Asian shares gain on global recovery outlook

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares advanced on Wednesday as investor confidence in the global economic outlook strengthened on solid U.S. data, giving comfort to investors ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy decision due later in the session.

Optimism over economic recovery from strong U.S. housing data and China's promising economic growth forecast for 2013 raised expectations for robust demand for fuel and industrial commodities, underpinning oil prices and lifting copper.

European markets are seen pausing after hitting two-year highs, with financial spreadbetters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open nearly flat. A 0.1 percent drop in U.S. stock futures suggested a cautious start on Wall Street. <.l><.eu><.n/>

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> rose 0.4 percent, after rising to near a 18-month high, building on the previous day's 1 percent rally. Gains were led by a 1 percent rise in the energy sector <.miapjen00pus>.

London copper added 0.5 percent to $8,146.50 a tonne after hitting $8,159, its highest since January 11, while U.S. crude oil held steady around $97.56 a barrel after rising over 1 percent on Tuesday on expectations of higher demand. Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $114.45.

Shanghai rebar steel futures climbed more than 1 percent to their highest since May on views demand from top steel consumer China will pick up after a week-long holiday in February.

"Sentiment has changed this year, with signs of stabilization in the euro zone, a U.S. economic recovery and a shift to a new Chinese political regime removing obstacles which had stood in the way of investors taking risks last year," said Xiao Minjie, an independent economist based in Tokyo.

"Domestic demand holds the key this year. Beijing's drive to urbanize inner China will boost infrastructure spending while Southeast Asia will also likely see expansion in domestic demand accelerating," he said.

Commodity-reliant Australian shares <.axjo> inched up 0.2 percent to a fresh 21-month high, with rising copper prices bolstering top miners. It was the 10th straight day of gains, the longest winning run since October 2003.

"The bar is set almost embarrassingly low for the vast majority of key macro indicators for the U.S., and anything mildly positive is serving to feed more buying enthusiasm. The prevailing market psyche is easily pleased," said Tim Waterer, senior trader at CMC Markets.

Hong Kong shares <.hsi> jumped 0.8 percent and Shanghai shares <.ssec> rose 0.3 percent.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> soared 2.3 percent to a fresh 33-month high, partly due to a weaker yen. <.t/>

FED STATEMENT EYED

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to as high as a nine-month high of 2.021 percent in Asia on Wednesday.

"A big question is whether the Fed is still cautious on the economy following recent improvements in Europe and U.S. fiscal cliff talks," said Hiroki Shimazu, fixed income analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities, adding that a more optimistic Fed economic assessment could pressure Treasuries.

The Fed ends a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, and few market watchers expect any near-term shift in its current, very accommodative stance.

But investors will focus on the statement for any clues to the Fed's thinking on if and when it might pull back from its aggressive easing stimulus. The minutes from the December meeting, released earlier this month, hinted at uneasiness within the Fed around its asset-buying program and sparked a sell-off in Treasuries and lifted yields up out of ranges.

Morgan Stanley said in a research note that global stimulus efforts and structural reallocation paved the way for a sustained period of asset-price reflation.

"This has three implications: Reflation would lend support to higher-yielding emerging markets assets, safe-haven assets would continue to weaken, and expectations about emerging markets policy would likely shift," it said.

The yen stayed pressured, with the Bank of Japan set to pursue strong monetary easing as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration pushes for radical reflationary policies to end stubborn deflation.

The dollar rose 0.2 percent to 90.93 yen, near its highest level since June 2010 of 91.32 reached on Monday. The euro gained 0.2 percent to 122.66 yen, not far from 122.91 also touched on Monday, its highest point since April.

The prospect of continued weakness in the yen and rising risk appetite lifted the Australian dollar to four-year highs on the yen and New Zealand dollars hovered near a four-year high against the yen.

Aussie rose as high as 95.34 yen while Kiwi rose as high 76.27 yen, close to 76.37 set Friday, its strongest since 2008.

The euro traded at $1.3496, a tad below Tuesday's 14-month high of $1.3498.

