Asia view

THE Japanese government has postponed publication of its annual defence white paper—which should have been released today—ostensibly because it needs time to add material on the sinking of a South Korean naval ship. Which seems a rather lame excuse, given that the Cheonan was sunk in March; a comprehensive investigation, which Japan accepted, was published in May. More probably the delay has something to do with the Takeshima islands. The Takeshimas, a pair of jagged islets surrounded by scattered rocks, are administered by South Korea, which refers to them as Dokdo. The defence report would have been obliged to reiterate Japan's inconvenient claim to this inconvenient bit of real estate.

Each country considers the islands to be a part of its own sovereign territory, and both countries’ claims go back hundreds of years. In South Korea the subject is extremely touchy—memories of Japanese colonisation remain fresh. In July outrage over the issue drove a South Korean man to throw a stone at the Japanese ambassador. When the Japanese prefecture nearest the islets hosted a "Takeshima Festival" in 2005, one angry South Korean mother protested by cutting off her own little finger, as well as that of her son. A disgruntled man set himself on fire.

South Korea’s government has asked that Japan’s refrain from referring to the Takeshima question. But the Japanese government is said to be unwilling to omit its mention. Still, South Korean sentiments would seem to factor into Tokyo's thinking, in so far as the paper was postponed. Its publication has been pushed back to September or later, to avoid clashing with a sensitive anniversary: August 29th, the centennial of Japan’s formal annexation of Korea.

Conservative parties and newspapers in Japan gripe that the government does not take territorial issues seriously enough. They hint that the relatively new Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government may not be sufficiently manly to maintain Japan’s position in a rising Asia. "Failure to say what Japan needs to say could be interpreted as a willingness by our government to make concessions" sniped the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's best-selling daily. 

Meanwhile, a draft report by an advisory panel convened by the prime minister, Naoto Kan, called for a softening in the country's stance against possessing, producing or permitting nuclear weapons to pass through Japan. Instead, to some extent, they should be accepted as a necessary deterrent. The same draft recommended easing the rules against exporting the country's high-tech military hardware, which today can be sold only to America. In all, the DPJ faces a tough balancing act when it comes to upholding Japan's territorial claims (some of them dodgy) and its defence interests (however legitimate) without angering its neighbours. 

CORPORATE Japan is heading overseas at a faster pace than usual. In recent days, four deals have been announced. Although each is small, and not yet completed, they reveal a lot about the direction that firms are headed in, in their efforts to globalise and reduce dependence on the anaemic domestic market. Consider:

• Kirin, a drinks company, will pay around ¥85 billion (almost $1 billion) for about 15% of Fraser & Neave, a leading drinks firm in Malaysia and Singapore (which brews Tiger beer, a house favourite at Asia view).

• JFE Steel will pay ¥90 billion for about 15% of JSW Steel in India, to produce high-grade steel for India's burgeoning car industry.

• Daiichi Sankyo, the third-biggest company in Japan's pharma industry, offered to buy up to 20% more of Zenotech, an Indian maker of generic drugs, building on a stake it received in 2008 when it acquired another Indian generic-drug maker, Ranbaxy.

• Monex, Japan's biggest internet stockbroker, reached an agreement to acquire Boom Group, a Hong Kong-based online brokerage, for an undisclosed sum. 

"There is a healthy 'second wave' following the credit crunch," write Kazuhiro Iino and Gideon Franklin of Mizuho, a big Japanese bank, in a recent research report. There was a surge in the number of deals struck in 2009, they explain, but those were mostly in distressed assets; now on the block is a raft of "higher-quality companies, which is more suitable for typical Japanese corporations."

In the first half of 2010 Japanese overseas M&A activity has been robust, growing 28% by volume from 2009. Strikingly, the number of Japanese acquisitions in Asia almost doubled compared with the first six months of last year, to reach 73 deals, according to Recof, an M&A consultancy and research firm.

Behind the trend is a new urgency on the part of Japanese firms that used to rely heavily on the domestic market. Those businesses are grasping that they will need to tap foreign markets to offset the damage done by lacklustre consumer spending, an ailing economy and a gradually shrinking population at home. As we recently noted, this is one way to address Japan's genteel decline. Such transactions are likely to continue proliferating as overseas share prices stay weak and the yen remains strong (now at a potent ¥87 to $1)—which helps make Japan Inc's war chest go even farther.

