June 7, 2010
12 Americans Detained in Yemen
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — Twelve Americans have been taken in custody in Yemen, the State Department spokesman said Monday, but the circumstances of why and when they were detained were unclear.
“If the question is, are we aware that there are Americans in custody in Yemen, we are,” the spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, told reporters. “We’re trying to find out more information.”
A Yemeni official who was trying to sort out the contradictory reports on Monday said that several dozen foreigners have been detained on suspicion of radical or terrorist ties since December, when the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by a Nigerian trained in Yemen set off a security crackdown.
But the Yemeni official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record, said he did not have details on the number of people arrested, their nationalities and the exact charges they face.
Agence France-Presse, citing an unnamed security official in Yemen, reported Sunday that Yemeni security forces had arrested more than 30 foreign citizens on suspicion of having links with Al Qaeda, among them 3 Frenchmen, an American and a Briton.
Other news agencies have reported in recent days that some or all of the foreigners detained were students studying Arabic at one or more of the language institutes in Sana, the Yemeni capital.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb the airliner on Christmas, studied at one of the schools, the Sana Institute for the Arabic Language, before he met with Qaeda operatives in Yemen to prepare to carry out his plot.
When asked if any of the Americans arrested had ties to terrorist activities, Mr. Crowley said he would not get into specific details.
Mr. Crowley declined to say whether any of the foreigners detained in Yemen had been taken into custody at the request of their governments.
Senior American officials have expressed growing alarm about the increasing number of Americans who are drawn to video and audio recordings that promote jihad, including lectures by the American-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen.
Scott Shane contributed reporting.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Junghwa Noh
Changes in China Could Raise Prices
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — The cost of doing business in China is going up.
Coastal factories are raising salaries, local governments are hiking minimum wage standards and if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the U.S. dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.
Although the salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe (the minimum wage in southern China is close to $125 a month), economists say the changes will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of everything from T-shirts and sneakers to computer servers and smart phones.
“For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. “But this may be the beginning of the end of an era.”
The shift was dramatized Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of everything from the Apple iPhone to Dell computer parts, said that within three months it would double the salaries of many of its assembly line workers.
The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company’s labor practices.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases are meant to improve the lives of its workers.
Last week, the Japanese auto maker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of between 24 percent and 32 percent in the hopes of ending a two week-long strike, according to people briefed on the agreement.
The changes are coming about because of the growing clout of workers in China’s sizzling economy, analysts say, and because soaring food and housing prices are eroding the spending power of migrant workers.
But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is backing wage increases as a way to spur domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.
But Chinese policymakers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.
Last Thursday, the Beijing municipal government said it would raise its minimum wage 20 percent to about $140 a month; several other cities are preparing to implement similar increases.
Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.
A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses — which employ over 400,000 — is about five percent a month, meaning that an astounding 20,000 workers are leaving every month and need to be replaced.
Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force, and that’s behind some of the wage pressure.
“Demography will do what the Strategic & Economic Dialogue hasn’t: raise the cost of Chinese goods,” he said, referring to U.S.-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. “There is no way out.”
Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008 — when China’s economy was overheating — have returned and even intensified this year.
Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.
And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.
Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively re-pegged the renminbi to the dollar. That was a way to protect exporters.
Even though labor accounts for a small percentage of the final cost of many products, salary increases are expected to affect much of the supply chain and force companies to raise prices.
For many exporters, profit margins are already razor thin, and raising prices could hurt business.
“They’re going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user,” says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.
Still, economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation’s huge “floating population” of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and spur domestic consumption.
United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the health of the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country’s massive trade surpluses.
Rising labor costs here aren’t the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country’s manufacturing mix.
“China isn’t going to lose its manufacturing base because it’s got a huge domestic market,” said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. “But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government’s ambition. They don’t just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods.”
renminbi-Another name for the Chinese yuan.
desperate to- you want or need it very much indeed. A desperate situation is very difficult , serious, or dangerous.
fluctuate-If something fluctuates, it changes a lot in an irregular way.
Questions.
1. Is it helpful to international trade, if prices raise in china?
2. what is the best efficient way in china economy?
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — The cost of doing business in China is going up.
Coastal factories are raising salaries, local governments are hiking minimum wage standards and if China allows its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate against the U.S. dollar later this year, as many economists are predicting, the cost of manufacturing in China will almost certainly rise.
Although the salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and Europe (the minimum wage in southern China is close to $125 a month), economists say the changes will eventually ripple through the global economy, driving up the prices of everything from T-shirts and sneakers to computer servers and smart phones.
“For a long time, China has been the anchor of global disinflation,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse, referring to how the two decade-long shift to manufacturing in China helped many global companies lower costs and prices. “But this may be the beginning of the end of an era.”
The shift was dramatized Sunday, when Foxconn Technology, one of the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturers and the maker of everything from the Apple iPhone to Dell computer parts, said that within three months it would double the salaries of many of its assembly line workers.
The announcement follows a spate of suicides at two Foxconn campuses in southern China and criticism of the company’s labor practices.
Taiwan-based Foxconn, which has more than 800,000 workers in China, said the salary increases are meant to improve the lives of its workers.
Last week, the Japanese auto maker Honda said it had agreed to give about 1,900 workers at one of its plants in southern China raises of between 24 percent and 32 percent in the hopes of ending a two week-long strike, according to people briefed on the agreement.
The changes are coming about because of the growing clout of workers in China’s sizzling economy, analysts say, and because soaring food and housing prices are eroding the spending power of migrant workers.
But there are other reasons. Analysts say Beijing is backing wage increases as a way to spur domestic consumption and make the country less dependent on low-priced exports. The government hopes the move will force some export-oriented companies to invest in more innovative or higher-value goods.
But Chinese policymakers also favor higher wages because they could help ease a widening income gap between the rich and the poor.
Last Thursday, the Beijing municipal government said it would raise its minimum wage 20 percent to about $140 a month; several other cities are preparing to implement similar increases.
Big manufacturers are moving to raise salaries because they are desperate to attract new workers at a time when many coastal factory cities are struggling with labor shortages.
A Foxconn executive said last week that the turnover rate at its two Shenzhen campuses — which employ over 400,000 — is about five percent a month, meaning that an astounding 20,000 workers are leaving every month and need to be replaced.
Marshall W. Meyer, a China specialist at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, says demographic changes in China are reducing the supply of young workers entering the labor force, and that’s behind some of the wage pressure.
“Demography will do what the Strategic & Economic Dialogue hasn’t: raise the cost of Chinese goods,” he said, referring to U.S.-China talks on Chinese currency reform and other economic issues. “There is no way out.”
Economists say many of the same forces that were at work in 2007 and 2008 — when China’s economy was overheating — have returned and even intensified this year.
Local governments have stepped up enforcement of labor and environmental regulations, driving up production costs.
And perhaps most troubling for companies here is the prospect of an appreciating Chinese currency, which would make their exports more expensive overseas.
Beijing has long promised to allow its currency to fluctuate more freely. But when the global financial crisis shuttered many Chinese factories, the government effectively re-pegged the renminbi to the dollar. That was a way to protect exporters.
