China's Peaceful Rise

[JasonJ]

Interesting how the World Bank measures Russia and Germany about the same where as the IMF and CIA factbook show Germany comfortably above Russia.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

[swerve]

Despite the source information given in the Wikipedia comparison, the World Bank figures are from the current World Development Indicators database, & based on the latest (2011 based, published end of April this year) PPP estimates from the International Comparisons Programme, which is run jointly by the World Bank, Eurostat, the OECD & various national statistics offices. They're the latest & best (for now) figures available.

 

http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP_PPP.pdf

 

ICP 2011 summary results

[X-Files]

 

 

............. a U.S. Navy P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft near Japan .............

 

............. was conducting routine surveillance of the Chinese coast over the East China Sea ..........

 

 

 

They should make their minds up.

 

.

 

 

Please stop falsely posting quotes and attributing them to me.

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration on Friday accused a Chinese fighter jet of conducting a "dangerous intercept" of a U.S. Navy surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft off the coast of China in international airspace — the fourth such incident since March.

The Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said Washington protested to the Chinese military through diplomatic channels, calling the fighter pilot's actions "unsafe and unprofessional." And U.S. officials said this is at least the second formal complaint American diplomats have filed with the Chinese over these military actions in recent months.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-cites-dangerous-chinese-jet-intercept-165354051--politics.html

[Heirophant]

During the Imperial age, if a country was weak, they become a power vacuum and that has consequences for any adjacent country. There is the reasoning to Korea as a dagger pointed to Japan's heart. Korea dragged on the hermit kingdom for too long making them a power vacuum that needed to be filled by Japan. And indeed Korea was a power vacuum as the Russians were looking to fill it. So now Koreans may have a tendency to capitalize in today's day in being the poor victim back then when in fact their country was making bad decisions that kept them feeble in that time. I say that at some point, it is wrong to pull old history out of context into today's cultural norms. At any rate, I would like to see Takeshima returned to South Korea for reasons I have made in other posts.

 

 

Couple of points, here.

 

First, invading a country because it is weak and therefore "in need of invading" to prevent its fall to another power is bizarre and self-serving logic. It fails this basic test: Did you consult the invaded country, and did they agree that they would be better off under you than under someone else?

So, did Japan send feelers out to Korea, and did they present their case as "Look, the Manchu dynasty can't protect you from Russia, and we can. Let our army occupy your country." Did Japan do that? Fact is, there weren't foreign armies rampaging at the time in Korea, so Japan's invasion was, to be very kind to Japan, pre-emptive. Korea might have been invaded by someone, so Japan decided that it might as well be them. You and I may disagree, but I find little merit in that reasoning. (This is all assuming, of course, that we do not apply Occam's Razor to Japan's motives vis-a-vis Korea. I'm giving Japan the benefit of the doubt, but it still rings hollow. IMHO only)

 

But the second thing I would like to point out is: what has planted the deepest seeds of hatred in the Koreans is the sheer brutality and ruthlessness of the Japanese occupation, and the attempt, zealously carried out, to eradicate the Korean ethnic identity (which btw is older than that of Japan's). Prison camps, forced labor, mass executions, terror in the countryside, torture, conscription into the IJA, the banning of the Korean language in any public venue, the forced teaching of Japanese values and customs - the list goes on. Koreans suffered all these things way before any Chinese did, or any other Asians.

 

Of course, eradication of the Korean culture was bound to fail. But that so many Koreans suffered so intensely and for so long under Japan's misguided program to "Nipponize" Korea makes the contemporary Korean (North and South) attitude perfectly understandable, if not at all conducive to peace in Asia.

 

It must be understood that Korean hatred of Japan is visceral and long-term, and is a mass phenomenon, not one dependent on propaganda.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Heirophant

[Nobu]

One event in which it must be accepted that Chinese noncombatants, women, and children were killed in numbers was in reprisal for aiding the passage of American Doolittle Raid aircrew through Japanese-occupied China to safety.

 

Every Chinese man, woman, and child knew by that point in the war just how brutally efficient the Imperial Japanese Army and Military Police were in garrison duty. They assisted in the escape of the Doolittle raiders regardless.

