EU group sees red as wine wars intensify

EU group sees red as wine wars intensify
A business group has criticized mainland calls to probe European Union wine imports as "protectionist," as a dispute between the major trading partners threatens to escalate.
Giant pandas celebrate birthday at Hangzhou Zoo
3 killed in bridge ramp collapse
24 injured in crash
Tembin sweeps across Taiwan
5 cops jailed for torturing farmer to admit murder
Syringe sting rattles cab rider
Six held for molesting women at water carnival
Deeper Asian splits possible after South China Sea spat: Indonesia
Have You Heard…
North Korean leader seeks trip to China for economic help
Shifts in Asia Fuel Flare-Ups Over Islands
China’s Missile Advances Could Thwart U.S. Defenses, Analysts Say
U.S. Said to Plan Added Radar to Bolster Asia Defenses
5 cops jailed for torturing farmer to admit murder
Syringe sting rattles cab rider
Six held for molesting women at water carnival
China editor's suicide sparks web debate
24 mainland tourists injured in Taiwan road accident

EU group sees red as wine wars intensify

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A business group has criticized mainland calls to probe European Union wine imports as "protectionist," as a dispute between the major trading partners threatens to escalate.

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 05:18 PM PDT

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Giant pandas celebrate birthday at Hangzhou Zoo

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:33 AM PDT

Giant pandas "Shu Yun" and "Ya Lin" enjoy a birthday cake made by local kids by using bamboo leaves and shoots, vegetables and fruits, at the Hangzhou Zoo in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, yesterday. Born in August 2008 in southwest China's Sichuan Province, "Shu Yun" and "Ya Lin" settled in Hangzhou in May 2011.

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3 killed in bridge ramp collapse

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:00 AM PDT

CHINA'S work safety watchdog said the build quality of a bridge in northeast China must be in question after one of its ramps collapsed yesterday morning, less than a year after construction finished.

Four trucks were sent hurtling 30 meters to the ground, killing three people and injuring five others, when a 120-meter ramp at the multimillion-dollar Yangmingtan Bridge in Harbin tilted and crashed to the ground.

Three heavy trucks loaded with lime and another with feedstuff were on the section about 3.5 kilometers from the main body of the bridge when the accident happened, said Sun Qingde, deputy head of Harbin's construction committee.

"The bridge must have some problems as it collapsed (less than) a year after being constructed," Huang Yi, spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety, told a press conference.

However, the authority was still investigating what was behind the accident and would publish its results as soon as it had any.

Truck passenger Liu Guodong, who suffered minor injuries, said: "I was dozing off in the truck when suddenly the truck rolled to the ground. It was so terrifying."

Three of the five people injured had serious problems which required surgery, doctors told Xinhua news agency.

They are being treated in the Harbin No. 1 People's Hospital.

Film aired by China Central Television showed wrecked trucks upside down with blood and broken glass all around.

By 1:30pm, apart from the collapsed ramp, the main body of the Yangmingtan Bridge and other ramps had been reopened to traffic, police said.

The trucks which crashed might have been overloaded, causing the collapse, Huang Yusheng, secretary general of the Harbin City government, told another press conference later yesterday.

He gave no further details but added: "It is a very complicated case and we cannot make a conclusion so fast."

He said the city government would "learn a lesson" and would be launching an overall inspection on all bridges across the city.

The Yangmingtan Bridge opened to traffic in November last year.

Spanning the Songhua River in Harbin, the eight-lane bridge is said to be the longest, at 15.42 kilometers, in northeast China.

Local media said it cost 1.88 billion yuan (US$296 million) to build. Construction took just 18 months, a record for the province, according to previous reports.

During construction last year, five workers were seriously injured when they fell 30 meters to the ground after a beam loosened and fell.

Built by the China Railway No. 1 Group Co Ltd, it is the third bridge to have been erected across the Songhua River in the past four years.

Yesterday's collapse was the sixth involving a major bridge in China since July last year.

Shoddy construction and over-loading was said to be the cause of the previous incidents.

24 injured in crash

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 09:48 AM PDT

TWENTY-FOUR tourists from the mainland's Guangdong Province were injured in a road accident in Taiwan's Chiayi City yesterday, the island's tourism authorities said.

One was seriously hurt, while the others suffered skin abrasions.

They were sent to four hospitals in the city for treatment, Taiwan's tourism bureau said.

