Global hacking game


PETER KAMMERER

Sep 07, 2007           
      


The extent of internet espionage by the world's powers is a matter of pure guesswork. Whatever the true level, one thing is certain: a heck of a lot is going on. Some security experts contend that China's internet hackers are responsible for up to 60 per cent of cyber-attacks, others say that Russia is behind 50 per cent, and there is a belief by another school of spy-thought that the US carries out at least half. Now, I was never any good at maths at high school, but even I can add up these figures; the total is 160 per cent - and that does not take into account the activities of Britain, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and others eager for state secrets.

That the figures do not gel is largely down to who spouts them. The nature of the internet and the fact that no government in its right mind is going to admit to spying makes for easy speculation. Unsurprisingly, China has vehemently denied the flood of allegations over the past week that it has been hacking into the e-mails and webpages of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and three of her ministries, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon, and the British parliament and Foreign Office.

The charges come as the political heat is being turned up on China by the US and Europe over tainted products.

I admit to loving a good conspiracy theory and have, on occasion, started one or two. In keeping with tradition, here goes. The American presidential election is 14 months away, and, with candidates jockeying for the right to represent their respective political parties, there is much to gain by portraying China as a bogeyman.

Or how about this: outcries in the west about dangerous levels of lead in toys and chemicals in food are a reaction to concerns that China has too strong a grip on the global economy. Keep up the pressure by casting the nation in an even worse light so people think twice about goods with the tags "made in China". This is not to deny that computer experts paid by Beijing, the People's Liberation Army, one of the nation's security agencies or some bored student geeks are hacking into sensitive information; given the way of the world, it is highly likely.

Beijing is, after all, skilled at spying. Decades of trying to undermine Taiwan's government has taught it a trick or two. After Microsoft in 2003 complied with a request to hand over its source code for the Windows operating system, there was a marked leap in the level of attacks on Taiwanese websites.

There are, however, two sides to every story in the cyber-crime world. For every claimed Chinese attack, Beijing can counter with a report about one from the US or elsewhere. China's government, not being as media smart or resource backed as that of its western counterparts, invariably loses the propaganda war.

For a final fling at a theory, consider the idiom that where there's smoke, there's fire. In May, the internet-savvy European Union nation Estonia accused its giant neighbour, Russia, of hacking into and disrupting its network. The two have long been at odds, but matters came to a head the previous month when authorities in the capital, Tallinn, removed a Soviet-era war memorial, prompting ethnic riots. The hacking started soon after.

Jim Lewis, director of the technology and public policy programme at the Washington think-tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told me that shoring up computer defences was the best way to stem cyber-attacks. In the meantime, governments could hope that a rival would make a diplomatic slip by going a step too far in its hacking activities.

China, he said, seemed to have done that with Dr Merkel's government. Visiting China as the German magazine Der Spiegel made the claims, the leader was so certain of the report's accuracy that she confronted Premier Wen Jiabao . He assured her measures would be taken to "rule out hacking attacks". At a press conference in Beijing on Monday, Dr Merkel, alluding to the allegations, said it was important that "common rules of the game" were observed in a globalised economy.

Outwardly, she seemed to be admonishing her hosts for wanting to look at her e-mails. Reading between the lines, she was telling them not to be so careless next time they play the global hacking game.

Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

dia's liberalisation by stealth breeds ignorance
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray
Sep 10, 2007        

Email to friend         |         Print a copy

The spate of attacks on indigenous supermarkets in several Indian states suggests that populist objections are as much against modernisation as globalisation. Resistance to the American chain Wal-Mart can be put down to anti-foreigner phobia. But the fire has now been turned on Reliance, one of India's biggest companies. It has an ambitious US$5.6 billion plan to revolutionise shopping with a seamless supply chain infrastructure to "embrace all strata of society" in 1,500 towns and cities, with annual sales of US$22.3 billion by 2011.

While New Delhi allows individual foreign brands to sell in India through their own shops, the general retail trade is restricted to Indian entrepreneurs. Tesco, Carrefour and other supermarket chains have yet to be allowed a foot in the door of a business that is valued at US$350 billion and is reportedly growing at 20 per cent annually. Only 3 per cent of this burgeoning retail trade is run by chain stores. The bulk is in the hands of some 12 million corner stores run by modest families. This is the traditional Indian way.

Opposition parties fishing for support among pavement hawkers and small shopkeepers are blamed for the mobs that recently ransacked Reliance Retail supermarkets. Militant trade unionists, wholesalers' organisations, economic luddites and ultra-nationalists lent them a hand. Rival business houses may also have put their oar in.

However, the real problem is that, in trying to goad the Indian elephant forward, no government has made any effort to carry the people with it. The preference has been for liberalisation by stealth instead of upfront programmes and campaigns to counter the indoctrination of half a century.

While anti-reform groups like the Forward Bloc were picketing and stoning Reliance supermarkets, there was hardly a squeak of support from the parties which form the governments that officially favour the enterprise.

They have been as silent about supermarkets as they were on other logical corollaries of opening to the world, like fast-food chains and special economic zones, which also provoked controversy.

This suggests three explanations: India's political leaders are ashamed of what they believe in; they don't really believe in liberalisation; or they do, but dare not take on voters who are prisoners of the old mindset.

West Bengal Forward Bloc chief Ashok Ghosh hailed Reliance's closure in his state as "a victory for the working class, the toiling peasants and the small traders..."

Large sections of Indians do see entrepreneurs as the modern incarnations of the zamindars (landowners who were also rent collectors), who exploited the peasantry in British times. And they see multinationals as new versions of the East India Company, which came to trade and stayed to rule. That situation leaves the state as the small man's only protector. No one has told people otherwise.

Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

A young Gandhi shows India the way


Deep Kisor Datta-Ray
Sep 11, 2007           
   


A new generation of politicians is the best guarantee that India's rapidly expanding economic and military networks will be used to improve stability and create prosperity in the region. They are internationalists by birth, education and inclination - and they are held accountable by democracy.

In parliament sit about a dozen young MPs who will become the leaders of the ruling Congress and opposition Bharatiya Janata parties. They understand the aspirations of a young population - the majority of Indians are under 35 - and their vision for India reflects a globalised upbringing which eschews narrow parochialism. Foremost among them is Rahul Gandhi, who entered parliament three years ago, aged 34.

He is heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has ruled India for 40 of its 60 years. By setting a personal example, he is trying to transform a highly stratified society where professional titles are paraded and a misplaced notion of respect deters criticism, stifles innovation and perpetuates inequality.

That approach is to be expected from a man whose father - former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi - was himself unwilling to be hemmed in by traditional boundaries.

Educated at Cambridge, Harvard and in India, Rahul Gandhi's elite background, foreign-born mother and modern mentality could easily have formed an unbridgeable gulf separating him from India's poor, uneducated masses. It did not. He secured an impressive 66 per cent of the votes cast in his first election.

On the one hand, sceptics insinuate that the victory was a product of Mr Gandhi's pedigree, not his electoral platform. On the other, loyalists enthused by his victory expect him to become prime minister after the next scheduled elections, in 2009.

Mr Gandhi's campaign revealed a new strategy. Intended to provide the means to create economic, social and political freedoms across the traditional divisions of caste and religion, it indicates the possibility of a new politics - one that stops perpetuating millennia-old divides. If indeed his name rather than his politics carried the day, it does not condemn the man. Rather, it is a sorry symptom of a society refusing to abandon its feudal mindset.

As for the prime ministership, Mr Gandhi has repeatedly said he is too young and inexperienced. But he has been endorsed by Oxbridge-educated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who said: "Rahul Gandhi is your future; he is sweating it out for you." It bodes well that the architect of India's opening to the world supports him.

The new internationalism is not about projecting power. Democracy - no matter how corrupt and inefficient - ensures that it is about learning from the world to better everyday Indian life.

Dr Singh's practical internationalism fostered the Indo-US nuclear deal. It is opposed by left-wing coalition partners simply because it is a link with the United States. Such narrow parochialism is exactly what Mr Gandhi and the next generation are avoiding. Autarchy is not for them.

Deep Kisor Datta-Ray is a London-based historian and commentator on Asian affairs. dattaray@gmail.com


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

Recipe for disaster
Washington's softening stance on nuclear weapons brings the world closer to the risk of a holocaust, Jimmy Carter warns

Jimmy Carter
Sep 12, 2007           
   


By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the United States has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other nations with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons. Currently proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

At the same time, no significant steps are being taken to reduce the worldwide arsenal of almost 30,000 nuclear weapons now possessed by the United States, Russia, China, France, Israel, Britain, India, Pakistan and perhaps North Korea. A global disaster is just as possible now, through mistakes or misjudgments, as it was during the depths of the cold war.

The key restraining commitment among the five original nuclear powers and more than 180 other nations is the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its key objective is "to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology ... and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament". In the last five-year review conference at the United Nations in 2005, only Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea were not participating - the first three have nuclear arsenals that are advanced, and the fourth's is embryonic.

The American government has not set a good example, having already abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, binding limitations on testing nuclear weapons and developing new ones, and a long-standing policy of foregoing threats of "first use" of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. These recent decisions have encouraged China, Russia and other NPT signatories to respond with similar actions.

Knowing since 1974 of India's nuclear ambitions, I and other American presidents imposed a consistent policy: no sales of nuclear technology or uncontrolled fuel to any country that refused to sign the NPT. Today these restraints are in the process of being abandoned.

I have no doubt that India's political leaders are just as responsible in handling their country's arsenal as leaders of the five original nuclear powers. But there is a significant difference: the original five have signed the NPT and have stopped producing fissile material for weapons.

India's leaders should make the same pledges and should also join other nuclear powers in signing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Instead, they have rejected these steps and insist on unrestricted access to international assistance in producing enough fissile material for as many as 50 weapons a year. If India's demand is acceptable, why should other technologically advanced NPT signatories, such as Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Japan - to say nothing of less responsible nations - continue to restrain themselves?

Having received at least tentative approval from the US for its policy, India still faces two further obstacles: an acceptable agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 45-nation body that - until now - has barred nuclear trade with any nation that refuses to accept international nuclear standards.

The non-nuclear NSG members are Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.

The role of these nations and the IAEA is not to prevent India's development of nuclear power or even nuclear weapons, but rather to assure that it proceeds as almost all other responsible nations do, by signing the NPT. Nuclear powers must show leadership, by restraining themselves and by limiting further departures from the NPT's restraints. The choices they make today will create a legacy - deadly or peaceful - for the future.

