http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-industrial-output-retail-sales-disappoint-2013-04-29
By Michael Kitchen
Japan industrial output, retail sales disappoint
NEW
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Japan's industrial production slowed its growth in March, while retail sales fell further, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry reported Tuesday, with both numbers missing forecasts. Industrial production rose 0.2% from the previous month, cooling from February's 0.6% rise and a 0.3% gain for January. Separate Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters polls of economists had called for a 0.4% advance. Chemicals was the top performing segment, followed by electronic parts and devices, the ministry said. A survey of manufacturers included with each month's data showed slightly better expectations for April, with a projected 0.8% gain in industrial output, up from last month's forecast for a 0.6% April rise. Other data showed retail sales fell 0.3% in March from a year earlier, though large-scale retailers swung to a 2.4% gain. In February, overall sales had dropped 2.2%, while those for large retailers tumbled 3.7%. The Reuters poll had predicted a 0.6% gain for total retail sales.
http://apdforum.com/en_GB/article/rmiap/articles/online/features/2013/04/29/senkaku-tensions-rise
Senkaku Islands tensions escalate between Japan, China
2013-04-29
![Senkaku Islands: A Japanese activist waves his country’s flag at sunrise as flotilla approaches the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea last August. [AFP]](http://apdforum.com/shared/images/2013/04/29/senkaku-tensions-rise.jpg)
A small cluster of uninhabited, undeveloped islands continues to raise provocations between Japan and China.
The two countries cannot even agree on what to call the East China Sea islands. In Japan, they are the Senkaku Islands while in China they are the Diaoyutai Islands.
China recently accused Japan of raising tensions in the region by nearly doubling the number of scrambles by Japanese fighter jets – 306 times between March 2012 and March 2013, up from 156 in the previous year – to monitor and observe China’s own air patrols near the disputed territory.
While China said its fighters do come near the islands, it claims those same planes have strayed into Japanese airspace just once – and insists that occurred inadvertently.
“We all know Japan has continuously provoked and escalated tensions over the Diaoyutais,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters during a news conference last week in Beijing. “What Japan needs to do is not send more planes, but show sincerity and action and talk with China.”
The only way to resolve the ongoing conflict, Chunying said, was for the two countries to enter into dialogue and negotiations, as well as China’s insistence that Japan at least acknowledge that ownership of the islands is in dispute.
Japan has thus far refused to do either.
Compounding the situation even more was the April 22 incursion of eight ships from China’s State Oceanic Administration into the 12-nautical mile zone of Japanese territorial waters near the islands. The incident represents the most Chinese ships to be in the area at any one time and in any one day since Tokyo’s nationalization of the area last September.
While the ships proceeded peacefully through the waters, they were observed by several Japanese Coast Guard ships nearby as well as fighter planes in the skies above.
“It is extremely deplorable and unacceptable that Chinese government ships are repeatedly entering Japanese territorial waters,” Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters in a news conference about the incident. “We have made a firm protest against China both in Beijing and Tokyo.”
Chinese officials claimed it sent its ships into the area because of a flotilla of 10 fishing boats filled with as many as 80 members of the Japanese nationalist group Ganbare Nippon in the same waters.
Chunying called the nationalists’ incursion illegal and troublemaking, although the nationalists said they were simply surveying the fishing waters in the area, Japan Daily Press reported.
It was the third time in the past year that the nationalists have come to the area to survey.
Why are the islands coveted?
China, Japan and Taiwan all claim the Senkakus, an archipelago of five small and uninhabited islands and three other minor land masses referred to as rocks.
From a commercial standpoint, the islands have little value. However, they lay within important and active shipping lanes, are surrounded by fertile fishing areas and sit atop what are believed to be lucrative deposits of both oil and other minerals, which heretofore have not been mined or drilled.
While China claims sovereignty over the islands dating back to the 14th century, Japan maintained control over the islands from 1895 through the end of World War II. At that time, the United States assumed control over the disputed land as part of the World War II settlement treaty.
The U.S. ceded control back to Japan in 1972, but China has never formally accepted that transaction and has since laid claim to the land, which collectively measures about 1,700 acres.
Geographically, the islands are between Japan’s Okinawa and the Taiwan. While Taiwan is closest to and lays claim to the islands, it has stayed out of the ongoing battle of wills about the islands between China and Japan.
Despite the growing tension, neither side has taken any military actions. Last September, Chinese people protested in several Chinese cities after Japan purchased three of the Senkaku Islands that had been previously held under private ownership.
“Due to the brutal Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s, sentiments over the status of the Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands run deeper in the Chinese psyche than any other territorial dispute in modern Chinese history, with the exception of Taiwan,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report this month.
Both Japan and China have new leaders – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December and Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in March.
“Despite expressions by both governments that they wish to avoid a war, potential for escalation has increased and there is deepening pessimism on both sides over the prospects of a peaceful settlement,” the ICG report noted. “Tokyo and Beijing urgently need to work toward establishing communication mechanisms and strengthening crisis mitigation in order to avoid a larger conflict.”
While Jinping is known for moderate views of governing, Abe threatened to expel the Chinese ships from Japanese waters by force during the most recent incident, according to the Japan Daily Press.
Abe continued to take a hardline stance during an April 23 meeting of the Upper House Budget committee.
“There is no room to negotiate since they [the islands] are inherent parts of Japan’s territory,” Abe told committee members. “It is only to be expected that we would forcibly expel people if they tried to land on the islands.”
Abe then announced that after nearly 17 years of on-and-off negotiations, Japan had reached agreement with Taiwan on April 10 about the use of fishing waters around the Senkakus.
“We took into account Taipei’s stance that [it] will not partner with Beijing over the Senkaku Islands,” Abe said.
Flotilla forces meeting cancellation
South Korea was drawn into the China-Japan fray, joining China in criticizing Japanese officials for a recent visit to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo.
One day before the Chinese ships sailed near Senkaku to observe the 10-ship flotilla of Japanese nationalists, according to China’s Foreign Ministry, Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and two other Cabinet members visited Yasukuni on the opening of its annual spring festival.
The next day nearly 170 members of the Japanese Parliament also visited the shrine, the largest multipartisan group to pay tribute there since at least 1987, according toThe Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s five national newspapers.
The shrine honors Japanese soldiers and 14 convicted war criminals killed during the conflict with China and South Korea in the 1930s and 1940s that preceded and then included the South Pacific portion of World War II.
For China or South Korea, the shrine visits brought back bitter memories of what occurred 70 to 80 years ago.
South Korean foreign ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young criticized the Japanese legislators’ visit to the shrine, claiming it opened old wounds from prior occupation and conflict with the peninsula nation.
“Some claim views on history can differ, but I would like to emphasize that what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong,” Tai-Young said.
“To create the proper atmosphere for South Korea, China and Japan to engage in talks, Tokyo should not further test the patience of neighboring nations,” South Korea’s largest newspaper, Dong-A Ilbo, wrote in an editorial.
South Korea Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se canceled a scheduled trip for meetings with Japanese officials, according to Japan Daily Press.
Seoul subsequently canceled its annual summit with Japan and China in late May, partly because of Japan’s actions and partly because of China’s reluctance to attend because of the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkakus.
“Japan’s channel for a dialogue is always open,” Abe responded, according to The Asahi Shimbun.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201304270049
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