In preparation for secretive Kim Jong Il's state funeral, planned for an unknown time today (we told you he was secretive!) we asked Tad Farrell (pseudonym) of NKNews, to explain the simularities between this procession and that of Kim's father.

Later today anyone who's anyone in Pyongyang will turn out for the funeral of Kim Jong Il. While Kim's death may have been unexpected, his mourning and burial process seems to be almost identical to that of his father sixteen years ago.

Both Kims underwent an initial mourning period of ten days at Kumsusan Memorial Palace.   Overseeing the mourning, like his father, Kim Jong Un has been wearing almost identical clothing to his own father at Kim Il Sung's funeral  - a dark grey Mao jacket.  Four days after Kim Jong Il's death, the Korean Central News Agency reported that North Korea's successor was distributing food and drink at mourning stations throughout the country, just as his father did sixteen years prior. And KCNA released almost matching coroner's reports within hours of reporting the deaths.  In 1994 and 2011, causes of death were similarly reported as "acute myocardial infarction", following "heavy mental strains" in Kim seniors' case, complemented by "a great ... physical strain" in Kim juniors' case.  The goal: to show the deaths had been brought on by the toil of working to bring about improvement for the North Korean people. 

Fast-forward a day or two past death, and reports in both cases emerged of natural wonders occurring throughout the country.  In Kim Il Sung's case, violent storms at North Korea's legendary Mount Paekdu and "rivers that were crying because of the sorrow".  For Kim Jong Il, news of similar "natural wonders" included a series of "blue flashes accompanied by thunder", unseasonal snowfall, and most recently, willows sprouting out of season in revolutionary sites.  Will the funeral of Kim Jong Il follow the same formula as that of Kim Il Sung, complete with glass coffin, motorcade, and the world's largest display of uncontrollable grief? Stay tuned.

South Korea has a problem: Energy demand is outpacing energy supply, and the country could face debilitating electricity shortages this winter (a surge in consumption during an unseasonably hot September already caused widespread blackouts). But, fortunately, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who's already constructed additional power plants and imposed new power-saving regulations, has an unorthodox, deeply personal solution. In a radio address on Monday, Lee informed South Koreans that he has taken to wearing thermal underwear after lowering the thermostat in his office.

"Naturally, I had to wear warmer underwear which was uncomfortable initially," Lee explained, according to the Yonhap News Agency. "But after a while, I got used to it, and now I am very warm and comfortable wearing it." Having resolved any outstanding confusion over the comfort of his underwear, Lee issued a challenge to South Koreans:

We can save energy beyond our expectations if we lower the temperature in houses and offices a little, turn off unnecessary lights during the night and use high-efficiency electric appliances. I urge businesses, civic organizations and the general public to participate in this campaign voluntarily.

Lee may be thinking outside the box, but he has an intellectual forebear. In 1977, a cardigan-clad Jimmy Carter informed Americans that if they would only keep their thermostats at "65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night," America "could save half the current shortage of natural gas." Carter, who would later install solar panels on the White House roof, was trying to develop a national energy policy in the wake of an exceptionally cold winter that had depleted supplies of oil and natural gas.

But the exercise in lead-by-example, micromanaged energy conservation fueled ridicule more than anything else. In 2009, for example, an op-ed in the Tulsa World claimed that "Carter's sweater" was "haunting the discussion" of energy conservation, making it "permanently associated with malaise and discomfort." Here's some footage from Carter's 1977 speech (the part about thermostats comes right after the end of the clip):

Perhaps South Koreans will look back on Monday, November 28 as the day the country got serious about energy conservation. Or, of course, they may remember it as the day South Koreans started making fun of Lee Myung-bak's long underwear.

Ulan Bator is funding a $730,000 ‘ice shield' initiative to counterbalance urban heat island effect and global warming and to lighten up the city's air conditioning bill. The experiment is sort of like a scotch on the rocks, except instead of scotch it's Mongolia, and instead of one cube or two it's the artificially super-frozen Tuul river. The hope is that a giant ice sheet --  known as a naled -- will store the winter's cold and cool the city through the hot months to come.