 

History and the Doolittle Raiders themselves may have forgotten them, but I will give them their due. That was courage personified.

[JasonJ]

 

During the Imperial age, if a country was weak, they become a power vacuum and that has consequences for any adjacent country. There is the reasoning to Korea as a dagger pointed to Japan's heart. Korea dragged on the hermit kingdom for too long making them a power vacuum that needed to be filled by Japan. And indeed Korea was a power vacuum as the Russians were looking to fill it. So now Koreans may have a tendency to capitalize in today's day in being the poor victim back then when in fact their country was making bad decisions that kept them feeble in that time. I say that at some point, it is wrong to pull old history out of context into today's cultural norms. At any rate, I would like to see Takeshima returned to South Korea for reasons I have made in other posts.

 

 

Couple of points, here.

 

First, invading a country because it is weak and therefore "in need of invading" to prevent its fall to another power is bizarre and self-serving logic. It fails this basic test: Did you consult the invaded country, and did they agree that they would be better off under you than under someone else?

So, did Japan send feelers out to Korea, and did they present their case as "Look, the Manchu dynasty can't protect you from Russia, and we can. Let our army occupy your country." Did Japan do that? Fact is, there weren't foreign armies rampaging at the time in Korea, so Japan's invasion was, to be very kind to Japan, pre-emptive. Korea might have been invaded by someone, so Japan decided that it might as well be them. You and I may disagree, but I find little merit in that reasoning. (This is all assuming, of course, that we do not apply Occam's Razor to Japan's motives vis-a-vis Korea. I'm giving Japan the benefit of the doubt, but it still rings hollow. IMHO only)

 

But the second thing I would like to point out is: what has planted the deepest seeds of hatred in the Koreans is the sheer brutality and ruthlessness of the Japanese occupation, and the attempt, zealously carried out, to eradicate the Korean ethnic identity (which btw is older than that of Japan's). Prison camps, forced labor, mass executions, terror in the countryside, torture, conscription into the IJA, the banning of the Korean language in any public venue, the forced teaching of Japanese values and customs - the list goes on. Koreans suffered all these things way before any Chinese did, or any other Asians.

 

Of course, eradication of the Korean culture was bound to fail. But that so many Koreans suffered so intensely and for so long under Japan's misguided program to "Nipponize" Korea makes the contemporary Korean (North and South) attitude perfectly understandable, if not at all conducive to peace in Asia.

 

It must be understood that Korean hatred of Japan is visceral and long-term, and is a mass phenomenon, not one dependent on propaganda.

 

 

Going to the second point made first, by no means am I saying the Koreans don't have a good reason to feel angry at Japan for the colonization period. I fully know all of that. Colonizing Korea poisoned the Japanese empire.

 

So if it poisoned the Japanese empire, why did Japan colonize Korea? It was the name of the game at that time. Did Japan consult Korea? Well, I'm sure they tried to do that in diplomacy. There were Pro-Japanese factions in Korea just as there were Pro-Chinese or Pro Russian factions, but back the point, did the British kindly consult China? No.. the two opium wars. Did France kindly consult Indochina? No.. Did the US and other European countries consult Japan? No.. they imposed gunboat diplomacy. The European countries were competing against each other over Asia. Japan was able to learn quick but at a great price. The surrounding situation threw Japan into civil war. The Pro-Bakufu side which included legendary groups like the Shinsengumi, and the Pro-modernization side which ultimately won.

 

Korea OTOH, where not waking up and smelling the coffee. They were trying a softer modernization reform program but the traditionalists still had too strong an influence. The traditionalists wanted to keep China as their big power ruler as China has always been down the centuries and they resisted any serious industrialization programs. The movements for reform modernization started in the 1860s and opinion was divided. Some Koreans liked America as an example. Some thought China might win in the end. And some truly did think Japan was the right side to go with. It was China's defeat in 1894 that finally prompted real reforms in Korea for modernization. Very late in a world of gunboat diplomacy. Japan didn't define this Imperialistic world, that world made Japan imperialistic. If the Russians won control of Korea and built their much wanted warm water sea port in Inchon or Pusan, and the Koreans were to get fed-up with Russians, its a pretty safe bet that the Russians would crack down hard with purges and what not.

