ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Obama and nearly all the leaders at an Asian summit directly confronted China on Saturday for its expansive claims to the resource-rich South China Sea, putting the Chinese premier on the defensive in the long-festering dispute, according to Obama administration officials.
Premier Wen Jiabao was by turns “grouchy” and constructive as he responded to the concerns aired by almost all of the leaders attending the East Asia Summit, said one of the administration officials, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as Mr. Obama returned from an eight-day diplomatic swing around the Pacific Rim.
The meeting, at the end of the summit, capped a week during which Mr. Obama moved quickly, and on several fronts, to restore the influence of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region after years of preoccupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. He announced that 2,500 Marines would be stationed in Australia; opened the door to restored ties with Myanmar, a Chinese ally; and gained support for a regional free-trade bloc that so far omits Beijing.
BALI, Indonesia — Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s most prominent democracy campaigner, announced on Friday that she would rejoin the political system of the military-backed government that persecuted her for more than two decades.
Her announcement came shortly after President Obama disclosed that he was sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on a visit there next month, the first by a secretary of state in more than 50 years.
The twin events underscored the remarkable and sudden pace of change in Myanmar, which has stunned observers inside and outside the country. The changes followed a transfer of power this year from a military junta to a nominally civilian government.
The re-entry of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi and her party into formal politics, by joining in an upcoming special parliamentary election, was seen as a milestone in reconciliation efforts between the military leadership and the country’s democracy movement whose members were jailed and repressed during years of authoritarian rule. The party’s decision was unanimous, according to a statement.
Beijing is caught in a diplomatic bear trap of its own making. After trying to bully the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) into not discussing disputes over the South China Sea at a summit this weekend in Bali, the territorial dispute is becoming the meeting's focus.
The trouble proceeds from China's opening position: Its claim to "indisputable" sovereignty over 90% of the South China Sea. In reality, Beijing wants to gain maximum access to fish stocks and hydrocarbons through bilateral negotiations with each of the other four claimants. To increase its leverage, it has threatened international oil firms that signed South China Sea deals with Asean countries with the loss of business inside China. The People's Liberation Army has also harassed ships on the high seas.
As the rising economic and military power, Beijing seems to believe it holds most of the cards and will hold more as time goes on. But even great powers soon find that overreaching is costly. China's assertion that the South China Sea is its "historical waters" is not based on any accepted concept of international law.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Friday a major new diplomatic initiative responding to positive changes in Burma, saying he is sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there next month.
Just hours before he attended the annual U.S. - ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) summit in Bali ahead of the East Asia leaders summit, President Obama came to the microphones to announce the major initiative.
While flying to Bali on Air Force One, he said he had spoken with Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi - the first conversation they have had.
Obama said they reviewed progress in Burma, where the government -- though still heavily influenced by the military -- has begun opening the country and loosening restrictions.
BEIJING (AP) — While Beijing's public response to President Barack Obama's more muscular China policy has been muted, behind the scenes the U.S. president's sudden moves to contest rising Chinese power are setting the capital on edge.
During his ongoing nine-day swing through the Asia-Pacific region, Obama has already unveiled a plan for an expanded U.S. Marines presence in Australia, advocated a new free-trade area that leaves China out, and called on Beijing not to buck the current world order.
The Beijing government is trying to understand the shift, tasking academic experts to review the initiatives and submit options on how to respond.
U.S. and Vietnamese officials will be meeting this week to discuss how to take the relationship between the two countries “to the next level” and move forward on a strategic bilateral partnership, the president of Vietnam said at the East-West Center.
“We work very well on defense and security cooperation,” said Truong Tan Sang, in Honolulu for the APEC leaders meeting. “Vietnam views the U.S. as a very important partner. If we cooperate, it meets the interest of both countries and brings peace” to the region.
Officials in the United States and Vietnam “want to take the relationship to the next level and move forward on this strategic partnership,” Sang said.
Leaders of the 21 economies that belong to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) are gathering in Honolulu, Hawaii, this week.
HANOI (Reuters) - After four years of economic instability, Vietnam is embarking on reforms some believe could be its most significant since steps started in 1986 that ended stifling central planning and, eventually, turned the war-torn country into a tiger.
However, there's substantial skepticism that policymakers can fend off resistance to major change from state-owned companies and other interest groups, including private conglomerates, whose influence has surged.
Months of heated discussion have produced a consensus that Vietnam, wracked by Asia's worst inflation and other woes, needs to change tack, as it did 25 years ago when the "Doi Moi" (renovation) policy took flight.
"It's not just talk anymore. This is serious business now," Vice Minister of Planning and Investment Dang Huy Dong told Reuters. "We've gone through careful analysis, painful analysis, to see where the shortcomings are and areas for improvement."
Aung San Suu Kyi has given cautious backing to the process of reform that appears to be under way in Burma.
