Surviving Tiananmen: On the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, two questions stand out: How has the CCP survived the last quarter-century, and can it endure for another

MINXIN PEI

Minxin Pei is Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

MAY 26, 2014

Surviving Tiananmen

HONG KONG – It may be hard to imagine, but 25 years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was nearly toppled by a nationwide pro-democracy movement. It was the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s steely nerves and the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army – dispatched to enforce martial law and suppress the protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square – that enabled the regime, at the cost of several hundred civilian lives, to avoid collapse. Read more of this post

Navigating a Post-Samsung Era; What would happen to South Korea’s economy if its largest conglomerate were to fail?

Navigating a Post-Samsung Era

JUNE 2, 2014

Young-Ha Kim

SEOUL, South Korea — On May 10, the chairman of the Samsung Group, Lee Kun-hee, had a heart attack and stopped breathing. He was resuscitated at the hospital but remained in a coma for more than two weeks. As the country waited for information about his condition, rumors ran rampant. One of the most widely circulated was that Mr. Lee, 72, had already died and Samsung was covering it up. Read more of this post

Grisly Murders Highlight Social Strains in Modi’s India

Grisly Murders Highlight Social Strains in Modi’s India

By Sruthi Gottipati on 02:42 pm Jun 02, 2014

Katra Shahadatganj, India. When a farm laborer in this hardscrabble village in northern India went to the police last week to report that his daughter and her cousin had gone missing, a constable slapped him in the face and sent him away.

Hours later he found the two girls, hanging by their necks from a mango tree. A post-mortem found they had been raped. Read more of this post

China Escalating Attack on Google: The Chinese authorities have blocked global versions of the company’s search engines, and Gmail, Calendar and Translate have been affected

China Escalating Attack on Google

By DAN LEVINJUNE 2, 2014

BEIJING — The authorities in China have made Google’s services largely inaccessible in recent days, a move most likely related to the government’s broad efforts to stifle discussion of the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 3 and 4, 1989.

In addition to Google’s search engines being blocked, the company’s products, including Gmail, Calendar and Translate, have been affected. Read more of this post

There is a growing dissatisfaction among employees of South Korean brokerage houses, which have been hit by an unprecedented wave of restructuring, with respect to the conditions of proposed voluntary retirement packages

Voluntary retirement allowances offered by brokerage houses half of banks

2014.05.30 14:32:38

There is a growing dissatisfaction among employees of South Korean brokerage houses, which have been hit by an unprecedented wave of restructuring, with respect to the conditions of proposed voluntary retirement packages.
While a simple comparison is inappropriate given the varying sizes and wage levels of the country’s brokerage houses, a significant gap with the bank industry appears clear.  Read more of this post

1 in 4 Korea-listed firms reports loss in Q1

1 in 4 listed firms reports loss in Q1

Yoon Jae-un, Gang Bong-jin, Kim Yoon-jin

2014.06.02 18:32:04

One in four companies whose shares change hands in the KOSPI market reported a loss in the first quarter (Q1).
Their earnings did not show marked growth momentum, as views are mixed over the future of the global economic recovery and the stronger won has crimped export competitiveness. But their sales and bottom line improved modestly against a year ago.
26.89 percent, or 135 of 502 listed companies on the KOSPI, which submitted consolidated financial statements (fiscal year ends in December), posted net losses in Q1, said the Korea Exchange (KRX) and Korea Listed Companies Association Monday.
17.73 percent or 89 firms remained in the red, while 9.16 percent or 46 companies swung to loss. The listed firms’ combined operating profit shrank 1.48 percent, or 386.3 billion won, from 26.1 trillion won a year ago to 25.7 trillion won in Q1 this year. But their sales edged up 1.19 percent and net profit 4.57 percent during the same period. “The listed companies’ non-listed units are presumed to have performed poorly, and it is not quite right to say their profit rose by a noticeable margin,” said an official at the KRX.  Read more of this post

Korea’s 386 generation is powerful but conflicted; 386 refers to people who were in their 30s in the 90s decade (accounting for the numeral 3), who went to college in the 1980s (the 8), and who were born in the 1960s (the 6)

