China Challenges

The Chile Example

While protectionist trade policy makes headlines in the West, China and Chile are lowering trade and investment barriers. Will Washington learn from Chile?

AP reports via BusinessWeek:

Chile and China have "successfully ended" a yearlong negotiation for a free trade accord and the presidents of the two nations will sign it next month, Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker announced Friday.

"It will be the first free trade accord signed by China with a Latin American nation," Walker told Radio Cooperativa of Santiago from Beijing. "It will bring more and better jobs for Chileans."

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8DH3GT01.htm?campaign_id=apn_asia_up&chan=gb

For more analysis:
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3527

Sino-Japan Economic Integration

While political relations are frozen, Sino-Japan economic ties continue to grow. The New York Times reports:

At a call center in Dalian, in northeast China, young workers speaking flawless Japanese answer customer service calls for a Japanese insurance company. In western Japan, a new commercial Chinatown is rising in Kobe City's rebuilt port area.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/31/international/asia/31asia.html?th&emc=th

Superpower Showdown

For an analysis of the Sino-US relationship in the years ahead from a conservative perspective, check out this cover story at the American Conservative:

Today, U.S. policy has put the nation in perilously close proximity to two separate flashpoints with China: North Korea and Taiwan. And China is surely the angriest rising power in Asia today; Americans should understand that if we want a war with the People’s Republic, Beijing will happily give us one.

Yet if we continue to drain away resources fighting in the Middle East—thus revealing our overall weaknesses, as well as our military tactics—it is no sure bet that we will win. For all the errors China has made, it wouldn’t have earned its status as the oldest continuous civilization on earth unless it had been able to learn from its mistakes.

To read more:
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/cover.html

Koizumi and Reforms

Read my new article posted at the American Thinker about Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi and Constitutional reforms. Link:
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3522

No Time to Exercise

Despite the increasing number of gyms opening every month, China's children and adults rarely exercise, reports Xinhua.  A survey shows that more than 60% of children between seven and 17 exercise very little every week. As for adults, 90% between 18 and 44 admit they never exercise.

China's Brain Gain

More talented Chinese are returning to the homeland to help develop the economy. The New York Times reports: When Andrew Chi-chih Yao, a Princeton professor who is recognized as one of the United States' top computer scientists, was approached by Qinghua University in Beijing last year to lead an advanced computer studies program, he did not hesitate.

To read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/asia/28universities.html?ex=1131163200&en=3f6f16710230ce85&ei=5070

The WTO and IPR

American Foreign Policy Council at http://www.afpc.org reports:

The Bush administration is stepping up its efforts against Chinese 
intellectual property piracy. The Wall Street Journal reports that the 
White House has signaled plans to initiate action in the World Trade 
Organization to force China to outline its anti-piracy measures. 

Administration officials hope to use the WTO’s “discovery mechanism” to gain a 
clearer picture of steps that have been taken by the Chinese to curb piracy 
ahead of President Bush’s planned visit to Beijing next month. 

A clearer picture of China’s anti-piracy policy, which many believe is 
lackluster at best, also would enable the White House to “begin to build a 
case” for “additional actions” against the PRC, if necessary, says United 
States Trade Representative Rob Portman. “It’s a matter of sort of 
applying pressure where you can on the Chinese.”

Bird Flu - People are Nervous

The growing threat of bird flu is starting to make Chinese people nervous. Melinda Lui at Newsweek International reports:

The deadly H5N1 virus is creeping closer to China’s teeming cities—and to me in Beijing. On Wednesday, Chinese media revealed yet another outbreak of avian influenza, the third report in little more than a week.

To read more:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9827680/site/newsweek/

Big Offering, Small Success

Suffering from major structural problems, the Chinese banking system continues on its slow reform path.   IHT.com reports:

Shares of China Construction Bank had a lackluster start on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday. But it was still China's biggest initial public offering ever, and the largest worldwide since 2001, raising $8 billion for the lender.

