Only a few months after being appointed the new general secretary, Xi Jinping has presented a very different image than his predecessors and taken a decisive ownership of the national discourse. Of course the current anti-corruption measures shouldn’t be taken as indicating a new path, but it is striking how much more in control Xi seems to be after such a short time in his new role. Discussions in China and foreign media outlets have focused on both the more high-profile statements on reform (which was previously mostly done by premier Wen Jiabao) and the recent proposed tightening of internet rules, both seemingly indicating and counter-indicating that there is a new atmosphere within the higher leadership. Personally, I believe this isn’t indicative of a major change but rather more intense jockeying among various interests to produce more radical legislation. The battle between the conservatives and the reformers/liberals didn’t stop when the new leadership was chosen.

Before we continue with this discussion, it might be worth looking at what kinds of thinking there is on political reform in general. Basically, there seems to be four different camps in China and abroad, and they advocate the following:

1. Multi-party democracy and dismantling the CCP’s monopoly on power (common in Western countries)
2. Constitutionalism and rule of law (Lang Xianping, part of the reformers within the party)
3. Curbing subsidies to state-owned companies, liberalizing the economy, removing bureaucratic red tape, increasing transparency (part of the reformers within the party)
4. No reform is needed (conservatives) – since reform is a very positive word in China, this is most often phrased as “there has been a lot of political reform in China, and while more reform is needed, we should keep to the correct political path.”

Reform? Yes please! (Wang Qishan)

The first alternative is hardly realistic but it is sometimes used as an example in Western media outlets on why China is not heading for political reform. For example, the fact that Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping have made statements that they want to strengthen party rule seems to them to indicate that no reform will materialize, since any true reformer would dismantle the current one-party state. However, looking at political reform in other countries, it rarely started with somebody who wanted to lose power; rather, it is often seen as a way to strengthen the ruling party and adopting to new circumstances.

The second alternative has recently raised its profile within China. More and more intellectuals and even some vocal party members have made assertions to this effect. The problem here is why high-ranking leaders would want to make changes that most assuredly would limit their own power. This line of thought, however, is certain to continue to make itself known and I see it on the horizon, but more than baby steps in this direction is hardly going to happen during the first five years of Xi’s tenure.

The third alternative, which might look more like a patchwork than a coherent program, is the most probably outcome of the next few years, and the indications that this has sanction from Xi are many. The fact that a program to deregulate and remove the need of official approval for a large amount of “points” that previously needed them is already underway in Guangdong is the strongest indicator, given that reform has often started in individual provinces before they were moved over to a national level. Other indicators are Xi Jinping’s first major visit as a new leader in Shenzhen to give a thumbs up to reform (Hu Jintao, on contrast, praised Mao Zedong) as well as the major focus on reform and the current image makeover of the party that he has orchestrated – for example, limiting all outer forms of corruption like lavish banquets and even long reports in the news media.

Reform? No thanks. (Liu Yunshan)

This can hardly be called substantial reform, but does qualify as “pre-reform” and is the most workable at this stage. To argue for constitutionalism directly now would attract too strong resistance from people advocating the fourth alternative here, the conservatives. Conservatives have strong support from the “vested interests” in the SOE (state-owned enterprises) sector, and this is the major political battle that the reformers will have to fight in order to gain momentum. While limiting of the party’s power is easily opposed, it’s harder even for conservatives to oppose measures to streamline the economy and remove factors that limit future growth, of which the SOE’s are going to be a major bottleneck.

Xi Jinping’s political capital will to a large extent be dependent on how well he carries out this “pre-reform” and creates a more liberal economy. This is still an unknown factor, but if too few changes have been made to this effect by 2022, social forces will have grown to such a strength that they will be disruptive. It is up to the current leadership to see to it that sufficient changes are made to accommodate them. If this happens, then reforms of the second alternative will have a much larger change of being carried out.

Another thing to factor in in these discussions are what the lacklustre performance of the EU and the US in the last few years, and the negative political capital they are accumulating, is having on China. I’m going to touch on these issues in a coming post.

No dancing Filipina flight attendants on this one but it’s still pretty cute and catchy, a safety video from Air New Zealand with hobbits, elves, orcs, dwarves and even Gandalf, though unfortunately no ents.

