Friday 19 February 2010


ASIA’S SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

Emil Salim

The Jakarta Post, February 19, 2010

Indonesia as part of Asia suffered economic crises in 1997-1998 and 2008-2009. The first crisis was severe and practically wiped out most of Indonesia’s major economic achievements.

Indonesia’s response to the crisis by tightening monetary policy and raising interest rates created a deep drop in Indonesia’s growth rate by 13 percent during 1998. Since then, Indonesia has slowly recovered from this deep crisis.

But then a second crises, originating from the US sub-prime credit system, hit the Indonesian economy in 2008. This time the road of fiscal stimulus has been followed to prevent a serious recession. Indonesia’s robust export growth, as is the case in Europe and many other economies, has been hampered by a waning US economy.

This means that economic leadership from the US is unlikely to come for years to come.

It is hence with great anxiety to discover that Japan’s GDP of US$5.1 trillion surpassed China’s GDP of $4.9 trillion in 2009. The Japanese government’s stimulus measures apparently stimulated its exports and global trade, accompanied by rising household domestic spending.

Meanwhile China’s economy grew by 8.7 percent in 2009. On the other hand, the European economy is struggling with the financial crises in Greece and a low growth performance in Germany.

Given all these projections, it can be predicted the gravity of the global economy will move to Asia with China and Japan as the major driving forces.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Thursday 18 February 2010


ECONOMIC SLUMP RAISES POVERTY THREAT IN ASIA-PACIFIC, UN SAYS

Paul Tighe

Bloomberg, February 18, 2010

The world economic crisis has pushed about 21 million people in Asia-Pacific countries into extreme poverty since the beginning of 2009, aided by a lack of social welfare programs such as unemployment benefits, the United Nations said.

The global slump stalled progress to reach the region’s anti-poverty targets for 2015 outlined under the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000 by the Group of Seven industrialized nations, the UN said in a report.

“Asia has much weaker social protection compared to other regions such as Latin America and Eastern Europe,” said Ajay Chhibber, the regional director for Asia and the Pacific for the UN Development Program and a UN assistant secretary-general. “Without better protection, people fall back into poverty with economic crises, health pandemics and natural disasters and cannot recover easily.”

More than 50 percent of people in urban and rural areas in the Asia-Pacific region live without basic sanitation and 50 percent of people in rural areas have no access to clean water, according to the UN. The financial crisis brought 17 million people into extreme poverty in 2009 and an estimated 4 million so far this year, it said.

Before the downturn, the region was on schedule to meet development targets for halving the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day and rural people without access to clean water, as well as ensuring universal access of children to primary school and gender parity in secondary education, according to the report by the UN and the Asia Development Bank.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Wednesday 17 February 2010


PUNE BLAST: ONE OF MANY TO COME?

Indrajit Basu

Asia Times, February 17, 2010

KOLKATA - Ever since the devastating terror attack on Mumbai by a group of militants in November 2008, India has been living in fear of more. Few thought it would take until February 2010 for the next strike - on Saturday a bomb ripped through a German bakery in the western Indian city of Pune, killing 10 people and injuring more than 60.

Experts fear the attack signals the beginning of a new wave. "I am more astonished by the fact that we did not have an attack in 2009. Given that India remains as vulnerable today as it was on 26/11, we were expecting a serious attack in 2009 as well," said Ajai Sahni, the founder-director of the Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management, a noted internal security think-tank.

"It was an attack on a soft target and there will be many more to come and the amazing thing is not that a local eatery was attacked; the amazing thing is that there are a dozen other soft targets that have not been attacked yet."

Sahni added that the state of Indian internal security is "deplorable". He said that while the blast in Pune had some of the tell-tale signs of a terror attack - targeting foreigners as well as Indians - that it was different. For one, he said, it was directed solely at a soft target, and it did not have a suicide element - a bomb was left in a backpack.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Monday 15 February 2010


AS OBAMA BETS ON ASIA, REGIONAL PLAYERS HEDGE

Jim Hoagland

The Washington Post, February 16, 2010

Asia forms the crossroads of success or failure for Barack Obama's grandest foreign policy designs. This impression has crystallized over a year in which the president has shown himself indifferent to Europe, sentimental and somewhat conflicted about Africa, perplexed by the Middle East and largely oblivious to Latin America.