At the end of November, the engineers of the Mongolian ECOS & EMI firm will begin recreating the natural naled-forming process by drilling holes through the ice covering the river Tuul. This will allow water to rise through the ice sheet in the warmer daytime temperatures and spread across its surface. Then the new layers will freeze during the nights and create an ever thickening ice shelf.

While naleds have served industrial applications before, as military bridges in North Korea or as platforms for drilling in Russia, the Ulan Bator climate experiment is unprecedented. But if the Tuul successfully cools down the spring and summer as it gradually melts, providing water and a hospitable microclimate, the practice may become more common in places like Mongolia where the environmental conditions are right.

Worst comes to worst, with Winter Olympics only two years away, Mongolia's figure skaters have a new place to practice in the summer.

It's been a very public few days for Kim Jong Il's 16-year-old grandson, Kim Han Sol.

On Friday, the United World College's (UWC) Bosnia-Herzegovina campus, one of 13 UWC international schools globally, announced Kim Han Sol's acceptance. Board chairman David Sutcliffe explained that the decision "understandably generated surprise and comment, some of it critical." But, echoing the school's mission statement, he went on to say that the UWCs "exist in order to cross new frontiers in international education.… The opportunity of taking a first step in bringing North Korea into the international community, through youth, is one to be cherished."

Three days after the UWC announcement, the Korean Daily News discovered what's believed to be Han Sol's Facebook page as well as the page of his father, Kim Jong Il's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam. If it is really him, then one picture shows Han sporting dyed blond hair and posing with a girlfriend. His favorite movie, according to the page, is Love Actually. Notably for the grandson of one of the world's most brutal tyrants, the page includes an encyclopedia definition of democracy. He also reportedly polled his friends on whether they preferred it to communism, as he did.

In this way, Kim Han Sol would resemble his father, whose talk of reform within North Korea (and being caught with a fake passport with the name "Fat Bear" en route to Tokyo Disney Land) cost him his position in line for the throne. Kim Jong Nam has lived in exile in China and Macau since 2001. What's believed to be his own Facebook page criticizes both his father and the North Korean establishment including his half brother, heir apparent Kim Jong Un.

In any event, it doesn't seem like there's much future for Kim Han Sol in the family business.

Chinese ambitions in Africa have been no secret to Western policymakers. In the past 7 years, Beijing has devoted over $14 billion dollars to Africa, through a mixture of aid for resources packages and direct investment. However, the outcome of this weekend's Zambian presidential election could be an indication that the policy is beginning to backfire. Four-time candidate, and former train station sweeper Michael "King Cobra" Sata, was confirmed as the winner last Friday.

The Global Post reports:

Sata referred to Chinese investors as "infesters." He called for Chinese migrant workers to be expelled from Zambia. And he described Taiwan as a country, breaching Beijing's obsessive "one China" policy, which considers Taiwan a rogue province rather than an independent nation. China threatened to cut ties with Zambia if Sata won.

China responded to Banda's defeat with the same pragmatism as it had toward the loss of friendly regimes in South Sudan and Libya: It tried to befriend the new boss.

"As a friendly country of Zambia, China respects the Zambian people's choice and would like to work with Zambia to promote friendship and expand mutually beneficial cooperation across the board," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.

But privately, the Chinese government must be worried. Sata has said he may implement capital controls aimed at keeping foreign-exchange earnings in Zambia, Africa's biggest copper producer and a country that has seen strong economic growth averaging 6 percent over the last three years. Foreign-exchange controls would prevent Chinese companies from sending their profits home to China.

China relies extensively on its investment and foreign aid apparatus to bolster its soft power on the continent. A white paper released this past April by the Chinese government went into more detail about the different components and extent of their operations. A significant portion of the monies are channeled through various Chinese state owned corporations and banks to the countries that they have ties with, including resources hubs Angola, D.R Congo, Sudan, and Zambia.