Even though labor accounts for a small percentage of the final cost of many products, salary increases are expected to affect much of the supply chain and force companies to raise prices.
For many exporters, profit margins are already razor thin, and raising prices could hurt business.
“They’re going to have to find a way to pass this on to the end user,” says Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse.
Still, economists say a necessary restructuring is under way, one that should allow the nation’s huge “floating population” of migrant workers to better share in the benefits of growth and spur domestic consumption.
United States and European Union officials have been pressing China to help improve the health of the global economy by consuming more and reducing the country’s massive trade surpluses.
Rising labor costs here aren’t the end of cheap production in China, analysts say, but they are likely to help change the country’s manufacturing mix.
“China isn’t going to lose its manufacturing base because it’s got a huge domestic market,” said Mary Gallagher, director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. “But it will move them toward higher-end goods. And that matches the Chinese government’s ambition. They don’t just want to be the workshop of the world. They want to produce high-tech goods.”
renminbi-Another name for the Chinese yuan.
desperate to- you want or need it very much indeed. A desperate situation is very difficult , serious, or dangerous.
fluctuate-If something fluctuates, it changes a lot in an irregular way.
Questions.
1. Is it helpful to international trade, if prices raise in china?
2. what is the best efficient way in china economy?
Youn's
The New York Times June 6, 2010
Japanese Leader Tells Obama He’ll Work to Fulfill Base Pact
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Japan’s new prime minister, Naoto Kan, told President Obama on Sunday that he would work to fulfill an agreement to relocate an American air base, moving to get beyond a contentious issue that had confounded his predecessor.
Making his diplomatic debut with a phone call to the White House, Mr. Kan also reaffirmed that his nation’s security alliance with the United States remained the “cornerstone” of Japanese foreign policy, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry released few details of the 15-minute call, which it said Mr. Obama had requested.
Mr. Kan, who succeeded Yukio Hatoyama on Friday, has promised to focus on pocketbook issues in an attempt to re-energize his governing Democratic Party, which has lost popularity since its election victory last summer.
However, he also inherits difficult decisions on relocating the American base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, a politically toxic issue that drove Mr. Hatoyama to resign after he gave in to the Obama administration’s demands that the base stay on the island.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Kan can better balance Washington’s demands with those of Okinawans, who have opposed the base. Mr. Kan must also appease national public opinion, which turned against Mr. Hatoyama for appearing indecisive and causing mistrust with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector.
Mr. Hatoyama stepped down a week after announcing an agreement with the Obama administration to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. In making the deal, he broke a prominent campaign pledge to move the base off the island.
Under the new agreement, Tokyo has until August to announce the details of the new air field’s construction. That means Mr. Kan will likely have to make tough choices early in his government because any new construction could face mass opposition on Okinawa.
Japanese Leader Tells Obama He’ll Work to Fulfill Base Pact
By MARTIN FACKLER
TOKYO — Japan’s new prime minister, Naoto Kan, told President Obama on Sunday that he would work to fulfill an agreement to relocate an American air base, moving to get beyond a contentious issue that had confounded his predecessor.
Making his diplomatic debut with a phone call to the White House, Mr. Kan also reaffirmed that his nation’s security alliance with the United States remained the “cornerstone” of Japanese foreign policy, Japan’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry released few details of the 15-minute call, which it said Mr. Obama had requested.
Mr. Kan, who succeeded Yukio Hatoyama on Friday, has promised to focus on pocketbook issues in an attempt to re-energize his governing Democratic Party, which has lost popularity since its election victory last summer.
However, he also inherits difficult decisions on relocating the American base, Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa, a politically toxic issue that drove Mr. Hatoyama to resign after he gave in to the Obama administration’s demands that the base stay on the island.
It remains to be seen whether Mr. Kan can better balance Washington’s demands with those of Okinawans, who have opposed the base. Mr. Kan must also appease national public opinion, which turned against Mr. Hatoyama for appearing indecisive and causing mistrust with the United States, Japan’s longtime protector.
Mr. Hatoyama stepped down a week after announcing an agreement with the Obama administration to move the base to a less populated part of Okinawa. In making the deal, he broke a prominent campaign pledge to move the base off the island.
Under the new agreement, Tokyo has until August to announce the details of the new air field’s construction. That means Mr. Kan will likely have to make tough choices early in his government because any new construction could face mass opposition on Okinawa.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
News
Gay rights in developing countries
A well-locked closet
Gays are under attack in poor countries—and not just because of “local culture”
May 27th 2010 From The Economist print edition
Militancy in Mauritius
THEIR crimes were “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts”. Their sentence was 14 years’ hard labour: one intended, said the judge, to scare others. He has succeeded. A court in Malawi last week horrified many with its treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple engaged to be married. The two men are the latest victims of a crackdown on gay rights in much of the developing world, particularly Africa.
Some 80 countries criminalise consensual homosexual sex. Over half rely on “sodomy” laws left over from British colonialism. But many are trying to make their laws even more repressive. Last year, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, signed a law criminalising consensual gay sex, despite the Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the bill. A draconian bill proposed in Uganda would dole out jail sentences for failing to report gay people to the police and could impose the death penalty for gay sex if one of the participants is HIV-positive. In March Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who once described gay people as worse than dogs or pigs, ruled out constitutional changes outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.
This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.
Discrimination against gays, in Africa in particular, risks undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS. In February, those suspected of being gay were targeted in Kenya in mob violence at a government health centre providing HIV/AIDS services. Bishop Joshua Banda, chairman of Zambia’s National AIDS Council, said that donor countries’ efforts to speak out against violations of gay rights were against Zambia’s “traditional values”. The increasing crackdown on gay rights in Africa will be a disaster for public health, according to Mr Epprecht, as gay people go underground and do not get treatment for HIV/AIDS.
The problem goes beyond Africa and is more than one of state-sponsored homophobia. In Iraq, for example, homosexuality is legal. But in 2009 Human Rights Watch described the persecution that men suspected of being gay there face, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there has been a growing fear of the “feminisation” of Iraqi men. The Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, has played on these fears and, claiming to uphold religious values and morality, offered violent “solutions”. Members of the Iraqi security forces have also been accused of colluding in the violence.
South Africa was the first country anywhere to ban homophobic discrimination in its constitution. It is the only country in Africa to allow gay marriage. In formal legal terms, it is a beacon for gay rights, says Mr Tatchell. But the growing phenomenon of “corrective rape” both there and in Zimbabwe, where women are assaulted in an attempt to “cure” them of lesbianism, suggests these laws often fail on the ground. As worrying to campaigners as the violence itself is a reluctance by the authorities to acknowledge that the attacks are motivated by homophobia. In April 2008 Eudy Simelane, a South African football player who was a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Two men were convicted of her murder but, in his sentencing, the judge denied that Ms Simelane’s sexuality played a part in the crime.
Hopes rose a little in June 2009 when India overturned its 149-year-old sodomy law but since then the global trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. Campaigners argue the proposed laws have implications beyond gay rights. How countries treat one particularly vulnerable group is a good measure of how they will act towards the rest of their citizens.
