20051029

Japan admits nuclear-powered vessel

REGIONAL SECURITY: Amid local protests, the US will replace an aging, conventionally powered aircraft carrier with a `more capable' warship, Japanese and US officials said

AP , TOKYO

The basing of a US nuclear-powered warship in Japanese waters for the first time will boost stability in East Asia, Japan's government said yesterday, hailing an agreement even as it drew protests from the community that will host the aircraft carrier.

The US Navy on Thursday announced the deal, under which Japan dropped its longtime opposition to hosting a nuclear-powered warship in its territory.

"Japan believes that the continued presence of the US Navy will contribute to safety and stability in Japan, the Far East and the world," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said yesterday.

He said the agreement would not threaten the safety of Japanese residents, who have long been wary of a US nuclear presence because of fears of radiation leaks.

"The US side has told us that it will continue taking strict safety measures," he said, adding that the carrier -- which has not been named -- will stop its nuclear reactor while anchored in Japan and conduct no repairs of the reactor there.

The US decided to deploy a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered carrier in Japan because it has far greater capabilities than traditional warships, US ambassador Thomas Schieffer said yesterday at a news conference.

Schieffer said that Washington took into account the reluctance of the Japanese to host a nuclear-powered ship, but such ships are faster and more nimble than fossil-fuel powered ships.

"We want to assure all concerned that this carrier can and will be operated safely in Japanese waters," he said at the US embassy, adding that nuclear-powered ships had made 1,200 visits to Japan over the past 40 years without harming the environment.

The plan immediately met with opposition from local officials south of Tokyo near the city of Yokosuka, the home to the US Seventh Fleet and the future base of the new warship.

"No safety tests can be conducted on nuclear-powered ships because Japanese law does not apply, and there is a great risk in the crowded area," said Shigefumi Matsuzawa, the governor of Kanagawa Prefecture, where the new warship will be based.

Matsuzawa said he would urge the US and Japanese governments to reconsider the plan.

The nuclear-powered carrier would replace the USS Kitty Hawk, a diesel-powered carrier based in Yokosuka.

The Kitty Hawk, commissioned in 1961, is the Navy's oldest ship in full active service and the only US aircraft carrier deployed abroad permanently. The new carrier would arrive in Japan in 2008, when the Kitty Hawk is scheduled to return to the US and be decommissioned.

The US Navy said the switch would boost the US military posture in the region.

"Nimitz-class aircraft carriers are far more capable than fossil fuel carriers ... possess superior endurance and sustained speed and can respond more quickly to any crisis," said Rear Admiral James Kelly, commander of US Navy Forces Japan.

The announcement came as the US and Japan are working out a plan for a realignment of the 50,000 American troops based in Japan -- a presence that has spurred protests over the years by residents angered by the bases.

Earlier this week the two sides struck a deal to close down a Marine Corps air station in Okinawa and transfer its functions to an existing base on the southern island, Camp Schwab. That plan, which calls for the building of a new heliport, was also running into opposition by some residents who are against any fresh military construction.

The two sides are meeting for high-level talks in Washington today to announce an interim plan for realignment. Schieffer yesterday said that the final plan would call for the reduction of US troops in Japan, but he did not elaborate.

PFP blamed for impasse

STYMIED BILL: Visiting researchers from a US think tank said that the PFP leadership is blocking even its own party members from compromising on the US arms bill

By Chang Yun-ping

STAFF REPORTER

A visiting researcher from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative US think tank, blamed the leadership of the People First Party (PFP) for holding hostage the long-stalled US arms procurement deal, but said he was optimistic the bill could eventually pass.

AEI research fellow Dan Blumenthal, who served from 2002 to last year as the head of Taiwan affairs in the Defense Department, said that rival parties in the legislature would likely be able to cut a deal were it not for PFP leadership.

"Below the leadership levels, people in the PFP who know the military matters will come to some sort of agreement with DPP," Blumenthal said. "This has become a political football. Once it goes to the defense committee with their experts, we believe strongly that something will pass."

Blumenthal said that a number of "serious PFP military types" realized Taiwan's need to upgrade its defense capabilities by passing the special arms budget.

Blumenthal made the comments after he and other researchers from the AEI met with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou, during which they exchanged views with Ma on the ongoing arms bill impasse and voiced US concerns that domestic politics is interfering with Taiwan's national security.

AEI researcher Gary Schmitt, a former adviser to the Pentagon, told reporters that the KMT leader appeared to want to make progress on the bill.

"There is a sense that [Ma] would like to move forward on this, but that unfortunately, his junior partner in the [Legislature Yuan,] the PFP, is making that impossible to do it at this point," Schmitt said.

AEI president Christopher DeMuth yesterday urged Taiwan not to let political bickering stand in the way of national defense.

"It is a matter of concern to the United States and AEI that the politics in Taiwan has been interfering for a long time the necessary steps for prudent self-defense," DeMuth said.