Update: On July 29th Softbank, a big Japanese mobile operator, took a $150m stake in Zynga, an online games company in Silicon Valley, as part of an alliance to distribute digital games in Japan. It is an investment, not an acquisition—but it is another demonstration of how Japan Inc has been racing into overseas deals.

  Would this be a bad time to ask for a re-appointment?

THAT there is a history of co-operation between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Taliban who are overrunning Afghanistan really should not come as a shock to anyone who has been paying attention over the years. It was the ISI after all who first saw the Taliban burst from Spin Boldak across Kandahar province back in 1994. It was only under extraordinary pressure from America, following September 11th 2001, that Pakistan’s army turned on its protégé, and then only half-heartedly.

What is more shocking, looking back over the week before the WikiLeak, is to see America throwing its support behind the man who has been running Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy.

On July 22nd General Ashfaq Kayani became the first of Pakistan’s army chiefs ever to have his tenure extended by a civilian government. News of his re-appointment made barely a ripple in America, even since Monday’s dump of ISI-incriminating material. And yet General Kayani has been personally overseeing Pakistan’s attempt to stitch up a political deal between the government in Kabul and Afghanistan’s Taliban. Moreover he was the chief of the ISI from 2004 to 2007, the very period in which the Taliban staged its spectacular comeback. 

America’s foreign policy establishment would not have been caught off guard, though it has chosen not to broadcast its support for the general. On her Asian whirlwind Hillary Clinton spent a day with Pakistan’s power elite, arriving on July 18th and leaving on the 19th. By the 22nd she was in Hanoi, talking about all sorts of national security issues: military co-operation with Vietnam; long-term commitments to South Korea; upgrading ties with Indonesia’s army; etc. But not another word for America’s man in Pakistan, whose term is suddenly set to outlast that of the president, Asif Zardari.

Most citizens in most democracies cannot name their country’s highest-ranking military officer. As in many other ways, Pakistan’s democracy is exceptional. When the elected prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, made a late-night televised address to announce that he had extended General Kayani, Pakistanis knew whereof he spoke. He had been due to retire in November upon serving out a first three-year term. It was expected that General Kayani might last a little longer, but his appointment for another full term came as a shock. Never before had one of Pakistan’s intermittent democratically elected governments prolonged the service of an army chief—not even by a day. 

More than half of Pakistan’s short history has transpired under the cloud of one or another military ruler. The most recent period, under General Pervez Musharraf, was brought to an end in early 2008 with the election of Mr Gillani’s government. Even during relatively sunny periods of democratic rule, the army has directed the action from the shadows, manipulating political processes to serve its own ends. 

General Kayani, widely respected as a soldier, leads an armed force reckoned to be the world’s sixth-largest, with over 600,000 men under his command and the country’s nuclear arsenal under his watch.  

Mr Gillani explained during his address that the war Pakistan is fighting against its own, home-grown variety of Taliban demands continuity in the army’s command. But this reasoning poses an ominous question: is no other general in the country’s vast officer class capable of leading the campaign? The army lauds itself as the country’s foremost institution—Pakistan’s only meritocracy, it is often called—but to hear the civilian government tell it, the military leadership appears to be lacking in depth.

At any rate, the decision to grant General Kayani another three years does not seem to have been the government’s choice in the first place. Instead, the army itself pushed it, with help from America’s military command, which is enamoured by a particular Pakistani general, not for the first time. More than anything else, this episode seems to expose the fact that whoever is in government, ultimate power continues to sit with the army and its allies. 

General Kayani has done more than many to keep the army out of politics and clean of its habits of dirty trickery. But if the principal is fine, the principle rankles. No that anyone is surprised to see it demonstrated, yet again, that the country’s foreign and domestic-security policies are run by the army. But now the next three years promise to deepen the trend, by entrenching the army’s chief.

The reaction in Pakistan has been muted, with normally lively commentators and politicians either speaking in favour of the move or keeping quiet. Nawaz Sharif, who is known to have opposed the extension, has not said a word publicly.  

Democracy in Pakistan is still in its infancy. Three more years of General Kayani is in way like a sugary treat. In the short-term the decision to extend his stint should buy some stability in civil-military relations. But in the longer view, it is simply no good for the prospects of elected rule.

