By Mure Dickie, FT Japan bureau chief

Foreign travel is always a learning experience. The first Asia tour as US president for the usually hyper-capable Barack Obama is a good chance for him to master one important skill needed for diplomacy in the region: how to say the name of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In just about the only duff note in his speech in Tokyo, Obama stumbled badly when his teleprompter reached the bit about Burma, first pausing and then reading it “soo kee?” in a questioning tone. The usual pronunciation is “soo chee”.

Not the end of the world, but hardly helpful given that Obama was trying to show he means business in finding a way to persuade the Burmese regime to release Suu Kyi and liberalise generally.

Nor, on the face of it, is Obama’s “new approach” all that compellingly different from the old. He refreshingly admitted that neither US sanctions nor engagement by others (such as Japan) had succeeded in improving the lives of the Burmese.

So what does Obama have to offer instead? Er, this blend of sanctions and engagement: “We are now communicating directly with the leadership to make it clear that existing sanctions will remain until there are concrete steps toward democratic reform”. Don’t hold your breath.

By Mure Dickie, FT Japan bureau chief

The run-up to Barack Obama’s first visit as president to Tokyo was overshadowed by the 20th anniversary of the Japanese emperor’s enthronement and the recent arrest of one of the nation’s most wanted men, but the trip should at least bring a welcome boost to his book sales.

With Obama scheduled to show off his celebrated rhetorical skills in a major policy speech on Saturday, publisher Asahi Press is hoping for renewed demand for its once-popular bi-lingual collections of his speeches.

Fans and English students sent sales soaring after Obama’s election. In a trend that mirrors Obama’s falling domestic popularity, however, all have since slipped out of the best-seller list.

The passing of Obama passion helps explain why popular attention this week has focused more on the anniversary of Emperor Akihito’s enthronement in 1989 and on the ongoing interrogation of the long-sought suspect in the 2007 killing of a UK woman.

Yet Obama remains popular in East Asia’s most influential democracy. Indeed, a banker at a major Japanese institution jokes that the US should tap the president’s personal brand to help shore up its fiscal foundations by issuing yen-denominated “Obama Bonds”.

“Even Japanese retail [investors] would buy,” the banker says.

Some of his biggest fans hail from the previously little-known city of Obama in central Fukui prefecture. A small group of Obama supporters from Obama city are in Tokyo to welcome him by wearing Hawaiian Aloha shirts and waving a welcome banner.

Inoue Koyoan, president of a food company based in Obama city, expects sales of tribute wheat crackers bearing the president’s image to jump to around 1,000 in November from the 700 to 800 recorded in recent months.

Juichi Hemmi, head of a local brewery that markets President Obama sake is grateful to the president for putting his town on Japan’s mental map – and his own enthusiasm has survived the president’s falling approval rates.

“I think he’s doing his best,” Hemmi says. “I really approve of him for taking on big challenges such as reforming healthcare.”

Lindsay Whipp, FT Tokyo markets correspondent, contributed to this blog

By Mure Dickie, FT Japan bureau chief

Here’s an interesting question ahead of Barack Obama’s arrival in Tokyo on Friday for the first leg of his Asia tour: would Mao Zedong have approved of the US president’s itinerary? Or would he have worried that Obama was not doing enough to make sure that Japan felt loved?

It might be surprising to some, but the late Chinese chairman was an astute observer of the impact that trip scheduling could have on sensitive Japanese sentiment. So much so that he discussed the matter in forceful terms with Henry Kissinger way back in 1971. Continue reading "How would Mao Zedong have seen Obama’s Asia tour?"

By Alan Beattie, FT World Trade Editor

To the usual putdowns of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation - “four adjectives in search of a noun” and “A Perfect Excuse to Chat” - my colleague Kevin Brown has added another ahead of this week’s big meeting: “a grouping that speaks for half the global economy but decides almost nothing”. If anything, this is a mild understatement.

Still, Apec has been doing its best to prove its relevance: here is a paper arguing that Apec members see more trade integration amongst themselves than do non-Apec members. It’s careful not to delineate a firm causal link, and just as well - even as it is the paper verges on blatant goalhanging in inviting us to infer some relationship.

