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Japanese communities
put on earthquake alert
Tokyo, 24 January 2012: The Japanese government has asked local authorities within a 30-km radius of nuclear plants to draw up emergency-response plans to possible nuclear disasters. The request coincides with a new report that warns that Tokyo was likely to be hit by an earthquake of magnitude-7 level by 2016 and was virtually certain that such a disaster would happen within the next 30 years. The prediction is the result of research carried out by the Earthquake Research Institute at Tokyo University.

The institute’s director Naoshi Hirata explained that while there are many factors controlling Japan's seismic activity, in general, the probability for a huge quake near Tokyo had increased since the Fukushima Dalichi earthquake in March last year. The institute said yesterday that it was virtually certain - 98 per cent - that the capital region will see a magnitude 7 quake in the next 30 years. It said there was a 70 per cent certainty of such an event by 2016.

Japan’s Central Disaster Management Council estimates that if a scale-7 earthquake occurred directly under northern Tokyo Bay, some 11,000 people would die and as many as 850,000 buildings would be damaged beyond use or destroyed by fire. The Japanese Meteorological Agency added that since the Fukushima disaster, earthquakes of magnitude 3 to 6 occurred on average 1.48 times a day in the Tokyo metropolitan area through to last December. This was about five times the pre-disaster average.

The government has also asked local authorities to draw up much more specific disaster-response plans, detailing the methods of evacuation, distribution of iodine pills for radiation exposure, securing of communication channels and deployment of radiation-monitoring posts. Goshi Hosono, the minister in charge for nuclear disasters, admitted that the March 2011 nuclear disaster had exposed serious flaws in communication between central and local governments.

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Rare female success in
Japan local government
Tokyo, 23 January 2012: Otsu city in Japan has elected the country’s youngest female mayor, in a race dubbed by Japanese media as a political first. 36-year old Naomi Koshi, a lawyer, defeated two-term incumbent Makato Mekata, 70. She was backed by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). After completing graduate school at Hokkaido University, the mayor-elect earned a law degree from Harvard University and worked as a lawyer in the United States.

The city is the capital of Shiga prefecture, in the south-central Kansai area. The country’s previous youngest female mayor was elected in December 2010 in Amagasaki City, 38-year old Kazumi Inamura of the Greens. Female mayors are relatively uncommon in Japan, only 1.5 per cent of the country’s 1,727 municipalities are headed by women, with the first elected 20 years ago. 

Both Otsu and Shiga Prefecture have scored another political first for Japan, with the prefecture and capital city now governed by female leaders. Shiga Governor Yukiko Kada was first elected in 2006 and is a member of the leftist SDP. 

In yesterday’s mayoral elections, Koshi received 51,700 votes, while incumbent mayor Mekata got 42,200, the final result showed. Masako Higashi, a doctor and candidate of the Communist Party obtained 22,700 votes. Voter turnout was 44 per cent, up almost two percentage points from the previous election.

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The majority of Chinese
now live in urban areas
Beijing, 18 January 2012: The majority of Chinese people now live in urban areas. The country’s National Bureau of Statistics announced yesterday that just over 680 million now lived in cities - 51.27 per cent of China's population of nearly 1.35 billion. Most have moved during the past three decades of boom in search of economic opportunities. In 1982, only 20 per cent lived in cities; in 1990, it was 26 per cent; and in 2000, 36 per cent. Forecasters now believe that within 20 years some 75 per cent of Chinese will be living in cities.

Li Jianmin, head of the Institute of Population and Development Research at Nankai University told reporters that the demand for more transport, energy, water and other vital infrastructure was set to test resources and city planners. "Urbanisation is an irreversible process. It will have a huge impact on China's environment, and on social and economic development,” Li Jianmin added.

According to last year’s census many of those settling down in urban areas are migrant workers, people moving from the country to cities to seek economic empowerment. The transient population is now estimated to be more than 220 million. Experts fear that the sudden and huge influx of rural workers in cities will be having a destabilising effect on urban society.

Most migrant workers are treated as second-class citizens in their adopted towns or cities because they are still classified as rural residents under China’s Hukou household registration system.  The Hukou is the registration paper or residency permit, which ties a migrant worker to his or her hometown. This means they can only receive benefits back in their hometown and not in the cities where they go for work. “Migrant workers have little or no social security, including access to education for their children, health and other welfare provisions.”

