Link Banana

When considering the under-noticed anniversary of Burma’s 1988 uprising, The Economist’s Asia.view column hits a sensible point I’d never considered:

No, the reason the revolution failed was simple: the army was prepared to kill as many people as it took to thwart it.

So long as a state apparatus is strong and remains cohesive, it’s hard to imagine how any citizen uprising can end authoritarianism.

The Economist’s Asia.view column has some interesting thoughts about how Asians shop to day and how they’re likely to shop in the future. It’s not unlike America at the start of the last century:

But as America grew richer, people started buying more processed foods, which supermarkets could sell more cheaply because they could buy them in bulk. Refrigerators spread, allowing households to shop only once a week, not every day or two. And women entered the job market in large numbers, where they found better uses for their time and talents than sizing up a cut of meat or double-checking the shopping bill.

What most distinguishes South Asian shopping is not culture, but abundant labour and onerous regulation. The number of human transactions required to buy a packet of milk or a loaf of bread in India can be bewildering: a boy gathers your order and dusts it off, another man handwrites the bill and tots it up, a third hands you your change, if they have it. But Indian shops employ so many people because they can. The family members who help out at the store often have nothing better to do. Likewise the customers who shop there rarely have to be anywhere else anytime soon.

Intent on following the pessimism of the horror story the paper told about rice prices, The Economist’s Asia.view columnist makes clear that a few recent elections do not mean that historical conflicts will quiet down.

IN NORTH-EAST Asia run the world’s most potentially lethal geopolitical faultlines, along which historical animosities and devastating weaponry are arrayed. Yet for Panglossians, particularly American ones, the regional picture looks suddenly better, thanks to the promise of three new national leaders in little more than six months: Yasuo Fukuda, who became prime minister of Japan last September; Lee Myung-bak, who assumed South Korea’s presidency in February; and Ma Ying-jeou, who won Taiwan’s presidential election by a landslide and will take office on May 20th.

The Economist’s Asia.view column brings a necessary reminder about the strong-as-ever military junta ruling Myanmar Burma.

The row over the timing of Mr Gambari’s visit shows the powerlessness of the UN against a regime determined not to mend its ways. It also shows that regime’s cunning: it has managed to turn a debate about the fundamental rights of its citizens into an administrative wrangle about a visa for a visiting diplomat.

As Britain’s ambassador, Mark Canning, has put it, “the name of the game” for the junta is staying off the front pages. The worldwide sympathy evoked by the “saffron revolution” made that seem a hard game to play. But these generals are past masters.

I had no idea what to make of the fact that Taiwan’s old hegemon, the Kuomintang (KMT), won the island’s recent election. The Economist’s Asia.view column argues that it is, on balance, a  good thing.

The choice is not between extreme changes to Taiwan’s position. Rather, there is a sophisticated debate about different strategies for preserving the status quo.

Of course, Taiwan’s politics are far from pretty. Both parties are tainted by corruption scandals. The legislative process has been bogged down in partisan obstructionism. Vote-buying is a science. And the KMT’s residual wealth gives it an unfair advantage.

But one has only to look around the region to see how much worse it could be. Never has the army appeared close to intervening, despite the obvious risk to “national security” posed by politicians who rile China. Never has an election result been held up for weeks as allegations of malpractice are investigated. Never has the losing party refused to accept the result.