Asia (Continuación)

Desde el golpe de Estado que derrocó al primer presidente democráticamente elegido de las islas Maldivas, Mohamed Nasheed, hasta el actual esfuerzo del Tribunal Supremo de Pakistán para desautorizar al ineficaz pero electo gobierno del país mediante una acusación de desacato contra el primer ministro Yusaf Raza Gilani, los progresos democráticos del Sudeste Asiático parecen sufrir un retroceso.

La dimisión forzada de Nasheed a punta de pistola ha convertido a las Maldivas en el tercer país de la región, después de Nepal y Sri Lanka, donde ha descarrilado la transición democrática. Las Maldivas, un grupo de islas situadas estratégicamen-te en el océano Índico, parece encaminarse ahora hacia una prolongada inestabilidad.…  Seguir leyendo »

Are China’s police hamstrung by a lack of power to detain national-security suspects?

What looks like an odd question to outsiders, given the notoriously elastic scope of what constitutes national security under China’s one-party system, has actually been the focus of one of the most intense behind-the-scenes political battles ahead of the leadership transition next October from President Hu Jintao to his likely successor, Xi Jinping.

The focus of the battle is a long-in-the-works set of revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law, which is expected to be adopted next month at the last annual plenary session of the National People’s Congress under Hu.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un rapport récent publié par Jane's Defense prévoit que le budget de défense de la République populaire de Chine (RPC) aura doublé en 2015, pour atteindre 238,2 milliards de dollars, avec un taux de croissance annuel de 18,75 %. Il s'agit là du prolongement d'une tendance lourde. La Chine connaît, depuis le début des années 1990, un taux d'augmentation annuel moyen de son budget de la défense à deux chiffres proche de 15 % par an.

Mais au-delà du budget, deux éléments sont à prendre en compte dans l'analyse de la montée en puissance sur le long terme des capacités militaires de la RPC.…  Seguir leyendo »

Si las cosas siguen bien, para 2021 China superará a los Estados Unidos como la economía más grande del mundo, medido en dólares corrientes (y aun más rápido si hablamos en términos reales). Su ingreso per cápita llegará al mismo nivel que el del umbral más bajo de los países de altos ingresos. Sin embargo, a pesar de este impulso hacia adelante, la economía china se enfrentará a riesgos inminentes en la próxima década.

El riesgo inmediato es estancamiento continuo o recesión en Europa. En la pasada década, el crecimiento de las exportaciones representó aproximadamente una tercera parte del crecimiento económico global de China, y alrededor de una tercera parte de las exportaciones de este país fueron para la Unión Europea.…  Seguir leyendo »

El debate sobre la austeridad fue el tema del día en el Foro Económico Mundial de Davos de este año. Con buenos motivos. Europa está cayendo nuevamente en recesión justo cuando la recuperación estadounidense finalmente comienza a lograr una cierta tracción. Eso ha socavado la justificación de la consolidación fiscal, que tantos adeptos tiene en Europa.

Sin embargo, me llevé una conclusión diferente de Davos. Fui el moderador de una sesión sobre «El Nuevo Contexto en Asia del Este», a cargo de un panel de representantes de alto rango de Tailandia, Corea del Sur, Malasia, Singapur y Japón. Excepto por el participante japonés, todos tenían experiencia de primera mano en la devastadora crisis financiera asiática de fines de la década de 1990.…  Seguir leyendo »

This week the UN Human Rights Council has an opportunity and a duty to help Sri Lanka advance its own efforts on accountability and reconciliation. Both are essential if a lasting peace is to be achieved. In doing so, the council will not only be serving Sri Lanka, but those worldwide who believe there are universal rights and international legal obligations we all share.

Nearly three years since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by the Sri Lankan government there has still been no serious domestic investigation of the many allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by both sides during the civil war's final stages.…  Seguir leyendo »

A subtle shift may be occurring in one of the world’s longest-standing and most intractable conflicts – the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Increasingly, it seems, Pakistanis are questioning what the Kashmir dispute has done to their own state and society.