Jimmy Carter is a former US president and founder of the non-profit Carter Centre in Atlanta

Copyright: Project Syndicate


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

It's not a game, so let's call a spade a spade


OBSERVER
Greg Torode
Sep 13, 2007           
   


The rise of the Venetian Macao from the dust of the Cotai reclamation is a harbinger of great change. Undoubtedly, as some commentators have noted, the unprecedented scale of its convention facilities, shopping arcades and suites stand to change the face of the tourism industry in the region.

It also threatens to change our language and, with it, our understanding and perceptions of the casino industry. For words as basic as "casino" and "gambling" are fast disappearing under a successful public-relations blitz on the part of the modern casino moguls now dominating Macau.

The casino gambling industry seems to prefer the word "gaming". That is, of course, if it has to refer to its core source of income at all. The Venetian Macao's website outlines in several languages all its facilities and events in great detail, from an upcoming top-drawer tennis match to its restaurants - except one. Its casino, the world's biggest gambling room, is conspicuous only by its absence, as is any reference to its loan facilities for out-of-luck punters.

Rather than casino resorts, we are also seeing increased references to "integrated resorts", an even more brazen euphemism of which Singapore, for one, has grown particularly fond. The Venetian's billionaire owner, Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson, took it one step further. He dubbed his latest US$2.4 billion project a "Disneyland for adults".

This is not meant as implied criticism. It is simply what casino companies do, and some of the Las Vegas operators now in Macau are among the slickest and most astute in the business. Anyone with experience of Las Vegas knows that they are masters of feel-good illusion. Once you are happily ensconced in their resorts, they don't want you leaving for anything as mundane as food or shopping. You won't find, for example, many nagging distractions such as clocks, daylight or even easy exits in their plush gambling halls.

What is more of a worry is the way - through slavishness or ignorance, or both - some pundits now happily skirt the use of such basic and well-used words as "casino" and "gambling" when describing the strength, merits and virtues of an industry built on the staging of games of chance for money - at odds, of course, where the house always wins in the long term.

Like most successful propaganda, it has a germ of truth. Gaming, according to dictionary definitions, can refer to gambling. In theory, neither word is particularly loaded positively or negatively. But gaming can also refer to war gaming or computer gaming, so it's hardly precise in the modern age.

Yet it is also arguably less explicit than "gambling". It is interesting to note that the punters themselves traditionally don't talk about "gaming", at least not in this part of the world. For better or worse, they know exactly what gambling is all about.

No one refers to "gaming" on a horse or a football match or zipping across to Macau for a "game". And if one of their friends succumbs to addiction, they certainly don't refer to him or her as being a "degenerate gamer". Further, it is hard to imagine anyone seeking to describe a vice as well as an industry using "gaming" instead of "gambling". In short, "gambling" is a much better word to describe what goes on in Macau.

Such distinctions are important. What is going on at the Cotai Strip has vast commercial, social and regulatory implications for Hong Kong, too. The casino boom is going to be weighed up, chewed over and commented upon in ever-greater detail.

In Hong Kong, gambling is tightly restricted to the Jockey Club's horse racing, football betting and Mark Six operations, and these remain part of that debate. Anti-gambling activists, for example, are threatening legal challenges against new Jockey Club moves to allow children into daytime Sha Tin meetings. Euphemisms should have no place in this arena.

Greg Torode is the Post's chief Asia correspondent


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

More big fish to fry


PETER KAMMERER

Sep 14, 2007           
   

Congratulations to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, after her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption. Having made fighting top-level fraud a priority of her presidency, the case serves as the highest-level proof since she took office 5-1/2 years ago that she means business.

There have been other cases, of course; that they generally involve names and faces that people are unfamiliar with has been unfortunate, given the all-pervasive nature of corruption at every level of Philippine society. Now that a big fish has been fried and Mrs Arroyo has chalked up a significant victory in her war on graft, the message of zero tolerance is loud and clear.

Of course, her fight cannot end with Estrada. This is a country where a banknote placed in the hand of the police officer who has just booked you for speeding will erase all memory of a traffic offence; where prisoners vanish from their cells because money has changed hands with the guards; where people often run for public office not out of a sense of civic duty, but because they know they can get rich from bribes.

Such institutionalised practices are obviously not good for the reputation of a nation that could do with foreign investment to kick-start the economy. Mrs Arroyo realises that clean government projects the right image, hence her anti-corruption drive.

Estrada's conviction - assuming it sticks - is welcomed by the Arroyo administration because of the criticism from inside and outside the country that the policy is little more than hot air. Non-governmental corruption watchdog Transparency International has been particularly critical. It said, in a study issued in February, that "although the government advocates zero tolerance for corruption and follows best practice by adopting a three-pronged approach against it through promotion, prevention and enforcement, a lack of compliance and implementation on the side of the public and a lack of prosecutions, convictions and enforcement on the side of the authorities persists". In the organisation's last annual Corruption Perceptions Index, the Philippines was ranked 121 out of 159 countries.

Turning around centuries of such practice will not happen quickly. Former first lady Imelda Marcos has been convicted of only one of the dozens of graft charges she faces and, under Estrada's presidency, was pardoned on the grounds of being too old for prison. She is accused of being an accomplice with her dictator husband, Ferdinand, of embezzling up to US$20 billion from public coffers, yet remains the nation's foremost socialite.

But all is not lost for Mrs Arroyo. She now has a golden opportunity to continue the impetus afforded by the Estrada ruling to constructively deal with the many corruption cases levelled against her family, government and associates. Although several involve considerably more public money than Estrada was accused of stealing, none has been resolved.

The list is too long to reprint; some have been the subject of two failed impeachment motions against the president, but the opposition is planning a third attempt. Among them are a US$25 million election computerisation scheme that has never been rolled out; a US$140 million government fertiliser fund allegedly distributed to Mrs Arroyo's allies during the 2004 presidential election; a 32km rail line that, it is claimed, is being built at a cost of US$16 million per kilometre; the mothballing of Terminal 3 at the main international airport over a payment dispute; and a scandal over purported payments from the game of chance, jueteng - similar to the claims that brought down Estrada.

Philippine governments are judged not by what they have achieved, but how corrupt they were. The graft cases swirling around the Arroyo government clearly put it on track as, potentially, the most corrupt since Marcos fell in 1986. And, unlike Mrs Arroyo, Marcos never claimed to be a graft-buster.

Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor



http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Japan's pronounced leadership gap


TOM PLATE

Sep 18, 2007           
   


Japan is of gigantic importance to the US and to the rest of the world. The nation of 127 million people has developed into the world's second-largest economy. Its engineering skill has become legendary. Its national literacy level is exemplary. It has had astonishing achievements in the arts, design and electronics. And it holds more US government bonds and other critical official American investments than any country, including China.

But there is one bad thing about Japan: its political system. Japanese talk a lot about the need for a consensus before any major political change or innovation can occur. One reason for all the talk is that, in Japan, true political leadership is often hard to find.

During the past decade or so, the country has seen more prime ministers entering the revolving door of power - and then being hurled back out onto the street - than many people could count. In the high echelons of the Clinton administration, the running joke was: "Hey, we just figured out how to pronounce the name of the new Japanese prime minister - and now he's gone!"

For about five years, though, one giant political figure arrested this distressing development. His name was Junichiro Koizumi, and he was the Houdini of Japanese politics. This master of image-politics held together the long-running, dominant but fatally flawed Liberal Democratic Party by a perverse but amazingly effective tactic: he attacked it, challenged it and at times purged it of its most dinosaur-like elements.

Mr Koizumi could get away with this because his leadership functioned within a very clear public consensus. The consensus was that he probably knew what he was doing. It was a sharply different consensus that triggered the resignation of his successor. The general view on the street was that Shinzo Abe did not know what he was doing.

Now he is out, and those in the cabinet who were closest to Mr Abe, such as Foreign Minister Taro Aso, seem to have lost ground in the race to succeed him. Those who were well removed from the Abe loop, such as  semi-retired old hand Yasuo Fukuda, are suddenly back in the limelight.

The succession issue is important to the world and to the United States. Japanese prime ministers do their friends and allies no favours when they insensitively insult neighbours by denying well-known horrors like the reality of second world war comfort-women atrocities. And when the Japanese economy starts humming along nicely - which happened during the upbeat Koizumi years - this is on the whole healthy not only for Japan but for Asia and the west.

Under Mr Koizumi and then under Mr Abe, Japan had become increasingly important to the Bush administration. Tokyo sent a token contingent of troops to Iraq; it sent a naval presence to the Indian Ocean to add to the supply trail for US troops in the region.

Whoever succeeds Mr Abe is, in immediate relations with the US, less likely to position himself as a Tony Blair-type prime minister (fawning and lapdog-like) than as the current British leader Gordon Brown (friendly enough, but cool and correct).

But it may take a few years for Japan to sort out its political system. Washington may have to learn how to pronounce several new Japanese names before Japan's political system uncovers a stabilising politician like Mr Koizumi.

UCLA professor Tom Plate is a veteran journalist and author, most recently, of Confessions of an American Media Man



http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Kevin Sinclair's Hong Kong
A veteran SCMP reporter, Kevin examines the good, bad and ugly sides of life in the city. E-mail him at kevin.sinclair@scmp.com

KEVIN SINCLAIR'S HK

Sep 19, 2007           
     


Thank God I don't live on Hong Kong Island. If so, I might next December be left in a chilling position; I could face a choice of voting for either Artful Anson or Regina the Rottweiler.

To me, this is like making a pick between Ivan the Terrible and Attila the Hun. If the race for the seat left vacant by the late Ma Lik is restricted to these two candidates, it doesn't seem to give voters a fair range of choice. These two truly formidable women have much in common; as former long-serving and senior ranking officials in the British colonial government, both have exhibited a broad streak of autocracy.

Both are members of the ultraprivileged elite. Over recent months, both have semi-secretly built up powerful think-tanks and support teams; to be fair, Mrs Ip's bid for power has been far more open, honest and transparent than her rival.

Before July 1, 1997, there was totally no hint from either of these powerhouse women that they were democrats-in-hiding. Nobody suspected that they lusted secretly for one-man, one-vote universal suffrage. This secret was well hidden behind their sleekly-cut business suits and government briefcases full of confidential documents.

But when they ceased working for the government of the SAR, each in turbulent circumstances, it dramatically emerged, they had long been admirers of full-blown democracy. Hail to the people! Up the workers! Vote for me! You expected them to break into La Marseillaise. If it wasn't so pathetic and sickening, it would be laughable.

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and Anson Chan Fang On-sang have leanings towards democracy they could share comfortably with Cixi, the Dowager Empress. Tremble, obey and vote for me.

