Interesting passages from the articles here ...
The Digested Read ... Japan counsels against 'extreme nationalism' in row with China
"What is most important is that government officials in Japan, China and other countries try not to fuel narrow-minded, extreme nationalism," Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Yoshito Sengoku, told reporters.
"For the peace and development of east Asia and the Asia-Pacific, we want to use all available means of communication to ask that this be resolved without the situation escalating."The US voiced concern at the prospect of a prolonged estrangement between China and Japan, which are engaged in long-standing disputes over the islands as well as drilling rights in oil and gas fields in the East China Sea.
A US state department spokesman, Mark Toner, said Washington expected the row to be "resolved through appropriate diplomatic means".
The finance minister, Yoshihiko Noda, said Japan would respond in a "level-headed manner" to avoid any impact on the countries' economic ties.
China became Japan's biggest trading partner last year, with bilateral trade reaching 12.6tn yen (£95bn) in the first half of this year, up more than 34 percentage points compared with the same period last year.
Victor Gao, director of the China National Association for International Studies in Beijing, suggested that Tokyo could offer to release the captain, whose mother died following his arrest, on humanitarian grounds, and because tomorrow's mid-autumn festival is traditionally a time for family reunions in China. "It could be an expedient way to wind this down without causing anyone to lose face or requiring either to compromise their principled position on the Diaoyu islands," he said.
The Digested Read ... Japan's shift poses dilemma for Taiwan's Ma
When the DPJ won a landslide victory in the Aug. 30, 2009 Diet lower house elections, many Taiwan pundits confidently predicted that the new DPJ administration under prime minister Hatoyama Yukio would be "anti-U.S." and "proChina".
However, these parameters changed suddenly with the sudden collapse of the Hatoyama Cabinet in June in the wake of his failure to square this circle, his replacement by Kan and the latter's consolidation of power last week with a landslide victory over rival DPJ kingpin Ozawa Ichiro.
Kan's appointment of the 48-year old Maehara, who is an outspoken advocate of the primacy of the U.S.security alliance as the "axis of Japan's diplomacy" and a frequent visitor to Taiwan, is likely to combine with Washington's own higher profile in East and Southeast Asia to re-energize the Washington-Tokyo alliance.
Japan's new young foreign minister displayed his firmness Sunday by urging Beijing to "calmly" cope with the latest dispute over the contested Diaoyutai or Senkaku islands, triggered by the collision of a Chinese fishing vessel and a Japanese Coast Guard cutter.
Ironically, the PRC's bald assertion of its "territorial sovereignty" over virtually all the waters in the East Sea, the South China Sea and the Yellow Sea may make it easier for Tokyo to convince reluctant Okinawans that their own security is also at stake.
Indeed, the "Ryukyu Shimbun" reported yesterday that Japan's Ministry of defense plans to boost the number of Ground Self-defense Forces stationed on the main island of Okinawa from 2,000 to 20,000 by 2020 in part to cope with "special needs due to the increase in Chinese military activities" near to the Okinawan island chain.
Although Ma has publically stressed the importance of the Japan-U.S. security treaty as "the bedrock of peace and stability in East Asia," there have also been much more friction between Taipei and Tokyo under his governance than during the Lee or Chen administrations, including several flaps over the disputed Diaoyutai or Senkaku islets.
The KMT government already displayed in May its lack of intention to help Japan deal with the PRC security threat by rejecting a request by Tokyo, made in the wake of an encounter between Japanese Naval SDF vessels and a flotilla of PRC People's Liberation Army Navy warships near Miyake Island, to extend Japan's Air Defense Identification Zone westward to ensure continued Japanese control over the airspace over Yonaguni Island.
Taiwan's foreign ministry issued a sharply worded protest to Tokyo last week over its blocking of an excursion to the contested islets by a politically motivated Taiwan fishing boat and a resulting standoff with Taiwan coast guard craft, but failed to file a protest over the incursion by the Chinese fishing boat into Taiwan's claimed territorial waters with the PRC authorities.
A litmus test of the direction in which the Ma government truly leans will occur in December, when U.S. naval and air forces and Japanese Self-defense Force units hold a joint exercise in the region of the Senkaku islets to test cooperation against a PRC incursion into the Okinawa chain.
