2011年8月31日 星期三

控訴中共 / Chinese Protest Suspensions of Bloggers

艾未未在秘密關押獲釋後一再發聲,現在又嚴厲批評中共,原因在於他的自我認識使他不可能保持沉默,他對北京的控訴就是對一個冷酷社會的控訴……
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中國官方再次釋放打壓微博信號
[公眾目前對可能到來的微博管製表示抗議] 近日新華網發表署名文章,稱互聯網上"謠言"導致爆炸式傳播,造成"巨大社會危害",呼籲互聯網企業、監管部門和警方聯手剷除網絡"謠言之毒",媒體專家認為,這是中共高官劉淇視察新浪網後,中國官方再次釋放的微博管制信號。

Chinese Protest Suspensions of Bloggers
New York Times
By MICHAEL WINES and SHARON LaFRANIERE BEIJING — The operators of China's most vibrant equivalent of Twitter notified each of its 200 million users Friday that several bloggers deemed to have spread unfounded rumors would have their accounts suspended ...


***

Banyan

Against the tide

Faced with the menace of the internet, Asia’s censors are not yet giving up the ghost

TAKING arms against a sea of troubles, many governments in Asia have long resisted the tide of unfiltered news, rumour and comment washing over their citizens via the internet. On August 15th one prime minister, Najib Razak of Malaysia, appeared to admit defeat. “In today’s borderless, interconnected world,” he said, “censoring newspapers and magazines is increasingly outdated, ineffective and unjustifiable.” Noting that the internet in Malaysia has always been uncensored, Mr Najib announced a “review” of print censorship laws. Yet what it comes up with is unlikely to be a free-for-all. Across Asia, governments find it hard to cede their power to control flows of information.

The unwitting instrument of Mr Najib’s epiphany was The Economist. An article in our July 16th issue covered the government’s crackdown on a huge demonstration organised by civic groups calling for electoral reform. In the copies of The Economist that reached Malaysians, the article was disfigured by black ink. Three passages—concerning the death of a man (from a heart attack), the banning of the protest march and “heavy-handed police tactics”—were censored. However, they could still be read on our website, or indeed on a number of Malaysian news sites and blogs. As Mr Najib noted, the act of censorship created far more of a fuss than the offending passages. Besides being “outdated, ineffective and unjustifiable”, the censorship was also very bad public relations.

His general point is plainly true all over the world. Strict controls over “old” media, foreign and domestic, are increasingly anachronistic since ever more citizens have access to the bottomless shallows of the internet. In both Malaysia and Singapore, where mainstream media have been largely servile in their treatment of the powers-that-be, the internet has changed the political landscape. It was one reason why the opposition did better than ever in Malaysia’s most recent parliamentary election, in March 2008. In Singapore, in the run-up to May’s general election, candidates were for the first time allowed to campaign on social-networking sites; once again, the opposition did better than ever. Opposition politicians in both places also credit online competition with gingering up the mainstream press a bit.

Mr Najib said that, instead of censorship, Malaysia could use “legal means” in the event of defamatory coverage. That for a long time has also been Singapore’s strategy. “Right-to-reply” rules oblige foreign publications that circulate in Singapore to carry government rebuttals. Settling contempt-of-court actions and defamation suits from leading politicians is costly. All of this deters critical foreign reporting.

Elsewhere in Asia, some governments still use the trusted old slash-and-blotch methods. The Chinese authorities simply rip out pages with articles they don’t like; or, if there are too many of them, they block the issue altogether. India tolerates most of what is written about the country, perhaps believing, as a member of the present cabinet put it when in opposition, that “this is India. You can never be wrong.” But officialdom draws the line, stamps the stamp, or confiscates the consignment when it comes to maps showing the India-Pakistan border as it is, rather than as it would be were all of Kashmir under Indian control.

In Sri Lanka, the government never “bans” The Economist. But customs officers spend a hell of a long time enjoying issues with Sri Lankan coverage. In Thailand, again, the government never issues a formal ban. But, in fear of the country’s fierce lèse-majesté laws, no distributor will touch a publication carrying coverage that might be construed as remotely critical of the monarchy.

Online distributors, however, are less easy to cow. The logic of monarchism also compels Thailand’s government to intervene directly on the internet. According to Freedom Against Censorship Thailand, an NGO, it has blocked hundreds of thousands of web pages. Thailand’s efforts to curb unpalatable online material, however, are no more than a picket fence when compared with the great firewall of China. China has more users of the internet than any other country, yet its censors battle the medium, convinced that they can win. The foreign press is the easy part. There are ways around the blockage of websites that the censors do not like. But relatively few people have the will, time or money to bother finding them.

The domestic internet poses more of a challenge, however. Deleted postings on social-networking sites immediately pop up elsewhere; banned internet-search terms morph into bizarre homonyms; small incidents such as hit-and-run road accidents become national scandals. And national scandals, such as the high-speed train crash on July 23rd, news of which the authorities would have liked quietly to bury along with the wreckage, suddenly become enormous political problems.

Hoping to reboot the world

The battle between the Chinese Communist Party and the internet seems fairly evenly matched. When Urumqi, in the western region of Xinjiang, was racked by ethnic violence in 2009, the authorities simply switched the internet off in Xinjiang for ten months. A strange new phenomenon, the internet-café border town, sprang up along the railway line to the east to cater for Xinjiang residents who wanted to get online. China, further alarmed by the alleged role of social networks in the recent riots in Britain, might well counter renewed regional unrest with another local internet shutdown.

But this is hardly an option for China as a whole. Not only might Hong Kong struggle to cope with an influx of more than 450m Chinese internet users needing to check their e-mails; China cannot, in effect, resign from the global economy. Asian governments are stuck with the internet which, worryingly for the dictatorships among them, seems as integral to the future as black blotches on newsprint seem to the past.


2011年8月29日 星期一

新加坡執政黨的另一屈辱:選上 可是.....

Singapore elects a new president

Tantamount to a humiliation

Aug 28th 2011, 8:07 by Banyan

PRESIDENTIAL elections in Singapore rarely set pulses racing. The job is that of a well-paid but largely ceremonial head of state, who is not allowed to represent any particular party. The poll on August 27th was the fourth time the post has been directly elected, but the first time there has been any doubt at all about the outcome. Four candidates competed, all surnamed Tan. One, Tony Tan Keng Yam, was seen as the representative of the government and the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore ever since it withdrew from the Malaysian Federation in 1965. As expected, he won. But he barely scraped home, with a shade over 35% of vaild votes cast, and just 7,000 more than his nearest challenger, Tan Cheng Bock, a former PAP MP, who campaigned against his former party colleague. Tan Jee Say, a former senior civil servant and banker who was an opposition candidate in the general election in May, won 25%, and the fourth candidate, Tan Kin Lian, just 5%. Voting is compulsory but nearly 2% of voters spoiled their ballots—more than 37,000, it was judged.

The PAP never endorsed Tony Tan formally. But he has held a number of cabinet jobs, and the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy. He also enjoyed the backing of party activists, trade unions, chambers of commerce and community groups. So, that he won not much more than a third of the vote is a remarkable slap in the face for the government. All the same PAP diehards protested that, since two former PAP MPs had garnered 70% of the vote, this was an endorsement for the party.

This follows the general election in May when the PAP did worse than in any election since 1965. It still won 60% of the vote, which left it, in Singapore’s first-past-the-post system, with 81 out of 87 elected seats in parliament. But the party acknowledged it as a setback, and Mr Lee promised to do some “soul-searching”. Voters seem to feel, however, that the government has still not got the message. The presidential election turned into a relatively low-risk chance to teach it a lesson.

A constitutional change in 1991 accorded the president some limited powers—including a veto over the government’s use of past financial reserves, and over senior appointments. The idea was to install a check over a putative future government that was spendthrift and populist, and stacked the civil service with its cronies. The eligibility criteria for presidential candidates are strict, ensuring that only pillars of the establishment need apply.

Until this year, only the first direct presidential election in 1993 had more than one candidate—in that case a virtual unknown who barely campaigned, but who still, in a foretaste of this year’s shock, won more than 40% of the votes.

In general elections opposition parties, which are small and fragmented, are at a disadvantage. Most parliamentary seats are in big “group” constituencies, where they struggle to field slates of credible candidates, and whose boundaries, they claim, are manipulated in the PAP’s favour. The presidential poll is the only one that is island-wide and not affected by these considerations. It gave voters the opportunity to install a different sort of check into the political system. The result is sobering for the PAP. As the country's biggest newspaper, the pro-government Straits Times, put it in reporting the result: "the voting patterns show a society more politically divided than ever before.”

They reflect a widespread sense that the government, blinded by Singapore’s astonishing economic progress, has lost touch with the grievances of ordinary citizens. This sense is in part about particular issues, such as the cost of housing or immigration, which some blame for depressing local wages. But it is as much a question of style—a resentment at what is seen as the government’s paternalistic belief that it knows best.

They also reflect the breakdown, thanks to the internet, and especially social-networking sites, of the government’s virtual monopoly over the media. In both general and presidential elections, the government’s opponents were able to change the terms of the debate by taking it online. For example, when one of the newly elected opposition MPs complained on his Facebook page that he was not allowed to attend constituency functions on a public-housing estate, the issue soon became a national one about the perception of a pro-PAP bias in public bodies.

The realisation that more than 60% of Singaporeans voted against the government’s favoured candidate will presumably provoke more soul-searching within the PAP. Some will take it as proof that the party must move further and faster in opening up to adjust to the “new normal” of a political system with a sizeable opposition. Others, however, may take the opposite view: that too much liberalisation has led to a fading of the fear of the unpleasant repercussions that used to deter critical commentary and opposition activism. In short, that Singaporeans are forgetting who knows best what's good for them.