There is one truly odious aspect to the process that appears to result in the two women staging a behemoth slugfest. For years we have been listening to a chorus from the patriotic front about how the grass roots must be represented in government. For just as long we have put up with boring lectures from pan-democrats on the need to groom talent to take the future political helms. Both sides now prove themselves to be hypocrites without conscience. Both have experienced members who over the decades have worked loyally for the political grouping in which they believed. They attended the endless hours of internal meetings building the parties that carried their visions of Hong Kong.

These are the frontline soldiers of any political organisation, the men and women who after years of sacrifice and working their way up through the ranks can expect to be rewarded by a chance of contesting a seat. Yet what have party bosses opted to do? They are ignoring these years of faithful toil to give outsiders the inside running. What must the party faithful think of such underhand action? How do people with proclaimed lofty principles like the sainted Martin Lee Chu-ming, founder of the Democrats, square this action with his conscience?

For months the public has been entranced by the carefully-orchestrated Anson Chan Show. She turns up at mass rallies for democracy: "I'm only here as an individual," she smiles sweetly. She drops hints that she may stand for this position or that post, then withdraws.

She's like a 17-year-old schoolgirl at a dance, whirling around the outskirts. Will she dance? Won't she dance? Suitors press her. Then, suddenly, a secret deal is done behind closed doors, all opposition and barriers are miraculously swept away; Awesome Anson, trademark grimace in place, is a candidate.

Not that she doesn't have other matters to fill her day: she sits on numerous commercial boards.

If she sits on Legco, what will be her stance on accountability for public servants whose colossal mishandling of affairs costs the community dear? It's hard to say. She chaired the committee that oversaw the opening of Chek Lap Kok, a massive debacle. I do not recall her being held to account for that.

As for Mrs Ip, it's truly miraculous that this woman has come back from the political graveyard. As secretary for security she tried to bulldoze the controversial security bill into law. The people hated it. They marched en mass in street protests.

The government blanched at this unexpected outright resistance. Mrs Ip resigned; the public were in the mood to rend her limb from limb. A couple of years at Stanford doesn't seem to have mellowed her combative outlook, but it may have taught her to be slightly more diplomatic.

The clash between these two Tyrannosaurus rex of politics is unfair to many loyal party workers; it will be interesting to see how they vote. But it will be colossal entertainment for the masses, mud-wrestling without the ring, a gladiatorial battle without the Colosseum.


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Missing ingredient
For West Kowloon to succeed, Hong Kong must realise the value of artistic pursuits, writes Margaret Yang


Sep 20, 2007           
     
  |   

  



The West Kowloon Cultural District project will be, among other things, a great catalyst for the Hong Kong arts scene. It will make the arts part of the city's development plan, which is a brand-new perspective for Hong Kong - putting the arts at the centre of the stage for the next phase of the city's development. For the cultural district to be a success, therefore, our overall perspective of the arts has to be reconciled with the one for West Kowloon.

The most challenging task, especially with regard to the "software" part - that is, the artistic content - hinges on how far these perspectives can be adjusted. That's because practically, without the following changes at the basic level, we will just be going round in circles.

First, talking to arts groups, it is clear that the number of qualified arts practitioners - performers and administrators - has decreased. Some have left for greener pastures outside the arts field, and others are reluctant to even enter the profession. It is therefore becoming more difficult to recruit the right person for the stage, as well as for the office.

The one glaring reason is people's general perspective towards the arts profession in this city. Even today, most Hong Kong families, if given a choice, are happier if their children end up in "proper" commercial office jobs. The term "professional" may apply to doctors, lawyers, accountants and architects, but does not really have the same meaning in phrases like "professional dancer" and "professional musician".

For West Kowloon to be sustainable, there must be an abundance of high-quality artists and administrators. Audiences will come if the artists and administrators are good. To attract people into the field, the status of arts practitioners must be elevated. They must be seen by the general public as working in a respected profession - and hopefully they will also have a career path.

The only way for this to happen in Hong Kong is to elevate the practitioners' worth in the job market to a level at least comparable with that of the commercial world. That way, children will not be discouraged from developing their talents, schools will design their curriculums accordingly and society will be less biased towards finance and commerce.

Second, the government is subventing some major performing arts groups because they have proved that they deserve the sponsorship. The government should, therefore, view them as assets that it has invested in, because the fruit they bear will contribute to the artistic vibrancy and creativity of society.

Arts groups have the ability to support and engage arts practitioners - to combine creative souls and administrative brains. As organisations dedicated to the arts, they attract dedicated experts who want to make a living in the arts. As the government invests in such organisations, it should be creating a special relationship with them built on trust and respect.

There are proposals to build 12 to 15 performing-arts venues in the cultural district. Thus, it would be in the interests of the government and the future West Kowloon authority to join with the subvented professional performing-arts groups on the venues' strategic development. This is a logical progression as well as a financially sensible solution. As with venues in other "world cities", the programmes should be overseen by people involved directly in the arts. A venue without an artistic vision is a venue without a soul and, in the long run, it runs the risk of becoming just a place for random rental.

Third, in the announcements about the West Kowloon district, the information about the hardware seems out of proportion with that on the software. There is even detailed information on which building should be iconic! Perhaps this is because the hardware part is easier to understand and measure.

Without the software, however, the iconic structures will be, at best, mere shells. It is, therefore, important to flesh out blueprints for the government's financial commitment on the artistic content, and the actual timetable for implementing plans to improve this content.

Twenty years ago, my family and friends tried to dissuade me from becoming an arts administrator. Today, the basic values in Hong Kong have not changed: the arts are still seen as not worth the effort. Changing such thinking is the biggest challenge facing the arts district.

Margaret Yang is chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta Limited


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

Too tied to one idea
Hong Kong should diversify its cultural centres rather than focus on West Kowloon, writes Paul Zimmerman


Sep 21, 2007           
   

There is no doubt about it: Hong Kong hasn't enough venue space for arts and cultural events. This was pointed out in a study and report in 1997. Ten years on, the shortfall against demand has increased further. No private venues have emerged in response to this demand because of the high-land-price policy, a focus on land revenue and a lack of appropriate zoning.

Will the West Kowloon Cultural District encourage diversified and balanced development? To build the long list of venues planned there, the government has devised a financing scheme based on selling linked property development rights in West Kowloon. In this way, the "all-in-Kowloon" straitjacket thinking continues at the expense of diversity.

Key questions remain unanswered. Where is the performing talent and the management experience for West Kowloon going to come from? The quality of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department's management of venues and museums has been questioned for at least a decade. Privatisation would improve the operations and groom new people. If we started today and invested a little effort - such as making the old Central Police Station site available for Fringe-Club-type activities - then new skills could be developed before West Kowloon opens.

This would add to the mix of land uses in Central, where hotels, bars, offices and apartments would benefit from the synergy. In North Point, retaining the Sunbeam Theatre to support the development of Cantonese opera would revitalise a tradition, and provide activities for local residents and tourists at the growing list of hotels there.

Refurbishing City Hall and expanding its neighbouring facilities - such as the Planning and Infrastructure Exhibition Gallery - would add to the mix of land uses along the Central and Wan Chai waterfront.

The only real arguments for creating a monopolistic cluster in West Kowloon, other than political convenience, are complaints about the lack of alternative activities accessible on foot around the existing venues. To ensure that places like the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Arts Centre are not cut off from restaurants and bars, we need solutions that benefit the city as a whole.

Privatisation is the solution for the venues and museums planned for West Kowloon. The new owners would immediately add harbour-facing bars, restaurants and retail outlets to their properties. They would allow busking and street performances - all at little or no cost to the community

How about making use of the former airport land at Kai Tak? There are proposals for a large, multipurpose sports centre near the Kai Tak station on the future Sha Tin-Central rail link, but its viability is being questioned. So, surely, there would be benefit in combining various mega performance venues in Kai Tak?

Consider a "common wealth" sort of development, accessible and affordable to locals. Is that idea reflected in a large, integrated structure that seeks to maximise its appeal to tourists? Will another large, intensive property development answer the local community's needs in Kowloon?

To build a vibrant district linked to nearby areas, West Kowloon needs smaller-scale developments and open, public spaces at the ground level.

Under the new financing model, income from retail, entertainment and dining business will pay for programming expenses. Does that fulfil the government's policy objective of creating an environment that is conducive to free artistic expression?

With no alternative on the table, the arts and culture community is asking few questions - afraid to cause any further delay in this long-awaited injection of resources.

It's telling that the arts and culture community has so easily accepted the reduction in investment from the original HK$30 billion to HK$19 billion, and its less secure source of programme funding. Has cultural and artistic integrity been traded for expediency?

The confusion over this issue can be seen in the push to give the cultural district's authority a greater say over cultural policy matters than the public and the cultural community.

Hong Kong needs a cultural commission with statutory oversight of all cultural development and arts-education-related matters. And we need more, not fewer, organisations managing arts and cultural venues.

In point of fact, we already have the integrated arts and cultural hub we want: it's called Hong Kong, specifically the core areas around the harbour. This "Hong Kong Cultural District" has grown organically over many years.

Now it needs to be nurtured and cared for by strengthening the infrastructure and software needed by the cultural and creative industries. Hong Kong would benefit greatly from a more diversified and comprehensive plan for our cultural and arts development.

Paul Zimmerman is convenor of Designing Hong Kong Harbour District


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

pls keep it up.. your effort is appreciated

At the sharp end
Medical errors are widespread, but blaming doctors alone won't make hospitals safer, writes Darren Mann


Sep 24, 2007           



Primum non nocere ("First, do no harm") is a key precept in medicine. In reality, harm is done every day in health care, and on a scale probably unimagined by the lay public. Medical accidents are epidemic, but go largely unnoticed because they affect one patient at a time and witnesses are few; frequently there is no investigation.

Contrast that with the loss of life that occurs in commercial aviation disasters, with their media attention and accident inquiries. In terms of risk defined as the rate of lethal events per person exposure, air travel is in fact many times safer than medical care.

There are three main areas of risk in health care: the disease itself; medical decision-making in diagnosis and treatment; and the carrying out of therapy. Studies consistently show that adverse events causing harm to patients occur in about 10 per cent of hospital admissions.

Health-care accidents exact a huge toll: for example, in the United States, medical error has been implicated in up to 100,000 unnecessary deaths and 1 million excess injuries annually.

The operating theatre is the single most hazardous environment in hospitals: about half of all inpatient mistakes are related to surgery. Complications from diagnostic mistakes, medication errors and therapeutic or investigational procedure mishaps comprise most of the non-operative events. Inexperience, fatigue and work overload are notable contributing factors.