A well-locked closet
Gays are under attack in poor countries—and not just because of “local culture”
May 27th 2010 From The Economist print edition
Militancy in Mauritius
THEIR crimes were “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts”. Their sentence was 14 years’ hard labour: one intended, said the judge, to scare others. He has succeeded. A court in Malawi last week horrified many with its treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple engaged to be married. The two men are the latest victims of a crackdown on gay rights in much of the developing world, particularly Africa.
Some 80 countries criminalise consensual homosexual sex. Over half rely on “sodomy” laws left over from British colonialism. But many are trying to make their laws even more repressive. Last year, Burundi’s president, Pierre Nkurunziza, signed a law criminalising consensual gay sex, despite the Senate’s overwhelming rejection of the bill. A draconian bill proposed in Uganda would dole out jail sentences for failing to report gay people to the police and could impose the death penalty for gay sex if one of the participants is HIV-positive. In March Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, who once described gay people as worse than dogs or pigs, ruled out constitutional changes outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In many former colonies, denouncing homosexuality as an “unAfrican” Western import has become an easy way for politicians to boost both their popularity and their nationalist credentials. But Peter Tatchell, a veteran gay-rights campaigner, says the real import into Africa is not homosexuality but politicised homophobia.
This has, he argues, coincided with an influx of conservative Christians, mainly from America, who are eager to engage African clergy in their own domestic battle against homosexuality. David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who proposed its horrid bill, is a member of the Fellowship, a conservative American religious and political organisation. “Africa must seem an exciting place for evangelical Christians from places like America,” says Marc Epprecht, a Canadian academic who studies homosexuality in Africa. “They can make much bigger gains in their culture wars there than they can in their own countries.” Their ideas have found fertile ground. In May this year, George Kunda, Zambia’s vice-president, lambasted gay people, saying they undermined the country’s Christian values and that sadism and Satanism could be the result.
Discrimination against gays, in Africa in particular, risks undermining the fight against HIV/AIDS. In February, those suspected of being gay were targeted in Kenya in mob violence at a government health centre providing HIV/AIDS services. Bishop Joshua Banda, chairman of Zambia’s National AIDS Council, said that donor countries’ efforts to speak out against violations of gay rights were against Zambia’s “traditional values”. The increasing crackdown on gay rights in Africa will be a disaster for public health, according to Mr Epprecht, as gay people go underground and do not get treatment for HIV/AIDS.
The problem goes beyond Africa and is more than one of state-sponsored homophobia. In Iraq, for example, homosexuality is legal. But in 2009 Human Rights Watch described the persecution that men suspected of being gay there face, including kidnappings, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings. In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, there has been a growing fear of the “feminisation” of Iraqi men. The Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, has played on these fears and, claiming to uphold religious values and morality, offered violent “solutions”. Members of the Iraqi security forces have also been accused of colluding in the violence.
South Africa was the first country anywhere to ban homophobic discrimination in its constitution. It is the only country in Africa to allow gay marriage. In formal legal terms, it is a beacon for gay rights, says Mr Tatchell. But the growing phenomenon of “corrective rape” both there and in Zimbabwe, where women are assaulted in an attempt to “cure” them of lesbianism, suggests these laws often fail on the ground. As worrying to campaigners as the violence itself is a reluctance by the authorities to acknowledge that the attacks are motivated by homophobia. In April 2008 Eudy Simelane, a South African football player who was a lesbian, was gang-raped and stabbed to death. Two men were convicted of her murder but, in his sentencing, the judge denied that Ms Simelane’s sexuality played a part in the crime.
Hopes rose a little in June 2009 when India overturned its 149-year-old sodomy law but since then the global trend seems to have been in the opposite direction. Campaigners argue the proposed laws have implications beyond gay rights. How countries treat one particularly vulnerable group is a good measure of how they will act towards the rest of their citizens.
America and Israel
Not quite as it was Support remains strong but is no longer unquestioning
Jun 3rd 2010 WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition
FROM Barack Obama’s point of view, the timing could not have been worse. The administration has been pushing hard in the Security Council for new sanctions against Iran and had invested heavily in the Israeli-Palestinian “proximity talks” brokered by Mr Obama’s special envoy, George Mitchell. Both of these efforts are now in jeopardy. Moreover, the Israeli raid came soon after Mr Obama had decided to rescue America’s relations with Israel from the ditch into which they fell in March, when Israel announced plans for a Jewish suburb in occupied East Jerusalem just as the proximity talks were about to begin.
During that confrontation Mr Obama asked Binyamin Netanyahu to freeze Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, an undertaking the Israeli prime minister refused to give. Mr Netanyahu received a frosty reception at the White House in March. But for one reason or another the Obama administration decided several weeks ago that it was time to make up. Mr Netanyahu was invited back and was supposed to drop by this week. After the raid he flew directly home to Israel from a visit to Canada.
Whatever the private thoughts of Mr Obama, America has refused to join the international outcry against its wayward ally. In New York American diplomats ensured that a special meeting of the UN Security Council did not condemn Israel and called only for an impartial investigation of the facts. In a telephone call with Turkey’s enraged prime minister, Mr Obama was cautious. He expressed his condolences and affirmed the need to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza—but, according to a White House summary of the conversation, “without undermining Israel’s security”.
As ever, domestic politics have played a part in shaping Mr Obama’s responses. Israel’s friends on Capitol Hill have pushed back hard since the March spat. A letter affirming the value of a close relationship with Israel was signed by 334 of the 435 members of the House, and a similar one by 76 of the 100 senators. Despite the emergence of J Street, a feisty and doveish pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has far more muscle and is not afraid to flex it.
Even in Congress, however, support for Israel is not rock solid, and is showing signs of change. Dan Senor, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted recently that there were “real divisions” among congressional Democrats over Israel, “and those divisions are widening and cementing in ways not seen in decades”. For most Republicans, on the other hand, supporting the Jewish state remains, literally, an article of faith.
With mid-term congressional elections due in November and the Democrats braced for a drubbing, this would be a tricky time for Mr Obama to pick a fresh fight with Israel. That may be why, since early May, the White House has been labouring to correct what Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, has described as the administration’s flawed “messaging”. A posse of senior officials have stressed that the ties to Israel are unbreakable.
That said, the influence of domestic politics can be exaggerated. Despite the pre-flotilla thaw, Mr Obama has made it abundantly clear in recent months that Israel can no longer take American support for granted. He seems genuinely to believe that the United States can and should bring about a two-state solution in Palestine. Mr Netanyahu says that is his aim too, but in his case there are strong reasons to doubt whether he is sincere. So long as both leaders remain in office, with their convictions unchanged, that will be a recipe for growing estrangement.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
UN to ban texting by drivers of its vehicles
(Form China Daily 2010-05-20)
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday he was banning all drivers of United Nations vehicles from texting while driving, to back efforts to curb a practice believed to kill thousands of people each year.
Ban made the announcement at a UN event where the United States and Russia issued what they called a "global call to end distracted driving."
Ban said he was issuing an "administrative instruction" to promote road safety that would include a prohibition on texting at the wheel. UN officials said the world body's legal department was studying the order and could not say what sanctions anyone caught sending text messages on cellphones or other hand-held devices while driving would receive.