(Picture credit: AFP)

2011年8月28日 星期日

共識 共識 多少罪惡假汝之名以行/ 這是那門子的共識

共識共識 多少罪惡假汝之名以行
談共識 /常識 要談所有利害關係人的表現
馬政府和中共根本不承認你的中華民國
所以馬英九必須將國旗國歌藏在心中
只對台灣人民談
哈哈 這是那門子的共識


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蘋論:台灣共識是公民國族主義 2011年 08月25日

由於選戰的逼近,特別是總統大選,討論抽象價值的現象忽然增多。這已是民主化之後台灣每次大選的必修課。眼下最當令的議題是共識問題,馬總統的九二共識以及蔡主席的台灣共識。

宛如台灣內部黏合劑

施明德在他的新書《常識》中歸納出藍綠 都接受的台灣共識共計三條:一,中華民國是主權獨立的國家。二,中華民國和中華人民共和國是平等、互不隸屬的兩個政治實體、主權體。三,中華民國即是台 灣、台灣即是中華民國。這是政治上的共識,相信除了少數極統派和極獨派,確實是藍綠及中間派的共識。這是數十年來逐漸累積的共識,早已是台灣內部的黏合 劑,蔡主席怎麼現在才要鑄造呢?
台灣共識還不只這些。體制上的台灣共識是選擇民主機制並遵守遊戲規則。例如,2000年陳水扁意外當選,連戰、宋楚瑜雖心有未甘,但並沒有糾纏胡 鬧。2004年兩顆子彈後扁連任成功,連宋合法聲請驗票,驗票結果出爐後連宋即不再堅持。當然也沒有綠營擔憂的政變發生。2008年大選前,藍營憂懼扁宣 布戒嚴而不肯下台,結果馬當選,扁也不戀棧,下台走人。在有三千多年封建獨裁傳統的政治文化下,這種全國及藍綠的共識多麼偉大難得。
另一項共識是多元價值和寬容,包括棄絕族群歧視、壓迫與挑撥。現在有誰敢於說出挑激族群矛盾的話?美國花了兩百多年才建立起族群平等的機制,台灣十幾年就達成這個共識,成就驚人。
此外,在兩岸政策上還有一項工具理性的藍綠共識:馬強調的不統不獨不武,與蔡在十年政綱中強調的維持台灣現狀不謀而合。這項共識的中道路線,讓中國找不到藉口宣戰,也讓美國放心而願意協防台灣。
所以加總起來台灣社會的最大公約數或稱為底線,也就是全國人民及藍綠的共識共有六項,每一項都有如汞合劑、三秒膠,把互相敵視的政治群體拉攏在一起共同生活。
國民黨和民進黨,馬與蔡都要珍惜這些共識。一旦共識消失,民主毀壞,社會騷動,台灣就會淪落成「失敗國家」而遭消滅。

應塑造兩岸政策共識

具有這六項的共識,我們因此可以稱現在的台灣是個「公民國族主義的國家」。馬推出的九二共識是國民黨與共產黨的共識。這項共識未來可能衝撞到台灣共識裡的主權觀,而若民進黨執政,九二共識會遭到挑戰,兩岸關係面臨倒退,所以國、民兩黨此刻也應共同塑造兩岸政策的共識。


2011年8月26日 星期五

郝龍斌: 最不要臉或臉皮最厚的市長


最不要臉或臉皮最厚的市長
任何風暴都面不改色 說我經歷多多了
手下大歪哥 他卻清白無辜

蘋論:郝龍斌暴衝

教育部宣布,經專案委員會表決,3╱4的委員反對明年北北基續辦聯測,明年將回歸全國統一實施國中基測,而且只考一次。郝龍斌只辦了一年就飽受指摘的的北北基聯測,就此宣告終結。

爛政策害14萬人

郝是在2006年11月推出單一版本教科書,協商北北基三市聯辦,拒絕參與全國國中基測。當時多少有和陳水扁政府對抗的意味。於是政治決定北北基三個國民黨執政的都市自己聯測。2008年馬當選,11月教育部同意,郝就開始蠻幹,聯測後麻煩大了,家長、老師、學生罵聲震天,郝黯然道歉,給自己因政治因素而做錯的政策一記耳光。


問題又來了,既然明年喊卡,那一綱一本的北北基八、九年級學生怎麼辦?共有14萬人喔。難怪家長怒罵一本又變多本,怎麼補?


好險此事發生在市長選舉之後,否則郝能否選上都很難講。此案顯示出郝的暴衝性格,對公共政策的馬虎衝動,剛愎自用,對馬的選情和立委的選舉都有負面影響。
郝的政治生命是否就此埋單雖言之過早,但已受到重傷,讓人懷疑他有更上層樓的資格和能力。


Working Lives: Malaysia



Working Lives: Malaysia

Busy street scene in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Six very different characters talk about their working lives.

Wardina Safiyyah is a Muslim model and TV host, hoping to change the perception of beauty in a Malysian'tudong'.

First-time politician Hannah Yeoh is waging war on the race politics she feels are entrenched in the national psyche.

Shopkeeper Santhosam Palanisamy works long hours in his shop in the urban slums of Kuala Lumpur, saving hard to send his daughter to university, while government worker Ravindran Devagunam is hoping to make Malaysia a better place, after sixteen years abroad because of the lack of opportunities at home.

These are just some of the stories revealed to us through six characters and their daily working lives - what do these stories tell us about Malaysia today?

Working Lives Malaysia will be shown in full on BBC World News on Saturday 27th August at 0030, 0730, 1930 GMT and on Sunday 28th August at 1230 GMT.

More on This Story

Malaysia Direct


2011年8月25日 星期四

新聞


China Cosco Holdings Co., the nation’s largest shipping company, slumped to a larger-than- expected first-half loss of 2.76 billion yuan ($432 million) because of plunging cargo rates and rising fuel costs.

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SINGAPORE—Google Inc. will continue to invest in Southeast Asia, the fastest-growing market for the U.S. Internet-search and services company, a company executive said on Wednesday.

"Southeast Asia is coming into prominence but not much of content about the region is available on the Internet. With over 120 million people online in the region, we are particularly excited about growth in the region," Julian Persaud, the managing director for Google in Southeast Asia, said during an interview.

Google on Wednesday that said it is opening an office in Bangkok, the second local operation



2011年8月24日 星期三

Groupon 公司七八個月前要去中國大通商 結果開始打包啦



Groupon Stumbles in China
China's joint venture in China, Gaopeng.com, has closed offices in some cities and laid off hundreds of employees. The moves appears to mark an abrupt reversal of Groupon's aggressive expansion into China just eight months ago.


2011年8月23日 星期二

爾虞我詐的日中高鐵技術攻防: 中國還是不要想速成....


中國可能又藉溫州大車禍要求買日本的核心技術
但是想一下德國的磁浮火車案 就知道中國還是不要想速成....

China's high-speed trains packed, but glitches remain

2011/08/24


photoThe D301 high-speed train running between Shanghai and Wenzhou South stations in China, on Aug. 20 carried the same service number as the train that rammed into another one and derailed July 23 near Wenzhou. (Atsushi Okudera)photoThe front car of a train involved in the July 23 accident was buried in a farm field. "I have no idea when I can resume farm work," said a farmer who grew vegetables there. (Atsushi Okudera)

A mixture of optimism and disgust was expressed among passengers aboard a packed high-speed train that passed through the site of the accident that killed 40 and injured nearly 200 a month ago near Wenzhou, China.

Measures have been taken to focus more on safety since the July 23 collision and derailment. But along the same route, delays and malfunctioning signals showed that improvements are still needed for China's railway system.

The D301 train--carrying the same service number as the one that rammed into another train on June 23--was filled to capacity on Aug. 19.

Obtaining a ticket for the D301 train from Shanghai proved difficult; all seats on all trains serving the Shanghai-Wenzhou South section were fully booked for three days.

An Asahi Shimbun correspondent was able to obtain a ticket only after a colleague waited for four hours for a cancellation.

The 16-car train, departing from Beijing South and bound for Fuzhou, Fujian province, was a CRH2 model, the same as the train that rammed the other one a month ago. China manufactured the model based on the Hayate bullet train used on the Tohoku Shinkansen Line in Japan.

Of the four cars that fell from the elevated track on July 23, car No. 1 housed second-class seats, while cars No. 2 through No. 4 were sleeping cars, each with a capacity of 40. There was no change in this composition.

The train, full of families with children and workers on business trips, left Shanghai on time at 3:44 p.m.

Eight passengers said they knew that D301 was the service number of the train involved in the accident.

"I don't care about it myself, but my 8-year-old daughter didn't like it," said a 43-year-old man from Beijing.

Traveling from Beijing to Fuzhou by train costs 1,385 yuan (17,000 yen or $220), more than discount airfares. He said his family would have preferred to fly. But his daughter is a second child, illegal under China's one-child policy. She does not have an ID card, a requirement for air ticket purchases.

"Showing the parents' ID was sufficient to buy high-speed train tickets, so we had no choice," his 39-year-old wife said.

Many passengers felt confident about the safety of the train ride.

"We just had a big accident, so we are not likely to have anything similar any time soon," said Yue Wenxiu, from Heilongjiang province.

The D301 attained a maximum speed of 250 kph, unchanged from before the accident. But it slowed down more than once after passing Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

A conductor explained: "There is a problem with the traffic signals. We are about 30 minutes late."

Another conductor said, "The signal ahead does not turn on."

