Banyan

VISITS by heads of government are rare in Kathmandu. So the four-hour stopover by China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, on Saturday stirred much debate and was analysed minutely. It comes at a time when Nepal’s relations with its two giant neighbours, India and China, are under more scrutiny than usual.

The plot’s variations can be so subtle that it can be worth looking back over the slow history of foreign relations in the region. Kathmandu has received influences from both north and south since the first millennium AD, but its primary orientation has long been towards India. During the 17th and early 18th centuries the city’s spectacular monuments were built on the proceeds of trade between India and China, trade which was to wither in later centuries.

The modern state of Nepal was formed by conquest in the mid-18th century. In 1775 the conqueror, the king Prithvi Narayan Shah, dictated a few pages of advice to his heirs from his deathbed. He described the country’s situation as like that of “a yam between two boulders”. It had good reason to feel vulnerable. The British East India Company was gobbling up independent kingdoms on the Indian plains to the south.

Nepal has never taken its independence for granted. “Like a yam between two boulders” has been on the lips of Nepali commentators and politicians ever since King Pritvhi’s time. Meanwhile every other Himalayan state has been consumed by the two giants—save for Bhutan, which is in most ways controlled by India.

In this context modern Nepal is often characterised as a “small” country, notwithstanding its medium-sized population of around 30m people. Nepal has traditionally used relations with China to balance India’s often domineering influence.

For long periods during the past few centuries Tibet—immediately to the north—has been under some form of control from Beijing. In 1792, for instance, when Nepal invaded Tibet it provoked a powerful counterblow from China. William Kirkpatrick, the British officer sent to mediate, put it like this at the time:

“The court of Pekin [Beijing], resenting certain encroachments which had been made by the Government of Nepaul upon the rights of the Lama of Tibet, whom the Emperor of China had, for some time past, taken under his protection, or, in other words, had subjected to the Chinese yoke, came to the resolution of chastising the aggressor, or the Robber, as the Rajah of Nepaul was contemptuously styled in the Chinese dispatches.”

Chinese troops almost reached Kathmandu. And Chinese power in Tibet is no less of an issue today. Mr Wen’s visit had been postponed since December, apparently due to Chinese concerns over protests among Kathmandu’s large Tibetan community. In the event the visit was kept secret until the last moment, and hundreds of “Tibetan-looking” people were arrested as a precautionary measure. It proceeded to pass without incident.

Nepal co-operates closely with China over Tibet. The Tibetan community in Kathmandu is said to be infiltrated by Chinese intelligence and Nepali police frequently suppress protests against China. Anyway, many Nepalis tire of Tibetan activism. “We’ve got enough problems,” says one middle-class professional. It is often said that Tibetan exiles in Nepal are relatively prosperous, and should refrain from causing trouble with the neighbours.

The agreement signed during Mr Wen’s visit includes $1.18 billion worth of budgetary aid to Nepal over three years, plus various other, smaller chunks of cash to support the security sector and the peace process. There was talk of “soft loans” and Chinese involvement in major infrastructure projects. Six cargo terminals will be built at road crossings along the border. There will be 30km cross-border grazing rights granted to pastoral communities. The joint statement proclaimed that relations between the two countries had reached “new heights”.

Nepal’s prime minister, Baburam Bhattarai, is pursuing a still grander ambition. He thinks Nepal can find a better place in the emerging world order by reprising its historical role as “a vibrant bridge” between India and China. In contrast to its neighbours, economic development has so far eluded Nepal. Mr Bhattarai asked the Chinese to extend their railway network through Kathmandu and as far as Lumbini, close to the Indian border. He also wants to develop special economic zones with transport links to both countries.

It has long been understood that modern India feels threatened by Nepal’s links with China. (For example, Nepal’s road network has been partly constrained by Indian planning for a Chinese invasion, and there is concern in some quarters in India over the possible strategic value of a Chinese rail link.) It would have been with these sensitivities in mind that the Nepali press made much of Mr Wen’s reported remarks to Mr Bhattarai: “We [China] and India have been developing very cordial relations in the recent times and it would be better and fruitful for Nepal to maintain good relations with India.”

At the height of their power in India the British questioned whether Nepal was to be regarded as fully independent. Since the British left in 1947 independent India has also intervened frequently in Nepal’s affairs. Nepal lies south of the main Himalayan ridgeline and Indian officials see it, strategically and culturally, as falling within their sphere of influence. Nepali politicians have long invited Indian involvement by turning to the Indian government for support against their rivals. There are significant Nepali-speaking communities native to India and well over 1m Nepali citizens who work there. The two countries enjoy an open border. In 2009 a prime minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, lost his job partly through insensitivity to India’s strategic concerns.

Yet economic ties between India and China are growing rapidly. For Nepal, one of the poorest and most politically turbulent countries in Asia, reviving its ancient, formerly profitable role as a link between the two giants might offer economic growth and political stability. And growth and stability in the Himalaya would surely be a win-win-win. India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is expected in Kathmandu in the coming months—the first visit by an Indian premier since the 1990s.

ACCORDING to our sister organisation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, South Korea ranks as the world’s 22nd strongest democracy, and as the second strongest in Asia. Its mainstream media, however, is a weak link. An American think-tank, Freedom House, labels the South Korean press only “partly free”, as a result of what it calls “an increase in official censorship” and “government attempts to influence news and information content”.

Journalists themselves worry. A Journalists’ Association of Korea survey conducted in 2010 showed that the top concern of people who work in the media is the “contraction of press freedom”. So-called nakhasan (parachute) appointments of government loyalists into major media outlets have contributed to the impression that newspapers and television news programmes cannot be relied on to hold to account the powers that be.

