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Biden has put forward a new initiative to strengthen democracy by getting increased commitments to key features for democratic processes in the world. The idea is not to limit partnerships with other countries says Anthony Blinken, Mr. Biden's main adviser and secretary of state. This means India a key partner in both democracy and the Indo-Pacific can for defending its thousands of miles of border in the high Himalayas with enroachment of China into border areas such as Tibet, maintain its good legacy relationships with Russia as happened in last weeks Modi-Putin meeting.  The idea says Blinken is- "The US does not want to limit your partnerships with other countries. We want to make your partnerships with us even stronger." This means the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, can maintain economic and development related ties with China which contribute to their economy, and build stronger relationships of culture and democratic processes with the US, India, European Union and Japan. For this reason the White House has emphasized that this is not about the US giving stamp of approval or disapproval of which country is a democracy and which is not. Too much of that happened under previous governments including Reagan, Carter, Bush, Obama.  The situation of Turkey relates to independence of judiciary and the unwillingness to take another look at problems. There is also the issue of technology is to be used so that citizens are protected from undue surveillance. Mistakes can be made but judiciary acts as an independent branch under the arrangements of checks and balances in American, British and now European frameworks of democracy built over centuries of struggle between monarchies and the people dating back to the Magna Carta in Britain. Neglect of workers and families also is an issue for democracies as for instance the effort now taking place in Germany under Scholz to "respect" workers and families. Lack of this led to the movements in US and European democracies giving room to vent that could ultimately lead to subverting democracies in the homeplace of democracies in the US or Britain. Why such a large gathering of 100 countries? Biden understands that the processes of democracy are always being improved and are a work for each new generation. For this reason there is no perfect scorecard- an ever renewing effort to make the process work in the best interests of the people of the country one generation at a time, to improve the quality of life and do this by preserving the right of peoples to choose their governments.  Why exclude China and Russia, till recently China had a consultative arrangement to run the country and Russia has elections? On this question the response of the Biden administration is that countries commit to the process and back initiatives to "counter authoritarianism. combat corruption, and promote respect for human rights."   Pakistan because it struggles with a long legacy of shortfall in the area of education after the collapse of Mughal rule that was seen under the British, and the general poverty of the Indian subcontinent that is striving to preserve the practice of elections, judiciary, and other democratic processes that were introduced in the Punjab and Sind provinces, and elsewhere since 1900. This is true for much of Africa, and also in parts of India, where aspirations of the people are for democratic process but faced with difficulties, corruption and poverty. In India the efforts of Naoroji, Gokhale, Gandhi, Nehru and Rajagopachari, Govind Pant, almost all leaders of the period since the 1850's, and able well meaning administrators since Lord Mayo in 1868 were to let democratic processes gradually find deep roots. Biden see aspirational in the face of difficulties as acceptable, even truly remarkable, with a willingness to learn from other countries to strengthen its own processes for democracy. It is no longer an Anglo-Saxon model alone as Germany and Europe are part of this process to be renewed by each generation. So are India and Japan. India after a century of elections since 1900 gradually expanding voters from one million to 5 million in the 1930's and to 900 million in 2019, with independent judiciary in a system of checks and balances as in the US.    ...

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Mokoto Rich of the NYT discusses sentiment in Japan as the North Korean nuclear program advances. A majority of Japanese surveyed do not favor preemptive strikes. Japan's Constitution only allows acting in self-defense. Experts say Japan has to consider what it would do for missiles flying over Japanese territory in the direction of the U.S. A Japanese government ruling in 1956 allows acting in self-defense in a broader way. Yet the public in Japan is not sure what is the best way to respond. Also to be considered is how this will be seen in South Korea and China- would Japan taking a greater defensive role and building its own anti-ballistic missile system defenses lead to greater tensions in the region.