When asked about the cause of the problem, the conductor could only answer, "I don't know."

Before the July 23 accident, the oncoming train also stalled or was forced to slow down because of failures in the train operating and other systems.

Even after the disaster, signal failures have frequently disrupted train services along the Ningbo-Wenzhou South route. The signals were reportedly switched to manual operations to enable the trains to keep running.

Some passengers looked disgusted. "It's there again," one of them said.

It appeared that the signal-system problems that caused the accident were never fixed.

The D301 passed through the accident site at slightly over 100 kph, about the same speed as that of the oncoming train when the collision and derailment occurred. It arrived at Wenzhou South Station 30 minutes behind schedule.

"We are cutting down on the stoppage time because our train is delayed," said a conductor, urging passengers to disembark quickly. On a signboard at Wenzhou South Station, red letters for "delayed" appeared beside all 10 high-speed train services on display.

The red figures on an electronic signboard inside a car showing the current speed never exceeded 295 kph aboard a Hexie (Harmony) high-speed train that traveled from Beijing to Tianjin on Aug. 22.

The Beijing-Tianjin line, which was opened in 2008 to coincide with the Beijing Olympic Games, used to boast the world's top speed of 350 kph. Following the July 23 accident, however, the Chinese government revised train timetables to place more emphasis on safety. Train speeds were reduced to 300 kph or less on all lines across China.

"The accident has helped us recover a sense of sanity," said a former Ministry of Railways official. "Public opinion pressured the State Council to take action. Gone are the days of a 'Great Leap Forward,' where speeds and distances alone counted as political achievements."

The Ministry of Railways, harshly criticized for mishandling the accident, is trying to come up with measures to quell growing calls for it to be dismantled. The ministry reduced the number of train services and suspended plans to build new lines.

"Construction used to begin before approval was given," according to a Ministry of Railways source, but the overall pace of railroad construction is also under review.

Sleeping cars aboard conventional trains linking Beijing with Shanghai were abolished when a high-speed train line was opened. But these cars will be revived, too, to comply with passenger requests. Trains of the latest CRH380B model, which has been plagued by frequent failures, were recalled. Improvement work is under way.

"This was a totally avoidable and preventable accident," said Luo Lin, head of the State Administration of Work Safety who also leads the Chinese government's accident investigation team, in Wenzhou on Aug. 11. Facing public criticism, investigators ousted two Ministry of Railways bureaucrats from the team.

So far, the Chinese government has only said that serious defects in the design of signal systems and inadequate emergency measures caused the accident.

Premier Wen Jiabao said the entire process of the investigation should be made transparent to the public. The results of the investigation are due in September.

(This article was compiled from reports by Atsushi Okudera and Keiko Yoshioka.)


2011年8月22日 星期一

國民黨的黃金在台灣銀行的存摺? 2010年156萬戶 入不敷出


干預適時收手

那政府能做什麼?政府基本角色在提供制 度,以便創造並支撐金融承諾裡所需要的信任;政府的責任在建立和保護財產權;政府還要創造金融市場中最重要的一環:政府的公債市場。政府負責創造公共制度 的品質,是經濟發展的最重要的單一元素。我們贊成政府在風暴時擴大介入市場,幫助國家脫困;但恢復正常後政府要退出干預,還給市場正常地運作,以免政府食 髓知味,難拒走向威權體制的誘惑。



行政院昨(二十二)日指出,政府施政一向秉持著「以台灣為主、對人民有利」的理念,引領臺灣持續向前邁進,透過制定與執行不同的政策方針,與全民攜手合作、齊心努力,全力打造未來黃金十年。 行政院說,在上週行政院會通過的「行政院101年度施政計 ...
去年156萬戶 入不敷出
2010年國內家庭收支概況

平均每戶透支二萬多元

〔記 者鄭琪芳/台北報導〕去年經濟成長率破十%,但貧富差距仍是史上第三高,中低所得家庭收支相當吃緊,成為新貧或近貧階級。根據行政院主計處調查,去年所得 次低二十%家庭,平均每戶儲蓄僅三.四萬元,為近二十四年來次低,只比前年的二.四萬元好一點;所得最低二十%家庭更是入不敷出,平均每戶透支二萬五二五 元,創下史上次高,僅次於前年的三萬六九七元。

每戶所得 連三年減少

主計處日前發布「家庭收支調查結果」,去年國內家庭總戶數七八四.一萬戶,所得總額為八兆八一一三億元,僅較前年增加一.五九%;平均每戶所得總額一一二.四萬元,較前年減少○.三九%,已連續三年減少,是歷年來僅見。

所 得總額減掉非消費支出(稅費、利息支出等)後,去年平均每戶可支配所得八十八.九萬元,雖較前年微增○.二%,但仍未回到馬政府執政前的水準;去年平均每 戶消費支出則是七十.二萬元,平均每戶儲蓄十八.七萬元,儲蓄率二十一.○三%,為近三十三年來次低,僅高於前年的二十.五%。

若將國內家庭依所得高低分成五等分,每一等分代表一五六.八萬戶,去年所得最低二十%家庭,平均可支配所得只有二十八.九萬元,平均消費支出卻達三十.九萬元,呈現入不敷出的情況,平均每戶透支金額二萬五二五元。

反觀所得最高二十%家庭,去年平均可支配所得一七八.七萬元,平均消費支出一一六.四萬元,一年就可以存下六十二.三萬元,儲蓄率高達三十四.八八%,等於近三成五的收入可以存下來,跟所得最低二十%家庭相比,可說是天壤之別。

另 外,各縣市貧富差距也相當大,去年台北市平均每戶可支配所得一二九.九萬元最高,其次是新竹市一一八.五萬元、新竹縣一○五.三萬元;至於所得較低的縣 市,依序是台東縣五十六.八萬元、雲林縣六十一.六萬元、嘉義縣六十五.八萬元,台東縣與雲林縣的家庭所得,都還不到台北市的一半。

台東雲林所得 不到北市一半

官員表示,台北市工商業發達,新竹縣市則有科學園區,提供較多就業機會,家庭收入較高;台東、雲林及嘉義等以農業為主的地區,家庭收入相對較低。不過,這項調查樣本只有一萬四千多戶,部分縣市樣本有限,恐難兼顧代表性。

西方的亞洲遠景讓亞洲各國押寶上猶疑--- 不過飛機預算還是要多編點




What’s Schadenfreude in Chinese?

Disarray in the West generates mixed reactions in Asia



German newspapers were falling over themselves with "Schadenfreude". The Financial Times Deutschland dubbed the aristocrat "Baron Cut-and-Paste" on its front page -- and with a cheeky superscript "1" next to the headline to indicate a footnote.

德國報紙簡直是竭盡「幸災樂禍」之能事。德國金融時報就在頭版戲稱這位貴族之後為「剪貼伯爵」,還在新聞標題旁用俗氣的上標寫著代表論文註腳的數字1。




Schadenfreude

schadenfreude[scha・den・freu・de]

  • 発音記号[ʃɑ'ːdnfrɔ`idə]

[名][U]他人の不幸や災難を喜ぶこと.
[ドイツ語]


TO ERR is human. To gloat, divinely satisfying. The sequence of bad news from America and Europe has provoked its share of triumphalist commentary in Asia. What the subtitle to a book by Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean former diplomat, called “The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East” seems to be happening faster than anyone expected. Many Asians, naturally, are inclined to cheer. But many find the shift rather terrifying.

No sooner was America’s credit rating downgraded than China, its biggest creditor, (admittedly by a coincidence of timing) sent its first aircraft-carrier out to sea. For those living in emerging Asia, the memory of the devastating regional financial meltdown of 1997-98 is still fresh, and now they see smug Europeans struck down by their own debt crisis. And although many countries in Asia suffer political instability, none has been reduced in recent months to the sort of anarchy that for a few nights this month afflicted staid old Britain.

These sundry calamities in the West have provided Asian commentators with an unmissable chance to unveil Western hypocrisy. Many Asian leaders have vivid memories of the lectures they endured in 1997-98 over their thriftless, incompetent economic management, and of the harsh medicine they were forced to swallow in return for IMF assistance. So some must enjoy the reversal of roles: emerging Asia as the model of steady, consistent economic policy and sustained growth; America, Europe and Japan mired in debt and slow growth or even recession. Mr Mahbubani, now dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, says “every piece of advice that the Asians received has been ignored” in the West.

A few weeks ago, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, rebuked Britain for its obsessive harping on human-rights abuses in its dealings with his country. How he must have relished hearing his British counterpart, David Cameron, say this month that his government would not let “phoney human-rights concerns” get in the way of hunting down rioters and looters.

Even before these latest symptoms of Western decline, the perception of China’s relative rise had taken root around the world. The IMF forecasts that, adjusted for purchasing power, China’s economy will be bigger than America’s by the end of 2016. According to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey, based on questioning in April, the proportion of respondents who think China has already replaced America as the world’s leading superpower, or will do so one day, was 63% in China, 65% in Britain and 46% even in America (up from 33% as recently as 2009).

In the circumstances it is not surprising that China’s press has adopted the finger-wagging tone heard so often from the West. The official news agency, Xinhua, told America to cure its “addiction to debt”. It also fretted that America’s irresponsibility would undermine “the spluttering world economic recovery” and that “financial turmoil could come back to haunt us all.”

That is one of at least three flies in the Schadenfreude. The West’s economic woes are also Asia’s. Even if renewed global financial upheaval is averted, slow growth in America, Europe and Japan will dent economic prospects across the region. Asia, too, is addicted to American debt, in so far as this finances imports from Asia, which then invests some of the proceeds back in America. Singapore’s Straits Times argued in an editorial this month that all the talk about Asian economies “decoupling from the West remains a pipe dream.”

