The Chiba Prefecture viewed from the Kanagawa Prefecture over Tokyo Bay
The Left Hand Side is to Tokyo and the opposite is to the Pacific Ocean
(Once the black steamers led by Commodore Perry passed this strait as well as the battleship Missouri...so that it is now defended by USS George Washington, CVN-73, subject to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.)
Japan's Long March Has Begun!!
(Tant que les peuples sont harcelés par Pékin...)
If the Japanese Government is weaker than Beijing, how Japanese businesses can operate with advantage over China?
The chairman of the Federation of Economic Organizations of Japan must trust his Government. If he has true friends in China, he has to let them help him. If he has no true friends in China, he had better forget about China. The global market is larger than the Chinese market.
And, it will need a very long march to achieve revolutionary performance in China.
SECTION I: The Administrative Detention System in China
According to the September 24, 2010's issue of The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, there are 350 detention centers in China where 160,000 citizens (according the Chinese Government) are imprisoned for forced labor and punishment.
Those citizens were arrested for disturbing order of the society but not admitted a right of access to courts. They were simply pulled into detention facilities by the police so as to spend time there for up to four years. Therefore, anybody can be thrown into a kind of jail without any evidence of violation of laws and regulation.
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Offences punishable by the system include unlawful advertising, unlicensed taxis, unlicensed businesses, vagrancy and begging. Authorities can also punish peaceful protest or dissent.
Hundreds of thousands are believed to be held in Re-education Through Labour facilities across China. All are at high risk of torture or ill-treatment.
China’s use of administrative detention is incompatible with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It falls short on the rights of detainees to be brought promptly before a judge; the right to a fair trial; and the prohibition of forced or compulsory labour.
Amnesty International has called on China to abolish Re-education Through Labour and other forms of punitive administrative detention. Pending their abolition, the authorities should ensure that the Beijing police do not use detention without trial to clean up the city.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/human-rights-china-beijing-olympics/issues/detention-without-trial
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This is the state of law and order in China Wall Street guys and Western economists have praised so much as a kind of the world No.2 economy.
SECTION II: Chinese GDP - Smaller or Larger
If the Japanese Government can control the society and the market in the same manner as China does, it could easily double GDP.
Anyway, data on 1.3 billion people cannot be correctly collected, counted, and sorted by this kind of the despotic government whose bureaucrats would simply pad reports and records to satisfy their bosses and evade demotion.
If GDP calculation was padded for a 10% mandatory increase every year for five years, it would result in:
1.0 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.6
The Chinese GDP can easily achieve 60% growth without any true growth.
So, it is no wonder that China claims that its GDP has doubled in five years.
1.0 x 1.15 x 1.15 x 1.15 x 1.15 x 1.15 = 2.0
Probably, truth is:
1.0 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 x 1.05 = 1.28
So, true GDP of China can be 38% lower than the presently announced value.
But, the total of local GDP reports from Chinese provinces is bigger than the national GDP.
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"It's very common that the regional GDP growth is higher than that of the nation today," Zhou said. "It reflects that the statistical system hasn't been improved yet, and the problem of false data has to be solved."
http://english.sina.com/china/2010/0426/316567.html
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Even, there is a theory that the true GDP of China is larger than the officially reported GDP, taking into the scale of underground economy and hidden income of citizens.
In either way, the GDP of a nation with 1.3 billion population can be something different from that of the 0.3 billion-population U.S. and 0.13 billion-population Japan.
SECTION III: Chinese GDP - Out of Question
There is a cooler view on GDP itself and the Chinese GDP. Due to the folloiwng factors, the figure so far presented as the Chinese GDP cannot be trusted.
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What I'm more concerned about — particularly in regards to China — is something Stiglitz mentions only in passing, the fact that GDP may overstate the real benefit of government spending or policies designed to artificially stimulate economic growth.