Emergency and intensive-care settings are particularly error-prone; clinicians working in these environments make one to two errors per patient per day.

Medical (indeed human) error is inevitable. Doctors work at the "sharp end" of a complex health-care delivery system, in direct contact with patients. Behind them lies the "blunt end" of the health-care system, the organisational and managerial components. The system's safety obligations are met through a framework of safety barriers, whose effectiveness is largely determined by resource constraints.

Doctors are frequently identified as the cause of medical errors, but to attribute fault entirely to them would be to isolate the person from the system. Mishaps tend to crop up in recurring patterns, with the same set of circumstances provoking similar errors - regardless of the person involved at the point of delivery of care. So medical errors should more properly be considered a problem of systems flaws rather than character flaws.

The traditional response to medical error is to impugn the doctor. This is emotionally satisfying and legally convenient, but in so doing we are actually hindering the process of improving safety for the system as a whole. A doctor who makes a genuine mistake is not necessarily a wholly incompetent professional. When marginalised and stigmatised, he or she arguably becomes the second victim.

A more valid response to error would be directed at uncovering and correcting the latent failures and error pathways in the system of safety barriers. These gaps can best be identified through comprehensive reporting programmes, which rely in large measure on the co-operation of medical staff.

That can only realistically be expected in an environment perceived to be fair and non-punitive.

Increasing social intolerance has recently caused some medical mistakes to be criminalised. In the 1990s, there was a policy shift at Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, resonating with a sense that the courts had historically been overly deferential to doctors. This has resulted in some 40 or so doctors being charged with gross negligence manslaughter in the past 15 years in Britain, with a conviction rate of around 30 per cent.

It is time for society to debate the issues surrounding medical error. Those injured by medical mistakes surely deserve our compassion, and compensation for their loss.

But what is the utility of punishing the doctor? Should an unwitting slip that could befall anyone not be more rigorously distinguished from deliberate acts of harm, brutal lack of skill, intoxication and dishonest conduct?

As for bodily harm resulting from medical error, why should criminal prosecution necessarily be limited to deaths? In some surveys, 45 per cent of doctors admitted to errors causing harm, of which one-third were thought to have contributed to a patient's death.

When every doctor who commits a mistake that results in serious or fatal injury has been put in prison, where will society look to find medical care? Certainly not to the criminal justice system.

And what of the organisational context in which errors occur? Why should hospitals, their managers and supervising government officials be immune from accountability simply because they are one step back from the firing line?

The problem of hospital errors will not go away. Inculcating a safety culture in medicine will require a partnership between the stakeholders - doctors, hospitals, government and society. Establishing an independent, patient-safety foundation would be a good place to start.

We cannot change the human condition, but for safety's sake we can change the conditions in which humans work.

Darren Mann is a clinical associate professor (honorary) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and examiner in surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

The inflation dragon


LAURENCE BRAHM

Sep 25, 2007  



Next month's Communist Party Congress will consolidate the authority of President Hu Jintao and stack the leadership with his coterie. But will it give him the strength he needs to rule China effectively? Deng Xiaoping ruled with centralised planning to assure his absolutism; former president Jiang Zemin used a macro-control system to steer local governments. Mr Hu should be concerned about whether the central government has unravelled too much - giving local authorities excessive powers - to govern effectively during a potential commodity price crisis.

Mao Zedong once said that "grain is the key link". That might sound anachronistic in the run-up to Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympics. But it might also be wise advice to heed. The consumer price index, a key measure of inflation, increased 6.5 per cent last month from August last year - an almost 11-year high. Food prices took the lead, shooting up 18.2 per cent. Grain - once considered the key link to maintaining rural social stability - rose 6.4 per cent. This alarmed central government think-tanks monitoring the national economy.

The logical response of China's production-consumer chain will be to produce increasingly substandard foodstuffs. If this happens, public discontent will spread. Although the media shuns consumer-protection reporting, never underestimate the power of text messaging on the mainland.

In 1992, inflation hit 21 per cent, threatening to unravel reforms that were gained on the back of hypergrowth. In response, vice-premier Zhu Rongji adopted 16 principles of macrocontrol policy to pull inflation down - eventually to 3 per cent. The measures included a range of state-planning and market initiatives, such as a reduction in construction projects.

Such measures would be ineffective today, because the government bodies that were able to implement controls at the local level have been disbanded. Local governments could hardly care less what policies Beijing announces, if they fail to support the local construction industry and bank branches that feed the nation's current corruption frenzy. Regional government officials, who depend on property-related corruption to maintain their debauched lifestyles, might consider such measures laughable.

The central government is already alarmed by the prospect of inflation-driven social unrest under the media glare of an Olympic year. One of Mr Zhu's tools that still exists is cutting the money supply, so we may expect this in coming months.

Many mainlanders judge a person's worth by the amount of money he or she can spend conspicuously on brand-name goods. At the other extreme, rural migrant workers' savings often fail to keep pace with their social expectations. If Beijing cannot control prices in the year ahead, the pinch will make some people scream. In March, rioting occurred in rural Hunan province over a bus fare rise from seven to nine yuan. Riot police clashed with thousands of farmers, leaving one dead.

If macrocontrols do not work this time round, Beijing authorities will certainly bludgeon any such political outbursts into submission - especially before and during the Olympics. However, it is exactly such knee-jerk reactions that attract foreign journalists like flies. There will be 30,000 of them in China next year, many with little interest in sports.

Mao said that "a single spark can start a prairie fire". In much of China's modern history, price rises have sparked major social unrest. Inflation struck a final blow to the Kuomintang regime, breaking its grip in major cities in 1949. It brought pragmatic workers out in mass support for the idealistic students demonstrating in the spring of 1989. In the coming Olympic year, China's newest generation of communist leaders may be well-advised to remember the words of their former sage, and to do something to control prices.

Laurence Brahm is a political economist, author, filmmaker and founder of Shambhala Foundation


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Cost of development finally to be counted


LEADER

Sep 27, 2007           
   

There is no better sign of the mainland's realisation that its "development at all costs" attitude has to change than acknowledgement by senior officials that the Three Gorges Dam could cause an environmental catastrophe. Just as the project symbolises the nation's economic and technological development, efforts to repair the damage caused by its construction highlight the need for a more sustainable approach to growth.

No one could doubt that the dam across China's mightiest river, the Yangtze, is an engineering marvel. The hydroelectricity it is producing and the floods and droughts that it prevents arguably justify the US$25 billion cost. But there have been other prices to pay for building the world's biggest dam. More than 1.3 million people have been moved, thousands of years of history and culture submerged and one of the river's most scenic stretches has disappeared.

As a forum in Beijing has been told, there are also a number of worrying environmental threats: erosion and landslides on steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and "ecological deterioration caused by irrational development". Then, there are the uncertainties of what the damming of the Yangtze could mean long-term for people living along its banks. Such concerns were expressed by environmentalists during the planning and construction of the dam, but shunned by authorities in the name of politics and progress. On the completion of the dam's wall in 1997, then president Jiang Zemin hailed the event as "a remarkable feat in the history of mankind to reshape and exploit natural resources".

Such comments are in stark contrast to those of the director of the administrative office in charge of building the dam, Wang Xiaofeng , who said on Tuesday that China "cannot win passing economic prosperity at the cost of the environment". Communist Party leaders agree: they will consolidate policies giving more attention to the environment at their congress next month.

The meeting will be an opportunity to make a stand on environmental matters. Holding up the Three Gorges Dam as evidence of the danger of putting unfettered growth ahead of all else will help to ensure that a more balanced approach can be developed.


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

Sputnik's children


PETER KAMMERER

Sep 28, 2007           
     


A 585mm-wide silver ball weighing 83.6kg seems an innocent enough invention. That it changed the way the world saw itself when the Soviet Union launched it into space, 50 years ago next Thursday, gives us pause for thought given the rise of China. Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite, started the space race. As soon as the rival United States caught wind of it, an intense battle began to conquer space. But while the instrument ultimately put animals and people into orbit, men on the moon, craft hurtling beyond our solar system, and piqued interest in a manned mission to Mars, it also had a major earthly impact.

As Sputnik soared high, sending bleeps back to scientists and ham radio operators, the planet was swept by the realisation that a new era of discovery and creativity had begun. Science, education and even global politics moved to the fore. Americans were the most deeply affected. Sputnik was a wake-up call that sent the nation scurrying to make up for lost ground. Round one went to the Soviets, as did round two - putting a dog and then a man into orbit. But the US had well and truly caught up by 1969, putting the first men on the moon.

Space travel expanded the bounds of science. Soon there were computers, medical breakthroughs and technological wonders.

But the fact that the Soviets were the first to conquer space also sparked a scramble on Earth for unclaimed portions of territory such as Antarctica and the continental shelves. Sputnik gave us the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 and, from there, a succession of international agreements dictating the use and ownership of the environment from the deepest seas to the highest mountains. There has been no more creative period in global rule-making.

I was born five years after Sputnik, in the year that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth - 10 months after Soviet Yuri Gagarin entered history as the first person to achieve the feat. These events sparked currents that were felt at the individual level, if indirectly, even by small boys. At primary school in Australia in the late 1960s, my aspirations and those of my peers were for jobs that went far beyond the ordinary: we wanted to be astronauts or scientists. At secondary school, the emphasis was on maths and science subjects. Those who performed poorly at these and excelled in languages and history were made to feel like second-class students. All that seems a long way off, in time and focus. The enthusiasm for treaty-making continued through the 1970s and 1980s, and there are now safeguards and organisations dedicated to most facets of human existence. Yet implementation remains patchy. The US, for one, refuses to join several treaties - on global warming, the International Criminal Court and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, among others - and seems intent on breaking the rules of the World Trade Organisation.

The tussle for natural resources beneath, and shipping routes across, the melting Arctic ice cap shows that not all eventualities have been considered; no international treaty covers the region. That nations such as North Korea, Iran and Israel can get around the rules on nuclear weapons reveals the weaknesses of what is in place.

All that will change in the coming years, though - and China holds the key. When Yang Liwei blasted into orbit on October 15, 2003, making the nation the third to put a person into space, it quite literally lit a rocket under the US - much as Sputnik did on October 4, 1957.

China plans unmanned missions to the moon from 2012, and will start on a manned one in 2017. The US now also wants to return there, and is working towards putting people on Mars. But it is China's emergence as an economic, political and space power that will propel the world towards an era of strengthening the international laws that are in place and creating new ones.