The instruction potentially applies to all UN employees, of whom there are more than 70,000 worldwide.
"I want every driver in the world to get the message: texting while driving kills," the UN chief said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that in the United States alone, nearly 6,000 people died and more than half a million were injured in "distracted driving" crashes in 2008.
Some 32 countries have passed laws restricting the use of cellphones and other hand-held devices while driving.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said measures to combat the "epidemic" of distracted driving were being incorporated into an action plan being prepared by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies for a road safety decade due to run from 2011 to 2020.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday he was banning all drivers of United Nations vehicles from texting while driving, to back efforts to curb a practice believed to kill thousands of people each year.
Ban made the announcement at a UN event where the United States and Russia issued what they called a "global call to end distracted driving."
Ban said he was issuing an "administrative instruction" to promote road safety that would include a prohibition on texting at the wheel. UN officials said the world body's legal department was studying the order and could not say what sanctions anyone caught sending text messages on cellphones or other hand-held devices while driving would receive.
The instruction potentially applies to all UN employees, of whom there are more than 70,000 worldwide.
"I want every driver in the world to get the message: texting while driving kills," the UN chief said.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that in the United States alone, nearly 6,000 people died and more than half a million were injured in "distracted driving" crashes in 2008.
Some 32 countries have passed laws restricting the use of cellphones and other hand-held devices while driving.
Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said measures to combat the "epidemic" of distracted driving were being incorporated into an action plan being prepared by the World Health Organization and other UN agencies for a road safety decade due to run from 2011 to 2020.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Lee Jeong Hyun
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/business/global/03foxconn.html?ref=asia
June 2, 2010
After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers’ SalariesBy DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — Stung by labor shortages and a rash of suicides this year at its large factories in southern China, Foxconn Technology said Wednesday that it would immediately raise the salaries of many of its Chinese workers by 33 percent.
The pay increase is the latest indication that labor costs are rising in China’s coastal manufacturing centers and that workers are demanding higher pay to offset an increase in inflation and soaring food and property prices.
On Wednesday, Honda Motor said it had resolved a strike in southern China and resumed operations at a transmission plant there after agreeing to give 1,900 Chinese workers a 24 percent pay raise.
The Honda strike, which lasted more than two weeks, was a rare show of power by Chinese workers, who are not commonly allowed by the government to publicly strike and walk off the job for higher wages.
At Foxconn, the basic salary for an assembly line worker in Shenzhen is expected to rise from 900 renminbi ($132) a month to 1,200 renminbi ($176). The minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen is 900 renminbi, about 83 cents an hour.
The announcement comes just a week after Foxconn’s chairman, Terry Gou, visited its factories in the southern city of Shenzhen and promised to do everything possible to halt a spate of worker suicides and improve conditions at Foxconn, which is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.
The police say 10 Foxconn workers have committed suicide this year in Shenzhen.
The company, which is based in Taiwan and employs more than 800,000 workers in China, has denied that the suicides were work-related or above the national average, saying instead that they were the result of social ills and personal problems of young, migrant workers. Foxconn said Wednesday that the decision to raise salaries was not a direct response to the suicides.
But Foxconn, which produces electronics and computer components for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple, has come under growing scrutiny in recent years because of recurring reports of harsh labor conditions at its factories, including long working hours and claims by labor rights activists that the company treats workers like machines.
Apple, Dell and H.P. each said last week that they were concerned about the recent suicides and were investigating the situation at Foxconn.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said Tuesday during a technology conference in California that he was concerned about the deaths at Foxconn, but said that the factory was not a “sweatshop” and added that Apple was “over there trying to understand what is happening.”
Like most manufacturers in southern China, Foxconn is also struggling to hire thousands of workers at a time when the economy is booming and there is a shortage of unskilled migrant workers in many parts of coastal China.
Many migrant workers who typically move from inland provinces to coastal cities looking for factory work have complained that factory salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Many of them have decided to look for work closer to home.
Foxconn executives say the company’s factories in Shenzhen alone have hired more than 100,000 workers during the last year, and that labor rights groups have pressed the company to raise salaries.
“First, a pay raise will give our workers more leisure time,” said Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “Second, such a huge pay raise will attract more qualified workers.”
Southern China’s manufacturing centers have been struggling with labor shortages since about 2003, and many coastal cities have raised the minimum wage in recent years.
Indeed, to help offset inflation and rising food, energy and housing costs — and to spur domestic consumption among the lower classes — Beijing urged local governments early this year to raise the minimum wage in the regions.
Many cities responded by raising the minimum wage by about 10 to 15 percent, to about 750 to 1,100 renminbi.
To cope with labor shortages and hold down costs, many factories in southern China expect employees to work a considerable amount of overtime. And often half of an employee’s wages come from overtime pay.
As a result, Foxconn’s 33 percent increase in wages could translate into even higher labor costs. Mr. Huang at Foxconn said the company had not yet calculated its impact on profitability.
But Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, said the wage increases were insufficient.
“We’re advocating the living wage, and we think the standard should be between 1,700 to 2,100 renminbi a month,” Ms. Chan said Wednesday. “And we also have other demands, like Foxconn should look into the problems of their management methodology.”
June 2, 2010
After Spate of Suicides, Technology Firm in China Raises Workers’ SalariesBy DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — Stung by labor shortages and a rash of suicides this year at its large factories in southern China, Foxconn Technology said Wednesday that it would immediately raise the salaries of many of its Chinese workers by 33 percent.
The pay increase is the latest indication that labor costs are rising in China’s coastal manufacturing centers and that workers are demanding higher pay to offset an increase in inflation and soaring food and property prices.
On Wednesday, Honda Motor said it had resolved a strike in southern China and resumed operations at a transmission plant there after agreeing to give 1,900 Chinese workers a 24 percent pay raise.
The Honda strike, which lasted more than two weeks, was a rare show of power by Chinese workers, who are not commonly allowed by the government to publicly strike and walk off the job for higher wages.
At Foxconn, the basic salary for an assembly line worker in Shenzhen is expected to rise from 900 renminbi ($132) a month to 1,200 renminbi ($176). The minimum monthly wage in Shenzhen is 900 renminbi, about 83 cents an hour.
The announcement comes just a week after Foxconn’s chairman, Terry Gou, visited its factories in the southern city of Shenzhen and promised to do everything possible to halt a spate of worker suicides and improve conditions at Foxconn, which is the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer.
The police say 10 Foxconn workers have committed suicide this year in Shenzhen.
The company, which is based in Taiwan and employs more than 800,000 workers in China, has denied that the suicides were work-related or above the national average, saying instead that they were the result of social ills and personal problems of young, migrant workers. Foxconn said Wednesday that the decision to raise salaries was not a direct response to the suicides.
But Foxconn, which produces electronics and computer components for Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple, has come under growing scrutiny in recent years because of recurring reports of harsh labor conditions at its factories, including long working hours and claims by labor rights activists that the company treats workers like machines.
Apple, Dell and H.P. each said last week that they were concerned about the recent suicides and were investigating the situation at Foxconn.