It will also trouble China Inc., as the election served as a vote of no confidence against their existing projects within the country. As the Economist covered in April, the reputation of Chinese companies has been slowly crumbling with the regular reports of poor working conditions, routine bribery and environmental damage. In Zambia, a Chinese built road was washed away by rainfall.

While Sata's election will not deter  the Chinese from further investing in Zambia, it could signal the beginning of a trend in African politics for candidates to run on anti-Chinese platforms.  Much in the way that prominent Latin American leaders such as Hugo Chavez ran on U.S-bashing platforms, African countries could see the beginnings of a similar type of movement to protest the wider abuses stemming from Chinese involvement. How it affects further economic relations will be seen in the coming months.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il traveled to Russia this week, his first visit to his country's former Cold War ally in nine years. Kim rode an armored train to eastern Siberia to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, crossing the Russian border on Sunday, Aug. 21, touring the Bureyskaya hydroelectric power station, and meeting with Medvedev on Wednesday. Medvedev flew 3,500 miles across Russia to a Siberian military base for the meeting.

Kim promised Medvedev a moratorium on the production and testing of nuclear weapons, a move that could help restart nuclear disarmament talks, stalled in 2009. North Korea has been isolated both economically and diplomatically since March 2009, when it conducted a second nuclear weapons test. Both the United States and South Korea demand concrete action from North Korea before they return to the six-party talks.

Kim's weeklong trip to Russia is also expected to focus on trade talks and gaining economic and political support from Russia. North Korea is facing chronic food shortages and factory closures thanks to punishing international sanctions. Russia pledged 50,000 tons of wheat to North Korea and also discussed energy and infrastructure projects, including a pipeline carrying Russian gas to South Korea through the North.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Kim is also concerned about the downfall of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and Middle East unrest in general. While North Korean media has not been reporting on the Arab Spring, news of the uprisings has been spread through radios and word of mouth from people who have illegally crossed into China and back. "That dynamic is probably much more alarming to Kim Jong Il than anything else," Lee Jong-min, dean of international studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, told the Monitor. "He's prompted by the need to bolster his power."

Kim has visited China five times since 2002, the year of his last trip to Russia, when he met with then-President Vladimir Putin.

More photos below the jump:

The fallout from this weekend's Chinese bullet train crash -- in which 39 people died when a train was immobilized after being struck by lightning on a bridge, then rammed by another train from behind, derailing several cars -- continued today. The government fired three senior railway officials and is reviewing safety on the country's four-year-old high-speed rail system. While there was justifiable anger at Chinese officials for trying to keep details of the accident out of the public, China's rail safety is far better than that of its fellow emerging economy -- India.

Journalist Lloyd Lofthouse, compared the numbers going back to 2007 for India, China, and the United States. He found that out of the 177 rail accidents during that period, 20 percent of them actually occurred in the United States, 15 percent occurred in India, and only 4 percent occurred in China. But the death toll in India was far greater.

In the period Lofthouse reviewed, 66 people were killed in U.S. train accidents, about 141 in Chinese accidents, and "hundreds" in Indian rail accidents.

Last year alone, there were at least 17 crashes in India. And, in the past month, three incidents killed more than 100 people. According to Bloomberg News:

In the early hours of July 7, 38 people were killed and at least as many injured when a train collided with a bus carrying members of a wedding party at an unmanned level crossing in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Then, on July 10, at least 68 people were killed and more than 250 injured when 15 bogies of the Howrah-Kalka Mail careered off the tracks, again in Uttar Pradesh, while the train was travelling at more than  60 miles per hour. That evening, six coaches of the Guwahati-Puri Express derailed in Assam after a bomb was set off on the tracks, injuring more than 100 people.

