China Has Its Own Problems With History
Beijing’s treatment of history should be scrutinized as well.
By Randall Schriver
August 31, 2015
While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities are eager to discuss aspects
of history around the period between 1931 and 1945, they are much less willing
to candidly discuss the period between 1949 and the present.
And for good reason:
one of the tragic realities of the CCP era is that more Chinese people died
unnecessary deaths from CCP authoritarian rule than at the hands of foreign
occupiers during the war in the Pacific. The Great Leap Forward alone accomplishes
this, but one can also add the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square Massacre
for a mind boggling total of avoidable, unnecessary deaths due to CCP policies.
This is not a happy contest, and not meant to minimize Japanese treatment of the
Chinese people during the war. But we would be wise to keep proper perspective
when engaged on “history issues.”
The CCP’s attempts to mold history to their liking affects the U.S. in even more
direct ways. General Secretary Xi Jinping and others have warned the Chinese against
“historical nihilism” and describe critiques of the CCP as a Western plot to
undermine the Communist Party and to throw China into chaos. To put another way,
unless the U.S. embraces and endorses the CCP’s version of its history, we cannot
have a trusting relationship that will enable bilateral cooperation. That is the
offer on the table for us from Beijing’s leaders.
Our friend and security partner, Taiwan, will have its role supplanted, despite
the fact that it was Republic of China forces that suffered 90 percent of the
casualties at the hands of the Japanese. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army
did little fighting and only accounted for 10 percent of the total war casualties.
The same standards for assessing historical accuracy should be applied to Chinese
history as well.
China's President Xi Solidifies Power with Overhaul of Military
September 1, 2015 ? 1:21 PM KST
The blueprint would unify the army, navy, air force and strategic missile corps
under one command, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the
proposal hasn’t been released. The plans call for thinning the ranks of officers
and traditional ground forces, helping elevate the role of the navy and air
force, to better project force in a modern conflict, they said.
It would also consolidate the country’s seven military regions to as few as four,
one of the people said.
Such a command system is seen as necessary to improve communications and coordinate
modern forces across the various arms of the military. The organizational changes
would aid China’s shift from a land-based military to one able to project force
far from its coastline.
“The PLA is currently a territorial muddy-boots military focused on defending
the rule of the Communist Party against all enemies foreign and domestic with
limited ability to fight jointly,” Andrew Scobell, a senior political scientist
at the RAND Corporation in Arlington, Virginia. “With growing attention to
China’s increasingly overseas interests, the U.S. model is very appealing.”
UAE nuclear project enters critical phase
Anthony McAuley
July 13, 2015 04:27 PM
Although the first reactor is nearly 75 per cent complete and is on time and on budget,
industry executives said that the last phase would be the toughest.
“With a nuclear plant it gets a lot more complicated at the end when all the pieces
have to come together,” said an executive who was until recently one of Enec’s senior
division heads, and who did not want to be quoted by name.
“The first 80 to 90 per cent is pretty standard construction,” added the local head
of a Barakah subcontractor. “The last bit is the really hard part.”
“The UAE, certainly in order to meet the project timelines, is tied to the Korean
procedures and processes across the board,” said the former Enec division head.
“There had to be some changes to Barakah to account for the differences in seawater
temperature, the dusty environment, and the high ambient summer air temperature ...
and a different electrical system [but] the UAE plants are built on the same basic
design.”
Already, the Korean regulator has failed to pass Shin Kori 3 on several occasions
because of the faulty parts and it will be extra vigilant after the deaths of plant
workers. Kepco, meanwhile, has an agreement with Enec to run Shin Kori-3 by September
to demonstrate that it is fully operational, or it must pay penalties if it fails
to do so.
“The UAE is a blend of US and western European philosophies” in terms of the plant
safety and emergency response procedures, said the former Enec executive.
“Ultimately you are going to operate the plant with systems and processes that were
developed in Korea,” he said. “Is there an impact of taking a Korea-based design
and dropping it into the UAE environment? No doubt.”
He added: “Having a multinational, multicultural and multilingual workforce certainly
adds a layer of complexity to the UAE project. A great deal of effort has been placed
on trying to address potential issues in this area, and it will have to continue to be
an area of emphasis for the foreseeable future.”
Nuclear Power in the United Arab Emirates(Updated August 2015)
The UAE is embarking upon a nuclear power program in close consultation with the
International Atomic Energy Agency.
It accepted a $20 billion bid from a South Korean consortium to build four commercial
nuclear power reactors, total 5.6 GWe, by 2020 at Barakah.
Construction of the first unit started in July 2012, and the second in May 2013.
The first unit is more than 60% complete and is expected on line in 2017.
HOSTILE TAKEOVER
S08.28.151:13 AM ET
The Coming Yakuza War
Watanabe was affectionately known as “Goro-chan,” i.e. Mr. Gorilla, for his
simian appearance. While many yakuza in Japan are naturalized Koreans or children
of Japan’s former outcaste class, burakumin, and thus were subject to discrimination,
the Yamaken-gumi tends to have more outcaste class members while the Kodo-kai has
a larger Korean-Japanese makeup. That has helped create tension between the factions.