To read more:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/27/business/ccb.php#

Copyright Concerns

Chinese portal Baidu introduces a new copyright protection policy.  Asiaone.com reports:

The Web portal Baidu.com has added a disclaimer to its popular search engine for MP3 music sites following lawsuits accusing the company of helping visitors illegally obtain copyright music. The new disclaimer says the company "fights piracy" and promises to remove links to sites that infringe on copyrights. However, the site still connects users to outside sites where they can download music.

To read more: www.asiaone.com

Threat or Not?

After a visit to Beijing, Robert Novak poses the the question - is China a threat? He writes:

The message from officials in this huge, shiny, booming capital is that China's military buildup does not connote desire to kick the Americans out of East Asia. Their assertion is buttressed by the clear impression that people here are interested in making money, not war. Yet, that members of the U.S. Congress see China's Communist regime as a threat is felt here to be endangering the relationship between the two powers.

To read more:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2005/10/27/173034.html

Abuses in China's One-Child Policy

Philip Pan in the Washington Post writes:

China said Monday that it has dismissed and detained officials in the eastern city of Linyi for abuses committed while enforcing the country's one-child policy. But the government provided no details and said nothing about the arrest this month of an activist who had campaigned against the use of forced abortion and sterilization there.

To read more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900596.html

Dell's China Slowdown

Dell's fast growth in China is slowing down. BusinessWeek reports:

What's happening to Dell's march on Asia? The company won't talk -- it's in the quiet period before its Nov. 10 third-quarter earnings announcement. But there's plenty of evidence suggesting it's out of sync with shifting market conditions in fast-growing China.

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc20051027_362966.htm

WTO in Hong Kong

In December, Hong Kong will hold the next round of WTO talks. As a developing country, there are major implications for China. Everyone is focused on agricultural subsidies. An New York Times editorial says:

The developed world funnels nearly $1 billion a day in subsidies to its farmers, encouraging overproduction. That drives down prices and leaves farmers in poor nations unable to compete with subsidized products, even within their own countries.

In recent years, American farmers have dumped cotton and other products on world markets at prices that do not begin to cover their cost of production. Europe's system is even worse; the United States' farm subsidies are only a third of Europe's.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/27/opinion/27thur1.html?th&emc=th

Missile Conspiracy

The Washington Times reports:

Federal investigators have linked a Chinese state-run export company to a conspiracy to sell surface-to-air missiles in the United States, Justice Department officials said.

To read more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20051026-124545-7668r.htm

More Bird Flu Worries

The South China Morning Post is reporting:

A 12-year old girl has died from flu-like symptoms in a Hunan village where the mainland's third outbreak of bird flu in a week was confirmed.

He Yin and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago at their home in the village, Wantang, after eating a sick chicken that had died, according to their farmer father, He Tieguang . She died soon after reaching the Children's Hospital in the provincial capital, Changsha .

So far there is no evidence linking her death with the outbreak of bird flu in Wantang. Doctors told the family she had died from fever. The mainland's only suspected human bird-flu death came in February 2003, when an eight-year-old Hong Kong girl on a family visit to Pingtan, in Fujian, died of pneumonia. Her father, who also died, and a brother, aged nine, had H5N1.

To read more:  (subscription needed)
http://www.scmp.com/topnews/ZZZ0QZU44FE.html

Liberation from Japan

The South China Morning Post reports:

The mainland yesterday marked Taiwan's liberation from Japan 60 years ago with a top party leader warning that "pro-independence forces" remain the biggest threat to peace in the region.

Jia Qinglin , a Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee member, said at an official ceremony at the Great Hall of the People that the mainland must strengthen its guard against separatism in Taiwan.

To read more:
http://china.scmp.com/chimain/ZZZOBCG64FE.html

Nato of the East

China is expanding its geo-political reach.  The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say.

The group, which started in 2001 with limited goals of promoting cooperation in former Soviet Central Asia, has evolved rapidly toward a regional security bloc and could soon induct new members such as India, Pakistan, and Iran.

To read more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1026/p04s01-woeu.html?s=hns

 

A Sporting Disgrace

With 2008 Summer Games in Beijing coming soon, the just-ended 10th National Games should be a disgrace for all Chinese people. Sadly, the event has been marred by controversy. An editorial in the South China Morning says:

Who can forget the scene of judo player Sun Fuming falling on the floor and conceding defeat after her opponent, a fellow competitor from Liaoning province lent to the People's Liberation Army team, barely touched her on the shoulder?