The second consideration dampening the regional celebrations is that many Asian countries are suffering from serious problems of their own. Of the three biggest, both Indonesia and, more acutely, India, are facing crises of confidence over their government’s failure to deal with corruption at the heart of their political systems. Even China is facing a rash of political protests. In particular, the fury caused by the high-speed train crash at Wenzhou in July, in which at least 40 people died, has raised troubling questions about the railways’ safety and, more broadly, about the political system itself.

Commenting on the debt-ceiling fiasco in Washington, DC, Xinhua took American politicians to task, and asked: “How can Washington shake off electoral politics and get difficult jobs done more efficiently?” But it is hard now for even the most nationalist Chinese commentators to go to town about the superiority of the “Beijing model”. One of its supposed advantages is precisely that it “gets difficult jobs done more efficiently”. And one example it used to point to as a source of pride was the world-beating high-speed train system. Whoops.

Premature adjudication

The third problem with Asian triumphalism is that it is—as Asian leaders well know—premature. Western consumers remain big contributors to Asian growth. American defence spending continues to dwarf China’s, and it will be years before that first aircraft-carrier outing translates into a serious carrier-group capability. A recent study by the Asian Development Bank projected that, on optimistic assumptions, China would by 2050 account for 22% of the global economy, compared with 14% for America (and India). In another plausible, if less rosy, scenario, in which China and India find themselves caught in a “middle-income trap”, the proportions would be 11% for China, 21% for America and 6% for India. But even on the optimistic projection, China would still be, per head, less than half as rich as America.

Mr Mahbubani argues that, for other Asian countries pondering the future, it is the trend that matters—and America’s is, at best, unpredictable. America insists it wants to remain an Asian power, and has the military muscle to do so. But defence spending may be easier to cut than “entitlements”. So America’s word may be less persuasive than China’s ever more visible presence. Long-term trends can have big short-term effects.



2011年8月20日 星期六

誰理你呀 班禪




China, Tibet and the Dalai Lama

Lamas at loggerheads

Three articles look at China and religion. First, a war of attrition over Tibet; next, China v the Vatican; third, a Chinese project at the Buddha’s birthplace

IT WAS never going to be easy. Installing the Chinese Communist Party’s chosen man as Tibet’s second-highest ranking religious leader has been an uphill struggle since 1995, when it declared him, at the ripe old age of six, to be the new Panchen Lama. But a recent attempt to introduce him to monastic life suggests that Tibetan resistance to China’s choice is still strong. Loyalty to the young man is brittle.

For China, this matters hugely. Tibetan Buddhism has a religious hierarchy with the Dalai Lama at the top, followed by the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama is traditionally involved in recognising the Panchen Lama, and the Panchen Lama is part of the process by which each new Dalai Lama is chosen. China has its eyes on a complex struggle that will play out after the death of the current 76-year-old Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in India. With the endorsement of its own Panchen Lama, China wants to choose a successor to the current Dalai Lama and seek to control him. Hence it is believed to be keeping another young man, who was the Dalai Lama’s choice as Panchen Lama 16 years ago, incommunicado in an unknown location. China fears that Tibetan exiles will appoint their own Dalai Lama and it does not want any authoritative Tibetan figure to show him support. Both China and the exiles have recently been stepping up preparations for a coming dispute.

On China’s side, this has involved an effort to burnish its Panchen Lama’s credentials by getting him some monastic training. Gyaltsen Norbu, as he is named, has spent most of his 21 years in Beijing. His outings have been few and secretive. Across Tibet, images of the Dalai Lama’s choice of Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, can sometimes be seen on furtive display in monasteries, his face frozen in time as a little boy. Chinese officials probably hoped that installing Gyaltsen Norbu in a big-name monastery might win him more supporters. With some parts of Tibet roiled by unrest—a protesting monk burned himself to death on August 15th in Daofu, a Tibetan-dominated county of Sichuan Province—this was always bound to be tricky.

The monastery they chose was Labrang in southern Gansu province, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. It is not clear why. Historically, the Panchen Lama’s seat was Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse in central Tibet. Robert Barnett of Columbia University in New York says it is possible that even at Tashilhunpo some lamas do not accept China’s choice. In 1997, Tashilhunpo’s then abbot, Chadrel Rinpoche, was sentenced to six years in prison (he has not resurfaced since) for helping the Dalai Lama make his choice of Panchen Lama. In 1998, Chinese officials tried to give their Panchen Lama a monastic start at Kumbum in Qinghai Province, a monastery that has usually acquiesced to Chinese rule. Its abbot, Arjia Rinpoche, fled to America to avoid the duty.

Labrang has no reputation for tameness. Its monks joined a wave of protests that swept Tibet and neighbouring Tibetan regions in 2008 after an outbreak of rioting in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital. In recent days, Labrang has again proved stubborn. Locals gave China’s Panchen Lama, who arrived on August 11th, nothing like the rapturous reception his predecessor, the tenth Panchen Lama, received during visits to Tibetan areas. Large numbers of police prevented any protests, and foreigners were ushered out of town. Tibetan exile groups quoted sources at Labrang saying that Gyaltsen Norbu was expected to stay for weeks or months. A local official, however, says he left on August 16th. His cool welcome, it seems, hastened him on his way.

In Dharamsala in India’s Himalayan foothills, Tibet’s government-in-exile has been busy manoeuvring, too. On August 8th it swore in a new prime minister, Lobsang Sangay. This is touted by the exiles as an historic event, with the new man taking over all the Dalai Lama’s political functions. Mr Sangay, who has never been to Tibet, struck an ambiguous tone in his inaugural speech, referring to Tibet as “occupied” but also expressing his wish for “genuine autonomy” under Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama’s decision to give up his political role appears aimed at bolstering the post of prime minister before his death. A new Dalai Lama chosen by the exiles is likely to be a small boy who will need many years of tutelage before taking up his duties. It also presents a challenge to China, which has always refused to recognise the Dalai Lama’s political mantle. Now that he no longer has it, China has a face-saving opportunity to engage with him properly. Chinese officials have held several rounds of talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives in recent years, the latest in January 2010, but have not moved beyond finger-wagging.

Few see any sign of change. The man likely to become China’s next president, Xi Jinping, visited Lhasa in July for official celebrations of the Communist Party’s takeover of the territory 60 years ago. He praised the fight against “separatist and sabotage activities staged by the Dalai group and foreign hostile forces”. But there have been some positive signals, too. A meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama at the White House in July elicited the usual sharp criticism from China. But it did not derail subsequent exchanges between China and America, including a visit to Beijing this week by the vice-president, Joe Biden.

On August 13th the Dalai Lama told reporters in France that he would discuss the issue of his reincarnation at a meeting of Tibetan religious heads in September. He said that unlike China, he is in no hurry to make arrangements.


亞洲男女青年不來電: 前途堪慮



The decline of Asian marriage

Asia's lonely hearts

Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious

TWENTY years ago a debate erupted about whether there were specific “Asian values”. Most attention focused on dubious claims by autocrats that democracy was not among them. But a more intriguing, if less noticed, argument was that traditional family values were stronger in Asia than in America and Europe, and that this partly accounted for Asia’s economic success. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged “scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.

On the face of it his claim appears persuasive still. In most of Asia, marriage is widespread and illegitimacy almost unknown. In contrast, half of marriages in some Western countries end in divorce, and half of all children are born outside wedlock. The recent riots across Britain, whose origins many believe lie in an absence of either parental guidance or filial respect, seem to underline a profound difference between East and West.

Yet marriage is changing fast in East, South-East and South Asia, even though each region has different traditions. The changes are different from those that took place in the West in the second half of the 20th century. Divorce, though rising in some countries, remains comparatively rare. What’s happening in Asia is a flight from marriage (see article).

Marriage rates are falling partly because people are postponing getting hitched. Marriage ages have risen all over the world, but the increase is particularly marked in Asia. People there now marry even later than they do in the West. The mean age of marriage in the richest places—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong—has risen sharply in the past few decades, to reach 29-30 for women and 31-33 for men.

A lot of Asians are not marrying later. They are not marrying at all. Almost a third of Japanese women in their early 30s are unmarried; probably half of those will always be. Over one-fifth of Taiwanese women in their late 30s are single; most will never marry. In some places, rates of non-marriage are especially striking: in Bangkok, 20% of 40-44-year old women are not married; in Tokyo, 21%; among university graduates of that age in Singapore, 27%. So far, the trend has not affected Asia’s two giants, China and India. But it is likely to, as the economic factors that have driven it elsewhere in Asia sweep through those two countries as well; and its consequences will be exacerbated by the sex-selective abortion practised for a generation there. By 2050, there will be 60m more men of marriageable age than women in China and India.

The joy of staying single

Women are retreating from marriage as they go into the workplace. That’s partly because, for a woman, being both employed and married is tough in Asia. Women there are the primary caregivers for husbands, children and, often, for ageing parents; and even when in full-time employment, they are expected to continue to play this role. This is true elsewhere in the world, but the burden that Asian women carry is particularly heavy. Japanese women, who typically work 40 hours a week in the office, then do, on average, another 30 hours of housework. Their husbands, on average, do three hours. And Asian women who give up work to look after children find it hard to return when the offspring are grown. Not surprisingly, Asian women have an unusually pessimistic view of marriage. According to a survey carried out this year, many fewer Japanese women felt positive about their marriage than did Japanese men, or American women or men.