It is in this environment that one band of rebel podcasters has flourished. The satirical “Naneun Ggomsuda” (roughly, “I’m a sneaky trickster”) reaches an audience of around 10m per episode, according to its founder, Kim Ou-joon (pictured above, second from the right). This would make it the most popular podcast in the world.

The fact that the express purpose of Naneun Ggomsuda (or “Naggomsu” for short) is to pour scorn on a government that Mr Kim openly regards as “greedy” and “suspicious” has raised the hackles of its targets. One regular member of the show, Jeong Bong-ju, a former politician, was recently sentenced to a year in prison for “spreading false information” about the centre-right president, Lee Myung-bak—in contravention of election and defamation laws. Other lawsuits are said to be in the works.

Naggomsu’s case has shed light on South Korea’s unusually strict treatment of its citizens who publicly criticise others. It’s bad enough that one can be sent to jail for it. One can even be judged to have defamed someone when the allegation in question is true. Making a martyr of Mr Jeong though looks to have been an own goal for the government. “It was very stupid to jail him”, according to Mr Kim, because “it is stirring people’s willingness to vote”.

Mr Kim intends to keep his podcast running until South Korea has a new president. Official opposition seems only to encourage him: when asked how he responds to being labelled “dangerous” by a supporter of the government, he smiles broadly and says simply, “I’m very thankful.”

THERE was a brief lull following the excitement of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Myanmar at the beginning of December, maybe as everyone paused to take stock. This week the story of Myanmar’s gradual reform seemed to be back on track, with two more dramatic and hopeful developments; a significant release of political prisoners, on January 13th, and a ceasefire agreement between the Burmese government and one of the main ethnic armed groups, the Karen National Union (KNU), the day before.

This prisoner release, along with the one before, constitutes the most solid evidence that the regime is serious about changing its ways. The freeing of all the country’s political prisoners (there may be 2,000) has been one of the most consistent and forceful demands posed by Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the opposition, and Western governments over the years: Ms Clinton reiterated the same on her visit. Indeed, people had hoped for another round of prisoner releases around the time of her trip, though nothing happened then. Now, just when a trace of scepticism was creeping in about the whole reform process, the government has released 651 prisoners in one go under its amnesty programme.

At the time of writing it’s not clear exactly how many of the freed men and women can be classified as “political”, but it’s already evident that this batch includes many of the most prominent jailed dissidents, some of whom have spent decades in and out of the government’s jails. Several of them are leaders of the so-called 88 Generation movement, made up of those who took part in the student uprisings of 1988 and later. These include Nilar Thein, Min Ko Naing, Mya Aye and Htay Kywe. Several of these activists were first jailed for long sentences after the unrest of the late 1980s, only to be released and then jailed again after an aborted uprising led by Buddhist monks in 2007—the failed “saffron revolution”. Most intriguingly, the day's released prisoners include Khin Nyunt: no student revolutionary, General Khin served as the junta's intelligence chief and as the country's prime minister until his ouster in 2004. On being let out of house arrest, at the age of 71, he immediately expressed support for Ms Suu Kyi. (Incidentally, while in office the former general was credited with brokering an earlier series of ceasefires with the armed ethnic groups.)

Those among the opposition and in the West who support deeper engagement with Myanmar’s quasi-military government will see this as a further vindication of their approach. Sceptics on the other hand think that Aung San Suu Kyi has been moving too fast in her rapprochement with the new president, Thein Sein. But she already seems to be getting more out of the government than many might have expected by this stage. On her release today Nilar Thein immediately endorsed Ms Suu Kyi’s new strategy, giving another little fillip to the reform process.

For her part Ms Suu Kyi welcomed the releases. They came only the day after her National League for Democracy had announced exactly which of their number will be contesting vital by-elections set for April 1st. Ms Suu Kyi herself will be standing, for one. The elections should prove to be quite a test for the government’s reformist credentials.

Meanwhile, on January 12th the Burmese government signed a ceasefire agreement at Hpa-an, in Kayin state (formerly Karen state), with the KNU. The Karen have been locked in a civil war with the Burmese government ever since the country won its independence from the British in 1948; if this ceasefire does eventually lead to a durable peace this too will be regarded as an important moment. In the agreement both sides committed themselves not only to a ceasefire, but also to opening communication offices and to allowing passage for each others’ (unarmed) troops.

The series of conflicts between the central government in Yangon and the main ethnic groups, such as the Karen, the Shan and the Kachin, on the peripheries of the country, has been one of the most destabilising factors in Myanmar’s history. Everyone acknowledges that if Myanmar really is to recover and prosper again then these little wars will all have to be resolved; Ms Suu Kyi puts particular emphasis on this point in many of her speeches. So a ceasefire in the longest-running of those conflicts is certainly a step forward—particularly as this will be the first such written accord between the two sides. Nonetheless, as one KNU leader warned, “talks only go so far. What matters are practical steps taken on the ground.” Quite so, especially in Myanmar, with its sad history of false dawns and dashed hopes.

(Picture credit: AFP)

A DEBILITATING confrontation between Pakistan’s army and its civilian government, a kind of slow-motion showdown that has persisted through four years of Asif Zardari’s presidency, broke out into open hostilities this week. At the same time, the government is fighting a battle with the courts, which the generals hope will force Mr Zardari (seated to the left, above) and his coterie from power, thus sparing them the trouble of staging a coup. The courts’ threat to the government should reach its climax in the coming week.