The tourists were on board a coach with the Guangzhou-based travel agency CGZL when the accident occurred in a tunnel in Chiayi.

Tembin sweeps across Taiwan

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 09:46 AM PDT

TYPHOON Tembin crossed over southern Taiwan yesterday morning, causing flooding and wind damage but largely sparing the island's heavily populated areas.

Flooding was 3 meters deep in the town of Hengchun in Pingtung County, and armored vehicles rescued several dozen people from their flooded homes. Television pictures showed empty buses overturned by raging waters and streets littered with uprooted trees and pieces of mangled furniture.

Rescuers were also deployed in Kaohsiung County to help villagers stranded by the overflowing Laonung River. Winds measuring close to 155 kilometers an hour toppled trees and blew out windows, but there were no reports of casualties.

The Taiwan authorities, mindful of a devastating typhoon that took 700 lives three years ago, had arranged evacuations from mountainous, landslide-prone areas ahead of Tembin and readied thousands of troops for rescue operations but, for the most part, the troops were not needed.

The typhoon made landfall about 5am and swooped over the island, returning to sea by late morning. Forecasters say it appears to be heading for China's mainland but warn it could return as a weaker storm to dump more rain.

The impact of Tembin in the heavily populated areas of northern Taiwan was extremely limited. Businesses and schools in Taipei were operating normally, and flights at the city's two airports were unaffected.

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5 cops jailed for torturing farmer to admit murder

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT

FIVE police officers in a rural county in central China's Henan Province have been jailed for torturing a farmer into admitting murder and causing him to spend 11 years in jail.

Zhao Zuohai, a farmer in Zhecheng County, was acquitted last May after the man he was convicted of killing turned up alive.

Prosecutors said Zhao had been tortured for 33 days before he made his confession. He was beaten with a club and had a pistol put in his mouth.

The officers would not let him sleep and set off firecrackers over his head.

After his release from prison, six officers, who had all been promoted for "cracking" the murder case in 1999, were investigated and indicted.

Longting District People's Court in Kaifeng City sentenced Wang Songlin and Guo Shouhai to two years in prison and imposed jail terms of 12 to 18 months on Ding Zhongqiu, Luo Mingzhu, and Zhou Minghan.

Si Chongxing, the former police squad deputy chief in Zhecheng County, was found not guilty.

The officers have appealed the court ruling and a second trial is being held at Kaifeng Intermediate People's Court.

In May 1999, police dug out a headless body from a well. They believed the man to be Zhao Zhenxiang, who had gone missing in October 1997 after a fight with Zhao Zuohai over a woman they were both romantically linked to.

Zhao Zuohai was found guilty and sentenced to death based on his confession and a DNA test which was said to have confirmed that the body was Zhao Zhenxiang's. Later, his jail term was commuted to 29 years.

While Zhao Zuohai was in Henan's No. 1 Prison, his wife remarried and three of his four children were adopted by strangers.

In fact, it was Zhao Zhenxiang who almost killed Zhao Zuohai. In the brawl he brandished a knife and cut Zhao Zuohai on the head. He fled the village fearing he had killed Zhao Zuohai. He returned on April 30, 2010.

Zhao Zuohai was awarded 650,000 yuan (US$102,238) in compensation for his wrongful conviction and jail.

He has already spent a considerable part of it on his eldest son's marriage.

Syringe sting rattles cab rider

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT

A 37-YEAR-OLD Beijing man was scared to death after he was accidentally pricked by a needle of a suspected HIV-tainted syringe left behind in a local taxi.

Xu Tian was riding in the taxi on Tuesday night when he felt a sting in his left knee and found a syringe sticking out of the magazine rack behind the car's front seat.

The cabbie surnamed Gong found thick liquid inside the syringe and immediately drove Xu to a hospital but it couldn't identify the liquid, The Beijing News reported yesterday.

The Chaoyang District Disease Prevention and Control Center later launched a test and suspected that the syringe may have been contaminated by the AIDS-causing virus. Xu was told to see doctors at Beijing Ditan Hospital on Wednesday.

A preliminary blood test showed Xu wasn't infected with the fatal virus but he was told to wait another three months to completely rule out a potential HIV infection.

Gong said he had no clue about the syringe user. "I got four set of passengers after 6pm and three women sat in the rear seat, but I didn't notice any of them placing anything in the rack," he insisted.