India has one of the largest railway system in the world, carrying about 19 million passengers every day on about 7,000 trains. It's called the "lifeline to the nation." Unfortunately, that often means trains are jam packed.

 

 

 

 

 

Given the spate of recent crashes, anger has mounted against the government-run system. Newspapers have editorialized about the system's persistent safety failures and "systemic decay."

The Deccan Chronicle, an Indian paper, said the increasingly accident-prone system could be blamed on the addition of "more trains on nearly every route, mainly to suit the whims or political compulsions of railway ministers, and raising their speed without commensurate upgrading of tracks and other equipment needed to bear the extra load." The Times of India wrote that the railway authority "failed to meet targets it had set for itself in the corporate safety plan ... indicating the low priority it gave to passenger safety." According to the Indian Express, "There is a real danger that the frequency of train accidents in India might soon desensitize people as ‘yet another' instance of what has become thoughtlessly, mind-numbingly commonplace."

Part of the problem is politicians have tried to keep fares as low as possible to keep voters happy, which has turned the system into a "financial disaster," according to the Indian Express, meaning trains are old and not properly cared for -- a deadly combination.

In a challenge to China's controversial one-child policy, a regional leader has asked for permission from the central government to relax the policy in his area. Earlier this month, Zhang Feng, the head of Guangdong's population commission, requested that some families be allowed to have a second child (specifically families in which one of the parents is an only child). Surprisingly, a similar baby-step implemented two years ago in Shanghai -- under which parents who were both single children were allowed, and even encouraged, to have two children -- did not lead to a surge in additional kids. Many parents cited financial and time concerns as their rationale for limiting themselves to one child. Even Zhang Feng admitted in an interview with the Southern Metropolis News, a state-run paper in Guangdong, that "to allow the new policy will have little overall impact on population growth."

With a population of more than 104 million, Guangdong is currently China's most populous province. Officials proposed this change in order to combat problems associated with a population that is rapidly aging. Zhang Feng explained that "the increase in population is still a big problem affecting our social and economic development...But in the long-term, aging will also be a problem."

Guangdong also has an important role in a very different method of circumventing the one-child policy. A growing number of mainland mothers use intermediaries -- many of whom are based in Guangdong -- to arrange for them to travel to, and give birth in, nearby Hong Kong, where the one-child policy does not apply.  According to government statistics, in 2010 47% of the babies born in Hong Kong were the children of mainland mothers.

In addition to avoiding fines imposed for disobeying the one-child policy, mothers who give birth in the territory reap a variety of other benefits. For example, their children are automatically considered residents of Hong Kong (although most children return to the mainland with their parents anyway), and as such, can travel abroad more freely. All of this doesn't come cheap however, with prices at public hospitals (where approximately a quarter of the mainland babies are born) between HK$39,000 and HK$48,000 (approximately US$5,000 and US$6,150).  Prices at private hospitals are even higher.

Officials in both Hong Kong and mainland China have expressed concern over this trend. In April, worried that the record influx of mainland mothers would overload their healthcare system, Hong Kong announced that for the rest of the year mainland mothers will be prohibited from signing-up to give birth in public hospitals. The Hong Kong government has also recently restricted the number of spots available to non-locals at public hospitals, from 10,000 in 2011 to only 3,400 for 2012. The government has also considered raising the rates charged at public hospitals. And in Guangdong, members of the family planning committee recently ruled that second children, even those born outside the mainland, must be registered as "additional."

If Guangdong, however, is given permission to enact the proposed reforms to its one-child policy, Hong Kong's moves to say "bye, bye, baby" may not be quite so necessary any more.

Clearly, the best part of yesterday's tense parliamentary session with Rupert and James Murdoch was when Wendi Murdoch leapt up to defend her husband after a spectator splattered a foam pie in his face. She literarily jumped over people to slap the man.