The legal case concerns a scandal—“memogate”—that reaches all the way up to Mr Zardari. His close confidante and former ambassador to America, Husain Haqqani, is accused of being behind an anonymous memo that made a “treacherous” offer to Washington: to rein in Pakistan’s army in exchange for America’s fulsome support of the civilian government.

This week the normally mild-mannered prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani (seated to the right), denounced as “unconstitutional and illegal” affidavits that the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the heads of the army’s chief spy agency, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, filed in December in connection with the memogate proceedings. Mr Gilani was furious that the testimony of the generals, which was at odds with the government’s position, was lodged without consultation.

It didn’t help soothe military tempers that Mr Gilani had made the remarks to a Chinese newspaper—while General Kayani was on a tour of China, perhaps Pakistan’s most crucial ally. Editors at the People’s Daily, incidentally, didn’t dare print the interview. They know too well where the real power lies in Pakistan. It was left to the official Associated Press of Pakistan, a government mouthpiece, to relate the prime minister’s incendiary comment.

The army responded by saying that Mr Gilani’s remark “has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country”, adding that by contrast they themselves had “followed the book”.

Then for good measure Mr Gilani fired the retired general had been serving as the top bureaucrat at the defence ministry, and replaced him with a civilian loyalist. Excitable analysts saw this as a possible prelude to an attempt to sack the army chief—it was just such an action which precipitated the last coup, in 1999.

Those who suspect that the current government is about to be sent packing say that the sudden urgency is because of the elections for the senate, which are coming up in March. Mr Zardari’s party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), is expected to gain a blocking majority.

But in fact a coup now is unlikely. The army has enough on its plate: a conflict against Pakistani extremists in the north-west; a resolution for Afghanistan left to stitch up; and then an apparent lack of solutions for the country’s dire economic problems.

So the real action is going to happen in the courts. The memogate hearings coincide with the revival of a case even more dangerous for the government. This concerns a legal amnesty granted to the president, which the Supreme Court has already ruled to be unconstitutional. This week the court declared the prime minister to be “not honest”, and gave his government until January 16th to comply with its orders to reinitiate a dormant Swiss corruption case that had been brought against Mr Zardari or face the consequences—which include, the court says, disqualification of the prime minster or president. Also on Monday the 16th, the accuser in the memogate case, a mysterious American businessman of Pakistani ancestry, Mansoor Ijaz, is due to arrive in Pakistan to testify.

The generals and the judges will keep Mr Zardari’s back to the wall. He will continue to manoeuvre on different levels to frustrate them. That means the government will remain, in effect, paralysed.

MORE than a year on from a first devastating earthquake, which struck in September 2010 (causing a miraculous zero fatalities), followed by the far more lethal pounding of February 2011, New Zealand’s garden city is a shadow of its former self. Christchurch is still haemorrhaging residents and whole neighbourhoods, still sitting atop churned-up alluvial soil, seem destined for the wreckers’ ball. And the punches keep coming, just about wherever proud residents have dared to hope, it would seem.

The latest run of shakes started rumbling through town just before Christmas. On one day in early January, Christchurch had trembled no fewer than ten times. No one was killed, but these temblors came after two-and-a-half months of settled ground, ruining what had seemed like becoming a sacred season worth celebrating. Many locals were already at the end of their tether. They are now asking questions about the city’s long-term future.

But its most dedicated boosters are a determined lot. On Cashel Street—a stone’s tumble from the shattered Anglican cathedral for which the city was named, and behind the now-teetering Bridge of Remembrance war memorial, which bestrides the Avon river—colour glistens amid the rubble. In a forest of vivid shipping containers stacked atop one another and painted in shades of red, yellow, orange, acid green and blue, shoppers bustle along a range of emporia selling high fashion and low art, books and flat whites.

Along the laneways of swept-aside gravel, patrons are basking in the Canterbury sun. All this takes place in the shadow of Ballantynes’, a department store and beloved institution with a history of resilience. In 1947, it was the scene of Christchurch’s previous worst disaster, a fire which killed 41 staff on its upper floors. Ballantynes’ reopened again in October 2011, hopefully. But the contrast it strikes against the desolation of the still-cordoned “red zone” is extreme.

The Cashel Street Mall, which also opened in October, is fruit of perseverance on the part of local boosters led by Paul Lonsdale. His group, Restart, was formed even before the earthquake struck, with the aim of bringing back life to the inner city. Since then their impetus has become the need to get something, anything happening quickly—not just to revive morale, but also to ensure that the centre of Christchurch city remains viable.

Mr Lonsdale points to the months in which much of the centre has languished behind a barricade, with businesses unable to access their premises. Overnight the city had lost 50,000 workers, as its businesses fled to the suburbs or to cities elsewhere, locking themselves into off-site leases in the process. Swift action was needed.

As Mr Lonsdale tells it, it is a story to gladden hearts. Local landowners proved willing to hand over land—temporarily—for peppercorn rentals, with the support of an interest-free loan from the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal Trust to meet their running costs. A huge amount of voluntary labour came from students, and some 3,000 hanging baskets were donated by local business.

All this happened over a winter that saw two major snowfalls and a series of major aftershocks, not to mention a fair bit of scepticism that it could be pulled off at all. Says Mr Lonsdale: “There was a lot of goodwill. So many people working towards a positive result was quite amazing.”

The essence of the project, he says, lies in its temporary nature. The project is meant to serve as an incubator for new businesses and to restore confidence in the city’s power to rebuild. “The project has put pressure back in the market and people have started returning to the city. Many said they would not be coming back, but we have proved they will.”