Xu said he had spent 2,500 yuan (US$393.5) on medicines to curb the spread of the virus inside his body and he felt like vomiting after taking the pills.

Lun Wenhui, a doctor at Beijing Ditan Hospital, said the suspected virus normally dies in dry conditions and since Xu took the medicines within 24 hours, he should be safe.

However, Xu is still depressed because his girlfriend wants to break up with him after hearing about the needle incident.

Six held for molesting women at water carnival

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT

SIX youngsters, some of them underage, have been detained for allegedly molesting and sexually assaulting several women during a water carnival held in Baoting Li and Miao Autonomous County in south China's Hainan Province.

Taking advantage of the celebrations on Thursday morning, a group of youth was seen fondling women's breasts and pushing women to the ground to sexually assault them, netizens claimed.

Online pictures showed crowds, dripping wet, gathering on the town square and playing with water. Dozens of men were seen surrounding a young girl, whose garments were torn off and who was crying and tightly holding on to her boyfriend.

Six of the men were caught yesterday morning while the others were still at large, Xinhua news agency said.

The local publicity department admitted that an incident of a sexual nature had taken place but didn't confirm the number of victims while arguing that the online allegations were an "exaggeration of the truth." Police investigation is ongoing, Xinhua said.

A netizen called Baochengxiaotao said he "heard many women screaming" after the carnival began at 8:30am. "I have since learned that it always happens every year at the water festival," he added.

The news went viral online, triggering a public outcry.

"It's so disgusting! What's wrong with today's society," a netizen called Wendy Yaozanjin asked. "Does the rapid economic development just result in loss of morals and humanity? We, the young people, should think deeply about how we should behave."

Some preferred to blame the girls for the incident, claiming they wore too little. "These girls should learn how to protect themselves since they know they will get wet," a netizen called Alice204 said.

Deeper Asian splits possible after South China Sea spat: Indonesia

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:27 AM PDT

Source: Reuters By David Ljunggren

(Reuters) – Deeper divisions could open up between Southeast Asian states and Beijing unless they do a better job of handling disputes such as a recent quarrel over the South China Sea, Indonesia's foreign minister said on Thursday.
Marty Natalegawa said Jakarta was trying to restore harmony after unprecedented arguments over the sea prevented a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) last month from issuing a joint communique, the first time this had happened in the 10-member bloc's 45-year history.

"That's not good … we will need to do better next time," he told Reuters in an interview during a visit to Canada.

The divisions stem from what some ASEAN members see as China's rapidly expanding influence in the region. Beijing has close relations with some ASEAN member states like Cambodia and Myanmar but there are tensions with others such as the Philippines and Vietnam. The Asian giant is not a member of the group.

China has territorial claims over a huge area of the South China Sea, including waters where the Philippines and Vietnam also claim sovereignty. At stake are potentially massive offshore oil reserves.

The area has become Southeast Asia's biggest potential military flashpoint. China and the Philippines have faced-off on a number of occasions in the disputed waters.

Natalegawa said he did not believe there was any one country in Southeast Asia or East Asia that "deliberately, with conscious aggressive intent" wanted to jeopardize peaceful international relations in the region.

"What we may have instead is a risk of miscalculation, of misperception, and action creating counter-reaction and a chain effect," he said.

Indonesia, by far the most powerful member of ASEAN, is working on a binding code of conduct for the South China Sea that would offer a guarantee that if one nation involved in a disagreement exercised restraint, the other would too.

"We have to save us from ourselves in assuming the worst of the other's intent and ending up having a self-fulfilling type of vicious circle. Now this is what Indonesia is trying to do," said Natalegawa.

"We are trying to intervene to say 'Look, stay calm and steady, let's not rush along a pathway that we don't want to go in' and avoiding this Cold War type of mentality, as if there are new fault lines."

China has yet to commit to the idea of a code of conduct, the details of which are still unclear. Natelegawa discussed the matter at a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi this month and "did not receive any negative response to my presentation of what is to come".

Natalegawa said he did not agree with the claim that China was becoming more assertive within ASEAN.

"I said (to Chinese officials) 'Look, what's going on? What's with you? Where are you coming from on this issue?' And when I hear from their world view, from their perspective, they have their own rationale and perception, as if they were caught by surprise as to what had happened at the (summit)," he said.

The arguments over the South China Sea were an unwelcome distraction for a grouping that plans to create a European Union-style economic community by 2015.