When a rematch was held, Sun again lost in incredulous circumstances, apparently to honour a deal between the PLA and the provincial team. The affair, captured on video, sparked national outrage.

To read more:
http://focus.scmp.com/focusnews/ZZZ4GBT44FE.html

Bird Flu in Anhui Province

Bird flu is moving across China. Reuters reports via CNN International:

China has reported a fresh outbreak of bird flu as fears grow across the world of an impending pandemic, a senior U.N. official said on Tuesday. The latest outbreak, among geese, was in a village in the suburbs of Changtian city in the eastern province of Anhui, Noureddin Mona, of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, told Reuters.

To read more:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/10/24/birdflu.main.china.reut/index.html

Koizumi Makes Claims

Political commentator Robert Novak interviewed Japanese leader Koizumi a few days ago.  At Townhall.com, he writes:

Koizumi rejects the danger of "militarism" in a Japan that has been a "pacifist state" and has not fired a shot in 60 years. The prime minister did not mention the arch-militarist Tojo by name, but that was what he had in mind when he told me: "I'm not visiting the shrine to pay respects or homage to any particular individual. Rather, I go there to pay respect to millions of people who lost their lives in the war."

Chinese who visit Japan "will find out for themselves there is no militarism in this country," the prime minister said. But "because of years of education in China, there is a strong perception in China that the regime of 60 years ago still exists, that Japan must be hostile to China. That is far from reality."

To read more:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2005/10/24/172503.html

Exporting China's Savings

China is helping finance reckless fiscal policy in the West. Can China save us from fiscal doom? Business Week reports about two German researchers, Hans Fehr and Sabine Jokisch.

(They) find that a flood of Chinese savings over the next 40 years could turn the anticipated capital shortages into capital gluts instead -- not just in the U.S, but in Europe and Japan as well.

According to their calculations, the potential impact of China is so large that global interest rates could drop by as much as a third by 2050, even with all the expected government borrowing. Those lower rates, in turn, could finance more business investment, boost productivity, and raise national incomes across the developed world. "It's potential good news in a very bleak fiscal picture," says Kotlikoff.

Their study, entitled Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us Out to Dinner?, represents a serious attempt to project China's long-term effect on the global economy. Kotlikoff's expertise is in long-run projections, as one of the creators of "generational accounting," a way of measuring how tax and spending policies affect different age groups over time.

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_44/b3957023.htm

Surging Growth, Falling Shares

While many Western experts focus on China's high growth numbers, the mainland stock markets remain a mess. Business Week reports:

If the mainland is to wean itself from the simple bank loans that now finance almost all investment, it must have fully developed bond and stock markets. But for most of their 14-year history, the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges have been unworthy of the name. Originally designed to enrich the stakeholders of privatized state companies, the bourses have become littered with small local companies with suspect financial statements and shares that are sold by often-corrupt brokers who allegedly make their money by manipulating prices.

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_44/b3957021.htm?chan=gb

Private or Public

The Japanese foreign minister has just shot a hole through the Koizumi claim that his visits to Yasukuni are private. The South China Morning Post reports:

Japan should be more firm with China rather than always trying to appease its giant neighbour, the Japanese foreign minister said yesterday as he defended Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's controversial visit to the Yasukuni war shrine. Contradicting Mr Koizumi's assertion that the visit was a "matter of personal belief", Nobutaka Machimura said the prime minister was aware of the diplomatic fallout when deciding to make the visit. The war shrine served Japan's national interest and Mr Koizumi's visit "was to show that he should not succumb to foreign pressure".

To read more:
http://www.scmp.com/topnews/ZZZXZOU44FE.html

Noodle Wars

In addition to all the other disputes, the Japan Times reports that China and Japan are now arguing about the history of noodles!  Read this in the Japan Times:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ed20051023a1.htm

Secret Mission to Beijing

The Japan Times reports top Japanese business leaders made a secret trip to Beijing on September 30 to meet the Chinese leadership.

