Kan's resignation saves pension 'reform'

The leader of Japan's largest opposition party, Naoto Kan, resigned this week over his non-payment of state pension contirbutions, effectively a form of tax-evasion. The contributions are deducted directly from the salary of most ordinary people, but some people, including the self-employed and politicians, have to make the payments themsleves. And a lot of politicians somehow forgot, including about half of the current cabinet and Kan, the leader of the opposition.
Kan's resignation followed that of Yasuo Fukuda, chief cabinet secretary - Peter Mandleson to prime minister Koizumi's Tony Blair, as it were. (American readers can compare him to Karl Rove instead). There has been much discussion about how this move by the ruling LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) forced Kan's hand, and even more about the succession in the opposition DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan). But the real story appears to be the way that Kan's resignation has drawn bad publicity away from the pension reform bill which the LDP and DPJ leaderships have been pushing and which has subsequently been passed by the lower house of the Japanese Diet (parliament).
According to an Asia Times report:

Even the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper offered Kan some backhanded praise in an editorial that noted that his resignation "has fulfilled his obligation" as signatory to a three-party accord as signed just before Fukuda announced his resignation last Friday.

The LDP and the DPJ agreed... to review the pension system by 2007 with an aim to unify all the public pension plans sometime in the future.

"His [Kan's] resignation prevented the agreement from becoming just a scrap of paper," the [Yomiuri Shimbun] newspaper said.

The actual package of pension bills on Tuesday in the Lower House was passed by a majority vote, with all votes along strict party lines. A final vote in the Upper House is expected the before the end of the current session on June 16.

For the public, the pension-reform bills consisted mainly of a plan to raise the premiums for mandatory national pensions operated by the government. By the year 2017, the monthly premiums will be raised from the current 13,300 yen (US$117) per month to a ceiling of 16,900 yen in 2017.

The reasoning is that money is needed to support the growing number of old people in Japan. But at same time, other legislation will lower the pension benefits paid by the government.

It should be noted that this is still basically the same premium-payment system into which some 40 percent of the pension payers, including elected members of parliament, resoundingly have chosen to evade paying. The bills will provide for tighter collection methods to be put in place.

In other words, the main opposition has colluded with the ruling party - to the rather extreme extent of the resignation of its leader - to lower pension payouts and increase payments. It is hardly surprising to see Japanese elites closing ranks like this - but it is appalling that they will get away with such radical action against the poor just when the Japanese economy is recovering, with - for example - Toyota posting profits of ¥1 trillion.

South Korea to delay troop deployment to Iraq by at least a month

South Korea - like Japan - has been under intense pressure from the US to send troops to Iraq. The South Korean government promised in November to send 3,600 troops by June adding to the 400 Korean medics and engineers who are already there. Now their despatch is being delayed, according to a report by ABC Radio Australia News. The announcement of the delay follows the recent publicity about US and UK torture of Iraqi prisoners, the increase in armed resistance in Iraq, the kidnapping of several East Asians in Iraq, including two South Korean missionaries, and the recent election in Korea with large gains for centrist and left-wing parties.
There has been a great deal of protest in South Korea against sending troops to Iraq, with thousands of people on the streets. (See this Green Left Weekly article about protest around Rumsfeld's visit at the end of 2003.) Compare this with Japan, where around half the population opposes sending troops to Iraq and there have been demonstrations of hundreds of people, large by recent Japanese standards, but not enough to rattle Japanese elites. There are already around 1000 Japanese troops in Iraq.

Arrests for fake milk in China

The BBC reports that 46 people have been arrested in connection with the fake baby milk scandal in China. The fake milk has no nutritional value and has lead to the deaths of tens of babies at least:

'Local press reports say more than 50 babies died there after being fed fake milk powder with no nutritional value.
The local authorities had known of the complaints for almost a year, but took no action until the scandal was publicised on national television. ...
Investigators found almost 30 factories producing the bogus product, according to Xinhua [the Chinese government news agency].
More horrifying stories have emerged in recent weeks, of industrial salt and pesticides containing cancer-causing ingredients being used in preserved vegetables and noodles.'