Natalegawa said he was encouraged by recent democratic reforms introduced by the military rulers of former rogue member Myanmar, which is due to chair ASEAN in 2014.

"A country that is chairing ASEAN on the eve of the ASEAN (economic) community 2015 must be more sensitive on human rights issues, on governance issues, than any one of us," he said.

"So it gives us a great deal of … encouragement in making sure the process of reform in Myanmar is irreversible."

Have You Heard…

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Have You Heard…

North Korean leader seeks trip to China for economic help

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:16 AM PDT

Source: Reuters By Benjamin Kang Lim

(Reuters) – North Korea's young leader wants a state visit to China in the latest move in his push to lift the isolated state out of decades of poverty, but risks further fraying ties with his only powerful ally by sticking to the threat of a new nuclear test.
It is not clear whether China will be prepared to host him, as requested, in September when Beijing will be preoccupied with its own leadership change. The leadership may also have its doubts about the unproven Kim Jong-un, who after only four months in office, defied his giant neighbor by conducting a long-range rocket test.

A source with ties to both Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters on Friday that Kim's uncle, Jang Song-thaek, effectively the second most powerful figure in Pyongyang, had asked for the visit when he met Chinese leaders on a visit to Beijing last week.

"It will be a state visit. This was one of the most important missions of Jang Song-thaek's visit," the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

China's foreign ministry declined to comment on the proposed visit, which would be Kim's first trip abroad since he took office and became the third of his line to rule North Korea.

Kim, in his late 20s, appears to be trying hard to soften the dour image of his dictator father whom he succeeded in December.

He has appeared waving and smiling at public events, even attending a pop concert that included Disney characters, and at times – just as unusually for a North Korean leader – accompanied by his wife.

But for most of North Korea's 22 million people, who are among the Asia's poorest, little has changed.

Some analysts see Jang as the driving force behind the North's promise of economic reform. Kim's uncle made his trip to China to press its leaders to provide greater backing for an economy brought to its knees by decades of mismanagement and international sanctions over missile and nuclear tests.

MAY BE LOATH TO HOST KIM

Beijing may be loath to host Kim in September at a time when China is preparing its own leadership change and because of the April rocket test, analysts said.

"North Korea has been nice to China only in the past one and half months," said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

"Heaven knows whether North Korea will change again in a few months."

The proposed visit also comes when there are doubts over how willing Chinese companies are to put money in their neighbor, with its complex and contradictory investment laws.

One Chinese mining company this month took the rare step of turning to the Internet to air grievances over what it saw as the North's unfair business practices.

Observers said new special enterprise zones in North Korea, aimed at building up business with China, have met with little or limited success.

United Nations estimates show that a third of North Korea's population is malnourished and it says the economy still has to regain output levels seen in the 1990s, when a devastating famine and the withdrawal of Soviet aid hit the country hard.

Chinese investment is the only viable large-scale option for the North.

"Jang Song-thaek went to China and discussed economic issues but the visit did not turn out to have the major impact that was expected. So Kim Jong-un will go to ask for the economic aid and long-term cooperation that they need," said Yoo Ho-yeol, professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in Seoul.

NUCLEAR THREAT

China will expect to extract a price from Kim and will want the North to commit to return to talks with regional powers, so-called Six Party talks, aimed at defusing the nuclear threat on the Korean peninsula, Yoo said.

For the reclusive North, that nuclear threat has long been its only real diplomatic leverage with the outside world, especially the United States.

Kim's father oversaw two nuclear tests and his long range missile tests were seen by the United States as attempts to develop a ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.

While the most recent missile test in April went spectacularly wrong, and saw sanctions even further tightened, the North is believed to be pushing ahead with plans to conduct a third nuclear test.

The source who disclosed Kim's request for a visit said that the North retained the capacity to carry out another test.

"There is no doubt North Korea has the capability, but China is strongly opposed to it," the source said. The source predicted the first nuclear test in 2006 and correctly identified Jang's rise to power in Kim Jong-un's administration

"North Korea wants a permanent peace treaty to replace the armistice in exchange for dropping plans for a third nuclear test. It's been 60 years and time to (formally) end the war with a peace treaty," the source added.

A formal peace treaty to end the 1950-53 Korean War, rather than the armistice in place, has been a longstanding demand from Pyongyang, which wants diplomatic recognition from the United States.

