Asia Focus

This week has been all about the markets starting to factor in the prospect of a global recession, it's not just the banking crisis in the northern hemisphere, which has been driving a lot of volatility in the markets in the past year or so but now the prospect is very real of a global downturn. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he's more concerned about the stability of Australia's banks than its competitiveness. The Commonwealth Bank has launched a bid to buy Bankwest, while Westpac is trying to takeover St George Bank. Australia's opposition says the global economic crisis is an opportunity for the big banks, and will reduce competition in the market.

In this days India's parliament has begun debate ahead of a vote of confidence in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. The vote is due on Tuesday and according to experts the outcome is too close to call. The Indian government will collapse and early elections will be called if Prime Minister Singh's government loses the vote. Prime Minister Singh stirred up anger among his left-wing and communist allies by pushing ahead a nuclear accord with the United States, which his government insists is essential to meet the energy needs of India's fast-growing economy.

Last Thursday the Chinese Labor Ministry confirm will transfer more than $9.1 billion in company pension plans to selected fund managers by the end of this year. China's market for enterprise annuities, as the plans are known, is expected to grow by 30 billion to 50 billion yuan, or $3.9 billion to $6.5 billion, in 2007.

According with labor authorities China's company pensions market was valued at about 90 billion yuan at the end of last year, of which 20 billion yuan has already been transferred to fund managers. All company pension plans rolled out in the future will be handled by fund professionals.

China allows 37 firms to handle these funds. Of these, four are joint-venture fund houses, according to a KPMG-Reuters research report. These include Harvest Fund Management, 19.5 percent owned by Deutsche Bank, and China Merchants Fund Management, in which ING holds 30 percent. The government will also gradually expand the scope for insurers to invest directly in stocks, confirm the responsible of the insurance regulator, China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

China is allowing pension funds and insurers greater access to stocks to help boost returns as it dismantles the nation's cradle-to-grave welfare system. The benchmark CSI 300 Index gained 121 percent last year.

Preparations are under way to lift a ceiling that limits insurers' direct investment in the stock market to 5 percent of assets, and progress will be made according to the needs of insurance firms. China also bans investments by insurance firms in stocks that have more than doubled in the previous 12 months. There are no current plans to remove this restriction.

Written: by LuisB

About 1.24 million Chinese college graduates have failed to land jobs that require their qualifications upon graduation this year, the county's top labour official said.

A total of 4.13 million students graduated from higher education institutions this year, 750,000 more than last year, as the country enters its ninth year of expanding college enrolment.

Tian Chengping, minister of labour and social security, said on Thursday (Nov 23) he estimates about 70 per cent of college graduates have been employed since graduation, according to the China Youth Daily.

He said the central government has set up an inter-ministerial joint team, including the Ministry of Education, to help address employment problems.

Meanwhile, the Labour and Social Security Ministry has established a mechanism to provide guidance and training for unemployed graduates, the minister said.

Only 22 per cent of China's new jobs last year were for college graduates, estimates a ministry study of 114 urban labour markets.

Tian said the country should create more jobs in the process of economic development and urged college graduates to work in grassroots units and undeveloped areas where they are most needed.

China's official registered unemployment rate stood at 4.1 per cent in the first nine months of 2006.

The demand for college graduates was down 22 per cent in 24 provinces and 15 major cities from last year, said a report issued by the Ministry of Personnel in March.

A survey showed 52.14 per cent of bachelor degree holders considered lack of experience as the biggest obstacle in finding work.

Colleges and universities should organize internships to prepare students for employment, said Lin Zeyan, a researcher with the Development Research Centre of the State Council at a forum this month.

The country needs to develop its service sector and promote small and medium-sized enterprises to create more jobs, said Mo Rong, deputy chief of the Labour Science Research Institute.

Aboard the Kurama - Nearly 50 warships crowded the bay just south of Tokyo, all flying the Rising Sun flag. Sea-to-sea missiles roared off the decks of several destroyers, and submarines emerged like a pod of whales from the surf.