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said Tuesday during a technology conference in California that he was concerned about the deaths at Foxconn, but said that the factory was not a “sweatshop” and added that Apple was “over there trying to understand what is happening.”
Like most manufacturers in southern China, Foxconn is also struggling to hire thousands of workers at a time when the economy is booming and there is a shortage of unskilled migrant workers in many parts of coastal China.
Many migrant workers who typically move from inland provinces to coastal cities looking for factory work have complained that factory salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Many of them have decided to look for work closer to home.
Foxconn executives say the company’s factories in Shenzhen alone have hired more than 100,000 workers during the last year, and that labor rights groups have pressed the company to raise salaries.
“First, a pay raise will give our workers more leisure time,” said Arthur Huang, a Foxconn spokesman. “Second, such a huge pay raise will attract more qualified workers.”
Southern China’s manufacturing centers have been struggling with labor shortages since about 2003, and many coastal cities have raised the minimum wage in recent years.
Indeed, to help offset inflation and rising food, energy and housing costs — and to spur domestic consumption among the lower classes — Beijing urged local governments early this year to raise the minimum wage in the regions.
Many cities responded by raising the minimum wage by about 10 to 15 percent, to about 750 to 1,100 renminbi.
To cope with labor shortages and hold down costs, many factories in southern China expect employees to work a considerable amount of overtime. And often half of an employee’s wages come from overtime pay.
As a result, Foxconn’s 33 percent increase in wages could translate into even higher labor costs. Mr. Huang at Foxconn said the company had not yet calculated its impact on profitability.
But Debby Chan, project officer at Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a labor rights group based in Hong Kong, said the wage increases were insufficient.
“We’re advocating the living wage, and we think the standard should be between 1,700 to 2,100 renminbi a month,” Ms. Chan said Wednesday. “And we also have other demands, like Foxconn should look into the problems of their management methodology.”
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Roh Youn's for the 26th of May
by Newsweek
Why Americans Think (Wrongly) That Illegal Immigrants Hurt the Economy
Job insecurity, strapped state budgets, and xenophobia may all play a role. But there's more to it than that.
By Arian Campo-Flores
At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 74 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants weakened the economy, compared to only 17 percent who said they strengthened it. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. They also replenish—and help fund benefits for—an aging American labor force that will retire in huge numbers over the next few decades. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality?
There are a number of familiar theories. Some point to the ravages of the Great Recession, arguing that people are anxious and feel threatened by an influx of new workers (though anti-immigrant sentiment ran high at times prior to the crash of 2008). Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners provide a convenient repository for the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all of these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.
To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers—meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agribusinesses in California's Central Valley. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9 percent between 1980 and 2000. Not surprisingly, surveys show that those without a high-school diploma tend to oppose illegal immigration most fervently.
There's another distortion in the way immigration's costs and benefits are parceled out. Many undocumented workers pay money to the federal government, in the form of Social Security contributions and income taxes, and take less in return, says Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. At the state and local level, however, it's a different story. There, illegal immigrants also make contributions, through property and sales taxes, but on balance, they use more in public services, such as schools, health benefits, and welfare assistance. As a result, says Hanson, the federal government ends up with a net gain in its coffers, while "states get stuck with the bill."
This breeds resentment among taxpayers. In a 2005 paper, Hanson analyzed how the size of the undocumented population and its use of public assistance affected attitudes toward immigration. He found that among low-skilled workers, opposition to immigration stemmed mainly from the competitive threat posed by the newcomers. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.
Beyond these economic rationales for anti-immigrant views, there's a demographic one as well. Illegal immigrants used to be clustered in a handful of big states, like California, Texas, and New York. But in the 1990s, they began dispersing en masse, chasing jobs in the remote reaches of the country. As a result, California's share of the undocumented population dropped from 42 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. A group of 28 fast-growing states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, more than doubled their share, from 14 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2008. Natives in those areas had barely any experience with undocumented immigrants, and they felt overwhelmed by the sudden change. The once distant debate over illegal immigration was now bubbling up in the heart of their communities.
In a new book, “Brokered Boundaries,” Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez cite research showing that such rapid demographic change tends to trigger anti-immigrant sentiment when it gets entangled in inflammatory political rhetoric. They argue that in the past several decades, a "Latino threat narrative" has come to dominate political and media discourse. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan began framing immigration as an issue of "national security," they write. In the 1990s, the image of the immigrant-as-freeloader gained wide circulation. And in the 2000s, there was Lou Dobbs, railing against an "invasion of illegal aliens" that waged "war on the middle class." "The majority of Americans are more ambivalent than hostile [to undocumented immigration]," says Massey, a professor at Princeton. But "the hostile part can be mobilized from time to time," by what he calls "anti-immigrant entrepreneurs."
The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal (about a one tenth of 1 percent gain in gross domestic product, according to Hanson). Even for those most acutely affected—say, low-skilled workers, or California residents—the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The shrill voices have tended to dominate our perceptions," says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists crunch the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one." Too bad most people don't realize it.
Why Americans Think (Wrongly) That Illegal Immigrants Hurt the Economy
Job insecurity, strapped state budgets, and xenophobia may all play a role. But there's more to it than that.
By Arian Campo-Flores
At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly thinks they're bad. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 74 percent of respondents said illegal immigrants weakened the economy, compared to only 17 percent who said they strengthened it. Yet the consensus among most economists is that immigration, both legal and illegal, provides a small net boost to the economy. Immigrants provide cheap labor, lower the prices of everything from produce to new homes, and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets. They also replenish—and help fund benefits for—an aging American labor force that will retire in huge numbers over the next few decades. So why is there such a discrepancy between the perception of immigrants' impact on the economy and the reality?
There are a number of familiar theories. Some point to the ravages of the Great Recession, arguing that people are anxious and feel threatened by an influx of new workers (though anti-immigrant sentiment ran high at times prior to the crash of 2008). Others highlight the strain that undocumented immigrants place on public services, like schools, hospitals, and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race, arguing that foreigners provide a convenient repository for the nation's fears and insecurities. There's some truth to all of these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.
To get a better understanding of what's going on, consider the way immigration's impact is felt. Though its overall effect may be positive, its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly. David Card, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley notes that the ones who profit most directly from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses and employers—meatpacking plants in Nebraska, for instance, or agribusinesses in California's Central Valley. Granted, these producers' savings probably translate into lower prices at the grocery store, but how many consumers make that mental connection at the checkout counter? As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too, are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers suffer most from the competition of foreign labor. According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist, immigration reduced the wages of American high-school dropouts by 9 percent between 1980 and 2000. Not surprisingly, surveys show that those without a high-school diploma tend to oppose illegal immigration most fervently.
There's another distortion in the way immigration's costs and benefits are parceled out. Many undocumented workers pay money to the federal government, in the form of Social Security contributions and income taxes, and take less in return, says Gordon Hanson, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. At the state and local level, however, it's a different story. There, illegal immigrants also make contributions, through property and sales taxes, but on balance, they use more in public services, such as schools, health benefits, and welfare assistance. As a result, says Hanson, the federal government ends up with a net gain in its coffers, while "states get stuck with the bill."