Washington and its ally South Korea, which is host to some 28,000 troops, insist the North give up its nuclear ambitions before any peace treaty and large scale economic aid.

With the U.S. presidential election and Chinese leadership change this year, Pyongyang has little leverage beyond its nuclear threat, analysts say.

But they add that Beijing cannot give up on Pyongang, which acts as a buffer to U.S. ally South Korea, and knowing that the North's collapse could send columns of refugees fleeing across its border.

Recent satellite images have shown North Korea making progress in tunneling associated with a nuclear test, although it has been impossible to independently verify the images.

Siegfried Hecker, a U.S. nuclear expert who has visited the North's main Yongbyon nuclear facility four times since 2004 and was the last foreign expert to visit the site in late 2010, wrote in a report published on August 6 that the North could be technically ready for a test within two weeks.

Hecker and co-author Frank Pabian wrote that North Korea might conduct a simultaneous test using plutonium and highly enriched uranium.

The North's previous tests have used plutonium and the use of highly enriched uranium would give Pyongyang a second route to a nuclear weapon.

"Whether and when North Korea conducts another nuclear test will depend on how high a political cost Pyongyang is willing to bear," Hecker and Pabian wrote.

"Beijing has continued to expand aid and trade with North Korea, but has also applied significant diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang not to test."

Shifts in Asia Fuel Flare-Ups Over Islands

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:36 AM PDT

Source: Wall Street Journal By Yuka Hayashi, Brian Spegele, Evan Ramstad and Alan Cullison

The late-summer flare-up in territorial tensions between Japan and three neighbors has been stoked by a shift in the balance of power in Northeast Asia, as well as leadership changes or contests in all four countries that complicate the impact of domestic politics on foreign policies.
The passions recently inflamed in Japan, China, South Korea, and Russia over the disputed areas are striking in part because of the seeming insignificance of the stakes: largely uninhabited islands with few natural resources, decent fishing rights and mostly modest strategic value.

But the spats aren't just about the islands. They are rooted in long, complex histories between Japan and its neighbors, particularly an ill-fated imperialistic expansion in the first half of the previous century, and Tokyo's inability to resolve fully lingering tensions in the following decades of peace. Now the still-simmering disagreements appear to have become opportunities for those nations to test the resolve of a Japan seen weakening economically and politically.

"The shift in power balance resulting from China's rise is pushing Japan into a defensive position," said Makoto Iokibe, former president of the National Defense Academy of Japan. "Countries that engage in power politics are taking advantage of the situation, confident that they can push further and still get away with it."

In just in a matter of days this month, Tokyo found itself grappling with new tensions on three fronts. The Aug. 15 landing of Chinese activists on one of the contested islands—called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in Chinese—was countered by a similar landing by a group of Japanese nationalists a few days later. Tokyo and Seoul have been caught in an escalating tit-for-tat since early August when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Korea-controlled islets known as Dokdo in the Koreas and Takeshima in Japan; they are also known as the Liancourt Rocks. Russia, meanwhile, threatened to send naval ships to Moscow-controlled islands north of Japan that Tokyo has long claimed. That came a few weeks after Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited the territory called the Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan.

On Thursday, the spat between Japan and South Korea turned nastier. In a highly contentious diplomatic gesture, Seoul tried to send back a letter of protest that Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had written to Mr. Lee. The attempt failed as security guards at Tokyo's Foreign Ministry refused to let cars carrying South Korean diplomats enter its grounds. The South Korean government later returned the letter by registered mail. At a parliament session, Mr. Noda said Japan has demanded Mr. Lee apologize for remarks deemed offensive to the Japanese emperor.

Government officials and analysts say Japan and South Korea will be careful not to let the political tensions damage their significant bilateral economic ties. Still, worrying signs are emerging. Anti-Japan protesters in South Korea have called for a boycott of Japanese products. Japan has cancelled a bilateral meeting of finance ministers this month and threatened to shelve the expansion of a foreign-exchange swap deal agreed to last year as a contingency measure to cope with a potential financial crisis. Some in Japan are concerned that Seoul may try to shut Japan out of trade talks with China that had been intended to lead to a three-way pact.

The concern not to let the spat escalate is felt on both sides. "We have never tried to link issues of history with other important issues for the future of our countries," one of Mr. Lee's aides said.

