The White Peril 白禍

The corruption scandal at the JDA (the Japan Defense Agency this time, not the Japan Dental Association--keep those scandals straight!) is coming to a head:

Japan Defense Agency chief Fukushiro Nukaga announced on a TBS television program the morning of 1 February that he was planning to dissolve the Defense Facilities Administration Agency because of collusion scandals revolving around its procurement and construction practices. The new approach will be to review the DFAA's organizational structure with an eye for its integration with the [rest of] the JDA.

Nukaga stated, "The plan is to dissolve the body and make suitable adjustments. Given the extent of the goings-on, it has become clear that collusion is embedded in the structure of the organization. A dissolution is what the public expects, furthermore, it's the decision I want to make, too."

The JDA stuff has ranged from inflated aircraft repair/parts procurement costs to cagily jiggering payments for use of facilities in Okinawa to illegal tracking of personal information, but the most recent flap is over bid rigging for climate control installation and construction projects. At this late date, no one pretends to be too shocked at revelations of collusion. Actually getting rid of an entity that's not doing it's job, however, is a pretty novel proposition. It didn't help much in the Great Ministerial Chinese Fire Drill of 2001, but if Nukaga--who can be wonderfully stubborn when he wants to be--is serious, the administrative structure for Japan's defense could really see meaningful streamlining. Not a moment too soon, either.

There's been more news about the Yamaha Motor flap:

Yamaha Motor Co. sold a top-of-the-line unmanned helicopter to a Chinese company that was established in 1993 by high-ranking officers of the People's Liberation Army, sources said over the weekend.

Yamaha is also suspected of having received several tens of millions of yen in rebates from another Chinese company that bought the helicopters, said the sources close to the police investigation into the alleged illegal exports.

Investigators now expect Yamaha will face charges of violating the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law for the unapproved exports.

The PLA-linked company to which Yamaha sold the unmanned helicopter is Poly Technologies Inc., based in Beijing.

...

The vice chairman and president of China Poly Group is He Ping, the husband of Deng Rong, the youngest daughter of the late paramount Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.

It's not what you know....

*******

Though the new Japan Post holding company has just started operations, Nippon Express (Nittsu) is already planning its strategic response to the privatization (or "privatization"):

As a defensive move against the operations of the new Japan Post public corporation, Nippon Express will become the first private provider to deliver personal correspondence on a nationwide scale. The new service will target documents with a delivery cost of ¥1000 or higher; parcels will be picked up from the user's address and delivered by the next day. Nationwide delivery of personal correspondence is now monopolized by the Japan Post registered mail service, but Nittsu will provide delivery at lower cost in certain regions.

*******

Japan is modifying its approach to angling for a permanent UN Security Council membership:

Japan's new proposal has taken into account the United States' position that Security Council membership should not be expanded by more than six seats, to a maximum 21 from the current 15, including the five permanent members--Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

The proposal calls for a country seeking permanent membership on the council to receive a seat if it can win the backing of two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly in a vote, the officials said.

Under the plan, such permanent members, however, would not be given veto power, the ministry said.

The government is considering presenting the proposal at the United Nations this spring. Whether other countries concerned will support the plan is not known, they said.

The new draft seeks to have the present Security Council framework comprising the five permanent members and 10 nonpermanent ones increased by six to make the council a 21-member body.

According to the plan, a maximum of six countries--two each from Asia and Africa, and one each from Latin America and Europe--should be allowed to join the existing five permanent members.

Japan contributes almost a fifth of the UN's general budget.

So Hamas won big against Fatah in the Palestinian elections. Great:

International peace broking in the Middle East was plunged into turmoil on Friday by Hamas's shock Palestinian election win and a U.S. vow not to deal with the Islamic group until it renounced violence against Israel.

Many world leaders turned up the heat on Hamas to moderate policies and Israel itself ruled out talks with any Palestinian government that involved Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction and has been behind dozens of suicide bombings.

Fears of internal Palestinian unrest grew when hundreds of gunmen from President Mahmoud Abbas's long-dominant Fatah movement marched in Gaza City, firing in the air to protest against the Hamas victory and demanding that Abbas resign.

Hamas's triumph on Thursday in winning 76 seats in the 132-member Palestinian parliament against 43 for Fatah was widely seen as a political earthquake in the Middle East, triggered by voter disenchantment with corruption.

"I have made it very clear...that a political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of a platform is a party with which we will not deal," U.S. President George W. Bush told a news conference in Washington.

The US, Russia, the UN, and the EU (the Palestinian Authority's biggest financial backer) are pressing Hamas to soften its position against Israel. Since it's still calling for Israel to be wiped off the map, that's going to be some softening.

There's no cause-effect relationship here, but the Japanese cabinet resolved today to extend the deployment of SDF personnel in the Golan Heights:

In a 27 January cabinet meeting, the government decided to extend by six months the deployment of the SDF in the Golan Heights, which was to expire in March but will now last until September. The measure follows a half-year extension of peace-keeping activities by the UN Security Council's United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). The SDF has participated in UNDOF, which conducts peace-keeping operations, since 1996; it conducts operations that include the transporting of basic supplies for living, the dissemination of information from headquarters, and project implementation.