Here's the account of an eyewitness in the room:

What you might not have seen is the full instinctive and furious reaction of Mr Murdoch's wife, Wendi. Having sat through the evidence unsmiling, she moved faster than anyone else. First, she swung a slap at her husband's attacker. She followed up by picking up the plate and trying to strike him with it. And then she moved back to her husband. Sitting on the table before him, she started to clear the foam from his face, sometimes embracing him, holding his bald head in her arms.

If you feel like watching her moves repeated in an endless loop, check this out.

Before today, when most people wrote about Mrs. Murdoch, descriptions like "much younger," "third wife," and "social climber" were pretty much de rigueur. And, along with those phrases came negative connotations, of course. Wendi Murdoch, 43, was born Deng Wen Ge in an isolated eastern Chinese city. Her father was a manager at a nearby factory.  She left for the United States in 1987 after meeting an older American couple in China who agreed to sponsor her. She moved in with them in California and attended college (she also eventually married the husband and became an American citizen).

That marriage fizzled, as did a subsequent one, before she met Murdoch when she was 30 and he was 68. Though she's remained busy -- even producing a movie in China -- her public persona has mainly been the woman standing by Murdoch's side at various events.

So, it was interesting to see some of the reaction in China, where her slap quickly became the number one trending topic on a popular micro-blogging service.

The Nanfang website posted a few translated tweets.

• Deng Wendi is a pearl among women!
• Every woman has to learn from Deng Wendi. Be an original wife; be a good step mother; slap protesters; be good in social accessions as well as in the kitchen. She's cunning on the inside and strong on the outside. Act like a tiger woman! Holy cow!
• Deng Wendi is so strong and aggressive! I highly doubt she directed the whole scene to show it to Murdoch! Otherwise, her reaction was unbelievably fast, and she was so brave!
• Mrs Deng Wendi, you are my idol from now on!
• She's a former volleyball player, not an ordinary woman! Whoever fights her will end up losing! That slap just drove up the stock price of News Corp.
• Deng Wendi not only has business wisdom, she is also a good bodyguard! Hey you professionals in the work place, how many skills do you have?
• I am starting to like Deng Wendi now. She is really aggressive! I think her action was out of instinct. She just wants to protect her family. I don't think she lost the faces of Chinese women!

 

Given that less-than-stellar track record, the press is taking a very cautious approach to the latest rumors that former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin has died.

The Internet rumors spread after the 84-year-old Jiang Zemin-- who held power for 12 years before handing control to President Hu Jintao in 2002 -- didn't appear last Friday at a celebration marking the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party's founding. According to the Daily Telegraph, TV stations and newspapers in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea all reported his death, but most outlets are being more careful. 

Today, China's Xinhua News Agency quoted officials calling the reports "pure rumor." Interestingly, they didn't say he hadn't died, said David Lampton, director of the China Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.

Lampton, who made clear he didn't know whether Jiang Zemin was alive or dead -- and didn't want to speculate -- called China's response a "non-denial denial."

"It could be he is close to death and so they don't want to say anything," Lampton said.

Minxin Pei, director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College, agreed. "There must be something to the rumors, he must be ill, but I don't think he's dead yet," he told Foreign Policy. "The Chinese government has never made up lies of that magnitude -- saying someone is alive when they are actually dead."

So if it's true he passed away, why wouldn't they come out and say it?

Lampton said there are a number of possible reasons.

"The regime may be trying to orchestrate how to play his role to the populace," he said. "Because he was in power so long, there are lots of policy issues they need to work through."

"The media systems are less controllable than in the past," said Lampton. "They may want to get their propaganda ducks in a row before making an announcement."

Whatever the case, Chinese Internet censors have gone into overdrive, the Telegraph reports.

"Searches for ‘Jiang Zemin' in Chinese or simply ‘Jiang' ... drew warnings on Sina Corp.'s popular Twitter-like service that said the search was illegal," according to the paper.

Lampton pointed out that the party is also in the midst of planning for Hu Jintao's succession (presumably to Vice President Xi Jinping) and there could be a debate within the party about how to burnish Jiang Zemin's legacy.

