Asia
The Washington Post reports on how little will there is to deal with the causes of Japan’s projected demographic collapse.
The article notes that the country may lose 70% of its workforce by 2050, at the same time it is faced with supporting a massive population of seniors.
The oncoming problems could be alleviated with immigration and a higher birth rate, but these are impeded by social malfunction:
- Japan’s strong sense of ethnic unity makes immigration a non-starter: “the issue is too politically toxic for extensive public discussion.”
- The low birth rate has a lot to do with how women are treated in the workforce and at home, but Japan seems to lack the will to do much to change this. The article reports renewed calls for “enlightened government intervention” on the issue, but those have gone and gone before.
Japan does not seem to face a disastrous implosion, like some socially malfunctioning societies of the past — see the Greenland Norse in Diamond’s Collapse — but it may choose diminishing strength, relevance, and perhaps prosperity over change.
See Futureatlas for more on this issue.
Image: usable with link and credit to Futureatlas.com
Taiwanese voters yesterday backed the opposition, effectively retreating from the more stridently pro-independence ruling party.
This may help reduce the risk of conflict between China and Taiwan, a war that could easily draw in the United States.
At the same time, Taiwanese are not ready to merge with China: polling finds that 63% consider the island sovereign and independent, 31% say its status is undetermined, and only 5% agree with China’s position that it is part of the mainland.
The Chinese response to unrest by Tibetans in the last two weeks has once again revealed how unlikely Tibetan self-determination is for the foreseeable future.
China is still willing to use force, and seems ready to escalate the level of force far beyond what has so far been employed.
And the Chinese seem ready to shrug off international condemnation: the sacred unity of China is far more important to them.
Tellingly, the government’s depiction of events — with the Tibetans as violent “splittists” manipulated by outside forces — seems to find widespread support among ordinary Chinese. So even a substantially democratized China might still keep a tight rein on Tibet, because the electorate would favor this.
(Image usable with credit and link to FutureAtlas.com)
India’s vast film industry has generated relatively little cultural power for the country over the decades: its productions have tended to be formulaic and simplistic, and have found only limited audiences beyond South Asia and its diasporas.
That may begin to change. Buoyed by India’s rising wealth, Bollywood is gaining resources, professionalizing, and linking to the global entertainment industry, reports indicate. Indian films are starting to attract global talent, and movies are taking on more diverse and serious subjects, while simultaneously becoming more accessible to non-Indian audiences.
The result may be that India’s values and views will be shared with the world more broadly and more convincingly, the hallmark of a great power.
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is straining ties between Pakistan’s ethnic groups, the Washington Post reports.
Comprised of four ethnicity-based provinces, Pakistan’s stability was already threatened by restiveness in Baluchistan and among the Pashtun of the North-West Frontier Province. Now Sindh, Bhutto’s homeland, may be added to the list, as Sindhis turn against the Punjabi-dominated military and the Punjabi elite.
Witte of the Post reports that mourners at Bhutto’s funeral chanted “We don’t need Pakistan!” and crowds of Sindhis have been shouting “Leave Sindh!” at soldiers. Some Sindhis are now threatening succession and war.
Still, Witte writes, “few believe the country is in imminent danger of fracturing,” and more people in Sindh and other provinces believe that substantial autonomy should devolve from the center to the four regions.
Others say that simply giving all groups a say might suffice: “Democracy is the way to keep Pakistan together,” says one NGO leader.
ChangeWaves last week noted that the landscape of the world economy has changed overnight.
With a recalculation by the World Bank, China’s and India’s economies are now much smaller, at least as measured by purchasing power.
This is how things used to look (click on the graphic to activate):
With the recalculation, the developing Asian economies are rather less imposing:
The upshot that the age of American (and Western) economic dominance may persist longer than people thought.
Gareth Evans of the International Crisis Group put summarized the impact of Bhutto’s assassination succinctly: “Prospects for democracy and stability in Pakistan are much dimmer without her.”
As for future directions, new data from Pew offers mixed messages:
- Support for terrorism has plummeted, with only 9% of Pakistanis saying that suicide attacks against civilians are justified.
- On the other hand, while only 15% of Pakistanis have favorable views of the US, more than twice that have some or a lot of confidence in Osama bin Laden to “do the right thing” in world affairs. This is down from 51% in 2005, but still indicates latent potential support for extremist views, despite skepticism that Pakistan is headed in this direction.
Last month The Atlantic examined Pakistan’s direction in light of ongoing political turmoil.
Author Joshua Hammer mentions the “nightmare scenario”–which Pakistan seems to inspire regularly:
an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. A tide of anti-American sentiment, some analysts fear, could bring to power Islamists, who would give free rein to the Taliban, spread nuclear technology to rogue states and terrorist groups, and support the mujahideen in Kashmir.
Hammer sheds light on various drivers of the scenario:
- The Islamist political parties simply aren’t very popular, even in their strongholds.
- Senior military officers are seen as pro-Western, but the views of the ranks who will succeed them in a few years are unknown.
- The Pakistani military is “deeply ambivalent” about fighting the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their Islamist Pakistani allies, not truly seeing them as a threat to the country.
- “While the military aims to do the opposite, it is slowly destabilizing Pakistan.”
Hammer also notes that the military has now deeply entrenched itself in the Pakistani economy, enriching its officers in the process, and this process may make it even less willing to truly relinquish power.
Hammer concludes that
The threat of an outright Islamist revolution—by gun or ballot—is low today, and so too is the threat that nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands. The army is not dominated by jihadists, and its controls on its missiles are strong.
However, he writes, “If the political process remains stunted, the Islamists may continue to gather strength until the country reaches a tipping point.”
The Post reported last week that American intelligence analysts are worried about a “looming strategic failure.”
Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban’s unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating.
US and NATO forces are not retaining control of the countryside, where three-fourths of Afghans live, and the Taliban is operating in new areas:
the Taliban’s control has extended beyond the group’s traditional southern territory, with extremists making substantial inroads this year into the western provinces of Farah, Herat and others along the Iranian border even as they regularly challenge eastern-based U.S. forces.
Pakistan’s role is also an issue:
Several experts believe that the United States can no longer afford to leave the Pakistani military to clean up its side of the border. “Unless we resolve the safe-haven issue, this is not going to succeed,” said Henry A. Crumpton, a CIA veteran
According to a recent New York Times article, many in the US intelligence community “believe that Pakistan, not Iraq, is the place Mr. Bush should consider the ‘central front’ in the battle against terrorism,” as it threatens “political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play.”
The article includes these forecasts:
- “If serious divisions emerge in Pakistan’s army, they could also threaten the security of Pakistan’s potent nuclear arsenal.”
- “Some experts … argue that Pakistan’s army is overwhelmingly moderate and will remain so, even without General Musharraf.”
- Instability in Pakistan “could cripple a renewed [US] effort to turn around the war against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.”
Despite Pakistan now constituting one of the chief threats to American security, there may be little the US can do about it: according to “recent intelligence assessments,” “American influence over events in Pakistan may be ebbing fast.”