Sputnik was the dawn of the first era of the world reassessing where it was and where it wanted to be. China's space programme is hurtling us towards a new age of innovation and creativity.

Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Back to the front
The heroic contribution made by Chinese labourers in the first world war has been largely forgotten, writes Mark O'Neill

BEHIND THE NEWS

Oct 08, 2007           
      


A bronze plaque on the wall of a Paris railway building and a modest monument in a small park are the only reminders of a remarkable but forgotten story of the first world war - 150,000 Chinese volunteers who cleared mines, removed the dead and made munitions, and became the first wave of Chinese to settle in Europe.

"In memory of Chinese workers and fighters who died for France in the Great War", reads the inscription on the park monument, in Chinese and French. It pays tribute to up to 10,000 workers killed by German bombing raids, disease, accidents and mine explosions.

Each year, on Ching Ming festival, the Chinese community in Paris leaves wreathes at the monument and the plaque, and at cemeteries in northern France where the men are buried.

The park is in the centre of the 13th district of Paris, the Chinatown that was born when several thousands of the workers decided to remain in France after the Great War, forming the first Chinese community in Europe. The community today numbers more than 500,000, according to official figures, and may be double that if illegals are included.

The bustling district is home to thousands of Chinese-owned factories, trading companies, shops and restaurants, whose number swelled with the arrival of the thousands of Chinese refugees from Indochina after the communist conquest of Vietnam in 1975. Among the biggest businesses is a giant supermarket owned by the Tang brothers, who arrived from Thailand in the 1970s and whose president, Chen Ke-guang, is an advocate of official recognition of the workers. Mr Chen is the secretary-general of the Association for the Advancement of Chinese in France.

"The history of the workers had been forgotten," said an official of the association. "The community pushed for recognition but nothing happened until 1988. I don't know the reason for the change, from the city or central governments. They put up the plaque [in 1988] and gave awards to two of the workers who were still alive."

Many Chinese residents, especially recent arrivals, are unaware of the history of their wartime compatriots.

Philippe Liang, 83, is a native of Xiamen who later moved to Vietnam and then France, and works in an association for the Chinese from Indochina. "When I arrived in France in the 1940s, there was racism against Chinese but not now, when it is directed against blacks and Arabs. The status of Chinese is rising. Some have very substantial businesses," he said.

While the early arrivals kept a low profile and emphasised their Frenchness, the Chinese of today have a confidence and self-belief that comes from economic success and integration into mainstream society and the growth and prosperity of their homeland.

It was a different reality in 1916, when the British and French governments conceived the idea of recruiting Chinese workers. The death in battle of their men on a scale no-one had ever imagined had left them seriously short of labour.

The two governments conducted discreet negotiations with China, then neutral in the war. Beijing favoured the plan because it believed the workers would learn skills useful for the country's modernisation and would give it a stronger hand at the negotiating table at the end of the war.

Those under British command would join the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) and be subject to British military rule. Non-combatant, they would build and repair docks, roads, airfields, railways, man ports and railheads, stores and ammunition depots, dig trenches, remove the dead, clear mines and work in factories.

Once agreement was reached, the governments used public notices and missionaries to spread the news of the CLC, offering a five-year contract, a level of pay much higher than at home, and free food, clothing and housing.

They would receive one franc (at that time equivalent to US$19.30) for a 10-hour day, half that of a British private, while their families would receive 10 Mexican dollars (US$5.40) per month.

The first French-bound contingent, of 1,700, arrived in France on August 1916 and the first British-bound contingent, of 1,000, arrived in Plymouth in April 1917, before being sent to France. They were accompanied by missionaries and Chinese-speaking officers.

In total, 100,000 Chinese went to work for the British, 35,000 for the French, and 10,000 for the Americans. The majority were farmers and city workers from Shandong and Hebei provinces. The CLC formed the largest contingent of foreign workers employed by the Allies during the war, outnumbering the Indians, black South Africans, Egyptians and West Indians.

They were sent to camps near the front. One of the largest was in the northern French town of Noyelles-sur-Mer, close to a military base.

The biggest risk came not from carrying the dead and wounded from the front, because both sides observed a truce while this was being done, but German air raids. Others died because of long-range bombardments, accidents involving unstable shells and explosives, and disease.

The French housed their volunteers in camps across the country, putting them to work in munitions, metallurgy and chemical factories and on construction sites. Chinese labour built the ferry ports of Calais and Boulogne and a sea defence wall at Orford Ness in Suffolk, England.

Manico Gull, the British commander of the second group of CLC workers, said in 1918: "Their emigration from the shores of Shandong will take its place certainly as one of the most important aspects of the Great European War."

According to the Allies, 3,000 Chinese died. Chinese figures put the toll at 9,000 to 10,000. They are buried in cemeteries in northern France, the largest in Noyelles with 842 graves, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Some tombstones have the name, number, date of death and native province of the victim, but others have no name.

With the end of the war in 1918, France still needed thousands of labourers and the Chinese stayed on to work in factories, hospitals and building sites.

Most returned home in 1919 and 1920 but 3,000 from Qingtian, outside Wenzhou , Zhejiang province , stayed behind. They formed the basis of the Chinese community in France.

One who stayed was Ye Qingyuan, a native of Qingtian who volunteered at the end of 1917. "My home village was a poor mountain village, a disaster for heaven and man alike, where you could not make a living," he wrote in his diary. "When Germany surrendered in November 1918, the government gave us a bonus. With my cousin, I opened a restaurant near the Gare de Lyons. The French were very curious and wanted to sample Chinese food. Within six months, we were run off our feet."

By the end of 1920, he had enough money to return home, marry a local girl and return to Paris with three brothers. They opened restaurants and shops that sold groceries and carved stone from Qingtian. In 1985, he retired and returned, finally, to live in his ancestral village.

In the Versailles Peace Treaty after the war, the Allies did not reward Beijing for providing the workers and left it with terms so bad the Chinese delegation refused to sign the document.

Lionel Vairon, a business consultant who travels often to China, said that, after the first world war, the Chinese who stayed on concentrated on becoming French and did not speak of the war. "They wanted to de-emphasise their Chineseness and wanted to integrate. So, the history of the workers is little known."


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

Climate crossroads


LAURENCE BRAHM

Oct 09, 2007           
     



"One world, one dream," is Beijing's motto for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But it means different things to different people and, in most cases, what the world dreams about is very different from what Beijing's leaders dream. If the capital's self-congratulating municipal leaders ever awake from their haze of cognac and rich banquets, they will find themselves in one of the most polluted environments in human history. For mainland China's citizens, its cities are miserable places to live. For the rest of the world, they are part of the threat to humanity's very existence.

Next year the mainland will become the world's single-largest polluter and emitter of greenhouse gases. Its recent achievements can be measured in clogged highways, overbuilt infrastructure and an excessive construction boom linked to the Olympics. The mainland's many golf courses reflect the nouveau-riche vulgarity of its values, when clean water is so scarce. Mainland officials should ask themselves: we can give our children money and cars, but can we offer them water to drink?

Those officials would be well advised to visit Bangladesh rather than Las Vegas to understand the future we are rushing towards. Global warming causes continual flooding in that poverty-stricken nation's lowlands. In a recent interview there, economist Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, analysed the dilemma our world faces. "Global warming is now at a serious stage, and greenhouse gas emissions are" increasing, he said. "Europe is concerned, but the USA does nothing and refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. All [China's] power is based on dirty fuel, and China's emissions will become worse and worse. Next to follow is India. So, now three nations have joined the club."

Both China and India refuse to cut carbon emissions unless wealthy countries such as the United States take the lead. It's a logical argument, since those three nations must join forces if any realistic programme of emissions cuts is to be achieved. Former US president Bill Clinton recently supported the China-India position, telling the Financial Times: "I think unless we take the lead in the United States, we'll never get the Indians and Chinese to do it."

Dr Yunus offered a deeper explanation. "The real problem is lifestyle," he said. "We can agree about having `non-smoking' areas in public places because one's smoking may destroy another's health. What about wastefulness of lifestyle? How can some nations retain lifestyles that destroy other peoples?"

For example, he said, buying gas-guzzling vehicles is not consistent with the planet's survival. "How can you enjoy life on this planet if your lifestyle destroys this planet?" he said. "It is like partying on a boat while lighting a bonfire on that same boat." And now China is aping America's wasteful lifestyle, he noted.

According to Dr Yunus, there are obvious, pragmatic steps that must be taken. The Kyoto Protocol, he notes, is not binding on nations that fail to ratify it; the world now needs a climate change deal that is mandatory for all nations. "It must be done through the United Nations, and done now," he said. "There is not enough time left before 2012 [when Kyoto expires]. By the year 2050, we must reduce our greenhouse gases by 50 per cent. But the US [has not ratified] the protocol. So we must get it to join."

The US, China and India, three major polluters, must adhere to clear commitments to reduce greenhouse gases - leading the rest of the world to follow suit. The recalcitrant Bush administration will be voted out next year. China and India are in a position to lead, putting economic and diplomatic pressure on Washington. But those nations' leaders must stand up rather than being sycophants, and they must cut greenhouse emissions at home.

Nobody cares about a narcissistic Olympics building spree. If the world has one dream in common, it is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a question of humanity's very survival.

Laurence Brahm is a political economist, author, filmmaker and founder of Shambhala Foundation



http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Pitfalls on the road to a Korean peace treaty


Donald Kirk
Oct 10, 2007           
     
  |   

  



The North-South Korean summit has opened a new phase in the great debate over the future of the Korean Peninsula by calling for a treaty to replace the armistice that ended the Korean war. But, although no one in South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun's entourage dares to say so, talk of a peace treaty, more than 54 years after the guns fell silent, presents complications and pitfalls that are sure to become clear all too soon.

The most obvious problem is that Mr Roh and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il evidently could not agree on how many parties should sit at the table for the talks. Their final joint statement said either three or four parties would attend the negotiations. If it's three, then one of the four major participants in the war will not be there. Might it be China, whose troops were "volunteers" - theoretically not under the command of the communist rulers who had completed their takeover of the mainland on October 1, 1949?

That was less than nine months before North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung ordered the invasion of South Korea. Or how about excluding the United States, which waged what it called a "police action" under the cover of the United Nations Command.

Incredibly, another candidate for exclusion may be South Korea. That's because its president at the time, Rhee Syng-man, refused to authorise a truce that would legitimise the more or less permanent division of the Korean Peninsula.

His refusal to sign the truce gives Pyongyang an excuse to reject Seoul as an equal participant in peace talks. North Korea has often given the impression that the South hardly counts when it comes to negotiating issues like the North's nuclear weapons programme.