Some experts also see the tiffs being stoked by new questions about the strength of the half-century-old U.S.-Japan military alliance. While the two governments are taking many steps to deepen defense ties, rising grass-roots opposition in Japan to Marine bases and the deployment of U.S. military aircraft has complicated cooperation efforts.

"The U.S.-Japan alliance remains strong, but it has weakened a bit—in the parlance of S&P, it has been downgraded and is not triple-A anymore," said Ryozo Kato, a retired diplomat who served for seven years as Japan's ambassador to the U.S. "Once we show signs of weakness in the alliance, that would tempt China, Russia, and Korea."

The growing animosities in the region also create new challenges for the U.S., as it shifts its focus to Asia to counter China's dramatic rise. In particular, the increasingly raucous row between Tokyo and Seoul could undermine Washington's efforts to enlist the unified help of its two closest allies in deterring aggressive action by Beijing.

In their report on the U.S.-Japan alliance published this month, Richard Armitage, a former U.S. deputy secretary of state, and Joseph Nye, a former assistant secretary of defense, urged Tokyo and Seoul to "resist the temptation to resurrect deep historical differences and to utilize nationalist sentiments for domestic political purposes." The called strong U.S.-Japan-South Korea relations "absolutely critical to the alliance and the regional stability and prosperity."

Fueling the contentions is rising nationalism sweeping the region at a time when countries jockey for leadership positions in the new regional order, while fighting the pressure of global economic competition that has left many citizens falling behind. The resulting anxiety carries particular political weight this year across the region. China faces a leadership transition. Russia had a presidential election this year, and South Korea has one at year's end. In Japan, Mr. Noda faces mounting pressure to call a snap election in coming months—a contest he is seen as likely to lose unless he can quickly seize on a winning political issue.

Japan's standoff with China centers around a chain of East China Sea Islands. Japan gained control of them at the end of its 1894-95 war with China, but China and Taiwan also claim sovereignty, citing historic association with the islands. The dispute has intensified in recent years with China's rapid naval expansion.

Chinese civilian leaders are wary of appearing weak on territorial issues with Tokyo that have an intense resonance with the public, especially as the sensitive once-a-decade leadership change is expected to begin in Beijing in coming months. While Japan and China are increasingly entwined economically and Japanese pop culture is popular among Chinese youths, long-standing mistrust remains, rooted in Japan's brutal occupation of large parts of China during World War II.

In response to Japan's expulsion this month of the Chinese activists who landed on the Senkaku, violent anti-Japanese protests erupted in a number of Chinese cities over the weekend. Photos posted online showed protesters smashing Japanese-brand cars. Analysts and diplomats said the anti-Japanese protests—China's worst since October 2010—underscored how intense public nationalism threaten leaders' control if they are perceived by the public as weak. In one of the most striking images, a mob of young men in Shenzhen overturned a Japanese-brand police car as officers stood helplessly by.

Japan's dispute with South Korea centers around the Liancourt Rocks, a set of islets halfway between the two countries, named after a French whaling ship that plied those waters in the 1840s. The islets have appeared on maps in both countries going back to the 1600s. Japan claimed control of them in 1905, shortly before its 1910 colonization of the Korean peninsula.

Since taking office in 2008, Mr. Lee has endured criticism that he treats South Korea's historical disputes with Japan too lightly. His Aug. 10 visit to the islets came after a public outcry in June over historical issues between the two countries forced his office to scrap a deal with Japan that provided a working framework for sharing military secrets.

Some analysts in the two countries believe that Mr. Lee's decision to visit the islets was aimed at countering low approval ratings, shifting attention from scandals—and showing that he still holds agenda-setting power even though he has just six months left in office before the December presidential election. In a recent speech, Mr. Lee vowed to keep working "until the last day of my term in office."

Japan claims the four Kuril Islands controlled by Russia and located off Hokkaido based on the 1855 Treaty of Shimoda, the first Russo-Japanese agreement addressing the area. Moscow argues that the islands became part of the Soviet Union following Japan's World War II defeat.

Some trace Russia's recent visible reminders of its control over the islands to the country's changing image of itself, and efforts by President Vladimir Putin to reassert Moscow's global influence.

Moscow has been especially worried about its image in Asia, where China's burgeoning economy and growing cities along the Russian-Chinese border have eclipsed Russia's own deteriorating economy and dwindling population. Mr. Medvedev's first visit to the Kurils in 2010 was choreographed to show that "the country's leadership takes care of even its remotest regions," wrote Fyodor Lyukanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine.

