HONG KONG (Reuters) - Workers began culling 17,000 chickens at a wholesale poultry market in Hong Kong on Wednesday after a dead chicken there tested positive for the deadly H5N1 avian virus, a government spokesman said.
The Hong Kong government also suspended imports of live chickens from mainland China and the trading of live chickens for 21 days in a bid to prevent any spread of the disease, which is normally found in birds but can jump to humans.
"We do not know if the dead chicken was imported from China or if it's a local chicken," the government spokesman said, adding that the market would be emptied of birds and thoroughly disinfected.
People do not have immunity to the H5N1 virus and researchers worry it could mutate in humans into a form that would spread around the world and kill millions of people.
Residents in the southern Chinese fishing village of Wukan say they are determined to march to the city in an ongoing dispute over land grabs.
Violent protests erupted earlier this month when their negotiator, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody.
A villager told the BBC that police have surrounded the village's waterfront and food supply is limited.
Meanwhile the local Communist Party head has lashed out at the villagers for talking to foreign reporters.
There have been simmering protests over land seizures in the village, in Guangdong province, since late September.
Residents say officials have sold off their land to developers and failed to compensate them properly. They also believe Mr Xue was killed by police - who say he died of a "sudden illness".
On Tuesday last week, the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC) held a hearing on Liu Xiaobo. While it was focused specifically on the one-year anniversary of Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize, it also sought to answer the larger question of what his treatment suggests about the potential for further reform of China's political process.
In the midst of a United States Congress increasingly of the mind that the country's historical policy of engagement with China needs to be re-evaluated, this hearing was an important attempt to address growing suspicions about the idea that engaging China will successfully bring about political liberalization.
As Congressman Christopher Smith (Republican - New Jersey) said in his opening statement, Xiaobo is currently "isolated iin prison thousands of miles away from his wife, whom is under house arrest in Beijing". While some have suggested that Xiaobo's imprisonment should be understood as somehow unique, Smith clearly believes this is not the case.
Pointing to the CECC's database, he noted that they are aware of "1,451 cases of known political or religious prisoners currently detained".
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Bernama) -- North Korea dispatched dozens of pilots to
the Vietnam War decades ago, with its communist ally short of specialists
to operate MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter jets in battles against the United
States, according to a recently released dossier.
"On 21 September 1966 an official North Korean request to be allowed to
send a North Korean Air Force regiment to help defend North Vietnam against
U.S air attacks was officially reviewed and approved by the Vietnamese
Communist Party's Central Military Party Committee, chaired by General Vo
Nguyen Giap," read the documents taken from an official People's Army of
Vietnam (PAVN) historical publication.
A tense stand-off between villagers and local authorities is continuing in southern China's Guangdong province.
A BBC reporter in Wukan says villagers held a fresh rally there on Thursday and that both police and villagers have set up checkpoints around the village.
The row - over village land taken by the local government - has been raging since September.
A local official said that the land seizures would be halted, but those inciting unrest would be punished.
Wu Zili, acting mayor of the city of Shanwei, which oversees Wukan, also promised to investigate village officials for wrongdoing, according to local media reports.
U.S. hedge fund Elliott Advisers LP is suing Vietnamese state-run shipbuilder Vinashin in the U.K. High Court,
according to a filing seen by TheWall Street Journal.
Vinashin defaulted on a $600 million syndicated loan last December, when the first repayment of $60 million
was due. Other investors in the loan, which was arranged by Credit Suisse AG in 2007, include Dublin-based
Depfa Bank PLC andMalayan Banking Bhd., as well as Credit Suisse.
The bloody dispute over diminishing fish stocks in the Yellow Sea has claimed another victim when the South Korean coastguard said one of its officers was fatally stabbed while trying to seize a Chinese fishing boat.
The killing, which prompted a diplomatic protest by Seoul, is the latest in a series of deadly clashes involving Chinese fishermen who are driven increasingly far from their own shores by the lack of stocks.
The officer was stabbed in the stomach and another injured when the Chinese crew resisted being boarded as they were fishing illegally about 55 miles (90km) from Socheong Island, the South Korean coastguard said in a statement.
