The Korea Herald

[David Ignatius] Charting a Syrian way out

WASHINGTON ― To help oust President Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian opposition group has drafted a plan for a transitional justice system that would impose harsh penalties against diehard members of his inner circle but provide amnesty for most of his Alawite supporters. The goal is to provide a legal framework that reassures Alawites this isn’t a fight to the death, and that they will have a place in a post-Assad Syria. The plan would also encourage the rule of law in areas that have been liberated f

Viewpoints Jan. 7, 2013

[David Ignatius] Charting a Syrian way out

[Kishore Mahbubani] Dynastic leadership in Asia

SINGAPORE ― To the extent that culture matters in politics, the recent spate of leadership changes in Northeast Asia suggests that Asian societies are more tolerant ― if not supportive ― of dynastic succession. South Korea’s recently elected president, Park Geun-hye, is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country from 1961 to 1979. China’s incoming president, Xi Jinping, is the son of Xi Zhongxun, a former vice premier. Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is the grandson and grandn

Viewpoints Jan. 7, 2013

[Kishore Mahbubani] Dynastic leadership in Asia

[Bill Gates] The optimist’s timeline

SEATTLE ― Usually, “optimism” and “realism” are used to describe two different outlooks on life. But I believe that a realistic appraisal of the human condition compels an optimistic worldview. I am particularly optimistic about the potential for technological innovation to improve the lives of the poorest people in the world. That is why I do the work that I do.Even so, there is one area of technology and global development where reality has tempered my optimism: the idea that cellphones would

Viewpoints Jan. 6, 2013

[Howard Davies] New rules may stop banks hiding behind borders

LONDON ― When Mark Carney replaces Mervyn King as governor of the Bank of England in July 2013, the world will be deprived of King’s witty public utterances. My personal favorite came when, commenting on strong retail-sales figures during one Christmas period, he cast doubt on their significance for assessing the state of the economy. “The true meaning of the story of Christmas,” he solemnly intoned, “will not be revealed until Easter, or possibly much later.” A new career on the stage, or in th

Viewpoints Jan. 6, 2013

[Howard Davies] New rules may stop banks hiding behind borders

[Editorial] Peter Pan syndrome

One notable aspect of Korea’s corporate landscape is the meager presence of intermediate-sized companies ― businesses that are larger than small and medium enterprises (SMEs) but smaller than large corporations. According to a recent report from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, midsized businesses accounted for a mere 0.04 percent or 1,291 of the nation’s 3.12 million enterprises in 2010. The share is much smaller compared with other countries, including Germany (11.8 percent), Swede

Editorial Jan. 4, 2013

[Editorial] Shame on lawmakers

Lawmakers on the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Budget and Accounts have shown that all the talk in political circles about a new politics was nothing more than lip service.According to reports, they handled the 2013 budget bill in the same old and lousy way as before. They did not make even a modicum of effort to cast away old practices and establish new ones.In the first place, they turned the process of deliberating on the budget proposal into a series of back-door deals on allocati

Editorial Jan. 4, 2013

[Dominique Moisi] The European oasis of peace

PARIS ― Are non-Europeans much less pessimistic about Europe than Europeans themselves? Could distance be a prerequisite for a more balanced view of the continent’s predicament?In an interview a few months ago, Wang Hongzhang, the chairman of China Construction Bank, indirectly expressed his subdued enthusiasm for Europe. Quoting the Chinese proverb, “A starved camel is still bigger than a horse,” he went on to say that Europe’s economies are much stronger than many people believe. And, without

Viewpoints Jan. 4, 2013

[Dominique Moisi] The European oasis of peace

[Hans-Werner Sinn] A second chance for reform

MUNICH ― The European Central Bank has managed to calm the markets with its promise of unlimited purchases of eurozone government bonds, because it effectively assured bondholders that the taxpayers and pensioners of the eurozone’s still-sound economies would, if necessary, shoulder the repayment burden. Although the ECB left open how this would be carried out, its commitment whetted investors’ appetite, reduced interest-rate spreads in the eurozone, and made it possible to reduce the funding of

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

[Hans-Werner Sinn] A second chance for reform

China’s princelings build wrong kind of capitalism

Over the last three decades, Communist China’s leaders have lifted more than 600 million of their citizens out of poverty ― and built one of the world’s most unequal societies. Those two outcomes didn’t have to go hand in hand. They are the result of a conscious decision by the former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and some of his closest associates ― the so-called Eight Immortals ― to safeguard the primacy of the Communist Party by putting their families in charge of opening up China’s economy.

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

Three worst political ideas in 2012 and hopefully of all time

It is not an enviable task, picking the top three bad ideas from our government in a year when they have given us so many to choose from. But The China Post would like to bid the year farewell by remembering the worst while hoping for the best for 2013.While risking being unoriginal and repetitive, we give the top spot to the undisputed king of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot ideas. The decisions to hike power prices by as much as a third and oil prices by some NT$3 in one go around early 2012 are ba

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

Asia’s new leaders must work together

At this juncture, with the kind of leaders we see in place in China, Japan and South Korea, the outlook for Asia in 2013 does not look so good. For the first time, leadership changes in those three countries came almost simultaneously. Each of the new heads of state wants to establish a trademark leadership role in Asia. To do so, they cannot display any weakness or be considered soft. To promote themselves in their own countries and on the world stage, they might have to do things that normally

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

Rising above the fray

The only thing in sync as new leaders take office in Northeast Asia is the coincidental timing of the events. But with regard to the old and complex issues dogging the region, their arrival portends more uncertainty rather than a unified approach to problem-solving.Conservative Park Geun-hye’s election as South Korean president completes the set of transitions in this important zone that also places new faces at the helm in China and Japan.Xi Jinping, who takes over as president of an increasing

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

[Walden Bello] No easy struggle for women

Women’s rights have been in the forefront of international concern over the last few weeks.Making the biggest headlines were the massive demonstrations in New Delhi and other cities in India provoked by the brutal gang-rape by six men of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in a moving bus in the Indian capital. The crime, which saw the victim suffer extremely serious wounds in her genitals and intestines, proved to be the trigger for the release of popular anger that had built up over the years

Viewpoints Jan. 3, 2013

[Walden Bello] No easy struggle for women

End of the world as we know it and I feel fine

Most of us acknowledge that some of our most cherished beliefs are based on faith, not facts. Even so, it takes a lot to dislodge those beliefs. When we are confronted by contrary evidence, we may dig in even more deeply. Consider a cautionary tale, exotic to be sure, but helping to explain why evidence-challenged thinking persists in a lot of areas, including politics and business. Harold Camping, a Christian radio talk-show host, predicted that the world was going to end on May 21, 2011, with

Viewpoints Jan. 2, 2013

[David Ignatius] China’s new hatchet man

WASHINGTON ― Who will have the world’s hardest job in 2013? There are many candidates for that role, but my nominee would be Vice Premier Wang Qishan, who has just been given the near-impossible assignment of combating corruption in China. China-watchers see Wang as a crucial player in the new Chinese government headed by Xi Jinping. It will fall to Wang, as the new head of the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline, to crack the whip and stop the thievery before it devours China. W

Viewpoints Jan. 2, 2013

[David Ignatius] China’s new hatchet man

Articles by Yu Kun-ha