When Pakistan was carved out of India by the departing British in the 1947 Partition, the 562 “princely states” (regions nominally ruled by assorted potentates, but owing allegiance to the British Raj) were required to accede to either of the two new countries. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir – a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu ruler – dithered over which of the two to join, and flirted with the idea of remaining independent.…  Seguir leyendo »

When China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, visited the White House on Tuesday, President Obama renewed calls for China to play more fairly in the world economy. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. echoed those sentiments, telling Mr. Xi that the two countries could cooperate “only if the game is fair.”

But while China’s industrial subsidies, trade policies, undervalued currency and lack of enforcement for intellectual property rights all remain sticking points for the United States, there is at least one area in which the playing field seems to be slowly leveling: the cheap labor that has made China’s factories nearly unbeatable is not so cheap anymore.…  Seguir leyendo »

Los individuos hacen historia. Si el último líder de la Unión Soviética no hubiera sido un hombre llamado Mijail Gorbachov, el mundo sería distinto. Por tanto, el carácter y las opiniones de quien va a ser el próximo presidente de China, Xi Jinping, que se encuentra estos días de visita en Estados Unidos, son importantes. Después de varios años de no haber conseguido obtener una idea clara de cómo es el presidente Hu, ahora debemos prestar atención al hombre que, salvo que ocurra algún imprevisto, le sucederá.

El mejor resumen que he leído sobre este personaje figura en un libro de próxima publicación de Jonathan Fenby, titulado Tiger Head, Snake Tails [Cabeza de tigre, colas de serpiente], un título que se refiere a la China moderna, no al vicepresidente Xi.…  Seguir leyendo »

This week the Obama administration is playing host to Xi Jinping, China’s vice president and heir apparent. The world’s most powerful electoral democracy and its largest one-party state are meeting at a time of political transition for both.

Many have characterized the competition between these two giants as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism. But this is false. America and China view their political systems in fundamentally different ways: whereas America sees democratic government as an end in itself, China sees its current form of government, or any political system for that matter, merely as a means to achieving larger national ends.…  Seguir leyendo »

Individuals make history. If the last leader of the Soviet Union had not been Mikhail Gorbachev, the world would be a different place. So the character and views of China's leader-designate, Xi Jinping, who is visiting the United States, do matter. After spending several years failing to answer the question "Who's Hu?" we must now ask "Who's Xi?"

The best thumbnail summary that I have read comes in a forthcoming book by Jonathan Fenby called "Tiger Head, Snake Tails." (The title refers to modern China, not Xi.) As you would expect, the available evidence is thin and inconclusive. The fact that Xi suffered personally in the Cultural Revolution ("I ate a lot more bitterness than most people"), the reformist communist sympathies of his father, his evident pragmatism, that he has a sister in Canada, a brother in Hong Kong and a daughter studying at Harvard, all suggests someone who might push forward essential political reforms at home and be equipped with a better understanding of the West.…  Seguir leyendo »

James Madison famously remarked that a popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy. The present government of the People’s Republic of China has set out to disprove this rule.

Rejecting talk of farce and tragedy, its rulers claim their authority is rooted within a new and higher form of popular government, a “post-democratic” way of handling power which delivers goods and services, promotes social harmony and roots out “harmful behavior” using state-of-the-art information-control methods more complex and much craftier than Madison could ever have imagined.

Information flows in China are not simply blocked, firewalled or censored.…  Seguir leyendo »

El proceso para la elección de las nuevas élites dirigentes chinas ha iniciado su curso. La celebración del XVIII Congreso del Partido Comunista, en otoño de este año, cerrará el círculo iniciado hace pocos meses y que actualmente transcurre, en lo esencial, en el nivel provincial y local. Aun a sabiendas de que Xi Jinping y Li Keqiang personificarán el relevo, el interés por su desarrollo persiste en la medida en que la renovación será la mayor de los últimos 30 años y que no se descarta alguna sorpresa. De los nueve máximos dirigentes actuales, solo ellos dos permanecerán.