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This report in WSJ says 4 months before becoming China's president in 2012 Xi Jinping issued a Communist party directive as head of the party committee overseeing the former British colony. The directive cautioned officials about a growing separatist sentiment in Hong Kong. It said "we must dare to struggle and be good at fighting," a retired official describes as Xi's approach. Another facet of Xi's views on Hong Kong are that his father as a party leader for the southern province of Guangdong in 1978 to 1980 near Hong Kong was the first after the Cultural Revolution to set up ties between the mainland and the British colony of Hong Kong. China was experimenting with a different model for the economy and Xi's father set up the early links with Hong Kong so that the flow of economic refugees from mainland China to Hong Kong could be reduced and the gap in living standards could be narrowed. He set up the first "Special Economic Zone" and met delegations to start the Sino-British talks on Hong Kong's future. Xi Jinping grew up in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. His father Xi Zhongzun, was jailed in 1962 in internal party struggles, and his family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966. The Cultural Revolution that went on till 1976 ironically was an attempt to stamp out possible capitalist or imperialist influences from the colonial period and the opium wars with Britain. He was later rehabilitated under premier Deng. During the turmoil Xi with some difficulty was admitted to University after spending some years in the countryside. His father remained loyal to the ideals of the Chinese Revolution even though he had suffered from the internal party struggles, an experience remains a strong memory for Xi Jinping. It is as if the period is seen as a period of experimentation and failure for the party not for its ideals of China rising from the colonial period after its failure to engage with the world before the colonial period leading to backwardness. The unity of the country had to be maintained bringing Hong Kong and possibly Taiwan together with the mainland. Rejuvenation was happening and stability was essential for Chia to grow and emerge into the "China Dream" a word coined by Xi for its emergence in the community of nations as an equal to western powers after the colonial period of oppression and cultural backwardness. In this way he is different than other leaders before him who followed premier Deng who started the experimentation with markets and economic structures. The leader preceding him was party secretary in Tibet with a prime minister who was an engineer working on public projects, in sharp contrast to Xi who had the the sense of authority from seeing different phases of Communist party experimentation in his early years. The Bo Xi Lai incident during the transition before 2012 also influenced Xi. This was an attempt similar possibly to the attempt by Lin Piao under Mao to subvert Communist Party leadership into a new direction bringing China under Soviet influence after the break by Mao. Bo Xi Lai, a party secretary for an interior less developed region Chongqing, who rose from being Mayor of Dalien to governor of Liaoning province. Bo Xi Lai attempted to subvert the process operating since the Cultural Revolution of leadership by consensus within the party ensuring stability and continuity needed for development and pushing the trauma of the Cultural Revolution out of memory. He did this by seeking high party office for his own ambitions not for the party and China's interests that guided leaders after the Cultural Revolution. This incident and the period of two decades of growth of market economy had led to growing corruption and Xi was convinced that "corruption would doom the Communist Party and the State" and the resulting instability was bad for China. During this period in 2012 Xi Jinping said that it was necessary to remove "tigers and flies" who could endanger the party's ideals and the future growth and stability of the country.  About 10,000 party officials were removed for corruption, and the rule of Politburo Standing Committee immunity (PSC) of the party operating after the Cultural Revolution was removed. The PSC is the body that at the top of the organization structure that runs China. On Hong Kong Xi now believes that the problem is best tackled by the Hong Kong government not by intervening from Beijing. There is increasing perception in Beijing and Hong Kong that the local government, business leaders have messed things up, by getting into the habit of telling Beijing planners what they wanted to hear, and failing to communicate with the 7 million people of Hong Kong. These leaders are also in a bind because Xi believes that Beijing exercized "overall governance authority" over Hong Kong. A 2014 government white paper warns against "confused or lopsided perceptions" of Hong Kong's status, saying that its partial autonomy comes "solely from the authorization of the central leadership."     ...

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A public relations campaign by China about Japan's role as a colonial power in 1905-1945.

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The Chinese market is shifting to more economical cars and to price conscious customers in China's growing middle cllass typicall making about $13000 a year. With the constant pressure to provide more value and better price China's local carmakers are willing to work with slim margins. The Chinese car makers are gaining market share and will continue to gain share in a very competitive price conscious market. In just one year from 2006 to the first 7 months of 2007 the Chineses carmakers increased their share from 26.4% to 30.6%. The Chinese carmakers include smaller makers in addition to the companies Cherry and Geely and these smaller carmakers are also gaining share. The Chinese companies are offering better equiped cars, more fashion and styling, and better prices. one example is a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV selling for $18500 versus a Hover SUV made by Great Wall Motor Company. The Hover SUV selling for $14500 than the comparable Santa Fe which this customer drove through the mountainous border of Sichuan with Tibet. See the article by Fairclough in wsj August 25-26, 2007 of a Cherry A1 compact driven through the Silk road 1700 miles trip in the westernmost province of Xingiang. What this also means for foreign carmakers is that there have to be price cuts to move product. GM took off 27% off the price of its Chevy Sail stationwagon and Hyundai cut prices by as much as 13%. ...