Nevertheless, boosters like Mr Lonsdale have a battle on their hands. For although reports of the death of Christchurch are exaggerated, the city’s heart remains a bleak place, as demolitions continue and insurers and landowners wrangle. To the east of the centre, whole suburbs are certain to disappear. The erstwhile heart might be destined to become an edgeland, even if the ground underfoot proves viable.

In the interim Christchurch’s centre of gravity is gradually shifting westward, to the suburbs between its traditional core and the airport. The ground is firmer there and, in contrast to the east and the inner city, it might almost be imagined that the terrible twin quakes of September 2010 and February 2011 never happened. Whether Christchurch—with or without the earthquakes—is able to keep its heart intact remains to be seen.

Still the ground refuses to settle. But on Cashel Street, for now, the blooming of the sunflowers amid the laneways offer a glimpse that New Zealand’s garden city could yet bloom again.

FIRST the good news: after years of insisting it would only countenance peace talks after foreign troops had quit Afghanistan, on January 3rd the Taliban issued a statement saying they had agreed to open a political office in Qatar to facilitate negotiations. Talking to the Taliban has always been impeded by the lack of a brass plate on an office door somewhere announcing their presence. This should help. The breakthrough was buried at the bottom of an emailed statement which included a lot of bluster about the Taliban’s glorious self-image as a former regime that brought peace and justice to Afghanistan in the 1990s, but it was still a breakthrough.

The idea of peace had seemed dead after the assassination of president Hamid Karzai’s main peace envoy in September. America should be praised for just about keeping it alive through secret talks.

Peace with the Taliban has three main actors and a large unsupporting cast. The opening of a Taliban office in Qatar suggests a change of direction from one of the essential players, Pakistan. Previous attempts by senior Talibs to talk to the Americans and the Afghan government have been nixed by Pakistan, anxious to maintain a stranglehold over the Taliban movement and ensure that any peace process worked in Islamabad’s interests. Just last year when the media reported that Tayeb Agha, the former secretary to the Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, had been holding secret talks with German and American diplomats, his entire family in Pakistan was promptly put under house arrest.

The latest round of talks that led to the Qatar breakthrough was once again led by Mr Agha. Western experts in Kabul think the plan would never have got this far without a degree of Pakistani involvement, which in turn implies a measure of support from Islamabad.

America, the second big player, hopes that by dangling the possibility of releasing senior Taliban prisoners held in Guantanamo in exchange for a ceasefire, it can nurture a serious peace process. At the same time, American diplomats are talking tough, trying to convince the Taliban that they cannot win in the long-run, and have no chance of sweeping back to power and re-establishing their old regime.

Today Kandahar, tomorrow the world

For those Taliban who pay attention to geopolitics, the argument is convincing. First, a little background. The circumstances that saw the Taliban rise to power in 1996 are unlikely to be repeated. In those days America had withdrawn from Afghan affairs, whilst the Soviet Union no longer existed. Without the involvement of the two great superpowers, the field was left clear for Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s neighbour had long been anxious to see a weak, pliant regime in Kabul that would be hostile to India and not assert claims to territory ceded in 1893, under British pressure, to what is now Pakistan. Pakistan eventually got everything it wanted by throwing support behind an obscure bunch of pious former mujahideen led by Mr Omar, back when he was just a one-eyed mullah living in the rural outskirts of Kandahar. Pakistan’s infamous Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) helped put these religious “students”, or Taliban, in power by giving them military support, as well as paying-off power brokers who stood in their way.

Fast forward to today and things look far less congenial for the Taliban. Despite American weariness at the high cost in lives and treasure, it remains unlikely that Afghanistan will be abandoned again. Today’s insurgency remains a phenomenon restricted to just one ethnic group, the Pashtuns. Consequently it lacks the nationwide appeal that the mujahideen enjoyed in the 1980s. In military terms the insurgents have been clobbered in swathes of the south. They are only really vigorous in a relatively small number of districts. Also, despite the notorious short comings of the Karzai administration, the Afghan state continues to strengthen. In such circumstances it would make sense for the insurgents to make a deal sooner rather than later.

Still, this is Afghanistan and peace anytime soon remains unlikely. America risks pushing things too far too fast, moving at a pace dictated by politics at home. The Taliban may be too fragmented to talk to. A senior Afghan official claims the Taliban team who helped bring the Qatar office to fruition are not authorised to engage in strategic talks and simply aim to gain the release of top Taliban prisoners. Taliban field commanders have responded to NATO’s intensified military campaign by becoming more radical and disobedient towards their nominal leaders hiding in Pakistan. It will be tricky to persuade these people that the time has come to compromise a cause so many of their comrades have fought and died for.

Let's pretend

Then there is the third big player in all this: Mr Karzai and his non-Pashtun backers in the north of the country, who remain strongly opposed to sharing power with the Taliban. The latter have every interest in trying to wreck a peace process and might even break away from the Afghan state they have more or less supported since 2001. Securing a measure of stability in the south just to lose the north would be no-one’s idea of a good outcome.

As for Mr Karzai, he has opposed the setting up of a Taliban office in Qatar before. His hesitance probably springs from a fear of being marginalised and the need to keep his fragile non-Pashtun coalition together. Afghanistan’s last communist president, Mohammad Najib, resisted pressure from Mikhail Gorbachev to strike a deal with his mujahideen opponents out of a similar concern not to unsettle his domestic supporters.

Despite all the reasons to fear this latest effort will come to nothing, one western analyst in Kabul says it is still worth pursuing. “Even if there is nothing really there yet, even a make-believe process can get a momentum of its own,” the analyst said. “If everyone acts like they believe it, it might become something.” 

