Events in Asia thread...

[MMC]

Well, the PRC government seem to be taking advantage of while the worlds' mostly focused on the Olympics, they try to quickly go through the trails of Gu Kai Lai (you know, the girl that killed James Bond... errr I mean a MI6 connected shady Brit) and also another big shot political figure, (the ex railway minister who seem to have taken huge advantage of China's epic railway boom)

Gu admitted to the charges, and Chinese political show trails are usually really quick, most folks don' think she'll be executed though, but this is China so who knows. The general guess is that they fear Gu and her husband will go all out and blow up so much dirty secret that the party will face a huge crisis if they were to be executed etc...



meanwhile, after 20 years of Taiwanese investing in China, amazingly only yesterday was there actually an agreement on investment protection, since Taiwanese are regarded by China as "not foreigner" ... but also "not citizen" ... the obvious self contradiction has caused Taiwanese folks on the mainland to often be at a huge disadvantage whenever they are involved in legal dispute (in a land where legal rules were already somewhat weak to began with). thus we sometimes see cases where say.... a Taiwanese company signs a 20 year lease on a land and builds a huge department store... but then 5 years later the landlords demand a huge rent raise and refuse to honor previous written contracts etc... (usually in such situation the general method for our investors would be to try and bribe an official to slam down on that landlord ....) hopefully with this deal FINALLY in place the situation will improve somewhat

Which one was the Actress involved with RW? Or was that a different story?

[RollingWave]

Which one was the Actress involved with RW? Or was that a different story?

the rumor was that Gu's husband Bo Xi Lai slepted with a $#@! load of famous actress for a huge sum of money, including Zhiyi Chang, who has starred in a ton of flims including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) Zhang denies this of course

[RollingWave]

meanwhile, another long time island dispute is blowing up again.



The liancourt rocks, as you can see is smack in the middle between South Korea and Japan, and both side have long claimed it to be theirs (Korea appears to have the upper hand in terms of actual control) . but the situation escalated recently with the South Korean primnister Lee actually landing on the rocks itself. causing a major uproar in Japan as they recalled their envoy to Japan, usually the sign of the most severe protest short of say... going to war or no longer recognizing the other side as a soverign state etc..

[URF8]

Japan and South Korea have many mutual interests, but their tortured past prevents them from working together. Japan hasn't come to terms with its brutal history and the South Korea has an historical chip on its shoulder.

[RollingWave]

True, but historically speaking Korea have strong ties with China as well, so their mutual interest with Japan may not seem as clear cut in the longer term, for South Korea, who worry of the inevitable North implosion, relationship with Beijing is especially important as both will need to work together in that sort of event.

The real thing is Japan has island conflict with every one of it's neighbor, which makes them the easy common enemy or everyone involved, this of course, is a headache for the US, seeing that it almost certainly don't want to go to war because of some silly islands and is greatly annoyed by the fact that this threaten their ring of chains against the PRC as it pushes two of their obvious allies (Taiwan and South Korea) closer to China in these conflicts.

[URF8]

True, but historically speaking Korea have strong ties with China as well, so their mutual interest with Japan may not seem as clear cut in the longer term, for South Korea, who worry of the inevitable North implosion, relationship with Beijing is especially important as both will need to work together in that sort of event.

The real thing is Japan has island conflict with every one of it's neighbor, which makes them the easy common enemy or everyone involved, this of course, is a headache for the US, seeing that it almost certainly don't want to go to war because of some silly islands and is greatly annoyed by the fact that this threaten their ring of chains against the PRC as it pushes two of their obvious allies (Taiwan and South Korea) closer to China in these conflicts.

If South Korea wants to be reunified with the DPRK it will be necessary for SK to arrange some form of accommodation with the PRC. Such an accommodation would require removal of USFK forces from the Korean Peninsula. If that happens Japan will have interesting choices to make.

[RollingWave]

If South Korea wants to be reunified with the DPRK it will be necessary for SK to arrange some form of accommodation with the PRC. Such an accommodation would require removal of USFK forces from the Korean Peninsula. If that happens Japan will have interesting choices to make.

Yes, that is the likely case that most folks can think of... and it seems likely it's going to happen within our life time anyway. the North's insane government can't possibly last forever. with the North gone the US army's presence becomes much more ambiguous. so it would seem like a given that if reunification happens the US will leave Korea.