According to the UN, some 51 per cent of the world's seven billion people live in cities, with developing countries generally more rural than rich countries. In India, the world's second-most populous nation, only 30 per cent live in cities, while in the US only 18 per cent of the population still resides in rural areas. In Germany some 74 per cent of people live in towns and cities. In the UK around 80 per cent of the population now live in urban areas.

Mayor threatens to change
Ankara’s French-named streets
Ankara, 27 December 2011: Melih Gokcek, the mayor of the Turkish capital Anakara, has threatened a number of retaliatory actions should the French Senate (upper house) confirm the French National Assembly’s bill which criminalises the denial of Armenian Genocide. (The Ottoman Empire is thought to have been responsible for the killing of between one to 1.5 million Armenians during and shortly after World War I. Turkey denies that genocide took place)

Among the retaliatory measures suggested by the mayor of Ankara are the re-naming of the city’s French-named streets and the erection of a monument in front of the French embassy as a memorial to the ‘Algerian genocide’. ((Some historians believe that the death toll during the Algerian war of independence (1954-1962) totalled more than 700,000 people, with both the French Army and the National Liberation Front being accused of indiscriminate killings of civilians)

Mayor Gokcek also told journalists that he had already suspended the order of some 100 electric Renault cars.

Some foreign commentators based in Turkey compare the threats by the mayor to the attempts by some Americans in 2003 to re-name ‘French fries’ ‘Freedom fries’ because the French government’s refusal to join the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq.

Chinese villagers revolt
against local government
Hong Kong, 20 December 2011: Villagers embroiled in a land dispute in southern China have managed to do what so many others have not: force the Chinese Communist Party out of their neighborhood. At least for a while. This has many wondering if Wukan is the epicenter of China's own ‘Arab Spring’, or just another incident like the tens of thousands of village protests that came before it.

Residents of the Guangdong province fishing village became incensed last September when they learned of plans by a local company to sell farmland to Country Garden, one of China's biggest property developers.  They accused local officials of corruption, raided the government offices and clashed with police. The local party boss fled Wukan, and the people began demanding negotiations with higher authorities.

The police had a different idea. They seized the village mediators and tried unsuccessfully to regain control of Wukan last week. But when police retreated, what some villagers considered a victory turned into a deadly standoff. One protest leader died in police custody and the entire village is still blockaded.

Many Wukan residents suspect the activist died from police abuse. Chinese state media have quoted local officials and doctors saying he suffered heart failure.

Malcolm Moore, a reporter with Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper, was one of the few western journalists to slip into Wukan and get the story out at the height of the tensions last week. He said everyone there "collectively lost patience" after the death of their fellow villager.

Moore spoke with Wukan's residents about what they want, and found it isn't mass political reform. "I think these cases are always about money and they're always about land. It's not part of some wider democracy movement. It's not an attempt to overthrow anyone," he said. "The village has expressed its confidence in the central government. All it's said is that the local government haven't resolved their grievances properly."

Moore left Wukan after two days because of concerns his presence would endanger the protesters. Since then, a stream of both foreign and Chinese journalists have headed for the village, a move he says signals the people's wish for Beijing's intervention might come true.

"The fact that Chinese media are now about to report this story suggests to me that somebody at a higher level has decided this can be resolved peacefully and can be reported on," Moore said.

Wu Zili, the acting mayor of Shanwei county, which oversees Wukan, took a dual approach to try to quell the unrest this week, vowing both to crackdown on its leaders and investigate the officials accused of wrongdoing. He also told state media that one of the land projects involved in the dispute has been frozen. (Report by Kate Woodsome, VoA)

New Osaka mayor calls
for celebration of sleaze
Osaka, 28 November 2011: Osaka’s combative former governor and his allies have scored a double victory in Japan’s second city’s mayoral and gubernatorial polls this weekend.  Former lawyer and television personality Toru Hashimoto was elected over incumbent Osaka mayor Kunio Hiramatsu, while his regionalist bloc ally Ichiro Matsui was successful in the prefectural governor’s election. The victors have both promised a radical restructuring of the metropolis’ governance in order to eliminate perceived waste and duplication, Hashimoto’s battle cry during the campaign to “Destroy City Hall and the Osaka Prefectural office!”

In the race for the mayoralty, for which the former governor Hashimoto quit his prefectural post months early to stand, the momentum was always behind the challenger against one term incumbent Hiramatsu. Although a genial and initially popular city chief, the ultra- cautious Hiramatsu failed to convince voters that Hashimoto and his allies’ plans were too radical or dictator-like. The incumbent’s backing by all of the ‘establishment’ parties may have also counted against him in the election, which saw a higher than usual turnout, particularly among the young.

