Unryu Suganuma: The Rising Eastern Yellow-Dragon

The current Chinese leaders will change when the 2012 Party Congress holds in Beijing. Two groups: Princeling and Chinese Youth League (CYL), have displayed their fights for the 5th generation leadership in China. The Chinese Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai (son of Bo Yibo) in Chongqing has made the crackdown on gangs and corrupted police officers in Chongqing.  Some officials who were arrested in Chongqing, are directly connected with Wang Yang, former head of Chongqing and former member of CYL where Hu Jintao came from (Nihon Keizai Shimbun). Besides Bo Xilai, Princeling group is contained Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan.  CYL has Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao.  In addition, the 6th generation leadership will be emerged including Sun Zhengcai, Party Secretary in Jilin Province; Hu Chunhua, Party Secretary in Inner Mongolia; and Zhou Qiang, Governor of Hunan Province. It will be interesting to see who will get into the Party’s Politburo Standing Committee in 2012.

The Siberian tiger is one of the world’s rarest species; currently, there are only about 300 left in the wild and 50 of them in China. In March, 13 Siberaian tigers were starving to die in the Shenyang Forest Wildlife Zoo in Liaoning Province even though the zoo has made millions of dollars annually. While the owner has postponed the salary payments for her works for more than 13 months, she has repaid her debts for her golf club which she is running (Phoenix News).  Authorities have discovered that many tiger’s parts, such as penises and bones, have been used to make a virility tonic, which traditionally the Chinese believe to increase sexual potency or treat certain illnesses. Obviously, these tiger’s virility tonic will provide for those higher officials, but not for normal citizens.

On 9 March 2010, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya disclosed that the Japanese government had allowed nuclear weapons to be brought onto Japanese soil under secret pacts (Japan Times). Since WWII, the LDP had ruled Japan and denied the fact that nuclear weapons were introduced into Japan, violating Japan’s three NOs nuclear policy. In 1967, Prime Minister Sato Eisaku declared Japan’s three-point non-nuclear principle of not “producing,” not possessing and not allowing the “bringing in” of nuclear weapons. For years since 1967, the Americans have demonstrated the nonsense of the three NOs nuclear policy. For instance, Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer told Foreign minister Ohira Masayoshi that port calls or transit by U.S. ships carrying nuclear weapons did not constitute “introduction” of nuclear weapons in April 1963. Even today, many former prime ministers including Abe Shinzo and Aso Taro, are still denying the existence of the secret pact. However, on 30 March 2010, NHK interviewed former prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, who stated that he received the details from the bureaucrats on 14 January 1983.

After months of diplomatic problems (i.e., selling arms to Taiwan and Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama) between China and the US, the White House finally dispatched two senior officials: Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg and Jeffrey A. Bader, National Security Council’s senior Director for Asia to Beijing in March 2010. The Chinese officials told two visiting American senior officials that China would not tolerate any interference in the South China Sea, part of Chinese “core interest” of sovereignty (New York Times23 April 2010). It was the first time that the Chinese insisted that the South China Sea was a core interest, on par with Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Similarly, when Hillary Clinton led more than 200 people to talk the Chinese in Beijing in May, during the meting between Lieutenant general Ma Xiaotian, the deputy head of the PLA general staff, and Admiral Robert Willard, Chief of the US Pacific Command, and Wallace Gregson, a American Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ma stated, “Beijing always values mutual trust and co-operation with the US military… But the US arms sales to Taiwan, frequent reconnaissance by US naval ships and aircraft in the waters and airspace of China’s exclusive economic zones, and the US Defense Authorization Act have long remained the foremost obstacles of Sino-US military relations (South China Morning Post 26 May 2010).”

After China’s annual National People’s Congress conference, the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao opened the press conference by criticizing the United States. Wen defended that China would not the appreciation of Renminbi. Soon after the Chinese leader dismissed the American complains, about 130 American congressman submitted the letter to the president by asking to add China as a currency “manipulator.” As Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman declares “trade war” even China dumps massive U.S. bonds in the market, the Capital Hill wants to target China as scapegoat. As Japan Times states, “the yuan is a job for China’s peer economies, not those that caused the turmoil.” Therefore, Wen Jiabao needs to reject Obama’s request. The fact of the matter is that today’s China is not stronger than Japan in the 1980s as the Japanese yen was appreciated.  The Chinese leaders are learning lesson from Japan.

According to BBC News Chinese website the Dalai Lama provided an interview on February 22 in Los Angels. In his interview with BBC News he indicated that, “The reincarnation should stop if the people in Tibet agree with.” Well, by now Dalai Lama has probably figured out that he may die outside of Chinese soil, and that he might not be able to stop the central government from picking the 15th Dalai Lama. It is too bad that the Dalai Lama and the central government can not get along.

According to the Japanese media the head of the PR department in CCTV, Xia Guanghong, resigned from his director post. During the lunar years (February 14-15), CCTV had all night entertainment programs including singing and dancing.  However, CCTV made about 6.5 millions yuan in profit from commercials. This outraged the Chinese audience who complained about the issue over the internet. Less than 10 days after the Chinese new year, the director resigned from his job. Who says that China does not have the public opinion?