Politics
Ida Torres on Jun 7 2013
Taiwanese President
Ma Ying-jeou believes that Beijing, Taipei and Tokyo should put aside their differences over the territorial dispute over the
Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai islands and instead form trilateral talks to focus on the development of the island's resources. He emphasized, “A peaceful resolution to the dispute will only benefit us all.”
In a recent development that is sure to add more complication to an already messy territorial spat between Japan and
China, former chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka revealed in Beijing that the two nations had agreed to “shelve” the alleged dispute regarding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands when the two countries normalized relations in the early 1970s. This revelation by Nonaka – who had worked under the late Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, famous for normalizing relations with Beijing in 1972 – is totally opposite of the government’s official stance that
there is no such dispute, and that the islands belong unequivocally to Japan.
In the latest event on this issue,
China on Thursday criticized the Japanese government for lodging a diplomatic protest against an article published in a Chinese state-run newspaper that questioned Japan’s sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands, which include
Okinawa, currently Japan’s southernmost prefecture. The heated exchange continues to degrade relations between the two neighboring Asian nations as territorial disputes come to the fore.
At the height of territorial tensions between Beijing and Tokyo, calls by Chinese netizens to demolish structures left by the Japanese during a period where they occupied
China were dealt a blow, as buildings constructed in the puppet state of Manchuria have received official protection from the government, state media reported Thursday.
Relations between Japan and
China are bad enough as it is due to a territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, but now the latest issue seems to be blowing up pretty fast. Japan has filed a complaint with China over an article published in the state-run
People's Daily that
questioned Japan's ownership of the Ryukyu island chain, including Okinawa, where major U.S. military bases are.
After a controversial article was published by China’s state-run paper
The People’s Daily about a think tank’s opinion of the Ryukyu island chain – which includes
Okinawa and is currently part of Japan’s southernmost prefecture –
Chinese officials have refused to confirm Japan’s ownership of the territory. This recent developments will continue to cause escalating tension in an already strained relationship between Beijing and Tokyo, already throwing verbal assaults at each other over a group of uninhabited isles southwest of Okinawa.
In its first openly acknowledged sanction against their ally, the Bank of China has shut down the account of
North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank and stopped all transactions with the lender. The North Korean bank has been accused by the United States of
supporting Pyongyang's nuclear development program.
In what is considered a "rare bird" in military/security circles, an unclassified net assessment of the dynamics between
China, Japan and the
United States. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released the document and says it's the first and only one of its kind and includes "relative military capabilities and domestic and external variables."
China’s ambassador to the United States said that Washington should be wary about the recent actions by the Japanese government that point to an increase in Japan’s nationalism. Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador in Washington, pointed out that as the
U.S. is concerned about stability in the region, a rise in Japanese nationalism is not helping the situation at all, adding that the United States should not encourage Japan in its escalating territorial dispute with China.
National Tech & Science
John Hofilena on Apr 26 2013
In the forests of Yakushima, a small, mountainous island off the southern Japanese island of
Kyushu, the pine trees are dying, and an environmental professor believes that the culprit is China’s pollution and smog being brought in by the winds from continental Asia. Osamu Nagafuchi, a professor of ecosystem studies at the University of Shiga in central Japan, started studying the trend in the late ‘90s at the start of China’s heavy industrialization and believes the
pollution is now causing pine trees in Yakusima’s primeval forest – one of the few left in Japan – to die at an accelerated rate.