"Each generational leader is always fearful of being overshadowed by his predecessor. They don't want to be diminished while you're praising their predecessor." 

 

 

Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor of Utah who crossed party lines to serve as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China, will stand in front of the Statue of Liberty tomorrow and announce he is running for president. Huntsman tends to get both foreign policy types and the cable news political punditocracy fired up -- He's moderate! He's friendly! He speaks Chinese! He worked for Obama! But is he an attractive candidate to anyone else-and most importantly, actual Republican voters?

The poll numbers would seem to suggest Huntsman has a long way to go. He finished dead last in the most recent Rasmussen poll of potential Republican candidates, with only 2 percent of likely voters saying they were inclined to cast their ballot for him. To put that into perspective, Mitt Romney got 33 percent of the vote. Herman Cain -- the pizza guy!-- got 10 percent. Even the option of "some other candidate" scored higher than Huntsman (8 percent).

Of course, this could all change once he's actively campaigning and participating in debates. But the rush to anoint him as a major candidate seems a bit premature. It doesn't help that the White House seems to be trying to kill him with kindness. Over the weekend Obama advisor David Axelrod told CNN "I think he's a very bright, fluent person." He said Huntsman's criticisms of the president were surprising because "he was very effusive about what the president was doing" when they talked in the past.

While Huntsman's ability to run the conservative gauntlet and seize the Republican nomination is still up for debate, China hands who have dealt with him and studied his tenure as U.S. envoy to Beijing give him high marks -- both diplomatically and politically.

"In terms of knowledge and diplomatic skills, I'd regard him as one of the best ambassadors we had," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution who met with Huntsman on several occasions in Beijing. "I thought he was very good. He related effectively to Chinese audiences. Part of that is he speaks Chinese well, but he also had a cultural sensitivity. I saw him when I made trips there. He was always on top of key issues."

Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China relations at the Asia Society, said he was also well-liked by the embassy staff.

"He is a very smart guy, quick on his feet, and he has a certain candor," he said. "We'll see if that remains when he starts campaigning."

Schell confirmed that his ability to speak Chinese opened doors for him in the country.

"He would go out in front of Chinese audiences-- he was a bit of a trained bear act. The Chinese adore anyone who can speak Chinese," he said.

If there was one discordant note to Huntsman's tenure as ambassador, it occurred when he got embroiled in a controversy about democratic reform in China near the end of his tour. There was a small pro-democracy demonstration outside a McDonalds in Beijing back in February and Huntsman showed up. He denied he was there to observe the demonstration, saying he was just in the wrong placed at the wrong time, but it caused some ripples in the Chinese government, which always suspected the United States was pushing a pro-democracy agenda, Lieberthal said.   

His last public talk as ambassador in April on the topic of U.S.-China relations also caused some controversy due to his specific criticisms of China human rights cases. He referenced imprisoned artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and said, "The United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur."

Could he have been setting himself up for a White House run by burnishing his bona fides on human rights issues and pushing a get-tough message? White House aides now say despite his past denials that he was considering a campaign in 2012, they suspect he had not always been straight with them about his political aspirations, according to the New York Times.

Beyond that, some critics say he has also already begun backpedaling on issues he once promoted, like climate change policy.

"My impression is he is an honorable man," said Schell. "We'll see whether the campaign will allow him to continue being an honorable man."

He does have one major thing going for him. In a sea of political bores, he is exciting. And people who have met with him say he has political skills that might surprise many.

"One time I brought a group of [Americans] to the embassy to meet with him,' said Lieberthal, who previously served in the Clinton administration. "There were seven people there besides me. He went around the table. It took him less than 30 seconds literally to establish some direct connection with each person. It reminded me of Clinton's skill on that level. He's the kind of politician who never forgets a name, never forgets a face."

A little Clinton magic couldn't hurt when you're at 2 percent in the polls.