The British invasion of Tibet, 1904

There's a new book out, Duel in the Snows: The True Story of the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa, by Allen, Charles about the 1904 British invasion of Tibet.
From the summary on the Free Tibet website, the invasion seems to have been a typical British imperial operation, motivated partly by geo-political rivalry with Russia, partly by the greed and adventurism of the officers involved, and started on the pretext of 'a trivial border incident involving some Nepalese yak-herders [which was] declared by [Lord] Curzon [Viceroy of India] to be [an] 'overt act of hostility' on the part of the Tibetans'. It involved the usual crimes, including a battle that turned into a massacre at Chumik Shenko, looting of religious artifacts (now in the British Museum, naturally), violence and death-threats to prisoners, and negotiations in bad faith, designed to break down so that further military advances could be made with reinforcements called up.
Colonel Francis Younghusband, leader of the British forces, put into the peace treaty an article 'requiring the Tibetans to pay an indemnity of half a million pounds over 75 years, during which time the Chumbi Valley was to be occupied by Britain, and a 'separate agreement' giving the British Trade Agent to be based at Gyantse the right to visit Lhasa for consultations. These two clauses were inserted by Younghusband in defiance of orders, and concealed from his Government until the Treaty had been signed. They were immediately repudiated and Younghusband was ordered to stay on and renegotiate the treaty, which order he ignored.'
Naturally Younghusband got a hero's welcome when he got back to England: 'lauded by the British press, received in private audience by the King, greeted with rapturous applause when he lectured at the Royal Geographical Society in London and at the Scottish Royal Geographical Society in Edinburgh. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Edinburgh, Bristol and Cambridge.'
The expedition's local expert, Dr. Waddell, was equally culpable, carrying out the looting, beating and death-threats mentioned earlier, perhaps unsurprisingly given his low opinion of Tibetan culture: he wrote a book arguing that Tibetan Buddhism was a perverted form of the religion.

Demonstrations during Wen Jiabou's visit to UK

There were 50 (according to Bloomberg) to 150 protestors (according to the Scotsman) from Falun Gong and Free Tibet groups outside the Chinese emmbassy in London yesterday. I had heard that there would also be Taiwanese independence activists, but if they were there, they were missed by the press.
The Bloomberg story quotes a Free Tibet spokesman who points out that 2004 is the centenary of Britain's invasion of Tibet. There's a page about their campaign for an apology from the UK government on their site.

China threatens to lock down its position on Taiwan independence

Wen Jiabao said yesterday that he would consider legislation to define Taiwanese independence and mandate steps against it. The point seems to be to adopt the standard - but dangerous - negotiating position of a line in the sand which your opponent must not cross, a form of ultimatum, or non-negotiable position.
Specifically, the aim must be to prevent the DPP administration from putting certain changes to the Taiwanese constitution in the referendum which is planned for 2006, as suggested by Reuters, elaborating on the China Daily report. I'm not sure what wording exactly is at stake.

Chinese Kremlinologists will presumably be interested in the way the proposal was put forward - by one Shan Sheng, apparently a member of the Chinese community in the UK, at a meeting with Wen Jiabou, who is visiting.

Welcome: aims and inspirations

Welcome to 'Learning without discrimination'. This is the first post.
This blog is intended as a personal collection of links to news items, articles and other resources on East Asia, particularly ones that deal with East Asian politics. I will also make comments on East Asian current affairs from my point of view, which is anti-authoritarian, internationalist and egalitarian, I think, although readers can judge that for themselves. Therefore this site is somewhat political, but not party political: I am not affiliated to any political party.
I don't intend to try to make this blog a comprehensive source for East Asian news, just a selection of things that seem important to me. One consequence of this selection procedure is that there's probably going to be a lot of bad news on the site, partly as a way for me to let off steam about things which I find outrageous, and partly motivated by the truism that it is impossible to do anything about something unless you know it is happening, so that letting people know is a necessary first step to improving things. I'll also try to post good news, particularly about activist groups such as peace, environmental and immigrant worker movements in the region, although given that these movements struggle against the interests of powerful elites, news about them will include setbacks and failures as well as successes.
This site takes East Asia to include the mainland areas of China, Mongolia and the Russian far east, the Korean peninsula and the islands from the Kamchatka peninsula south through Japan and Okinawa to Taiwan and Hong Kong. I will post items about the neighbouring regions - Central Asia, South-East Asia and Pacific islands - as they seem to bear on East Asia proper.
The coverage is limited to East Asian affairs because of my interest in the region, but also in the belief that the region is integrated and becoming more so, making it worthwhile to consider events in the region together, despite the inevitable distortions that come with any focus on a scale smaller than the whole of everything.
This blog is the successor to a one-off email briefing that I sent out at the end of last year. I want to thank everyone who responded to that email, but particularly Alex Higgins, who inspired that email and the current move to a blog.