China’s Missile Advances Could Thwart U.S. Defenses, Analysts Say

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:51 AM PDT

Source: New York Times By Keith Bradsher

HONG KONG — China is moving ahead with the development of a new and more capable generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched missiles, increasing its existing ability to deliver nuclear warheads to the United States and to overwhelm missile defense systems, military analysts said this week.
Over all, China's steady strengthening of its military capabilities for conventional and nuclear warfare has long caused concern in Congress and among American allies in East Asia, particularly lately as Chinese has taken a more assertive position regarding territorial claims in the East China and South China seas.

The Global Times, a newspaper directly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, reported on Wednesday that China was developing the capability to put multiple warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. But the newspaper disputed a report in Jane's Defense Weekly that the latest Chinese ICBM, the Dongfeng-41, had been tested last month.

Larry M. Wortzel, on the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a panel created by Congress, said that China was developing the capability to put as many as 10 nuclear warheads on an ICBM, although dummy warheads could be substituted for some of the nuclear warheads. The dummy warheads would have heat and electromagnetic devices designed to trick missile defense systems as being as threatening as the actual warheads, he said.

"The bigger implication of this is that as they begin to field a force of missiles with multiple warheads, it means everything we assume about the size of their nuclear arsenal becomes wrong," said Mr. Wortzel, who is a former United States military intelligence officer and retired Army colonel.

China has separately tested submarine-launched missiles as well in recent weeks, which it could use to outflank American missile detection systems, Mr. Wortzel said. Most of the radar arrays that the United States has deployed against ballistic missiles were built during the cold war to detect attacks over polar routes.

Sun Zhe, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said that China was developing its military forces only in response to continued efforts by other countries, particularly the United States, to improve their own forces.

"We have again and again said that we will not be the first country to use nuclear force," he said. "We need to be able to defend ourselves, and our main threat, I'm afraid, comes from the United States."

China's development of long-range missiles is part of a much broader military expansion made possible by rapid budget growth in tandem with the Chinese economy, which had an output of $7.5 trillion last year, compared with $1.2 trillion in 2000.

China began sea trials last year for its first aircraft carrier, the Varyag, a retrofitted version of a Soviet vessel, and has begun talking this summer about the eventual construction of up to five aircraft carriers. China also began conducting fairly public flight tests in January last year for the J-20, its new stealth fighter jet.

The scale of China's strategic missile program is much more secret. The Pentagon estimates that China currently has 55 to 65 intercontinental ballistic missiles. China is also preparing two submarines for deployment, each with 12 missiles aboard, Mr. Wortzel said.

Those forces are dwarfed by those of the United States, which is cutting its inventory to 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons by 2018 under the latest arms control agreement with Russia, signed in 2010.

Western forecasts vary of how many Dongfeng-41s China will produce, with 20 to 32 mobile launching systems planned. The mobile launchers make it harder to find and destroy a missile before it is launched, and also raise the possibility that additional missiles could be hidden in storage and used to reload after the initial missile is fired.

If each missile has 10 nuclear warheads, that could result in a few hundred to several hundred nuclear weapons.

But Tom Z. Collina, the research director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said that China might not actually deploy multiple warheads without first developing and testing smaller warheads. And China signed in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, agreeing not to conduct further nuclear tests.

"It's not just an issue of whether they have a missile that could physically lift all those warheads, but whether they could fit all those warheads on a missile," Mr. Collina said.

The United States has tried to reassure Russia and China that its limited ballistic missile defenses are only designed to shoot down one or a handful of missiles launched by a rogue state. But missile defense advocates in the United States favor more ambitious but also far costlier systems, a spirited debate that has been followed with nervousness in Moscow and Beijing.

The United States has been mulling where it can best place additional high-tech radar systems designed to track ballistic missiles. American forces currently have one in northern Japan and others that are deployed from time to time at sea. The Wall Street Journal reported this week on discussions of whether to put two more on land, in southern Japan and in Southeast Asia.

American officials have said repeatedly that their main concern is North Korea, which has been testing long-range missiles and developing nuclear weapons. But Chinese officials and experts have been deeply suspicious that American missile defense systems are aimed at their country's forces as well.

"I have no doubt that the one of the goals of the missile defenses is to contain threats from North Korea, but objectively speaking, a high-tech expansion of U.S. military biceps impacts China, too," said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. He added that discussions had taken place in China on whether to develop missile defense systems as well.

