Nerd Analysis: Dateless and Desperate in Asia

Well, this can't be good. Then again, what did you think would happen with the rampant selective "gendercide" of baby girls?

More Thoughts on the Amy Chua School of Parenting

Read one Chinese-American's take on the Amy Chua kerfuffle (my own takes are here and here).  Here's a notable bit of it too:

While I think some of what says makes some sense, I just can't go along to the extremes that she does.  Having high expectations, and trying to instill discipline and good work habits (homework first, then TV/play) strikes me as generally desirable.  No playdates, no roles in school plays, no choice in extracurriculars . . . .  I'd rather let my kids experiment a bit to see what they like, and then encourage them to work hard at what they choose.  True, this means my kids are not likely to become Olympic athletes/musical prodigies, but I'm not sure I'd want to be parenting on that assumption anyway. 

EDIT: I should add one potentially pernicious thing about Chua's article (and forthcoming book) is the idea that there's any one monolithic "Chinese"/Asian approach to parenting.  No doubt there are some basic elements that maybe common, like the emphasis on education.  But it would be a shame if non-Asians were to come away from this article thinking that this is the *only* way to raise kids in a Chinese way.

Kitchen Notes: Happy Lunar New Year/Spring Festival/Year of the Tiger. Now Eat Until You Explode!

It's Pan-Asian holiday madness. I could not care less about food-related superstitions, but the food itself is fabulous. I'd be happy with just mountains and mountains of dumplings. EAT UP, PEOPLE!

(And, even more importantly for impecunious nerds, bring on the ang pao! Look, some enterprising person has even come up with a way to make heart-shaped ang pao, all too fitting for the double-whammy holiday this year!)

What Fresh Hell Is This? -- Has Anyone in the State Dept. Even Heard of Protocol?

Apparently the only person the president won't bow to is the American citizen-taxpayer.

Here's the latest protocol/foreign policy debacle from Japan.

Other comments here, here, and especially here from PowerLine. A British news story even points out that Obama wanted to talk about his personal fondness for green tea ice cream. Really?

A thought: There is something fundamentally unserious about this administration's foreign policy. I suppose this time the protocol flop is very slightly less dreadful since Japan is an ally, but come ON -- the whole point to the American Revolution was that free Americans would no longer bow to any sovereign or suzerain anywhere.

Another thought: Is the president really so naive -- or so narcissistic -- as to think that he, personally, is the center of foreign policy and his gleaming popularity the lynchpin of actual diplomacy? His fawning, spaniel-like approach to foreign leaders (any foreign leader) is beginning to make me cringe. Who really thinks this Sally Field "You like me" approach will accomplish anything positive? Our enemies will laugh and our allies will roll their eyes.

Don't you remember the fallout when President Clinton almost bowed to the Japanese emperor?

UPDATE: Check this out!

On Freedom: Bruce Lee Versus Jackie Chan

Here is a follow-up to "Chan-Gate." From Foreigner in Formosa come two Asian action movie stars and two views for you to compare and contrast:

"The Moment is freedom. — I couldn't live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them."

- Bruce Lee

“I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic. I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

- Jackie Chan

I'm with Bruce. Be water, my friend!

UPDATE: Another nice Lee quote here: "I have come to discover through earnest personal experience and dedicated learning that ultimately the greatest help is self-help; that there is no other help but self-help—doing one’s best, dedicating one’s self wholeheartedly to a given task, which happens to have no end but is an ongoing process."

Jackie Chan Backlash from Hong Kong and Taiwanese Democrats

First there was the idiotic comment.

Now comes the (well-deserved, IMHO) backlash. News blurb:

HONG KONG (AP) - Action movie star Jackie Chan questioned the need for freedom for Chinese people during a speech Saturday, prompting outrage from lawmakers in Taiwan and Hong Kong, who accused him of insulting his own race.

. . . "He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets," pro-democracy Hong Kong legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law."

"His comments are racist. People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?" another Hong Kong lawmaker, Albert Ho, told the AP.

"He himself has enjoyed freedom and democracy and has reaped the economic benefits of capitalism. But he has yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom and democracy," Taiwanese legislator Huang Wei-che said.

While Chan's comments were reported by the Hong Kong and Taiwanese news outlets, they were ignored by the mainland Chinese press.

Hear, hear!

We also get the somewhat odd spectacle of one Hong Kong native accusing another of being a racist. Raaaaaaaaaacist! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. I've spent too long listening to arguments from identity politics!) By the way, gentle reader Lumpy was first on scene with the race-based angle. He was, I dare say, being a bit tongue-in-cheek with his comment, but the angry HK lawmakers are apparently quite serious about the accusation.

Japan in Economic Trouble: A Social Safety Net's Vulnerabilities

A troubling report on the plight of many Japanese workers appears in the latest IHT.