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For the sake of completeness, I reproduce the email briefing below:

East Asia report

An occasional round-up of news about East Asia, particularly politics and activism.

In the first one:
This weekend saw the deaths of South Korean workers and Japanese diplomats in Iraq. What were they doing there? And are those countries sending troops to Iraq?


Two South Korean electricians died in an ambush in Iraq today, near Tikrit, and a third is in a critical condition. They were employees of a South Korean firm, Omu Electric Company, working on a subcontract for Delta, a U.S. firm.

Yesterday two Japanese diplomats and their driver were killed in similar circumstances, also near Tikrit. In a way this is no surprise: a recent increase in death and mayhem has also seen the first killing of Spanish and Italian troops and a civilian Colombian contractor. At least 104 occupying troops, including at least 75 US soldiers died in November: more than in any previous month of the Iraq invasion or occupation, including April or May, during the war itself. (In a moment of horrific dark comedy, the US military commander in Iraq, Lt-Gen Ricardo Sanchez, tried to put a positive gloss on this by pointing out that the _number_ of attacks was down on previous months, failing to draw the obvious conclusion that more deaths from fewer attacks means that his opponents are getting more efficient at the bloody business specialised in by soldiers everywhere.)

So the deaths of Japanese and South Koreans in Iraq were bound to come sooner or later. It's worth asking - along with many people in Japan and South Korea - what they were doing there at all. The US has put immense pressure on both countries to send soldiers to Iraq, with both Bush and Rumsfeld visiting East Asia in recent weeks to push the message home.


Some 675 Korean soldiers were sent to Iraq in May. They are mainly engineers and other non-combat troops. In addition, South Korea has promised to send 3,000 combat troops, considerably fewer than the 10,000 that the US has asked for. Public opinion in Korea is overwhelmingly against sending personnel to Iraq and there have been large and vocal demonstrations in Seoul and elsewhere, coinciding with massive labour unrest (triggered by government anti-union policy, but sympathetic with the anti-war campaign).

Arguably the South Korean administration has little choice about complying with US demands: although the days of US-imposed military dictatorship are over and the current head of government Roh Moo-hyun is an ex-dissident and human-rights lawyer (imprisoned in the 1980s by the military government) South Korea is still close to being a US client state, with nearly 40,000 US troops stationed there.

Most South Koreans want the US to withdraw from the Korean peninsula, partly because US troops are often badly disciplined and - not being subject to Korean law - may literally get away with murder. There is also considerable awareness and resentment about US policy towards North Korea - that is, roughly, to impose sanctions, block reconciliation between North and South and renege on treaty agreements with the North while complaining loudly that the North has breached the same agreements. Any resemblance to US policy on Iraq in the 1990s is purely non-coincidental. As with Iraq, the US is quite prepared for Koreans to pay the costs of this policy which tends to keep apparently crazy dictator Kim Jong-Il in place while large numbers of North Koreans starve.
The continuation of Kim's regime in the North means South Koreans have to put up with the huge US force 'for their own good' and the US gets to keep its grip on a strategically important location between China, Japan and Russia.

It is not clear what the current South Korean government thinks of the US troops in Korea, but it is clear that they do not want to send their own soldiers to die for the US in Iraq. The irony that Donald Rumsfeld was asking for spare troops in a country which puts up with tens of thousands of US soldiers must have occurred to him and to Roh Moo-Hyun, but I rather doubt they discussed it.


Japan also has a surfeit of US troops - around 60,000 - but the situation there is different. The Koizumi administration is genuinely enthusiastic about sending Japanese troops abroad, but the constitution forbids sending Japanese 'Self-Defence Force' personnel to areas where there is armed combat. Actually, it forbids Japan from officially having an army, navy or air-force, hence their deceptively peaceful name.

