mindmeta.com

What lies behind the Dear Leader’s latest trip to China?

NORTH KOREA’S leader, Kim Jong Il, must have been on an urgent mission when he boarded his bulletproof train and headed to China for the second time in less than four months on August 26th. With America’s former president Jimmy Carter in town, devastating floods in the north and a rare conclave of his ruling party only days away, Mr Kim had much to keep him at home. But buttering up China appears to be a new priority.

Both China and North Korea, as is their wont, kept quiet about the visit until after Mr Kim’s return on August 30th. By then Mr Carter had left with an American, Aijalon Gomes, who had been serving eight years’ hard labour for entering the country illegally in January. Mr Gomes’s release was a rare gesture of conciliation to America after months of heightened tension caused by the sinking in March of a South Korean naval vessel. ...

The South waves sticks and dangles footballs at the North

SOUTH KOREANS are unsure precisely how best to respond to the uncertain changes in the regime to the North. A hardline approach to its neighbour has been the official stance ever since the Cheonan, a Southern military corvette, was torpedoed in March. Sanctions, a diplomatic freeze and military exercises with the Americans all suggest that the authorities in Seoul are in no mood to back down.

Yet this week, the South Korean Red Cross said that it would send emergency aid, mostly food and medicine, worth $8.4m to help the North cope with floods. This would be the first aid to flow north since May, but the South’s government insists it is merely a temporary humanitarian measure. ...

The economy is powering on, but the Congress-led coalition is squandering an opportunity to improve India

THE weightlifting auditorium has a leaky roof. The athletes’ village has no kitchen. Stagnant monsoon water, abuzz with dengue-carrying mosquitoes, collects at most of the stadiums being hurriedly built for the Delhi Commonwealth games, which are due to begin on October 3rd. The security arrangements, in terrorism-stricken India, are shot to pieces because of 24-hour processions of workmen at most venues. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, reiterates the official line that these will be the “best games ever”. That may depend on how you define “best”.

This shambles, for which corruption, feuding ministries, sapping bureaucracy and shoddy workmanship are all to blame, does not matter to many Indians. Athletics is not cricket. And few know much about their country’s image abroad. Yet it is depressing, not least because it mirrors how large parts of India are run. ...

An ancient pan-Asian university might yet open again

NALANDA is an unlovely place in the poorest state in India. Yet, as in much of Bihar, a prosaic present belies a poetic past. It is the site of one of the first great universities which, half a millennium before the founding of Oxford, flourished with some 10,000 students and monks from all over Asia. Mango groves and lotus pools circled its halls, and an 8th-century inscription touted its “row of pagodas the spires of which touched the clouds.”

If some scholars and diplomats have their way, a new generation of students will be enrolled. A bill has just snaked through India’s parliament calling for Nalanda’s revival, at a likely cost of several hundred million dollars. The Nalanda Mentor Group, led by Amartya Sen, an economics Nobel laureate, has overseen the project since it was first proposed in 2006. The Bihar state government has agreed to provide 500 acres for a new campus and India’s Planning Commission has proffered 1 billion rupees (some $21m) to get the project started. A chancellor has also been appointed. ...

Cheap labour will not yield gains for ever. But what comes next is unclear

ON THE edge of Hanoi brick-walled factories lie abandoned, weeds sprouting in their ruins. Surprisingly, this is a sign of progress. The land is slated for new housing; the state-owned textile firm that operated there is moving to an industrial park, where it can better meet booming demand for Vietnamese garments. Exports of textiles and garments rose by 17% in the first seven months this year, to $5.8 billion, suggesting that investors still favour Vietnam as a base for cheap manufacturing.

Its advantages have been amplified by recent labour unrest and rising costs in southern China’s factories. In Hanoi there is renewed talk of “China Plus One” as a strategy for multinationals keen to spread their bets. Vietnam could gain handsomely, thanks to its labour which is cheaper than China’s and its neighbours’ (see chart). Even after a pay rise, the monthly wage for a textile worker starts at $84, says Nguyen Tung Van, head of the Communist Party-run textile workers’ union, from his office in the abandoned compound. The industry employs around 1.7m people. Makers of footwear, furniture and more also gain from supplies of cheap labour. ...

