The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 16
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MrMahathir also added his voice to the Thai junta's attacks on the Singaporeans: “You'll get nowhere withthem either being nice or being tough, they only think of themselves,” he said on Thai television.There is always a plausible-sounding reason for the fights that Singapore's neighbours pick with it. TheSingaporeans' kiasu (win at all costs) negotiating style does them few favours in a region where savingface is important. But it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the little country's unforgivable offence is beingricher and more successful than its neighbours, and not particularly apologetic about it.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group.
All rights reserved.About sponsorshipAustralia's culture warsTo flag or not to flagFeb 8th 2007 | TAYLORS ARMFrom The Economist print editionHow Australians see themselves has become a theme for the coming electionGet article backgroundTHE small town of Taylors Arm, in the rolling farmlands of northern New South Wales, was once famous asthe setting for “A Pub With No Beer”, an Australian country song. The customers who flocked to the pubfor Australia Day on January 26th were displaying a fashion that has not been much in evidence in the 50years since the song was a hit: many were carrying an Australian flag, or had one stamped on theirbodies.
Until recently, the flag was rarely flaunted. Now, few politicians risk a television statement withoutbeing seen to be standing next to it.As Australia's federal parliament came back this week from its lengthy summer break, the flag's rebirthhas become a symbol of the so-called “culture wars” that are likely to reverberate through the generalelection later this year.
John Howard, the prime minister, who will be seeking a fifth term for hisconservative coalition government, has successfully stoked these wars to win four elections since 1996.But this time he is facing Kevin Rudd, who took over as leader of the opposition Labor Party in Decemberand who has staked out a tough response to Mr Howard's cultural definition of Australia.
An opinion poll onFebruary 6th gave Labor a 12-point lead over the government, after the distribution of second-preferencevotes, compared with the two points it had just before Mr Rudd's ascension. Voters also rated Mr Rudd 16points ahead of Mr Howard in their approval rating (compared with an 18-point deficit for Kim Beazley, MrRudd's predecessor). Despite these good showings, however, Mr Rudd faces a big battle to persuadevoters to buy his picture of themselves.The culture war stems from a bid, by the Labor government defeated in 1996, to redraw Australia'snational identity.
Labor's picture of the country focused on multiculturalism, closer ties with Asia, breakingthe constitutional link with the British monarchy and making amends for past wrongs to indigenouspeople. Mr Howard robustly rejected all that.On Australia Day last year (the holiday marks the British settlement of Australia in 1788), he launched acampaign to revive the teaching of Australian history in schools and to recapture the “values, traditionsand accomplishments of the old Australia”. This was code for the old British, pre-multicultural Australia. Ina speech last October the prime minister lauded certain historians who had rebuffed “the black armbandview of Australian history”.
To Mr Howard, this mournful version paints the country's story as “a litany ofsexism, racism and class warfare” and is a product of the “posses of political correctness”.Mr Rudd countered in November with “Howard's Brutopia”, an article in the Monthly, a centre-left journal.He called the prime minister's culture war a strategy drawn from the American Republican Party, designedto raise fears and then offer voters what appear to be old certainties: “tradition versus modernity,absolutism versus moral relativism, monoculture versus multiculture”. All this, pronounces Mr Rudd, is acover for “the values debate...that Howard is desperate not to have”.
He defines the debate he wants as abattle between treating people fairly and the “market fundamentalism” of Mr Howard's economic policies.The unfurling of flags in Taylors Arm and elsewhere suggests that Mr Howard's brand of inward-lookingAnglo nationalism may still be doing rather well.
But, come the election, Mr Rudd has other things on hisside: relative youth (at 49 he is 18 years Mr Howard's junior), stability and drive. He has made therunning with climate change and education, two issues that register strongly with voters.On the other hand, Mr Howard has the advantage of incumbency, a successful record as a ruthlesspolitical strategist and an economy that is humming into its 16th year of uninterrupted growth. Theopinion poll identified a large corps of swing-voters. No doubt it will be they who decide which way theelection goes, and perhaps the culture war too.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipChinese babiesThe golden pig cohortFeb 8th 2007 | BEIJINGFrom The Economist print editionAs China enters an auspicious year, the birth rate is expected to soarEPAHOSPITALS across China are bracing themselves for what is expected to be a surge of babies born in theyear of the pig, which starts on February 18th.
Pig years, which occur every 12 years, are consideredauspicious. But the coming one, or so many believe, will be especially fortunate since it is not just a pigbut a golden pig, the first in 60 or even 600 years, depending on which astrologer one consults.China's state-owned media have carried numerous stories of gynaecologists struggling to cope withunusual numbers of expectant women.