IN ORDINARY times, the North Korean consular office in Dandong, just over the border in China, can be a hard place to find. It is located on the 21st floor of the Jia Di Plaza, a riverside hotel and commercial complex. Neither internet searches nor queries of building staff in the lobby yield much information. But this week one needed only follow the trail of Chinese and Korean visitors bearing flowers to pay their respects and bestow condolences. It has been so ever since the December 19th announcement that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had died, two days earlier.

Some carried single stems, and others brought huge wreaths. They all chose either white or yellow chrysanthemums, and they all had to queue up in the crowded hallway outside the consulate. Once inside, they were allowed to sign a registry, add their flowers to the pile, and spend a few moments bowing their heads and in some cases muffling their sobs in front of a framed photo portrait of Mr Kim. By mid-morning Wednesday, 315 visits had been logged. A tight-lipped consular official said there had been heavier traffic the day before, but declined to provide a number.

From its perch on the western bank of the Yalu river, Dandong boasts a unique front-row view of the long-running horror show that is North Korea. Though the distance to the Korean side is a mere 800 metres, there is not all that much to see. In daylight, a few idle smokestacks loom above a handful of dilapidated factories and other structures. Just near the Korean end of a bridge joining the banks sits a forlorn and motionless Ferris wheel. The night-time view may be even more revealing. There is near total darkness, with only a few lit bulbs scattered along the entire length of the riverfront. 

But even with this close-up view, the steady flow of people and goods across the Friendship Bridge that leads to the North Korean town of Sinuiju, and a sizeable North Korean presence in their midst, the people of Dandong have scarcely more insight than anyone else into what might be wrought by the death of Mr Kim.

They do, however, have more cause for concern. Trade and tourism make significant contributions to Dandong’s economy. According to Chinese statistics, bilateral trade between China and North Korea in 2010 rose nearly 30% year-on-year, to $3.47 billion, a record high. As much as 60% of that trade is thought to move through Dandong. The official announcement of Mr Kim’s death led to the prompt shuttering of Dandong’s many North Korean-run restaurants, shops and trading companies.

The hope among the many people here who derive their livelihoods from dealings with the neighbours across the river is that things will return to normal with the end of the official mourning period after Mr Kim’s funeral December 28th. 

The fear is that they have no way of gauging the odds, especially with the leadership transfer now under way to a largely untested man in his 20s, Kim Jong Un, the deceased despot’s third son. “Anything could happen. It’s a very strange place, and a very strange situation to have such a young person taking over,” said the Chinese manager of a trading company who makes frequent visits to North Korea.

The effects of any turmoil in North Korea—whether in the form of military tension, unrest, or a swell of refugees—would be keenly felt here. But at least in the first two days after the announcement of Mr Kim’s death, an orderly calm prevailed. There was no sign of any extra police or military presence. Traffic bustled along as usual through Dandong’s busy streets, while in the riverside park pensioners flew kites and peddlers sold trinkets and souvenirs. The only way your correspondent managed to hear any wailing and gnashing of teeth was by tuning his car radio to AM 657, a North Korean station, which alternated between sombre music and a grieving, distraught announcer.

Despite rumours about an imminent shutdown of all cross-border traffic, a stream of vehicles, including both large cargo trucks and light vans, made its way across from the Chinese side on Wednesday morning. The situation was much the same in the Yanbian border region, hundreds of kilometres north-east of Dandong, according to local residents and Western diplomats who had been poking around the area for information.

Outside the consulate, a North Korean trader who refused to identify himself or his company said it was only appropriate in a time of mourning to suspend normal trading activities. But, he hastened to add, things would certainly return to normal. Dandong residents can only hope his prediction bears out. Until then, they can at least take consolation in a boom in the flower business.

IT IS hard to overestimate how much is at stake for the world after the sudden death of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean despot, on December 17th. Officially, at least, it has thrust into the inexperienced hands of his pudgy young son, Kim Jong Un, control of a nuclear-armed nation that has one of the largest standing armies in the world as well as the capacity to wreak havoc on two of America’s strongest Asian allies, South Korea and Japan. The new Kim’s domain abuts China and Russia, both powers that analysts believe would be opposed to any move America might make to try steering the new regime into its orbit.

Almost nothing is known about the man North Korea’s propaganda apparatus has dubbed the “Great Successor”. Apart from evidence he was schooled for a while in Switzerland, it is not even clear whether he is 27 or 28. Since he was unveiled as the heir-apparent in September 2010, he has not spoken in public, and was always accompanied on trips he took with his father by several other veterans of the ruling clique, including his uncle and aunt. These precautions suggest his grooming as dictator-to-be was a race against the clock.

The pressure on him now is likely to be huge. Whereas his father had 20 years of apprenticeship to the regime’s founder, Kim Il Sung, this third-generation Kim has had just two years since rumours of his privileged status first surfaced, shortly after his father had a stroke. After the death of his grandfather, North Korea’s “eternal president”, Kim Jong Un’s father had three years of official mourning to stay out of the public eye. Now the youngster will have only 12 days’ seclusion for official grieving, to end the day after his father’s funeral on December 28th. Less than four months later, the country he inherits is supposed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the eternal president’s birth, by which time it is meant to turn from a land of bellicose misery into a “strong and prosperous” nation. It is a fair bet that an insecure young Mr Kim, surrounded by crusty generals some of whom are triple his age, feels he has a lot to prove.