The "resilience" of the Chinese economy right now is based, at least in part, on several factors that I find cause for concern:
- acceleration of a 20-year pipeline of infrastructure projects into a 5-year time horizon, including many seemingly redundant projects or vanity projects, or ones where the returns are far from clear (such as the construction of entirely new cities to replace perfectly good old ones);
- reconstruction in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake (which needs to be done, but is actually the replacement of destroyed value, not — as growth figures imply — a form of genuine economic expansion; otherwise you could tear down the whole country just to rebuilt it and call it "growth");
- construction of large-scale luxury condo developments that go entirely unoccupied and serve merely as investment vehicles, on the expectation of future appreciation;
- easy state-provided credit that has kept businesses — many of them poorly run and financed — from exiting sectors (such as steel) that have chronic excess capacity;
- a massive shift in resources towards the State Owned sector and away from private enterprise (including the acquisition by the State of controlling stakes in successful private companies);
- misdirection of business loans into stock market and real estate speculation, fueling bubbles in both markets;
- direct investment by government ministries in order to speculate in — and thereby prop up – the real estate market, on the misconception that a rising real estate market is a "driver" of growth (rather than a result of real demand for more and better usable space driven by business expansion and rising living standards);
- the possibility of "channel stuffing," where wholesalers and retailers are forced to build up unsold inventories to keep factories (particularly state-owned factories) running. Ironically, this shows up in China’s official statistics as “retail sales” because in China, retail sales are counted when the manufacturer ships, not when the products is sold to a consumer.
I'm not saying everything about the Chinese economy is bad, although it might sound like that. There’s actually plenty that's good. My main concern is that by pretending everything is wonderful, and brushing the real problems under the rug, China is missing a critical opportunity. Unlike India, which is struggling to revitalize its infrastructure, China already has the whole “building for the future” thing down pat. Bigger airports, taller skyscrapers, and more highways might be good, but they’re not the challenge China faces. Developing a vibrant service sector, improving quality and safety in manufacturing, building recognized and well-respected brands, developing more efficient and transparent capital markets, providing a social safety net that lubricates labor markets and liberates savings, moving towards full convertibility of the Renminbi, learning how to manage and grow businesses in political and social environments beyond China’s borders — these are the challenges China must master to take its economy to the next level. But I don’t see anything in the “8% growth” story that is moving China in that direction. It’s more (a lot more) of the same, and more of the same just won’t do. Count me as someone who still needs to be convinced on the “quality” of China’s current GDP figures.
http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/chinas-quality-of-gdp/
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Finally, my suggestion is that we do not apply the concept of GDP to China in a conventional manner.
There are two types of GDPs in the world: the Non-Chinese GDPs and the Chinese GDP
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Once again, as for the Senkaku Islands, when people in the world see the map, they find the Chinese continent so close to the Senkaku Islands and the Okinawa Islands. They will think that China must have occupied them even from days of 1,000 years ago.
But, the fact is that the coastal areas were simply remote regions without value from capitals of the past Chinese dynasties. Chinese empires deeply rooted in inland areas, especially at the so called "Central Plain" along the midstream of the Yellow River. Chinese emperors in the past never got interested in coastal areas and islands, except Taiwan which was however incompletely occupied by the Ching Dynasty since 1683.
For the 2500-year history of China before modernization in the 20th century, only once a Chinese empire tried to invade the Japanese Islands to fail so critically as kamikaze typhoons blew to destroy hundreds and more Chinese ships. It was in the late 13th century.
Before 1868 when the last samurai regime fell and the modern Meiji Government was established in Japan, there was no agreement on, and recognition of, borders between Ching and the Okinawa kingdom which was subject to a local samurai lord under the samurai central government in Edo (Tokyo). The only modern diplomatic handling of this border was conducted by the modern Meiji Government of the Empire of Japan alone in 1895 so as to declare recognition of the Senkaku Islands as a Japan's territory. It took 10 years for the Tokyo government to accomplish this work that was started in response to a request from the Okinawa governor.
So, tonight, a newscaster of Japan's NHK explained that since the declaration of official occupation of the Senkaku Islands by the Japanese government in 1895, no one, including the Ching Dynasty and any successive Chinese authorities, raised objections to this issue till around 1970 when the Chinese Communist government suddenly started to claim the Islands as their own.
Even, a Sunday night semi-entertainment TV program of a private TV station in Tokyo explained the same thing last night. Isn't it enough?
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j_TDoOPnIA&feature=related
It is interesting that three million viewings are recorded for John Coltrane's rendition over the net.
Usually, a husband who loves jazz wants his wife to praise his ability to appreciate jazz, doesn't he?)
Heb 9:25 Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others;
Heb 9:26 For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
Heb 9:28 So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.