Asked about former president Lee Teng-hui's calls for Taiwan to purchase offensive weaponry such as long-range missiles, Blumenthal said it is a "false notion" that Taiwan can get defense more cheaply through developing offensive capabilities.

"It would be very expensive to have the kind of capability that would actually matter if Taiwan were to go toward that kind of direction of striking capabilities. There is no defense on the cheap," Blumenthal said.

Chen vows to be `crusader' for constitutional reform

By Shih Hsiu-chuan

STAFF REPORTER WITH CNA

President Chen Shui-bian said yesterday he has no position regarding a new constitution, saying he would support one that is backed by the majority of the Taiwanese people.

Chen has vowed to carry out more constitutional reforms during the remainder of his presidency -- despite the fact that the opposition parties, which control the legislature, said they will not support further reforms. He made the statement at the opening of a two day conference on constitutional re-engineering, which was sponsored by the Presidential Office's Constitutional Reform Promotion Panel.

"I am the most suitable person to promote constitutional reform, as I am now under no pressure to be re-elected," Chen said. His second term in office expires in 2008.

Following constitutional reforms focusing on the legislature which were approved in June, some officials advocate further reforms focusing on the governmental system. Chen said the next phase of reforms is expected to address issues such as whether to change the country's political system to a presidential system or parliamentary system; protection of basic human rights; defining the rights and obligations of the central and the local governments; streamlining the government agencies; lowering the voting age from 20 to 18; and adopting a voluntary military service system.

Furthermore, the current Constitution provides no way to resolve political stalemates caused by the flawed design of the governmental system, which paralyzes the Executive Yuan whenever the Legislative Yuan is controlled by an opposition party, Chen said.

In the next two years, he will make every effort to be a "constitutional reform crusader," noting that the government will recruit instructors and hold 10,000 seminars to invite public discussion by 2007 in a constitutional reform awareness campaign.

"By the time I complete my presidency in 2008, I hope to hand to Taiwan a new version of our Constitution -- one that is timely, relevant and viable," he said.

Chen said the nation's government system has tilted toward a presidential one, but the president still has no right to veto bills passed by the legislature and can only dissolve the legislature if the legislature topples the Cabinet, he said.

The nation's governance has stalled, Chen added, which he asserted was "definitely related to our Constitution which can't provide a legal mechanism to solve political stalemates."

China’s military farmers left behind

OLD SCHOOL: Members of a construction corps sent to Xinjiang Province in the 1950s are finding it hard to adjust to modern life as China continues its rapid development

REUTERS, SHIHEZI, CHINA

As China moved away from a planned economy, its "regiments" were dissolved and the group has survived only in remote western Xinjiang province.

Borders with conflict-tam Afghanistan and several Central Asian nations, tremendous oil wealth and a large, often-unhappy minority population of Turkic-speaking Uighurs means there is plenty for Beijing to worry about.

Officials say the once secretive group, known in Chinese as bingtuan (military corps), has severed links to the military, but its members still spend 40 days a year in training, to ensure they can, take up a gun again if needed.

Human-rights activists say the group was also told to colonize areas that historically belonged to ethnic minorities.

They grow fruit, cotton and spices, to earn its 6,200 working members 16,000 yuan (US$1,980) a year－enough to hire migrant laborers from far-off Henan province for the back-breaking work of cotton picking.

Life for the first arrivals was far harder. A museum celebrating them shows crude wooden spinning wheels and ploughs beside sketches of the underground caves they dug as homes.

Cams so pouted tide original fabric is no longer visible are preserved behind glass, together with praise for socialist heroes such as tractor driver Jin Maofang, who did 20 years' work in just seven.

But the hard-working pioneers would barely recognize the town they founded or the high tech sophistication of parts of the bingtuan－now an industrial and agricultural conglomerate.

Skyscrapers have sprouted to replace the caves, and the corps owns China's top provider of water saving irrigation systems.

But modernization also brought losses, of jobs and security, that accompanied China's post-Mao transformation nationwide.

"I grew up in the bingtuan, but I've been driving a taxi for seven or eight years now. Their economic situation hasn't been great since the reforms and I had to leave," said one worn down city resident who didn't want to give his name.

And as the town is spruced up, developers are knocking down some of the primitive brick houses of the earliest arrivals to put up modern, but pricey, apartment blocks.

A government official said all owners were compensated, but locals told a different story.

"People are not getting enough compensation to buy new homes and some have nowhere to go," the driver added.

Those who have managed to hang on in the corps are convinced that their special status will protect a cradle-to-grave welfare system crumbling in much of the rest of China.

"We don't have to worry because [China] cannot do without the bingtuan－it protects the western gate to the country," says peach farmer Bai Xinguo.

"Of course we will be here for generations, because our main task is to protect a country."

And far ohm ci~'ear that their children will be around to care for the next generation of retirees.

