Tag: Japan

President Ma Ying-jeou Of Taiwan Asks The Japanese To Do His Job For Him

More Taiwanese visit Japan than vice versa, and Ma The Bumbler thinks Tokyo needs to get right on it:

President Ma Ying-jeou on Friday told a Japanese envoy that the Asian country should review the imbalance of tourist flow between the two nations.

[…]

[In a previous meeting with former Deputy Minister Okada Katsuya, the] president was quoted to have said that Taiwanese tourists visiting Japan greatly exceed that of Japan to Taiwan, and that Japan should take measures to rebalance the difference.

Perhaps it's not surprising that Ma's response to this "problem" is both lazy and incompetent. Because the most obvious solution is for his government to pony up the funds for a tourist promotional campaign in Japan.

But of course, that would take effort.

His government could also get off its duff and do a marketing study about how to make the country more attractive to Japanese tourists, and then go about following the study's recommendations.

More work, again.

Taiwanese KMT President Ma Ying-jeou sits and crosses index fingers from both hands.

(President Ma Ying-jeou makes the teenage "crucifix"-gesture to ward off the evil expectation that he do the job he was elected to do. Whined Ma: "Oh, maaaaan, Foreigner, all your proposals sound TOO HARD. Why can't I just let somebody ELSE do it, instead?" — Image from the Want China Times.)

Another option would be for his government to stop going down-market with its ardent pursuit of low-income Chinese tourists. It's entirely possible that concentrating on this niche discourages higher-income Japanese from visiting…

A different angle would be for Ma to tackle some of the anti-Japanese bigotry that the KMT fostered during its decades-long misrule of the country. I once witnessed (with my own eyes) a Taiwanese woman in her 30s walk up to a Japanese man in a bar and, unprovoked, tell him straight to his face in English, "I don't like Japanese."

(Fortunately, it was a foreigner pub, and there weren't any Taiwanese men around. The situation might have escalated quickly had any drunken, Japan-hating, Chinese nationalists been present.)

By my reckoning, that Japanese man probably told his family and a few of his co-workers about his unfortunate experience with Taiwanese hospitality. Undoubtedly, a few other Japanese later heard about it second-hand. Does Mr. Ma think that's the kind of word-of-mouth which encourages Japanese visits to Taiwan?

Finally, if Ma Ying-jeou wants more Japanese tourists (or tourists from any country, really), he could see to it that the country's legal system charges and prosecutes Taiwanese who assault tourists. His pathetic failure to do so is certain to leave a few foreign tourists crossing Taiwan off their itineraries.

Update: After sleeping upon it, I realized this post gave the false impression that Taiwanese in general behave badly towards Japanese tourists. So to clarify: most Taiwanese are cool. Really cool.

However, Taiwan has a very small, ugly minority (who usually prefer to be called "Chinese") which rabidly hates Japan and all things Japanese.

Having made that qualification, an encounter with even one of the latter is enough to ruin a vacation…

UPDATE (Aug 31, 2014): With more temperate language, the Taipei Times makes much the same point.

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China’s Peaceful Rise? Beijing Slavers For War

Chinese unilaterally declare Japanese air-zone as their own.

If he were an honest man, Joe Hung of Taiwan's China Post would now write a column apologizing for being hoodwinked by claims of "China's Peaceful Rise".

IF he were an honest man…

UPDATE: Ha. Missed this quote from Yang Yujun of China's Ministry of War:

China "has always respected the freedom of over-flight in accordance with international law".

Sure. With exactly the same respect it affords the territory of its neighbors.

 

Japanese Prosecutors Refuse To Arrest Senkaku Island Video Leaker

Encouraging, but the man's not out of the woods yet.

Very unfortunate that the Kan administration of Japan is attempting to classify "information which is merely embarrassing to the government" as a "national security secret".

 

Japanese Coast Guard Officer Admits Leaking Senkaku Videos

Story at The Japan Times.

I can certainly understand why he did it.  Must be demoralizing to spend hours chasing a Chinese fishing boat which has rammed two coast guard vessels . . . only to see the Japanese government let the perp walk.

UPDATE (Nov 10/2010):  Thought so.

"He was aboard a patrol boat for many years, and I suppose he might have felt righteous indignation about the fact that his colleagues' clash with a Chinese ship at the risk of their lives was hidden from the eyes of the public," a JCG official said.

That Left Turn At Albuquerque

Japan Probe, on the Chinese fishing boat "collision" with Japanese coast guard vessels near the Senkaku Islands in October:

According to international rules, ships that are in risk of collision should turn to the right.  In the video, the Chinese ship is very clearly veering to the left: straight into the Japanese ship.