Life Times, a weekly newspaper, quoted an official as saying thatBeijing alone could see 170,000 births this year, 50,000 more than in 2006 (quite an auspicious yearitself). The increase is partly the result of a mini-baby boom in the 1980s, which was in turn caused by aboom two decades earlier. But officials say the golden pig has much to answer for.In recent years, Hong Kong has become a magnet for urban Chinese women trying to evade China's strictone-child policy and enjoy better standards of hospital care (often free since many leave without payingtheir bills). But those hoping for a golden pig baby in Hong Kong will face difficulties. To stem the influx,Hong Kong introduced new rules on February 1st requiring mainland women who are more than sevenmonths pregnant to prove they have a hospital booking in the territory before they can cross the border.China's top family-planning official, Zhang Weiqing, said lastmonth that given the current bulge in the number of peoplereaching childbearing age, the government would not relax itsone-child policy.
This will probably mean that the golden pig'simpact on the birth rate will be followed by a correction once theauspicious period is over (next year is also being tipped as lucky,what with the Olympics and all).But problems are bound to arise as the golden pig cohort reachesschool age. In some parts of China, children born in 2000, the yearof the dragon (also very auspicious, as suggested by the chart),are already facing stiffer than usual competition for places.
InShanghai last week, deputies to the local legislature's advisorybody called on city planners to start taking account of auspiciousyears when considering education demand. They also appealed tocitizens to abandon superstition, but that is much less likely to beheeded.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipRussia and the Middle EastThe bear is happy to be backFeb 8th 2007 | CAIROFrom The Economist print editionDavid SimondsClever diplomacy has brought Russia back into the regional power gameAS RUSSIA'S president heads to the Middle East this week, the former KGB lieutenant-colonel may relishthe fact that, here at least, his country is recouping some of its cold-war losses.
Vladimir Putin's Russia isstill less of a player than it was. It no longer has a network of Soviet client states. It does not baldlychallenge Western interests by backing revolutionary forces and flexing its own military might. But MrPutin has exploited the decline in American prestige, brought about by, among other things, the Iraqimorass and the poisonous issue of Israel and Palestine. So he may find it easier to reinsert Russia as acounterweight to the lone superpower.In some ways, last summer's fight between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbullah echoed thecold war: a clash between proxy forces that tested armaments and tactics.
While Israel's Americansupplied gadgetry was far more lethal, Hizbullah's Russian weapons were effective too. Its anti-tankmissiles knocked out scores of Israel's armoured vehicles.Russia is not a direct sponsor of Hizbullah. The Shia militia smuggled its arms via Syria and Iran, statesthat are now Russia's customers rather than strategic allies. Confronted with evidence of unauthorised“leakage” of arms to Hizbullah, Russia is said to have quietly apologised to Israel and promised to tightencontrols.
Given that Israel is home to 1m Russian-speakers, the Kremlin is keen to keep on friendlyterms with the Jewish state.Yet it is also content to reap gains from the impression that it opposes America's overweening power.After Russia secured a $7.5 billion deal to supply Algeria with fighter aircraft, tanks and anti-aircraftmissiles, its army chief of staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, recently echoed Mr Putin, saying that the Americaneffort to create “a unipolar world” was fomenting crisis. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told anArab newspaper earlier this month that Russia has returned to the world as a strong and confidentpower.
This, he said pointedly, is “an important factor on the path to restoring balance in world affairsand on moving towards ensuring stability and predictability rather than chaos.”At this week's meeting of the Quartet, a club of Russia, America, the EU and the UN which is meant topush Palestinians and Israelis towards peace, Mr Lavrov publicly sparred with Condoleezza Rice,America's secretary of state. Referring to America's policy of shunning Hamas, the Islamist party thatwon last year's Palestinian elections, he said it was counterproductive to isolate anybody. He laterblamed America for dimming peace prospects by applying a “with us or against us” standard tointerlocutors and called Russia's relations with America troubled.Russia does not have great influence over Arab-Israeli matters.
As American officials happily point out, itcontributes barely 1% of foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. When Mr Putin last year proposedhosting a Middle East peace conference in Moscow, Israel ignored him. Yet Russian diplomacy has usedits clout to great advantage elsewhere in the region.Take Iran's nuclear ambitions, for instance. By posing as the sole major power to take seriously (at leastin public) Iran's protestations that its nuclear programme is innocent, Russia has gained bothcommercially and diplomatically.
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