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One of my favorite Development experts, William Easterly co-authored a paper earlier this year that found strong correlations between ancient historic technological development levels and current global development trends. It is quite fascinating.
This is not a coincidence that he visited America and accepted a prestigious award (that according to the criteria should have never went to him as “The decoration is awarded to any individual who performs an outstanding deed or act of service to the security, prosperity, and national interest of the United States. The honoree need not be an American citizen.” It was all a political message sent by Washington and him to China. Seems that Japan is also going to follow America down this road, as if the Chinese don’t despise the Japanese enough. I will be watching closely for the official party reaction and the response on the Chinese street.
Dalai Lama to visit Japan: report
Posted: 20 October 2007 1740 hrs
TOKYO – The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will visit Japan next month at the invitation of religious groups, a report said Saturday.His planned visit could come at a politically sensitive time as China has been angered by the honouring of the Dalai Lama in the United States.
The Dalai Lama plans to visit Japan from November 14 to 23 but it may be affected by the political row between Washington and Beijing, Kyodo News agency quoted anonymous sources saying.
During his Japan tour, the first since a similar visit last November, the Dalai Lama will give lectures in Yokohama near Tokyo and other cities, the agency said.
China has opposed visits to Japan by the Dalai Lama, but Japan allowed him to come last year on the condition he avoid political activities.
US President George W. Bush on Wednesday defied repeated warnings from China and awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal — US lawmakers’ highest civilian honour — at the US Capitol building.
It was the first time a sitting US president had appeared in public with the Dalai Lama, whom China accuses of being a dangerous figure agitating for Tibetan independence. – AFP/ir
Taken from the Shanghaiist:
A post apparently has been widely circulated around the internet entitled 《大会现场鼓掌40次表达党心民意》(“Delegates clapped 40 times, showing the heart of the party is in alignment with the desire of the people”). According to that post, journalists had observed:
- Delegates had clapped a grand total of 40 times throughout President Hu’s 2.5 hour speech
- They clapped a total of 10 times during the President’s recap of the “great milestones in the history of reform and opening up”
- The 1,000-word segment on he Taiwan issue was interrupted by applause 5 times. In particular, there was loud applause when Hu mentioned “任何涉及中国主权和领土完整的问题，必须由包括台湾同胞在内的全中国人民共同决定” (All issues related to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be solved by the people of China, and that includes the Taiwanese compatriots). And when the President said “绝不允许任何人以任何名义任何方式把台湾从祖国分割出去” (We will not allow anyone or any cause to use any method to separate Taiwan from the motherland), the applause lasted for over 30 seconds.
Despite the constant remarks about democracy, Hu has done next to nothing to further liberalize the party and in fact it seems that he still has not (and maybe never will) consolidate power. The Economist is reporting that Hu’s aireapparent Li Keqiang will have some competition forced on Hu by various factions in the party, Xi Jinping. As far as I can tell, neither of them appear to be ideologically different from Hu in any significant way. If they are both as hawkish as I assume, they will be around in 2012 for the final showdown and won’t falter like poor Zhao Ziyang.
Ta ma de! Remember that China is a country where a good percentage of the population still lives on $2 or less a day and the average income per years (even with purchasing power parity) is less than $8K a year, real dollars are $2K a year. Mexico by contrast has 1 billionaire and $11K (PPP) per capita, real $8K per year.
China Has 106 Billionaires, Up From 15 Last Year (Update1)
By Allen T. Cheng and Dune Lawrence
Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — China has 106 billionaires, up from 15 last year, as surging stocks boost the wealth of the nation’s richest people, according to the Shanghai-based Hurun Report.
Yang Huiyan, the 26-year-old daughter of a property developer, is the nation’s wealthiest person with $17.5 billion, according to the annually published list. She also topped a list released by Forbes Asia two days ago.
China’s billionaire tally is second only to that of the U.S., which has 400, according to the Hurun Report, as surging mainland and Hong Kong stock markets have boosted wealth.
“China may have 200 billionaires, we just haven’t identified them yet — there are a lot of people out there who don’t report their assets,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, who has produced the list since 1999. “The new wealth we haven’t discovered yet is lying in the stock markets.”
The mainland benchmark CSI 300 Index of stocks has nearly quadrupled in the past year. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is up 41 percent this year through yesterday, the strongest annual performance since 1999 if it holds through year-end. Mainland and Hong Kong-based companies raised HK$160.3 billion in Hong Kong this year through Sept. 30, up from HK$133.9 billion last year.
Yang’s net worth rocketed after her father gave her his shares in property developer Country Garden Holdings Co. and the company raised HK$14.8 billion ($1.91 billion) in its Hong Kong debut last April. Read the rest of this entry »
This would give these small states some leverage. It would help them to have Khazah oil wealth created clout behind them. They are all authoritarian countries and most of them are Turkic. I can imagine that Russia and China will be against this if they feel they can not control it and especially if it might give Turkey more sway in the region with their distant ethnic kin. CHina might also not like such a union as it might inspire more separatism with their own Turkic minorities in Xinjiang (namely the Uighurs).
Kazakh President Proposes Central Asian Union on the EU Model
Source:UzReport
President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has proposed the forming of a “Central Asian Union”. “The Treaty of eternal friendship between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan can serve as a solid foundation for such union,” Nazarbayev said during his annual appeal at the joint session of both houses of Kazakhstan’s parliament.