At the same time as employment makes marriage tougher for women, it offers them an alternative. More women are financially independent, so more of them can pursue a single life that may appeal more than the drudgery of a traditional marriage. More education has also contributed to the decline of marriage, because Asian women with the most education have always been the most reluctant to wed—and there are now many more highly educated women.

No marriage, no babies

The flight from marriage in Asia is thus the result of the greater freedom that women enjoy these days, which is to be celebrated. But it is also creating social problems. Compared with the West, Asian countries have invested less in pensions and other forms of social protection, on the assumption that the family will look after ageing or ill relatives. That can no longer be taken for granted. The decline of marriage is also contributing to the collapse in the birth rate. Fertility in East Asia has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in the late 1960s to 1.6 now. In countries with the lowest marriage rates, the fertility rate is nearer 1.0. That is beginning to cause huge demographic problems, as populations age with startling speed. And there are other, less obvious issues. Marriage socialises men: it is associated with lower levels of testosterone and less criminal behaviour. Less marriage might mean more crime.

Can marriage be revived in Asia? Maybe, if expectations of those roles of both sexes change; but shifting traditional attitudes is hard. Governments cannot legislate away popular prejudices. They can, though, encourage change. Relaxing divorce laws might, paradoxically, boost marriage. Women who now steer clear of wedlock might be more willing to tie the knot if they know it can be untied—not just because they can get out of the marriage if it doesn’t work, but also because their freedom to leave might keep their husbands on their toes. Family law should give divorced women a more generous share of the couple’s assets. Governments should also legislate to get employers to offer both maternal and paternal leave, and provide or subsidise child care. If taking on such expenses helped promote family life, it might reduce the burden on the state of looking after the old.

Asian governments have long taken the view that the superiority of their family life was one of their big advantages over the West. That confidence is no longer warranted. They need to wake up to the huge social changes happening in their countries and think about how to cope with the consequences.


2011年8月18日 星期四

外交休兵去,來做內政大秀--怎麼現在才不知為何而戰?




蘋論:外交國防都不知為何而戰

中斷多年的外交部使節會議昨天在台北召開,有外交官問國安會祕書長胡為真,兩岸外交休兵,在海外與中國外交官該如何相處?


這個問題問出什麼重點?答案就是:外交官不知為何而戰!跟軍方一樣,兩岸和解,在終極統一的大帽子下,也不知為何而戰?事關國家安全最重要的兩大機關外交部與國防部,都不知為何而戰,真是悲哀又恐怖。

面對中共官員迷惘

胡為真回答說,儘管兩岸休兵,但外館仍須蒐集與中國相關的情報供國內討論與了解。另有外交官說,中國現在對台最有敵意的單位,就是外交部。如果外交官連這都要問、都不知道,可見外館已經無聊到什麼地步。閒得發慌,難怪秦日新喝酒把妹,外館大致都如此嗎?
蒐集駐在國的政治、經濟、社會、商業和軍事情報,是外交官的基本動作與職責,怎麼已經迷惘到連這都不知要做呢?以往外交戰線鬥爭慘烈,中國外交戰 線咄咄逼人,我方外交官負隅頑抗,完全是零和遊戲。當時最反共的不是台獨,而是外交官員;這也是我外交官認為對台敵意最深的是中國外交部的原因。雙方外交 官是以肉搏戰的方式鬥爭,其他國內部門,即使軍方,都沒有那樣的鬥爭。所以外交官也是台灣對中國敵意最重的政府官員。現在外交休兵,難怪外交官迷惘惶惑,要問怎麼跟宿敵相處了。


軍方的預算連續好幾年低於GDP的3%,無力大規模推動募兵制;軍方想買的先進武器也沒有動靜。困窘的是,軍方發現馬強調要買F-16 C/D可能是假的,因為大選快到了只是作態給選民看的,就很鬱卒,士氣更低,更不知為何而戰。

軍售作秀為馬助選

馬很放心地大聲嚷嚷要買F-16 C/D和柴油潛艦,因為知道美國不會賣,就打蛇隨棍上作態要買。馬了解美國不願開罪中國而售台機艦,美國也不願軍事科技被台灣的間諜偷去給中國;同時,中 國知道馬必須作態才能連任成功,就假裝生氣罵街,好讓馬變成反共英雄。易言之,這是場台、中、美聯手演出的為馬助選大戲,演給誰看?當然是演給台灣可憐又 很瞎的選民看。最後肯定是以F-16 A/B升級來向中國和選民交代。這樣搞,軍方當然不知為何而戰了。問題是,大家都拆穿馬軍購是假的,他還繼續演個沒完,不彆扭嗎?


「英九日報-電視」天天賣愛民的膏藥 無所不在的賣乖 因為我黨黑金無限

天天賣愛民的膏藥 無所不在的賣乖 因為我黨黑金無限




---
蘋論:得便宜賣乖

馬總統是不是有點被迫害妄想?或者喜歡表演得了便宜還賣乖的戲碼?前天說:黨政軍退出媒體後國民黨不再有媒體,在媒體上反而處於弱勢。

監督政府媒體天責

他說政府做了很多事,媒體不是抹黑就是不報導。是嗎?馬總統好久沒看報、看電視了吧。先不說媒體本來就是執政黨政府的天敵,天責就是監督政府,媒體沒必要錦上添花,反而應該善盡監督的責任。馬總統居美多年,在哈佛念法律,竟然不懂這個道理,令人駭異。
馬政府在媒體上處於弱勢嗎?很多讀者認為若干報紙簡直就是「英九日報」,捧場新聞已讓學新聞學的人看不下去;電視台勤王護主的還少麼?民進黨固然 得到若干媒體的支持,但支持泛藍的媒體只會多不會少,馬有此感嘆,令人不解,莫非嫌捧馬的媒體不夠努力嗎?媒體同志們你們不夠努力,要加油喔!


2011年8月16日 星期二

完全執政: 完全硬不起來: 生育率續降




Taiwanese birth rate plummets despite measures

A nurse inspects newborn babies at a hospital in Taipei Taiwan has the lowest fertility rate in the world

Related Stories

Taiwan's government has acknowledged its birth rate declined last year, even as it introduced a series of measures to encourage people to have babies.

These included stipends for giving birth and childcare subsidies.

Taiwan's total fertility rate - the average number of children women have during their childbearing years - dropped to 0.9 last year, down from 1.03 the previous year.

That gives Taiwan the lowest fertility rate in the world, the statistics show.

Some Taiwanese women are reluctant to have children.

"We think it's not suitable to raise children, especially in Taiwan. In Taiwan, when a girl gets married she has to sacrifice a lot," one says.

"Once she reaches a certain academic level she can't just stay at home and take care of kids and her parents-in-law, but that's still what the older generation expects from them."

Another says: "Taiwan's work hours are really long. That makes it difficult to get married and have kids. You might not have much free time and it's hard to relax."

These women's views reflect those of many Taiwanese people. Wages here are considered low compared to the cost of childcare and property prices.

Many couples still live with their parents or in-laws. Many Taiwanese women also delay getting married to pursue academic degrees or careers.

Some complain it is hard for them to find a husband once they reach 30 because of old-fashioned views about women.

In addition, many employers frown upon female workers taking extended maternity leave, and expect mothers to work the same amount of overtime as they did before they gave birth.

Baby boom?

The government, however, blames the lower birth rate on superstition.

The year 2009 was considered an unlucky year to get married, and 2010 - the year of the tiger - a bad year to have children.

However, officials say this year is considered a lucky one as it is the country's 100th anniversary.

Between January and July, the number of marriages rose more than 12% compared to the same period last year, and the number of births also shot up.

Next year, the year of the dragon, is especially auspicious for having children.


China biggest source of migrants to Australia/ 美國製的筷子




中國成澳洲最大移民來源國
China biggest source of migrants to Australia
英國《金融時報》 彼得•史密斯悉尼報導


China has overtaken the UK to become Australia's biggest source of migrants in an historic shift that underlines the strengthening ties between the two Asia Pacific nations.


中國已經超越英國,成為澳大利亞最大的移民來源國。這一歷史性轉變突顯了這兩個亞太國家關係的不斷增強。

Migrants from China jumped a fifth to nearly 30,000 out of Australia's total annual intake of 168,685, according to government figures published on Wednesday.


據周三公佈的政府數據顯示,2010-11年度來自中國的移民上升了20%,達到近3萬人,而同期澳大利亞吸納的移民總數為168685人。

The rise comes at a time when Australia is grappling with skilled worker shortages, especially in its booming mining and energy industries that are investing record sums to meet China's demands for commodities and fuel. China is Australia's biggest two-way trading partner.


澳大利亞近年來正努力解決熟練工人短缺的問題,尤其是在其蓬勃發展的採礦業與能源業,澳大利亞正在這兩個行業大舉投資,以​​滿足中國對大宗商品與燃料的需求。中國移民數量的攀升正是在此背景下發生的。中國是澳大利亞最大的雙邊貿易夥伴。

Australia's jobless rate has flat-lined this year at about 4.9 per cent, considered close to full employment, and the government has forecast it will fall to 4.5 per cent in 2013.


澳大利亞今年的失業率幾乎與去年持平,在4.9%左右(被認為接近充分就業),而政府預測到2013年失業率將下降到4.5%。

The greater migrant numbers from China helped offset the continued decline from the UK, where numbers fell for a fifth straight year to slightly less than 24,000. India, now Australia's third biggest migrant source, has also declined in recent years and fell 6 per cent to 21,768.