Asian credit markets underperformed the region's equities as the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index widened by 2 basis points on an increase in new issues and some caution before the Fed's statement.

(Additional reporting by Miranda Maxwell in Melbourne, Gyles Beckford in Wellington and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer & Kim Coghill)

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India Ink: India Ink Is Taking Your Questions for Thomas Friedman

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman has been a regular visitor to India for a decade.

During his travels here and in China, he developed his widely followed theory of the inevitability of globalization, and the need for businesses and individuals to adapt to the accompanying changes. In India, he met former Infosys chief executive Nandan Nilekani, who coined the phrase “The world is flat,” which became the title of Mr. Friedman’s best-selling 2005 book.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Friedman was a correspondent in Washington, Beirut and Jerusalem before leaving the news side of The Times for its editorial side, becoming the paper’s foreign-affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995.

This week, Mr. Friedman is in India on what has become an almost annual pilgrimage, meeting with a wide range of business executives and government officials. He will be a keynote speaker at the Sustainable Development conference in New Delhi on Friday.

Later this week, Mr. Friedman will also take questions from India Ink readers about India’s role in the global economy, and the changes he has seen in that role in recent years.

Have a question for Mr. Friedman? Please leave it in the comments below, or send it to IndiaInk@nytimes.com.

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Critical, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

TORONTO (AP) — BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. will kick off a critical, long-overdue makeover when chief executive Thorsten Heins shows off the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday.

Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices. There has even been talk that the fate of the company that created the BlackBerry in 1999 is no longer certain.

Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the BlackBerry 10 software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has more than doubled to $ 15.66 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.

RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today. The company is promising a speedier device, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone.

Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability. Doubts remain about the ability of BlackBerry 10 to rescue RIM.

“We’ll see if they can reclaim their glory. My sense is that it will be a phone that everyone says good things about but not as many people buy,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek called it a “great device” and said RIM does have some momentum just months after the Canadian company was written off for dead.

“Six months ago we talked to developers and carriers, and everybody was just basically saying ‘We’re just waiting for this to go bust,’” Misek said. “It was bad.”

The BlackBerry has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and crossed over to consumers. But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that. The exact date and prices are expected Wednesday.

Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Popular service such as Instagram and Netflix won’t have apps on BlackBerry 10.

Gillis said he’ll be looking to see when RIM releases a keyboard version of the new phone. The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said a physical keyboard version will be released soon after. He said a delay could alienate RIM’s 79 million subscribers.

“The No. 1 feature that they like is the physical keyboard,” Gillis said.

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Asian shares rally, eye Fed, U.S. data

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rallied on Tuesday as recent selling drew bargain hunters ahead of more U.S. economic data and a Federal Reserve policy decision later in the week that may offer clues to the Fed's stimulus plans.

European markets were seen following Asia higher, with financial spread-betters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open up as much as 0.3 percent.

U.S. stock futures were up 0.1 percent, hinting at a firm Wall Street start. <.l><.eu><.n/>

Solid U.S. earnings and an improving U.S. business spending gauge have combined with a recent run of positive global economic data, along with signs of easing financial stress in the euro zone, putting upwards pressure on Treasury yields.

Further signs of brightening U.S. growth prospects would fuel speculation the Fed may consider pulling back on aggressive easing stimulus. The Fed ends a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday.

The first estimate of U.S. fourth-quarter gross domestic product also will be released on Wednesday, followed by non-farm payrolls on Friday.

Few expect any immediate change to the Fed's very accommodative monetary stance while other central banks such as the Bank of Japan also embark on fresh easing to help spur economic activities. India's central bank cut interest rates on Tuesday for the first time in nine months.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> rallied 0.9 percent to snap a four-day losing streak, led by a 1.1 percent jump in Australian shares <.axjo> to a fresh 21-month high on gains in financial shares.

"It seems that a lower interest rate environment is starting to improve confidence among the Australian business community. Mix this in with the China rebound and we have a sharp rise in confidence," said Ben Taylor, sales trader at CMC Markets.