Korea’s 386 generation is powerful but conflicted

June 03,2014

Mrs. Kim, a 50-year-old housewife in Seoul, has never considered herself a conservative. She entered college in 1985, but she never actively participated in the pro-democracy movement against dictator Chun Doo Hwan’s regime. However, she certainly shared the zeitgeist of those days. Read more of this post

Xi Jinping’s World Cup diplomacy; So why is Xi so obsessed with football? The reason is because football is a part of his strategy to overcome the United States

Xi Jinping’s World Cup diplomacy

June 03,2014

Table tennis is China’s national sport. The chance of a Chinese player, male or female, winning the World Table Tennis Championships is more than 90 percent. The Chinese say their Ping-Pong players are the best in the universe; they are proud that no other country is a match for China. We don’t need to discuss so-called Ping-Pong diplomacy to know that the sport is China’s pride.  Read more of this post

Is Soros trying to spark a Japan rally? Reshuffling Japan’s pensions suggests Abe is still grabbing the low-hanging fruit, not making the hard decisions

Is Soros trying to spark a Japan rally?

Reshuffling Japan’s pensions suggests Abe is still grabbing the low-hanging fruit, not making the hard decisions.

June 03,2014

Takahiro Mitani finds himself between George Soros and a hard place.
Mitani is Japan’s $1.26 trillion man. The Government Pension Investment Fund that he runs tops Mexico’s annual output and dwarfs the Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds that investors are always cooing about. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants the notoriously conservative fund to crank up returns by putting more money in stocks – with an unlikely assist from billionaire Soros.
In January, the world’s most famous short seller chatted with Abe at Davos, urging him to nudge the pension colossus into the 21st century. News of that tete-a-tete is helping Abe to push changes in the fund’s management structure and to encourage it to diversify. At the moment, about 60 percent of the fund’s holdings are wasting away in the lowest-yielding domestic debt – Japan’s – anywhere. Getting the fund to move large chunks of that money into stocks could provide a timely boost to Abe’s reflation efforts. Read more of this post

Choi Dung-kyu, the CEO of Daebo Group: “I started picking up trash out of gratitude for my customers,” Kim said. “But now it has become a pleasant task”

CEO goes the extra mile

Head of Daebo Group serious about health and company’s success

연 매출 1조원 넘는 회장님, 고속도 휴게소 변기 닦는 까닭

May 31,2014

On a crisp morning two weeks ago at Hwaseong Rest Area, located along the West Coast Highway, Choi Dung-kyu, 66, was cleaning toilet bowls with his bare hands.
Scrubbing the holes where the water flushes out, he stressed that the most important part of cleaning them was to leave them smooth and slippery.  Read more of this post

Gwanfia casts pall on new Korean agencies; “If former government officials get in the new agencies, the purpose of creating them will be tarnished. The government needs to nominate real experts if it wants to prove its earnestness.”

Gwanfia casts pall on new agencies

June 03,2014

A handful of new government agencies that will oversee the financial sector are expected to be created in the second half of the year, but lawmakers and the general public can’t stop frowning, believing that the new entities will only give jobs to former public employees.  Read more of this post

Forum warns of economic risks; Multinationals doing ‘carry trades’ will have to be very cautious

Forum warns of economic risks

Multinationals doing ‘carry trades’ will have to be very cautious

June 03,2014

As the global economy gradually improves and economies look for exit strategies from their stimulation regimens, economists are warning about risks on the horizon.
Some are warning of an expansion of carry trades by multinational companies, particularly in emerging markets, while others warn of new crises for highly leveraged Asian companies as monetary policy starts to tighten. Read more of this post

Student loans to weigh on Korean economy; Growth rate doubles that of household debt; “In 2012, Korean parents shouldered 79.9 percent of their children’stuition. In 2008, they shouldered 94.7 percent”

Updated : 2014-06-02 19:12

Student loans to weigh on economy

Growth rate doubles that of household debt: BOK
By Yoon Ja-young

Media reports in the United States state that student loans arehampering the economic recovery. A report by LG Economic ResearchInstitute said that student loans will also become a major problem inKorea.
The Bank of Korea estimated the country’s education-related loans at28.4 trillion won last year, up 12.3 percent from the previous year. It isdouble the growth rate of the total household debt, which increased bysix percent.  Read more of this post