More than an exercise, this was a message: In Asia's accelerating arms race, Japan is determined not to fall behind.

“The security environment surrounding our nation has changed dramatically in recent years,'' Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the sailors aboard this destroyer after watching Japan's annual fleet review Sunday. “I believe this is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate our readiness”.

Though in the planning for months, the fleet review - Japan's biggest show of its military might each year - came just weeks after North Korea sent shock waves through the region with the Oct. 9 announcement that it had conducted its first nuclear test.

The test brought particularly strong condemnation from Japan, which is within striking distance of North Korea's ballistic missiles. Japan plays host to about 50,000 U.S. soldiers, who would probably also be high on the list of potential targets should North Korea decide to launch an air attack.

But well before North Korea's nuclear announcement, Japan, the United States and Asia's other big power, China, have been scrambling to enhance their military standing in a region rife with territorial disputes, economic tensions and the remnants of Cold War rivalries.

“For Japan, the radical shift has already happened in many ways,'' said Lance Gatling, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who is now a private analyst.

Gatling cited North Korea's launch of a long-range ballistic missile over Japan's main island in August 1998 as the key event. Tokyo responded by launching its own intelligence-gathering satellites and agreeing to join in the creation of a U.S.- led ballistic missile shield - a move it had previously considered too provocative.

Japan, which Gatling said has just 7 to 12 minutes to respond to a North Korean missile attack, will soon be bristling with Patriot interceptors. A U.S. Army detachment is being deployed on the southern island of Okinawa, and reports this week said Japan is also considering putting more missiles around Tokyo, where roughly one-quarter of all Japanese live.

Abe and other senior members of Japan's ruling party, meanwhile, firmly support an overhaul of the country's post-World War II constitution, which bans the use of military force as a means of settling international disputes. Over the next several months, the nation's Defense Agency is expected to be revamped into a full-fledged ministry.

But officials also say the need for a stronger military is not a knee-jerk reaction to North Korea, and instead reflects deeper problems specific to the region.

“With the creation of the European Union, it is now hard to imagine a nation-on-nation war in Europe,'' Japan's new defense chief, Fumio Kyuma, said last week.

“But in East Asia, we still have this possibility”.

Kyuma also noted that with the addition of North Korea, Asia is now the best-represented region in the world's nine-country nuclear club - with India, Pakistan and China having already demonstrated their capabilities.

Still, Kyuma has come out strongly against the nuclear option, as has Abe.

“I am from Nagasaki”, Kyuma said earlier this month. “I hope Nagasaki will be the last place on Earth ever to suffer a nuclear attack”.

Written: by Eric Talmadge

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Publish: by LuisB

North Korea's nuclear test Oct. 9 may have created a crisis atmosphere in the world but, at the same time, it has greatly improved China's relations with the United States as the two countries work closely together to put pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-arms program.

This new situation is recognized by both Washington and Beijing. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on a swing through Japan, South Korea, China and Russia - which along with the U.S. and North Korea make up the countries taking part in the "six-party talks" - that some developments suggest that Beijing was becoming more of a partner on issues important to Washington. 

Christopher Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia responsible for the North Korea talks, said at a forum in Washington that the two countries have "really come closer together as a result of this terrible provocation by the North Koreans."

"So perhaps someday in the history books, Kim Jong Il will get a lot of credit for bringing the U.S. and China closer together," he added facetiously.

Both Rice and Hill have underlined the significance of China actually joining the other 14 members of the United Nations Security Council to denounce North Korea, its erstwhile ally.

"Not bad for a couple of years' work," Rice said, apparently referring to the time Washington and Beijing had spent working together on the North Korean nuclear issue.

China, too, recognizes its increased importance to the U.S. When President Hu Jintao received Rice last Friday, he said her visit showed "that U.S. President George (W.) Bush and the U.S. government attach great importance to U.S.- China relations."