South Korean shares <.ks11>, which slumped to an 8-week low on Monday, rebounded 0.8 percent.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> reversed earlier declines and closed up 0.4 percent, buoyed by optimism over earnings of major banks. <.t/>

"With yields on U.S. Treasury and German government bonds inching higher, one might say investors may be shifting funds to riskier assets from safe-havens," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo.

The benchmark U.S. 10-year note yield briefly pierced 2 percent on Monday for the first time since last April, and inched up 2.5 basis points (bps) in Asia from New York close. The 10-year Japanese government bond yield also rose.

Naka Matsuzawa, fixed income strategist at Nomura Securities, said in research note that a sell-off in 5-year Treasury notes over the last two days "would not have occurred unless expectations of an economic recovery have gained ground to the extent that the monetary policy outlook begins to change."

"The market is aware that risks are toward more hawkish FOMC statements in the future rather than dovish ones," considering a pick-up in the U.S. economic recovery and stock market rally, as well as the underlying global risk-on trend, he said.

STUBBORN YEN

Yen selling paused, helping to bolster the benchmark South Korean stock index which is vulnerable to exchange rate swings as exporters lead market capitalization.

The dollar fell 0.1 percent to 90.78 yen after touching 91.32 on Monday, its highest level since June 2010, while the euro recouped earlier losses against the yen to steady around 122.10 yen after hitting 122.91 on Monday, its highest point since April.

The euro was at $1.3450, not far from an 11-month high of $1.3480 hit on Friday.

The euro's strength sharply contrasted with the crumbling pound, which has been pressured by worries about the weak UK economy, prospects of more monetary easing by the Bank of England and the UK's unclear role within the European Union.

The euro extended its recent stellar run to hit 0.8575 sterling, its highest since late 2011, on Tuesday. The pound fell to $1.5687, near a five-month low.

"The UK is a small open economy that has benefited from capital inflows because it is not in the euro area but is in the EU. The former is less helpful now, the uncertainty about the latter is a clear negative. The result could be to take EUR/GBP close to 0.90 before long-term downtrend resumes," said Kit Juckes, FX strategist at Societe Generale in a note.

Commodities were underpinned by a more positive global growth outlook.

"I don't think there's much downside risk," said Tetsu Emori, a commodities fund manager at Astmax Investments in Tokyo. "I think economic data out of the United States has improved, so I don't think there are any negative factors in the market."

U.S. crude rose 0.4 percent to $96.80 a barrel and Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $113.64.

London copper gained 0.4 percent to $8,078 a tonne.

Gold inched up 0.4 percent to $1,661.95 an ounce but was capped by receding investor appetite for safe-haven assets.

Asian credit markets lagged the region's rallying equities, pushing the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index wider by 2 basis points.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Jaganathan in Singapore and Thuy Ong in Sydney; Editing by Eric Meijer & Kim Coghill)

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India Ink: Five Questions (Plus a Few More) for Selma Dabbagh

Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian fiction writer based in London. Her first novel, “Out of It,” which is set in Palestine, was published in 2011. A lawyer and mother of two, she is also working on her second novel, about expatriates, which is coming out next year. She spoke to India Ink at the Jaipur Literature Festival, which she was attending for the first time.

What are the occupational hazards of being a writer?

Compared to a lot of Palestinian writers, I have a big advantage of living in Europe and having a European passport, so I don’t face threats on a daily basis. I think I am more likely to get criticized because of my subject matter, or have people take objection to my politics, rather than my writing.

What is your everyday writing ritual?

I like to work in the morning. I try to have big chunks of time where I’m doing nothing else, and I try to keep administrative work to the evening. I still work part-time as a lawyer and I have two children so my time is very splintered.

Also, writers now have to do quite a lot of work for the publicity of a book that is out, so the administrative side and the publicity side impinge on your time. When I’m actually writing, I have a sofa that I go to in a room that has no Wi-Fi. I close the door, I have my notes on the side on a small easel, and that’s where I write and that’s when I’m happiest.