Yet in the face of such insecurity and unpredictability, analysts say there is little that foreign powers, whether allies such as China, or “mortal enemies”, such as America, can do except wait and see how things turn out. Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, describes North Korea as a country that has remained “remarkably insensitive to punishments and rewards” from abroad; in other words, it shrugs off both sanctions and support, and its behaviour is mostly guided by domestic political considerations. Foreigners have little leverage.

Perhaps it is for that reason that many outsiders have chosen to take a sanguine view that the succession will be smooth—at least in the early months—rather than something like a prelude to regime collapse, a refugee crisis, “loose nukes” or even war. The Obama administration on December 20th called for a “peaceful, stable transition”, a position shared by Japan and echoed in Seoul by Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president (who nevertheless has kept troops on high alert). Several Washington-based think-tanks believe the regime had prepared for the succession, and that a “gang of four”—the young Mr Kim, his powerful aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, her husband, Jang Song Taek, and the most senior general, Ri Yong Ho—will work together to keep order. Kept in check by his seniors, some believe Mr Kim may initially represent little change from his father, either for good—for example, by allowing greater economic modernisation—or for bad, say by ratcheting up repression or aggression. Others are more pessimistic, however. Mr Noland thinks Mr Kim may be tempted to engage in provocative acts, another nuclear test or a military engagement for example, to burnish his credentials (some believe he was partly responsible for attacks in South Korea in the last two years). Or he may be simply unable to control factions within the regime, allowing the army to create mischief of its own.

Foreign powers have not even been given a chance to gauge the mood by attending the funeral: it is to be an internal-only affair. That has put more emphasis on the messages sent by North Korea’s interlocutors abroad, which range from condolences, in the case of China and Russia (cravenly, China’s authorities said its people would “forever cherish” Kim Jong Il’s memory) to a sort of sympathetic contortionism by America and South Korea, which have both professed support for the North Korean people in their grief without explicitly offering condolences to the regime. In 1994, when Kim Il Sung died, the refusal of South Korea’s then-government to offer condolences cast a pall over the relationship for years. In contrast, the Clinton administration dispatched an envoy to meet with North Korean officials to express condolences.

Coincidentally, almost at the time Mr Kim was suffering a fatal heart attack on a train last Saturday, an American envoy was meeting with the North Koreans to discuss the resumption of food aid to the impoverished country, whose people are stunted by hunger. There are unconfirmed reports that this was in exchange for a halt to North Korea’s uranium-enrichment programme. Whether true or not, the Obama administration and its allies appear to have been moving gingerly back to a resumption of six-party denuclearisation talks with North Korea, involving South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. The food-aid initiative was promptly suspended on news of Mr Kim’s death, replaced by a wait-and-see attitude.

No one is as yet pressing the new leader for a quick resumption of denuclearisation talks. Beyond that, one discussion on North Korea that its five counterparts in the six-party talks have never been able to have—even secretly, according to analysts—is how to react to a potential breakdown if the regime implodes. For China, such a discussion may smack of disloyalty and risk exacerbating what it fears most—chaos in the North. Neither have South Korea and America, who are broadly allied on dealing with North Korea, always seen eye to eye on how to handle regime change. Worryingly, one reason all of them now are urging a smooth and stable transition may be that there is no alternative plan if it all goes wrong.

(Picture credit: AFP)

NORTH KOREAN state media has just announced the death of leader Kim Jong Il. According to the report (on this site, when it's not overwhelmed by traffic), he passed away on Saturday 17th December, at 8.30am, while travelling on a train to visit an area outside of Pyongyang.

The report, delivered by a tearful, black-clad announcer, claimed that he died due to "an advanced acute myocardial infarction, complicated by serious heart shock," which was caused by "a great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation." It is of course no secret that he had been unwell for several years, having suffered a stroke in 2008, and often appearing frail in public appearances.

Kim’s declining health had prompted the regime to accelerate progress towards the planned succession of his third son, Kim Jong Un. The report itself exhorted viewers to “loyally follow” the Swiss-educated, would-be third-generation leader, whom his father chose ahead of two elder sons, apparently due a ruthless streak that runs beneath his pudgy features.

Still in his late twenties, and with very little experience of leadership, the younger Kim may yet face trouble when it comes to grasping the reins of power. Kim Jong Il himself had already been the heir-apparent to his father, the founder of the North Korean state, Kim Il Sung, for almost two decades before he was declared the country’s “Dear Leader” and thrust upon the throne of the Democratic People’s Republic in 1975. Kim Jong Un will have no such luxury. But that does not mean that crisis is imminent. Kim Han-jong, who visited North Korea with South Korea’s President Kim Dae-jung at a momentous summit in 2000, states we should “not expect Kim Jong Il’s death to be followed by big political change”, owing to China’s apparent support for the regime as well as to the internal efforts to speed up the succession.

South Korea is however on a state of high alert. The KOSPI index dived 3% at noon, following the announcement. In the coming days, all eyes will be on Pyongyang, and the attempts of one young man to lay his claim to the world’s only communist monarchy.

(Picture credit: AFP)

IT IS not often that an ambassador to China who leaves his post chooses to hold forth—on the record, and on Chinese soil—about the ups and downs of his former job. This is true for at least two reasons. First, Chinese government officials here are not exactly thick-skinned (nor short of memory). Second, those with future business here, whether diplomatic or more remunerative, tend to say nice things or nothing at all.

Few diplomats understand that better than Geoff Raby, who from 2007 until this summer served as Australia’s ambassador to China. He now runs an eponymous consultancy in Beijing that trades on the connections he established over a career that took him to China in the 1980s, back to Canberra and back again. Little wonder that Mr Raby would hesitate to tread on those relationships in Beijing last night, when he addressed a gathering of foreign correspondents who sought to induce him into undiplomatic utterances.

