Asia News Digest
Afghanistan Surpasses Colombia as World's Biggest Drug Producer
Despite President Bush's starry-eyed comments about the Oct. 9 Presidential election in Afghanistan, including such remarks as: "Isn't it Amazing?" and "Freedom is Beautiful," the fact remains that Afghanistan has become the largest producer of opiates in the world. Speaking in Bogota, Colombia Oct. 27, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said his office would release a survey the following week, which will show that Afghanistan has surpassed Colombia in drug production.
Although figures have not been made available yet, the 2003 production of opium in Afghanistan was about 3,970 tons. The highest ever was in 2000, when it exceeded 4,600 tons. This year's harvest is expected to be close to 5,000 tonsa rise of 25% over last year's figure.
According to available reports, Afghan drugs sold last in year in Europe fetched about $30 billion. In Afghanistan itself, $2.5 billion worth of drugs were soldnearly 50% of GDP.
Malaysian Border Police on Alert Following Bloody Clashes
Malaysia put its border police on alert Oct. 26, and warned citizens against crossing into southern Thailand, after the clashes between protesters and Thai security forces, in which 86 died, the Singapore Straits Times reported Oct. 27.
Police had been instructed to step up security to prevent Thai militants from taking refuge in Malaysia, said Zuber Shariff, police chief of the Malaysian border state of Kelantan. He was quoted by the official Bernama news agency as warning Malaysians to avoid crossing into southern Thailand.
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar also expressed concern about the violence in southern Thailand.
Thai Officials Claim Weapons Show Protest Was Planned
Thai police claim to have found seven automatic rifles, a pistol, four hand grenades, and machetes believed to belong to the protesters in the clash in Tai Bak district, which might indicate that the demonstration was planned. The clash took place on Oct. 25, and led to the deaths of 86 Thai Muslims.
Senior security officials said they had heard of the rally a couple of days in advance, but had not known the exact target and could not determine how several thousand people massed from different towns at one location.
General Sirichai Tunyasiri, chief of the Southern Border Provinces Peacekeeping Command, told the Bangkok Post that he believed a "third hand" had plotted the unrest and fired pistols into the air during the scuffle. About 50 core protesters wore hoods and were reported to be armed. Religious leaders and locals confirmed they were not from the neighborhood.
Neo-Cons Pressure Korea To Keep Quiet Until U.S. Elections
A Korean official told EIR, "The neo-con pressure on us to be quiet between now and Nov. 2, is not so subtle. They are out to isolate North Korea, to insist that North Korea is to blame for ending the Six-Power Talks, and they are pressing us heavily not to make any peaceful overtures. It is no accident that [Deputy Secretary of State Richard] Armitage was here last week; now Colin Powell is touring our region, and on Wednesday [Oct. 27] [Undersecretary of State] John Bolton will be part of an exercise here to board North Korean ships. That is pretty provocative."
The official was referring to the first drill in Asia on Oct. 26, of Bolton's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), aimed against North Korea. Japan, the United States, Australia, France, and others will hold two days of multinational maritime drills to practice boarding other nations' ships illegally on the high seas, to intercept WMD.
"The only thing North Korea should be concerned about, is whether or not they are going to be caught in the act of participating in this kind of illicit traffic," Colin Powell said in Tokyo Oct. 24. "This is not hostile to any nation that is acting in an appropriate manner," he added.
China Faces Real Estate Bubble
Real estate prices are "soaring" in China, warned Xinhua Oct. 27. There are fears that the government's macro-control measures are failing to "squeeze out the bubbles in the overheated real estate sector," Xinhua warned. Property prices rose 13% during the first nine months of 2004, year on year, and residential property prices were up 10.9%.
Housing costs are rising beyond most people's means, said senior economist Zhang Xueying, despite government clamp-downs on credit and many measures, including control of land-planning, to "cool down" overheated sectors such as property and steel.