How do you deal with your critics?

I had one review which was quite strange. He made it sound like I was trivializing the Holocaust by something one character had said in the novel. He misinterpreted it and said it was offensive rubbish. I was so upset and angry with my first review because I felt that he got it wrong. Your sense is to respond to correct the record. To trivialize the Holocaust is actually a statutory offense in some countries. I did try and draft a response against the advice of everybody.

It [the review] came out in The Independent, and it was also odd because they put a strapline which said, “Aren’t you a bit too young for this conflict?” I was eight years older than the reviewer. And then I realized there is actually no dignified way of responding to a review. You have to just leave it.

You do get these knee-jerk reactions from people who are very supportive of Israel. Just the minute you say you are from Palestine, that in itself is offensive enough. So it doesn’t really matter how you are dressing it up.
That means you get quite cautious in the way you speak. You qualify everything, you talk with your footnotes, you have to make sure that you are really not going to say something in a panel or a session which is going to be filmed or played on YouTube and then get distorted.

Do you self-censor?

I don’t think it is self-censorship. It is extreme caution in how you say things and making sure that you know absolutely where something is coming from.

One of the tests as a writer is that you should follow what interests you. Often that is the behavior of your own people. Rather than thinking “this is what I should write about; this is the way we should be positively portrayed,” find your interest, find your passion as honestly and truthfully as possible.

What advice would you give to people who are interested in conflict writing?

History is very important. So is putting things into perspective so you are not just dealing with the immediate conflict. The back story is always relevant; it always needs to be clear. Even if it is not going to fit into your word count, it has to be very clear in your head why something has happened, whether it was a fictional event or a real event.

If you are portraying negative aspects within your own movement or your own people, one thing I often find is useful is to make sure that I have a good understanding as to why that person is behaving in a way they are, what is their history.

People are inherently the same. They are responding to circumstances. They have the same capacity of good or evil in them; it is just how they get driven into that position. It’s critical to have some sort of sympathy being built up, even if the end result is not one that you would condone.

Could you tell us a little bit about your book “Out of It?”

It’s a very specifically a Palestinian book in some ways. It is about a very specific set of circumstances, but the issues in it are very universal. The particular thing that was interesting to me was the idea of political consciousness, and how people in conflict situations deal with what space they should allow their personal lives when the political may be dominating.

The characters in my book are very middle class. They are exiled and are returnees to Palestine. They are very educated, and they want to change their country, and they want to somehow engage. But they find it very difficult to find a place between the sort of extremist opposition and the defunct leadership that is in place.
I wrote the book before the Arab Spring, but I was writing it to show a class of Arabs who are multilingual, urban, politicized urbane that were not being depicted in the media. I felt like this is a whole view of the Arab world which was just not coming across. And then when the Arab Spring started, and suddenly, there were my characters.

How is your upcoming book different from your previous one?

It’s different because it’s not about Palestine. It is a novel about living in a compound in a situation where there is a political conflict outside. It’s about how we can turn a blind eye on a crisis that is surrounding us. It’s different in terms of setting, but I think in terms of theme it is similar. It should be hopefully coming out next year, and the title is “Here We Are Now.”

Why does the Jaipur Literature Festival matter to you?

I think among writers there’s no festival you’d rather go to than Jaipur because it’s very international. It attracts the top writers of fiction and nonfiction as well as new writers, so it’s a great sort of hub to meet people. It’s a combination of being high-powered and yet very relaxed and friendly at the same time.

You’ve mentioned before the need to talk to the world outside as a sort of impetus that drives your work. How important do you think it is to talk to writers from different parts of the world?

I’m a great admirer of Ariel Dorfman’s work, and I think there are very few writers who have written in this specific zone of having to engage in politics and writing literature because a lot of people see it as a big tension. The presumption of Western literature is that it’s not political; the presumption of Palestinian literature is that it is political so you have this great tension between the two things. So to meet people who have somehow resolved in their minds the little tests they use is critical in terms of being able to write.