Elections this month should not be quite as awful as last year’s presidential one

THE presidential poll in Afghanistan is still the stuff of nightmares for the technicians, diplomats and officials who had the misfortune to be involved in it. They shudder at the orgy of Taliban violence unleashed across the country on voting day, August 20th 2009, the most violent day in recent years. Voters stayed away from many polling stations, leaving corrupt supporters of the incumbent, Hamid Karzai, to stuff ballot boxes with perhaps 1m votes. And during the months of ballot auditing and recounts that followed, the business of government ground to a halt.

Relations between Afghanistan’s Western backers and Mr Karzai also sank to a wretched low after the West dared to point out the extraordinary level of electoral fraud. “God, it was just terrible,” says one shaken foreign election expert. “It just can’t happen again.” ...

China’s economic rise has brought the rest of emerging Asia huge benefits. But the region still needs the West

WITH markets still on edge after the worst financial crisis in decades, and fears of renewed recession stalking the West, this week seemed a poignant moment for China’s People’s Daily to detect a “golden age of development”, for Asia at least. Yet developing Asia, led by China itself, is booming. China’s GDP barrelled along in the first half of the year, growing by 11.1% compared with a year earlier. The newly industrialised little tigers—Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan—as well as most of South-East Asia seem to have fully recovered from the downturn. Even Thailand, mired in political turmoil, grew by 9.1% in the second quarter.

The dream is that this gilded future is now insulated from rich-world downturns: that China—now having, after all, officially overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy—can drive growth for the whole region. One day, maybe. Not yet. ...

Bovine politicians fail to pick a prime minister

THE monsoon brings Nepal’s annual cow festival, a chance for ordinary people to mock their rulers in traditional street performances. This year the comedians were blessed with plenty of material. Two months after the prime minister resigned, on the grounds that he was unable to advance the country’s peace process, Nepal remains without a leader. As a result, the tenuous peace stands in dire need of some process.

Five rounds of voting in the democratically elected Constituent Assembly, which also serves as a parliament, have failed to produce a new prime minister. A sixth round, scheduled for September 5th, is unlikely to do any better. ...

A booming economy and middle class means painfully slow roads.

Drivers beware: a booming economy and middle class may result in painfully slow roads. One traffic jam this month, along a highway leading to Beijing, stretched over 100km and lasted for nine days. Some 248,000 additional cars were registered in Beijing in the first four months of this year alone, snarling up the streets. Lots of roadworks are causing short-term grief. But the main problem seems to be demand for goods and energy, as lorries carrying coal crawl endlessly towards the city. Beijing is said to be spending 80 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) this year on transport infrastructure. It might be wiser to invest in alternative forms of power generation.

...

The prime minister calls frankly for political reform

CHINA is enjoying its new status as the world’s second-largest economy, but the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, is refusing to relax. During a visit to a southern boomtown he declared that economic gains could yet be lost without reforms to the political system. One official newspaper called his speech one of “extraordinary importance”, but sceptics abound.

His remarks on August 20th and 21st in the city of Shenzhen have been compared by some optimists to those made by the late Deng Xiaoping during a tour of the same city in 1992. Deng’s calls for market-oriented reforms sent central-planners scurrying and unleashed the entrepreneurial energy that has helped China to grow at giddy rates since. During his trip Mr Wen laid flowers before a statue of Deng, who turned Shenzhen into a test bed for economic change exactly 30 years ago. ...

The Australian electorate falls out of love with the two main parties, while each tries to woo independents and form a government

EVERYONE had expected a long night waiting for a result in the closely fought general election on August 21st. Instead, it looks like turning into a long fortnight. The contest between the ruling Labor party, under Julia Gillard, and the conservative Liberal-National opposition, led by Tony Abbott, produced some exotic outcomes: Wyatt Roy of Queensland, at 20 the youngest federal MP; and Adam Bandt of Victoria, the first Green elected to the lower house in a general election. But it failed to yield a clear verdict, leaving the first hung parliament in 70 years. Australia’s political culture seems set for upheavals.