Diagram of Chinese fishing vessel intentionally turning left to ram a Japanese coast guard ship which approached from its right. The collision happened in October 2010.

Photo showing that a Chinese fishing vessel deliberately turned left to ram a Japanese coast guard ship, in violation of the rules of the sea.

I've indeed confirmed that this is true.  Here's Rule 15 of the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea:

When two power-driven vessel are crossing so as to involve risk of collision, the vessel which has the other on her starboard side shall keep out of the way . . .

Let me remember now . . . port is left, starboard is right.  Got it.  Pretty commonsensical.  If a ship is on your starboard (right) side, you're not supposed to steer LEFT because that might, y'know, cause your ship to RAM into the other one.

A simple diagram of the right-of-way rule for two ships at sea. The diagram illustrates the rule: If a ship approaches another from the right (starboard), then the other ship should turn right to avoid hitting it.

(Image from Rule 15 explanation of the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea)

Of course, if that's your intention all along, then go for it.  Just don't forget to gun the motor!

Which brings me to Rule # 8e of the regulations, unmentioned in the Japan Probe blog entry:

If necessary to avoid collision or allow more time to assess the situation, a vessel shall slacken her speed or take all way off by stopping or reversing her means of propulsion.  [emphasis added]

All that black diesel smoke suddenly belching from the Chinese boat at 1:29 . . . Sure looks like an intentional acceleration to me.

Postscript:  I've added new related updates at the end of this post, as well as this one.

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Winning Hearts And Minds

87% of Japanese view China as untrustworthy.

Which reminds me:  Not content with snatching Taiwan & Tibetan flags, Chinese ultranationalists have decided to bring some joy into their dreary little lives by snatching Japanese flags as well.

UPDATE:  The Chinese Communist Party spends millions on propaganda to inculcate rabid anti-Japanese sentiments in its citizens . . . then spends millions more to PROTECT Japanese against those very same citizens.

UPDATE (Nov 9/2010):  The Chinese Communist Party is so concerned about the anti-Japanese Frankenstein's monster it created, that it fills the stadium with well-behaved astroturfed government workers to prevent racial violence against Japanese spectators.

The Truth Will Out

During the Senkaku incident of September 2010, newspapers mistakenly claimed that a Chinese fishing vessel "collided" with two Japanese coast guard vessels.

Now the video has leaked, so we can all decide:  Collision…or deliberate ram?

You make the call: (It's an 11 minute video, with the impact taking place at 2:18.  There's little of interest beyond the 5 minute mark, but knock yourself out if you like.)

Another video shows the Chinese ship ramming (sorry, "colliding with") the second ship.  This one has English subtitles:

No wonder the current Japanese government wanted to keep these under wraps — for they clearly show that Prime Minister Naoto Kan released guilty men under pressure from the Butchers of Beijing.

Best thing Japan can do now is release ALL the tapes in the interests of transparency.  We've got all the money shots now, but for completeness sake the rest need to be made public.

And the worst thing?  Attempt to cover it all up by maintaining the current fiction that the tapes are part of "an ongoing judicial investigation" and cannot be released.  Because in case Prime Minister Kan hasn't noticed, the case ceased to be a judicial one the day the Chinese took Japanese hostages in order to get Captain Ramboat back.

UPDATE:  Good story, bad headline — Senkaku collisions video leak riles China.  (Bad headline because the story itself makes it clear that China doesn't seem too "riled".  And of course, the two ramming incidents were more than mere "collisions").

Nonetheless, it seems the Japanese government is blustering about prosecuting those whose only crime was revealing the totality of Kan's surrender on this issue.  Idiots.

UPDATE #2:  Great stuff from the Afterword of this post by Ampontan:

"Had the Kan government been born with a spine, they would have done [what Adlai Stevenson did at the U.N. during the Cuban missile crisis].  They could have shown the world what the Chinese did, just as the world saw what the Soviets were doing in 1962."

UPDATE (Nov 9/2010):  Japanese government seizes YouTube records to find identity of leaker.  Dunno how well that's gonna go over — freeing Captain Ramboat but punishing the guy who revealed C.R.'s guilt.

UPDATE #4:  Prosecutor's office bombarded with over a thousand requests from the Japanese public to drop the inquiry against the leaker.

Meanwhile, opposition parties in Japan grouse that the government has shown them less footage (6 minutes in total) than were leaked to the public.