As a former journalist for daily newspapers, I’ve learned that all you can hope for is that your story is an accurate reflection of what happens on a given day. It’s a snapshot, that’s all. By tomorrow, everything may have changed completely.

I’m constantly fascinated by both the everydayness, and the you-don’t-see-that-every-dayness of China, and specifically my current location in Macau. So I take pictures, and post them. One picture a day. No more, no less.

Please check out my blog: http://chinaenglish.wordpress.com/

Why would an American presidential election be such a new experience to me? I grew up in Sweden which is also a multi-party system, and I’ve lived in China for almost a decade. Certainly China in absolute terms has a very different system, but over the years I’ve learned how it works and gotten used to it; simply put, it doesn’t surprise me and I’ve seen it develop over a fair amount of time. But I’m fairly new to the US and when you’re new to a country, differences often stand out more than similarities.

One mistake many people do when moving to a new country is to find out which political grouping is closest to their original viewpoint and then follow it more fanatically than the locals themselves. Given my political viewpoints and my background, I should probably be somewhere in between the Democrats and the Green Party (for a description of what many Europeans tend to think about the US, this article is highly recommended). But every country, for social and cultural reasons, have their own system, and so I think it’s my duty as a newcomer to try to understand the political party furthest away from me, the Republican party. I guess I should point out I’ve gone through the same process with China’s Communist Party.

Many American concerns are the same as in other countries – the economy often dominates elections and high unemployment, which is currently a scourge in the whole developed world, was a big thing in this election as well. One major difference between the US and most other countries, though, is its role in the world. US foreign policy is one of very active “involvement” in other countries’ affairs, whether you choose to interpret that word in a positive or negative way, but one thing that has surprised me is that the people who often talk about going to war abroad are the same who seem to care the least about the world in the first place. There’s a sort of blind spot to the world there that fascinates me – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from a hawkish viewpoint, was to liberate these two countries, but most of the debates are about the lives of American soldiers. Be that as it will, the American election has a big influence on the world, perhaps to a larger extent than many locals envision.

Personally, despite my political viewpoints, I haven’t been as upbeat about this election as the last one. When Obama won in 2008, the sense of hope was unmistakable. After the Bush years, it was now time for a progressive leader to come to the fore and set things right. In this election, though, Obama in a sense had to fight against himself – the promises he made and failed to fulfill, the economic change that didn’t come, the change in foreign policy that hardly happened. Unlike most other people of my political affiliation, Romney didn’t strike me as particularly bad. Despite things like the 47%, his viewpoints on foreign policy and a certain “woodenness,” he seemed to be a fairly acceptable candidate.

While I should say that I was relieved over the election results, I don’t foresee any enormous changes in the short run. In the long run, though, the demographics of this election are very interesting and show the US from its most dynamic and interesting side – several analysts have pointed out that the Republicans still predominantly cater to white people, a strategy they will need to change. The country as a whole is changing, and in this it’s doing a much better job than Europe where immigrants and the rest of society is often more separate. The American political system may have problems, its economy may be sluggish, but the dynamism and diversity of its people is still unrivaled in the world. This gives it a lot of resilience despite an often gridlocked political system.

Chinese prizes are often controversial, one way or another. When Liu Xiaobo got the peace prize, American and European media outlets lauded the decision and quickly began reporting about the lack of reports in the Chinese press. When the latter finally began to surly comment on the whole thing, it led to counter-reports in the Western media. This dance has repeated itself in other cases and both sides just tend to say their standard lines, so when the dance was turned on its head this week, it was slightly amusing to see disgruntled reports in the Western press. As amusing as these debates might be, I don’t find them very substantial, and it says almost nothing about the object of the controversy.

While many Chinese might not have known a lot about Liu Xiaobo, most of the comments in the foreign press seems to be from people who haven’t read anything by Mo Yan. Perhaps this is not surprising as much contemporary literature in China haven’t been translated to other languages. The Nobel Prize of Literature has been criticized for awarding authors that are not mainstream, but what this shows is often more the ethnocentrism of the critics than anything else. Authors that are awarded are almost always mainstream in their own countries. The prize itself has gone from being a very Europe-centered affair back in the early and middle 20th century, to something more substantially global the last decades, though one can of course question the choices of the committee (*).