Today the Korean President just said along the lines that he wants the Emperor of Japan to appologize for WW2, that's obviously not gonna end well... but he does have a point in saying that "some things simply can not be left unspoken forever"

For us other Asians the general view has always been that the US gave Japan kids glove after WW2 (most likely due to the practical needs of the impending cold war situation) and thus a lot of old scores were never fully settled, so it's not hard to see why it wouldn't be hard for all of us to gang up on Japan in most disputes.

Still, some really ugly issues were really never settled, during WW2 it was well known that Japan essentially enslaved a significant number of young girls (even the most conservative Japanese sourcse says there were over 20k of them, non-Japanese source claim up to 410k!!!! reality is more likely right in the middle I'd guess.) as sex slaves (predominantly from Taiwan and Korea, but also China / South East Asia as well) for their military, the few surviving women are in their 80s now, but numerous compensation and apology filing have basically fell on deaf ears, the logic in japan seem to be that if they admit and compensate for this they'll open a huge flood gate where endless amount of compensation charges can be filed agains them. it's not hard to see how even only mildly nationalistic folks can be stirred up to such outrage.

Japan did pay about 400 Million USD to Korea way back in the 60s to cover "all damage for WW2 and colonization" but never to other countries, still, the San Fransico treaty theoretically barred other allied POWs from sueing the Japanese government for further compensation, and they use that argument on these situation as well, which is obviously rather infuriating.

[URF8]

Japan's inability to come to terms with its past and South Korean revulsion at Japan's actions more than seventy years ago will play into Chinese hands. It ensures that Japan and South Korea each face China alone. It also ensures that South Korea will become a vassal of the Chinese and that Japan will go nuclear in its isolation.

[Mister D]

Yes, that is the likely case that most folks can think of... and it seems likely it's going to happen within our life time anyway. the North's insane government can't possibly last forever. with the North gone the US army's presence becomes much more ambiguous. so it would seem like a given that if reunification happens the US will leave Korea.

Today the Korean President just said along the lines that he wants the Emperor of Japan to appologize for WW2, that's obviously not gonna end well... but he does have a point in saying that "some things simply can not be left unspoken forever"

For us other Asians the general view has always been that the US gave Japan kids glove after WW2 (most likely due to the practical needs of the impending cold war situation) and thus a lot of old scores were never fully settled, so it's not hard to see why it wouldn't be hard for all of us to gang up on Japan in most disputes.

Still, some really ugly issues were really never settled, during WW2 it was well known that Japan essentially enslaved a significant number of young girls (even the most conservative Japanese sourcse says there were over 20k of them, non-Japanese source claim up to 410k!!!! reality is more likely right in the middle I'd guess.) as sex slaves (predominantly from Taiwan and Korea, but also China / South East Asia as well) for their military, the few surviving women are in their 80s now, but numerous compensation and apology filing have basically fell on deaf ears, the logic in japan seem to be that if they admit and compensate for this they'll open a huge flood gate where endless amount of compensation charges can be filed agains them. it's not hard to see how even only mildly nationalistic folks can be stirred up to such outrage.

Japan did pay about 400 Million USD to Korea way back in the 60s to cover "all damage for WW2 and colonization" but never to other countries, still, the San Fransico treaty theoretically barred other allied POWs from sueing the Japanese government for further compensation, and they use that argument on these situation as well, which is obviously rather infuriating.

Thanks for that perspective. Germany has gone in the opposite direction of constant self-flagellation and self-loathing.

[RollingWave]

Thanks for that perspective. Germany has gone in the opposite direction of constant self-flagellation and self-loathing.

yeah, which is also probably why even Isreal / Poland / Czech / Russia today is generally on decent terms with them.. (of course not having a ton of unihabited rocks in between them helps too)


Yesterday a Hong Kong boat managed to sneak up onto the disputed Daiyutai island and planted the ROC and PRC flag up there.... and then was immediately arrested by the Japanese authority. meanwhile the Russians are also making big waves on the Kuril Isles, which they had kinda stole from Japan at the very end of WW2 (FDR basically traded it to them for their 1 week entrance into Manchuria.... which probably did more to make China a commie state than it helped ending WW2)