Final Reality MMVIII

In the spirit not at all related to current events in California, do you Hu Jintao take Fukuda Yasuo to be your lifelong partner in oil & gas development?

Japan, China to jointly develop gas field: statement
AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan and China agreed Wednesday to jointly develop a disputed gas field in the East China Sea, resolving a longstanding row between the Asian powers, a Japanese foreign ministry statement said.

Japanese companies will participate in the existing development of the Chunxiao gas field, which Japan calls Shirakaba, a statement said.

"To make the East China Sea a sea of peace and cooperation and friendship, Japan and China have agreed to cooperate," the statement said...

Okumura Jun has written at length and with erudition about his fears regarding the agreement's inviting speculation that Japan is not willing to defend its full claim to the seabed in between the geographic mid-point line and the Okinawa Trough.

My view on the agreement is more sanguine and two-fold.

First, in terms of the conduct of international affairs, China has had a history of losing to Japan whenever the two sides argued about sovereignty over a bit of territory. I could understand a Chinese wish to hold border talks with everybody except the Japanese, preferring to handle those boundary disputes through a hearkening back to the Edo Period practice of keeping the line between the Sinitic and Nipponic spheres vague...rather than revisiting the chain of conflicts from the 1874 Japanese invasion of Taiwan onwards--fights that erupted largely from the early Meiji government's ingesting wholesale the praxis associated with the Westphalian state system.

Second, since it is impossible to send even one cubic meter of the natural gas under the East China Sea to Japan (there is a trough in the way) without sending the gas first to the coast of China via a seabed pipeline, the fight over development of the gas resources was largely about pride (hokori)...and when talking about the importance of pride in economic negotiations, one has to remember Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #109:

Dignity and empty sack is worth the sack.

Japan gets the chance to call the East China seabed its own without fighting a shooting war with the Chinese over it, the possibility of linking up with the Chinese pipeline network and a share in an existing platform.

That's a net gain.

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Most of the canonical Ferengi Rules of Acquisition can be found here.

The story bringing this whole post full circle is here.

By people I know

Tobias Harris writes movingly of last night's speech by Lester Tenney, the last Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor.

Kato Kazuyo of Armitage International and, yes, the daughter of the recently retired Ambassador to the United States of the same name, writes what is probably the best review so far of Hu Jintao's trip to Japan.

Nice it is to know people in the know.

Guess Hu's Not Here

Yes, "Hosokawa Morihiro" is a correct answer.

Image Courtesy: AP

I was thinking of a more recent former Prime Minister.

Who? Oh Who? Oh Who can it be?

Hi Hu! Hi Hu!

La, la, la, la, la, la...

"Hey Jintao. Have the umeboshi; there from my home district in Gunma. Yes, Madame Liu, there are stones in them. Sorry, forgot to warn you about that.

Hey, there's a historical geography quiz in the paper. 'Name five countries that existed in between the end of World War I and the end of World War II that have not reemerged since the collapse of the Berlin Wall.'

Hmmm...

OK, I give up. Let's look at the answers. Oh, there's the Dominion of Newfoundland and Labrador--it joined Canada only in 1949. Wow, did you know that? Then there's the Tuvinian People's Republic or Tannu Tuva, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1944. Does it freak you out when you hear those Tuvans do that voice thing? Scares the pants off me. Then there's Manchuguo/Manshūkoku --oh dear, our bad. Not really much of a country--there are hardly enough native Manchu speakers left to fill an izakaya nowadays. Bad idea it was. I can officially confirm here and now that we are really, really sorry about all the whole Pu Yi thing. Honest, we really are. Moving right along, there's Republic of East Turkestan--hey that's present day Xinjiang Province. Then there's...oh...a mountainous kingdom. No, not Sikkim--Sikkim did not win sovereignty until after World War II--another mountain kingdom. You know...rhymes with "kismet"...that one.

I know you say it has never been independent. We agreed to disagree on that point. I know that in your opinion you did not agree to disagree. "Agree to disagree" is the default option. Have your Foreign Ministry call my Foreign Ministry, OK?

Hmmm...when you look at a map, four out of the five abolished countries were on China's periphery. You guys have three of the four under your thumb--not bad. If you add to your absorption of those sovereign nations your claim on Taiwan and your puppet state on the Korean Peninsula...you guys have managed to put a heck of a lot of effort into keeping the empire thing going well into the post-imperial age. Makes me wonder how you have any energy left for our little tiff over the Senkakus and the bed of the East China Sea.

What? What? Why are you looking at me like that? It was just a quiz..."