Obama's choices about China, India, Japan and Pakistan loom at least as large as the urgent challenges of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The president has outlined the need for the United States to shed burdens abroad to help repair the badly damaged American economy. That means that Obama must settle discarded U.S. burdens -- and power -- across a range of international organizations in which Asian nations are becoming increasingly influential.

The president consigned the Group of Eight industrial countries to leadership oblivion in his recent State of the Union message, omitting any mention of it while singling out the G-20 forum of developed and developing nations. This was no oversight: His administration hopes to shift climate change negotiations out of the unmanageable U.N. format that doomed the Copenhagen summit in December and place these talks in the G-20 process, according to U.S. officials.

Asia's giants, India and China, present differing and opposed models of international cooperation. A G-20 world needs at its center a dynamic U.S.-Indian relationship to help bridge that organization's divides between haves and have-nots and their different political systems. But here in New Delhi, Indian officials increasingly fear that the Obama team does not see it that way.

(...) [artículo aquí]

THE DANGER BEHIND CHINA'S 'ME FIRST' WORLDVIEW

Robert J. Samuelson

The Washington Post, February 15, 2010

It's become apparent from recent events that America's political, business and scholarly elites have fundamentally misjudged China. Conflicts with China have multiplied. Consider: the undervalued renminbi and its effect on trade; the breakdown of global warming negotiations in Copenhagen; China's weak support of efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; its similarly poor record in pushing North Korea to relinquish its tiny atomic arsenal; the sale of U.S. weapons to Taiwan; and Google's threat to leave China rather than condone continued censorship.

The United States and China view the world in starkly different terms. The lesson of the Great Depression and World War II for Americans was that isolationism was self-defeating. Tried after World War I, it failed. The United States had to engage abroad to protect its economy and physical security. These core ideas remain the bedrock justifications for overseas military commitments and the promotion of an open world economy. The quest is for stability, not empire.

China, too, covets stability. But its history and perspective are different, as Martin Jacques shows in his masterful "When China Rules the World." Starting with the first Opium War (1839-42) -- when England insisted on importing opium from India -- China suffered a string of military defeats and humiliating treaties that gave England, France and other nations trading and political privileges. In the 20th century, China was balkanized by civil war and Japanese invasion. Not until the communists' 1949 triumph in the civil war was there again a unified national government. These experiences left legacies: fear of disorder and memory of foreign exploitation.

Since 1978, China's economy has increased roughly tenfold. The prevailing American assumption was that as China became richer, its interests and values would converge with those of the United States. China would depend increasingly on a thriving global economy. Freer domestic markets would loosen the stranglehold of the Communist Party. The United States and China would not always agree, but disputes would be manageable.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Sunday 14 February 2010


THE YEAR OF THE TIGER: THE CHINESE CENTURY
Today, China celebrates its New Year. But how much do we really know about the economic powerhouse in the east - and what lies in store for the rest of the world? Rupert Cornwell, Clifford Coonan, Hamish McRae and Greg Walton hunt down the answers

Rupert Cornwell, Clifford Coonan, Hamish McRae and Greg Walton

The Independent, February 14, 2010

The pace and extent of China's ascent among nations has been remarkable. Barely 20 years ago, it went virtually unnoticed. Today it is an economic superpower - if not (at least yet) a cultural and military one.

By every measure it is a rising power. It is now the world's second- biggest economy behind the United States, and some experts predict it will overtake the US within two decades. It has overtaken Germany to become the world's largest exporter. It holds the largest foreign-currency reserves on earth, more than $2 trillion (£1.3 trillion). Barring a collision between China's authoritarian politics and its economic liberalisation - the paradox of "Confucian capitalism" - this momentum will surely continue.

Despite its progress, China certainly has great potential weaknesses: a poor rural population and ethnic tensions, to name but two. It is also the world's greatest polluter. But its public infrastructure programme dwarfs anything in the West. In that sense especially, its centralised and authoritarian system is a source of strength, enabling decisions to be taken and vital projects to be launched without the delays that often hold up such investment elsewhere.