HAVING been denied permission to demonstrate, more than a thousand citizens of Guangzhou, most of them youngsters, happened to drift together—assembling as if by chance—outside the Jiangnanxi metro station on Sunday evening, at exactly 5:30 in the evening. Soon they were chanting a very pungent Cantonese slogan, in unison: “Fuck your mother! Go all out!” (Or “hit the hard”, depending on one’s taste in translation.) Their cry was at once a celebration of local culture and an act of defiance, aimed at the local government. The Cantonese dialect itself is under attack, they reasoned. How better to defend it than to demonstrate it in action, en masse?

Authorities in Beijing are unlikely to be worried that their complaint against the Guangdong government, about the dialect used in a television broadcast, will trigger broader unrest. But the protest on July 25th will be seen as a warning sign of something that does disturb them. It showed that for all China’s strenuous efforts to censor the internet, it remains a powerful tool for mobilising dissent. Word of the protest was spread online, not least by social-networking tools such as Twitter. Though Twitter is blocked in China, thousands of Chinese gain access to the service by using software to circumvent what is scornfully referred to as the government’s Great Firewall. Many also use government-sanctioned Chinese versions of Twitter, which—though filtered for offensive keywords—are still effective tools for the broadcast transmission of sensitive news.

Many of the protesters in Guangzhou were young people brought up in classrooms where use of the Cantonese dialect (or language, depending on one’s linguistic views) has long been restricted. But for all their professed dismay at the government’s decision to reduce Cantonese broadcasts, they have nonetheless grown up in an environment far richer in Cantonese culture and language use than their parents experienced in the earlier decades of Communist rule. Guangdong province is today awash with Cantonese DVDs from Hong Kong, where the dialect is almost universally spoken. Many residential buildings provide feeds of Hong Kong television (albeit with the sensitive parts blacked out). Since the dark days of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s, Cantonese opera has enjoyed a revival.

The experience of Taiwan suggests that government efforts to impose linguistic homogeneity on an unwilling population are by no means guaranteed success. After fleeing China in 1949, the island’s ruling party, the Kuomintang, tried to force universal use of Mandarin (which in Taiwan is called guoyu 國語, or the state language, rather than the less formal-sounding term putonghua 普通话, or common language, that is used in China). For years, the use of Taiwan’s widely spoken native dialect (a variant of the most popular dialect in China’s Fujian province) bordered on the subversive. It was all but eradicated from mainstream cultural entertainment. Yet as soon as the KMT’s grip began to relax, in the 1980s, the Taiwanese dialect rebounded, magnificently. Mandarin has since found itself increasingly marginalised. Many Taiwanese leaders now use it sparingly, even though it remains the official tongue.

A dialect as robust and well-entrenched as Cantonese will not be extinguished. The protest in Guangzhou seems more to reflect youthful resentment at interfering bureaucrats rather than a specific anxiety about the demise of Cantonese. In a country where protest is rarely tolerated, especially when it is directed at officialdom, an innocuous-sounding get-together to air views on the local dialect stood a better chance of ending without arrests. But the large police presence that was deployed suggests the authorities were still nervous. A protest over dialect-use today could embolden Guangzhou’s youth to rally for more overtly political causes tomorrow.

BANGKOK held a parliamentary by-election on Sunday, the first test of public opinion since troops rumbled into the city centre to put down chaotic street protests on May 19th. The capital and much of Thailand’s north and north-east is still under a state of emergency. The voting itself went off without a hitch, if one wasn't put off by the sight of armed police commandos buzzing around on motorbikes. And the democratic result was in line with expectations: a victory for the ruling-party candidate over his rival, a jailed leader of the “red shirt” protesters, who conducted his campaign from behind bars and under threat of censorship. Though only 50% of the city’s eligible voters bothered to turn out, it was refreshing to see even a glimpse of democracy in action. 

Sadly, the orderly day took a bloody jolt in its final hours. More succinctly than any voting could have done, a bomb blast spoke for the centrifugal forces that are pulling at the centre of Thailand today. A few hours after the polls closed, a single explosion ripped through a bus stop in a busy shopping district. Nine people were taken to hospital; one later died of his injuries. That the bomb exploded near the site of May’s bloody showdown between security forces and the red shirts strongly suggests a political meaning. The meaning itself however is obscure. All sides seem certain to deny any involvement and point the finger of blame at their enemies. It was the worst kind of spoiler for any election. 