This breeds resentment among taxpayers. In a 2005 paper, Hanson analyzed how the size of the undocumented population and its use of public assistance affected attitudes toward immigration. He found that among low-skilled workers, opposition to immigration stemmed mainly from the competitive threat posed by the newcomers. Among high-skilled, better-educated employees, however, opposition was strongest in states with both high numbers of immigrants and relatively generous social services. What worried them most, in other words, was the fiscal burden of immigration. That conclusion was reinforced by another finding: that their opposition appeared to soften when that fiscal burden decreased, as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s, which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.
Beyond these economic rationales for anti-immigrant views, there's a demographic one as well. Illegal immigrants used to be clustered in a handful of big states, like California, Texas, and New York. But in the 1990s, they began dispersing en masse, chasing jobs in the remote reaches of the country. As a result, California's share of the undocumented population dropped from 42 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. A group of 28 fast-growing states, such as North Carolina and Georgia, more than doubled their share, from 14 percent in 1990 to 32 percent in 2008. Natives in those areas had barely any experience with undocumented immigrants, and they felt overwhelmed by the sudden change. The once distant debate over illegal immigration was now bubbling up in the heart of their communities.
In a new book, “Brokered Boundaries,” Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez cite research showing that such rapid demographic change tends to trigger anti-immigrant sentiment when it gets entangled in inflammatory political rhetoric. They argue that in the past several decades, a "Latino threat narrative" has come to dominate political and media discourse. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan began framing immigration as an issue of "national security," they write. In the 1990s, the image of the immigrant-as-freeloader gained wide circulation. And in the 2000s, there was Lou Dobbs, railing against an "invasion of illegal aliens" that waged "war on the middle class." "The majority of Americans are more ambivalent than hostile [to undocumented immigration]," says Massey, a professor at Princeton. But "the hostile part can be mobilized from time to time," by what he calls "anti-immigrant entrepreneurs."
The irony is that for all the overexcited debate, the net effect of immigration is minimal (about a one tenth of 1 percent gain in gross domestic product, according to Hanson). Even for those most acutely affected—say, low-skilled workers, or California residents—the impact isn't all that dramatic. "The shrill voices have tended to dominate our perceptions," says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon. "But when all those factors are put together and the economists crunch the numbers, it ends up being a net positive, but a small one." Too bad most people don't realize it.
Sangmin Han' Selection
May 24, 2010
Clinton and Geithner Face Hurdles in China Talks
By MARK LANDLER
BEIJING — China and the United States opened three days of high-level meetings here on Monday meant to broaden and deepen the ties between the world’s largest developed and developing economies.
But the opening session instead laid bare a recurring theme between Beijing and Washington: the United States came with a long wish list for China on both economic and security issues, while China mostly wants to be left alone to pursue policies that are turning it into an economic superpower without putting at risk its prized geopolitical stability.
President Hu Jintao, welcoming the 200-strong American delegation in the Great Hall of the People, praised the “mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation” between the United States and China. Such coordination, he said, had helped speed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.
On the crucial issue of China revaluing its currency — something the Obama administration had pushed for — Mr. Hu made a specific reference to continuing “reform of the reminbi exchange-rate mechanism.” His language repeated China’s past promises to make its effectively fixed exchange rate respond more to the market, but the fact that the country’s top leader mentioned reform at all suggested it is on the leadership’s agenda.
Still, Mr. Hu also repeated that Beijing would move “under the principle of independent decision-making, controllability, and gradual progress.” Translation: China alone will determine the timing of any such move.
Economists said the deepening debt crisis in Greece, which came up immediately in the discussions on Monday, would make Beijing more reluctant to allow its currency to appreciate in value in the immediate future.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did not mention China’s currency in his opening remarks, and the United States did not broach it in the first working session. The administration has decided not to prod Beijing at this meeting, officials said, concluding that it would resist outside pressure.
The United States is hitting similar hurdles on security issues. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed China to support measures against North Korea following the strong evidence that it torpedoed a South Korean warship in March. But China has been skeptical of North Korea’s role and is reluctant to punish Pyongyang, with which it has close ties.
And while China agreed to a watered-down United Nations resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, it has not signed off on annexes against specific Iranian individuals and companies. With big investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, China may well be in business with some of them.
In her speech to the opening session, Mrs. Clinton cited Iran and North Korea as issues in which Beijing and Washington must find common cause. “Today, we face another serious challenge provoked by the sinking of the South Korean ship,” she said. “So we must work together, again, to address this challenge and advance our shared objectives of peace and stability.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, was noncommittal, saying of the Korea crisis, “We hope all the relevant parties will exercise restraint and remain cool-headed.”
Some of this is cultural, to be sure. Chinese officials tend to speak far less directly than Americans. Mr. Hu did not mention Iran and North Korea at all, referring only to regional “hot spots.” The fact that he frankly addressed the exchange rate of China’s currency, the renminbi, surprised some observers, and lent itself to varying interpretations.
For some experts, Mr. Hu’s pledge to “steadily advance the reform mechanism of the RMB exchange rate,” without repeating his previous references to the rate being “basically stable” was a sign of conciliation. “It’s important, the fact they haven’t mentioned it,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, the China economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But others interpreted it as a pre-emptive move to take the issue off the table. Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, noted that the crisis in Greece had rattled the Chinese on two levels. It was likely to curb their exports to Europe, and it had strengthened the renminbi relative to the swooning euro, which makes Chinese goods more costly in foreign markets.
“That double hit on China’s exports almost certainly means that they’re not going to move forward unless there is evidence of stabilization in the euro and stabilization in Europe’s recovery,” Mr. Prasad said.
A senior Chinese official said that Beijing would keep a “high alert and attention on the euro zone sovereign debt crisis.” He noted that it could affect not only Europe’s economic recovery but also Chinese exports. China exports more to the European Union than to the United States.
The United States needed a 48-vehicle motorcade to ferry its delegation to this second round of the so-called strategic and economic dialogue. Among the prominent names: the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben A. Bernanke, the commander of the military’s Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, and the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius.
Some of the topics under discussion veered far from economics and security. Mrs. Clinton singled out Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for women’s issues, who is meeting with Chinese women’s groups to discuss their progress in women’s rights.
Mr. Geithner lobbied against Chinese government procurement rules that give preference to products with intellectual property developed in China. American businesses, particularly in technology, complain that this handicaps them and deprives China of state-of-the-art products.
“Innovation flourishes best when markets are open, competition is fair, and strong protections exist for ideas and inventions,” he said.
The Chinese have their pet issues as well: Beijing is pushing for the United States to loosen controls on exports of high-technology equipment with potential military applications. A raft of questions from reporters for state-run Chinese media organizations suggested a coordinated campaign.
If the United States seemed likely to leave Beijing with many of its wishes unfulfilled, there was one notable difference in this year’s meeting compared to the one last year in Washington: the American economy is growing again, which gave Mr. Geithner a rare chance to crow a bit.
Rather than identify the United States with the troubled economies of Europe, Mr. Geithner said America was holding its own with the big emerging economies like Brazil, India, and China.