The West's economic travails have, if anything, made China yet more confident and assertive, and more dismissive of criticism from abroad - be it of its human rights record or its manipulation of the yuan's exchange rate. The fact is that money, not gunboats, gives huge muscle to a diplomacy whose goals are mercantilist rather than ideological. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the 21st, like the 20th, would be an "American Century". Now, for the first time in almost a millennium, a Chinese century is on the cards.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Saturday 13 February 2010


THE END OF THE BEIJING CONSENSUS
The Chinese model of authoritarian economic growth cannot survive.

Yang Yao

The Times of India, February 13, 2010

Since China began undertaking economic reforms in 1978, its economy has grown at a rate of 10 per cent a year, and its per-capita GDP is 12 times greater than it was three decades ago. Analysts attribute the country's success to its unconventional approach to economic policy - a combination of mixed ownership, basic property rights, and heavy government intervention. TIME magazine's former foreign editor, Joshua Cooper Ramo, gave it a name: the Beijing Consensus.

The term Beijing Consensus is used in reference to as well as a foil to the Washington Consensus. As the finance ministry explained, the Washington Consensus originated from a 10-point market-oriented policy prescription that the US pushed crisis-plagued South American countries to adopt in return for aid in the late 1980s. It is often described as an expansion strategy for US-style capitalism. The Beijing Consensus is summarised by several key concepts used by the Chinese government to describe its growth model, such as step-by-step economic reform, balanced development strategies and the "peaceful rise of China."

But, in fact, over the last 30 years, the Chinese economy has moved unmistakably toward the market doctrines of neoclassical economics, with an emphasis on prudent fiscal policy, economic openness, privatisation, market liberalisation, and the protection of private property. Beijing has been cautious in maintaining a balanced budget and keeping inflation down. The country is the world's second-largest recipient of foreign direct investment, and domestically, 80 per cent of its state-owned enterprises have been released to private hands or transformed into publicly listed companies.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Friday 12 February 2010


G-20 REFLECTS GROWING IMPORTANCE OF INDIA, CHINA: BARACK OBAMA

The Times of India, February 12, 2010

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has told the US Congress that the key role given to the Group of 20 (G-20) leading economies in the global financial crisis reflects the growing importance of key emerging economies such as India and China.

"Given the central role the G-20 had played in the response to the crisis, it is not surprising that the leaders agreed in Pittsburgh to make the G-20 the premier forum for their economic coordination," he said in the annual economic report of the president.

"This shift reflects a shift that was reinforced by the agreement in Pittsburgh to realign quota shares and voting weights in the IMF and World Bank to better reflect shifts in the global economy."

The 458-page document sent to the Congress on Thursday details the actions taken by Obama to prevent the economy from falling into a depression, and outlines White House's outlook and policies on areas as diverse as savings and investment, health care and climate change.

The G-20, which includes India and 18 other nations plus the European Union is composed of most of the world's largest economies, both advanced and emerging, and makes up nearly 90 percent of world's gross national product.

Turning to the global financial crisis, Obama noted that even as world GDP was estimated to have fallen roughly 1.1 percent in 2009 from the year before, "Asia continued to grow at a robust pace for the year as a whole (over 6 percent)".

[artículo aquí]

Thursday 11 February 2010


CHINA TO PUSH ASIDE JAPAN AS NO. 2 ECONOMY

Chris Isidore

CNNMoney, February 11, 2010

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- China is likely to soon overtake Japan to become the world's second largest economy, a milestone that will only fuel growing fears about the economic might of the world's largest country.

China's economy grew by 8.7% in 2009, even in the face of a global economic slowdown. Japan, which will report its full-year numbers on Feb. 14, is expected to slip behind China due to the steep decline in its economy in the first half of last year.

Both China and Japan are likely to end the year with a gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, of just over $5 trillion. To put that in context, that's only a little more than a third of the size of the U.S. economy.

But with its huge population edge on the United States, many economists believe it is inevitable that China will eventually overtake the United States -- even if it takes another 20 or 30 years.

"It's kind of like the U.S. and Great Britain 125 years ago. Given how much larger we were, it was only a matter of time before we caught them," said Jay Bryson, global economist for Wells Fargo Securities. "And it's only a matter of time before they catch us."

(...) [artículo aquí]

Wednesday 10 February 2010


CHINA REPORT SHOWS MORE POLLUTION IN WATERWAYS

Jonathan Ansfield and Keith Bradsher

The New York Times, February 10, 2010

BEIJING — China’s government on Tuesday unveiled its most detailed survey ever of the pollution plaguing the country, revealing that water pollution in 2007 was more than twice as severe as was shown in official figures that had long omitted agricultural waste.

