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January 16, 2025

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COMMENTARY / World

Jun 19, 1999

China's oppression of Tibet continues

By Cesar Chelala

Fifty years after being invaded by Chinese troops in 1949, Tibet is still experiencing repression and violence on the part of Chinese occupying forces. According to Amnesty International reports, human-rights violations such as ill-treatment of prisoners and torture are widespread in Tibet. Even those...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 12, 1999

Restrain Japan, contain India

By Mohan Malik

The main objective of China's Asia policy has always been to prevent the rise of an Asian rival or peer competitor to challenge its status as the Asia-Pacific's sole "Middle Kingdom." As an old Chinese saying goes, "'One mountain cannot accommodate two tigers."

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 11, 1999

Come clean on defense policy

By James Auer

In July last year I took issue with an article written by former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa ("Japan-U.S. Security Treaty: A kind of insurance policy" July 11, 1998). In his recent May 31 article "A de facto treaty revision," Hosokawa called for "a full dress debate on se curity issues, including...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 8, 1999

Recovery hinges on fast action

By Yukio Suzuki

Following U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's comments suggesting a change in U.S. monetary policy, the surging U.S. stock market has apparently entered an adjustment phase. To prevent the booming U.S. economy from overheating, it is necessary to fine-tune monetary policy.

COMMENTARY

Jun 4, 1999

Obuchi set for one more term

By Minoru Tada

Following the Diet's enactment last week of a legislative package covering the updated guidelines for Japan-U.S. defense cooperation, the Lower House on Tuesday passed bills that will allow wiretapping in investigations into organized crime. The administration of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has thus...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 4, 1999

Both sides to blame for Sino-U.S. troubles

By Harvey Stockwin

HONG KONG -- As the United States debates the security implications of the Cox report on Chinese spying in the U.S., and as China continues to deny the spying and to denounce the NATO attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, it is easy to lose sight of a basic reality: There is a remarkable symmetry...

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 2, 1999

France's Corsican question

By Andre Fontaine

PARIS -- "France," according to one of its best-known poets and political thinkers, Paul Valery, "is the most heterogeneous country that ever existed." The present tragedy in Kosovo makes this sound hyperbolic, yet there is an element of truth in it. The French who live on the shores of the Mediterranean,...

COMMENTARY / World

May 31, 1999

Tiananmen martyrs: rebels without a cause

By Panos Mourdoukoutas

History holds many surprises for true believers, especially for revolutionaries who find out that the causes they fought for years ago were baseless. That, at least, is the lesson to be drawn from the collapse of the Soviet Union by people who fought and even died for the communist ideology that supported...

COMMENTARY / World

May 31, 1999

Trade must extend to poorer countries

By Michael R. Czinkota and J. Denis Belisle

Prosperous countries in the North, such as the United States, can no longer rely on trade between developed countries led by Fortune 500 corporations alone. Trade must increase in developing countries and transitional economies if all are to benefit from a growing world economy. Policymakers and businesses...

COMMENTARY / World

May 31, 1999

A de facto treaty revision

By Morihiro Hosokawa

The Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, signed in 1951, is understood to be an arrangement whereby the United States, in exchange for the use of military bases in Japan, is committed to the rescue of this nation in the event of external aggression. Japan, with its "war-renouncing" Constitution, follows a policy...

COMMENTARY

May 28, 1999

A step in the right direction

By Keizo Nabeshima

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi agreed with U.S. and South Korean officials in Tokyo Monday on the need to continue trilateral cooperation in their policies toward North Korea. It is highly significant that Obuchi's agreement with U.S. policy coordinator William Perry and South Korean Unification Minister...

COMMENTARY / World

May 23, 1999

Save whales with science, not sentiment

By Stephen S. Boynton

The death of Lennie's pet mouse in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" conveys the tragedy and guilt that overpowers us all when good intentions produce the exact opposite of what we hoped to accomplish.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.

Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?

By Tomoko Otake

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Site designer on why expos matter more than ever

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