In a speech to mark a year since her release from house arrest, Ms Suu Kyi called for determination and daring to maintain progress.
But the pro-democracy leader warned against any sense of complacency.
Her comments come amid growing expectation that another group of political prisoners could soon be set free.
'Faith and daring'
In a wide-ranging speech to journalists in Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi refused to say categorically whether Burma was now firmly on the road to democracy.
But she said: "I think we are looking at the road and we need faith and daring to proceed along this path."
The Pentagon should spare AirSea Battle from cuts. The military concept is America's best chance of ensuring peace and stability in the Western Pacific.
By Andrew F. Krepinevich
November 9, 2011
After more than a decade of steady increases, the Pentagon has been directed to reduce its projected funding by nearly $500 billion over the next decade as part of a larger effort to restore the country's economic foundation. Additional cuts — in the hundreds of billions of dollars — may be imposed pending the recommendations of the congressional "super committee" tasked with identifying more than $1 trillion in federal spending cuts.
As Lord Rutherford famously observed when his laboratory faced bankruptcy: "Gentlemen, we are out of money. We'll have to think." So too the Pentagon. The Obama administration has declared that allocating cuts of this magnitude must be informed by thinking — that is, they must be "strategy driven," to ensure that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively. Toward this end the Pentagon has established a group to identify the major strategic choices confronting the United States over the next decade.
TAIPEI, Taiwan - A Vietnam Maritime Police vessel rammed a China Maritime Surveillance vessel within the past six months. Exactly where the incident ensued is unknown, but given the fact that it was a "police" vessel points to the likelihood it was within Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Sources in the region indicate that if it occurred after the July 20 agreement for the Declaration of Conduct guidelines for South China Sea claimant countries or after the Oct. 11 China-Vietnam agreement on basic principles to settle sea issues, it then raises questions on which country is in violation.
However, Vietnam is clearly the aggressor in the video, and the video demonstrates that the Vietnamese vessel violates safety of navigation and international regulations preventing collisions at sea.
The beating and arrest of at least 30 peaceful Falun Gong demonstrators yesterday outside the Chinese embassy in Hanoi is an unacceptable violation of freedom of expression, Amnesty International said today.
The demonstrators were protesting the trial and mistreatment of two local Falun Gong broadcasters, Vu Duc Trung and Le Van Thanh, who had worked for the movement’s radio station The Sound of Hope. The trial of Vu and Le is due to take place on Thursday.
“The repression of these Falun Gong practitioners by the Vietnamese authorities is a violation of their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Donna Guest, Amnesty International’s Deputy Asia Pacific Director.
“We should really question why the Vietnamese authorities are targeting the Falun Gong in this way.”
The recent move by Elliott Advisors to sue Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group (Vinashin) could throw the company’s already contentious debt restructuring into further turmoil, Debtwire reports.
Elliott resigned last week from the steering committee for Vinashin’s USD 600m loan, signaling that the hedge fund plans to go ahead with litigation against the state-owned shipbuilder to recover interest and principal on the defaulted debt, said three creditors and a Hanoi-based source close to the company. The lawsuit would be filed in London as the loan is governed by English law, even though the majority of Vinashin’s assets are in Vietnam. Elliott officials declined to comment.
A lawsuit against Vinashin could sink a proposal from the Vietnam government – presented to creditors earlier this month – to guarantee the USD 600m loan in a restructured form, the three creditors said. Lenders had been clamoring for the government to guarantee the debt ever since prospect of a default emerged last year, but until recently the Socialist Republic refused to do so. The government issued a comfort letter when the loan was made in 2007 expressing support for Vinashin, but stopped short of an explicit guarantee.
If there is to be an Asian century, it won't be China's alone. While it still has hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, the country is losing its cheap labor advantage to East Asian competitors while more industrialized nations in the region are far more receptive to international trade.
The Chinese economy is expected to overtake the United States as the world's largest in sheer size by the middle of this decade but the ruling Communist Party has ample reason to be worried about perpetuating China's impressive growth rates for another generation.
As China's middle class expands in the urban east, it is expecting more than just growth but in the western hinterland, a lack of development and, perhaps even more frustrating to the people there, a lack of political accountability fuels unrest
and discontent. The party will be increasingly hard pressed to meet the aspirations of both these peoples. Economic and political openness, as desired in the coastal provinces, would weaken the state's grip on industrial development, which could exacerbate the existing imbalance between cities and countryside.
By Ellen Nakashima, Updated: Thursday, November 3, 12:06 PM
Online industrial spying by China and Russia presents a growing threat to the U.S. economy and its national security, the top counterintelligence agency said Thursday, abandoning the caution American officials typically display when asked to name the countries they believe are most responsible for cyber-economic espionage.
