country. But China has a billion more people than America.
Word is spreading that US unilateralism may soon be threatened.
Is this really what Europe wants?
Either way, interest and concern about all things Sino is growing in Washington. An annual Pentagon report to Congress last week said that Chinas build-up of short-range missiles is happening much faster than anyone imagined. The missiles are pointed at Taiwan and (possibly) at US targets.
The message is clear: do not interfere on Taiwans behalf.
The Pentagon is unhappy that China seems to be adopting a doctrine of pre-emption based on surprise, deception and shock.
Now whered those China folks go and get an idea like that?
US marines based in Okinawa, Japan, are in Chinese sights. The Pentagon warns that Chinas military actions increasingly focus on the United States as an adversary.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports an important shift in post-Jiang Zemin Chinese politics.
For fifty years, the Communist leadership has spent the month of August living it up on the Beidaihe sea resort. In amongst the mud-coloured surf and the notably communist gated western-style mansions, the ins and outs of Chinese communism have been planned, denied and executed. The beach resort is a hotbed of political intrigue and August has traditionally seen the leadership cunningly jostle for position in the name of solidarity.
Not any more.
Hu Jintao, the new kid on the block, has cancelled the sea and surf party and ordered his henchmen to stick it out in Beijing for the summer, working for the good of the people.
Ruthless!
The NYT calls the decision to kybosh the secret love-ins Hus most formal break with Communist tradition.
After all, it was at Beidaihe in 1958 that Mao planned his not-so-great Great Leap Forward programme.
The gossip is that, in fact, Hu is jostling for position with Jiang Zemin, his predecessor and still powerful rival. Banning the Beidaihe bonanza is Hus snub to Jiangs way of doing things.
Hu has committed himself to a clean-living campaign. The state-run Science and Technology Daily called the decision a populist measure for clean government that will stir peoples hearts. It is sure to win applause.
Does this mean that the Communist Party is becoming more communist?
Not in the judgment of The Economist which reports on the new Chinese penchant for brand-building. It cites Li-Ning, the Chinese equivalent of Nike, which, inspired by the Just Do It campaigns, has launched a marketing drive around the mottos Goodbye and Anything is possible.
If only Mao had advertised...
Anyway, The Economist says the commercial blitz taps into the Chinese belief that they can safely wave goodbye to their hard lives of the past, and that the future is filled with unlimited opportunities.
One of those opportunities, according to Wilson Xu of Li-Ning, is a new-found freedom to seek a more balanced life.
We all want some of that.
The ads show a boy smiling despite damaging his hand skateboarding and a girl kick-boxing with bandaged knuckles.
Triumph over adversity. Watch out America!
Jingoism
This all comes as Beijing unveiled Jing, the emblem for the 2008 Beijing Olympic games.
Jing is a popular Chinese character who has been remodelled for the games to look like a running athlete.
2,008 invited guests attended the ceremony this week at the Temple of Heaven.
The emblem was presented by film star Jackie Chan, movie director Zhang Yimou, table-tennis star Deng Yaping, and political bureaucrat Wu Bangguo.
Bangguo got the biggest cheer.
Down the road, Yang Jianli, a pro-democracy scholar based in the US, went on trial charged with spying for Taiwan. Another dissident, Zhao Changqing, was sentenced by the Xian Intermediate Peoples Court to five years in jail for signing an open letter to the authorities calling for national democratic elections and the freeing of political prisoners.
Thats the Olympic spirit!
(Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Human Rights in China)
On the sunny side of the Straits
To North Korea, where the Voice of National Salvation, a radio station that spent the last three decades broadcasting hostile propaganda to South Korea, ceased operation this week.
It was left to an official, one Kim Ryong Song, to make the announcement, which also marked the first time North Korea admitted it had operated the radio station. For thirty years, North Korea insisted the Voice of National Salvation was run by an underground movement in South Korea.
So what are we to make of the announcement this week by KCNA, North Koreas official news agency, that Dear Leader Kim Jong-il won a whopping 100% of the vote for constituency 649 in elections for the countrys Supreme Peoples Assembly?
Well, we might start by acknowledging, unlike KCNA, that Kim stood unopposed.
The KCNA gushed appropriately: the victory, it said, was an expression of the absolute support and trust of the servicemen and the people in him, and a striking manifestation of the revolutionary spirit and indomitable will of them to vigorously advance under the uplifted banner of Songun (military first), single-heartedly united around the party.
Enough said.
While this farce was going on, Pyongyang was agreeing to participate in multilateral (six-country) talks, starting next month, regarding what it called the nuclear problem between North Korea and the United States.
Attending the talks: the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States.
The decision to participate comes after months of North Korean insistence that it would only talk with America. The likely pressure has come from China, that model of open dialogue.
Last Monday, Chung Mong-hun, a senior executive at Hyundai, took his own life. The South Korean is thought to have been driven to suicide by his part in a scandal that involved the secret channelling of hundreds of millions of dollars from the South to the North as part of the Souths sunshine policy towards the North.
Last week, John Bolton, the US under-secretary for arms control, referred to life in North Korea as a hellish nightmare. Pyongyang responded by calling Bolton human scum and his colleagues bloodthirsty vampires.
Dont expect the talks, even without John Boltons presence, to be cordial.
A report issued on 1 August by the International Crisis Group warned Time is slipping away for a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.
(Sources: BBC Monitoring, AP, Reuters, The Economist, New York Times)
Democracy stirs
Remember Afghanistan?
Well, the new Afghan electoral commission had its first engagement this week. The six-member commission met with UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and representatives from donor countries.
Elections are due in Afghanistan next year.
The commission is charged with registering voters what then BBC calls a daunting task.
Afghanistan has never seen free elections.
There are an estimated 10 million potential voters.
There are signs in Kabul of political parties starting to be formed. The BBC talks of the first fragile stirrings of democratic politics in Afghanistan.
Silvio a go-go!
Finally, to revisit a story the Diary couldnt get enough of last month: Silvio Berlusconi and his spat with Germany.
Hoping to dispel his reputation for stereotyping the German people, Silvio said in an interview with Bild, In Italy I am almost seen as a German for my workaholism, also because I am from Milan, the city where people work the hardest. Work, work, work I almost am a German.
Lazy Germans and, yes, they do exist will be furious!
Meanwhile, responding to the latest blistering attack on Berlusconi in The Economist, Niccoló Ghedini, Silvios lawyer and fellow Member of Parliament, defended the controversial prime minister. The Italian people democratically elected Berlusconi, and The Economist treats them as imbeciles, Ghedini said. We cant all be that foolish.
Quotes of the week
The American people should not be surprised by surprises. David Kay, special advisor to the CIA on the search for WMD in Iraq. President George W. Bush responding to a question asking how, with no opponent, he plans to spend $170 million plus on the Presidential primary campaign.
Even our own experiment with democracy, it didnt happen overnight. President George W. Bush on post-war Iraq
It is not an easy decision to give up a job like this. Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar on his promise to serve just two terms the second term ends in 2004.
Iranians insist on freedom, but they are not sure where it will come from. If it comes from inside, they will welcome it, but if it was necessary for it to come from abroad, especially from the United States, people will accept it. Sayyid Hussein Khomeini, grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, making the case for a US invasion of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Contact the Diary Editor: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net
