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https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2c16763519.html,/WORLD CHINA DAILY
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“He seems to be a caring, modern, open-minded and a very intelligent person,” Kim-berley said. “He is someone that listens and understands the interconnectedness of the global economy and its importance.”Kimberley said it is a posi-tive sign for Iowa — a lead-ing producer of soybeans, corn, pork and eggs — that Xi “understands the importance of agricultural trade with Iowa”. A thorough understanding, he added, will ensure a safe and stable supply of food for China. “It can serve as the foundation for a positive relationship between the two countries.”
Before his departure aft er the Muscatine visit in February, Xi invited his Iowan friends to visit China. Th e route of the trip in June, said Lande, was outlined by Xi. Among places the group visited were Shanghai and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.In Beijing, Lande and the group were hosted by Xi. Lande recalled she felt special sitting next to Xi at the meeting.
“He values friendship and he believes people-to-people rela-tionships are the basis of a good foreign policy,” Lande said.Th e friendship with Xi also makes Lande feel responsible to promote more exchanges between the two largest econo-mies at a more local level.
“For one thing, China is our banker, but is also our custom-er. We can work together and the future can be bright for all of us,” she said.
Host: Xi’s personal touch ‘impressive’
Hopes for Gaza peace immediately dashed
By AGENCIES in Gaza City,
Palestinian T erritories and Brussels
Egypt opened a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy in Gaza on Friday, but hopes for even a brief ceasefi re while its prime minister was inside the bombarded enclave to talk to leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement were immediately dashed.
Prime Minister Hisham Kandil visited the Gaza Strip on Friday officially to show solidarity with the Palestinian people aft er two days of relent-less attacks by Israeli warplanes determined to end militant rocket fi re at Israel.
Kandil told reporters that Egypt has started and will con-tinue its eff orts to end the Israe-li “aggression” on the enclave.A Palestinian official close to Egypt’s mediators said that Kandil’s visit, which included members of Cairo’s secret ser-vice, “was the beginning of a process to explore the possibil-ity of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve”.
Israel undertook to cease fi re during the visit if Hamas did too. But it said rockets fi red from Gaza had hit several sites in southern Israel as he was in the enclave.
According to Hamas, the Israeli air force launched an attack during the Kandil’s visit to the house of a Hamas com-mander for southern Gaza that resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.
But Israel’s military strongly denied carrying out any attacks from the time Kandil entered Gaza, and accused Hamas of violating the three-hour deal. “Israel has not attacked in
Gaza for the past two hours,” a spokesman said.
“Even though about 50 rock-ets have fallen in Israel over the past two hours, we chose not to attack in Gaza due to the visit of the Egyptian prime minister. Hamas is lying and reporting otherwise,” the army said in a Twitter message.
Kandil said: “Egypt will spare no eff ort ... to stop the aggres-sion and to achieve a truce.”Palestinian medics said two people were killed in the explosion, one of them a child. It raised the Palestinian death toll since W ednesday to 21. But Israel’s military denied later that it had carried out attacks to the enclave.
“Hamas does not respect the Egyptian prime minister’s visit to Gaza and violates the temporary ceasefi re that Israel agreed to during the visit,” Ofi r Gendelman, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu, wrote on Twitter.
Air raid sirens wailed over T el Aviv on Th ursday evening, sending residents rushing for shelter and two long-range rockets exploded just south of the metropolis. Th e location of the impacts was not disclosed.They exploded harmlessly, police said. But they have shaken the 40 percent of Israelis who, until now, lived in safety beyond range of the southern rocket zone.
“Even Prime Minister (Ben-jamin) Netanyahu was rushed into a reinforced room,” said cabinet minister Gilad Eldan.Israel has started drafting 16,000 reserve troops, in what could be a precursor to invsion.The last Gaza war, a lop-
sided three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Y ear period of 2008-2009 aimed at ending repeated rocket attacks, left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilian, and killed 13 Israelis.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Friday that Israel had the right to protect its people against Gaza rocket attacks but urged it to stick to a “propor-tionate” response.