In terms of their take on the Palestinian issue and whether they are going to be sympathetic, you always hope that this is going to be a consequence meeting people or them reading your book, but you can never know what other influences they are exposed to and where they ideas come from. It’s a slow process to get somebody engaged with an issue that does not directly affect their lives. Writers are curious about the world, but most people are fairly incurious about things that don’t directly affect them.

Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, always wanted to be writer but my dad wouldn’t let me. He said, “You have to have a vocation; you can’t just go and study literature.” I’m one of three girls. My older sister is an architect, my younger sister is a doctor and I’m a lawyer. My dad just sort of decided — “you’re like this kind of character and you’re like this” — and we never really challenged it.

I enjoyed doing law, and I still practice as a lawyer. It gave me a way to work in places to get the material for the book, and that’s what I wanted with it. I felt I didn’t want to just study literature and then come out and work as a writer without ever having done much else. I always wanted to write, but it took me until my 30s to actually start doing it.

(The interview and been lightly edited and condensed.)

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Funniest Quotes We're Still Talking About from the SAG Awards

Tina gives a shout-out to Girls' baby mama Amy, Jennifer Lawrence's super sweet 16 win and more LOL one-liners

Credit: Michael Buckner/WireImage

Updated: Monday Jan 28, 2013 | 12:20 AM EST

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CDC: Flu seems to level off except in the West

New government figures show that flu cases seem to be leveling off nationwide. Flu activity is declining in most regions although still rising in the West.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitalizations and deaths spiked again last week, especially among the elderly. The CDC says quick treatment with antiviral medicines is important, in particular for the very young or old. The season's first flu case resistant to treatment with Tamiflu was reported Friday.

Eight more children have died from the flu, bringing this season's total pediatric deaths to 37. About 100 children die in an average flu season.

There is still vaccine available although it may be hard to find. The CDC has a website that can help.

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CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/

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Seoul pulls Asian shares down, solid economic data helps

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tech-heavy South Korean shares led the broader Asian share index lower on Monday on fears of weaker earnings, but improving economic prospects in Europe and solid U.S. profit reports underpinned sentiment.

Gold languished near two-week lows and was capped as the improving global macroeconomic environment has curbed interest in safe haven assets.

"Investors would rather move their money into equities or bulk commodities from safe-haven assets," said Li Ning, an analyst at Shanghai CIFCO Futures.

European markets were seen edging higher, with financial spread-betters predicting London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> would open up as much as 0.3 percent. U.S. stock futures were up 0.1 percent, hinting at a firm Wall Street start. <.l><.eu><.n/>

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> fell 0.4 percent, dragged lower by a 1.9 percent plunge in its technology sector <.miapjit00pus>. Among the regional equities markets, only Seoul and Jakarta, which stayed near its lifetime highs, were in the red.

The Korea Composite Stock Price Index <.ks11> extended losses to close down 0.4 percent after touching an 8-week low, as a weakening yen soured the outlook for local exporters and foreign investors reduced their holdings.

Tech heavyweight Samsung Electronics shed 3.2 percent to a 10-week low, exposing the industry's vulnerability to a clouding outlook for high-end smartphone device shipments

"Concerns about South Korean tech firms' fundamentals have increased, with high-end smartphone device shipments expected to slow down this year," said Park Young-joo, an analyst at Woori Investment & Securities.

Global investor sentiment improved on Friday as a rise in the German Ifo business morale index gave further evidence for Europe's largest economy picking up speed, and European banks were to repay the European Central Bank a larger sum of money than expected to highlight a stabilizing euro zone financial system.

In China, data on Sunday showed profits earned by industrial companies rose 17.3 percent in December from a year earlier to 895.2 billion yuan ($143.9 billion), adding to evidence of a fourth-quarter economic recovery.

Spot gold steadied around $1,659.90 an ounce on Monday, still below its 200-day moving average.

U.S. crude inched up 0.2 percent to $96.09 a barrel and Brent steadied around $113.27.