中國移民數量的增加幫助抵消了英國移民數量的持續下降——來自英國的移民數量已連續第五年下降,跌至2.4萬人以下。澳大利亞如今的第三大移民來源國——印度的移民數量近年來也出現了下降,本年度降幅為6%,移民總數為21768人。

Australia's image in India was tarnished by a string of brutal Indian student bashings in 2009, while Canberra has also cracked down on disreputable vocational education schools that were temporarily used by foreign students, including those from India, to attain working visas.


澳大利亞在印度的形象,因2009年一系列在澳印度學生遭暴力襲擊事件而受到了破壞。與此同時,澳洲政府還對外國學生(包括來自印度的學生)暫時選擇就讀,以獲取工作簽證的不良職業教育學校進行了取締。

Chris Bowen, the Australian immigration minister, said the bulk of the new arrivals in the 2010-11 migration programme were skilled workers.


澳大利亞移民部長克里斯•鮑恩(Chris Bowen)表示,2010-11年移民計劃吸納的移民,大多數都是熟練工人。

“Skilled migrants deliver significant benefits … as their employment contributes to economic growth and their relative youth offsets some of the impacts of the ageing labour force,” he said.


“熟練工移民為澳大利亞經濟帶來了重大利益……他們的工作為經濟增長做出了貢獻,而且他們相對年輕,這抵消了澳大利亞勞動力老齡化的部分影響,”他表示。

Mr Bowen is locked in a legal battle over Canberra's plan to deport 800 asylum seekers entering Australian waters illegally by boat to Malaysia in exchange for 4,000 of its refugees.


鮑恩眼下還忙著一起有關澳政府遣送難民的法律訴訟。澳政府計劃將乘船進入澳洲水域尋求政治避難的800名非法偷渡客,遣送回馬來西亞,以交換馬來西亞的4000名難民。

The top occupations in the skilled migrants stream were accountants, computing professionals, cooks and registered nurses.


熟練工移民中,排名最靠前的幾個職業分別是會計師、計算機專業人士、廚師以及註冊護士。



譯者/何黎


***

American manufacturing

Sticking it to China

A factory in rural Georgia helps East Asia eat

American wood meets Chinese food

ASK someone to write down all the differences between China and rural Georgia and his hand will fall off before he’s halfway done. So let us restrict ourselves to the vista: cranes, skyscrapers, spanking new rail networks and smog: China. Barbecue restaurants, red clay and trees: Georgia. And whereas most rural Georgians are surviving quite well, thank you, without skyscrapers and subways, Chinese diners, who go through billions of disposable wooden chopsticks each year, could use a few more trees.

Enter Georgia Chopsticks. Jae Lee, a former scrap-metal exporter, saw an opportunity and began turning out chopsticks for the Chinese market late last year. He and his co-owner, David Hughes, make their chopsticks from poplar and sweet-gum trees, which have the requisite flexibility and toughness, and are abundant throughout Georgia.


In May Georgia Chopsticks moved to larger premises in Americus, a location that offered room to grow, inexpensive facilities and a willing workforce. Sumter County, of which Americus is the seat, has an unemployment rate of more than 12%. Georgia Chopsticks now employs 81 people turning out 2m chopsticks a day. By year’s end Mr Lee and Mr Hughes hope to increase their workforce to 150, and dream of building a “manufacturing incubator” to help foreign firms take advantage of Georgia’s workforce and raw materials.

But that is some way off. For now Messrs Lee and Hughes, and their workers, keep busy shearing, steaming, shaving, cutting and drying huge logs into rough chopsticks. They still need to be finished—to eat with a pair of Georgia Chopsticks right off the Americus line you would need tweezers in your other hand and a high pain tolerance. For that they are shipped via the Port of Savannah to China (later this year they will start sending them to Korea and Japan) in boxes with a rare and prestigious stamp: Made in the USA.


2011年8月15日 星期一

越泰中印巴日韓





Washington backs Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam

BY DAISUKE FURUTA CORRESPONDENT

2011/08/14


photoNurses feed infants with disabilities caused by Agent Orange at the "Peace Village" at Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam on Aug. 3. (Daisuke Furuta)photoPart of the area around Da Nang airport most contaminated by Agent Orange has been covered with concrete. (Daisuke Furuta)

DA NANG, Vietnam--The air around Da Nang airport in central Vietnam is filled with a pungent smell of chlorine. Almost nothing grows there.

Fifty years after the first use by the United States of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, the highly toxic defoliant still torments the land. According to the Dioxin Analysis Laboratory in Hanoi, the density of dioxin in the area is about 400 times international safety standards.

Now, a joint U.S.-Vietnamese project is working to clean up approximately 29 hectares around Da Nang, the site of a U.S. base during the 1960-1975 war where drums of Agent Orange were stored.

The United States will provide about $32 million (about 2.4 billion yen) to finance the decontamination work, which both governments aim to complete by 2013.

Experts say that it will take 20 years to remove soil in an estimated 28 highly contaminated areas across the country.

U.S. forces began using Agent Orange a year after the war broke out to destroy cover for communist Viet Cong guerrillas in forests and cultivated areas. By 1971, they had sprayed 72 million liters of Agent Orange in Vietnam. The northern side of Da Nang airport was a major storage area.

According to victim support groups, 3 million Vietnamese people have health problems linked to the defoliant, which contains a dioxin that causes cancer and birth defects.

Although Washington started providing compensation to U.S. servicemen damaged by the chemical in 1991 and normalized its diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995, it has not provided redress to Vietnamese victims.

Recently, however, Washington has been trying to strengthen its relations with Hanoi, partly in an effort to check China's growing power in the region. The former foes have held joint military exercises.

In 2003, the United States offered Vietnam about $400,000 to fund research into eliminating Agent Orange contamination.

Calling the dioxin "a legacy of the painful past we share," U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton promised to assist Vietnam in cleanup efforts when she visited the country in October last year.

The Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense will start the decontamination work next year, digging up ground and applying heat to degrade the dioxin. Military personnel have been working on bomb disposal in the area surrounding Da Nang since June as part of the preparations.

Vietnamese officials say the toxin has seeped into nearby rivers and marshes. That raises serious concerns about the health of residents in the area, according to Nguyen Thi Hien, who leads the Da Nang branch of the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin.

"Residents were eating fish caught in nearby rivers until three or four years ago," Nguyen said.

In Ho Chi Minh City, about 60 children with a variety of problems caused by Agent Orange including missing limbs and mental disabilities live in the "Peace Village" at Tu Du Hospital.

Some were left there because their parents found it too hard to raise bed-ridden children, according to officials at the hospital.

Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan said at a ceremony in Hanoi on Aug. 10, the 50th anniversary of the first use of Agent Orange, "We will demand that the United States take responsibility for the environmental destruction and health damage."

---

Thailand’s new government

Yingluck to the fore

The new prime minister rides in with a fresh mandate but familiar problems

POLITICS and publishing make good bedfellows. So it is only natural that Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand’s new prime minister, is already the subject of several books rushed out since her Pheu Thai (PT) party won July’s elections. One title, “Female Knight on a White Horse”, is an Arthurian account of her journey, from political squire at the start of the campaign in May, to becoming Thailand’s first female leader. She leads a solid majority in parliament with a popular mandate and a six-party coalition to boot, quite unlike her hapless predecessor, Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Yet Ms Yingluck’s Thailand is a long way from Camelot. She inherits a slowing economy in a week of global financial panic, and takes the reins of a nation exhausted by five years of political turmoil. Her enemies are already cooking up legal reasons to dissolve PT and remove her from office. Royalist generals are digging in their heels ahead of an autumn reshuffle. Populists are prodding PT to carry out its ambitious agenda. Red-shirt activists want justice for their fallen heroes.

Then there is her elder brother and PT’s de facto leader, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006. Now in effect exiled in Dubai, Mr Thaksin chose Yingluck, 44, to ride the horse, a masterstroke that puts him closer to his dream of a glorious homecoming. The last time he tried, in 2008, when another proxy party held power, it ended in disaster. He may be more patient this time. But he still expects a return on his investment. Scrutiny of Ms Yingluck’s 35-member cabinet, appointed on August 10th, has largely turned on Mr Thaksin’s role in its selection.

Investors will be cheered by the background of its economic ministers, who include former heads of the stock exchange and its regulatory agency. Other positions went to PT insiders, political veterans and coalition partners. Remarkably, no red shirts made it into the line-up. The new foreign minister, Surapong Towijakchaikul, is a surprise pick. He had served as chairman of the committee on foreign affairs, and it surely did not hurt that he married into the Shinawatra family. His first job should be to calm tensions on the Thai-Cambodian border, where Mr Thaksin’s friendship with Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, could come in handy.

Ms Yingluck insists that the buck stops with her. She says she wants to govern in a spirit of compromise, and so far has eschewed direct attacks on her political opponents. Speaking when she received the royal command on August 8th (pictured above), she said she wants to “return happiness back to our brothers and sisters.” She promised to listen to all opinions and to use feminine qualities of “strength and gentleness” to solve the nation’s problems.

Getting anywhere with her economic platform will require the gift of persuasion. PT campaigned on a pledge to raise the minimum wage to the equivalent of $10 a day and to double salaries for new civil servants. Business groups complain that such an increase—a 50% raise, on average—is impractical and would trigger lay-offs. As a sweetener, corporate taxes are to be cut from 30% to 23%. But tax cuts benefit mainly large companies, which tend to pay higher wages, not the small, family-owned firms with thinner margins.

Increased wages and the near doubling of rice subsidies, as well as infrastructure projects, will add to inflationary pressures. The Bank of Thailand has already warned that its 3.25% policy rate is too low, and most investors have priced in further rises by year-end. A recession in America could upset these calculations. But with public debt at 42% and over $200 billion in foreign reserves, Thailand can afford further stimulus. Whether this extra spending leads to real economic growth or a new distribution of wealth is another matter.

