标题: New York Times, Nov 16 [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 11-16-2011 12:57 标题: New York Times, Nov 16 (1) Ian Johnson and Jackie Calmes, As US Looks Toward Asia, It Sees China Everywhere. New York Times, Nov 16, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/1 ... 20Jackie&st=cse
(a) Quote:
(i) The first two paragraphs:
"The last time the remote Australian city of Darwin played a significant role in American military planning was during the early days of World War II, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur used the port as the base for his campaign to reclaim the Pacific from the Japanese.
"President Obama was greeted by Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia in Canberra, Australia on Wednesday.
So it was with considerable symbolism that President Obama arrived on Wednesday in Canberra, Australia’s capital, for a trip that will include an announcement that the United States plans to use Darwin as a new center of operations in Asia as it seeks to reassert itself in the region and grapple with China’s rise. The United States is taking some first steps — bold in rhetoric, still mostly modest in practice — to prove to its Asian allies that it intends to remain a crucial military and economic power in the region as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw to a close.
(ii) "Officials in the Philippines say Chinese forces entered Philippine waters or airspace six times, including once when a Chinese frigate fired in the direction of a Philippine fishing boat. * * * On Tuesday, Philippine officials said China had recently protested their [Filipino] plans to explore waters less than 50 miles offshore from the Philippines, saying the waters fall under its territorial jurisdiction.
(iii) Five consecutive paragraphs:
"Mr. Obama will join the leaders of 16 other nations for the sixth East Asia Summit meeting in Bali this week, the first time an American president has participated in the forum.
"The move is part of a broader strategy to re-embrace multilateralism. In recent years, Washington had come to view Asian regional groups as limiting its ability to act, while China embraced regional partnerships before its rise to regional superpower. Now, those roles appear to have switched. The United States has 'turned the multilateral tables on China,' said Carlyle A Thayer, a professor of international relations at the Australian Defense Force Academy.
"But multilateralism has taken on an aggressive tinge, some analysts contend. 'Beneath the surface they’re becoming an arena for subtle but, for the region, quite unnerving power plays and influence games between the US and China,' said one analyst in Washington, Michael Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The more robust American position is proving difficult for many in China to accept.
"Global Times, a subsidiary of the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, wrote Tuesday that the United States was trying to 'form a gang' against China’s territorial claims on the South China Sea.
(b) Note:
(i) The "common" in the sentence "South China Sea is a very important maritime common" is a noun.
(ii) airspace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace
(By international law, the notion of a country's sovereign airspace corresponds with the maritime definition of territorial waters as being 12 nautical miles (22.2 km) out from a nation's coastline)
(iii) SHI Yinhong 时 殷弘
"Why won’t the authorities simply let Mr. Chen and his family go? The most critical reason is mianzi, or “face,” as it is usually translated in English. The authorities know that what they have been doing is unjust and illegal. But they saw the gathering of activists as an affront, and responded harshly because the government could not afford to lose face — which would undermine its power in the public’s eyes.
"Such concessions would call into question the regime’s legitimacy. And once the issue is survival, the government is in effect cornered, leaving it no choice but to resort to drastic measures from which nothing — sense, humanity or law — can dissuade it.
"To Chinese leaders, 'governing' means absolute control.
"The same is true in Mr Chen’s case, but with an important difference: in 1989, the government refused to set a precedent of yielding to popular demand at home. Today it refuses to set a precedent of yielding to American pressure.
Note:
(a) The article is translated into Chinese:
罗霄, 中国怎么就说不听. 四月青年社区, June 17, 2011 (Beijing time apparently; available now). http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-3239263-1-1.html
(b) CHEN Min 陈 敏
China Reform magazine 中国改革