What Asian Commentators Think of Big-Foot Uncle Sam

JAPAN

“Japan lends money to America so its people can maintain living standards three times higher than ours.” --Comedian Tokoro Joji, quoted in Shukan Bunshun “The gaps between our living standards and those in the United States and Western Europe have been widening unfavorably for us over the years. Management should give us working people a much bigger share of Japan’s economic pie.”

--Seigo Yamada, secretary-general of the Japanese Trade Union Confederation “Perhaps the overpresence of the United States and other nations in the Middle East will provoke antipathy among Arabs. That will be the time for Japan to move in.”

--A Mitsubishi Corp. spokesman on the likelihood of Japan gaining reconstruction contracts in the Persian Gulf. “Many people had predicted that the Japanese would become more nationalistic as the country’s economic power grew. This prediction did not come true until recently. But Japanese nationalism has been growing since late 1989 in the form of anti-Americanism. Now it has the potential for shaking the U.S.-Japan security arrangement.”

--From a Foreign Ministry report on the future of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty TAIWAN

“The swift and destructive Persian Gulf War underscored the grim reality that air superiority is . . . Taiwan’s only hope to deter, or to stop, the Peking Communist regime’s oft-threatened invasion. . . . If the United States won’t help provide security (like the F-16 in exchange) for (contracts on major new) infrastructure projects, perhaps the Europeans will.”

--China News editorial PHILIPPINES

“It is no secret that a ‘no vote’ on the U.S. bases has no chance of winning in a referendum. With the United States coming out glowing from its victory against Saddam Hussein, the admiration of ordinary Filipinos for American military prowess has verged on deification.”

--Manila Chronicle columnist THAILAND

“Pattaya offers sun, sand and sex. Well, out in the Gulf I saw plenty of sun and sand, so that doesn’t leave me much option.”

--U.S.S. Midway seaman, quoted in the Bangkok Post, when asked about the danger of AIDS “Private multinational firms, the United States and key Western allies in the anti-Saddam Hussein coalition have, with the help of their governments, quickly cashed in on lucrative reconstruction projects, leaving little room for non-coalition member countries like Thailand and South Korea to try to squeeze in.”

--Nation editorial SINGAPORE

“What if it had been Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia that had been occupied by Iraq? What if it had been us, our family members, relatives, friends and fellow citizens who were being brutalized by such an occupying force? . . . Would the sentiments have been the same?”

--Letter to the editor of the Straits Times responding to charges that the United States exceeded its U.N. mandate in the Gulf “More and more Asians undergo plastic surgery to give eyelids a fold here and noses a narrow bridge there. This is said to make Asians look more American (whatever that looks like) and as if, in any case, to LOOK American meant the same as to BE American.”

--Straits Times editorial HONG KONG

“I hope that America’s foreign policy-makers will really ‘banish the specter of Vietnam’ by extending diplomatic recognition to its former foes in Hanoi, lifting the embargo and assisting Vietnam to rehabilitate itself.”

--Letter to editor of the South China Morning Post “Instead of vowing support to despots of one kind or another in the Gulf, the United States should stick to its higher principles, and advance the cause of democracy in Kuwait and in the Gulf, as well as in Iraq.”

--South China Morning Post editorial