 

For Japan to mend relations with Korea, it is really down to Takeshima IMO. The other parts like hard feelings over colonization and comfort women would be alleviated enough to mend the relations. Takeshima is keeping the hard feelings fresh. Takeshima does that because immediately after WW2 Korea has been saying Dokdo (Takeshima) belonged to them before Korea was colonized. So When Korea gained independence they should get back all their territory that Japan took from them. Before the colonization of Korea, Japanese maps explicitly showed Dokdo as Korean territory. It is interesting that Dokdo wasn't returned to Korea in the San Francisco peace treaty. Whatever reasons were there for letting Japan keep Dokdo are no longer suitable today. Japan and South Korea are very materialistic. Dokdo going back to South Korea would enable that materialism to wash away the old feelings from mainstream media. The hard feelings will remain in the bedrock of Korea but it would be by large dormant. The action of returning Dokdo may compromise the Senakaku and Northern territory issues. But obviously, Japan isn't doing very much to chase the Koreans off Dokdo today.

 

edited for typos

Edited August 23, 2014 by JasonJ

[firefly1]

 

Please stop falsely posting quotes and attributing them to me.

 

 

.

 

No, you were the one which posted the quote.

 

I now see that the BBC are reporting that the event happened "east of China's Hainan Island" - hardly "near Japan".

 

.

[JasonJ]

Despite the source information given in the Wikipedia comparison, the World Bank figures are from the current World Development Indicators database, & based on the latest (2011 based, published end of April this year) PPP estimates from the International Comparisons Programme, which is run jointly by the World Bank, Eurostat, the OECD & various national statistics offices. They're the latest & best (for now) figures available.

 

http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP_PPP.pdf

 

ICP 2011 summary results

 

Noticeably a different picture, thanks. Seems like the main difference is the measure of advancing countries with still relatively lower GDP per capita.

[swerve]

Yeah. For example, the previous ICP figures, for 2005, are accepted as having understated China's GDP* (price data restricted to a fairly small number of big cities where prices were high), & to a lesser extent some other big, poor to middling countries, mostly in Asia. There've also been upward revisions to nominal GDP for some countries, e.g. Nigeria, where national statistics hadn't been capturing new stuff.

 

*2005 was the first time China participated in the ICP. It had some learning to do.

[tankerwanabe]

Ain't nothing peaceful about China's territorial grabbing.

[Yalmuk]

A lot more peaceful border war than last time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ20QbdaZ00

[Adam Peter]

Something a bit interesting: Lorem Ipsum: of good and evil, Google and China

[JasonJ]

The lengths some people will go for freedom of speech.

[JasonJ]

Hong Kong police stop Hong Kong based activists from sailing to Senkaku islands.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/26/national/h-k-fishing-boat-carrying-senkaku-sovereignty-advocates-set-sail/#.U_zK_ngay0c

 

 

 

Vietnam to compensate for Chinese victims in the violent anti-China protests this year which was in response to the oil rig.

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/r-china-welcomes-vietnams-move-to-compensate-riot-victims-2014-8

 

Currently, the Chinese rig that upset Vietnam was relocated out of Vietnam's EEZ in July for giving reasons that the rig finished what it set out to do there. I recall moving to safe areas in anticipation of hurricane season being another reason. It'll be interesting if China is to move the rig back into Vietnam's EEZ later as they maintain they have a right to explore there.

 

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/chinas-cosl-moves-oil-rig-from-contested-waters-1405472611?mobile=y

Edited August 26, 2014 by JasonJ

[X-Files]

Chinese hackers have targeted Malaysian government departments involved in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, a Malaysian newspaper said on Wednesday.

Malware disguised as a news report that the missing jet had been found was emailed to Malaysian officials on March 9, a day after the airliner disappeared in mid-air, The Star said, citing CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive Amirudin Abdul Wahab.

CyberSecurity Malaysia is a government agency under the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry.

In a statement to the South China Morning Post, a spokesman said the agency's digital forensics team provided technical assistance to targeted departments. However, the agency declined to say which departments had been targeted and how.