Ms Yingluck will need to mind more than just the opposition. She also has to strike a balance in her own camp, between politicians focused on the usual spoils of office and red-shirt supporters bent on retribution for last year’s mayhem in Bangkok, in which 90 people died in an army-led crackdown. Some want to put Mr Abhisit on trial. The army has ignored calls to account for its killing of unarmed protesters and bystanders. Prosecutors have shied away from the army’s offences and instead chased up red-shirted arsonists. Their attention may start to shift now that their political bosses have changed.

But Ms Yingluck appears wary of aggressive moves that could provoke a hostile army. She says she will support an independent committee set up by Mr Abhisit last year to investigate the protests and their fallout. That committee faces the nearly impossible task of attributing blame for Thailand’s worst political violence in a generation. It will struggle to make progress unless it has subpoena powers over army officers and red-shirt leaders, some of whom are now MPs.

Ms Yingluck’s caution may disappoint PT supporters. Some want her to show the door to General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army chief, a staunch royalist who urged voters before polling day not to elect “the same people”, ie, Thaksinites. Embarrassingly, most of the army’s rank-and-file ignored his advice. The reshuffle set for October may reward pro-Thaksin officers who have been sidelined since the 2006 coup.

General Prayuth’s hawkish views reflect those of Queen Sirikit, his patron. Her destructive partisanship, particularly towards yellow-shirt protesters in 2008, has been a public-relations disaster (amply detailed in American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks). As ailing King Bhumibol, now 83 years old, fades, Sirikit increasingly resembles Empress Dowager Cixi, the reactionary ruler of the late Qing dynasty. Neither Sirikit nor her playboy son, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, enjoys the respect given the king. As in imperial China, a privileged few appear blinded to the social changes outside the palace walls.

Most red shirts are well versed in the palace’s meddling in politics. No wonder, then, that many have concluded that the royalist elite and its enforcers stand in their way. Mr Abhisit’s premiership suffered from the perception, rightly or wrongly, that he did the bidding of this elite and cared too little about the lives of ordinary voters. Despite having enjoyed the advantages that go with incumbency, his Democrat Party failed to make headway in the countryside and received a drubbing on the national party-list vote. Yet still it re-elected Mr Abhisit, a well-spoken Old Etonian, as its leader on August 6th.

This does not bode well for a party that has now lost four straight elections to pro-Thaksin parties. In other democracies, politicians might conclude that it was time for new blood in their leadership. For the Democrats, it is also time for a less blue-blooded approach, the better to appeal to Thailand’s farmers and workers.

In chess, the king and queen are the most important pieces on the board. But knights are capable of fancy footwork. Thailand is waiting to learn what a female knight can do


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China International Fund

The Queensway syndicate and the Africa trade

China’s oil trade with Africa is dominated by an opaque syndicate. Ordinary Africans appear to do badly out of its hugely lucrative deals.

WHEN the man likely to become China’s next president meets an African oil executive, you would expect the dauphin to dominate the dealmaker. Not, though, with Manuel Vicente. On April 15th this year the chairman and chief executive of Sonangol, Angola’s state oil firm, strode into a room decorated with extravagant flowers in central Beijing and shook hands with Xi Jinping, the Chinese vice-president and probable next general secretary of the Communist Party. Mr Vicente holds no official rank in the Angolan government and yet, as if he were conferring with a head of state, Mr Xi reassured his guest that China wants to “strengthen mutual political trust”.

Angola—along with Saudi Arabia—is China’s largest oil supplier and that alone makes Mr Vicente an important man in Beijing. But he is also a partner in a syndicate founded by well-connected Cantonese entrepreneurs who, with their African partners, have taken control of one of China’s most important trade channels. Operating out of offices in Hong Kong’s Queensway, the syndicate calls itself China International Fund or China Sonangol. Over the past seven years it has signed contracts worth billions of dollars for oil, minerals and diamonds from Africa.

These deals are shrouded in secrecy. However, they appear to grant the Queensway syndicate remarkably profitable terms. If that is right, then they would be depriving some of the world’s poorest people of desperately needed wealth. Because the syndicate has done deals with the regimes in strife-torn places, such as Zimbabwe and Guinea, it may also have indirectly helped sustain violent conflicts.

The Economist repeatedly put these accusations to the people who feature in this article, asking for their side of the story. But—with one exception, noted below—we heard nothing. In short, it looks as if the fortunes of entire African countries depend to a significant degree on the actions of a little-known, opaque and unaccountable business syndicate. “Buccaneers are cutting themselves a large slice of Africa’s resource cake,” says Gavin Hayman of Global Witness, a watchdog that mapped the syndicate’s deals.

The Queensway rules

The syndicate is built on links forged during the cold war. It is largely the creation of a man known as Sam Pa. Though he uses several names, he was born Xu Jinghua. After attending a Soviet academy in Baku four decades ago, say people who have looked into his career, he traded with Angola during its civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 2002 and over the years was a proxy battleground for several outside powers, including China, America, Cuba, the Soviet Union and South Africa. Mr Pa is a private and rarely photographed person. His name appears in few syndicate documents. He is believed to exert control through Veronica Fung, who may be a member of his family. She controls 70% of a core company, Newbright International. The two frequently travel in Africa, using the syndicate’s fleet of Airbus jets. They are said sometimes to bypass customs.

Mr Pa has several Chinese partners, according to a 2009 American congressional report. The daughter of a Chinese general, Lo Fong Hung, married to Wang Xiangfei, a well-connected banker, controls 30% of Newbright. Mrs Lo is the public face of China International Fund and China Sonangol. She is listed as a director of dozens of interconnected companies. The business’s operations were initially entrusted to the head of a privatised engineering firm from the mainland, Wu Yang. Later, African partners took over.

Although the Queensway syndicate has sometimes been suspected of being an arm of the Chinese government, there is little evidence of that. Indeed, it has often been the butt of criticism from Chinese officials. More likely it was set up to take advantage of a new strategy by the Chinese government, known as the “going out” policy. In 2002, after decades of commercial isolation, China started encouraging entrepreneurs to venture abroad. Short of contacts, Mr Pa teamed up with Hélder Bataglia, a Portuguese trader who had grown up in Angola and had links to Latin America. Together in 2004 they visited Néstor Kirchner, the president of Argentina, and Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela. Mr Chávez welcomed them on his weekly television show “Aló Presidente”, where Mr Pa grandiloquently declared: “This is an historic day because we are taking part in your programme.”

The syndicate initialled several deals in Latin America but none of them came to much. The idea was to trade minerals for infrastructure—in return for commodities, Chinese contractors would build housing and highways. But Argentina and Venezuela already had a fair amount of both, so the syndicate turned to new markets.

In late 2004 Mr Pa travelled to Angola. He knew President José Eduardo dos Santos, having first met him as a student in Baku and later traded with his guerrilla army. Mr Pa’s new partner, Mr Bataglia, also knew the guerrillas from having supplied them with food during the civil war. They were joined by a third trader, Pierre Falcone, a French Algerian who has long enjoyed close links with the Angolan elite and particularly the president.

Together the men persuaded the Angolan elite to channel their fast-expanding oil exports to China through a new joint venture, called China Sonangol. Mr Vicente, boss of Angola’s Sonangol, became its chairman. Contracts, signed in 2005, gave the company the right to export Angolan oil and act as middleman between Sonangol and Sinopec, one of China’s oil majors.

China Sonangol threw itself into the business, according to Angolan oil ministry records and applications for bank loans backed by oil shipments. The official statistics are incomplete, but good sources have concluded that almost all of China’s imports of oil from Angola—worth more than $20 billion last year—come from China Sonangol. By contrast, China’s state-owned oil companies have no direct interest in Angolan oilfields, one of their two biggest sources of crude. Their names do not show up on the map of concessions.

To Guinea and Zimbabwe

By 2009 the syndicate was trading a lot of Angolan oil and decided to expand to other African countries. Mr Vicente, both head of the Angolan state oil company and of China Sonangol, flew to Guinea in 2009 to arrange a deal for the syndicate. One of the people he met was Mahmoud Thiam, Guinea’s minister of mines, whose government had come to power the same year in a coup. Mr Thiam is an American citizen who studied at Cornell University and had previously worked as a Wall Street banker at Merrill Lynch and UBS.

With Mr Thiam’s support, the syndicate won the chance to become a partner in a new national mining company. This would control the state’s share of existing projects and, much more important, gain control of future projects in what is a relatively undeveloped mineral territory. Guinea contains the world’s largest reserves of bauxite and its largest untapped reserves of high-grade iron ore. Under a contract signed by Mr Vicente, the syndicate got an 85% share in a venture called the African Development Corporation. The government received the other 15%. The venture won exclusive rights to new mineral concessions in Guinea, including the right to negotiate oil-production contracts in the Gulf of Guinea. In return, the syndicate promised to invest “up to $7 billion” in housing, transport and public utilities, according to the government of Guinea (GDP $4.5 billion).

Ultimately this deal foundered on a Guinean election, but at the time the Queensway syndicate was so pleased that it reportedly gave Guinea’s military ruler a helicopter as a present. Mr Thiam began to travel with representatives for the syndicate—though in a response to our questions (and as the only person to reply to us) he says he was representing the Guinean government’s shareholding in the joint venture and he denies ever having become one of its employees. Mr Thiam went to Madagascar for the negotiation of a deal modelled on the one he made on Guinea’s behalf. Simultaneously, he carried on as mines minister for another year.

