Sol W. Sanders The new year’s worldwide economic downturn has an interlocking effect: every national economy is searching to accommodate itself politically as well as economically to what looks to be an extended period of low growth. After longer or shorter periods of historically unrivaled prosperity, they are feeling for a “bottom” — a level […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Brian M. Downing, FreePressers.com One can scarcely read anything on world affairs these days without seeing discussion of the decline of the U.S. and the rise of China. In recent weeks, however, President Obama spoke plainly, bluntly, and even disparagingly to China. At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Obama chided China, […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea is playing a skillful game of funeral diplomacy and politics that’s dividing South Koreans and leaving everyone to wonder who’s doing what to whom in the corridors of power in Pyongyang. All North Korean strategists have had to do is issue a huge welcome […]
Sol W. Sanders A new era of increasing instability is opening in East Asia. The death of North Korean leader Kim Il-Jong is only adding another, if explosive, element to an already volatile equation: China enters a period of substantially slower economic growth, if not a crash, on the eve next autumn of a takeover […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — No matter which way South Korea looks, the government faces tough new/old issues with the two enormous powers that have subjected the Korean Peninsula to pain and suffering over the centuries. First, this week, the problem was with China after the skipper of a Chinese fishing […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com MINAMISOMA, Japan — The soulful notes of Silent Night wafted from an outdoor sound system on the near-empty main street to the station of this coastal city on the northern edge of the 20-kilometer “exclusion zone” around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The doleful refrain set the […]
John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — With the historic visit of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Burma, the highest profile American diplomatic contact in fifty years, the United States has entered a high stakes geopolitical chess game in Southeast Asia. Burma, a political pariah state has long been courted by China, coveted by India, […]
Sol W. Sanders Creeping up on the outer edges of Wall Street soothsayers’ economic crystal ball, until now dominated by American and Euro crises, is growing concern about China. The inane idea China [and India, which is also in trouble] would somehow rescue the world economy is now, finally, dismissed by the pundits — without […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com WASHINGTON — Call it a matter of conflicting — or colliding — messages. South Korean conservatives have forced a free-trade agreement with the United States through a fractious National Assembly. A U.S. Congress “supercommittee” has demonstrated the weakness of the American system of governance by abject, humiliating failure […]
By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Relations between Asia’s two biggest countries seem to be taking a confrontational turn on multiple fronts. On Sunday, the Japanese coast guard arrested the captain of a fishing vessel that had ventured into Japan’s territorial waters near the southwestern port of Nagasaki. While the skipper was released several days later after […]