PanOrient News

"Japan as Number Three... Four... Five"       "P. Ennis: Okinawa Problem Could Boil Over"       "Kan Says Fiscal Consolidation Still Needed"       "FM Okada on Cluster Bomb Treaty"       "Japan Times Gets It Wrong on the SDP"      

Japan as Number Three... Four... Five

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Tokyo -- China's currency regulator, Yi Gang, declared yesterday that his nation had now overtaken Japan as the world's second-largest economy.

More confirmation of this fact will be necessary, but few doubt that this event has either already occurred or else will happen quite soon.

In 2009, China reportedly surpassed the United States as the world's largest energy consumer, and Germany as the world's leading exporter.

For Japan, the glamour of being the world's Number Two economy - a d...

P. Ennis: Okinawa Problem Could Boil Over

Saturday, July 31, 2010

It's now about as "unofficially official" as it can get that the August and November deadlines concerning a Futenma replacement facility on Okinawa will not be met.

Indeed, the political underpinnings of the 2006 bilateral "Roadmap" for realignment of US forces in Japan, of which the relocation of some 8,500 US Marines from Okinawa to Guam and the construction of a Futenma replacement facility are cornerstones, are coming undone in both countries.

The confluence of three events on July...