Gao Hong's 24-year-old daughter has married and moved to the provincial capital, Urumqi, where she works in a steel facroty.

Even the leaders admit their youngsters are tempted by the bright lights of wealthy east coast cities such as Shanghai－although they say love of the land lures enough back.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency recently reported on a government investigation into a string of forced sterilizations and abortions in the village of Linyi in Shandong Province. The speed of the investigation -- said to have begun days after the kidnapping of Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist who had been a public advocate for the victims -- and the candor of the report created the impression of greater government responsiveness and a bolder official media. But is this the correct impression?

The story in Linyi is the kind of news that propaganda officials usually bury in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) secret files. According to reports, local authorities in Linyi, seeking to avoid exceeding birth quotas under China's "one child" policy, forced several women to undergo abortions and forcibly sterilized many couples with more than one child. Villagers who hid to avoid the campaign reportedly saw their family members jailed. Some in Linyi alleged degrading treatment, torture and extortion.

Why investigate and report this scandal? The Xinhua reports, I believe, are best read as damage control.

China is trying to secure funding from the UN to improve reproductive health -- an effort that has been set back by reports of forced abortion. Central authorities did not investigate the Linyi abuse until news of the harassment of Chen -- and his abduction with the help of Beijing police -- spread into the international media. Chen had reported the abuses to officials and asked a non-governmental organization, the Citizens' Rights Defense Group, to investigate.

The group went to Linyi in May. A month later, the network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported the group's findings and demanded the intervention of the central government's Family Planning Commission (FPC).

As a volunteer for the network, I was in touch with Chen and followed events closely. In July, having failed to elicit any government response, Chen began seeking legal aid from prominent lawyers to prepare lawsuits on behalf of the victims, causing alarm among local officials. Pursued by police, Chen went into hiding.

My "personal safety was threatened," he wrote on Aug. 30 in the last e-mail he sent me.

Following strenuous international protests over Chen's kidnapping, the FPC decided to investigate. Xinhua announced that the local officials responsible for the violence might be prosecuted. Central authorities seemed to sense an immediate need to quell criticism of its controversial population-control efforts. Xinhua wasted no time in claiming that the abuses were limited to a few towns.

However, central government authorities have done little to halt intimidation of Linyi's villagers. Chen was released from detention but remains under house arrest, and was dragged back to the police station on Sept. 2 for unknown reasons.

Police refuse to return Chen's personal computer and cellphone. The village, too, is mysteriously without any telephone service. Meanwhile, through arrests, threats and bribery, authorities are forcing villagers to withdraw accounts of abuse and back out of their lawsuits, warning of the dire consequences of cooperating with Chen and the lawyers.

The FPC has declined to intervene, citing lack of law-enforcement powers. On Oct. 10, the villagers' lawyers were told that the court hearing scheduled for that day was canceled. On their way back to Beijing, thugs reportedly assaulted the lawyers.

Viewed in this context, the belief that the government's approach to Linyi reflects a new responsiveness to human-rights abuses seems naive. If the government were truly becoming more responsive, why have we not seen similar responses to other disputes over the theft of farmland, compromised investors' rights, or high-level corruption?

In all these cases, authorities have responded with repression, including the hiring of plain-clothes militias to kidnap or beat up people who attempt to publicize problems. China's belated bouts of openness about the spread of AIDS and the SARS epidemic clearly indicate that the central government sees little need to become more transparent.

Others argue that China's government is simply losing its grip over local authorities. This prospect is hardly encouraging. If abuses and repression in the provinces continue no matter how attentive the central government, or how assertive the press might have become, what then?

More likely, however, the central authorities are following a policy that most Chinese know well: neijin waisong, or "controlled inside, relaxed outside." Applied here, the policy means consolidating power at home while disarming critics abroad.

I believe that the government's loss of control in the provinces has been stage-managed. Chaos provides a cover for crackdowns. It is too convenient when unidentified strongmen beat and harass activists who question party rule, and it is too easy for officials to blame an out-of-control "criminal society" when international media start asking questions.

Suspiciously targeted "criminal" assaults have, indeed, occurred in places other than Linyi. Thugs thrashed civil rights activist Lu Banglie (呂邦列) in the Guangdong town of Taishi earlier this month. Six villagers in the Hebei village of Dingzhou, protesting government seizure of their land, died after bloody clashes with a gang of thugs in July. The list goes on.

State media recently started releasing year-end "mass incident" statistics. Last year, the government said, there were 74,000 such incidents. Observers marvel that China's leaders admit to such a staggering number of protests. But here, again, the government is hiding in plain sight. State-run media organs have been forced to admit that these protests test the CCP's will to maintain power. They neglect to tell the real story of how the CCP exercises that will, trusting that the admission itself will satisfy us. We should not be so quick to play along.

Li Xiaorong is a human-rights researcher who specializes in reproductive rights and gender issues in developing nations. She taught philosophy at the People's University in Beijing.