A helicopter took the casualties to a hospital in Incheon, along with the Chinese boat captain, who was allegedly responsible for the stabbing and then injured in the fight, it said. The remaining eight crew members and their boat have been seized and are being taken to Incheon port, west of Seoul.
It's not like the old days in China when the top guys in the Communist Party at least pretended to be pro-equality.
Back then, "poor peasants" were encouraged to denounce and kill "rich peasants" for the crime of being too productive, too individualistic or insufficiently enthusiastic about self-sacrifice.
Today in Australia there's a mansion, overlooking Sydney Harbor, that recently sold for $32.4 million. Its new owner is Zeng Wei, 43, the son of Zeng Qinghong, once one of the most powerful men in the Chinese Communist Party.
"Nestled high on a hill," the 100-year-old mansion "boasts some of the best views in the Emerald City," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The street, Wolseley Road, was ranked the ninth most expensive in the world in a survey by Financial News."
The US has sought to reassure China that its recent diplomatic and military initiatives in Asia were not directed against Beijing.
“The US does not seek to contain China, we do not view China as an adversary,” said Michele Flournoy, US undersecretary of defence, after bilateral military talks.
The defence consultative discussions took place despite Beijing’s anger over Washington’s announcement of a $5.9bn arms deal with Taiwan in September, indicating that military dialogue between the world’s only superpower and the country often seen as its most likely future challenger had become less prone to disruption.
YANGON (Reuters) - Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi welcomed on Friday renewed U.S. engagement with Myanmar, saying she hoped it would set her long-isolated country on the road to democracy.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a final meeting with Suu Kyi as she wrapped up a landmark visit to Myanmar which saw the new civilian government pledge to forge ahead with political reforms and re-engage with the world community.
Clinton and Suu Kyi - the Nobel laureate who has come to symbolize the pro-democracy aspirations of Myanmar's people - held a private dinner on Thursday and met again on Friday at Suu Kyi's lakeside home, effectively her prison until she was released in November last year after years in detention.
"If we go forward together I'm confident there will be no turning back from the road to democracy. We are not on that road yet but we hope to get there as soon as possible with our friends," Suu Kyi said.
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar (AP) — Making a diplomatically risky trip to the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she wanted to see for herself whether new civilian leaders are truly ready to throw off 50 years of military dictatorship — a test that includes rare face-to-face meetings with former members of the junta whose brutal rule made a poor pariah state of one of the region's most resource-rich nations.
During her visit, Clinton will also encourage Myanmar, also known as Burma, to sever military and nuclear ties with North Korea.
Clinton arrived Wednesday in the capital of Naypyidaw on the first trip by a U.S. secretary of state to Myanmar in more than 50 years. She is to meet senior Myanmar officials Thursday before heading to the commercial capital of Yangon, where she will see opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is returning to the political scene after years of detention and harassment.
The Wall Street Journal Asia.
Nov 28, 2011. pg. 28
China is downshifting.
A key measure of conditions in China's manufacturing sector to be released this week could provide further evidence of deteriorating output in the world's second-largest economy. Stock markets will be focused on whether the official purchasing managers index will fall below the 50 mark that signals contraction. It registered 50.4 in October.
Expectations are already low, after a report last week from an HSBC survey of purchasing managers pointed to a fall in manufacturing output. The HSBC poll has a smaller sample than the official one and the two polls can sometimes offer differing outlooks. But markets are expecting the official reading to be similarly dour.
Signs of a slowdown are already prevalent. That comes thanks to a double whammy from fading demand abroad and weaker construction activity in China.
Asian nations - and Australia - are in the middle as these two economic giants battle for dominance.
The United States has set out more clearly how it plans to shape Asia-Pacific security and prosperity in the 21st century. The key question countries in the region must now decide is the extent to which US terms for long-term engagement with the world's fastest-growing economic zone fit with their own interests.
Before flying to Indonesia for talks in Bali with Asian leaders, US President Barack Obama summarised his approach in an address to Parliament in Canberra.