The last time the country found itself in this state was in 1940. Robert Menzies, who later founded the conservative Liberal Party, which Mr Abbott now leads, relied on two independents to stay in power; that arrangement collapsed a year later. This time, neither Ms Gillard nor Mr Abbott will command the 76 seats needed in the 150-seat House of Representatives, so each has set out to woo Mr Bandt and four independents, who hold the balance of power. The romancing may yet turn ugly. ...

A bungled rescue of Hong Kong hostages sparks a diplomatic row

AS A policeman ineffectually sledgehammered the windows of a hijacked bus, in a desperate effort to reach 15 hostages trapped inside, it became sickeningly clear that a rescue operation had gone dreadfully wrong. More than an hour later the police got in by opening the emergency exit, and found proof of their bungling: eight of the 15 hostages, all Hong Kong tourists, had been shot dead, as had the hostage-taker, a former policeman.

August 23rd thereby became a shameful day for the Philippine National Police. Battered by criticism at home and abroad, the police admitted to “defects” in their handling of the hijack. Survivors and relatives of the victims were more explicit in their anger. It was obvious to millions in the Philippines and beyond, watching the drama unfold live on television, that the rescue squad lacked training and equipment. As serious are chronic weaknesses in the country’s law-enforcement system. ...

The return of a destructive force in Japanese politics

ICHIRO OZAWA, Japan’s most Machiavellian politician, recently dismissed Americans as “monocellular”—using a Japanese term that roughly means simplistic. Compared with his scheming mind, Americans should take that as a compliment. On August 26th Mr Ozawa dropped a bombshell that could bring down the government, launching a leadership challenge to the prime minister, Naoto Kan, in an internal election of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

If he were to win on September 14th, Mr Ozawa, 68, would automatically become prime minister, Japan’s third this year alone. That would mark a remarkable comeback. Less than three months ago, on June 2nd, he was forced out as the DPJ secretary-general alongside the previous prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, because of poor leadership and his links to a foul-smelling campaign-funding scandal for which he may possibly still face indictment this year. ...

The misery shows no sign of abating, even as waters recede in some places

PAKISTAN’S floods are looking ever more monstrous. In the south waters continue to rise, eating up new areas and swamping districts such as Jaffarabad, in Baluchistan province, a full 100km from the Indus river. Farther north the tide is now receding, only to reveal the many homeless and hungry, their stores of wheat and their crops and livestock destroyed. Everywhere it is becoming clearer how social, economic and political misery will endure for a long time yet.

Overall 1.2m homes have been damaged or destroyed. Some 800,000 people remain cut off from all help. Even where the government or aid agencies are present, the help is patchy at best, with many left to fend for themselves. Now dark (and plausible) accusations are circulating: the well-connected chose which areas were purposefully flooded to relieve pressure elsewhere; aid is being diverted to constituencies of powerful figures; woefully feeble flood-protection infrastructure was left badly maintained. ...

In Kashmir freedom is much farther than a stone’s-throw away

OWAIS hardly looks like a serious danger to the security of India. Slender and frail, he says he is 17 but seems younger as he basks shyly in the praise of the men gathered in a garden in Srinagar, summer capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir. But he is proud to show off the scars and stitch-marks that cover his belly. He has just emerged from hospital, lucky to be alive. He took a bullet in an anti-Indian protest on August 2nd in Kupwara, some 90km (56 miles) away. His uncle died that day, one of more than 60 people, mostly young, killed in a wave of unrest that began on June 11th. Owais and those like him have presented the Indian government with a new and perhaps insoluble Kashmir crisis.

They are self-proclaimed “stone-pelters”, named after their weapon of choice. Well-organised—on Facebook, to a large extent—the pelters emerge at short notice to throw stones at police stations and other targets, and get shot at. In response to their protests much of the Kashmir valley that surrounds Srinagar has been shut down—both by hartals, or strikes, called by separatist leaders, and by government-imposed curfews. On most days, Srinagar is a ghost town of shuttered shops and empty streets. Paramilitaries point their rifles out from bunkers or lounge on street corners, idly tapping their lathis (heavy batons) on their padded legs. On the one or two designated “shopping days” each week, the traffic is gridlocked. ...