east asia

Rambling Thoughts: Looking back on Yao Ming 20 years later
Draft day photo of a great legend

This summer, 20 years ago, Yao Ming was drafted with the first pick by the Houston Rockets.

This summer, 13 years ago, the Houston Rockets announced that Yao would miss the entire 2009-10 season with another foot injury, and that was basically the end of his career.

As a Houston Rockets fan who grew up watching Yao, it is interesting looking back on his legacy both on and off the court. No one hates Yao, in the same way that a NBA fan might hate LeBron or Kobe or Luka or (especially) Harden. Go on any highlight video or Twitter thread about Yao, and you will quickly find the same sort of comments: that Yao transcended basketball, or that he could have been an all-time great if not for injuries, or how skilled he was.

It is that first point which I think should be looked at. Because as much as Yao transcended basketball, in a way he failed to live up to the promise off the court that he presented in the way that he failed to live up to the promise he presented on the court.

This is not Yao’s fault, any more than his injuries were his fault. But Yao Ming sort of presented a promise of a better world between the US and China, which today in 2022 and with the Taiwan strait becoming an ever-bigger problem looks ludicrous today.

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CSIS Event: Getting China Wrong

CSIS held an event on Thursday discussing Getting China Wrong, a new book written by Professor Aaron L. Friedberg with Princeton University that was published last Wednesday. Here are some of the things which Friedberg argued in his 45-minute talk:

Friedberg has been talking for decades about the US-China relation, and host Jude Blanchett praises him for his insight. His new book talks about a new way of thinking about US-China relations, and what the US has gotten right/wrong. What is China’s position in June 2022? What challenges and opportunities is it facing?

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CSIS Event: The Spear and the Shield

https://www.csis.org/events/spear-and-shield-japans-defense-strategy-trajectory

What is Japan’s security policy, especially in the wake of threats and concerns from Russia, North Korea and China? The CSIS held an event discussing the policy, and these are my personal notes of the meeting:

Introductions, as always. Members of CSIS, as well as a member of the Japanese lower and upper house respectively. First member is Itsunori Onodera, member of the lower house, Minister of Defense under Abe. Part of group which submitted NS documents to the Japanese diet. Second member is Masahisa Sato, elected in 2007 and a commander of the JSDF deployment to Iraq. Minister of Foreign Affairs under Abe.

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Panel Review: The Center for Strategic and Intl Studies on Obama’s Asian Trip

Next week, President Obama will embark on an Asian tour which will include stops in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Yesterday at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a panel discussing what Obama’s visit means for the US-Japan alliance, the key lynchpin to American policy in East Asia. There was plenty for the four panel members to discuss.

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Japan to hand over weapons-grade plutonium to the US.

Asahi Shimbun link

I touched on the problems of Japanese nuclear security in an earlier post, but one thing I did not discuss was that Japan already has a large stockpile of plutonium and uranium, not only stored in Japan itself, but in France and Britain.  This plutonium was supplied to Japan by the United States during the Cold War, and it appears that Japan will be handing them back.

This is without a doubt a very good thing.  Just as an Iranian nuclear bomb is bad for global peace as it could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, a Japanese nuke would be a possible spark towards creating a arms race in the even more vital East Asia.  North Korea is already dangerous enough – South Korea, which doesn’t particularly trust the United States to begin with, having nukes on their own would do nothing for the sake of stability.  It should be noted, however, that despite this transfer, Japan has without a doubt the scientific and technological know-how to make a nuclear bomb within a time frame of 6 months to 2 years should it so desire, but there is really nothing which can be done about that.

Xiaoje Xu and the World Energy China Outlook

Yesterday, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Xiaoje Xu of the World Energy Division, which is part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, hosted a presentation on the World Energy China Outlook, a Chinese perspective on global energy trends.  There has been plenty written, both on the Internet and in other news, about how China and India’s inevitable rise will mean a growing demand for energy, as their people switch from bicycles to cars and the thick smog of coal dampens their cities.  ( For a perspective of how bad Chinese air pollution is, Mr. Xu said during the talk that the latest reports have Beijing around 500 parts per million in their cities, in comparison to cities like New York and Washington which are around 5).  Yet what do the Chinese think about how to meet this rising energy demand, combined with the stresses of handling the global call for decreased carbon emissions?

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On “Best Korea”, Iran, and the perception of countries.

Yesterday, an United Nations panel discussed the human rights abuses of North Korea, which has naturally prompted all sorts of hand-wringing about the North Korean regime.  I must admit that the surprise to the concept that yes, North Korea is a horrifying country straight out of 1984 and not just the silly “Best Korea” that the Internet makes it out to be is surprising. However, it is the concept of “Best Korea” which I would like to talk about in more detail.

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