A History Lesson and Nerd Analysis: Japan's Economic Stimulus Attempt of the 1990s

This is from the New York Times. I blurb for thee, O reader, and as usual, I highlight the bits that caught my eye:

Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

. . . “It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again,” said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. “One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future.”

In total, Japan spent $6.3 trillion on construction-related public investment between 1991 and September of last year, according to the Cabinet Office. The spending peaked in 1995 and remained high until the early 2000s, when it was cut amid growing concerns about ballooning budget deficits. More recently, the governing Liberal Democratic Party has increased spending again to revive the economy and the party’s own flagging popularity.

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

In the United States, it has also led to calls in Congress, particularly by Republicans, not to repeat the errors of Japan’s failed economic stimulus. They argue that it makes more sense to cut taxes, and let people decide how to spend their own money, than for the government to decide how to invest public funds. Japan put more emphasis on increased spending than tax cuts during its slump, but ultimately did reduce consumption taxes to encourage consumer spending as well.

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs. Much of the blame has fallen on the Liberal Democratic Party, which has long used government spending to grease rural vote-buying machines that help keep the party in power.

. . . Most Japanese economists have tended to take a bleaker view of their nation’s track record, saying that Japan spent more than enough money, but wasted too much of it on roads to nowhere and other unneeded projects.

Dr. Ihori of the University of Tokyo did a survey of public works in the 1990s, concluding that the spending created almost no additional economic growth. Instead of spreading beneficial ripple effects across the economy, he found that the spending actually led to declines in business investment by driving out private investors. He also said job creation was too narrowly focused in the construction industry in rural areas to give much benefit to the overall economy.

He agreed with other critics that the 1990s stimulus failed because too much of it went to roads and bridges, overbuilding this already heavily developed nation. Critics also said decisions on how to spend the money were made behind closed doors by bureaucrats, politicians and the construction industry, and often reflected political considerations more than economic.

Interesting. Very interesting indeed. That last bit about people jockeying for a piece of the political money pie is just too true -- even as here we're watching various and sundry jockeying and lobbying for a piece of yummy Paulson TARP Pie. Instead of Shoofly Pie, we should call it Shoolobbyist Pie.

Of course, I have to give you the usual caveat to take all comparisons with caution since the situations being compared are nevr precisely the same. Even so, I do find it utterly fascinating how many Japanese economists are pessimistic about the entire stimulus scheme, even as various foreign ones seem to think it wasn't SO bad. Hm, it's the Japanese who have to live with the consequences, no?

David Brooks on Harmonious Collectives

Does Brooks actually believe what he's saying? A harmonious collective is as good as the individual American Dream? Show me a genuine "harmonious collective" -- and China does not count because it's NOT -- and then we'll talk.

I live in a world where I have experience with BOTH collective and individualist schools of thought because I'm Asian-American, and let me tell you: the individualist approach has given me far more opportunity and autonomy than the purely collective approach. The Cine-Sib and I will tell you that the "collectivist" model in social contexts is all too easily used to exploit some people for the benefit of others. That, and the individual becomes subsumed; you can become totally suffocated by expectation and obligation to things and people you may not even like.

Besides, how many times in human history has the idea of the "harmonious collective" been used as a goal and justification for utopian social engineering projects -- all of which ended up creating hell on earth? *cough* totalitarian Communism! *cough* But I'll spare you another of my unhinged rants.

But I simply have to point out Brooks' description of how Americans and Chinese look at a fish tank.

This is a divide that goes deeper than economics into the way people perceive the world. If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim. These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal the same underlying pattern. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts.

Oh, please. Stereotype, anyone? But let me get this straight:

American: What's the big fish doing?

Chinese: What are all the fish doing?

Mad Minerva: SASHIMI!!!!!!

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: HK is Japan's New Tourism Ambassador

This is fresh from my inbox, courtesy of the Coffee Pot Dictator himself. I'll have you know that he commented on this story thus: "Mwahahahahaha!" Evil, sheer evil.

Come, gentle reader! Feast your terror-stricken eyes on this headline: "Hello Kitty Named Japan Tourism Ambassador."

In this capacity, she is actually an envoy of the Japanese government. Is this the Imperialism of Cuteness?

A photo follows of Hello Kitty with Japan's Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister, Tetsuzo Fuyushiba. The horror, the horror!

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: Hello Kitty High Fashion

When the Coffeepot Dictator (aka Il Barista) sent me this link, I didn't want to believe it. But independent research has confirmed the apocalyptic horror of this cuteness run amok. Here it is:

In a few days, the Japanese edition of the fashion magazine Vogue will feature Hello Kitty wearing designer gowns by Galliano. She will be in Paris, modeling Galliano's fall collection for Dior.

Hello Kitty on the fashion runway? Oh, my! Meanwhile, the entire insanity of this has me humming -- unwillingly but compulsively -- the lyrics to (you guessed it) that laughably bad but catchy song about the catwalk.