The Japanese constitution was written under US supervision after WWII and the US has been regretting the provisions against Japanese rearmament ever since the 1950s when they wanted Japan to contribute to the fighting in Korea, instead of making a huge profit out of supplying the US forces there. Again, Koizumi and Rumsfeld must have been aware of the irony of all of this, but again, I doubt it came up in their meeting. In fact the situation is more ironic still - Koizumi is a nationalist who would like to remilitarise Japan, like most others in his party, the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party, or Jiminto), which is basically several gangs of corrupt businessmen in direct line of descent from the war criminals who ran Japan during WWII. The required changes in the constitution have been prevented for fifty years by considerable public pressure, which has stiffened the spine of social-democratic and Buddhist parties in parliament, denying the LDP the two-thirds majority they would need.

In the past the Japanese public actively fought against remilitarisation. In 1959-60 general strikes and huge street battles between protesters and police backed by gangsters followed an attempt by Prime Minister Kishi (a Class A war criminal) to ratify a changed US-Japan Security Treaty. At one point 15,000 protesters entered the parliament building. After waves of strikes, US President Eisenhower had to be asked by Kishi to cancel his official visit to Japan.

No demonstrations on that scale have occurred since the LDP violently crushed the student movement and militant unions at the end of the sixties, but most people remain opposed to Japanese remilitarisation. The main parliamentary opposition party at the moment, the Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto), is far from left-wing, but seeing the LDP stuck between US demands, public opinion and nationalist desires, it has made the most of the situation by opposing deployment of troops to Iraq. It may not be a coincidence that the DPJ made large gains in the general election last month.

The LDP has responded by trying to distance itself from the decision to send troops. It has sent a fact-finding mission to investigate the situation in Iraq; conveniently, a preliminary report has stated that the southern area where Japanese troops would be sent is largely peaceful. But public opinion was hardened against deployment by the deaths of Italian soldiers two weeks ago. The killings this weekend, including the Japanese diplomats who may have been part of the fact-finding mission, will make it very hard for Koizumi's government to go ahead with deployment.

Perhaps in the end Japan will not send soldiers, appeasing the US instead with a token presence and a cash payment as they did after the Gulf War of 1991 when they provided minesweepers and $13 billion, a large percentage of the cost of the war. Koizumi has already pledged $5 billion this time, under considerable duress - the announcement was made during Bush's visit to Japan. Much of the Japanese elite as well as the public was opposed to the payment in 1992. It is unlikely that they will be any happier this time.

Neither Japan nor South Korea has much room to manoeuvre out of sending soldiers. A number of commentators have speculated that part of the deal with the US is that in return for their support in Iraq the US will not launch an attack on North Korea. Elites and the public in both countries view the possibility of such an attack with horror, whereas parts of the US elite see it as more desirable than the containment and starvation policy currently practised. (Parallels with Iraq are too obvious to be worth addressing.)

This enthusiasm is present on the right wing of the Republican party, but also among Democrats: the Clinton administration was very close to launching an attack in 1994, according to a 2002 article in the Washington Post by Clinton's Defense Secretary William Perry and Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. They wrote that they “spent much of the first half of 1994 preparing for war on the Korean peninsula.” They “readied a detailed plan to attack the Yongbyon [nuclear power] facility with precision-guided bombs." They expected North Korea to "lash out" if the US attacked. "In the event of a North Korean attack,” they said, “U.S. forces, working side by side with the South Korean army and using bases in Japan, would quickly destroy the North Korean army and the North Korean regime. But unlike Desert Storm, which was waged in the Arabian Desert, the combat in another Korean War would take place in Seoul’s crowded suburbs.”

It appears that the attack was averted by pressure on the Clinton administration from the South Korean government (and probably the Japanese and Chinese) plus concessions from the North Koreans. It is a brink that the South Korean and Japanese governments do not want to revisit; complying with the US 'request' to send troops to Iraq may be partly motivated by a desire to avoid a US war closer to home.

Only one group of people is happy. Extreme nationalists in Japan, who ride around the streets in armoured trucks playing ear-splittingly loud military music, are enthusiastic about exporting Japanese troops to Iraq and the possibility of the US attacking North Korea (which they see as part of a Greater Japan). Traditionally they have hated the US, blaming it for Japan's defeat in the Pacific War and the democratic, pacifist constitution it imposed afterwards. But during the Bush visit, Pierre Pariseau writes, "several buses welcomed George last month by blasting the US national anthem around his embassy compound while roaring their aversion to North Korea."