Mr Raby, though outspoken, has a diplomat’s flair for strategic candour. The most undiplomatic broadside he delivered while he was ambassador was targeted at his own boss, Kevin Rudd—the Mandarin-speaking minister of foreign affairs whose tenure as prime minister was marked by rocky relations with China. Speaking earlier this year to a gathering of Australian executives in Beijing, Mr Raby observed, among a series of remarks that were clearly aimed at Mr Rudd, that “to speak Chinese is not to know China”.

Mr Rudd was prime minister during what Mr Raby described last night as the annus horribilis of Sino-Australian relations, the year of 2009. That was a time in which China was baring its fangs diplomatically, on the heels of ethnically charged riots in the northwest region of Xinjiang that summer and in Tibet a year earlier. Mr Raby recalled how Chinese diplomats ham-fistedly objected to the screening at a Melbourne film festival of a documentary about Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uighur activist whom Chinese authorities had tried to make out as the leader of a separatist movement. Ms Kadeer herself was invited to attend the screening, much to Chinese consternation.

“The Chinese consulate was just amazingly inept,” Mr Raby said. “They did such a good job—I mean no one’s heard of Uighurs in Australia, no one had heard of Rebiya Kadeer—they did such a good job that the organisers had to rent a much bigger hall to fit everyone in who wanted to come and see the film.” Mr Raby said that Chinese diplomats have shown more sophistication on sensitive matters since, but he noted that the big decisions about how to engage with other countries are never in their hands.

So it was with the most troubling Sino-Australian episode of 2009: the arrest of Stern Hu, an Australian citizen and then the de facto head of China business for Rio Tinto, a mining giant. Mr Hu was held initially on suspicion of stealing state secrets. Eventually he was convicted of bribery and other offences, taking a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Many observers saw the episode as a case of politically selective prosecution, partly due to China’s frustration with the rising price of iron ore, and partly as retribution for Rio Tinto’s abandonment of a multi-billion-dollar investment deal with the Aluminium Corporation of China, or Chinalco.

Mr Raby, without referring specifically to the facts of Mr Hu’s case, did not dispute questioners’ assertions that there was politics behind its prosecution.

“You can draw your own conclusions from the evidence, but you’re right that a lot of people give and receive gifts, and some get pinged and some don’t, and I think to my mind that’s the nub of the issue,” Mr Raby said. In response to an earlier question on the Hu case, Mr Raby had noted an inherent defect of China’s justice system: its lack of independence from politics.

“Here we know there’s a reason why someone’s pinged for corruption or someone’s not pinged for corruption and usually there’s something sits behind it, so when there’s an anti-corruption campaign in Guangdong or Shenzhen, then it’s a fair bet that that’s somehow tied to elite politics, because why ping Person A and not B? And I think that is the context in which law is practiced here,” Mr Raby said. “There is rule by law here…But there’s no rule of law. There’s nothing that sits above the political processes of the [top leadership].”

Mr Raby said foreign governments can only hope to push patiently, persistently and diplomatically for “incremental” progress on its justice system and human rights. “I don’t think megaphone diplomacy gets you anywhere in this space.”

Mr Raby noted that during his four years as ambassador China’s leverage in world affairs has increased dramatically, as it became, for example, Australia’s number-one trading partner. He said that China’s economic power, combined with its authoritarian system, pose an historic diplomatic challenge as China’s ambitions—including its military ambitions—continue to grow.

“We have never seen in world history, with Nazi Germany perhaps to one side, a global economic power that has stood so far apart from the international norms of social and political organisation, so it’s something different. It really, really is different,” Mr Raby said. He later assured me that when he uses this line in speeches, he throws in a mention of Nazi Germany to pre-empt the nitpickers of history, not as a point of comparison to China. That would be rather undiplomatic indeed.

(Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A HUNDRED years ago Britain’s King George V visited the jewel of his Empire, marking—it later became clear—the zenith of British colonial rule in India. The highlight of his trip, on December 12th 1911, was an enormous and colourful ceremony known as the Delhi Durbar, where local princes paid homage, a 101-gun salute was fired for the King and many thousands gathered to see him crowned as Emperor of India. Delhi had been the old Mughal capital, and also the centre of Indian resistance to British rule in the 1857 Mutiny (known to Indians as the first war of independence). At the Durbar the King announced that imperial India’s capital would shift back here, away from the eastern trading port of Calcutta. That would take another couple of decades to complete, once an elegant new city, New Delhi, was built to the designs of the architect, Edwin Lutyens.

Yet Dilliwallahs have met this anniversary mostly with a shrug. Few newspapers in the city made a big fuss of it this week. The colonial fanfare has no appeal now, and even at the time some considered it tasteless, given the drought and famine that prevailed. Residents today are more bothered by daily concerns. Asked by pollsters, they praise the city for its fast-growing metro and open spaces, and are as quick to lament its filthy air and roads, crowded suburbs and, especially, the famous snobbery of its resident netas (politicians) and babus (civil servants). A poll at the weekend found that other cities—Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Pune in Maharashtra—ranked as more appealing places to live than the capital.

In retrospect, the British did modern India a favour in this case, sparing the post-independence government the headache of having to shift the capital from a corner of the country that now sits against the border with Bangladesh. Back in 1911, too, the move generally seemed to be a smart one. On December 16th of that year, The Economist’s correspondent in Delhi celebrated the Durbar and more, and even quoted admiringly the idea of the “permanency” of British rule. In this and other ways, the old dispatch makes for a dizzying read today.