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Li Keqiang, China's new premier, is a member of the "Class of 77," who gained entry to Peking University when university entrance exams were reinstated after Mao's death. This is a period of great curiosity in China about the outside world. Li described it this way in 2008: "In this period knowledge was expanding with the speed of an explosion. I came here not just for knowledge, but to mold a kind of temperament, to master a kind of academic discipline." This he did by working extremely hard trying to master the English language and Western legal theory. He is now the only leader in China who can speak fluent English and is familiar with western concepts of law. For this he owes much to one of his professors, Gong Xiangrui, who studied at the London School of Economics in the 1930's and supported a multiparty system for China. Li was selected as one of the students to translate "The Due Process of Law" by Lord Denning, a British jurist. He spent the next 15 years in the Communist party's Youth League and moved up through the ranks. Many of the "Class of 77' " are still close friends and in academic positions in Singapore, Hong Kong and other universities. He understands the weaknesses in China's legal system because many of his close friends are lawyers, judges and law professors. Evidence of his intellectual openness, is his return to Peking University for a masters degree in economics years later, his thesis on urbanization, and his sponsorship through the Development Reform Commission think tank and the World Bank's Zoellick, of the report published in 2012, "China 2030." That report called for China to change course and reverse the role of state owned firms in the economy, giving consumers a bigger role. Like many of China's leaders this openness also meant during the period of turmoil of the Mao period and the decades following this, of a reticence to talk about political change that came over the entire country, in the words of the 2012 Chinese Nobel Prize Laureate's name, Mo Yan, a kind of "Don't Speak." Taking any kind of political position was simply too risky. The presence of 4 older Politburo members in their mid-60's who are close allies of former president Jiang Zemin and likely to preserve the status quo, also suggests a cautious approach in making changes. One key difference between Jinping- Keqiang from the Jintao-Wen Biao leadership is that Jinping has experience in provincial leadership positions in Hebei, and Keqiang was provincial leader in Henan, China's most populous province, as well as leader in industrial Liaoning province. By odd contrast Hu Jintao was a leader in the remote Tibet region and Wen Biao was a geologist in the northeast for many years. This gives the new leadership team a first hand knowledge of conditions in populous provinces, and the connections with the World Bank's Zoellick a kind of window to the outside that no other leader has had. Jiang Zemin, a former mayor of Shanghai, China' most westernized city in the 1930's and today, was himself a experimenter in his own right when he initiated the changes tht gave China entry into the World Trade Organization. His support of Xi Jinping gives Xi the needed backing for making change happen when the time comes....

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Yuka Hayashi's interview with Gen. Shigeru Iwasaki, Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Japan's Self Defence Forces. Iwasaki says Japan will improve its defense capabilities in the southwestern part of Japan and protect Japanese airspace. Japan will increase defense spending under the government of LDP leader Shinzo Abe.

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Shinzo Abe talks about China and Japan being similiar to competing powers Britain and Germany towards the end of the 19th century at a meeting in Davos.

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A civic group plans to continue showing a woman's statue representing 'comfort women' in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. South Korean media is critical about the lack of merit in generating goodwill of the agreement between prime minister Abe and prime minister Lee on 'comfort women.' Some South Koreans see an uncomfortable association between history showing Ms. Lee's father being an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army, and the agreement that does not do much to put the issue behind by offering $8.3 million. Japanese prime minister Abe considers the 1965 agreement normalizing relations between the 2 countries with no reparations as final, with no exceptions for the situation where many South Korean women were used by the Japanese Imperial Army. An exception might open up claims from other survivors of the war in other situations, Japan fears. Japan offered $8.3 million as an humanitarian gesture for the surviving 46 comfort women, which is seen as insulting for the women in the South Korean media. The women say they were never consulted. ...

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Negotiations between Japan and China before the APEC summit in Beijing, Nov. 2014, lead to an agreement that does not explicitly state Japan's sovereignty over the Senkaku islands, but acknowledges the current position in which the islands have remained in Japanese control since 1880. It lets both sides agree to disagree so that trade and diplomatic ties can be improved. China's economy has taken a hit from a 50% decline in Japanese foreign investment in 2014, just as the economy is slowing for other reasons. Both leaders can show the international community they have moderated their positions. Prime minister Abe also can show his foreign and domestic policies are working as his high poll ratings have declined in recent months.

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Japan's Foreign Minister tells Martin Fackler of the NYT in an interview that the Abe government will follow previous governments in the postwar period that apologized for colonial policies that caused suffering in other parts of Asia. He repeatedly calls for Japanese to be humble about the past. Previous statements by persons seen to be close to the government, including the head of NHK broadcaster, were interpreted negatively in S. Korea, China and the U.S. as needlessly escalating tensions in the region. China and S. Korea responded with a public relations campaign of their own to present what happened in the prewar period. S. Korean president Park refused to meet Japan's premier Abe. Kishida used NYT and Fackler to send a message to a global audience about Japan taking a path of peace since 1945.