Asean Hopes for a Calm, Constructive Summit – The Irrawaddy
October 23rd, 2009
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=17050
Masked Thai dancers wearing colorful costumes perform during the opening of the 15th ASEAN Summit. (Photo: Reuters)
HUA HIN, Thailand — The 15th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) gets underway on Friday, with host Thailand welcoming heads of government from member states, including Burma’s Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein.
Before the summit started, the US stole some of Asean’s spotlight by announcing that it would send a delegation on a “fact-finding” trip to Burma, possibly within a few weeks
There are few signs that Asean members will pressure Burma to move toward democratization and reconciliation during the current summit.
Opening the proceedings, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told his counterparts that one of the goals of the summit was to further Asean integration, and, “We are working together to try to overcome the impact of the global economic crisis.”
But as usual, the issue of Burma looms over the regional bloc’s attempts to develop new institutions, and to move on from its traditional emphasis on consensus and non-interference, to promoting democracy and human rights.
On Friday, Asean officially launched its Asian Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. However, the new body can do little beyond promoting the concept of human rights, and it seems unlikely that it will be able to make any difference to rights violations in Burma or in other Asean-member states.
Sean Turnell, a Burma expert based at Macquarie University, told The Irrawaddy that Asean could use the summit more effectively if it “put something real into its human rights charter.”
A bit of controversy emerged before the summit officially began, with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen offering sanctuary to fugitive ex-Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. (more…)
Myanmar refugees return as fighting cools – The Washington Times
September 3rd, 2009
Government troops clashing with ethnic militia
By Michael Standaert and Simon Roughneen
Chinese soldiers watch as refugees cross from Myanmar last Friday (AFP/Getty)
LINCANG, China | A few thousand Myanmar refugees have returned home this week during a lull in fighting between government troops and an ethnic militia that has roiled relations between Myanmar and its closest foreign ally — China.
U Aung Kyaw Zaw, an expert on the military situation in northeastern Myanmar who lives in the Chinese city of Yunnan, said Wednesday that the situation has stabilized somewhat but that many of the estimated 37,000 Burmese who fled here last week are still afraid to go home to their country, also known as Burma.
“The Chinese want to show the world that they are treating the refugees well and have control of the situation,” he said.
The recent fighting suggests that the ruling junta in Myanmar seeks to extend control over rebel-held territory in advance of 2010 elections.
The violence has pitted the junta against the Kokang — ethnic Chinese who have lived in Myanmar for generations. The offensive, launched last month against the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) militia in a section of the largely autonomous Shan state along the border of China’s Yunnan province, broke a 20-year-long cease-fire.
On Tuesday, state-run Chinese media reported that about 2,800 of the refugees had returned to Myanmar.
According to the Burmese-exile newspaper Irrawaddy, the Myanmar junta is using the lull in the fighting to reinforce its forces in Shan state in what could be a prelude to action against other ethnic militias in the region. (more…)
Cardinal Zen Interview – NCRegister
August 25th, 2009
http://www.ncregister.com/daily/cardinal_zen_interview/
This exclusive interview with Chinese Cardinal Joseph Zen will appear in the Sept. 6 print issue of the Register:
Cardinal Zen and Pope Benedict XVI (Asianews.it)
Cardinal Zen on China and Christianity
Cardinal Joseph Zen is sometimes called “the new conscience of Hong Kong.”
That’s due to his outspoken defense of religious freedom and political rights.
He has often been the target of criticism from state media in mainland China, and he was banned from entering China from 1998-2004. For example, he used his position to oppose the “consecration” of two bishops who belong to the state-controlled Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. He later referred to the nominations, which did not have papal sanction, as “a declaration of war.”
Since he stepped down as archbishop of Hong Kong, he has continued to be outspoken. He denounced “false interpretations” of the latest papal encyclical in China, after fears that Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) could be manipulated to vindicate the Communist regime’s social and economic policies.
Cardinal Zen, the only Chinese cardinal under the age of 80, spoke with Register correspondent Simon Roughneen. (more…)
Roadblocks for Rio Tinto – Asia Sentinel
June 3rd, 2009
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1908&Itemid=422
Politics gets in the way China’s pursuit of the Australian mining giant
Rio Tinto mine (CEOWorld Magazine)
The high-stakes deal between struggling Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto and China’s state-owned Chinalco looks set to go down to the wire, with the Australian government set to say yea or nay sometime within the next two weeks.
Rio Tinto lined up the deal with Chinalco back in February, looking for a way to pay down half of its A$38 billion in debt as debt markets remained frozen and commodity prices collapsed. Under the terms agreed, Chinalco would take minority stakes in some Rio mining assets as well as buying convertible notes that could double its equity stake to 18 percent.
Business journalist Tim Treadgold is based in Perth, close to the Western Australia mining heartland. He told Asia Sentinel that “this is not a good deal and I think it will get unwound. It was truck at a low point in the markets, and to price a deal of this magnitude at such a low point in the markets was very unwise.”