Actually, the North Korean nuclear issue has provided a geostrategic rationale for the Chinese-American relationship for the last few years, ever since Beijing became both mediator and host in the international talks to get Pyongyang to end its nuclear-weapons program. Such a rationale had been largely missing since the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

China and North Korea were allies during the Korean War in the 1950s against the Union States and South Korea. The two are still technically allies, since a treaty of friendship signed in 1961 obligates each to go to the assistance of the other if one of them should come under military attack from a third country.

Now, though, the rift between the two is palpable, with Beijing joining the U.S. and the other members of the U.N. Security Council twice in three months in voting for a resolution denouncing North Korea.

While the North Korean media has not criticized China by name, some recent articles clearly were directed at Beijing. Reserving most of its venom for the U.S., Pyongyang has denounced all the other members of the Security Council - including China - for supporting the resolution.

According to a North Korean spokesman, the resolution "cannot be construed otherwise than a declaration of war" against Pyongyang and was intended to "destroy the socialist system" in the country. Such a charge would be especially hurtful to China, which still considers itself a socialist country.

In fact, the day after the resolution was adopted, the Korean Central News Agency publicized a signed article in the official newspaper Rodong Sinmun that called for the maintenance of "revolutionary principles."

To shrink back from revolutionary principles, it said, "means surrender and ruin" and would ultimately lead to "subordination and slavery."

"This has been proved by the situation of some countries," it said. "Those countries that were building socialism in the past deviated from the revolutionary principles with no faith in socialism when facing difficulties and ordeals. And they were afraid of the threat and blackmail by the imperialists and yielded to them."

These words seem a clear allusion to China, which after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong gave up class struggle and embraced capitalist principles, even though China insists it has not abandoned socialism and is merely employing the market economy as a tool. 

China's growing closeness to the U.S. is likely to lead to increased trust, which will help resolve other problems. If there was doubt in Washington before about China's attitude to a fellow Communist country, that has no doubt been laid to rest.

The rift with North Korea is not likely to heal in the near term. The days when China described its relationship with North Korea as being as close as that between lips and teeth are gone forever.

Source: The Japan Times

Written: by Frank Ching is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator.

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Publish: by LuisB

Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev is taking swift action to defuse popular outrage over a scandal, in which at least 78 children have been infected with the HIV virus through the negligence of healthcare workers.

On October 25, Nazarbayev traveled to Shymkent, the capital of the South Kazakhstan Region, and the scene of the mass infections, to be briefed on the crisis by local officials. The first reports of children becoming infected surfaced this spring, but the trend rapidly accelerated in recent weeks. As of mid-October, at least seven of the infected children had died from HIV-related illnesses, the Health Ministry reported. Eight mothers of HIV-positive children are also infected.

The scandal has shed light on corruption within Kazakhstan’s healthcare system. It also embarrasses Nazarbayev’s administration, which has gone to great lengths this year to tout Kazakhstan as a rapidly modernizing nation that could soon join the ranks of the world’s 50 largest economies.

The children contracted HIV via tainted blood transfusions. Among the sources of the tragedy, Health Minister Anatoly Dernovoi identified three factors: inadequate equipment, unqualified healthcare staff and misappropriation of funds, the Kazinform news agency reported October 25. Other officials have cited the embezzlement of state assets by healthcare workers as playing a major role in the infections.

Nazarbayev’s visit to Shymkent was designed to demonstrate his direct involvement in improving care conditions in the region. The president received an update on the HIV situation from the health minister and the regional prosecutor. He also vowed that all those responsible for the infections would be brought to justice, and indicated that additional funds would be allocated to correct existing problems. “The economic situation in the region is not bad,” the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted Nazarbayev as saying. “The only thing that needs to be done is to put right the health situation.”

Criminal proceedings are already under way. Eight senior doctors and public health officials face charges of negligence, according to Torekhan Aday, who is leading the ongoing investigation. Aday identified the accused as the former regional health department director, two of her deputies, a former senior doctor at the regional children’s hospital along with his deputy and two department heads, and a former senior doctor at the regional blood center. Since those indictments, the investigation has broadened its scope; at least 12 more criminal investigations have been opened. Possible charges arising out of these probes could include bribery, Aday told Kazakhstan Today.