London copper, another industrial commodity linked to demand prospects, rose 0.4 percent to $8,061.25 a metric ton (1.1023 tons).

YEN UNDER PRESSURE

The yen extended losses to fresh lows earlier in the session, but Japanese equities gave up morning gains ahead of Japan's corporate reporting season, which enters full swing this week.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> closed down 0.9 percent after briefly striking a fresh 32-month high above 11,000 in the morning. It jumped 2.9 percent on Friday to log an 11th straight week of gains, its longest such run since 1971. <.t/>

Against the yen, the dollar hit 91.26 early on Monday, its highest level since June 2010 while the euro touched 122.91, its highest point since April.

Analysts estimate that a one-yen decline against the dollar is worth around a 1 percent increase in combined recurring profits at all listed Japanese firms. Of total estimates for companies, there are more analysts' upgrades than downgrades.

New Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for aggressive monetary easing and huge fiscal spending to beat deflation. The yen has fallen some 13 percent since mid-November when he began making those calls as part of his election campaign.

"The potent mix of Abenomics and strong risk appetite abroad is continuing to soften the yen, which means investors will still be buying stocks," said Masayuki Doshida, senior market analyst at Rakuten Securities.

In sharp contrast to U.S. and German equities, the Nikkei remains well below levels before the financial crisis in 2008, reflecting the magnitude of negative effect from the yen's strength. The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> closed at its highest in more than five years on solid U.S. corporate earnings on Friday and Frankfurt's DAX index <.gdaxi> also scaled five-year highs.

The yen is stronger than around 105 to the dollar before the 2008 financial crisis, but the euro hovers well below the pre-crisis levels. The Korean won is weaker against pre-Lehman levels against both the dollar and the yen.

Investors will focus this week on the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee statement on Wednesday and U.S. nonfarm payrolls due on Friday.

Sluggish equities weighed on Asian credit markets, widening the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index by 1 basis point.

($1 = 0.7421 euros)

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul, Sophie Knight in Tokyo and Rujun Shen in Singapore; Editing by Kim Coghill and Richard Borsuk)

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IHT Rendezvous: In Beijing, No Tears Over Clinton's Departure

BEIJING — It’s a badly kept secret in Beijing that quite a few Chinese officials, including very senior ones, never warmed to Hillary Rodham Clinton. How much of that is because she is an outspoken supporter of women’s rights is unclear, but it is almost certainly a factor: China is run by men (literally — there is not a single woman in the inner circle of power, the Standing Committee of the Politburo), and women have little policy input, whether on domestic or global issues.

China’s Communist Party mandarins have been wary of Mrs. Clinton since at least 1995, when she was a key figure at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women here in Beijing. Those of us present at the meeting heard her tell delegates that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.” That language is in the declaration, which said: “Women’s rights are human rights” (Article 14 of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action). It was a major moment for the women’s movement in China and around the world.

Yet that was after officials had exiled the lively N.G.O. groups in attendance to the distant suburbs of Huairou, fearing the mind-opening impact they would have on its citizens. China in 1995 was a more socially conservative place than today, and feminists calling for health care for prostitutes, or wages for mothers, or lesbian and gay rights, profoundly shocked officials.

So recent talk from some leading academics within Beijing’s foreign policy establishment that China is looking forward to seeing John Kerry succeed Mrs. Clinton as the U.S. secretary of state comes as no surprise.

Jin Canrong, an international affairs professor at Renmin University of China, said Mr. Kerry would be less aggressive toward China than Mrs. Clinton has been, according to China Daily.

China disliked Mrs. Clinton’s central role in the Obama administration’s turn toward Asia, which has been interpreted by many here as an effort to contain China.

Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution said Mrs. Clinton’s role in the administration’s “pivot to Asia” and her tough stance toward China were arguably “her greatest and most memorable contribution” as secretary of state, as my colleague David Rohde reported.

In contrast, Ruan Zongze, a former senior Chinese diplomat in the U.S. and the deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies, views Mr. Kerry as “professional, calm and pragmatic, and expects him to initiate strategic dialogues between China and the U.S., which will wield positive influence on Sino-U.S. relations,” China Daily wrote.