DELHI AND THE DURBAR
December 16th, 1911

AMID scenes of splendour unparalleled even in the imperial city of Delhi itself, the great day of the Durbar has come and gone. In conformity with the immemorial usage of the East, various boons and remissions of penalties were announced to the people. Grants of half-month’s pay were made to all soldiers, sailors, and subordinate civil servants. Certain criminal prisoners and debtors were released. Officers and men of the native army were made eligible for the Victoria Cross, an honour to which the Indian soldier has long aspired. Popular education is to be aided by a small gift of £300,000, and similar grants are promised for the future. But all these subsidiary marks of favour are thrown into the background by a master stroke of high policy which involves vast changes in administrative organisation. The capital of India is to be removed from Calcutta to Delhi, and following on this the Bengali Provinces are to be reunited, Assam will revert to its earlier position as a Chief Commissionership, and a new Province is to be created by uniting districts of Behar, Chota Nagpur, and Orissa under a Lieutenant-Governor in Council.

As an appeal to Indian imagination alone no better policy could have been followed than the reversion to Delhi as capital. “Not only”, to follow the words of the Secretary of State of India, “do the ancient walls of Delhi enshrine as Imperial tradition comparable with the Constantinople, or with that of Rome itself, but the near neighbourhood of the existing city formed the theatre for some most notable scenes in the old-time drama of Hindu history, celebrated in the vast treasure-house of national epic verse. To the races of India, for whom the legends and records of the past are charged with so intense a meaning, this resumption by the paramount Power of the seat of venerable Empire should at once enforce the continuity and promise the permanency of British sovereign rule over the length and breadth of the country.” If criticism is to be made, it should be directed against a tendency towards Imperial centralisation, which might possibly be promoted by this move of the Viceroy’s seat to Delhi.

 But, important as the change may be in its appeal to the traditional instincts of India, it is also dictated by more direct motives of policy. Calcutta became the capital of India through a seemingly fortuitous course of events. Those chance causes have now disappeared, and the unfortunate remoteness of its situation has become increasingly apparent. Moreover, as the capital also of one of the chief Provincial Governments, it has become too much associated in the eyes of the rest of India with a purely provincial policy. “Events in Bengal,” says the explanatory dispatch from the Indian government, are apt to react on the Viceroy and Government of India, to whom the responsibility for them is often wrongly attributed. The connection is bad for the government of India, bad for the Bengal Government, and unfair to the other Provinces, whose representatives view with great and increasing jealousy the predominance of Bengal.  Further, public opinion in Calcutta is by no means the same as that which obtain elsewhere in India. Calcutta is a vast mart of commerce, and there is no fear that it will suffer much from the loss of a few officials. A great trade can well spare a little pomp.

Delhi, on the other hand, is already a city with imperial as opposed to provincial traditions behind it. At Calcutta the Government was surrounded almost entirely by Bengali influence. In Delhi it will be in contact with far more varied types of Indian peoples—Sikhs, Hindoos, Mohammedans, and other lesser races being all represented in the surrounding country. Not only so, but its geographical situation is more central than that of any other Indian city that could have been chosen for the same honour. On the borders of the Punjab, it is almost touched by Rajputana and the United Provinces. It is within easy reach of Central India and the North-West frontier, equidistant from Bengal and Bombay, and in close touch with the Central Native States. Moreover, some of the money squandered on the Durbar camp will be saved, and if the work is honestly carried out, the Government may almost be able to recoup itself for the cost of new buildings in the enhanced values of the 25 square miles of land which it is said to have acquired. We hope there will be no building scandals or land swindles, and that the palaces built for clerks will not be all marble and gold.

 Bengal loses the Imperial capital, but, on the other hand, the province is once more restored to a united whole. Lord Curzon’s policy, a policy which has caused deep and continuous ill-feeling since its introduction, is definitely reversed. The partition is frankly acknowledged to have been a mistake. In the words of the dispatch: “It was deeply resented by the Bengalis... In the Legislative Councils of both the provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal the Bengalis find themselves in a minority, being outnumbered in the one by Beharis and Uriyas, and in the other by the Mohammedans of Eastern Bengal and the inhabitants of Assam... This is a substantial grievance... The bitterness of feeling will become more and more acute... We feel bound to admit that the Bengalis are labouring under a sense of real injustice, which we believe it would be sound policy to remove without further delay. “History teaches us,” says the Secretary for State, in reply, “that it has sometimes been found necessary to ignore local sentiment or to override racial prejudice in the interest of sound administration, or in order to establish an ethical or political principle,” But he goes on to add that whenever the opportunity occurs these assumptions of force should be retracted. We are hopeful enough to believe the generous confessions of error, backed by actions, constitute the highest wisdom in politics. And while the grievances of the Bengalis are removed, at the same time substantial justice is done to the other elements of the North-Eastern provinces. The Hindu-speaking population, “hitherto unequally yoked with the Bengali,” are now to be included in a separate province based on a culture and language distinct from that of Bengal. Assam is brought back once more under a Chief-Commissionership on the grounds that the country is still insufficiently developed for its latest form of Government. “Events also of the past twelve months,” says this candid report, “on the frontiers of Assam and Burma have clearly shown the necessity of having the North-East frontier, like the North-West frontier, more directly under the Government of India, and removed from the local Government.” The interests of the Mohammedans are safeguarded by the representation they enjoy in the Legislative Councils, and Moslem sentiment is appeased by the removal of the capital to the Mohammedan City of Delhi.