There is no parliamentary cut-and-thrust; there are no televised debates or florid, adversarial rhetoric. But China's leaders are engaged in a vigorous debate about the country's direction as they jockey for position before next year's transition of power to a new generation. And, in a rare departure from the disciplined displays of unity that characterise the communist elite, they are beginning to air their differences in public.
"The gap between people holding different opinions is pretty large. It is also evident to the public, which is very rare," said Qiu Feng, a liberal scholar from the Unirule Institute of Economics in Beijing.
"There are differing views. There were before, but they couldn't be seen easily. Now leaders have expressed them in public," said Professor Zhang Ming, of the political science department at Renmin University.
Next year, China’s leadership changes. But as Chinese scholars, experts and officials are constantly reminding me, we should not expect any sudden or major shift in government policy. The rigid structure of Chinese government means that policy decisions are locked into place before leaders get a chance to shape them. And former leaders retain positions of influence and power behind the scenes.
Xi Jinping will likely become the international face of the Communist party, but Hu Jintao will, like his predecessors, retain a powerful position within the Chinese system. World leaders will find themselves dealing with a new character, though, as a Shanghai-based scholar told me: “leaders are not that important in foreign policy formation.”
Beneath this smooth exterior, however, there are fierce debates within the party about new “interest groups” in the system. This is shorthand for the growing fractionalisation in Chinese policymaking, a result of an increasing diffusion of power throughout the country. On the face of it, China remains a one-party state ruled by a central Politburo Standing Committee of nine men, but in reality an increasing number of actors influence the decision-making process.
Now that President Obama has completed his victory lap in Asia and is safely ensconced—or is that mired?—in Washington’s political mess, the Chinese are busy recalibrating their message to the region. After watching the United States once again be voted most popular, the message from China seems to be twofold:
First, the United States is not one of us. As Tsinghua University scholar Tao Wenzhao writes in the China Daily, “East Asian countries have to face another thorny issue: How to deal with the United States in their push for regional integration. Despite being a non-Asian country and despite lying on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. has been on high vigilance against East Asian integration that in its eyes could lead to its exclusion from the region’s affairs.” Or, as Premier Wen Jiabao noted at the East Asia Summit, “East Asian countries are capable of solving the [South China Sea] dispute by themselves.”
Second, we have more money, so you should be friends with us instead (or, by the way, you’ll be sorry).
Taiwanese investor Lee Wang-chung took advantage of low land prices and cheap labour to set up his motor parts factory, but strikes, currency problems and inflation make steering a path to profit difficult
Lee Wang-chung, general director of a Taiwanese family-owned motor vehicle parts plant in Vietnam, has weathered one thing after another since the fast-growing economy started to crack in 2007.
The animated, coffee-chugging 41-year-old former salesman started the factory in 2003. That was well after the communist country opened to foreign investment in 1986 and became a cheap manufacturing alternative to China. The flood of foreign investment helped spur Vietnam’s economy to grow by about 7 per cent a year in the 1990s.
PARIS — This is the season of summits. It took European leaders several summits to hammer out a rescue package for the euro; then there was the G-20, the new ring of global power. Then President Obama hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Community meeting in Hawaii, where he was born and raised, and then attended the East Asia Summit in Indonesia, where he lived.
The symbolic value of such meetings is often overrated. But they offer an opportunity to take stock of the changes that have quietly reshaped the landscape of world power. They show how much the center of gravity of the world economy has shifted to the east, to Asia, and to what extent this has tilted the overall balance of power.
At the end of October, there was a lot of attention paid to the fact that we had crossed the 7 billion population mark. Much less attention was paid to the fact that 60 percent of these 7 billion live in Asia — 37 percent in China and India alone.
On August 10, professor Pham Minh Hoang, a french citizen, has been sentenced to 3 years imprisonment followed by 3 years of house arrest for criticizing the Vietnamese government on his blog.
The conviction of a pro-democracy activist and blogger sparked international outrage, particularly from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs.
Home > RFD News
0 Comments 
- 
