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, 2003

The transmutable Mr. Blair

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair is back in London after his whirlwind tour of Northeast Asia. For many of us the high point of his tour were the delightful moments at Tsinghua University in Beijing when, following a range of predictable questions that he answered with the usual bromides, he was asked by a student to sing. Without any of his usual advisers on hand to tell him what to do (they had gone home), he turned to his wife, Cherie, and told her to sing instead. Quite. No advisers, no views.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 12, 2003

East Asian FTA? Dream on!

LONDON -- At their summit meeting in Beijing last week, Presidents Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea and Hu Jintao of China agreed to push for a summit declaration on the establishment of a free trade area (FTA) among South Korea, China and Japan.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 20, 2003

Foreign aggressors target N. Korea again

CAMBRIDGE, England — The war of words goes on. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has warned the North Korean government that any aggressive activity on the Korean Peninsula sponsored by North Korea would be met by a "devastating response."

COMMENTARY / World

May 28, 2003

Once a dove, Roh has now grown talons

CAMBRIDGE, England -- The recent summit meeting in Washington between President George W. Bush and President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea has been hailed as a success. Not by me. The word success is being used by "experts," American experts that is, to describe a process of driving a wedge between North Korea and the other countries of Northeast Asia.

COMMENTARY / World

May 19, 2003

SARS sets off power struggle in Beijing

CAMBRIDGE, England -- The SARS epidemic centered in China has become a global issue. Most people in the world, even if they are not infected or in serious danger of infection, are indirectly affected by the restrictions on freedom of movement and economic downturns directly attributed to reactions the disease.

COMMENTARY / World

May 1, 2003

Kelly's 'fairies' threaten peace

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Last October, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly set off an international crisis by claiming that North Korean officials had told him that Pyongyang was developing nuclear weapons. The officials denied saying that.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 13, 2003

Chinese deserve grown-up party leaders

SEOUL -- The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party want the world to believe that the government they control is fit to be accepted as a full-fledged mature member of the global community. But is it? There have to be some doubts.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 28, 2003

With Hu comes a hint of interesting times

HAINAN, China -- The 3,000-plus delegates to the annual two-week meeting of China's National People's Congress, or NPC, have packed their bags and gone home. It was an unusually important meeting this year. In addition to the usual rubber-stamping of the Chinese Communist Party's policy proposals for the coming year, it was also the occasion for the announcement of the new government leaders.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2003

Deprived, ignored and scorned, North Korea driven into a corner

CAMBRIDGE, England -- For several years now North Korea has been carrying out a process of economic reform and opening up. Sound familiar? That is what the Chinese did 25 years ago when they, too, realized that their economic system was out-of-date and unable to meet the aspirations of its people.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 14, 2003

How the U.S. piqued Pyongyang

CAMBRIDGE, England -- If it weren't for the fact that the lives of several million people are at stake it could be fun watching the game of diplomatic poker being played by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and U.S. President George W. Bush. Those lives are at stake, however, as is the future stability of East Asia.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 17, 2003

U.S. forces should go home

CAMBRIDGE, England -- In the recent presidential election in South Korea, candidate Roh Moo Hyun played to the populist tune when he called for U.S. troops to leave the country. This was a response to the highly emotional popular reaction to the deaths of two South Korean girls who were accidentally run over by a U.S. military vehicle. The U.S. military court that tried the soldiers involved acquitted them.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 2, 2003

Koizumi's revenge has cost Japan dearl

Special to The Japan Times CAMBRIDGE, England -- A lot has been written about Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's third visit to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Much of it had a high emotional content. Now that the initial furor has died down we can step back and give it a bit more thought.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 18, 2003

China cedes leadership chance

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Although you could argue that the current U.S. leadership caused the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, it is not really an American crisis. Whatever weapons North Korea has, biological, chemical or nuclear, it does not yet have the means of delivering them to the United States. It does, however, have missiles that can reach major cities in South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 3, 2003

'Dear Leader' no madman

CAMBRIDGE, England -- When I was in Beijing the week before Christmas, the topic of North Korea came up several times in conversations with friends and colleagues. Several of them referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a madman. Kim's state of mind is quite an important question at a time when North Korea is trying to gain, or add to, a nuclear weapons capability.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 28, 2002

Saber-rattling leaves Asia cold

CAMBRIDGE, England -- I was in Beijing last week for a conference and research visits that focused on regional cooperation in Northeast Asia. While I was there, Chinese newspapers reported on Japan's dispatch of the Aegis missile detection system-equipped warship, Kirishimi, to the Indian Ocean.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 16, 2002

Withholding food aid only kills innocents

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara does not like Japanese charities sending dog biscuits and old rice to North Korea to feed its hungry people.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 30, 2002

The CCP wears the pants in this marriage

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Now that the dust is settling after the Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress, we can begin to see the implications of the various decisions announced there.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 9, 2002

An alphabet soup of FTAs in East Asia

CAMBRIDGE, England -- There are so many summit meetings nowadays that it is difficult to keep up. Only a week after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit finished in Mexico, East Asian governments met at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus 3 summit in Phnom Penh. ASEAN plus 3 is now probably more important for East Asian countries than APEC, which has become an organization dominated by U.S. interests.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 24, 2002

'Tax evaders' steal the talk of Shanghai

SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which the new leaders of the party will be announced, those taking over from President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and National Peoples' Congress Chairman Li Peng.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 6, 2002

Koizumi almost pulls it off

SHANGHAI, China -- My perspective for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to North Korea is that of the Chinese. I have been in Shanghai since just before his visit. The reports I have been reading and listening to are those of the Chinese media and my Chinese friends and colleagues.

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