My own first contact with Mo Yan was back in 2001 when I read the novel “红树林”. Not one of his more famous works, I found it a very apt description of the corruption and bleak materialism of the then newly formed upper class of China. Other books seems to have left a stronger impression on me, but the same year his “檀香刑” (Sandalwood Death) was published, and made quite a bit of a stir. Written in a local dialectal style, the book is an orgy in violence committed by European occupiers, boxers and local rulers. The “sandalwood punishment” is very graphically described and I’m not going to go into the gruesome details here, but suffice it to say that it’s on the same level of torture as the lingchi procedure, which has been described elsewhere.

Mo Yan’s style is pretty straightforward language-wise, but due to the often very extreme things described, it tends to leave strong feelings in its wake. The first book mentioned above seemed to describe a smaller part of society at the time, but if I had read it today I would probably have found it more descriptive of the general mood in Chinese society. Like some other famous authors in China, like Yu Hua (余华), Mo has gradually gone from describing the past to the present of urban China. Personally I find the modern urban descriptions more interesting than his works on the past, but I have a feelings it’s mostly for the former that the prize was awarded. The often absurd history of China’s past before the reforms and even the revolution in 1949 lends itself better to the “magic realist” style the Nobel committee mentioned.

Is Mo Yan the most fitting choice for a Chinese author? I’ll leave that to others to decide, but I definitely think he deserves the prize. Hopefully it can lead to a wider audience for contemporary Chinese works in other parts of the world. As pointed out in this article, written by a French translator of Chinese works, publishing companies in the West stay away from a lot of current Chinese literature because it’s an unknown for them. Now, the vibrant and fascinating literature of 21st century China might reach a wider audience.

* The Peace Prize is even more controversial, this year being awarded to the EU, while previously having been given to Barack Obama when his presidency had hardly started, Al Gore, Yitzhak Rabin or Yasser Arafat, to name a few. Sometimes it seems the prize represents hope more than anything else.

As a former journalist for daily newspapers, I’ve learned that all you can hope for is that your story is an accurate reflection of what happens on a given day. It’s a snapshot, that’s all. By tomorrow, everything may have changed completely.

I’m constantly fascinated by both the everydayness, and the you-don’t-see-that-every-dayness of China, and specifically my current location in Macau. So I take pictures, and post them. One picture a day. No more, no less.

Please check out my blog: http://chinaenglish.wordpress.com/

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands

We’ve all been hearing a lot about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands lately, what with all the demonstrations in China after the Japanese government purchased the islands from the Japanese owner. Meanwhile, Taiwan is adding their opinion into the mix since three governments claim this territory. So, what’s really going on? What laws govern island ownership? Who has the more legitimate claim, Japan, China or Taiwan? How much of this is covered by international treaty, how much is demagoguery  and how much is simply gunboat diplomacy? I haven’t been impressed with media accounts; most reporters have not done their homework and mix up the various justifications so I’ll break it down as best I can.

First, let’s take a look at the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is an international agreement spelling out the various ramifications of sea law as it pertains to littoral zones, islands and archipelagos. Japan and China are both signatories to UNCLOS so it is very important to understand what the agreement says. Taiwan, as a de facto but not a de jure country, was not able to ratify the treaty. For the purposes of the UNCLOS argument, we’ll ignore Taiwan at this time.

The territorial sea for each country is 12 miles from baseline. So are these islands considered baseline? If either China or Japan was an archipelagic State, they would so what is an archipelagic State?

(a) “archipelagic State” means a State constituted wholly by one or
more archipelagos and may include other islands;
(b) “archipelago” means a group of islands, including parts of islands,
interconnecting waters and other natural features which are so
closely interrelated that such islands, waters and other natural
features form an intrinsic geographical, economic and political
entity, or which historically have been regarded as such.

OK, so can these islands be considered for baseline status? There is also a provision in UNCLOS covering this situation.

3. Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of
their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.

The Senkaku Islands (I’ll refer to them as the Senkakus for simplicity since they are currently under Japanese control) cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own. They have no water source, can grow no food nor can they provide human habitation. They are essentially rocks sticking out of the ocean, the largest being less than 3.5 kilometers long and slightly more than 1 kilometer wide. Therefore, under UNCLOS, they don’t count in regard to having an exclusive economic zone. What this means is that by international agreement, whoever owns the islands doesn’t get any treaty benefit from them.

