Japan disaster not thwarting nuclear plans – Sunday Business Post
March 20th, 2011
http://www.sbpost.ie/news/world/disaster-not-thwarting-international-nuclear-plans-55172.html
Simon Roughneen in Bangkok and Niall Stanage in New York – While Asian countries say they might revise nuclear energy plans in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima crisis last week, planned projects seem likely to go ahead in the longer-term.
China and India both plan to increase their current nuclear energy capacity, and Beijing’s expansion plan, adding 28 reactors to its current 13, is around 40% of the new nuclear facilities being planned globally. China plans an additional fifty reactors further down the line, taking its overall number of plants close to 100. (more…)
Toys for the boys or a real arms race? – The Irrawaddy
March 7th, 2011
China’s 12.7 percent hike in military spending for 2011 could add impetus to a preexisting arms-buying spree in Southeast Asia, where other factors are also fueling a dramatic increase in defense spending.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=20885
BANGKOK — China’s announcement of a 12.7 percent hike in military spending for 2011 could add impetus to a preexisting arms-buying spree in Southeast Asia, after a year in which Beijing’s growing assertiveness over disputes such as the South China Sea alarmed a number of countries in the region.
Overall, military or defense spending has increased by 50 percent in Southeast Asia since 2000, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). (more…)
Tough on graft, kind of – The Diplomat
December 8th, 2010
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/12/08/asia-gets-tough-on-graft-kind-of/
Thursday marks UN Anti-Corruption Day. There’s plenty of it to be worried about, reports Simon Roughneen from Bangkok.
Despite the supposed global nature of the economic crisis, a number of countries in Asia have managed to maintain robust enough growth rates to make the whole thing feel more like a Western story. But while the resource sector in energy-hungry China and the construction sector boom of new roads and high-rise buildings across the continent suggest the region should be well on its way to slashing poverty, there’s a potentially major obstacle to continued rapid growth: these booming sectors are chronically corrupt.
Speaking at the recent International Anti-Corruption Conference in Bangkok, Prof. Paul Collier said that increased corruption could undermine the opportunity for many of the about 900 million Asians living on less than $1.25 a day to climb out of poverty. ‘Commodities and construction are the two most corrupt sectors on earth,’ said Collier, a professor at Oxford University and author of The Bottom Billion.
ASEAN sups with Chinese ‘devil’ – Asia Times
November 3rd, 2010
HANOI – China’s rise has altered the dynamics within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and across Asia, as was on display at recently concluded
US Secretary of State and Vietnamese Foreign Minister witness signing of Boeing-Vietnam Airlines deal (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
summits meetings in Hanoi. Chinese naval expansion and increasingly assertive claims to disputed maritime areas in the East and South China Seas has prompted Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others to reaffirm their enthusiasm for America’s security umbrella after some ambivalence in recent years.
Japan and India, China’s main Asian rivals, are increasingly looking to each other, and to Southeast Asia, as a hedge against China’s rise, which has taken a hard turn in recent months. Prime Ministers Naoto Kan and Manmohan Singh met after the Hanoi summits, which were overshadowed by the mud-slinging coming from the Chinese and Japanese delegations.
“Prime Minister Kan was keen to understand how India engages China,” India’s foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao said after that meeting. As well as increasing ties with Japan, India’s slow-to-action ‘Look East’ policy, which has brought the self-proclaimed world’s largest democracy into disrepute over its feting of the Myanmar junta, is likely to be enhanced in coming years, as highlighted in the statement issued after the India-ASEAN summit. (more…)
Tapping into the summit drip-feed – RTÉ World Report
October 31st, 2010
http://www.rte.ie/news/player.html?worldreport#programme=World%20Report
Hands over cameras and ‘back-off’ glares and growls made it a drip-feed for journalists in Hanoi covering the Asia-Pacific meetings over the past few days.
Hillary Clinton arrives in Hanoi for the East Asia Summit (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
There was plenty happening however, even if information was slow to come out. Stakes were high, with the US and China clashing over a number of long-running issues, such as the value of the Chinese renminbi, control of the South China Sea, North Korea, and more recently, Japan.
Arriving late to the show, American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was on the end of Chinese anger once more, with Beijing claiming she took Japan’s side in a territorial dispute over a group of islands in the East China Sea. China recently overtook Japan to become the world’s second biggest economy, behind the United States.
This comes after China and Japan clashed over Tokyo’s arrest of Chinese sea captain near the islands, which prompted street protests and threats to boycott Japanese businesses in China. Beijing then stopped exports to Japan of so-called rare earth minerals, which are vital to the production of hi-tech communications and electronic goods. China currently dominates the world market in rare earths, meaning that Japan, and other countries, may seek alternative sources.
One possibility is summit host Vietnam, which Japan says has some of the minerals underground. The Hanoi Government, like many others in southeast Asia, is doing its best to balance between the US and China. Though economically-linked to and in some ways dependent on China, Vietnam has moved closer to the US in recent months, with the former enemies now sharing naval intelligence. (more…)
Clues to a post-election Burma? – The Irrawaddy
October 5th, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=19633
The run-up to Burma’s Nov. 7 election has left observers and policy wonks wondering whether the vote will facilitate some opening-up inside the military-ruled country, despite the seemingly overwhelming bias in favor of the army and its allies.
Some clues, it could be argued, might be found in the experiences of other countries in the Southeast Asia region.
