Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
You keep picking our flowers!!!
December 9, 2010
U.S.-China Tensions Intensify Over Korean Crisis
December 10, 2010
Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approx. 9:00 a.m. ET
Kim Ju-sung/AP/Yonhap South Korean Gen. Han Min-koo looks at houses destroyed by North Korea's Nov. 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. Two weeks after the attack, the rivals are still trading threats, while tensions are also rising between South Korea's ally, the U.S., and China, an ally of North Korea.
North Korea has been blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors. Last month, Pyongyang announced it had a uranium enrichment program. And, just before Thanksgiving, North Korea launched an artillery barrage on a South Korean island, killing four people, including two civilians.
David Schambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, says the incidents have heightened tension on the Korean peninsula and eroded relations between the U.S. and North Korea's traditional ally, China.
"It's an extremely serious situation and in the context of U.S.-China relations only adds further friction and tensions to an already stressful relationship," Schambaugh says.
After each incident, Washington has pressed China to intervene, but with little success. Schambaugh says there has been growing mistrust between Beijing and Washington for more than a year over a series of issues, such as human rights and currency manipulation, and the United States' good relations with Taiwan.
Ahn Young-joon/AP South Korean veterans burn a banner showing photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (center), his late father, Kim Il Sung (left), and his youngest son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, during a rally Tuesday in Seoul denouncing North Korea's bombardment of Yeonpyeong.
U.S., China Clash Over How To Handle Crisis
Meanwhile, the situation on the Korean peninsula has grown more serious after last month's attack. After the incident, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea and staged naval exercises in the region. South Korea has vowed to retaliate the next time it is attacked from the North.
The U.S., South Korea and Japan have created a united front. And as the days wear on, Beijing and Washington are exchanging barbed statements about how to handle North Korea.
Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says both sides want to defuse the Korean crisis; they just go about it in different ways. "The United States and South Korea believe that you have to deter North Korea, to demonstrate to North Korea that we are prepared to take very tough actions, military actions," he says. "To Beijing, the way to calm things down is to engage in talks, not challenge North Korea, try to just tamp it down."
Michael Green, an Asia adviser in George W. Bush's White House, says China has real fears about North Korea collapsing.
Now a senior Asia adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Green says Beijing has a legitimate worry about instability leading to a massive influx of refugees into China and destabilizing its own domestic situation.
"They also, I think, at a strategic level, have no stomach for ... unification under the South, which would put a democratic, unified nation of 75 million, aligned with the United States, right on their border," he says.
Chances Of Escalation Very Real
China has been encouraging the resumption of six-party talks involving North Korea and regional powers. But U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg says Washington sees that as simply a reward for bad behavior.
"What we've seen in the past [is] that talks for the sake of talks do not produce the kind of results that we need to see to move the Korean peninsula in a more stable and peaceful direction," he says.
Steinberg will lead an American delegation to China next week to talk with officials there about North Korea. A top Chinese envoy and North Korea's ailing leader, Kim Jong Il, met Wednesday to discuss the situation on the Korean peninsula. The talks were described as candid and in-depth.
The Brookings Institution's Lieberthal says there is no doubt that Beijing has been telling Pyongyang to stop engaging in provocations. But Lieberthal says that's no guarantee North Korea will listen.
"Pyongyang has a habit of not listening to advice if they feel pressured by China or in the past by the United States," he says. "As often as not, North Korea's response to pressure is to do the opposite of what you're asking and to escalate."
Lieberthal says the chances of escalation on the Korean peninsula are very real, in part, because Kim Jong Il is trying to arrange for his youngest son to succeed him. The younger Kim will have to show he is tough enough to take over the reins from his father.
For whatever it is worth
A Smoke Break at the Nuclear Command
We multitask chop, grill, wok, and pickle.
They are fickle, can come all hours, drunk,
after sex, before meetings, during greetings;
hucksters, gangsters, no telling who wants what
stir-fried, steamed rock cod with its head and bulbous eyes.
My father at the meat block hacks spareribs, carves bone from chicken,
mince onions, six sons chow the mein, French-fry the sausage,
whip the gravy, beat the eggs until you can fool the young
into thinking that’s sperm yanked from a calf.
Smoke signals say the pork chops are burnt,
the white sauce turning yellow and the waitresses ladle the soup.
Sounds like feeding at the zoo. Chopsticks tingle from a corner booth.
On and on motors start and stop, door open and shut, ice water
set down as menus are tossed. You need a minute? Mom is helping the girls to wash
glasses and tea pots. It would be sinful to run out of hot mustard during the rush.
My father drinks my coffee and I smoke his Marlboro,
Two cowboys in cattle drive fending off rustlers, and damn!
The waitress says that the women’s toilet has overflowed!
We are going to go fishing as soon as our mental breakdowns are over with.
And we are going to take a smoke break from the nuclear command.
Just then a party of 12 comes in – well, put two tables together,
like a man joining a woman, the yin and yang, and kids with yo-yo’s.
We are family doing family business, money for school books,
Mom’s dentures.
Koon Woon
Circa 2006
First line of defense
Missiles, Pillar of China’s military modernisation
Missiles have been a pillar of China’s military modernisation. After awesome demonstrations of American firepower, in Operation Desert Storm in the first Gulf war, and then in 1996, when the United States sailed two carrier strike groups close to Taiwan to deter Chinese aggression, China felt that it could no longer depend on sheer manpower for its defence. So it has invested heavily in the strength and technical sophistication of its missiles.
The Pentagon has described China’s programme as “the most active land-based ballistic- and cruise-missile programme in the world”. Missiles are good value. Compared with a fully equipped aircraft-carrier, which might cost $15 billion-20 billion, a missile costs about $1m. And missiles can be potent.
The chart shows how, in terms of numbers, China has concentrated on short- and medium-range missiles. This puts Taiwan within easy range of a devastating cruise- and ballistic-missile attack. Military analysts fear that the Second Artillery could retarget the missiles, putting Japan at risk, as well as America’s Asian bases. China also has a few intercontinental ballistic missiles, able to carry a nuclear payload.
And American strategists are closely watching an experimental anti-ship ballistic missile with a manoeuvrable warhead, which could make it hard for American fleets to approach the Chinese shore. China recently hinted that it may be ready to cut the number of missiles targeting Taiwan. Whether this comes to anything will depend upon relations with the island—and they can be highly unpredictable.
From The Economist
The Pentagon has described China’s programme as “the most active land-based ballistic- and cruise-missile programme in the world”. Missiles are good value. Compared with a fully equipped aircraft-carrier, which might cost $15 billion-20 billion, a missile costs about $1m. And missiles can be potent.
The chart shows how, in terms of numbers, China has concentrated on short- and medium-range missiles. This puts Taiwan within easy range of a devastating cruise- and ballistic-missile attack. Military analysts fear that the Second Artillery could retarget the missiles, putting Japan at risk, as well as America’s Asian bases. China also has a few intercontinental ballistic missiles, able to carry a nuclear payload.
And American strategists are closely watching an experimental anti-ship ballistic missile with a manoeuvrable warhead, which could make it hard for American fleets to approach the Chinese shore. China recently hinted that it may be ready to cut the number of missiles targeting Taiwan. Whether this comes to anything will depend upon relations with the island—and they can be highly unpredictable.
From The Economist
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
My limited understanding
| |  Koon Woon | 4 Mar 09 6:36 AM MST | ||
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Changming Yuan is the most published China poet in the world. He has work out from Goldfish Press -- Kinship. Kinship --- poetry by Changm...
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