Unryu Suganuma: The Rising Eastern Yellow-Dragon

China has more than 6,900 islands and more than 10,000 small isles, according to the Chinese governmental media On 26 December 2009, China’s top legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC) standing committee, passed a law protecting the islets. According to the Xinhua News, China will strengthen the protection of its eco-system, the utilization of natural resources, and the development on Chinese sea islands. The law prohibits coastal reclamation of quarry stone or sand in both inhabited and uninhabited sea islands, bans all construction projects, the cutting of trees and tourist activities on uninhabited sea islands. All development projects on inhabited islands will be subject to strict environmental impact assessment. Both Japan and some countries from ASEAN are getting extremely nervous because this law might apply all disputed islets with China including the Diaoyu Islands, Paracels Archipelagos, and Spratlys Archipelagos.

Interestingly, Time (November 23, 2009) magazine published Bill Powell’s article, titled “5 Things the U.S. Can Learn from China” before Obama landed in the Middle Kingdom. The five things are: be ambitious, education matters, look after the elderly, save more, and look over the horizon. All five items are fundamental bases of the Chinese society and Confucian culture. Will Obama learn these five items before returning to the Asian region?

In 2001, Gordon G. Chang predicts  the collapse of China (The Coming Collapse of China by Random House). Nearly ten years has past, where is the collapse of China? Recently, most economists, governments, and experts expect the Chinese economy to continue to grow in 2010. But, James S. Chanos, a wealthy hedge fund investor of Kynikos Associates, predicts the end of China Inc. According to the New York Times (8 January 2010) China looks like Dubai times 1,000 or worse, and Beijing is cooking its books. Chanos has earned his reputation by foreseeing the collapse of Enron, problems of Tyco International, the Boston Market restaurant chain, and home builders as well as some world’s biggest banks. However, the Chinese society is more sophisticated than any Western societies. In term of the population, economic structure, and governmental transparency, China is relatively more complicated than any Western countries including Japan. China does not look like any western nation at all. The bubble of the real estate in China is real, but the collapse of the China Inc., might not be true.  To be a true Chinese experts requires an understanding of the history, culture, society, and politics etc., of the Middle Kingdom. 

For years, the LDP repeatedly denied the existence of the Secret Pact between the U.S. and Japan. On 1 December 2009, a former senior diplomat, Yoshino Bunroku, admitted for the first time in court that Tokyo and Washington had a secret accord on the cost burden relating to the 1972 reversion of Okinawa (former Liuqiu Kingdom) to Japanese control (Japan Times). In the 1970s, when the American government decided to return sovereignty of Okinawa to Japan, them Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, the great-uncle of Abe Shinzo, told the Japanese taxpayers that the returning Okinawa without compensation. The fact of the matter is that Japan secretly shouldered $4 million in costs that the American government was supposed to pay to restore Okinawan farmland which had been used by the American forces. How can the Japanese taxpayers be so stupid, having been fooled since the 1970s? Will LDP take any responsibility?

If an alumni makes a donation to a university in the West, it would rarely make the international news unless it was an exceptionally large donation. When Zhang Lei, the founder and managing partner of Hillhouse Capital Management in Beijing gave $8,888,888 to the management school of Yale University (where he finished a master degree in business administration and a master degree in international relations) on 8 January 2010, he was criticized over the internet. A majority of posts condemned his action for giving his money to a U.S. university rather than keeping it in China. However, a minority spoke out in support of Zhang’s donation writing, “Well donated!! If you donated that money [in China], then more than half would fall into the wallets of corrupt officials (South China Morning Post).” Probably Zhang Lei felt that he had learned more knowledge from Yale University than Renmin University in China where he finished undergraduate studies. This is natural when one is evaluating or reviewing his/her lifetime education after a successful career. No one was surprised that the Chinese education system was worst than education system in the USA.

On 30 November 2009, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon (OPCW) opened its 14th conference in the Hague of Holland (till December 4th). The head of the Chinese delegation, Zhang Jun, insisted that “I hope that Japan will remove its chemical weapons in China, abandoned by the Japanese imperial army, as soon as possible (Xinhua News).” Both Japan and China agreed that Japan would remove its chemical weapons in China by April 2012. Since China has modernized its nation, construction has blossomed. As a result, some construction sites break these chemical weapons which result in death, injury, and pollution that the people and environment suffer for years. The Japanese government has not made any compensation for these victims. In addition, no victim has won any verdicts in the Japanese court since WWII by suing the Japanese government. Will Hatoyama Administration makes any compensation for the Chinese victims?

On 7 January 2010, the Chinese government denounced the U.S. decision to clear the sale of Patriot missiles by Lockheed Martine to Taiwan, the deal entered into by George W. Bush. Three days later, the Chinese Foreign Ministry again denounced U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a $1.1 billion order received by Raytheon Con for ground-system hardware to support Taiwan’s Patriot air defense capability. By the end of January, the White House is going to sell Black Hawk helicopters to Taiwan. As George Gilder states in the Wall Street Journal (4 February 2010), “The Chinese are needlessly aggressive in missile deployments against Taiwan, but there is absolutely no prospect of a successful U.S. defense of that country. Sending them $6 billion of new weapons is a needless provocation against China that does nothing valuable for the defense of the U.S. or Taiwan.”