U.S. Said to Plan Added Radar to Bolster Asia Defenses

Posted: 24 Aug 2012 10:55 AM PDT

Source: Bloomberg News By David Lerman and Daniel Ten Kate

The Obama administration is considering the possibility of expanding missile defenses in Asia in response to threats from North Korea and aggressive moves by China, U.S. defense officials said.
Two U.S. officials said the Pentagon has been discussing with Japan a new radar installation on a southern Japanese island. An eventual installation in Southeast Asia would complete a more robust defense system if a location can be found, one of the officials said.

While the Wall Street Journal reported last night that the U.S. planned such an expansion of anti-missile defenses, the officials said no decisions are imminent and called the system a possibility in view of the North Korean threat. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The Pentagon's willingness to make it known that new installations of advanced X-Band radar arrays made by Raytheon Co. (RTN) are under consideration is intended to reassure U.S. allies as China increases defense spending and contests jurisdiction over maritime territories with countries including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, one of the officials said.

Deploying a second X-Band system to southern Japan, in addition to one already installed in the country's north, makes sense in light of North Korea's saber-rattling, the second official said. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has shown no willingness since assuming power in December to abandon his regime's nuclear weapons program, and he oversaw an attempted launch of a long-range rocket in April.

Countering China

"If they are moving down to Southeast Asia, they are probably making an effort to counter Chinese missile systems," Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said of the reported missile defense plan. "The Chinese would probably think about how they would have to counter these counters, and that would probably mean acquiring more systems or perhaps targeting those radar sites."

Pentagon spokeswoman Wendy Snyder in Washington said she couldn't immediately comment, and Japan's top spokesman also declined to comment.

Asked today whether a U.S. missile defense installation in southern Japan would raise hackles in China because it may be seen as protecting Taiwan, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that planning "for Asia mirrors the work that we're doing in Europe, the efforts that we have in the Middle East. These are defensive systems."

North Korea

U.S. systems in Asia are designed to defend "against a missile threat from North Korea," Nuland said during her regular briefing in Washington. "They are not directed at China."

Asked about the possibility of a third radar system in a location such as the Philippines, which is far from North Korea, Nuland said she didn't "have anything new to announce."

The X-Band radar is "a high-powered, phased-array radar designed to meet near-term ballistic missile threats from rogue states," according to the website of Waltham, Massachusetts- based Raytheon.

Japan and the U.S. have decided not to put the new radar facility on Okinawa, given tensions over the American military presence there, according to the Journal, which said the Philippines is a possible site in Southeast Asia.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura, speaking to reporters in Tokyo, declined to comment on the Journal article.

New Launchpad

North Korea is building a new launchpad for firing larger long-range missiles at its Musudan-ri site in the northeast, the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington said on its website in May. Japan is beefing up its anti- ballistic missile defense system in concert with the U.S. and "most of that is geared against North Korea," Bitzinger said.

China continued "sustained investments" in advanced cruise and anti-ship missile technologies last year that "appear designed" to blunt U.S. military access to the region, the Pentagon said in a May report. The missiles are designed for launch to a general location, where the guidance systems take over and target U.S. aircraft carriers for attack, with warheads intended to destroy aircraft on deck, airplane-launching gear and control towers.

Elements of the X-Band radar system can be deployed aboard Navy ships to support tests of U.S. missile-defense systems and to provide coverage against possible threats.

Southeast Asia

Placing the radar in Southeast Asia would mean "the U.S. would actually have to step up patrols in the South China Sea and place these large destroyers in that region on basically regular patrols," Bitzinger said. "That could be obviously taken by the Chinese as provocative."

One of the U.S. officials said the Philippines and Vietnam have been reluctant to host permanent U.S. military facilities for fear of provoking China.

China called for the U.S. to stop gathering intelligence in waters off its shores after a 2009 incident in which its vessels harassed an American naval vessel 75 miles south of Hainan Island. The U.S. views the South China Sea as international waters and has repeatedly called for maritime states to respect freedom of navigation.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in June became the highest- ranking American official to visit Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay since the Vietnam War, reflecting the U.S.'s expanding ties with a former enemy as China's rise realigns relationships in the region.

In November, Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced a defense accord to deploy American Marines on Australian bases in 2012.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join other leaders at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vladivostok, Russia, next month.