REUTERS-AFP-XINHUA
Noda left to ? sh in murky waters
Y
oshihiko Noda com-pared himself to a loach, an unattractive, bottom-feeding fish, when he was appointed Japa-nese prime minister less than 13 months ago. He was proud of the fi sh’s qualities to handle the muck.
His surprise announce-ment to dissolve the lower house on Dec 16 has left his Democratic Party of Japan in chaos and caused an exodus of its lawmakers, with nine quitting the ruling party on Th ursday and Friday in pro-test over Noda’s decision.Th is means the DPJ — with 239 seats — no longer has a majority in the 480-seat lower house, going into the election.
Noda promised leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito in August that he would dis-solve the House of Represen-tatives “sometime soon” in exchange for their support in passing his key bill to hike sales tax. But with no disso-lution in sight three months on, he had found himself routinely labeled a “liar” by the opposition.
By relieving himself of this burden, he has infl u-enced minds and morale of his party members who appear ill-prepared for the upcoming lower house elec-tion. Th e DPJ has been slow to compile a manifesto for the poll, with a draft report-edly due by the end of this month. Th e manifesto is under-
stood to include six areas as guiding principles, including “ending reliance on nuclear power generation” and “defense-oriented security and foreign policy based on the Japan-US alliance”. However, some party members have voiced con-cern over whether it can be compiled in time for the lower house election.Th e delay stems from the party’s diffi culty in work-ing out how to evaluate the implementation of key policies in its 2009 manifesto, and how to explain its fi nd-ings to the public.
On Nov 10 Noda said he intended to include Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacifi c Partnership free-trade talks in the new manifesto. However, as there is strong opposition to the idea within the party, the issue could further complicate eff orts to compile the manifesto.Pundits are placing their bets on the LDP in the Dec 16 general election, saying the DPJ is running a huge risk of being booted out of offi ce three years aft er wrest-ing power from the LDP . As the nation prepares to vote, DPJ executives are busy calling for party unity,
apparently worried about the growing number of desert-ers.
At a Standing Offi cers Council meeting on T uesday, DPJ Vice-President Hirotaka Akamatsu said the party’s candidates would be defeated unless they showed a com-petitive spirit in the election.Party confi dence is being eroded by fears that it will suff er a crushing defeat. Th e approval rating of Noda’s cabinet plunged to 18 per-cent in latest media polls, a level that usually rings alarm bells over a prime minister’s ability to stay in power.In a sense, the Noda cabi-net is preparing for a possible change of government. Min-istries such as foreign aff airs and defense are briefi ng the LDP about important poli-cies, including Japan’s territo-rial disputes with China. On W ednesday, Vice-Minister of Defense Nagashi-ma Akihisa said Japan and the United States will revise their defense cooperation guidelines early next month. Offi cials from the foreign ministry criticized Noda for his “sometime soon” promise in the summer to dissolve the lower house, saying they were fi nding it hard to sched-ule summit talks between the prime minister and foreign leaders.
Contact the writer at
caihong@https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2c16763519.html, Th e reporter is the T okyo bureau chief of China Daily.
brie? y
CHINA
Spokeswoman appointed
Hua Chunying, vice-director of the Informa-tion Department of the
Foreign Ministry, has been appointed as the new spokeswoman and will preside over the regular press conference on Nov 19, Qin Gang, general-director of the Information Department of the Foreign Ministry, announced on Friday.
UNITED STATES
Train slams into parade, killing 4
A train crashed into a fl atbed truck carrying veterans during a parade in the state of T exas on Th ursday, killing four people and injuring more than a dozen others, police said. Th e truck, part of a parade held in the town of Midland, was carrying veterans when it was struck by the train.
INDIA
Concerns over woman’s death
New Delhi on Friday demanded a “transparent” probe into the death of an Indian woman in Galway, Ireland, aft er doctors there allegedly refused to terminate her pregnancy even though she was miscarrying. New Delhi increased the pressure over the Oct 28 death of Savita Halappanavar. CHINA DAILY - AFP
MOHAMMED SALEM / REUTERS
A member of the Hamas security forces gestures while standing in rubble after an Israeli airstrike on the building housing Hamas’ ministry of the interior in Gaza City on Thursday.