“Economic growth in the U.S. and China is broader and stronger than many had anticipated, even a few months ago,” he said.
Michael Wines contributed reporting from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
Clinton and Geithner Face Hurdles in China Talks
By MARK LANDLER
BEIJING — China and the United States opened three days of high-level meetings here on Monday meant to broaden and deepen the ties between the world’s largest developed and developing economies.
But the opening session instead laid bare a recurring theme between Beijing and Washington: the United States came with a long wish list for China on both economic and security issues, while China mostly wants to be left alone to pursue policies that are turning it into an economic superpower without putting at risk its prized geopolitical stability.
President Hu Jintao, welcoming the 200-strong American delegation in the Great Hall of the People, praised the “mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation” between the United States and China. Such coordination, he said, had helped speed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.
On the crucial issue of China revaluing its currency — something the Obama administration had pushed for — Mr. Hu made a specific reference to continuing “reform of the reminbi exchange-rate mechanism.” His language repeated China’s past promises to make its effectively fixed exchange rate respond more to the market, but the fact that the country’s top leader mentioned reform at all suggested it is on the leadership’s agenda.
Still, Mr. Hu also repeated that Beijing would move “under the principle of independent decision-making, controllability, and gradual progress.” Translation: China alone will determine the timing of any such move.
Economists said the deepening debt crisis in Greece, which came up immediately in the discussions on Monday, would make Beijing more reluctant to allow its currency to appreciate in value in the immediate future.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner did not mention China’s currency in his opening remarks, and the United States did not broach it in the first working session. The administration has decided not to prod Beijing at this meeting, officials said, concluding that it would resist outside pressure.
The United States is hitting similar hurdles on security issues. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed China to support measures against North Korea following the strong evidence that it torpedoed a South Korean warship in March. But China has been skeptical of North Korea’s role and is reluctant to punish Pyongyang, with which it has close ties.
And while China agreed to a watered-down United Nations resolution on Iran’s nuclear program, it has not signed off on annexes against specific Iranian individuals and companies. With big investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, China may well be in business with some of them.
In her speech to the opening session, Mrs. Clinton cited Iran and North Korea as issues in which Beijing and Washington must find common cause. “Today, we face another serious challenge provoked by the sinking of the South Korean ship,” she said. “So we must work together, again, to address this challenge and advance our shared objectives of peace and stability.”
A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Ma Zhaoxu, was noncommittal, saying of the Korea crisis, “We hope all the relevant parties will exercise restraint and remain cool-headed.”
Some of this is cultural, to be sure. Chinese officials tend to speak far less directly than Americans. Mr. Hu did not mention Iran and North Korea at all, referring only to regional “hot spots.” The fact that he frankly addressed the exchange rate of China’s currency, the renminbi, surprised some observers, and lent itself to varying interpretations.
For some experts, Mr. Hu’s pledge to “steadily advance the reform mechanism of the RMB exchange rate,” without repeating his previous references to the rate being “basically stable” was a sign of conciliation. “It’s important, the fact they haven’t mentioned it,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, the China economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland.
But others interpreted it as a pre-emptive move to take the issue off the table. Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University, noted that the crisis in Greece had rattled the Chinese on two levels. It was likely to curb their exports to Europe, and it had strengthened the renminbi relative to the swooning euro, which makes Chinese goods more costly in foreign markets.
“That double hit on China’s exports almost certainly means that they’re not going to move forward unless there is evidence of stabilization in the euro and stabilization in Europe’s recovery,” Mr. Prasad said.
A senior Chinese official said that Beijing would keep a “high alert and attention on the euro zone sovereign debt crisis.” He noted that it could affect not only Europe’s economic recovery but also Chinese exports. China exports more to the European Union than to the United States.
The United States needed a 48-vehicle motorcade to ferry its delegation to this second round of the so-called strategic and economic dialogue. Among the prominent names: the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben A. Bernanke, the commander of the military’s Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, and the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius.
Some of the topics under discussion veered far from economics and security. Mrs. Clinton singled out Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for women’s issues, who is meeting with Chinese women’s groups to discuss their progress in women’s rights.
Mr. Geithner lobbied against Chinese government procurement rules that give preference to products with intellectual property developed in China. American businesses, particularly in technology, complain that this handicaps them and deprives China of state-of-the-art products.
“Innovation flourishes best when markets are open, competition is fair, and strong protections exist for ideas and inventions,” he said.
The Chinese have their pet issues as well: Beijing is pushing for the United States to loosen controls on exports of high-technology equipment with potential military applications. A raft of questions from reporters for state-run Chinese media organizations suggested a coordinated campaign.
If the United States seemed likely to leave Beijing with many of its wishes unfulfilled, there was one notable difference in this year’s meeting compared to the one last year in Washington: the American economy is growing again, which gave Mr. Geithner a rare chance to crow a bit.
Rather than identify the United States with the troubled economies of Europe, Mr. Geithner said America was holding its own with the big emerging economies like Brazil, India, and China.
“Economic growth in the U.S. and China is broader and stronger than many had anticipated, even a few months ago,” he said.
Michael Wines contributed reporting from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
Junghwa Noh
U.S. Backs South Korea in Cutting Trade With the North
By CHOE SANG-HUN and MARK LANDLER
Published: May 24, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Tensions escalated sharply Monday on the Korean Peninsula as the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, said that his nation would sever nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North for what he called the deliberate sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.
In Washington, the Obama administration said the South Korean measures were “entirely appropriate.” President Obama instructed American military commanders to coordinate closely with their South Korean counterparts to “insure readiness and deter aggression.”
“The Republic of Korea can continue to count on the full support of the United States,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Beijing, where she was attending high-level talks between China and the United States that have been overshadowed by the crisis. “Our support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal.”
The steps outlined by Mr. Lee in a nationally televised speech — coupled with new moves by South Korea’s military to resume “psychological warfare” propaganda broadcasts at the border after a six-year suspension — amounted to the most serious action the South could take short of an armed retaliation for the sinking of the ship, the South’s worst military loss since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953.
“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Mr. Lee said. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended.”
North Korea’s military immediately warned that if South Korea put up propaganda loudspeakers and slogans at the border, it would destroy them with artillery shells, the North’s official K.C.N.A. news agency reported.
Mr. Lee’s speech came just as economic and security talks between China and the United States began in Beijing. In meetings on Sunday evening and Monday, Mrs. Clinton pressed Chinese leaders to take a much tougher position toward North Korea, China’s historical ally. Mr. Lee’s speech was bound to add to the pressure on the Chinese, who have called for restraint.
Mrs. Clinton expressed confidence that the Chinese would agree to take at least some measures, noting that Beijing supported additional sanctions against the North after it tested a nuclear device last year. But other American officials cautioned that Beijing remains unconvinced of the need to punish North Korea in the case of the warship.
“I can say the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after Mr. Lee’s speech. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region; it is one that every country that neighbors or is in proximity to North Korea understands must be contained.”
President Hu Jintao did not mention North Korea in his speech welcoming the American delegation, though he did say the two countries should “strengthen coordination on regional hot-spot and global issues.”
North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship.