For analysis read Thomas Lifson's comment at the American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3460

Huge Incubator for Bird Flu

China is a key battleground in the fight against bird flu. The International Herald Tribune reports:

The UN point man on bird flu warned in China on Friday that migrating fowl appear to be more susceptible to the disease, while countries in the region announced bans on bird imports and discussed preparedness plans that could involve sealing borders.

China's latest outbreak of the virulent H5N1 bird flu strain was reported this week in northern Inner Mongolia. Scientists say that China is a huge incubator for the disease because of its large poultry industry and vast territory, even though it has reported no human cases.

To read more:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/21/news/flu.php

Stronger Yuan Helps China

BusinessWeek has a commentary from former Clinton trade official Laura D'Andrea Tyson. She claims a stronger yuan will benefit China. She writes:

Despite the howls from Congress, China's management of its exchange rate is not the reason America's current account deficit has soared in this period. As Morgan Stanley (MWD ) economist Stephen S. Roach recently observed, it would take the current account surpluses of 10 economies -- including those of Japan, China, Russia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia -- to equal the U.S. current account deficit. America is running a massive current account gap not because of an undervalued Chinese currency, but because the U.S. is saving too little to finance its investment needs.

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_44/b3957156.htm

Financial Firms Jump into China

Western banks have risked billions of dollars in China. International Herald Tribune reports:

After years of hesitancy and half-hearted attempts to break into the Chinese market, American and European financial services companies are investing billions of dollars here in the hopes of reaping huge profits from China's sharp rise.

Wall Street firms and some of the biggest banks and financial services companies in the world, including Bank of America and American Express, have already invested more than $20 billion over the past three years in joint ventures or strategic stakes in dozens of Chinese banks, brokerage houses or insurance companies.

To read more:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/21/business/services.php

Chinese Pirates Are Ready

Will Chinese pirates help set the new DVD standard? The International Herald Tribune reports:

In the high-stakes battle with Sony over whose format will power the next-generation of DVD players, Toshiba has adopted a potentially perilous strategy: encouraging low-cost Chinese competitors to crank out machines using its standard known as HD-DVD.

To read more:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/business/dvd.php

Selling Babies Online?

The moral decay of Chinese society continues.  This sad story comes from AsiaOne:

Shanghai police are investigating an online ad offering babies for sale on the Chinese subsidiary of auction Web site eBay, the company said Thursday.  The ad was deleted shortly after it was placed Sunday and relevant information has been turned over to investigators, a spokesman for the Internet Web site said.

To read more:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHINA_BABIES_FOR_SALE?SITE=ASIAONE&SECTION=TECHNOLOGY&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Debate over Space Ambitions

The debate over China's space program continues.  This comes from the 
China Reform Monitor:

China’s second manned space launch has ignited a new round of debate 
over the implications of the PRC’s burgeoning space capabilities. “China 
is serious in investing” in space capabilities that have “significant 
military applications in the future,” retired Air Force China specialist 
Mark Stokes tells Voice of America. 

“Space assets, as well as countering... the U.S. use of space or other 
countries' use of space, are important force multipliers that can help to
even the playing field when you are going up against a technologically 
superior adversary.” 

According to Stokes, the space launch constitutes “a stepping stone for a 
longer-range program to make them a significant player in military space in the 
future.” 

Others, however, take a different view. The Chinese “already have so 
many other programs to weaponize and militarize space that would be more 
effective in a shorter time,” says Larry Wortzel of the Heritage 
Foundation. 

“I would rather see them go ahead with the manned space program 
and use the money on that because I think in the near term, it makes the 
United States, Taiwan, and Japan safer.”

To read more visit the American Foreign Policy Council:
http://www.afpc.org

Bird Flu Problem Grows

Birds smuggled from the mainland to Taiwan reportedly have bird flu. The South China Morning Post reports:

Bird flu sent fresh jitters across East Asia yesterday, with Taiwan reporting the island's first confirmed case of the H5N1 strain in birds and Thailand announcing another fatality. Speaking in Taipei, Shih Wen-yi, a deputy director of Taiwan's Centre for Disease Control, said the island was on high alert after samples collected from a batch of songbirds smuggled from the mainland for sale to bird fanciers tested positive for H5N1.