The first national pollution census, environmentalists said, represented a small step forward for China in terms of transparency. But the results also raised serious questions about the shortcomings of China’s previous pollution data and suggested that even with limited progress in some areas, the country still had a long way to go to clean its waterways and air.

The pollution census, scheduled to be repeated in 2020, took more than two years to complete. It involved 570,000 people, and included 1.1 billion pieces of data from nearly 6 million sources of pollution, including factories, farms, homes and pollution-treatment facilities, the government announced at a news conference.

But the comprehensiveness of the survey also resulted in stark discrepancies between some of the calculations and annual figures that the government has published in the past.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Tuesday 9 February 2010


U.S. CURRENCY BELLIGERENCE MAY BE COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

China RealTime Report, February 9, 2010

It may seem like the stars are aligning for China to let its currency rise, but recent tough talk from the U.S. may make such a move less, rather than more, likely.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s talk last week of monitoring exchange-rate policies may be welcome in Washington, but counterproductive in Beijing. Rather than encourage China to let the yuan, or renminbi, rise against the U.S. dollar, Obama’s tough stance may discourage China from budging, especially when ties with the U.S. are worsening over Google, Taiwan and Tibet.

As Credit Suisse economist Tao Dong put it Friday in a research note, “movement in the RMB exchange ultimately is a political decision, and the Chinese leaders will want to avoid being seen domestically as bowing to foreign pressure.” ING Financial Markets economist Tim Condon said Thursday the government “tends to freeze economic policies when political tension increases, which we think reduces the likelihood of any move on the renminbi in the current environment of elevated US-China political tension.”

The reasons for exiting the policy of keeping the yuan steady versus the U.S. dollar–one in place since July 2008–have become more solid in the past few months: Exports rose in December from a year earlier, after dropping for 13 months, and likely rose further last month; economic growth soared above 10% in the last three months of last year; and Beijing still wants to rely more on domestic demand for growth, which an appreciation of the yuan would encourage.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Monday 8 February 2010


INDIA GROWTH MAY ACCELERATE FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2007

Kartik Goyal

Bloomberg, February 8, 2010

India’s economic growth may accelerate this year for the first time since 2007, giving Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee room to withdraw fiscal stimulus.

Asia’s third-largest economy will probably expand 7.2 percent in the year ending March 31 from a year earlier after growing 6.7 percent in the previous 12 months, the Central Statistical Organisation said in a statement in New Delhi today.

Mukherjee is under pressure from the central bank to raise taxes in the budget on Feb. 26 to check inflation in the world’s fastest-growing major economy after China. Companies including Hero Honda Motors Ltd., India’s biggest motorcycle maker, and Videocon Industries Ltd., a refrigerator maker, resist removal of tax support, saying demand hasn’t strengthened sufficiently.

“Stimulus measures should continue,” said Ravi Sud, chief financial officer at Hero Honda. “My sense is that the finance minister may partially withdraw stimulus as inflation and fiscal deficit become prime concerns.”

Manufacturing output may rise 8.9 percent in the year through March after a 3.2 percent gain in the previous year, according to today’s report. Banking and insurance services may grow 9.9 percent, mining may gain 8.7 percent while electricity production will probably rise 8.2 percent, the report showed. Farm output may decline 0.2 percent.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Sunday 7 February 2010


DAZZLED BY ASIA
When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.

Joshua Kurlantzick

The Boston Globe, February 7, 2010

During his trip to Asia in November, Barack Obama seemed strangely mute. Unlike Bill Clinton, who criticized China’s human rights record in front of then-president Jiang Zemin, Obama largely avoided the topic of rights. In Singapore, despite pressure from human rights activists, the president deferred to pressure to not release a statement calling for the freeing of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Japan, the president worked valiantly to massage local sentiments, bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito - and drawing flak back in the United States from conservative critics for appearing weak.