In 2008, Yu Keping, the head of China's Central Compilation and Translation Bureau and a professor at Peking University, published an attention-grabbing collection of essays called Democracy is a Good Thing. Coming from a Chinese Communist Party official said to be close to President Hu Jintao, Yu's bold assertion that "democracy is the best political system for humankind" was striking. But so was the fine print: Yu argued in the book that while "it is the inevitable trend for all nations of the world to move towards democracy ... the timing and speed of the development of democracy and the choice of the form and system of democracy are conditional." Among other things, he has resisted the idea that a multi-party political system would be appropriate for China. All of which is to say that Yu is something of a sphinx: As a New York Times profile observed last year, "Even China experts have a hard time determining whether Mr. Yu is a brave voice for change or simply a well-placed shill."

Which makes Yu -- who is in Washington this week -- a particularly interesting person to ask about the current moment in Chinese politics, in which the Communist Party is managing the transition from Hu to his presumed presidential successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, while watching the sudden explosion of anti-government, pro-democratic sentiment in the Arab world with palpable unease. The Chinese government began cracking down on human rights activists, artists, and writers in March, and barred another prominent writer from leaving the country this week.

The most interesting moment in an otherwise subdued -- dare I say dull -- press conference by U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao came when a Bloomberg reporter insisted that Hu answer a fellow journalist's question about human rights.

Hu, blaming the translation, claimed he hadn't heard the question (to audible titters among the assembled press corps). He went on to give China's standard answer on human rights, which is basically, "Blah blah we've always respected human rights (yet we're also improving), China faces unique circumstances as a developing country, we favor dialogue, etc."

He also said that "China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights," which caught the ear of New York Times reporter Michael Wines, who sees the remark as "a palpable shift for a government that has staged a two-year crackdown on internal dissent and imprisoned a Nobel laureate."

"Until Wednesday," Wines continues, "recognizing credos like democracy and human rights as 'universal values' had been all but taboo in Chinese political discourse, although China has signed the United Nations convention that enshrines the principle of universal human rights."

Not so, points out Forbes correspondent Gady Epstein, who passes along this Washington Post article from 2009, which discusses China's submission (pdf) to a U.N. review panel:

"China respects the principle of the universality of human rights," the document states. But it adds: "Given differences in political systems, levels of development and historical and cultural backgrounds, it is natural for countries to have different views on the question of human rights."

That's almost exactly what Hu said. I suppose it's different when the president himself says so with all the eyes of the world upon him, but let's not kid ourselves about whether China has made some profound new commitment to human rights and democracy. For all its very real successes in promoting development, the Chinese Communist Party has no intention of relinquishing its stranglehold on political power anytime soon, if ever. Wake me up when they stop throwing political prisoners in jail, beating people in the streets, censoring the press, and generally evincing little regard for the Chinese people's ability to chart their own future.

Almost every day, there's a completely bonkers, factually dubious story in the South Korean press about North Korea (which admittedly is a pretty strange place). Today is no exception. Here's Joong Ang Daily with an article about how a train supposedly bearing birthday gifts for Kim Jong-un, the heir to the Kim family dynasty, went off the rails:

The train was comprised of more than 40 train coaches, and eight of them were derailed, the radio station [Open Radio for North Korea] reported. The train was filled with presents for Jong-un’s upcoming birthday, which falls on Jan. 8, including luxury goods such as wristwatches and televisions in bulk, it said.

And here's a story in Yonhap, the South Korean wire agency, about the latest consumer crazes up north:

Skinny jeans, blue crabs, pig-intestine rolls and even human manure were some of the hottest items among North Korean consumers this year, according to a South Korean professor who has interviewed recent defectors from the communist country.

Kim Young-soo, a political science professor at Seoul's Sogang University, said in a conference on Tuesday that adult movies, television dramas and instant noodle "ramen" made in South Korea are also selling "like hot cakes" in North Korea.