The scandal claimed the political careers of several top officials, with Nazarbayev installing a new health minister, Dernovoi, as well as a new regional governor for South Kazakhstan, Umirzak Shukeyev, the former mayor of the capital Astana. In struggling to contain the spread of HIV infections, authorities have screened roughly 10,000 children and 18,000 pregnant women for the disease.

“This catastrophe has arisen due to the fault of specific people,” Shukeyev told a task force set up to tackle the crisis on 26 September. “They must be punished. Society expects that from us; the parents of the victims expect that from us.”

Dernovoi was quick to point the finger at his predecessor, Yerbolat Dosayev, who was sacked on September 20. “Obvious medical mistakes have been made which led to the outbreak of HIV infection,” Dernovoi said in remarks broadcast on Channel 31. “In this lack of professionalism we see mistakes made by the previous management. The Health Ministry is going to push through all reforms and all measures directly aimed at improving the health service for the public.”

The specific origin of the infections has not yet been determined. However, mass media outlets have focused on corrupt practices in the health system. Reports have suggested that graft among hospital managers may have caused equipment shortages, leading to disposable syringes being re-used. The criminal investigation has likewise revealed irregularities in the donor system: blood given for free was re-sold; donors giving their blood for money were underpaid; and one woman remains under investigation for allegedly acting as an intermediary in blood sales.

Reports say that homeless people, prostitutes and drug addicts were routinely giving blood for money, sometimes using fictitious addresses and false IDs. Payments are relatively attractive, ranging from $16 for blood and $32 for plasma. If reports that medical staff pocketed some of that money are accurate, this would indicate both doctors and donors had a financial incentive in the transactions, thereby explaining the lax enforcement of safeguards in Shymkent.

In the wake of the infections, new, stringent standards have been introduced, a doctor at the National Blood Center in Almaty told EurasiaNet. “All laboratories are operating strictly according to the rules now,” the deputy head of the center’s medical unit, Aliya Mamyrkhanova, said. “Our documentation is all in order; we are strictly checking donors to avoid the transfer of infection. … We are aware of our responsibility for blood transfusion, in making sure infection is not passed on.”

To many Kazakhstani citizens, reports of corruption in state-run healthcare facilities do not come as a particular surprise. A payment or gift of some sort, often discretionary, is widely seen as needed to receive attentive care, even though medical services in state-run facilities are supposed to be free. Anecdotal evidence speaks of senior doctors setting targets for junior doctors to bring in a certain sum at the end of each shift.

The families of infected children are to receive financial assistance from the state, including a preliminary payment of approximately $800, and subsidies ranging from $110 to $175 per month while the children are being treated. The children are expected to qualify for a disability allowance of approximately $70 per month until the age of 16. Medical assistance has arrived from abroad. Two Russian experts are working on the ground, one offering psychological counseling to families and medical staff, another focusing on treatment for the infected children, UNICEF says. More foreign specialists are expected in late October.

The stigma of HIV/AIDS is a further source of trauma for the families, who face rejection by a public ignorant of HIV. Some families of infected children have gone public to report being shunned by acquaintances. UNICEF has launched a publicity campaign to encourage ethical reporting of the crisis and warn of the danger of stigmatizing the infected children. “One main problem is to avoid discrimination against children who are infected,” UNICEF communications assistant Torgyn Mukayeva told EurasiaNet. UNICEF conducted a seminar in Shymkent on October 13 to promote awareness that infected people can survive with the virus.

The government is moving to tackle problems in blood transfusion centers. Reports say centers all over Kazakhstan are being inspected. It remains to be seen whether this flurry of activity will translate into real reform of the health system, which is in clear need of an overhaul. As Shukeyev, the new governor of South Kazakhstan, told medical staff in late September: “We may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg.”