Now let’s look at the contiguous zones and exclusive economic zones for each nation. The contiguous zone is defined as 24 miles from baseline, so this again does not apply. However, the exclusive economic zone does matter. Let’s look at the definition.

1. In the exclusive economic zone, the coastal State has:
(a) sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting,
conserving and managing the natural resources, whether living
or non-living, of the waters superjacent to the seabed and of the
seabed and its subsoil, and with regard to other activities for the
economic exploitation and exploration of the zone, such as the
production of energy from the water, currents and winds;
(b) jurisdiction as provided for in the relevant provisions of this
Convention with regard to:
(i) the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations
and structures;4
(ii) marine scientific research;
(iii) the protection and preservation of the marine environment;

1. The continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the seabed and
subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea
throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of
the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the
baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the
outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance.
2. The continental shelf of a coastal State shall not extend beyond the
limits provided for in paragraphs 4 to 6.
3. The continental margin comprises the submerged prolongation of the
land mass of the coastal State, and consists of the seabed and subsoil of the
shelf, the slope and the rise. It does not include the deep ocean floor with its
oceanic ridges or the subsoil thereof.
4. (a) For the purposes of this Convention, the coastal State shall
establish the outer edge of the continental margin wherever the
margin extends beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines
from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured, by
either:
(i) a line delineated in accordance with paragraph 7 by
reference to the outermost fixed points at each of which
the thickness of sedimentary rocks is at least 1 per cent of
the shortest distance from such point to the foot of the
continental slope; or
(ii) a line delineated in accordance with paragraph 7 by
reference to fixed points not more than 60 nautical miles
from the foot of the continental slope.
(b) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the foot of the
continental slope shall be determined as the point of maximum
change in the gradient at its base.
5. The fixed points comprising the line of the outer limits of the
continental shelf on the seabed, drawn in accordance with paragraph 4 (a)(i)
and (ii), either shall not exceed 350 nautical miles from the baselines from
which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured or shall not exceed
100 nautical miles from the 2,500 metre isobath, which is a line connecting
the depth of 2,500 metres.
6. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 5, on submarine ridges,
the outer limit of the continental shelf shall not exceed 350 nautical miles
from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured.
This paragraph does not apply to submarine elevations that are natural4
components of the continental margin, such as its plateaux, rises, caps, banks
and spurs.
7. The coastal State shall delineate the outer limits of its continental
shelf, where that shelf extends beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines
from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured, by straight lines not
exceeding 60 nautical miles in length, connecting fixed points, defined by
coordinates of latitude and longitude.
8. Information on the limits of the continental shelf beyond
200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial
sea is measured shall be submitted by the coastal State to the Commission on
the Limits of the Continental Shelf set up under Annex II on the basis of
equitable geographical representation. The Commission shall make
recommendations to coastal States on matters related to the establishment of
the outer limits of their continental shelf. The limits of the shelf established
by a coastal State on the basis of these recommendations shall be final and
binding.

These are the key articles pertaining to the controversy between Japan and China. Let’s say we took a line from the Chinese mainland to the islands in the Ryukyu’s that are habitable. This would create a line that ends up very close to the Senkaku Islands. However, China has another card to play. There is an exception to the normal baseline and that is the continental shelf and the continental margin. So now it’s time to look more closely at the East China Sea.

As you can see in the photo above, the continental shelf extends from China to the Senkaku Islands but between the Senkakus and the Ryukyu Islands is a deep oceanic trench. Therefore, China is very interested in UNCLOS as it applies to the exclusive economic zone in accordance with continental shelf provisions. Under these provisions, China controls the exclusive economic zone out to 200 miles from her coast which is a line just west of the Senkakus. This doesn’t help her much when it comes to the area in question, it does increase China’s exclusive economic zone compared to having a line drawn between Japan and China and using the halfway point as the boundary. Under those conditions, Japan would possess considerably more territory. However, this reading still puts most of the Chunxiao gas field in Japan’s sphere of influence since it is outside the continental shelf and closer to Japanese territory.

So why all the fuss about a few relatively tiny rocks in the ocean if they don’t give anyone fishing, mineral or oil/gas rights? This is where we break away from UNCLOS and look at other ways to claim ownership.