Rio Tinto has been struggling since a A$S38.1 billion takeover of Alcan in 2007 weighed the mining giant down with debt. (more…)
Chimerica: Consensus or Chimera? – World Politics Review
May 22nd, 2009
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3798
By Simon Roughneen and Diana Ionescu
Chimerica (Ibankcoin.com/cronkite)
At the London G-20 Summit in April, British prime minister and host Gordon Brown asserted that “The Washington Consensus is over.” With the struggling U.S. economy pulling much of the world down with it, the “Anglo-Saxon model” is now deemed flawed. Dirigiste tendencies are in, with U.S. President Barack Obama embracing a government-funded “stimulus” package whose numbers are well in excess of his high-spending predecessor.
Washington itself is moving away from the formula — consisting of fiscal discipline, market-set interest rates, competitive exchange rates, liberalisation of trade and investment regimes, deregulation and privatisation — to which it lent its name. The “Washington Consensus” was a term coined by economist John Williamson back in 1989 to name a would-be policy panacea for struggling Latin American economies. When implemented via international financial institutions, the “one size fits all” approach did not always work, with the Asian economic crisis in 1998-99 being the classic case in point. Moreover, given that it was not adhered to by the U.S., even under allegedly free-market-oriented Republican administrations, it is debatable whether it was ever really a consensus to begin with. (more…)
China’s embrace hits raw nerve – Asia Times
April 3rd, 2009
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KD07Ad02.html
SYDNEY – On April 1, Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper reported that a Chinese consortium was going to buy the Melbourne Cricket Ground and rename it the “Mekong Cricket Ground”.
The scoop came on the back of a furtive meeting between Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Beijing’s propaganda chief, Li Changchun, as well as allegations of cozy dealings between one of Rudd’s ministers and a Chinese-Australian businesswoman. Talking heads then navel-gazed for days about whether Rudd’s Sinophilia marked him out as some sort of Manchurian Candidate, a Politburo plant in The Lodge – the official Canberra residence of the prime minister and his family. (more…)
Obama wrestles the ox – ISN
January 19th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=95464
Amid economic flux, Obama faces challenges and opportunities across Asia, with the possibility of revolutionary change in China, but state failure in Pakistan.
Chinese year of the Ox (ISN)
By Simon Roughneen in Singapore for ISN Security Watch
Just days after Barack Obama assumes office in the US, 26 January will mark the Year of the Ox in Asia. As the global downturn pushes dozens of countries into recession, Asia, like much of the world, faces a deeply uncertain 2009.
When the subprime crisis morphed into full-scale Wall Street meltdown and pan-European banking panic during in the fall of 2008, longer-term predictions about a rebalancing of global geopolitics – with the rise in relative importance of India and China in particular, and Asia in general – were taken as imminent by some.
Longer-term, this rebalancing seems inevitable. However, Obama will have to contend with a rising Asia, managing relationships with an array of economies, as well as contribute to defusing security threats on the Indian subcontinent, in Afghanistan, and with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. (more…)
Military Grip on Burma backed by China and India – The Irish Catholic
October 4th, 2007
Cracks in army needed to unseat Generals
The Buddhist-led anti-military protests in Burma have faded as an army crackdown has prevented monks from getting onto the streets. Fears that hundreds may have died in the brutal reaction to peaceful protests, has cowed the demonstrators, for now at least.
After more than a week of protests in Rangoon and other cities, on Wednesday September 26 the Burmese military dictatorship lived up to threats to “take action” against protesters, with over 14 deaths reported by last weekend and dozens of bloodied Buddhist monks reeling from the military’s counter-action on the city’s streets.
Although the protests were led by monks, by Thursday September 27 the proportion of monks versus laypeople than in previous days, after hundreds of were rounded up and troops surrounded monasteries.
UN Envoy Ibrahim Gambari visited Burma over last weekend, but despite meeting the democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the former Nigerian foreign minister was not permitted meet the military dictator General Than Shwe. Thus far, mission failed.
Last week, the UN Security Council sought to impose western-led global sanctions against the Burmese regime, but this was blocked by China and Russia on Wednesday evening. Agreement was reached on a watered-down press statement expressing “concern” and urging “restraint especially from the government.” (more…)
Influence Anxiety: China in Africa – ISN
May 15th, 2006
By Simon Roughneen in Nairobi for ISN Security Watch (15/05/06)
Chinese investment in Africa, 2005 (risingpowers.foreignpolicyblogs.com)
“Business is business. We try to separate politics from business. Secondly I think the internal situation in the Sudan is an internal affair, and we are not in a position to impose upon them,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong said in an interview with the New York Times on 22 August 2005.
In the Mao era, China dealt with Africa as part of a show of solidarity with countries that shared some of China’s experience of Western oppression. However, these links were fostered in an ideologically charged time, when China sought to display affinity with other socialist countries and to demonstrate an almost nihilistic aversion to the institutions and norms of international relations. Although it joined the UN in 1971, any real alteration of China’s foreign policy did not come until the Deng-initiated reforms post-1979.
Even then reform was piecemeal and cautious, predicated on careful changes to China’s domestic political economy, which allowed for marketization of the economy while retaining a totalitarian state. According to Christopher Alden, senior lecturer in International Relations at the London School of Economics, in an article for YaleGlobal magazine, China’s foreign policy changed in 1993 when it shifted from being an oil exporter to being an oil importer. (more…)