Indonesia left a long era of military dictatorship behind it in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis precipitated the collapse of the Suharto regime. Since then, the vast, multi-ethnic archipelago has undergone a largely successful—if hardly flawless—transition to being southeast Asia’s best-functioning democracy.
In 1986, soldiers refused to fire on protestors on the streets of Manila, as mass protests backed by the Catholic Church helped bring about the end of the Marcos dictatorship. During the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Burma, some views held that a similar dynamic might prevail once Buddhist monks took to the streets. Just as the armed forces of the Philippines backed down when confronted by priests and nuns, then surely the Tatmadaw would not harm the Sangha? (more…)
Two Reminders From Indonesia – ISN
August 12th, 2010
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=120027
While Indonesia has made notable strides in the twelve years since the fall of the Suharto dictatorship, radical ideology and elitist cronyism could stall further progress
It is sometimes said that Indonesia is the most important country that the world knows least about. It might be clichéd to remind that the country is “the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy”, but in truth the world’s fourth-biggest country remains little-known relative to its size.
Earlier this week came two reminders why this knowledge deficit probably needs addressing. Former Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) leader Abu Bakr Basyir was arrested on Monday for allegedly backing an al-Qaeda linked training camp in the country, with this coming after a series of terrorist-related shoot-outs and arrests in recent months. Almost simultaneously, Jim O’Neill, the economist who coined the term BRICs to categorise the large emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, said that Indonesia, along with Turkey, would likely emerge next as a major global economic player. (more…)
The China Trade-off – The Irrawaddy
February 1st, 2010
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17688
The China-Asean free trade deal is a milestone as Southeast Asian nations test the waters of economic competitiveness.
Cover of February print edition of The Irrawaddy
Almost one-third of the world’s population is covered in the China-Asean Free Trade Area (CAFTA), which came into being on Jan. 1. However, CAFTA is only the third largest free trade zone in the world, after the European Economic Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement zone (NAFTA). Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) governments hope that their economies will benefit as businesses get easier access to Chinese markets.
Most of the optimism seems to be coming from China, however, as the long-negotiated deal becomes a reality. The Chinese news agency, Xinhua, ran numerous feel-good stories talking up the merits of the new agreement, quoting officials, business people and academics in Asean states in a series of reports outlining the possible benefits of freer trade. With Chinese exports to the US and Europe down and not likely to recover anytime soon, Asean countries offer China more economic opportunity, as the more developed member-states seek to boost domestic consumption.
However, Asean was immediately put on the defensive, with Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan refuting claims that CAFTA would be detrimental to the bloc. In a press release marking the new agreement, he said, “Asean has the capacity to be the supply chain for China’s booming economy, which has been very much propelled by the gradual trade liberalization under the China-Asean FTA (Free Trade Agreement).” (more…)
Asean & Burma: Getting Beyond Spin, Addressing Substance – The Irrawaddy
October 16th, 2009
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17005
NEWS ANALYSIS
| By SIMON ROUGHNEEN |
BANGKOK — With the US announcing its Burma policy review on Sept 28, the focus now switches to the Asean summit to be held in Thailand next week. It appears that the regional bloc has been handed a golden opportunity to affect developments in Burma – by working more closely with a US that is “back” in southeast Asia - as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton remarked in Phuket in July.
The US is retaining sanctions on the Burmese regime, to the chagrin of many Asean nations, which do business with the junta and have urged an end to sanctions. However the US has started talking to the junta, the onset of what Assistant Secretary Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell regards as likely to be “a long, slow and step-by-step process.”
In his Senate testimony on Burma, Campbell referred only to “direct, senior-level dialogue with representatives of the Burmese leadership,” while mentioning consultation with the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Burmese opposition. Suu Kyi’s response was to welcome the prospect of bilateral talks, supplemented by her request that the US to “engage” with the political opposition in Burma, as well as the regime. (more…)
War Crimes: The Movie – ISN
October 8th, 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=106861
After a movie based on the deaths of five journalists at the hands of the Indonesian army in East Timor hit the screens, Australian police launched a war crimes investigation into their deaths, sparking ire in Indonesia and ambivalence in East Timor, Simon Roughneen writes for ISN Security Watch.
Looking back: history of Timor-Leste in pictures at CAVR museum in Dili (Photo: Simon Roughneen)
Almost 35 years ago, five Australia-based journalists died while reporting on the early stages of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Jakarta maintains that the men died in the crossfire as the Indonesian army fought Timorese
fighters in Balibo, which sits a few kilometers from the border separating Indonesian West Timor from the eastern half of the island, now known as Timor-Leste.
The murders made headlines recently. On 24 July, Balibo’ premiered in Melbourne, with Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta in attendance. The movie does not stick to the events of the day, digressing into a fictionalized scenario where the young Ramos-Horta accompanies another journalist, Roger East, to Balibo, to investigate the five’s disappearance. East went to Timor and, according to dozens of eyewitnesses,was shot on the Dili waterfront when the Indonesians took control of the city.
Real-time impact
The movie seems to have had some real-time impact beyond the silver screen. On 20 August, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced that it would launch a war crimes investigation into the deaths, based on 2007 recommendations by the deputy New South Wales coroner.
The coroner’s report concluded that Brian Peters, Malcolm Rennie, Gary Cunningham, Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart were shot or stabbed as they tried to surrender to the Indonesian-led troops who stormed the border town on 16 October 1975. According to the coroner, the men’s bodies were dressed in military uniforms and photographed with guns, before being incinerated in an attempt to portray them as combatants killed in a mortar attack. (more…)