Note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asian affairs.

Publish: by LuisB

Today, on the threshold of 60 momentous years of Independence, the nation is justifiably proud of its myriad achievements. Among these is the remarkable success in eliminating widespread famines and the impressive increases in food production. Nonetheless, there is a long road to be travelled before the vision of a truly food secure India is achieved.

As the world's leading humanitarian agency and the food aid arm of the United Nations, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been privileged to work with the Government of India in its efforts to eliminate hunger and ensure food security to the poor. Although its assistance is small compared to the scale of the Government's own programmes, yet with its international outreach, and the experience gained globally, the WFP has a special niche in complementing and sharpening government efforts to eliminate hunger.

Recent years have seen the economy booming and growth rates have been among the highest in the world. The flip side, however, is that one in every five Indians suffers from overt or covert hunger.

"Hunger," as stated by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze, is "intolerable in the modern world" in a way it could not have been in the past, because it is "so unnecessary and unwarranted.

" India is a poignant example of how food sufficiency at the aggregate level has not translated into food security at the household level. A staggeringly large number of undernourished - about 214 million people - is chronically food insecure. Many more, varyingly about 40 million, are exposed to natural disasters. About 50 per cent of children (mostly tribal and rural) are undernourished and stunted, 23 per cent have a low birth weight and 68 out of 1000 die before the age of one year. There is a high prevalence of anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies.

The challenge before the WFP is to help the country attain the critical Millennium Development Goal on eradicating hunger. The Draft Approach Paper to the Planning Commission's Eleventh Five-Year Plan articulates a "vision of growth that will be much more broad-based and inclusive.” These priorities of the Government match the WFP's own goals and will guide future initiatives. As part of the U.N. system, the WFP also works within the U.N. Development Assistance Framework to achieve synergy and, at the same time, avoid costly duplication of efforts.

Committed to the vision of a hunger-free India, the WFP set itself twin goals. The first is to be a catalyst for change in the country's effort to reduce vulnerability and eliminate food insecurity. The second is to leverage policy and resources to demonstrate models that provide immediate and longer-term food security in the most food insecure areas.

The WFP seeks to achieve its strategic objectives through three major initiatives. The first is the support it extends to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). India is home to the largest number of children in the world. But what distinguishes India is not the numbers but what has been called its "silent emergency": astonishingly high child malnutrition rates. As part of its assistance to the ICDS, the WFP has successfully piloted Indiamix - a nutritious fortified food - widely recognised as an innovative nutrition intervention.

Secondly, the WFP complements the Government of India's mid-day meal scheme in some districts with a mid-morning snack that is fortified with vitamins and minerals and enhances learning by children, many of whom go to school on an empty stomach. This has proved to be an effective means to increase enrolment and retention, especially that of young girls.

With increasing degradation of resources, the livelihoods of poor tribal communities are under threat. In collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the WFP assists food-for-work activities in tribal development programmes undertaken by Governments in select States. This has led to empowerment of tribal communities and sustainable use of natural resources.
In addition to the core programmes, the WFP has proposed significant capacity-building initiatives that relate to food fortification, grain banks, and strengthening of the Government's food-based programmes. The Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative is an alliance between UNICEF and the WFP at the global level as well as in India that holds great promise.

The WFP takes pride in the analytical rigour it has imparted to the conceptualisation of food security. The Food Insecurity Atlases, prepared in collaboration with the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, were a landmark. Extending the earlier work to the regional and district levels, the WFP proposes to prepare, in partnership with the Government, food insecurity atlases for several States.

The future beckons! As India surges ahead to take its rightful place in the comity of nations, we in the WFP look forward to the coming years with renewed faith and optimism and a firm belief that hunger and undernourishment can be banished.

The revised thrust of the WFP endeavours will be to bring the hungry, malnourished, and vulnerable within the ambit of human development, to change the course of their destiny and unleash their potential through opening a new world of opportunities.