Other countries of the region (Tajikistan and Turkmenistan) can join the new union. Mr Nazarbayev stressed: “In the region, we share economic interest, cultural heritage, language, religion, and environmental challenges, and face common external threats.”
“The founding fathers of the European Union could only wish they had so much in common,” he emphasized. “We should direct our efforts towards a closer economic integration, a common market and a single currency,” he noted. “The global economy demands larger markets,” Nazarbayev added.
In his opinion, today “we are again witnessing superpower rivalry for economic dominance in our region. We have to address correctly this new global and geo-economics challenge. We have a choice between remaining the supplier of raw materials to the global markets and wait patiently for the emergence of the next imperial master or to pursue genuine economic integration of the central Asian region,” he said.
“I choose the latter,” stressed the President. “Further regional integration will lead to stability, regional progress, and economic, military and political independence. This is the only way for our region to earn respect in the world. This is the only way to achieve security, and to fight effectively against terrorism and extremism. Regional integration will advance the interests of all the common folk that live in Central Asia.”
Four Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization together with Russia and China. Moreover, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Belarus and Russia form the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The same countries except Armenia make the Eurasian Economic Community. Therefore, the new initiative of President Nursultan Nazarbayev can be regarded as an attempt to advocate closer integration within the Central Asia.
Source: UzReport, 23 February 2005
The Economist was spot on in the highlighted sections. Many western nations (including the U.S.) already have sanctions against Myanmar but it does not matter because all its neighbors are eager to trade with it. As long as the money flows between the junta and China, ASEAN, and India there will be no significant change unless the junta decides money flow is being hurt by too much oppression, so they need to liberalize…it remains to be seen though if the junta think like South Korea, Taiwan and other nations who made the jump from authoritarianism to liberal democracies after decades of strong economic development. Unlike the former nations, Myanmar is not ethnically homogeneous and I am not convinced the Burmese Junta care enough about Myanmar as a nation to care if it develops or not. Truthfully, Myanmar is the country in Southeast Asia I know the least about, but from my understanding the junta does not even control all of the country (although most) and are fighting some strong secessionists movements, that have been going on for over 30 years, the place is the most backward nation (but maybe for Laos) in Southeast Asia. Truly a mess.
Myanmar
Life beyond the pale
Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
The outside world seems powerless to help the benighted country
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“NORMALCY” has now returned to Myanmar, boasted its foreign minister, Nyan Win, to the United Nations General Assembly this week. Sadly, he was right. It is normal for the country to be in the grip of vicious repression, with 15,000 soldiers keeping order on the streets of the largest city, Yangon; normal for unknown numbers of peaceful protesters to have been killed and for others to vanish into the Burmese gulag; and normal for the country to retreat into its default mode, isolation, with internet connections and mobile-phone lines largely cut. Days of brave protests, led by monks, had given a glimpse of the hopes that people power has brought to many countries, from the Philippines to Ukraine. But people power meets its match in a regime ready to kill and torture as many as it takes to cling to power. Myanmar’s junta fits that bill.
Sadly, too, it is also entirely normal that the outside world is at a loss about how to react. And rather than speak in one outraged voice, it is giving these thugs the comfort of mixed messages. The divisions run along predictable lines. On the one side is the West, wringing its hands and thundering impotently. America, which already has tough sanctions against Myanmar in place, was swift to announce even tougher ones. Some in Congress want secondary sanctions against China, calling for a boycott of next year’s Beijing Olympics.
On the other side are the Asian countries that have “engaged” rather than shunned the junta. Most important are China, India and Myanmar’s fellow members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). They, on the whole, are wagging fingers sternly at the misbehaving generals, but not threatening any sanctions. They seem to be waiting for the storm to pass and business-as-usual to resume, as it has in part since 1988, the last time the junta spilled a lot of blood to stay in power. But ASEAN, above all, has a duty to act in the face of one of the biggest tests the group has faced.
In one sign of a fragile international unity, the United Nations special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, visited Myanmar (see article). And the Human Rights Council, on which China has a seat, adopted a resolution that “strongly deplores” the repression (“condemns” was apparently too interventionist for the squeamish Chinese). Even that went further than India, whose foreign minister hoped that “the process of national reconciliation” in Myanmar “would be taken forward expeditiously” and tentatively suggested the junta hold an inquiry into “recent incidents”.
ASEAN’s mid-life crisis
An ASEAN statement departed from the group’s habitual timidity to express “revulsion” at the violence and call for the release of all political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader. For the sake of its own credibility, ASEAN will have to do more. It admitted Myanmar as part of its 30th-birthday celebrations in 1997, brushing aside criticism with the promise that engagement would help civilise the generals. This always seemed a convenient fiction to help ASEAN’s loggers to strip the teak forests, its jewellers to scoop up rubies and Thailand’s electricity authority to buy Burmese gas.
If engagement was supposed to buy influence, now is the time to use it. As ASEAN celebrates its 40th birthday, one of the world’s most loathed regimes should not be helping to blow out the candles. Its continued membership of the organisation should be made conditional on its embarking on a genuine transition to civilian rule. ASEAN has never known where to set the bar for acceptable behaviour among its members. But wherever it is, it is surely too high for Myanmar.
