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 […]
By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com North Korea’s military has been ordered to shoot anyone crossing the border into China, even if they had reached Chinese soil. The directive was issued by Kim Jong-Il’s son and heir-apparent, Kim Jong-Un, who is seeking to tighten his grip on the populace, activists and media reports from Seoul say. It […]
Jeffrey T. Kuhner BOWING TO BEIJING: HOW BARACK OBAMA IS HASTENING AMERICA’S DECLINE AND USHERING A CENTURY OF CHINESE DOMINATION By Brett M. Decker and William C. Triplett II Regnery, $27.95, 231 pages President Obama is creating a post-American world — one that is ushering in the dominance of China. Mr. Obama is fostering U.S. economic […]
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The image of South Korea’s highly conservative, arch-capitalist President Lee Myung-Bak waving happily in a sea of little paper flags featuring a gold star in a red field was just another ceremonial photo for the Seoul media. The picture, Lee smiling as he and Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang and wife […]
By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korea’s totalitarian regime is reaching out to its suffering population for foreign currencies, gold and other valuables they might possess to help finance massive political projects marking the centennial next April of the birth of the nation’s founder, Kim Il-Sung. The North’s state banks have offered to buy […]
By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Since the mid-2000s, “authoritarian resilience” has been a fashionable theory put forward by a host of famous Western Sinologists for explaining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ability to hold on to power. The theory goes that the authoritarian regime has strengthened its proverbial “mandate of heaven” by making smart policy adaptations […]
By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, accompanied by his son and heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un, rushed to military fortresses after he heard about the bloody killing of his colleague dictator Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. The two Kims made a “surprise visit” to the People’s Army Unit No. 985, the North’s official […]
By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com The Chinese leadership is taking very seriously Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s statement that after curtailing its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington would focus more of its energy and resources on the Asia-Pacific Theatre. Panetta said in Tokyo last week that despite overall cuts in the Pentagon budget, “we are not […]
UNITED NATIONS — There’s rarely good news from North Korea. The quaintly-titled Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis, while at the same time the government is heightening political repression, and the communist rulers are vaingloriously pursuing their nuclear weapons program. Valerie Amos, the UN’s Humanitarian chief just returned from […]
Special to WorldTribune.com ABU DHABI — Kuwait has expanded its presence in China’s energy sector. The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. has reached agreement to participate in a major Chinese energy program. KPC intends to acquire 20 percent of a $9 billion energy project in China. “The partnership with one of the international oil companies will […]