The first is historical. This one is tricky specifically because the islands are uninhabitable. Throughout history, fishermen from China, Japan and Taiwan have all used these waters. Whose claim is the best? Well, that’s the rub because none of these nations have a clear advantage. They can all rightfully claim to have fished in these waters for millennia. Since no one wants to submit to UNCLOS arbitration, the solution is negotiation among themselves, either that or go to war. Since going to war, though possible, isn’t much of a solution, negotiation should be the best course.

But because something is logical doesn’t mean it is the most appealing. This has become a nationalistic tug-of-war and neither government can be seen as being ‘soft’ on the issue. China is going through a leadership transition along with an economic slowdown and some messy political trials so the government cannot be seen as weak. Japan’s government is also in a precarious position with party leaders coming and going, a weak economy and populist candidates who are boosting their popularity by championing this cause. The two most obvious are Tokyo’s mayor, Shintaro Ishihara, and the mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto. In fact, the recent friction was started by Ishihara, who tried to buy the Senkakus from their owner in order to up the ante by inhabiting the islands. The Japanese government thought they were defusing the situation by buying the islands outright and keeping them vacant but it was in the Chinese government’s interest to play the ‘nationalism’ card and create a controversy out of what really is the status quo.

Gunboat diplomacy is another factor. China has been sending vessels into the area but none of them have been People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels, so as not to push things too far. Japan has responded by sending more naval vessels into the area and as posted earlier, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force is quite formidable. It’s a game of bluff since no one wants a shooting war, yet there is always the chance that things could get out of hand, one vessel fires upon another and a conflict does break out. Then throw in Taiwan’s recent incursion that was turned away with water cannons and the issue becomes even more complex.

The other factor to consider is this: There are gas and oil deposits between the surface that both countries want to exploit. However, regardless of who exploits them, the only logical shipping terminus is in China. The sea floor between these deposits and China is quite shallow while the sea floor between these deposits and Japan is very deep and not suitable for a pipeline. So even if Japan ends up developing the fields, their logical buyer is China so they need to negotiate a solution that works for each side. My guess is that both sides eventually employ joint development. I think this would have already happened if not for political and nationalistic considerations on the China side.

So to sum it up, all this talk about the Senkakus is, in the long run, much ado about nothing. The islands themselves have no value except being a port in a storm. This is all about political posturing and perception, not international agreements or actual benefits. Each government gets to stoke nationalist sentiment with their own populations and paint the other side as the ‘bad guy’.

In the same vein, the conflict in the Paracel and Spratly Islands, though not exactly the same, also shares many commonalities with the Senkakus, and appeals to the same nationalistic sentiments. So the next time you read an article about any of these islands, think back to what UNCLOS actually states and it might make more sense.

*** In today’s Stratfor appeared this article, Understanding the China-Japan Island Conflict. It helps explain both the political and geopolitical implications of the conflict rather than in legal terms. Highly recommended…

Back when Wukailong and I started this blog, my first ever music post was about New Zealand’s Bic Runga. Over the last few years, she’s been raising her son Joseph and taking a break from the music business. But children get older and she felt it was time to record again. Thus was born her most recent album Belle, released last November. Rather than explain the background of the album, I’ll let Bic do it for me before she sings and acoustic version of Everything Is Beautiful And New.

Before the album was released, the song Hello Hello debuted on local radio and was given away as a free download for a time. It was also her first music video.

Here’s an interview she did on Mike Hosking’s Breakfast Show.

Because motherhood takes up a lot of her time, this is the first time Bic has worked with other songwriters. She also let Kody Nielson produce the album, something she had always done herself in the past.

A live performance of This Girl’s Prepared For War…

So, how is the CD as compared to her previous efforts? Personally, I could listen to Bic sing the phone book, I like her voice that much. My favorite track is Everything Is Beautiful And New followed closely by This Girl’s Prepared For War and Belle. Overall, it’s not up to Beautiful Collision (my personal favorite) but compares well with Drive and Birds. But dont take my word for it, pick it up from Amazon or whoever your preferred music vendor is. You can buy it from iTunes for $17.99 or go to and pick it up from the other vendors she has listed.

Jimmy Lai’s Next Media is at it again, this time updating their American avatars to look more… ah, realistic?

*Big thanks to James Fallows for bringing this to our attention.