Cutting off trade with North Korea is the most punishing unilateral action the South could take against the impoverished North. It will deprive North Korea of 14.5 percent of its external trade and $253 million in cash revenues a year, according to estimates by Lim Kang-taek, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
Mr. Lee also said that South Korea would block North Korean merchant ships from using South Korean waters, which would force the ships to detour and use more fuel. North Korean merchant ships made 717 trips to South Korean ports or through South Korean sea lanes last year.
Besides these unilateral measures, South Korea will “refer this matter to the U.N. Security Council, so that the international community can join us in holding the North accountable,” Mr. Lee said. “Many countries around the world have expressed their full support for our position.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to detail specific steps the United States is weighing until after she meets Mr. Lee in Seoul on Wednesday. Other administration officials said the United States might conduct joint naval exercises with South Korea in anti-submarine warfare in the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
But Mrs. Clinton did not suggest that the State Department would soon add North Korea’s name to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some members of Congress have demanded. Reinstating North Korea, which was taken off the list by the Bush administration, would only happen if there was evidence that it was involved in acts of terrorism, she said.
In a separate announcement, the Defense Ministry announced the resumption of propaganda blitzes aimed at the North, a cold war tactic with loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, propaganda radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by balloon. The resumption was bound to irritate the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, whose grip on power rests partly on denying outside information to citizens.
North Korea has already warned that such a move would prompt it to shut down the border with the South completely, raising the possibility of stranding 1,000 South Korean workers at a joint industrial park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. President Lee cited evidence that a multinational team of investigators released last week on the sinking of the ship, saying, “No responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.” But he did not mention China by name.
Mr. Lee also stopped short of terminating the Kaesong industrial complex.
Delivering his speech from the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Mr. Lee drew an analogy between the North’s surprise invasion that started the three-year Korean War on June 25, 1950, and the blast that sank the Cheonan.
“Again, the perpetrator was North Korea. Their attack came at a time when the people of the Republic of Korea were enjoying their well-earned rest after a hard day’s work,” he said. “Once again, North Korea violently shattered our peace.”
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Mark Landler from Beijing.
QUESTIONS
Do you think that is it right to solve this problem?
Did North korea is really deed to South korea ship?
By CHOE SANG-HUN and MARK LANDLER
Published: May 24, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea — Tensions escalated sharply Monday on the Korean Peninsula as the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, said that his nation would sever nearly all trade with North Korea, deny North Korean merchant ships use of South Korean sea lanes and ask the United Nations Security Council to punish the North for what he called the deliberate sinking of a South Korean warship two months ago.
In Washington, the Obama administration said the South Korean measures were “entirely appropriate.” President Obama instructed American military commanders to coordinate closely with their South Korean counterparts to “insure readiness and deter aggression.”
“The Republic of Korea can continue to count on the full support of the United States,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Beijing, where she was attending high-level talks between China and the United States that have been overshadowed by the crisis. “Our support for South Korea’s defense is unequivocal.”
The steps outlined by Mr. Lee in a nationally televised speech — coupled with new moves by South Korea’s military to resume “psychological warfare” propaganda broadcasts at the border after a six-year suspension — amounted to the most serious action the South could take short of an armed retaliation for the sinking of the ship, the South’s worst military loss since the Korean War ended in a truce in 1953.
“We have always tolerated North Korea’s brutality, time and again,” Mr. Lee said. “But now things are different. North Korea will pay a price corresponding to its provocative acts. Trade and exchanges between South and North Korea will be suspended.”
North Korea’s military immediately warned that if South Korea put up propaganda loudspeakers and slogans at the border, it would destroy them with artillery shells, the North’s official K.C.N.A. news agency reported.
Mr. Lee’s speech came just as economic and security talks between China and the United States began in Beijing. In meetings on Sunday evening and Monday, Mrs. Clinton pressed Chinese leaders to take a much tougher position toward North Korea, China’s historical ally. Mr. Lee’s speech was bound to add to the pressure on the Chinese, who have called for restraint.
Mrs. Clinton expressed confidence that the Chinese would agree to take at least some measures, noting that Beijing supported additional sanctions against the North after it tested a nuclear device last year. But other American officials cautioned that Beijing remains unconvinced of the need to punish North Korea in the case of the warship.
“I can say the Chinese recognize the gravity of the situation we face,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after Mr. Lee’s speech. “This is a highly precarious situation that the North Koreans have caused in the region; it is one that every country that neighbors or is in proximity to North Korea understands must be contained.”
President Hu Jintao did not mention North Korea in his speech welcoming the American delegation, though he did say the two countries should “strengthen coordination on regional hot-spot and global issues.”
North Korea has denied responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, on March 26, which left 46 sailors dead. A growing body of evidence assembled by the South has suggested a North Korean torpedo sank the ship.
Cutting off trade with North Korea is the most punishing unilateral action the South could take against the impoverished North. It will deprive North Korea of 14.5 percent of its external trade and $253 million in cash revenues a year, according to estimates by Lim Kang-taek, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
Mr. Lee also said that South Korea would block North Korean merchant ships from using South Korean waters, which would force the ships to detour and use more fuel. North Korean merchant ships made 717 trips to South Korean ports or through South Korean sea lanes last year.
Besides these unilateral measures, South Korea will “refer this matter to the U.N. Security Council, so that the international community can join us in holding the North accountable,” Mr. Lee said. “Many countries around the world have expressed their full support for our position.”
Mrs. Clinton declined to detail specific steps the United States is weighing until after she meets Mr. Lee in Seoul on Wednesday. Other administration officials said the United States might conduct joint naval exercises with South Korea in anti-submarine warfare in the waters off the Korean Peninsula.
But Mrs. Clinton did not suggest that the State Department would soon add North Korea’s name to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, as some members of Congress have demanded. Reinstating North Korea, which was taken off the list by the Bush administration, would only happen if there was evidence that it was involved in acts of terrorism, she said.
In a separate announcement, the Defense Ministry announced the resumption of propaganda blitzes aimed at the North, a cold war tactic with loudspeaker broadcasts along the border, propaganda radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped by balloon. The resumption was bound to irritate the North Korea leader, Kim Jong-il, whose grip on power rests partly on denying outside information to citizens.
North Korea has already warned that such a move would prompt it to shut down the border with the South completely, raising the possibility of stranding 1,000 South Korean workers at a joint industrial park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. President Lee cited evidence that a multinational team of investigators released last week on the sinking of the ship, saying, “No responsible country in the international community will be able to deny the fact that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.” But he did not mention China by name.
Mr. Lee also stopped short of terminating the Kaesong industrial complex.
Delivering his speech from the Korean War Memorial in Seoul, Mr. Lee drew an analogy between the North’s surprise invasion that started the three-year Korean War on June 25, 1950, and the blast that sank the Cheonan.
“Again, the perpetrator was North Korea. Their attack came at a time when the people of the Republic of Korea were enjoying their well-earned rest after a hard day’s work,” he said. “Once again, North Korea violently shattered our peace.”
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Mark Landler from Beijing.
QUESTIONS
Do you think that is it right to solve this problem?
Did North korea is really deed to South korea ship?
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