With reports this week that Pakistan is preparing to shift its strategy and launch an offensive against the Taliban’s key stronghold in South Waziristan, I thought now would be a good time to get an update from our Pakistan correspondent, Mustafa Qadri, on the unfolding situation there:

“The local network of Taliban is continuing its brutal suicide attacks throughout the north western frontier of the country, despite the loss of overall leader, Baitullah Mehsud. These include a string of bloody bombings in the centre of Peshawar, the political and economic hub of the region, and a police station near the Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan that left at least 16 dead and scores of others injured.

“The Pakistan Army has been pushing with its advance into regions, like Swat and Orakzai Tribal Agency, formerly occupied by the Taliban. But in Washington, there’s continued disaffection at Pakistan’s performance, particularly with respect to Afghan Taliban based in its territory. Credible newspaper reports recently claimed that senior US officials threatened to expand the controversial drone missile attacks to Quetta, the dusty capital of Pakistan's thinly populated but resource rich southern province of Balochistan.”

Mustafa has spent a lot of time in the region in the last year, including in the Swat valley area, where he met with refugees fleeing the fighting. He’s putting a story together for The Diplomat on his experiences in the camps.

But in the meantime, he offers this interesting insight into US strategy across the border in Afghanistan.

“Although top military commanders want to expand troop numbers, the White House is after quite the opposite – more focused, counter-insurgency operations using greater airpower and remote military assets and less boots on the ground”, he says.

“Once the political drama surrounding the disputed presidential elections dies down, expect a tapering down of US victory conditions away from state building and towards security and stabilisation -- if this hasn't already started. In effect, this will mean making deals with those Taliban commanders willing to cease hostilities in exchange for a negotiated settlement of their grievances while simultaneously hunting down those other insurgents, and members of al-Qaeda, that are seen as too dangerous to be left alone.”

The huge Chinese National Day parade has ended in style. Just a couple of hours ago, tens of thousands of colorful balloons were reportedly released into the sky to close the official festivities at Tiananmen Square.

And in the meantime, we are left imagining the sorts of unofficial celebrating that could be going on as the nation marks the big 6-0. Images of beer kegs being cracked open at boisterous parties across China, like a US July 4th, are a bit far-fetched perhaps…or are they?

Some studies on global beer consumption numbers, such as one conducted by Japan’s Kirin Holdings Co., report that China’s beer consumption has topped the global chart for years.

A recent article in the Beijing Review confirms this:

“China's beer output grew 6 percent year on year to 20.5 million kiloliters in the first half of 2009, leading to the country's eighth straight title as the world's largest beer producer and consumer.”

Also noted is that, “A record 3.7 million tourists were attracted to Qingdao for this year's 19th Qingdao International Beer Festival. Visitors drank 1,065 tons of beer.”

There must be something about that beer to manage a turnout like that. The most popular brands of domestic brew are Tsingtao and Zhujiang – and if you manage to find a bottle in your area, that means there’s still time to take part in the festivities.   

Chinese officials must have been delighted with the weather today for the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, with sunshine apparently beaming down on the largest-ever parade of its military hardware.


Security was extremely tight, with potential flashpoints like Tibet apparently receiving extra attention. These measures extended to the Internet, with IDG News’ Owen Fletcher reporting that they included:


“[A] crackdown this month on online tools that help users circumvent the ‘Great Firewall,’ the set of technical measures China uses to filter the Internet, according to providers of the tools.”

And, according to our China correspondent, Kathleen McLaughlin, the triumph over ‘all sorts of difficulties’ that President Hu Jintao talked about today when addressing the parade from the top of Tiananmen Gate also includes victory over mother nature.

“Just twelve hours before the People's Republic of China's 60th birthday party was slated to begin, Beijing's skies were thick with soupy smog. But when the day broke over Tiananmen Square and the People's Liberation Army began its massive show of hardware and patriotism, skies were clear and blue,” she said.

“Nothing was left to chance for the 60th anniversary party, not even the weather. State media says Chinese military fired rain-making agents into the clouds the night before to create a cleansing storm. It worked, and the brilliant blue skies provided a stunning backdrop to the parade, which seemed at times a spectacle choreographed by North Koreans.

Along with the latest in military hardware, including missiles that can reach the United States, the three-plus hour parade included 60 floats, happy ethnic minorities and singing schoolchildren. Were one to view China only through its National Day parade, it might indeed seem a harmonious society.”

As China busies itself preparing for tomorrow’s 60th anniversary celebrations, one of its most notorious artists is recovering from brain surgery in a hospital bed in Munich.

Ai Weiwei was reportedly brutalized and detained by Beijing police back in August for his presence at a friend’s trial. It is not known whether the brain hemorrhage is linked to his injuries from that incident.

Notable Ai Weiwei facts:

-He is a conceptual artist, photographer, architectural designer and outspoken activist.

-Ai maintains five blogs and a Twitter account with over 8000 followers. He has said of his intentions: ‘I do my blog because this is the only possible channel through which a person can express a personal opinion in China.’

-The Beijing native spent the 1980s and early 90s living in the US and attended the prestigious Parsons School of Design in NY.

-He was raised in a labour camp when his father, poet Ai Qing was sentenced to ‘reeducation through labour’ by the government.

-Ai was the art consultant for the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics (although he has publicly voiced criticism for the event).

-Ai has posted scandalous semi-nude photos of himself to protest internet censorship (on his blog, now mysteriously inaccessible). Luckily (?), you can still view them here.