The North would like nothing better than to sign a peace treaty with the US and China, relegating the South to subsidiary status. That would befit Pyongyang's view that only one government should rule all Korea: a government led by Mr Kim and his inner circle. The North Korean concept of a peace treaty, moreover, is not just a document saying that the war is long over, and now let's declare permanent peace. No, the reason Pyongyang wants this treaty is to dismantle the entire structure behind which South Korea has risen as a great economic power from the ashes of a war that left the South among the world's poorest countries - poorer even than the North.

With the treaty would come provisions disbanding the UN Command while reducing US military strength to a marginal, advisory role at best. We may assume the treaty would not include provisions for a vast reduction in North Korea's 1.1-million-man military establishment, much less pull most of them away from  positions close to the demilitarised zone.

Actually, no one, certainly no foreign observer, could object to a simple peace treaty between South and North Korea. A foreigner would have to say that the two Koreas had every right to sign a treaty free from foreign interference.

That kind of treaty, however, would be too easy. The North is not interested in a peace treaty with the South. The whole point is to strengthen the North's hand by drawing the US and China into the process of establishing a "peace regime" - under which North Korea stands to receive enormous quantities of aid while giving very little in return.

The US may be falling for North Korea's stratagem. President George W. Bush has held out the possibility of a treaty after the North "verifies" that it has dismantled its nuclear programme.

Those interested in a peace treaty, though, should see it as a gimmick that runs the risk of undoing the prolonged peace under which South Korea thrives while North Korea - for all its weapons of mass destruction - remains mired by its own policies of massive self-destruction.

Donald Kirk is the author of two books and numerous articles on Korea for newspapers, magazines and journals


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

China - the lesser of two evils for Africa?


OBSERVER
Alex Lo
Oct 11, 2007           
     
  |   

That the west, especially the United States, thinks it is in any position to criticise China's expanding investment and diplomacy in Africa - on moral and human rights grounds, of all things - is truly mind-boggling. It is beyond hypocrisy.

China's activities are, in many ways, problematic. But the west, through its history of state-sponsored terrorism, failed economic policies and aid programmes, and sheer arrogance, has forfeited any right or moral grounds on which it can lecture  others.

During the 1950s and 1960s - when one African state after another gained independence - the US could have opened Africa to much brighter prospects than the dreadful state much of the continent has been mired in for the past half century.

US president Lyndon Johnson briefly considered a kind of Marshall Plan for Africa in the 1960s. However, the CIA and the National Security Council recommended not taking it up. To what extent this was due to racism can be determined only by historians. Instead, many newly independent African states ended up on the receiving end of the "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" US foreign policy during the cold war - and that is the case even today.

It was not the Marshall Plan that became the foreign policy model. Rather, it was the CIA-assisted coup and assassination of newly independent Congo's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba - in a conspiracy with the Belgium government.

Lumumba's murder was followed by the violent overthrow of Ghana's president Kwame Nkrumah, which again implicated the CIA. But even benign western and US economic and food aid did not help recipient African states much.

A study last year on China's links with Africa by Barry Sautman of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology provides some instructive figures. Of US$530 billion in aid and loans granted to Africa between 1970 and 2002, the recipients had repaid US$540 billion, with interest. The debts of only 14 African states were cancelled while the continent's debts stood at US$300 billion last year. "Much [aid] is subject to conditions benefiting the donor economically and politically [including its security interests]," Dr Sautman wrote.

Most of the grants and contracts have to be used to buy goods and services from companies and non-governmental organisations from the donor country - even though they could be bought more cheaply elsewhere in the global market. Meanwhile, while under western tutelage and aid, Africa's share of world trade declined from 5 per cent in the 1970s to 1.5 per cent in 2005. In the 1980s, the continent received 30 per cent of the world's foreign investments, but this dropped to 7 per cent in 2003, according to figures cited by Dr Sautman.

China has been accused of being interested only in African oil and minerals. But currently, 75 per cent of US investment is in oil, while 64 per cent of China's was in manufacturing and 28 per cent in resources, up to 2000. However, the percentage of investment in resources has probably shot up during the current commodities boom.

As for China spreading corruption and propping up corrupt regimes, consider this: in 2005, China sold weapons to, or had military missions in, seven African countries; the US gave military aid and had arms sales with 47 of Africa's 53 states. Again, I cite Dr Sautman.

Last month, Beijing pledged US$5 billion to the Democratic Republic of Congo to build 3,200km of railways and the same length of roads, 31 hospitals, 145 health centres, two universities and 5,000 housing units, all in 36 months. As Howard French of The New York Times observes, if delivered, this will be more than the west has done for the country in its 47 years of independence.

So, which is worse, the ugly American or the ugly Chinaman? Africans may have to make that choice this century.

Alex Lo is a senior writer at the Post


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

When communists warm to democracy


OBSERVER
Lau Nai-keung
Oct 12, 2007           
     
  |   

In the past few years, mainland Chinese leaders have begun to talk about democratic development. Most mainlanders do not think of democracy as their inalienable right but, rather, a means to good governance. Nor do they feel that democracy should be developed at the expense of social stability. This is perhaps why the pace of democratic development is so slow on the mainland, where quality is valued over speed.

In October last year, Beijing issued its first white paper on the development of democratic politics. Its contents show that Beijing takes a holistic view of democracy, going well beyond universal suffrage alone.

Democracy is the No1 element in President Hu Jintao's concept of a harmonious society. It starts with democracy in the ruling Chinese Communist Party - and the showcase for that will be the upcoming 17th Party Congress. In a speech on June 25, Mr Hu said for the first time that democracy within the party was one of the top four priorities for party reform.

Friends who attended regional party congresses this year told me the atmosphere there was a lot more democratic than before: all participants felt they could speak their minds freely. To ensure more effective internal supervision, the heads of provincial disciplinary committees have begun to be appointed from the central party. We expect more concrete structural reforms to emerge from the upcoming congress.

One suggestion is to set up a standing committee to supervise the party's general secretary and Politburo, which have unchecked powers. Perhaps they will both be elected through competitive elections rather than a vote of confidence - a democratic practice unthinkable in the past.

The mainstream thinking is that the emphasis should be on promoting democracy within the Communist Party. At the same time, reforms in the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference should move those two institutions towards becoming more like parliaments. Direct elections will be popularised through the use of grass-roots polls up to the township level. They will form the foundation for more democratic,  indirect elections.

As part of this momentum for reform, three non-party members have been appointed ministers in the government over the past two months, a move unseen since the early 1950s.

This is an indication that the Communist Party is willing to share more power with other political parties and non-affiliated individuals. To that end, the ruling party will exercise political leadership over the executive, the legislature and the judiciary rather than the current model of direct micro-management.

There is constant criticism of the party for centralising too much power in its own hands, without enough checks and balances. In the Chinese tradition of elitism and meritocracy, the ruling party is supposed to take good care of the people without their having to worry or participate.

On the whole, the party is still sceptical of involving the media and non-governmental organisations in political participation, viewing them as troublemakers rather than important adjuncts of good governance. Nevertheless, the media is courageously doing its part in exposing scandals.

In an increasingly pluralistic society, there are many problems that, for various reasons, go unnoticed by the government - or are covered up by the officials involved. In other cases, official priorities may be different from those of the people, and certain minority needs may not be adequately addressed. The government is not omnipotent, nor is any ruling party.

A vibrant media and active NGOs are part and parcel of a good modern democratic system and good governance. Without their participation, a harmonious society is far, far away.

Lau Nai-keung is a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference delegate


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

Call of the clerics
Jailed insurgents are being freed after undergoing religious counselling to end their radicalism, writes Simon Montlake

BEHIND THE NEWS

Oct 15, 2007           
     
  |   

  



When Singapore began busting local cells of regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah in 2001, it had a useful counter-terrorism tool at its disposal: the Internal Security Act. A legacy of British colonial rule in former Malaya, the ISA allows for indefinite detention without trial.

More arrests followed as details emerged of plots to hit Singaporean and western targets in the city state, including cutting off the crucial water supply from neighbouring Malaysia. In all, about 70 Singaporean members of JI were detained under the ISA. But there was no appetite to put anyone on trial for what amounted to detention aimed at stopping attacks on Singaporean soil and preventing Muslim extremists from regrouping in other countries.

In recent years, Singapore has begun releasing terrorist detainees who are no longer deemed a security threat. Over one-third of JI suspects have been freed from jail or released from house detention. At the same time, authorities continue to closely watch the Muslim community and arrest suspects linked to foreign terrorist organisations.

Behind the release of the suspects is a religious counselling programme that uses Muslim clerics to rebut extremist views and instil moderate Islamic teachings. The theological programme, staffed on a volunteer basis by Singaporean Muslims, is part of a broader effort to rehabilitate JI members and enable their release. Clerics also reach out to families of detainees and the wider Muslim community to counter extremist propaganda.

Proponents say the success of Singapore's approach offers lessons to allies in the US-led war against Muslim extremism and an alternative to indefinite detention without trial of extremists in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons. In recent years, other countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia have also promoted religious rehabilitation in jails bulging with terror suspects, with varying results.

Faced with swelling detention centres after a surge in troop deployments to trouble spots, US military commanders in Iraq have begun to take note. With an estimated 25,000 Iraqis in US custody, the US has in recent months introduced religious education programmes that are modelled, in part, on Singapore's scheme, and on a much larger programme in Saudi Arabia.

Marine Major-General Douglas Stone, who oversees US detention facilities in Iraq, told bloggers last month that religious courses at Camp Cropper had helped to "bring some of the edge off" detainees who often had only a limited grasp of Islamic jurisprudence. General Stone, who spoke Arabic, said "a few hundred" insurgents had been through the programme.

His goal was to release prisoners who were judged unlikely to return to insurgency activities, General Stone said. He said his approach was persuasive because "it's how you win this war, not only the one in Iraq, but the one on a greater basis", according to a transcript of the interview provided by the Pentagon.

Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University and a consultant on the Singaporean programme, said an effective counter-terrorism strategy must combat religious indoctrination in society and, crucially, in jails. He said a "war of ideas" could be won by releasing suspects into the Muslim community armed with Islamic teachings that debunked the do-or-die rhetoric of al-Qaeda and its offshoots.

"Deprogramming is not 100 per cent successful ... some will go back [to militancy]. But it's the only intelligent thing to do," said Professor Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda. "We've planted a seed ... Iraq was the beginning. I believe America can take this idea to Guantanamo, Afghanistan and other areas."