While the charged campaign has brought nationwide attention amid a moribund political scene, the business of restructuring and repositioning Osaka, which has recently sought to become the nation’s ‘back up capital’ in the event of a disaster in Tokyo, now falls to the new mayor and governor team.  As well as eyebrow-raising revelations about the new mayor’s ‘gangster’ father during the campaign, Hashimoto also courted controversy in polite circles by calling on the city to embrace its sleazy reputation:  “There is no other city as vulgar and obscene as Osaka. We should celebrate the image and welcome the development of casinos and red-light districts to attract people.”

The Osaka plan for a metropolitan government similar to that of Tokyo is being closely studied by other cities in Japan, including Nagoya and Niigata. The mayor of Japan’s second largest city Yokohama, Fumiko Hayashi, has also called for such larger cities to be able to function more autonomously. The Osaka result is likely to fuel demands for reform of the country’s ‘1947 system’ of two-tier local autonomy amid disparities in regional economies outside of the Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka mega-region.

Mayoral challenger proposes
radical changes for Osaka
Osaka, 12 November 2011: The future of Osaka government is at stake in the metropolitan elections held later this month. Seven candidates are vying for the governorship of the metropolitan area while the mayor’s race has turned into a two-way battle between the incumbent Kunio Hiramatsu and an aggressive challenge from the recent governor Toru Hashimoto and his civic group’s radical plans for a rearranged metropolis government.

Hiramatsu is fighting for a second term and is backed by supporters of the status quo, while Hashimoto and his supporters back a merger of the Osaka prefecture and the cities of Osaka and Sakai along the lines of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG). The election is due 27 November and promises to be a charged race compared to many recent local elections in Japan where incumbents faced no challenger.

Elected in 2008, Hashimoto resigned as governor last month, three months before the end of his term of office, in order to fight the mayoral election due.

Hiramatsu has the official backing of both main parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), while the Japan Communist Party (JCP) gave him its tacit support by withdrawing its candidate as it opposes Hashimoto’s radical reorganisation plan.

Hashimoto argues that a merger along the lines of TMG into an Osaka Metropolitan Government (OMG) would be more efficient and create a more dynamic second city for Japan, but his detractors allege his ambitions are to become a local ‘dictator’. The former lawyer and television personality also favours privatisation and more robust education policies.

The mayoralty is being portrayed by the Hashimoto camp as a race with destiny against the vested interests of the establishment parties, who have put aside partisan considerations, and bureaucrats, to block his ambitions. The governorship however is being contested by the secretary of Hashimoto’s Osaka bloc Ichiro Matsui and six other candidates, either independents or backed by the LDP/DPJ or JCP. The candidates are mostly former local government members or officials. “It's time to change the current system of two bureaucratic and administrative entities that waste taxpayer money and slow down much-needed reform,” Matsui told supporters.

Centre-left independent
wins Seoul mayoral race
Seoul, 27 October 2011: Park Won-soon, a liberal independent candidate backed by the opposition, has won the fiercely fought mayoral election in South Korea's capital Seoul. The contest is viewed as an indicator of which way the political winds are blowing for the country's parliamentary and presidential elections next year. The solid victory by Park Won-soon, a political novice and long-time civic activist, is seen as a significant setback for the governing conservative Grand National Party (GNP).

Park Won-soon, who was supported by the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), dashed the hopes of a seasoned and prominent politician, Na Kyung-won of the ruling Grand National Party (GNP), to become the capital city's first female mayor. Park said his election was a victory for all of Seoul's ten-and-a-half million people.

The victorious candidate told supporters he would start his administration by taking care of those citizens who had suffered. He added that the "engine of universal welfare" will make Seoul a city where people are the priority.

The defeated Na said she takes the results as an opportunity for introspection. Na, without mentioning Park by name, added she hoped the new mayor would be a great mayor for the future of Seoul.

Sociology Professor Chung Il-joon of Korea University said Park's victory had significant ramifications for the national political scene. “The Seoul mayoral election is a barometer of Korean politics. Seoul is very symbolic. It is not just one big city. It is almost one-fifth of the population. Through this election result we can speculate what will happen next year, the general election and presidential election."

The previous mayor, Oh Se-hoon of the GNP, resigned in August, to take responsibility for a bungled referendum over free school lunches, a programme he opposed. The two major candidates vying to succeed him, to some degree, were overshadowed by their respective high profile backers.

