Special to WorldTribune.com Japan on March 28 switched on a new radar station near disputed islands in the East China Sea that drew an instant rebuke from China. The new Japan Self-Defense Forces base is on the island of Yonaguni, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of the disputed islands known as the Senkaku islands […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Beijing seems to have all guns blazing on the diplomatic front even as what the authorities call Uighur jihadists are wrecking more havoc in and out of Xinjiang. While it has been a Chinese diplomatic principle to avoid simultaneous confrontations in both the South China Sea and the […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Gregory R. Copley, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs China — the People’s Republic of China — has been accused, as 2014 and the Year of the Horse dawn, of aggressively stepping out of its geographic constraints and seeking territorial hegemony over areas beyond those associated with Chinese sovereignty, as well as over areas […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The Japanese don’t take kindly to people telling them what they should and shouldn’t teach. “As a sovereign nation, any country should be responsible for what to teach and how to teach it,” an experienced teacher in Japan told me when asked about this textbook controversy that so […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave the Chinese leadership a much-appreciated Christmas present when he unexpectedly paid a formal visit to the Yasukuni Shrine — where 14 Class-A WWII criminals are honored — on Dec. 26. Abe’s perceived support of quasi-militaristic goals has elicited a tidal wave of […]
Sol W. Sanders There is an eerie feeling of déjà vu about the drama in the East China Sea just now. Again an authoritarian government with a rapidly expanding politicized military is making more and more aggressive noises, in large part in pursuit of its voracious appetite for energy. The U.S., hegemonic power in […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com The landslide victory won by the Shinzo Abe administration in last weekend’s parliamentary elections is unlikely to lead to a detente in Japan’s difficult relations with China. Just the opposite. While senior Chinese officials have remained reticent, the official media have zeroed in on the fact that with […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com MANILA — Japan is probing the possibilities of a most improbable alliance in a corner of Southeast Asia that once lay at the heart of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” The term “co-prosperity” was a euphemism for Imperial Japan’s policy of prospering off impoverished people from Burma […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Brian M Downing, FreePressers.com The dispute between China and Japan over the Senkakus group of uninhabited islands and barren rocks jutting up from the East China Sea has intensified in recent days. China has sent armed vessels to the island and anti-Japanese demonstrations have broken out in Chinese cities. Japan has […]