In Beijing, prices for residential housing are between 7,000 yuan (US$843.4) and 8,000 yuan (US$963.9) a square metre, while the average annual income in Beijing is just 10,000 yuan (US$1,204.8). "If there is no bubble, who will buy this housing?" he said.
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences economist Yi Xianrong said that real estate is the root of the China's overheated economy.
Even National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Zheng Jingping said recently that "we cannot rule out speculative factors" in housing prices. The government must act to prevent a speculative bubble.
Energy Bottleneck Hampers China's Economic Growth
China's "energy bottleneck" is continuing, an editorial in the Peoples Daily warned Oct. 25. China has suffered serious energy shortages since the second half of 2002. To resolve the current power crunch, China has built many coal-fueled power projects. These should "dramatically" increase electricity generation in the next year or so, but at the same time will demand an 8%-9% increase of coal production in 2004. Half of China's coal goes to power generation. The coal sector is already overstretched, and conditions in China's coal mines are among the most deadly in the worldas recent accidents have shown, in which over 4,000 miners have died so far this year.
More coal, means more transport, and the already overburdened rail transport system will get worse, the editorial warns. In the first half of 2004, coal transportation increased by 12.2% over last year, "but still failed to meet the demand."
China's dependence on oil imports is growing steadily, 5.5% year on year over the past decade. China will consume 280 million tons of oil this year, but has "a disproportionately small bearing on the pricing of oil in the international market. Further rise in oil import prices will have an adverse impact on the Chinese economy," the editorial warns.
A 1% hike in oil price lasting one year would cut Chinese GDP growth by 0.01%. China must build a "comprehensive oil reserve system," the editorial states. It also calls for developing nuclear energy as one alternative.
Powell Keeps the Lid on in East Asia
After meeting South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-Ung in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was on a tour of Japan, China, and South Korea, beginning Oct. 23, ostensibly trying to restart the Six-Power Talks on North Korea.
Powell is not taking any new offer to the region, the usual anonymous "high U.S. official" told the New York Times. "The simple answer [to get North Korea back to talks] is to get China to twist their arm more," a senior State Department official said. Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, reminded Pyongyang that the sentiment in Congress would persist for tough negotiations regardless of who won the White House. "We've got two weeks and the North Koreans seem to want to wait until after that election," he said. "I think they have miscalculated the importance of change here in Washington."
"The North Koreans see Powell as a lame duck. They will keep stalling until they know who they will be negotiating with," said one U.S. official opposed to the talks with North Korea. No matter who wins the Presidential election, Powell is not expected to serve another term as Secretary of State.
Elite Japan Defense Panel Questions U.S. Security Alliance
Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi's Advisory Panel on Defense, in a report and press conference Oct. 5, questioned whether and to what extent Japan should expand the scope of cooperation with the U.S. military, as being demanded by the Washington neo-cons. "The bilateral alliance needs to be redefined," they said, warning that "the alliance should be operated with utmost care and under close bilateral cooperation, due to concerns about U.S. unilateralism."
Several panel members said that the bilateral alliance "does not have a post-9/11 security strategy," meaning that the U.S. side "moved the goal posts" after 9/11, when Cheney introduced the "first strike" policy, which is against Japan's Constitutionbut has never even been discussed. The Japanese people are not happy about the results that followed when their government last used the "first strike" doctrineat Pearl Harbor.
Opposition Demands Japan PM Apologize for Iraq War
The leader of Japan's opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which has until now acted like mindless centrists, on Oct. 13 made an unprecedented break and demanded Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologize to the Iraqi people for backing the war, after the CIA's weapons inspector found no weapons of mass destruction. "Prime Minister Koizumi, you were too rash," DPJ chairman Katsuya Okada told Parliament. "You have a grave responsibility for supporting the war that deprived many innocent people of their lives. You must admit squarely you made a grave mistake in supporting the Iraq war and apologize to the Japanese people and the people of Iraq," Okada said. "The Bush Administration has acted unilaterally and justified preemptive attacks, making a serious challenge to the idea of the UN Charter and undermining the postwar framework for global peace."
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