Around the same time, Zimbabwe also caught the syndicate’s eye. Mr Pa met Happyton Bonyongwe, the head of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), the country’s notorious secret police, which helps to keep Robert Mugabe in power. Mr Pa’s plane frequently showed up at the Harare airport and he bought properties in the capital, including the 20-storey Livingstone House. His two original partners, Mrs Fong and Mrs Lo, became directors in a new company, called Sino-Zimbabwe Development Limited, which received rights to extract oil and gas, and to mine gold, platinum and chromium. In return, the company publicly promised to build railways, airports and public housing. These pledges were valued at $8 billion by Mr Mugabe’s government.

By 2009 the Queensway syndicate spanned the globe from Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire to Russia and North Korea and on to Indonesia, Malaysia and America. It had bought the JPMorgan Chase building at 23 Wall Street in New York.

A sad, sad Songangol

Nobody should begrudge an entrepreneur commercial success. And China needs the raw materials that the Queensway syndicate can supply. However, there are three worries about the syndicate’s conduct.

The first is personal gain. The terms under which China Sonangol buys oil from Angola have never been made public. However, several informed observers say that the syndicate gets the oil from the Angolan state at a low price that was fixed in 2005 and sells it on to China at today’s market prices. The price at which the contract was fixed is confidential, but Brent crude stood at just under $55 a barrel in 2005; today it is trading above $100. In other words, the syndicate’s mark up could be substantial. Over the years, considering the volume of oil that is being sold to China, its profit could amount to tens of billions of dollars. The Economist s requests for comment have gone unanswered. No public statement suggests the terms have been renegotiated since 2005.

Sonangol’s skyscraping ambitions

In return for Angolan oil, the syndicate promised to build infrastructure, including low-cost housing, public water-mains, hydroelectric plants, cross-country roads and railways, according to the government. The country desperately needs such things, to be sure. But their value is unlikely to exceed several billion dollars. That looks like a poor deal for the Angolan people.

In Angola accusations of personal enrichment percolate up towards the top of the state structure. In 2006 the head of the external intelligence service, General Fernando Miala, alleged that $2 billion of Chinese money intended for infrastructure projects had disappeared. He claimed that the funds had been transferred to private accounts in Hong Kong by senior officials, though without naming people mentioned in this article. The general was swiftly sacked, tried and imprisoned (he may, however, now be about to make a comeback to government).

Parts of the Angola-China oil trade appear to be contaminated by conflicts of interest. The Angolan president’s son is said to be a director of China Sonangol, the main trading partner of the state oil company. The Economist’s requests for comment to the companies went unanswered. As well as running both the state oil company and its main customer, Mr Vicente is a director of private shell companies linked to the syndicate. Although these may exist for tax purposes, a report on foreign corruption, prepared last year by the American Senate, reveals that Sonangol was deemed so corrupt in 2003 that Citibank closed all its accounts. The report also says that Mr Vicente personally owns 5% of Sonangol’s house bank which has assets worth $8.2 billion. According to the IMF and the World Bank, billions of dollars have disappeared from Sonangol’s accounts. At one point, Sonangol awarded Mr Vicente a 1% ownership stake in the company he chairs. He was forced to give it back after a public outcry in Angola.

In Guinea criticism is focused on the former mines minister. An unpublished 2009 WikiLeaks cable quotes an American mining executive, whose company stood to lose business in Guinea because of the syndicate, complaining that Mr Thiam has “personally benefited from promoting [the] China International Fund”. Mr Thiam denies this. As a former Wall Street banker, he already had money before he returned to the country of his birth.

The deserted railway

The second complaint about the Queensway syndicate is that in Africa it has failed to meet many of the obligations it took on to win mining licences. Zimbabwe is still awaiting even a fraction of its promised infrastructure. Guinea never received the 100 public buses that were meant to arrive within 45 days of the 2009 deal.

The situation in Angola is more complicated, though also disappointing. Chinese contractors have built some housing and railway lines and the projects were at first financed by the syndicate. Signs saying “China International Fund” appeared on construction sites. But in recent years they have been replaced by those of other Chinese companies. According to Western diplomats and Chinese businessmen, the syndicate stopped paying bills for more than eight months in 2007. All work stopped, 2,000 Angolan day labourers were fired on the Benguela railway project and only a Chinese cook remained on duty. Western diplomats suspected the syndicate was banking on being bailed out by the Angolan government, which had staked its legitimacy on infrastructure development. Soon enough, the government issued treasury bonds worth $3.5 billion to finance the projects. Subcontractors are now paid directly by the Angolan state.

Angola’s wealth isn’t trickling down

Six years after the syndicate arrived more than 90% of the residents of the capital, Luanda, remain without running water. Meanwhile, the syndicate has continued to prosper.

The third complaint against the Queensway syndicate is that its cash props up certain political leaders and thereby fuels violent conflicts. For instance, in Guinea the syndicate came to the rescue of the junta. In September 2009 government men went on the rampage, raping women by the score and massacring more than 150 protesters in a sports stadium, which triggered EU and African Union sanctions. A month later, the syndicate signed its minerals deal, transferring $100m to the cash-strapped junta. Bashir Bah, a member of the opposition, condemned the deal. “First of all it is immoral, and second of all it is illegal,” he said.

The deal caused outrage even inside the government. The prime minister, Kabine Komara, a relatively powerless figure, protested about ministers’ conduct to other officials. A memo from the prime minister’s office, dated November 26th and leaked to Global Witness, declared: “The council of ministers did not discuss or bring up the question of creating a national mining company. What’s more it is not acceptable that a foreign company could become a shareholder in such a company, as it would grant the company, ipso facto, the ownership of all the current and future wealth of the country.” Mr Thiam denies any knowledge of Mr Komara’s complaint.

According to international institutions, the military leaders, who backed Mr Thiam, needed the syndicate’s money if they were to hold on to power. A World Bank official told Western diplomats the junta would “sell the country short on mining revenues and tell the international donors to get lost”. The junta eventually fell and, following elections last year, the minerals deal is now in limbo.

In Zimbabwe the situation is even more egregious. The finance minister, an opposition member of the governing coalition, has blocked extra funding for the CIO, presumably because it backs Mr Mugabe. And yet, it is suddenly flush with cash. In recent months it has reportedly doubled the salaries of agents, acquired hundreds of new off-road vehicles and trained thousands of militiamen who are now in a position to intimidate voters during next year’s elections. Several sources who have looked at the deal concluded that the money came from Mr Pa. They say he struck a side deal with the CIO that gives him access to Zimbabwe’s vast diamond wealth—controlled in part by the CIO. The diamonds were for some years banned from reaching international markets because of global industry prohibitions over violence routinely inflicted on Zimbabwean miners. Yet, Mr Pa is said to buy them and apparently makes payments directly to the CIO, bypassing government coffers.

Little is certain about China Sonangol and China International Fund. Our repeated questions to the companies and their representatives went unanswered. The documents and witnesses we tracked down around the world paint an incomplete picture. But they raise questions of immense public interest.

Who benefits?

Oversight of the Queensway syndicate’s businesses is almost non-existent. A decade ago Mr Vicente forbade foreign oil companies in Angola to publish even routine data, on threat of ejection. Since then Sonangol has published some information on its operations. But oil contracts are treated as state secrets. Revenues from deals with the syndicate go to an opaque agency controlled by the president whose accounts are off-limits even to government ministers. Although Sonangol scores reasonably for some criteria, such as revenue, in rankings by Transparency International and Revenue Watch, two lobbies for corporate openness, it still receives bottom rankings for safeguards against corruption.

The syndicate itself is even more opaque. Who ultimately benefits by how much from the lucrative deals is not clear from public records. The syndicate’s corporate structure is fiendishly complex. Individual companies are not vertically integrated—it is not a group in the usual sense. There is no holding company, though the same people keep cropping up as directors in the records of affiliated companies, which are often owned by shell companies registered in lightly regulated tax shelters. Final beneficial ownership is impossible for an outsider to establish.

All this means that the syndicate taints China’s “going out” policy, a cornerstone of the country’s rise in recent years. When the policy works, African resources are swapped for aid, commercial financing and payments in kind such as public infrastructure. But with the syndicate, billions of dollars meant for schools, roads and hospitals have apparently ended up in private accounts. Rather than fixing Africa’s lack of infrastructure, Chinese entrepreneurs and Africa’s governing elites look as if they are conspiring to use the development model as a pretext for plunder.

For more on this topic, see article




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ON THIS DAY

On Aug. 15, 1947, India and Pakistan became independent after some 200 years of British rule.

二戰結束66年 日韓各有挑戰課題

二次世界大戰結束紀念日,也是韓國脫離日本殖民的光復節,總統李明博上午在首爾世宗文化會館參加紀念儀式,直指兩韓必須結束六十年來的對立,展開和平與合作,共同追求繁榮,才是真正的獨立。

李明博在賀辭中,沒有直接提及日韓之間的獨島主權爭議問題,不過仍然強調日本應該正確面對過去的侵略歷史。

而在日本,許多人15號前往供奉二戰陣亡將士,包括14名聯合國甲級戰犯的靖國神社祭拜。由於今年日本遭逢311強震海嘯核災三重災難,外交上又因為領土爭議遭遇許多困境,有民眾認為此時應該反省克制。

日本內閣府15號發布今年四到六月的國內總生產GDP速報,換算成年率達負1.3%,這是連續三季日本GDP所出現的負成長,主要原因是東日本大地震造成產業供應鏈斷練,內閣府認為七到九月可望有所改善。
不過日圓匯率居高不下,仍然被視為出口的一大負擔。

記者施慧中報導

(2011-08-15 20:00) 公視晚間新聞