Considering what happens when communists take it into their heads to get bellicose, this is kind of nice to hear in a way. Unrealistic given the way the world has shaped up of late, but, you know, nice:

Kazuo Shii, chief of the Japan Communist Party secretariat, submitted an invitation to Social Democratic Party head Mizuho Fukushima to join the JCP in a struggle to oppose the revision of Article 9 of the constitution. The party leaders will conduct a meeting in the near future and discuss what kind of joint struggle is feasible. Shii addressed a press conference, saying "If we can come to an agreement between our parties, which hold Diet seats, we can wield a great deal of power to block the revision of the constitution." SDP chief party secretary Seiji Mataichi confined himself to telling the Diet press corps, "The Social Democratic and Communist parties are not in a position to make very great headway by ourselves. We're just part of a more broad-ranging citizens' battlefront for preventing constitutional revision."

How much citizen support the SDP and JCP can actually rally is very debatable. The public is ambivalent on the Koizumi administration's unqualified support for Bush's approach to the WOT; at the same time, China and North Korea have been emitting hostile noises with disturbing frequency, and Japan knows that it's small and potentially vulnerable next to them. Its alliance with the US allows it to be part of a proven winning team, the US has made it clear that it wants the revision of Article 9 to go through, and while the Japanese are proud of the reputation for peaceableness the non-aggression clause has helped them maintain since the war, hard-core anti-war types haven't succeeded in getting voters fired up against the LDP's revision proposals.

...but so did his opponents, so that part of the outcome wasn't really under dispute.

The Governor of Okinawa spoke today with the head of the JDA on the restructuring of US military installations in Okinawa, which is an ongoing issue on which there seems to be little movement lately:

Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine visited Japan Defense Agency head Fukushiro Nukaga at the JDA offices on 23 January. Of the mayoral election in the city of Nago, he stated, "The new mayor will be someone who acts in good faith, but all three candidates stood opposed to the proposal to shift [US military] operations and facilities from the Futenma Base to the coastal areas of Camp Schwab. It will still be a difficult issue from here on." He went on to say of the Futenma restructuring issue that "from the Okinawa side, we will continue to act in good faith."

The JDA has asked for concessions from the US aimed at minimizing the burdens placed on locals where our bases are located. The Yomiuri had a good English-edition rundown of the election referred to above:

In fact, Shimabukuro [who won, BTW--SRK] is opposed to the relocation plan to which the Japanese and the U.S. governments agreed (under the agreed plan, the Futenma Air Station in Ginowan will be relocated to the southern coast of Camp Schwab in Nago). However, Shimabukuro wants to leave room for compromise should the plan be revised.

Henoko Ward Head Yasumasa Oshiro said: "Those who protest against the plan say, 'The money will be gone as it's spent, but the base will remain forever.' But these pretty words don't feed people. What's important is compensation."

Quite a few restaurants in the central part of the ward seemed to have closed down, others seem to be struggling, the English letters on their signs fading away.

An elderly taxi driver said, "This used to be a lively quarter, full of U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War, but now it's deserted, with no young people coming in."

Oshiro is opposed to the current relocation plan, which suggests building the air station only 300 meters away from the closest civilian residence. He does not approve of the way the central government overruled the local governments when it agreed to the plan.

Oshiro criticized the central government, saying: "We're not interested in dugongs and seaweed beds. The government should have dealt effectively with the opponents and promoted the idea of building the airport on reclaimed land in shallow waters off Henoko. It was their delinquency that didn't make it happen."

A few months ago, the US was the party pushing the original reclaimed-land proposal; local voters didn't go for it, and it isn't just a gambit by Okinawan politicians to shove the relocated facilities as far away from the locals as possible.

*******

Oh, and BTW, whoops!

Several unmanned helicopters produced by Yamaha Motor Co. may have been passed on to China's People's Liberation Army, it has been learned.

Suspicions have arisen that the helicopters, which are employed largely for industrial use but can be also used for military purposes, were illegally exported to China, investigators allege.

Yamaha Motor has denied the allegations, but suspicions have arisen that the helicopters may have been passed on to the People's Liberation Army. Police and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry are investigating the company over its actions.

Investigators said Yamaha Motor was involved in trade with an aircraft firm in Beijing. The aircraft firm's Web site says Yamaha Motor's unmanned helicopters have prospects for "wide use in civilian and military fields." An unmanned helicopter is pictured alongside a People's Liberation Army jet.

Myrick at Asiapundit and Hunter at East Asia Watch note that Kim Jong-Il recently made a state visit to the PRC that may have represented a CCP effort to keep his feathers smoothed over the nukes issue. Hunter says, "On Monday, the DPRK indicated an unwillingness to resume nuclear talks. Was the invitation to China an effort to persuade Kim to stick to a diplomatic path?" The article cited by Myrick indicates that that's the most likely possibility:

The secrecy makes it impossible to know what the exact purpose of Kim’s visit is. But a source in Beijing said Kim would spend four or five days in the country and meet with President Hu Jintao to discuss stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and expansion of economic cooperation between the two countries. The talks are in limbo as North Korea has said the U.S. must lift economic sanctions imposed over Pyongyang’s alleged counterfeiting activities.

The Nikkei's Beijing correspondent also reports that the PRC has "evaded" giving any confirmation that Kim was visiting, with equivocations along the lines of "China and North Korea are friends that share a border"...and therefore, presumably, their heads of state sometimes wander into proximity like billiard balls...though whether Kim has wandered toward Hu this particular week is not a topic that would be appropriate to discuss just now. We'll see what comes of it.