To read more:
http://china.scmp.com/chimain/ZZZ3FQW71FE.html

South Korea Leads in Investment

Led by Samsung's 29 plants in China, South Korean firms have moved to China in a big way.  The New York Times reports:

South Korea has emerged as perhaps the largest single source of foreign investment in China, making $6.25 billion in fixed investments there last year, according to data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.  In 2004, Korean investment in China, mostly in steel and cars, overtook Japan's, which has an economy six times that of South Korea's.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/business/worldbusiness/20koreainvest.html?th&emc=th

Democracy With Chinese Characteristics

The New York Times reports:

China issued its first white paper on democracy on Wednesday, but included no initiatives for political change and left little doubt of the Communist Party's determination to maintain its grip on power. The report, "Building of Political Democracy in China," emphasizes the importance of economic development and social stability in establishing a democracy. It says the continued rule of the Communist Party is "the most important and fundamental principle for developing socialist political democracy in China."

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/20/international/asia/20china.html?th&emc=th

Bird Flu Hits China

Two cases so far.  Unlike SARS, the state-run media is admitting the country has a problem.  Xinhua is reporting:  China has confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in its northwestern Xinjiang region, saying 460 geese had died of the H5N1 strain of the virus but the situation was under control.

The latest outbreak of bird flu in Qinghai has so far proven to be an isolated case, with the northwestern province stepping up prevention, while the rest of the country enhances awareness.

To read more:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-06/09/content_450027.htm

China's Credit Report

This story comes from the Asia Times Online:

The expanding Chinese economy is causing fundamental changes in the way businesses and customers interrelate and the expectations associated with these relationships. Although China is still largely a "cash-centric" society with minimal credit exposure, many corporate executives, economists and global investors see sustained growth and vast opportunities in China's underdeveloped consumer credit markets.

To read more:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/GJ15Cb01.html

Fake Kyodo News Story

This comes from the Japan Times:

A fabricated Kyodo News story announcing that Chinese warplanes had violated Japanese airspace over Okinawa was posted on a fake Yahoo News Web site, it was reported Wednesday.  Kyodo News and Yahoo Japan Corp., which have reported the incident to police, said they are considering taking legal action against the person who produced the fake article.

To read more: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051020a3.htm

To read more analysis at the American Thinker:
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3436

No New Great Wall

Donald Rumsfeld gave a major speech at a Communist school in Beijing.  The New York Times reports:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged the next generation of China's Communist leadership on Wednesday to become "a major player" in the global economy by taking steps to strengthen the system and not just reap the financial rewards, and he warned against erecting "another type of Great Wall" restricting free expression and choice

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/international/asia/19rumsfeld.html

Labor Shortages Amid Plenty

This comes from a report by the McKinsey consulting firm via the South China Morning Post:

The problem is that few of the mainland's graduates have the foreign language skills, cultural fit or practical education necessary to work in a multinational company. According to interviews with human-resources professionals involved with hiring local graduates in low-wage countries, fewer than 10 per cent of mainland job candidates are suitable for work in a foreign company in occupations such as engineering, finance and accounting, quantitative analysis and support.

The specific reasons vary by occupation. Consider the mainland's 1.6 million young engineers. Their education is generally biased towards theory, and they get little practical experience in projects or teamwork. As a result, despite seeming so numerous, the mainland's pool of young engineers considered suitable for work in multinationals is just 160,000 - no larger than Britain's. Hence the paradox of shortages amid plenty.

To read more:

http://focus.scmp.com/focusnews/ZZZMRNR4UEE.html

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1685&L2=18&L3=31

Smuggling Everything

As a haven of fake products, China is in the middle of many international smuggling rings.  Newsweek reports:

Smuggling revenues are spectacular. From 1992 to 2002 the total size of the global drug trade more than doubled to $900 billion annually. Fifteen years ago the trade in counterfeit goods was almost insignificant; today the bootleg-CD business alone is worth $4.6 billion a year. The illicit arms trade accounts for an additional $10 billion. So does cross-border human trafficking. Stolen art is worth $3 billion each year. An illegal trade in toxic waste is estimated at $12 billion.