 

 

 

https://customerservice.scmp.com/meter/1/1?destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scmp.com%2Fnews%2Fasia%2Farticle%2F1577626%2Fchinese-hackers-targeted-mh370-investigation-report&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scmp.com%2Fnews%2Fasia%2Farticle%2F1577626%2Fchinese-hackers-targeted-mh370-investigation-report

[JasonJ]

Stronger economic and military ties between India and Japan seem to be underway.

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/30/national/politics-diplomacy/indian-leader-arrives-summit/#.VAH2VXgay0c

[chino]

Thank you everyone for the very informative replies. Forgive me for not having answered.

 

I'm in a bit of a headache over work because I have just been made an offer to move to another region of China. I was flown there for an interview with one of the founder's family member and it all went well. I have seen the contract via email and all parties agreed to go ahead. In order to meet the start date I have ALREADY quit my current job and am serving my month's notice.

 

But it's been two weeks since we nailed down the terms of the contract with the prospective new employers but I have yet to receive the actual signed contract...

 

If they have changed their minds, then I'll be in a stew.

[Guest Charles]

Thank you everyone for the very informative replies. Forgive me for not having answered.

 

I'm in a bit of a headache over work because I have just been made an offer to move to another region of China. I was flown there for an interview with one of the founder's family member and it all went well. I have seen the contract via email and all parties agreed to go ahead. In order to meet the start date I have ALREADY quit my current job and am serving my month's notice.

 

But it's been two weeks since we nailed down the terms of the contract with the prospective new employers but I have yet to receive the actual signed contract...

 

If they have changed their minds, then I'll be in a stew.

Chino, I trust that its simply an admin stuff up; you'd be suprised how often that happens.

 

All the best in your new job.

 

Charles

[JasonJ]

No problem Chino. Hope it works out and if so, hoping for the best.

[chino]

Thanks Charles and Jason. Everything seems going to plan after all.

 

If no further hiccups, I'll be relocating from Shanghai to Macau by middle of October!

[JasonJ]

Thanks Charles and Jason. Everything seems going to plan after all.

 

If no further hiccups, I'll be relocating from Shanghai to Macau by middle of October!

 

Good News

 

Oh Macau. I don't here much about Macau except for the casinos while I hear plenty from its neighbor Hong Kong.

[Corinthian]

YAY! Closer to the triads! hehehehe

[Colin]

good that things are working out Chino who knows maybe one day our paths will cross!

[Mr King]

Chino just for perspective sake, I think China is something that is still very foreign, and unfamiliar to the majority of average Americans. Americans know that their jobs are going there, their goods are made there, and there was a guy named General Tso who made some damned good chicken ( I know its not real Chinese food ). Our news and basic education is just not focused on China. I don't think Americans see China like they did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Frankly I think it confuses the situation even more for Americans when they know that China is one of our biggest trading partners, holds an insane level of our debt, so much of our every day goods are made there, and then they hear on the news about military rumblings or confrontation between our forces. Sadly and I am not being facetious, the most likely chance the average American will encounter an off the boat Chinese person, is at one of the mega American Chinese food buffets that have come to dot the country. Sadly the majority of Americans do not know that the people working at these restaurants are often brought in, and managed through a human trafficking ring. Or on a more positive note, Americans will meet them in a higher education setting. So outside of the cultural conflicts and misunderstandings that lead to bias and casual racism from those situations, I don't think Americans overall "hate China".They probably could not even find it on the map. We have very short attention spans.

 

Sorry for the rambling, .

[chino]

Thanks for the well wishes everyone.

 

It's a snap decision for me. I had never wanted to move to another city because I already have 2 permanent homes - Singapore and Shanghai (my wife is Shanghainese). Moving to another city means having a third home. Life become very complicated. For the past 2 years after I'd quit my last permanent job, I'd rather go jobless or freelancing (albeit a very long term freelance) than to move to another city.

 

But Macau isn't just another Chinese city, and its prxomity to Hong Kong is a strong attraction. I used to live in HK for over 6 years and I love HK. But of course, Macau is like Las Vegas and is a place for day trippers and lacks soul and culture, unlike Hong Kong or Shanghai.

 

Colin where are you situated?