Na received support from another prominent female politician, Park Geun-hye. Her father, Park Chung-hee, was South Korea's president for 18 years until he was assassinated in 1979.

Park herself, no relation to the new mayor, has been regarded as the leading candidate for the GNP's nomination for president next year. But Na's defeat is a setback for the late president's daughter's apparent aspirations for the country's highest office.

The victorious independent candidate for Seoul mayor received a late boost from one of the country's most popular public figures, a software entrepreneur who became a university professor, Ahn Cheol-soo. Ahn himself had considered a run for mayor amid polls showing him to be the favourite if he had indeed entered the race.

Na, who is 47, enjoyed stronger support among older voters and homeowners. Park, who is 53, was favored by younger voters. However, some liberals expressed hesitation about supporting Park, concerned he is too far to the left, noting his repeated criticism of South Korean government policies towards the communist North.

During the campaign, Park also embraced the language of the recent demonstrations in New York under the "Occupy Wall Street" banner. He criticized the influence of big business in South Korea and the country's close ties to the United States.

Communist North Korea also weighed in on the mayoral race in a commentary in the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun. It urged Seoul's voters to bring about new politics by voting against the GNP's candidate. (Report by Steve Herman, VoA News)

China to allow muni bonds
for the first time in 17 years
Hong Kong, 21 October 2011: The Chinese government announced yesterday that it would allow two cities and two provinces to issue bonds on a trial basis. A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance said the government had selected the cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen and the provinces of Zhejing and Guangdong to tap the markets for funds. It will be the first time for 17 years that local governments have been allowed to issue bonds directly.

The ban on local government bonds was introduced in 1994 because China feared cities and provinces were amassing financial commitments, which eventually they would not be able to meet. However, ingenious local government treasurers got around the ban by setting up companies, which borrowed to finance capital projects. Now the Chinese government seems to be concerned that much of this borrowing was spent on prestige projects without any ideas how the loans will be repaid. According to China’s national auditing agency there are more than 6,500 financing entities with debt of some US$1.68 trillion, with 42 per cent falling due by the end of this years and next.

The selected two cities and two provinces will be allowed to raise some US$4.7 billion, which cannot be used for new construction projects. A spokesman added that the Finance Ministry would keep some of the money raised in a special account to be able to guarantee timely payment of interest and principal.

The Chinese move has been generally welcomed by Hong Kong’s financial community. An economist from the Societe Generale commented that bonds wont solve the fundamental debt problem but will help the banks because now the onus is not just on them. “The risk will be spread to other investors,” he added. Daiwa Capital Markets said the move should increase transparency of local-level finances as investors demanded more detailed disclosures, which might help curb excesses down the road.

Tokyo launches new
branding campaign
Tokyo, 16 October 2011: A new city brand campaign for Tokyo hopes to emulate the success of other Asian city brand campaigns, according to its organisers. The ‘Creative Tokyo’ project is the first government attempt to work up a coherent and recognisable branding campaign for the Japanese capital, building on the work of other Asian hubs such as Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore.

Intended to showcase the capital as the gateway to ‘Cool Japan’, the campaign aims to present the Tokyo metropolis as the embodiment of Japanese creativity in the hope of attracting new talent and investment to the city. A series of launch events in this month and next will bring together creative firms and local governments in order to assert the work of the capital’s creative industries and its global tourist offer, particularly in light of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami which has seen a fall in visitors.

Led by the national economy, trade and industry ministry (METI), the project’s organisers hope to hand the campaign to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) to progress following the launch. The city campaign was recommended by the expert panel overseeing the ‘Cool Japan Promotion Project’ in order to recognise and utilise Tokyo’s prominence in the Japanese national brand overseas, with the hope of establishing similar campaigns for Japan’s other leading cities.

The Creative Tokyo logo is intended to symbolise the capital’s population as drawn from other cities. Naoki Ito, creative director for the Cool Japan promotion strategy and Chief Creative Officer of the city firm PARTY said that the project will utilise a platform that “does not seek to spread government-orientated policies in a traditional way” but instead “invites the general public to suggest a wide range of new ideas”.

The organisers also point to the brand’s contribution to promoting national renewal and restructuring following the 3/11 disasters, while the soft power leverage of Tokyo’s pop culture in Asia has continued apace with the rise in popularity of the city’s girl groups which have even spawned local imitators in China and Singapore. The Tokyo International Anime Festival, also organised by METI and TMG, takes place next week.