To read more:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9711920/site/newsweek/

Europe, not China, is the Problem

In the near term, American policymakers should be much more concerned Europe's economic weakness than China's economic strength.  If you disagree, read this article:

Link:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/101705C.html

Bird Flu Concerns

For more on China's poor handling of the bird flu problem, read Thomas Lifson's comment at the American Thinker.

Link: http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3409

Targeting China

Business Week reports:

A rare commodity on Capitol Hill -- bipartisanship -- is emerging within the Senate Banking Committee. And that has business worried. The reason? There is a budding consensus to tighten rules allowing U.S. companies to be sold to foreigners. That could nick corporate interests and damage relations with trading partners, particularly China, Congress's chief target.

To read more:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_43/c3956074.htm

Shanghai Skyscrapers

The New York Times reports:

Move over, New York. This year alone, Shanghai will complete towers with more space for living and working than there is in all the office buildings in New York City. That is in a city that already has 4,000 skyscrapers, almost double the number in New York. And there are designs to build 1,000 more by the end of this decade.

To read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/business/worldbusiness/18bubble.html

Military Transparency

The Pentagon pushs for more transparency of China's military forces.  The Christian Science Monitor reports:

As the war in Iraq began, the Pentagon embedded a Chinese reporter for five days on the USS Kitty Hawk. Some officers thought it odd to invite a reporter from a state that many see as the greatest long-term military threat to the US. But the Pentagon felt a close look by China at an aircraft carrier was a good deterrent.

Chinese PLA officers have ridden US fighter jets, boarded nuclear submarines, sat in on classes at West Point, and visited the strategic command at Cheyenne Mountain. But US military visits to China have been mostly a matter of seeing parades or an empty base.

To read more:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1018/p01s03-woap.html?s=hns

Chinese Hospitals

In a commentary in the South China Morning Post, Laurance Brahm outlines three possible situations at a Chinese hospital.  Each story explains weaknesses in the Chinese health care system.  Here is one:

A Chinese staff member in a foreign company had a car accident, and was laid up in hospital for a month with a broken back. The foreign company's Beijing boss wanted to visit her in the hospital. He was shocked when Chinese staff begged him not to.

His colleagues said: "The problem is, if doctors see a foreign face they will go for your deep pockets, prescribing lots of medicine to run up her hospital bill. It may hurt her in the end. Lots of medicine is counterfeit and can have side effects."

To read more:

http://focus.scmp.com/focusnews/ZZZXVKR4UEE.html

Koizumi Visits Yasukuni Again

Sure to anger millions of Asians, Japan's PM Junichiro Koizumi has visited Yasukuni Shrine again.

The timing of this visit is also interesting. On the same day, two Chinese astronaunts safely returned home. A few days ago, as reported in the Japan Times, former Taiwan leader Lee endorsed Koizumi's right to visit the shrine.

For more on this topic, read my American Thinker article from July 20.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4662&search=Schwarz

Thomas Lifson has more on this topic also at the Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=3401

Bird Flu and SARS

With Beijing's emphasis on state secrets, could bird flu develop into a health crisis similar to SARS, a few years ago? The International Herald Tribune reports:

The Chinese health authorities in Beijing have called repeatedly for vigilance against the disease. But they have refused to share virus samples from infected wild birds this year with international organizations and have quarreled with researchers who have suggested that the disease remains a problem.

To read more:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/16/news/flu.php#

Taiwan's Lee Backs Koizumi

While millions of Asians hate Japan's PM Junichiro Koizumi for his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, it seems he has found some unlikely support.

The Japan Times reports:

Former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui said Saturday he supports Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine. "It is natural for a premier of a country to commemorate the souls of people who lost their lives for their country," Lee said in an interview during a two-week private visit to the United States. Lee also said there is no reason for foreign countries to tell Koizumi not to visit the shrine.

To read more:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20051017a1.htm