The man who won the vote, Panich Vikitsareth, is a former banker and was once the deputy mayor of Bangkok. He belongs to the Democrat Party led by Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. Since the contested seat had been vacated by the death of another Democrat, Mr Panich’s victory will maintain the parliament’s precarious state of balance. It has a symbolic importance too. In his acceptance speech, after telling reporters that he will do his best to represent all the voters of his Bangkok constituency, Mr Panich made sure to frame his victory as an endorsement of the sitting government’s policies.  

For the red shirts, the balloting provided a now rare opportunity to gather in public and vent anger. They remain furious over the military crackdown on their season of protest. The subsequent state of emergency has granted civilian and military authorities sweeping powers to arrest, suppress and monitor the country’s citizens. More than two months on, the army is reluctant to give up these powers. Hundreds of protesters remain in detention. Their leaders face charges of terrorism. In parallel, the hunt for anyone who might be accused of insulting the monarchy is intensifying. The government encourages Thais to rat each other out, and anti-dissent Facebook groups have sprung up to oblige.

Mr Abhisit has said that he favours lifting the emergency law, but gradually. His aides point hopefully to the law’s having been lifted in several provinces earlier this month—a step in the right direction, they say. But as they well know, the emergency’s prolonged enforcement in the capital dashes any pretence that the life of the country is back to normal. That also seems to be the message of Sunday’s bombing. During the protests of April and May, a series of grenade attacks around the city were blamed on mysterious armed men who seemed to move among the red shirts. But most of those attacks did little more than damage property. Detonating a bomb at a bus stop on a Sunday evening is heinous on a different order. In a gesture, it suggests that Thailand’s political turmoil is far from over. 

CHINA’S president, Hu Jintao, speaks often and forcefully of the need to foster innovation. He makes a strong case: sustaining economic growth and competitiveness requires China to get beyond mere labour-driven manufacturing and into the knowledge-based business of discoveries, inventions and other advances. 

Yet doing so will be hard, not least because of the country’s well-earned reputation for pervasive academic and scientific misconduct. Scholars, both Chinese and Western, say that fraud remains rampant and misconduct ranges from falsified data to fibs about degrees, cheating on tests and extensive plagiarism. 

The most notable recent case centres on Tang Jun, a celebrity executive, a self-made man and author of a popular book,“My Success Can Be Replicated”. He was recently accused of falsely claiming that he had a doctorate from the prestigious California Institute of Technology. He responded that his publisher had erred and in fact his degree is from another, much less swanky, California school.

Other cases involve accusations of plagiarism against well-known Chinese scholars which have provoked the authorities to talk of investigating. A Western scholar recounts how a social-science project was jeopardised recently when data collection was contracted out to a Chinese company whose researchers simply filled out the survey forms themselves.

Such lapses of integrity are not unique to China, but poor peer-review mechanisms, misguided incentives and a lack of checks on academic behaviour all allow fraud to be more common. China may be susceptible, suggests Dr Cong Cao, a specialist on the sociology of science in China at the State University of New York, because academics expect to advance according to the number, not the quality, of their published works. Thus reward can come without academic rigour. Nor do senior scientists, who are rarely punished for fraud, set a decent example to their juniors.

The implications of widespread academic misconduct could be great. Denis Fred Simon of Penn State University argues that growing evidence of fraud “calls into question the overall credibility of the entire scientific enterprise in China-and unfortunately feeds negatively into the related concerns about the safety of Chinese products and the integrity of information coming out of China.” 

In practical terms foreign scientists may be deterred from China, as they worry about getting caught up in scandals. Early this year, after it was found that 70 papers on crystal structures submitted to an international journal by Chinese scientists had been fabricated, the Lancet medical journal called on China’s government to “assume stronger leadership in scientific integrity”. Measures taken so far, it suggested, had failed to get to the root of why some Chinese scientists lie. 

Another direct cost may be felt by Chinese students looking for college places abroad. Admissions officials are suspicious of near-perfect scores on standardised tests and glowing recommendations from professors, which are common to many applications from China. The risk is that genuinely qualified students are turned away because of general suspicion about fraud. But at least China’s growing academic integration with the outside world may help. As more academics earn degrees abroad and go back to posts in China, informal networks are created that help outsiders check on the quality of applicants. That is a small innovation, but perhaps one that will benefit China.