More likely is that Apec was lucky enough to include all the countries (Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, later on China and Vietnam, etc) that organised themselves into the “Factory Asia” disaggregated supply chain - and which was focused on western markets. And not even the actual bilateral trade agreements in the region (as opposed to Apec’s “voluntary” i.e. toothless one) contributed much to that process either (see previous link). Meanwhile,  pace one very vocal advocate, the chances of turning Apec into a proper free trade zone are the square root of Doha.

The best reason for Apec, one east Asian official once confided to me sotto voce, was that it forced the US president to travel to Asia at least once a year. But surely any good CEO visits his biggest suppliers and creditors regularly in any case?

By Geoff Dyer, FT China bureau chief

Barack Obama is preparing to get on Air Force One en route to Japan to start his first presidential visit to Asia. Yet one of the centerpieces of his three days in China, a town-hall style meeting in Shanghai, is also still up in the air.

The White House had hoped the Monday morning forum would be President Obama’s one big chance to try and communicate directly with young Chinese people.

But as of this morning, according to a source familiar with the negotiations, there was still no agreement with the Chinese authorities on who would be present or how the question-and-answer session would work. And, most importantly for the White House, there was also no decision on whether it would be broadcast live on television and on the internet.

There is some precedent here. When Bill Clinton visited China in 1998, he ended up appearing live on radio and television on four separate occasions, including a discussion with then Chinese president Jiang Zemin when they debated religion, human rights and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest movement. An FT report on the Clinton visit noted that by allowing the live broadcasts, “the Chinese government offered tantalising glimpses of prospects of greater political openness”.

Presidential visits always involve last-minute haggling, especially in China. But if the event ends up being cancelled, which my source says is possible, it would be hugely embarrassing to both sides – Obama would look as if he was muffled by his hosts while China would come across as being afraid of its own people.

By Roula Khalaf, the FT’s Middle East editor

It is easy to dismiss Mahmoud Abbas’s decision not to contest the next Palestinian presidential election as a capricious cry for attention.

Since taking the helm of the Palestinian Authority after the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, he has often looked uncomfortable in the job and has frequently threatened to resign.

Under his leadership, the PA has been a far less corrupt administration and one genuinely committed to the peaceful pursuit of an end to Israeli occupation. But it has also presided over the worst divisions in the Palestinian national movement’s history. And its purpose – to negotiate the creation of an independent state – has looked increasingly hopeless.

The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a column hailing “the age of the small state”. I pointed out that the number of independent nations had grown sharply over the past 40 years and that small countries topped many of the international league tables, on everything from gross domestic product-per-capita to peacefulness and “human development”.

But that was then. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the economic and political tide has turned against small nations. Look around Europe and it is the smalls that have fared worst – Iceland, Ireland, the three Baltic states. Iceland has not only suffered a catastrophic economic and banking collapse. It is also being bullied by Britain and the Netherlands into paying back billions lost by their citizens when Icelandic banks collapsed. Membership of the European Union has provided the Irish and the Balts with some protection from pressure by larger nations, but it cannot solve all problems. Latvia has had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. Lithuania and Ireland may be forced to tread the same route.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below

Last week a Tibetan mastiff was flown into Xian airport in central China, where it received a welcome fit for an emperor. The dog was swept into town by a convoy of 30 Mercedes-Benz cars. Tibetan mastiffs are a rare and noble breed – and the pampered pooch had cost his new owners Rmb4m ($586,000, €402,000, £351,000). Reporting the story, the China Daily newspaper commented nervously that such an extravagant display of wealth might “heighten tension between rich and poor”.

This shaggy dog story is just a particularly weird example of the new wealth of modern China. When I last visited the Pudong district of Shanghai, in the mid-1990s, it was a ramshackle area of factories and warehouses. Last week, I found it transformed into a forest of neon-lit, modernist skyscrapers. China has shrugged off the global recession and should grow by 8 per cent in 2009.

This year the country has passed a number of economic milestones. It is now the world’s largest exporter, surpassing Germany. It is the world’s largest market for vehicles, surpassing America. Its foreign reserves, the world’s largest, are now over $2,000bn. The biggest landmark of them all – the moment when China becomes the world’s largest economy – is getting closer. Goldman Sachs famously predicted a couple of years ago that China would hit that target in 2027. But that was before the financial crisis. If America is now set for a long period of slower growth, the big moment could come rather sooner.

The remainder of this article can be read here. Please post comments below.