TORU YAMANAKA / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda bows during a lower house of parliament meeting in Tokyo on Thursday.
Tokyo also con? rms its new envoy to China will arrive in late December
CAI HONG
TOKYO JOURNAL
Japanese PM dissolves lower house
By ZHANG YUNBI
zhangyunbi@https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2c16763519.html,
T okyo kicked off its political reshuffl ing on Friday aft er Japa-nese Prime Minister Y oshihiko Noda dissolved the lower house, while pessimism remained over possible future political dead-lock as well as Japan’s trend of
going conserva-tive.
Tokyo also
confi rmed that its new ambas-sador to China will arrive in Beijing in December.
Observers said the country’s ties with China, which have suf-fered over the Diaoyu Islands dispute, will face further tests amid the Japanese candidates’ tough talk on the issue.Th e Japanese House of Rep-resentatives was officially dis-solved at the plenary session for a general election scheduled for Dec 16. Election campaigning will begin on Dec 4.Th e election comes as Japan is struggling to prop up its economy, mend ties with Chi-na, re-establish energy policies after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and reconstruct areas devastated by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, K yodo News Agency said.
The prospect of the Liberal Democratic Party’s potential return to power has prompted concerns that the conservative Shinzo Abe, president of the Liberal Democratic Party, will likely be the next prime minister and further fray ties with China, Reuters said.
“W e’ll restore foreign policy. W e will strongly appeal to voters on the need to restore the Japan-
US alliance” and “that will help us defend our beautiful country, territories and national inter-ests”, Abe said.
Y ang Bojiang, a professor of Japanese studies at the Univer-sity of International Relations in Beijing, said the overall politi-cal pursuits highlighted in the upcoming chaotic month will be defi ned as “going right-wing” as Japan’s ties with China dete-riorate at this sensitive time.“The Japanese community, in recent years, has shown an evolving tendency for conser-vatism. Bitter remarks to fan the nationalist mood for votes will be a theme in the upcoming election for most of the parties involved,” Y ang said.
Electoral cooperation may be announced on Saturday between two new radical right-wing parties — former T okyo governor Shintaro Ishihara’s Party of Sun, and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s Japan Res-toration Party, Japan’s Jiji Press News Agency said.Th e new radical parties, aim-
ing to form a “third force” that
could challenge the traditional parties, may become a major force if they gain considerable momentum in the election, said Gao Hong, deputy-director of the Institute of Japanese Studies, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“If they form an alliance with the powerful Liberal Demo-cratic Party to win a majority in the Parliament, Japanese politics may see a change,” Gao said.Feng W ei, an expert on Japa-nese studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Noda’s grip on the Cabinet was loosened in the context of overwhelm-ingly unfavorable approval rat-ings. Support for Noda’s Cabinet slumped to less than 18 percent earlier this week.“Th e LDP is likely to retake the top seats. How to face the situation remains a test for the new leadership in China,” Feng said.
As for the future agenda in the month before the new rul-ing party is unveiled, analysts warned about a possible power vacuum in the existing Cabinet.“The DPJ Cabinet, now a door-keeper during the power transition, seems more help-less than a lame duck, and its legitimacy is being questioned as the party is losing its major-ity in both the lower and upper houses,” Y ang Bojiang said.Th e Japanese government has made the preliminary decision to dispatch its next ambassador to Beijing in late December.Masato Kitera, the 59-year-old deputy chief Cabinet sec-retary, is expected to see the offi cial confi rmation of his new Beijing position during next week’s Japanese Cabinet meet-ing, K yodo News Agency said.Beijing on Friday said the China is following internation-al routines and relevant proce-dures related to the arrival of the new Japanese ambassadors. “Currently, China-Japan ties are in serious difficulty, and every one knows the reason behind it — the unilateral prov-ocations of the Japanese side,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.
ANALYSIS The LDP is likely to retake the top seats. How to face the situa-tion remains a test for the new leadership in China.”
FENG WEI
EXPERT ON JAPANESE STUDIES AT FUDAN UNIVERSITY
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