Having raised the issue of disputed territory in Asia yesterday, I thought it would be interesting to get an on-the-ground take on another dispute that has been simmering just below the headlines in Asia lately, between China and India.

Tensions sparked by accusations over border incursions and troop deployments along the Himalayan border between the two are being stoked by Indian media outlets (who have apparently been slapped down by the government) and a semi-official Chinese think tank that suggested in August that India should be split up.

I asked our India correspondent Madhav Nalapat for his view on the dispute. He told me:

“Although the territory occupied by the respective militaries since the 1962 Sino-Indian border war is a settled fact, thus far the PRC has refused repeated Indian requests for a formal agreement on the (so-called) Line of Actual Control that separates China from India. The reasons are (a) the desire of Beijing to keep a bargaining chip in future negotiations with India on the Dalai Lama issue and (b) the advantage an unsettled border gives to Pakistan, by necessitating the stationing of several divisions of troops along the Sino-Indian border that could otherwise potentially get shifted to the Indo-Pakistan border.

Thus far, thirteen rounds of high-level boundary talks have taken place between the PRC and India, each of which has foundered on Chinese insistence on more land.

Such obduracy has given oxygen to those policymakers in India who seek to join Japan and the US in a PRC-facing alliance. Unless both the Dalai Lama and the boundary issues get amicably settled between India and China, tensions between the two giants of Asia are likely to continue, and (in a post-Obama administration) eventually lead to an Asian version of NATO that combines the US, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore and Australia in a military alliance that would dwarf the power of the PLA for decades to come.”

Madhav is also putting together a piece for The Diplomat on India-Taiwan relations – a further twist to an already complicated issue. Indian policymakers including National Security Advisor M K Narayanan have been careful not to add fuel to the fire. But tamping media and blogosphere hype is no easy task for any country.

Nothing exciting to report on the trilateral meeting in Seoul yesterday of foreign ministers from China, Japan and South Korea. But what WILL be interesting to see is if Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama can keep up the impressive diplomatic pace he has been running at when he visits Seoul next month to meet South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Hatoyama won praise at home for his bold UN climate change speech and early meeting with Hu Jintao in New York last week. Indeed, his international overtures started before he was even elected, with a pledge not to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, in contrast to some of his predecessors who have infuriated China by doing so. Of course this is only a gesture, but it’s an important one that will mean Japan avoids unnecessarily giving China a diplomatic stick with which to beat it.

But welcome though these moves are, they won’t replace some kind of lasting agreement on the territorial issues that dog Japan and its two neighbors -- with China over the disputed joint gas-development project in the East China Sea and South Korea over disputed islets (known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan). The dangers on the latter especially were made clear when I spoke last year with leading Korea watcher L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. He offered the following advice:

‘If Japan thinks about this in terms of its national interests, this is not the Northern Territories (dispute with Russia), it is not Senkaku, there are not oilfields. If Japan is thinking about its role in the region then Japan ought to be big on this issue and ought to make a move to resolve it.’

Question now is if Hatoyama’s honeymoon will allow him some space domestically to make some tough international decisions.

A mention in an article I found at Asia Movie Pulse will have fans of Hayao Miyazaki pleased. The 68 year-old Japanese filmmaker, who one writer calls, ‘the most cherished animator in the world,’ is reportedly in discussions with studio staff to make two more feature-length films in the next three years.’ See the full article, which mentions other related Studio Ghibli news, here.

Back when we were university students aspiring to have a worldly sense of humor, a friend and I decided to randomly start sentences with, ‘Well, Mao Zedong said….’ We would insert some outlandish and completely made-up phrase here – the likes of: ‘…A rock is only a stone if it believes it can move a mountain.’

‘I don’t know which outfit to wear tonight!’

‘Well, you know what Mao Zedong once said… “A turtle without its shell is a salamander happy.”’

The point is that we were mistaken. Our inspiration should have actually been a far more ancient Chinese figure, the philosopher Confucius. And our sentences should have been starting with, ‘Well, Confucius said…’ It was Confucius who has gone down in history leaving behind such profound remarks as, ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,’ versus Mao, who is better known for such practical statements as, ‘We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.’

I was reminded of these past silly antics after seeing Confucius making headlines this week in the news…with his family tree. In 2006, females were made eligible to claim Confucian ancestry. Now, on the 2,560th anniversary of his birth, an astounding 2 million have been recognized and documented as descendents of the famous thinker.

Last week I briefly brought up the topic of Australia-Japan relations, namely tensions surrounding their whale-hunting policies. For those of you interested in getting a more in-depth perspective into this on-going issue, have a look at David McNeill’s recent piece here on The Diplomat’s main site. In ‘Whaling Diplomacy,’ David offers some new insights, including the suggestion that ‘Japan’s position on whaling is more complicated than it is presented in Western media.’

I was startled to hear on my BBC world news podcast this morning, that a standard bottle of Jacob’s Creek Australian wine—about $15 US dollars on average in most places I’ve encountered it—costs about $50 US in India. In the last few years there has been some international pressure to lower their tariffs on wine imports, but nearly 400 per cent price increases must mean that India is standing firm.

So the question is: will this really benefit their domestic wine industry? Various sources report that wine is gaining popularity amongst Indians. Wine Review Online says: ‘The Indian wine industry is only 10 years old, but there are already 50 wineries,’ and that, ‘India and China are viewed by many wine experts as the two world markets with the most potential.’ Check out the full article, which also mentions India’s pioneer winery, Sula Vineyards, whose products are available for international distribution. The company even has Facebook and Twitter accounts for its tech-savvy fans.