More than any recent American president, Obama displayed deep deference to his Asian counterparts. He did so, in part, because, like many Americans, he has become convinced that this will be Asia’s century, and that the United States must begin to accommodate itself to this stark new geopolitical fact. A recent report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the world is witnessing the rise of “major global players similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century...[and they] will transform the geopolitical landscape.” Major media outlets covered the president as if he was some kind of Dickensian vagrant, appealing to his increasingly powerful creditors in China for leniency. “Obama’s trip reveals a relationship with a strangely lopsided quality to it,” wrote longtime China specialist Jonathan Fenby, in one typical example of the coverage.

Over the past two years, some of the most important foreign policy thinkers have chronicled America’s decline, and argued that Asia is rising to preeminence. Parag Khanna’s “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order” landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, while Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World” became a bestseller. Meanwhile, the influential former Singaporean ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, who helped spark the “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, released “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.” Martin Jacques, a prominent columnist for The Guardian, took the idea one step further. In his book “When China Rules the World,” he contends that China’s rise will have a greater impact on the globe than the emergence of the United States as an international power in the 20th century.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Saturday 6 February 2010


CHINESE FM HIGHLIGHTS ROLE OF "A CHANGING CHINA IN A CHANGING WORLD"

Ban Wei, Zhang Wei

Xinhua, February 6, 2010

MUNICH, Germany, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi delivered a major foreign policy speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, saying that while focusing on its own peaceful development, China is undertaking more international responsibilities in a transforming and closely-linked world.

Addressing the Munich gathering of senior diplomats and security officials, Yang said that it is a strategic choice that China has made to "seek a peaceful international environment to develop ourselves and at the same time contribute to the cause of world peace through our own development."

Stressing that China is committed to a path of peaceful development, Yang said that a more developed China is an opportunity rather than a threat to the world.

"The argument that a strong nation is bound to seek hegemony finds no supporting case in China's history and goes against the will of the Chinese people," he said.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Friday 5 February 2010


N.KOREA PURGES PARTY, MILITARY

The Chosun Ilbo, February 5, 2010

The North Korean regime is purging senior military and party officials. In the Workers' Party, the heads of the financial and economic sections have been sacked over the disastrous currency reform and international sanctions, and in the military, officers in their 70s and 80s from the era of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung are making way for younger military leaders in their 50s and 60s.

Party Purges
In the Workers' Party, three key economic figures have been replaced. Finance Director Pak Nami-gi was apparently axed on Jan 20, taking the fall for the failed currency revaluation late last year. "Room 39" bureau director Kim Tong-un was recently replaced by his deputy Jon Il-chun after having managed the regime's secret coffers for 36 years. A source says that Kim Tong-un was replaced because he was put under a personal travel ban by the EU in December last year and it was difficult for him to manage overseas funds for the North Korean leader.

Han Kwang-sang was apparently promoted from first deputy of the finance and accounting department to head, which has been vacant for a long time. The department is in charge of managing party funds. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il last month tapped Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il, who is familiar with Chinese affairs and served as the chief negotiator to the six-way nuclear talks, as the head of the party's department for international affairs. An intelligence officer in Seoul says the appointment of Kim Yong-il is likely related to the international sanctions, which were imposed after the North conducted its second nuclear test.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Thursday 4 February 2010


CHINA AND THE U.S.: TOO BIG TO FAIL

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Time, February 4, 2010

Beijing has fervently denounced U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to sell more arms to Taiwan, and loudly demanded that he break his coming date with the Dalai Lama. Is this proof that China-U.S. relations have entered a radically new and deeply worrisome phase?

It's tempting to see it that way. There has been much talk of China ruling the world and the clash of civilizations this would prompt. Much has been made of the notion that Chinese leaders have been showing an unexpected cockiness vis-à-vis the U.S. of late, tightly controlling what Obama did when in China, refusing to follow American leads in Copenhagen and then lambasting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for criticizing Beijing in a Jan. 21 speech on Internet freedom. But it's a temptation worth resisting.

China's long, slow return to great-power status is of historic importance and something that will lead to recalibrations of many diplomatic relationships, including that between Washington and Beijing. But as foolish as it would be to ignore this, it's equally foolish to see too much novelty in headline-grabbing stories that fit neatly within established patterns. Chinese officials have expressed outrage before about meetings between foreign leaders and the Dalai Lama. And the Taiwan arms tale follows an even more familiar script. There's nothing new about a U.S. Administration announcing, as Obama's just did, that it's going to sell military hardware to Taiwan. Nor is there anything new about Beijing treating this announcement as proof that the U.S. lacks respect for Chinese sovereignty and for the principles of the "one China" policy that, since the 1970s, has provided the groundwork for relations between the two.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Wednesday 3 February 2010


2009: WAS IT A VERY GOOD YEAR FOR THE ECONOMY?