Billions of dollars of trade secrets, technology and intellectual property are being siphoned each year from the computer systems of U.S. government agencies, corporations and research institutions to benefit the economies of China and other countries, the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive said.
Its report to Congress was released Thursday morning.
Multiple international shipping agencies are conducting a comprehensive review of refrigerated containers processed at a Vietnam port, the Pacific Maritime Association said in a statement, after some units exploded, reportedly killing two mechanics in Vietnam and one in Brazil.
Besides the inherent risk for longshoremen -- who in Oakland, Calif., have even refused to move containers processed in Vietnam -- industry workers expressed concern for the general public once these faulty containers, known as "reefers," are unloaded and shipped out on trucks and freight trains.
“We don’t want this reefer going down the road and exploding next to a mom and her kids,” Chris Peeler, a member of the Labor Relations Committee of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, local 19 in Seattle, told KING5.com.
The station reported that authorities think the containers have been contaminated with bad coolant, which can become explosive when exposed to air.
BEIJING – On most mornings, the senior editorial staffers at China's hyper-nationalistic Global Times newspaper flash their identification badges at the uniformed guard outside their compound in eastern Beijing and roll into the office between 9 and 10 a.m. They leave around midnight. In the hectic intervening 14 hours, they commission and edit articles and editorials on topics ranging from asserting China's unassailable claims to the South China Sea to the United States' nefarious role in the global financial crisis to the mind-boggling liquor bills of China's state-owned enterprises, to assemble a slim, 16-page tabloid with a crimson banner and eye-popping headlines. In the late afternoon, staffers propose topics for the all-important lead editorial to editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, who makes all final decisions and has an instinct for the jugular.
Take last Tuesday's saber-rattling editorial, printed with only slight variations in the Chinese and English editions, which duly unnerved many overseas readers. "Recently, both the Philippines and South Korean authorities have detained fishing boats from China, and some of those boats haven't been returned," the editorial fumed. "If these countries don't want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons." The war-mongering language was meant to attract attention, and that it did, with Reuters, Manila Times, Jakarta Globe, The West Australian, Taipei Times, and other overseas media referencing it in news articles. The bellicose editorial was certainly newsworthy, assuming that the paper on some level is a mouthpiece for China's rulers. But whose views, exactly, does Global Times really represent?
1. The world superpowers are currently engaged in a relationship of competitive cooperation.
2. Dizzying events in North Africa and the Middle East have affirmed that democratization is the unavoidable trend against dictatorial regimes.
3. Regional and inter-regional meetings, such as those by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), East Asia Summits (EAS), Asia-Europe Dialogs, etc., have indicated a strategic adjustment among the powers in Asia and the Pacific.
4. Myanmar's (Burma) relaxation of its news censorship and recognition of workers' rights to organize independent unions and to strike indicate a change of most of ASEAN nations towards a period of regional cooperation with democracy as the common denominator.
5. The Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) has lost all capacities to lead because they are going against the world trend of democracy. They are an illegitimate usurper of power who was not elected via free and fair elections by the people. They are incompetent in economic management and have failed to protect the sovereignty of the nation in many aspects.
As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations prepares to hold its annual talkfest next month with Asia-Pacific powers at the East Asia Summit (EAS) in Bali, attention will be focused on the two central powers: China and the United States.
For the US, this is the first time it will partake in the regional EAS at the leader level, represented by President Barack Obama.
Together, China and the United States hold the key to the region's future.
These talks come at a crucial time. China is increasingly showing its military muscle in the region, potentially creating a turning point in China-Asean relations.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A massive cyberattack that led to a vulnerability in RSA's SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.
A list of 760 organizations that were attacked was presented to Congress recently and published by security analyst Brian Krebs on his blog Monday.
The list is the first glimpse into the pervasiveness of the attack that brought RSA to its knees. Those in the security industry have long suspected that RSA was not the hack's only victim, but no other companies have been willing to talk publicly about whether they had also been compromised.
It's just before the dinner rush at Huong Giang, a central Vietnamese restaurant in Westminster's Little Saigon, and dozens of dim-sum-like dishes obscure our tabletop. Chopsticks eagerly reach for fat little shrimp-filled dumplings and impossibly tender rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves. We pass around silver dollar-size rice pancakes topped with pork cracklings and nibble on Vietnamese cold cuts swathed in freshly steamed rice noodle sheets as airy as chiffon.
These small bites may have the feel of new wave dim sum or the latest Asian-influenced gastropub, but they belong to the legendary cuisine of central Vietnam — the most sophisticated of the country's three major culinary regions — whose capital city, Hue, enjoys the cachet of Paris, Rome or Shanghai among Vietnamese food lovers. Intricate and labor intensive, its dishes are known for their complex garnishings and multiple layerings of sweet-savory tastes.
Home > RFD News
0 Comments 
- 