Not everyone is convinced by this approach. Analysts said Yemen shelved a similar cleric-run programme in 2005 after former prisoners returned to extremism, usually by joining insurgent cells in Iraq. Of 400 militants freed after counselling, about half have since been put back behind bars. In contrast, only one Singaporean has been rearrested for allegedly contacting foreign militants.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Ho Peng Kee told parliament earlier this year that the programme had worked well on some detainees, but not all, as it took time to turn around those who were deeply indoctrinated. "We will continue to try to rehabilitate the others. But it is worth highlighting that a number are adamantly holding on to their radical and violent beliefs," he said.

Mohammed bin Ali, one of the clerics working in the group secretariat, said that Singapore's Religious Rehabilitation Group had 21 volunteer clerics who led weekly one-on-one counselling sessions with detainees to "correct their misinterpretations" of Islam . In the four-year-old scheme, counsellors systematically expose the distortions of JI doctrine, emphasising Muslims can live devoutly in multi-faith Singapore, where they make up about 15 per cent of its 4.2 million people. The government-funded group also hosts public forums and runs a website (rrg.sg).

"We believe in rehabilitation. No one is born a terrorist. No one wakes up one morning and says I'm going to be a terrorist. It's indoctrination ... and we're trying to bring them back to normalcy," said Mr Mohammed, who had briefed US military officials in Iraq on Singapore's programme.

Counselling continues after suspects are released, while a parallel programme focuses on coaching the wives of detainees and ensuring they get financial support from the government. Mr Mohammed said moderate Muslims had a duty to counter extremist views in the community. "The terrorist network [in Singapore] is crippled, but unless the ideology of extremism is countered, the threat will persist," he said.

Malaysia and Indonesia have also sought to rehabilitate JI detainees using moderate Muslim teachings. In Indonesia, where JI bombed two Bali nightclubs in 2002, Nasir bin Abas, a disillusioned ex-JI cell leader, helped authorities to convince former colleagues to abandon their violent struggle for an Islamic state. In 2005 he published a book that exposed the group and its methods.

Other Indonesian militants have helped police behind the scenes in return for reduced jail terms and other privileges. In Singapore, a handful of detainees have played a similar role. But while Malaysia and Singapore have used colonial-era ISAs to detain terror suspects indefinitely, Indonesia has opted for public trials. Three of the Bali bombers are on death row, and more than 30 others were jailed.

Malaysia's prisoner release programme seemed to depend as much on coercion - the threat of harsher punishment for re-offenders - as theological re-education, said Zachary Abuza, a professor at Simmons College in Boston and an expert on JI.

"In Indonesia, unless you have a death or life sentence, there is light at the end of the tunnel without recanting. People enter into rehab programmes there because they want to," said Dr Abuza.

In Saudi Arabia, authorities have created a religious counselling programme for about 2,000 prisoners accused of belonging to al-Qaeda. Some 700 had been released since 2004, of which 10 were later rearrested, said Christopher Boucek, a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University, who is tracking the Saudi scheme.

Saudi Arabia uses family support networks to bring poorly educated al-Qaeda recruits into the programme and show how they have been tricked by corrupted Islamic teachings. Detainees who have participated in violent attacks are not eligible. As in Singapore, authorities have found that hundreds of other hardened militants refuse to join.

Despite the programme's success in forcing militants to recant, some Saudi government officials said public executions would send a tougher message to wrongdoers, said Dr Boucek. The counter argument, though, is that releasing detainees is a more effective rebuttal of militant propaganda. "The state is fighting a war of ideas ... as part of this process, what they're doing with these guys is showing that if you co-operate with the state, bad things don't happen," he said.

Applying the lessons of Singapore and Saudi Arabia to counter-insurgency in Iraq could be a stretch, according to terrorist experts with experience there.

Unlike in prisons where terrorist suspects are held separately, US military officials have warehoused thousands of insurgents in giant holding pens that extremists reportedly use as recruiting centres. Edward O'Connell, a senior analyst at Rand Corp who is studying Iraqi detainee motivations for the Pentagon, said the US now faced the uphill task of trying to weed out religious and sectarian insurgents from hired gunmen and criminals.

He warned that religious education in camps could backfire, and General Stone's belief in theological debate to rebut extremism, while laudable, was untested in the maelstrom of a violent insurgency. "You've got to be careful with re-education and rehabilitation," said Mr O'Connell. "You don't want to enhance the union of religion and criminality and nationalism in a troubled state."


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

Harmony or chaos?


LAURENCE BRAHM

Oct 16, 2007           
     
  |   

  



The 17th Party Congress will espouse lots of "Chinese characteristics", which can be interpreted as alternative paths to economic and political development. Most mainlanders smirk at the term, as its popular misinterpretation is an open wink at corruption, cronyism and local rule by economic warlords.

We can expect to hear this congress regurgitate Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Deng Theory and the Theory of the Three Represents. These will be cited as foundations for President Hu Jintao's new theory of a "harmonious society" - or as proof that capitalism was right all along. (Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping must have said this somewhere, so it's acceptable to repeat it as long as you cite their names.) "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", then, means hard-core capitalism in a one-party state.

That may disappoint many lesser-developed countries looking at China's development as a potential economic model. Or a social and political model. They shouldn't count on it, or on Beijing's leadership for poor nations: the current administration will do nothing for poor countries unless they receive a quid pro quo in energy supplies or market opening. This is blatant capitalism with Chinese socialist characteristics.

Mr Hu's own political ideology - the "harmonious society" - merges four pillars of thought: a "democratic legal system"; a "fair struggle for righteousness"; a "sincere and honest love for each other"; and "stability and order". These are called the "basic starting points of Chinese society".

But are they? These wonderful ideals cannot be found anywhere in China today, so how can they be starting points? Mainland society is arguably the most unharmonious of any nation in the world today not being torn apart by war. "Harmonious society is a policy for the people and the rich," the Central Party School recently explained. That raised the question of whether the concept is intended to fill an ideological or spiritual void among people, or is just another stimulus to encourage mainlanders to get rich.

In June, Mr Hu gave a speech at the Central Party School in which he elevated the notion of "social construction" onto the same plane as economic, political and cultural "constructions". By way of explanation, a Central Party School scholar said this established a "bottom line for China's people's social development" - in short, every individual has ample space for their own free development.

But don't think they are talking about individual freedoms along the lines of America's founding fathers. They mean everyone is free to use whatever means he or she likes to make money and get the material things they want. The Pandora's box of Dickensian capitalism has been opened.

Such statements are dangerous for a nation that has witnessed the reappearance of slavery in rural areas of Shanxi and Henan provinces. In such places, making money any way you can - and at any cost to other people - has become mainstream thinking. Does this mean economic anarchy?

When Deng announced Beijing's adoption of a market economy in 1992, many did not understand what that meant. They stretched its definition, taking the new market model to mean carte blanche to engage in smuggling and counterfeiting. Illegal stock markets opened all over the country, and property projects were developed without approval. That led to chaos and the 24 per cent inflation that had to be reigned in by then vice-premier Zhu Rongji .

Is there a danger, following these latest pronouncements, that capitalism will once again be taken to extremes?

In the run-up to the 17th Party Congress, the mainland media quoted an editorial in Britain's Guardian newspaper which said that during the 19th century, Britain taught the world manufacturing; during the 20th century, America taught the world consumption; and, for China to find its rightful place as leader of the 21st century, it should teach the world sustainable development. But can it? Mr Hu may be asking the same question.

Laurence Brahm is a political economist, author, filmmaker and founder of Shambhala Foundation

laurence@shambhala-ngo.org


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... lumns&s=Opinion

the more you read, the less grammatical error you make.

The battle for truth
A former Okinawa governor is fighting to ensure wartime atrocities are not erased from textbooks, writes Julian Ryall

BEHIND THE NEWS
Julian Ryall
Oct 17, 2007           
     
  |   

  



Wearing only rags, and bandaged or hobbling, the old men, women and terrified children left the sanctuary of the cave in the limestone cliffs at the very southern tip of Okinawa. Standing out to sea were the warships of the US Navy, from where came calls relayed over loudspeakers for the survivors to surrender. Blinking in the bright sunshine of May 1945, the villagers began to cautiously make their way towards the American soldiers' lines.

Masahide Ota would often see the little groups start out on their journey into the no-man's land that divided the US Marines from what remained of the Imperial Japanese Army's forces in the Mabuni district of the disputed island. Most of the time, they were shot before they had gone more than a couple of hundred metres. They were not killed by the Americans, to whom they posed little threat, but shot in the back by their own soldiers.

"I saw it happen every day," said Mr Ota. "The local people wanted to surrender but the Japanese soldiers would not allow them to go and they killed them when they tried to escape. And they didn't just kill the civilians; there was no food and the only well had been contaminated by the bodies of the dead, so soldiers were killing each other for food or the contents of their water bottles," he said. "I saw Japanese soldiers throwing grenades at each other so they could drink.

"I had been conscripted into the army myself at that time, but I never thought I would see the day when friendly soldiers would be killing each other. The terrible things I witnessed every day changed my ideas completely."

What Mr Ota, now 82, witnessed in the final days of the conventional fighting on the island changed his life. He went on to study in Tokyo and live in the US before winning election as the governor of Okinawa in 1990, a post he held until 1998. He then became a member of the Social Democratic Party in the Upper House of the Japanese Diet for six years up until July.

Throughout his private and public life, Mr Ota has dedicated himself to ensuring that what happened on Okinawa is never forgotten. Such a stance has made him highly critical of right-wing historians' reinterpretations of events in Okinawa in 1945, and he vehemently opposes plans announced by the Japanese government to rewrite history textbooks that are to be issued to students at the start of the new school year next April.

In March, then prime minister Shinzo Abe ordered that school-book references to the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army in the suicides of Okinawan civilians be deleted.

Nationalist historians claim that suicide pacts were voluntary and not the result of orders. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology responded by decreeing that as there was disagreement among historians as to what happened in Okinawa, it would be unfair to state that the civilians had killed themselves as a direct order from the military. In response, a draft textbook prepared by publishing house Shimizu Shoin altered a passage that read some people "were forced by Japanese troops to commit group suicide" to "there were people who were driven into group suicides". Other publishers similarly watered down Japan's official view of history.

The new government of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has made some conciliatory moves, with new Education Minister Kisaburo Tokai telling reporters: "The ministry will deal with any applications for further revisions in a serious manner. A panel will be convened to make a fair judgment on the issue if necessary."

Mr Ota remains incensed at official efforts to beautify history. Public outrage led an estimated 115,000 Okinawans to protest on September 29 in the city of Ginowan, marking the largest public protest since the prefecture reverted to Japanese control in 1972.