ChinaRealTimeReport, February 3, 2009

More like a very strange one. New figures from the National Bureau of Statistics detail just how unusual the composition of China’s world-beating economic growth was last year.

Hit by the collapse in global demand and world trade, China’s exports fell outright in 2009 for the first time in more than two decades. As a result, the NBS says, net exports subtracted 3.9 percentage points from overall economic growth – the first time since 1993 that trade has been a drag on growth.

Given that the final GDP growth rate was 8.7%, that means the domestic part of the economy expanded 12.6% — the fastest growth in consumption and investment since, again, 1993. (China’s economy was smaller and much more volatile then, and the statistics are considered less reliable than for more recent years.)

That figure that goes some way to explaining why so many people are now worried about overheating in China: the domestic growth rate is well above the average in recent years of around 9%. It of course reflects the enormous stimulus effort the government unleashed to help counter the contraction in the export sector.

That surge in bank lending and public-works spending boosted investment to a nearly unprecedented degree: the NBS says capital formation contributed 92.3% of China’s economic growth in 2009, or 8 percentage points of the 8.7% overall growth rate. Final consumption contributed 4.6 percentage points.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Tuesday 2 February 2010


WHY DO THE CHINESE SAVE SO MUCH?

Shang-Jin Wei

Forbes, February 2, 2010

Much attention has been directed toward China's high savings rate. Not only is the savings rate disproportionately high compared to virtually any other country, but it directly impacts China's current account surplus and the U.S. consumer deficit. When national savings exceeds investment, the excess savings shows up in China's current account surplus.

Given its far-reaching effects, both private sector analysts and policy makers have attempted to trace the causes of China's high savings rate and to predict how long it will last. Some have attributed the savings primarily to Chinese corporations rather than households. Others point to a precautionary savings motive: because Chinese people are worried about costs of healthcare, education and old-age pensions and are unsure about how much these costs might change over time, they respond by saving more. Other explanations point to habit formation or financial development.

But these explanations do not tell the whole story, and possibly are not the most important part of the story. For example, while the Chinese corporate savings rate is high, there are similar patterns in other countries. By contrast, the high Chinese household savings rate has no peer among major economies. In my recent research with Xiaobo Zhang, we hypothesized that one important social phenomenon is the primary driver of the high savings rate. For the last few decades China has experienced a significant imbalance between the number of male and female children born to its citizens.

There are approximately 122 boys born for every 100 girls today, a ratio that translates into cutting about one in five Chinese men out of the marriage market when this generation of children grows up. A variety of factors conspire to produce the imbalance. For one, Chinese parents often prefer sons. The availability of ultrasound makes it easy for parents to detect the gender of a fetus and abort the child that's not the "right" sex for them.

(...) [artículo aquí]

Monday 1 February 2010


CHINA, IRAN PROMPT U.S. AIR-SEA BATTLE PLAN IN STRATEGY REVIEW

Viola Gienger and Tony Capaccio

Bloomberg, February 1, 2010

The U.S. military is drawing up a new air-sea battle plan in response to threats such as China’s persistent military build-up and Iran’s possession of advanced weapons, according to the Pentagon’s latest strategy review.

The Air Force and Navy are seeking more effective ways of ensuring continued access to the western Pacific and countering potential threats to American bases and personnel, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review to be released later today.

The joint Air Force-Navy plan would combine the strengths of each service to conduct long-range strikes that could utilize a new generation of bombers, a new cruise missile and drones launched from aircraft carriers. The Navy also is increasing funding to develop an unmanned underwater vehicle, according to the report.

The battle plan is among a range of new initiatives outlined in the review, which is conducted every four years to revise U.S. military strategy for the coming decade or more. The new report places top priority on the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq and against terrorist threats elsewhere, while also preparing for future threats.

“This is truly a wartime QDR,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a cover letter for the report. “For the first time, it places the current conflicts at the top of our budgeting, policy and program priorities.”

(...) [artículo aquí]