David Wall - The Japan Times

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David Wall

For David Wall's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 1, 2005

Bound by a common cause

LONDON -- When Chinese President Hu Jintao was in Moscow in early July, he sought to strengthen the "strategic partnership" between China and Russia that his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed in Moscow four years ago.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 20, 2005

America's flexible notion of sovereignty

LONDON -- On May 9, in an interview in Moscow on CNN U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "the United States, of course, recognizes that North Korea is a sovereign state."

COMMENTARY / World

May 22, 2005

Betting on World War III

LONDON -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick has a way with words. On a recent trip to Europe he tried to persuade European Union politicians not to lift the arms embargo that they had imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. If the EU lifted the ban, he said, the Europeans would be painting bull's-eye targets on the back of U.S. soldiers' uniforms. (It was not clear why he said back rather than front.)

COMMENTARY / World

May 11, 2005

Japan's new foreign policy

LONDON -- As Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has traveled about and made his speeches in recent months, it is possible to trace his perception of a new foreign policy for Japan.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 22, 2005

CCP smacks of hypocrisy

LONDON -- At the end of his visit to India last week, China's Premier Wen Jiabao made a strong political attack on Japan. With respect to Japan's bid for a seat on an expanded U.N. Security Council (UNSC) Wen opined that "Only a country that respects history, takes responsibility for history and wins over the trust of the people in Asia and the world at large can take greater responsibilities in the international community."

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 5, 2005

A dicey hypocritical streak

LONDON -- I am glad that March is over. The problem with the month is that it begins with the release of the U.S. State Department's annual reports on human rights violations worldwide (except in the United States, of course). Just as you come to terms with that, in the middle of the month, the six-week meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights begins detailed debate of accusations of human rights violations in U.N. member countries.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 13, 2005

A laggard plan to end African poverty

LONDON — Last weekend the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized countries met in London. British Finance Minister Gordon Brown tried to bounce his colleagues into setting up the largest aid program the world has ever seen: an International Finance Facility (IFF). He called it a new Marshall Plan (referring to the aid program that the United States set up after World War II to finance Europe's reconstruction). The IFF, however, would supply aid only to Africa, a continent that Brown recently visited for the first time.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 2, 2005

Putin raises stakes in Asia

LONDON -- In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao stood together in the State Guest House in Beijing while their respective foreign secretaries signed an historic agreement defining the two countries' common 4,374-km border for the first time. The border was an issue over which several battles had been fought in the past.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 10, 2005

Why does CCP still fret over the news?

LONDON -- A short while ago, when I was in Beijing, I wanted to keep up with some political development in Hong Kong. I turned on my computer and went to the Asia-Pacific page of the BBC's Web site. Or at least I tried to; I had forgotten that the BBC site is blocked in China.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 6, 2004

No witch hunt for North Koreans in China

BEIJING -- North Korean "refugees," economic migrants or defectors -- take your pick -- in China have been in the news again. Staged video film of dozens of them storming embassies in Beijing has been circulated globally by South Korean and Western political activists who arrange for these incidents.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 14, 2004

Crisis that hangs on hearsay

LONDON -- I am rapidly approaching the age of retirement. I am already cutting back on my activities, slimming down my portfolio of work and deciding what activities are wastes of time.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 11, 2004

Pariah regime doesn't deserve ADB aid

SUSSEX, England -- Bombers have been out again in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital. The bombs that went off at the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the prosecutor general's office on July 30 marked the opening of the trial of 15 men charged with setting off bombs that rocked Tashkent a year ago. The government describes the men as "Islamic militants."

COMMENTARY / World

May 5, 2004

China can't stop counterfeit DVD sales

LONDON -- Some months ago I was coming out of a classroom at Fudan University in Shanghai when a man sprinted past me with a suitcase under his arm. He was closely followed by a policeman, who suddenly leaped at him in a rugby tackle and brought him down. The suitcase went up in the air and came crashing down, sending hundreds of counterfeit DVDs flying all over the road.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 6, 2004

Let China decide yuan's fate

CAMBRIDGE, England -- The Americans are at it again. Unable to get their own economic house in order, they have sent a team to Beijing to try to force China to revalue the yuan.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 26, 2004

Trade, tourism thrive on DPRK border

LONDON -- I spent the first two weeks of this year on a whistle-stop tour of Northeast China -- an area once known as Manchuria. The term Northeast China usually means the three provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 5, 2004

Contrived problem resists quick solution on Peninsula

LONDON -- In late autumn I attended a conference on the slopes of Mount Fuji. The focus of the conference was security issues in Northeast Asia, addressing the so-called nuclear threat from North Korea. It was a high-level conference with participants, including a minister of defense, from many countries with a stake in East Asia and the Korean Peninsula.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 23, 2003

EBRD must rethink its role

LONDON -- When people hear the word "globalization" they differ in how they react. Some think about how globalization has spread around the world raising incomes and the quality of life wherever it goes. Others think about how the capitalist forces of the West extend their exploitative tentacles to grab wealth and resources from poor defenseless peoples.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 7, 2003

Fear rules Uzbek majority opposition

LONDON -- Uzbekistan President Islam Abduganievich Karimov will have been watching recent events in Georgia very closely. Could a "revolution" like the one that ousted President Eduard Shevardnadze happen in Uzbekistan?

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 20, 2003

Worlds apart: a tale of two Asian cities

LONDON -- I have spent most of the last two months traveling in the poor areas of western China (the mountain areas in south Ningxia, Qinghai and Gansu) and in Uzbekistan. What a contrast! You could describe the development process in western China as two steps forward and one step back, while in Uzbekistan it is one step forward and two steps back.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 29, 2003

Washington lays siege to WTO system

LONDON -- In the last few weeks the U.S. Congress has approved free-trade agreements with Chile and Singapore and has approved the opening of talks on FTAs with Bahrain and the Dominican Republic.

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