(As for Il Barista, I am now convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that he is trying to kill me, slowly and cutely. But I don't intend to go quietly...)

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: the Hello Kitty Cake

The photos are far too horrifying to post! Click on this link if you dare.

Which one "takes the cake" for being the one which will make you scream the loudest? I must vote for these Hello Kitty cupcakes, marching like a Greek phalanx and striking twice as much fear into the hearts of the enemy.

UPDATE: The "Hello Kitty Hell" blog has yet another possibility: a cake pan that produces a three-dimensional Hello Kitty cake. Oh, my.

Hello Kitty Monstrosity of the Day: the Hello Kitty MMORPG Online Game

Believe it!

Click on the link and tremble in terror!

Ian Buruma: Culture is no excuse for China to deny democracy

Ian Buruma says something worthwhile. Of course, it's the same thing that I've been saying for a really long time!

Anyway, the gist of it is: stop saying that Asian culture is incompatible with democracy, and stop using "cultural sensitivity" as an excuse to let repressive Asian regimes get away with tyranny, oppression, and murder.

Here is a quote worth looking at:

. . . culture is often a poor excuse for inhumanity. Slavery, female circumcision or stoning of adulterous women are undoubtedly part of certain cultures, in that they are traditional practices. So is widow burning in India. This is not a good argument, however, for continuing such practices.

Well, now that's not at all politically correct. But that doesn't mean the statement is false. As for the argument from tradition, I am reminded of this lovely and sardonic visual reply.

Also, look at this:

A few decades ago, it was fashionable, especially in Singapore and Malaysia, to talk about 'Asian values'. Obedience to authority, sacrificing self-interest to what governments defined as national interests, accepting curbs on free speech, all these things were claimed to be specifically Asian, part of ancient traditions, something all Asians had in their cultural DNA. In fact, it was a justification of authoritarian politics inherited by the likes of Prime Ministers Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew from the British empire.

Even as the Asian values were being touted, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Thais, Chinese and Filipinos were demonstrating in huge numbers against their authoritarian rulers. In South Korea, Taiwan and, more fitfully, Thailand and the Philippines, they succeeded. And what was it that the Burmese were risking their lives for recently . . .

One reason why Taiwan is such a tricky problem for the Chinese government is precisely its politics. If Chinese culture demands authoritarian politics, or what Ambassador Wu would call 'Chinese democracy', then what about Taiwan? Are the Taiwanese any less Chinese?

Most of this is fine, though I don't really think the last bit (Taiwanese = Chinese) is really entirely accurate. Remember that old saying that China is a culture masquerading as a state? As for Taiwan, whether you want to believe it or not, there is such a thing as Taiwanese identity.

The point remains, though: statements about Asian culture being antithetical to democracy and the values of a free society can be, at their worst, the tacit condoning of Asian tyrannies -- not to mention deeply offensive to freedom-loving Asians everywhere. Also, do I really have to remind you about Tiananmen Square?

Quirky Asia Files: Meet the Japanese Rice Babies

Seriously. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!

Read on:

New-born babies in Japan who can't make it around to visit all their relatives can now send them proxies instead - cuddly bags of rice.

A small rice shop in Fukuoka, southern Japan, has been swamped with orders for "Dakigokochi" rice-filled bags shaped like a bundled baby and printed with the new-born's face and name.

Each rice bag is tailor-made to weigh as much as the new-born and shaped so the rice fills the bag up. Holding the round-edged bag would feel like holding a real baby.

You know, I'm not so sure I would want to hug a bag of rice.

Japanese Toy Recall over Labeling Taiwan on Globe

Well, I suppose I should be happy that for once in the news, a toy is being recalled for some reason other than Chinese-made lead paint.

Of course, the reason for this new toy recall is just as poisonous -- just not in a physical sense.

The short version: a Japanese toy company that makes toy globes for Japanese kids wanted to manufacture in China. The company wanted to label Taiwan on the globes simply as "Taiwan," but the Chinese refused to make the toys unless Taiwan was labeled "Taiwan Island" and as specifically part of "People's Republic of China."

Some globes were then made under these conditions, but now they are being recalled after the Japanese company received complaints. The company has issed an apology that says, and I quote, "Unfortunately we let cost considerations override sound judgment." How many other companies do this all the time?

Note: the globes were going to be sold only in Japan. Interestingly also, the complaints were not made by Taipei, so I think they were from unhappy Japanese customers.

You'll remember, of course, a similar flap over Google Maps and the name of Taiwan.

China: Spoiled Rich Kids

Surprise, surprise -- the kids of wealthy Chinese are turning out pretty much like the kids of wealthy Everybody Else. The kids are turning into spoiled brats.

The kids even have a nickname: "Little Emperors."

So as one observer asks, how to teach these kids morals and manners?