Pese a algunos gestos de apertura, la opacidad sigue siendo la nota característica de un procedimiento de elección que no solo margina al conjunto de la sociedad, consolada con la expectación, sino que se ha quedado corto con respecto a las promesas de más democracia interna, proclamadas en 2007.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese dissident writers exiled to the West today get a very different response than Soviet writers received not so long ago.

In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised President Ford not to meet with writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, warning in a memorandum that doing so would offend the Soviet Union. Now, similar views are held not only by pragmatic politicians but also by multinational corporations with large investments in China as well as universities and foundations with inextricable links to China.

The Chinese communist regime’s penetration of the West far exceeds that of the former Soviet Union. In the Cold War era, the Soviet Union was blocked behind the Iron Curtain; there were few links between Soviet and Western economies.…  Seguir leyendo »

It is a deeply ingrained belief in China that a young novice starting out in the real world must earn a degree, or at least spend some time in the West. “Gilding,” or “du-jin” as it’s called in Chinese, boosts the person’s credentials and chances of success. Nowhere is this belief more apparent than in politics. For a new leader, strutting on the White House lawn and shaking hands with the president of the United States validates his status as a true statesman and confirms his country’s rising power.

Ten years ago, China’s current president, Hu Jintao, made the rounds in Washington before taking the top spot.…  Seguir leyendo »

One hundred years ago, on Feb. 12, 1912, the 6-year-old child emperor of the Qing Dynasty abdicated, ending more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. But this watershed moment for modern China will not be widely celebrated in the People’s Republic. The political climate in Beijing is tense as the ruling Communist Party prepares for a secretive transition to the next generation of leaders, with the untested vice president, Xi Jinping, expected to become president. Reminders of past regime change and the end of dynasties are not welcome.

Of course, the current government has little to fear from the example of 1912.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit this week is an opportunity for the man who is likely to lead China from late 2012 to late 2022 to begin to develop the agenda for that decade with a president who may well serve until January 2017.

Yet this visit comes at a time of growing strategic distrust between China and the United States.

China, despite some problems, remains on a roll. Its economy has rapidly expanded to second-largest in the world, with gross domestic product continuing to advance annually in the high single digits. Its military budget has grown 10-plus percent a year for more than a decade, growth that is likely to continue for years.…  Seguir leyendo »

The visit by China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, to Washington this coming week offers a unique opportunity to take the measure of the man who will lead China for the next decade.

While Xi has traveled the world since being anointed Hu Jintao’s designated successor in 2007, he has not been to the United States during this grooming period (he did visit earlier as a provincial official).

This will be a good opportunity for Xi to familiarize himself with America and vice versa. As he is not well known outside of China and enigmatic even inside the country, observers will be looking for clues to Xi’s domestic and international orientation.…  Seguir leyendo »

En su visita la próxima semana a Estados Unidos, Xi Jinping, que cuenta con la práctica totalidad de los boletos para ser agraciado próximamente como secretario general del PCCH (2012) y presidente de China (2013), encara una agenda apretada y difícil. Xi mantiene una buena sintonía con los dirigentes estadounidenses, no solo políticos. Es conocida su afinidad con Henry Paulson. En las últimas semanas ha mantenido encuentros con Henry Kissinger o Jeb Bush. Es consciente también de la importancia cardinal de las relaciones sinoestadounidenses y de la significación que su hipotético capital personal puede desempeñar como activo para superar las diferencias.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Feb. 14 visit to Washington by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping gives the United States a well-timed opportunity to lay its cards on the table for China’s presumptive next president and Communist Party chairman. With U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke’s recent characterization of China’s human rights situation as “worsening,” the United States should use Mr. Xi’s visit to state unambiguously that a failure to reverse that trend constitutes a serious obstacle to better bilateral relations. The U.S. can take three steps to ensure he gets that Valentine's Day message.

First, President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden could highlight individual cases that represent some of the most serious abuses taking place today.…  Seguir leyendo »