"It is truly a terrible thing to try to rewrite historical truth," said Mr Ota. "The people of Okinawa will absolutely not allow this to happen. Tens of thousands turned out to demonstrate against the plans and, in a very rare case of all the municipal assemblies joining together, 41 local authorities also protested."

According to Mr Ota, who founded the Ota Peace Research Institute in Okinawa's largest city, Naha, the government is increasingly falling under the thrall of the right, and aims to win sufficient political support to rewrite a constitution drawn up after the war that renounces the use of military force.

"The main reason that they want to change the constitution is because they would like to drop the `Self-Defence Forces' title and simply have a real and regular military," said Mr Ota. "They want Japan to be recognised as having military units that can go and fight wherever the government wants."

But with the actions and excesses of the Imperial Japanese Forces in the 1930s and 40s still remembered by some and documented in textbooks, the right is having trouble winning over the majority of the public.

Mr Ota said their approach was three-pronged. Firstly, the nationalists are rewriting the events known as the Nanking Massacre, claiming that maybe a few hundred citizens of the city died in disturbances, a far cry from the 300,000 deaths China blames on the Japanese army. Their second target is the women who were forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women" for Japanese troops during the years of expansion throughout Asia and the Pacific, with the right claiming they were mere prostitutes who volunteered to serve in frontline brothels and were paid for their labours. The third target is reversing the myth perpetrated by Okinawans that the military murdered civilians and forced others to commit suicide.

After his wartime experiences, Mr Ota knows that he is fortunate to still be alive. As the Allied invasion approached, the Japanese military headquartered beneath Naha's Shuri Castle conscripted all the students from the city's 12 boys' schools and 10 girls' schools. The boys were given a gun, 20 rounds of ammunition and two grenades, with the instruction that one grenade was to be thrown at the Americans; the other one was for themselves. The girls were given rudimentary first aid training and served as nurses.

Of the 460 students from Mr Ota's school, 305 were killed; of the 120 pupils in his grade, just 37 survived.

Known as Tetsu no ame (the "rain of steel"), the US forces landed on the main island on April 1, 1945, in the largest Pacific theatre amphibious assault of the war. The Japanese defence was tenacious and made the most of the terrain and extensive fortifications. Nearly 80 Allied warships were destroyed or had to be scrapped due to enemy action - a good number of them victims of kamikaze attacks. The Allies lost 12,513 lives; the Japanese military lost an estimated 66,000. Well over double that number of civilians also died.

"In the very last days of the fighting, I was told to infiltrate behind the enemy's lines and to persuade local people to rise up against the US," Mr Ota said. Indoctrinated not to surrender, he managed to evade the Americans and made his way with other stragglers to the rugged northern jungles of Okinawa. In small bands, they lived rough and scrounged from the Americans' dumps to survive.

On one occasion, he was among a group that chose to run instead of surrendering and was chased into the sea. After losing consciousness, he was washed ashore and found himself surrounded by the corpses of his colleagues.

Teaming up with another soldier one day, they came across a US magazine that proclaimed the war was over, yet it was not until a former officer in the Okinawa General Headquarters made his way to their hideout with a manuscript signed by the emperor that they decided to surrender.

"When I read that the war was over, I was not disappointed that Japan had lost," said Mr Ota. "I was more sad that I was so ignorant I could not read the magazine because English was the language of the enemy."

It was at this point that he decided to educate himself to help the people of his native island. Okinawa was once the independent Ryukyu kingdom and still has many cultural differences with the country that effectively annexed it in the early 1600s. The Japanese military regarded islanders with suspicion and hostility, while local people hated being ordered to revere the emperor and to sacrifice themselves for the homeland.

In the years since the end of the conflict, research has indicated that between 800 and 1,000 Okinawan civilians were killed by the Japanese military during the campaign, although the chaos that enveloped the islands in the summer of 1945 makes it almost impossible to prove the vast majority of the cases. In cases that have gone to court demanding recognition of the atrocities that were committed, most have failed to provide the identities of those killed, the identities of the killers and witnesses. This same problem has given more ammunition to nationalists, who say there is no proof that the Japanese military was to blame for forced suicides or murders.

"Those who are trying to change the descriptions in textbooks that are to educate the next generation of Japanese say the local people misunderstood what was happening and that the Japanese military was there to protect their lives," said Mr Ota. "But that's not true."


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion

The talent crunch
Companies across Southeast Asia could be feeling the impact of a skills shortage for decades, writes Rosheen Rodwell

BEHIND THE NEWS

Oct 18, 2007           
     
  |   

  



Serena Ma Hong-yee is a Hong Kong headhunter's dream come true. She is confident, well-presented, speaks English, Cantonese and some Putonghua, and is a graduate in international relations with a few years of work experience.

These qualifications sound common for a Hong Kong resident, but the high demand for her skills suggests otherwise. Ms Ma started looking for a job in August and, before the end of the month, she had four firm offers on the table, two of them significantly better than she had expected.

The scenario is becoming common as companies scramble to employ the few good candidates that briefly enter the employment market amid the accelerating economy. New figures out this week show that Hong Kong's jobless rate last month improved slightly to 4.1 per cent, the lowest level in almost a decade. The figure is down from 4.2 per cent in August. As skilled workers become harder to find, employers are now warning that the skills shortage will have an impact on corporate profits.

"Historically, it is as bad as it has ever been," said Gina McLellan, Hong Kong manager of recruitment company Hudson. "It is dire. Some companies will not be able to deliver on their growth targets. They have got the facilities, they've got the materials and they've got the manufacturing capabilities - they just don't have anyone to do the jobs."

A recent survey of 250 firms by financial and business advisory firm Grant Thornton found that nearly half wanted to increase their workforce next year and a third were worried that a lack of available staff would constrain their growth. "Clients from different industries have been complaining," said Daniel Lin Ching-yee, an accountant and spokesman for Grant Thornton.

The problem is most acute in the engineering sector, as huge property developments in southern China have drawn experienced engineers away from Hong Kong. The service industry has also been badly hit, with Macau's casino and hotel boom enticing good staff from the Hong Kong hotel industry.

"All you have to do is go out to a hotel and have a cup of tea to notice that the service is really bad compared to what we are used to," said Mr Lin.

Other professional fields are low on talent. Susanna Chiu Lai-kuen, of the Hong Kong Institute for Certified Public Accountants, said firms in Hong Kong were "chewing up accountants". She said part of the problem was caused by demand from multinationals on the mainland.

Even investment banks are feeling the pinch. Global investment bank UBS recently opened a wealth management training office in Singapore in response to the lack of talent in the region. The office will provide training for existing and would-be wealth managers in the Asia-Pacific region.

The talent shortage in Hong Kong is reflected throughout the region. An Economist Intelligence Unit survey this year of 600 chief executives in Asia found that the shortage of staff ranked as their biggest concern.

"Everyone [in the rest of the world] just thinks Asia is going to continue to boom," said Ms McLellan. "If you talk to most companies and you ask them, 'What does your US head office think you are going to generate next year?' they will say, 'We've got 50 per cent growth targets', or `We've got 110 per cent growth targets'. We tell them it is not achievable, but no one [outside Asia] understands that."

Mr Lin warns that many companies in Hong Kong have yet to understand the long-term implications of the skilled staff shortage. "They really have to face the issue," he said. "Most Hong Kong companies are SMEs [small to medium sized enterprises] and they tend not to have any plans; they just deal with issues in firefighting mode and so this has been hitting them quite hard. They think that this is just a cyclical problem and it will go away, but it is going to be affecting businesses for decades."

There are several reasons for the skills shortage. Mr Lin cites the declining birth rate in Hong Kong as a contributor, as well as the shortage of management-level candidates on the mainland which is drawing managers from Hong Kong.

Ms McLellan said another theory was that the ageing baby boomer generation was sapping the workforce as children opted to look after their parents.

Some firms have commented on the reluctance of the "spoilt" younger generation to do jobs considered to be unglamorous. The director of careers at Hong Kong University, Herman Chan Ping-kong, said students favoured sectors such as finance over engineering.

But by far the biggest reason for the shortage is the extraordinary growth of the economy. Companies appear to be flocking to Hong Kong to take advantage of the buoyant local economy and gain a regional foothold near the booming Asian economies of the mainland and India. As Hong Kong becomes a regional base for these companies, some firms are increasing their headcount here, as well as taking people out of Hong Kong to work in other offices in Asia.

Complicating the issue is the strong demand for staff who can smooth the business process for western companies operating in East Asia; those with an understanding of Chinese and western cultures and languages. Employment agencies also say employees need to be able to think outside the box, and some firms complain that the local education system does not encourage this kind of creative thinking.

This is why people such as Ms Ma, who appears to have a common skill set, is the ideal candidate for many firms. She speaks Cantonese with her family and understands the Chinese culture, but she grew up in Canada and is familiar with the culture of westerners.

To attract this calibre of staff, firms have been raising salaries significantly. In the banking sector, candidates changing jobs this year have been receiving salary increases of up to 20 per cent, according to Guy Day, head of the recruitment company Ambition. As a result, some people are leaving their jobs to chase higher salaries. Recruitment specialists say turnover in some sectors has gone through the roof, and in some cases candidates keep their options open even after they have committed to a new job.

"They will keep interviewing if they think there might be more money in it," said Ms McLellan.

Companies are unhappy about employing people who demonstrate a tendency to "job hop", but their options are limited.

Some firms are employing people who a few years ago would not have got past the first interview, and they are promoting staff to management before they have the proper experience.

One option that firms have in a fished-out talent pool is to widen the net, and Hong Kong firms are being encouraged to embrace diversity policies that have long been established in firms in western countries due to concerns over fairness and possible litigation risks. Ms McLellan said banks, in particular, with large staff levels, now recognised the need to consider staff from more diverse racial backgrounds and with disabilities.

The other option available to companies struggling to employ the right people is to strive for the all-important "employer of choice" label, to create a company that everyone wants to work for and no one wants to leave.

Mr Day said that, apart from salary rises, strategies becoming more popular were share options, bonuses, training and career development, and opportunities to work abroad. Other initiatives include so-called "soft" issues, such as a better work/life balance.

Sometimes, simply changing a person's title can convince them to stay. A "supervisor" who becomes an "assistant manager" may not have more responsibility, but will feel more inclined to show off his business card and less inclined to leave.

Mr Day said that, in the final analysis, most staff made a decision to change jobs based on salary. They only see about five to 10 of their candidates retained or "bought back" by their original company.


http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/ ... sight&s=Opinion