“Among the challenges facing Kerry will be to improve ties between China and the U.S., which have worsened since Washington’s rebalancing policy in the Asia-Pacific region,” the state-run newspaper said.

“China-U.S. ties have deteriorated through a series of high-profile measures by the U.S. aimed at rebalancing, especially the over-emphasis of military action, which triggered great antipathy from China,” the paper quoted Mr. Ruan as saying in December, after Mr. Kerry’s nomination became known.

Last week, Mr. Ruan had more to say, Global Post reported.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, he said that “America’s pivot is sending the wrong message” to its allies, encouraging them to “become more bellicose and provocative,” according to Global Post. “An unstable or weak China would be very dangerous,” he added.

Yet over the weekend, China praised Mrs. Clinton’s four years at the helm of U.S. foreign policy, in words from a key interlocutor of hers over the years, Dai Bingguo, a deputy minister of foreign affairs and a key voice in China’s foreign policy.

“Over the last four years,” Mr. Dai told Mrs. Clinton in a telephone call on Saturday evening, according to a statement on the Web site of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “China-U.S. relations have been generally stable and have made major, positive progress.”

Both sides should continue to steer towards a new type of relationship between big powers based on mutual respect and partnership, said Mr. Dai.

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Providence theater experiments with ‘tweet seats’

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Sarah Bertness slipped into her seat at a recent staging of the musical “Million Dollar Quartet” and, when the lights dimmed, started doing something that’s long been taboo inside theaters: typing away at her iPhone.

The 26-year-old freelance writer from Providence wasn’t being rude. She had a spot in the “tweet seat” section at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

The downtown theater is now setting aside a small number of seats — in the back — for those who promise to live-tweet from the performance using a special hash tag. They might offer impressions of the set, music or costumes, lines of dialogue that resonate with them or anything else that strikes them, really.

At “Million Dollar Quartet,” based on the true story of a 1956 recording session that united music greats Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, PPAC for the first time had cast members tweeting from backstage, too.

A growing number of theaters, including some on Broadway, have been experimenting in recent years with tweet seats and other real-time uses of social media as they try to figure out the relationship between the stage and the smartphone.

Some insist the theater should remain a sacred, technology-free place and that allowing the use of phones during a show — even discreetly — only serves as a potential distraction for other patrons. But others say theaters can’t afford not to engage the digital generation, and that the way performances were once enjoyed, in a vacuum, doesn’t hold up anymore.

“I think that it’s important that PPAC and cultural institutions in general kind of jump on the social media bandwagon and learn to engage a broader audience,” said Bertness, who runs the blog The Rhode Islander and is such a big Johnny Cash fan that she showed up to the performance wearing all black. “I think it’s such a valuable tool.”

Scott Moreau, an understudy for Johnny Cash, hadn’t ever tweeted from backstage during a performance. He tried to provide a glimpse of what life’s like on the tour, which he likened to the special features on a DVD. He said he enjoyed getting instant feedback from the tweeters — feedback he shared with other cast members.

“It makes it feel a lot more personal,” Moreau said.

A picture of Moreau that was tweeted out from backstage — he was tweeting in it himself — prompted someone in the tweet seats to declare that’s what the Man in Black would have looked like, with an iPhone.

Other theaters are also trying different digital ways to engage with patrons. In Boston, the Huntington Theater plans to introduce a “Twittermission” where an artist affiliated with the production, or someone from the theater’s staff, answers questions about the show on Twitter during intermissions. The tweets will also be projected on screens in the theater lobby, according to spokeswoman Rebecca Curtiss.

The theater won’t be introducing tweet seats, though.

“We feel strongly that the experience that an audience member has in our theater should be limited to what they are seeing on the stage,” Curtiss said. “When the lights go down and the show begins, we want the art on stage to speak for itself.”

PPAC isn’t sure yet whether any social media buzz generated by those in the tweet seats will have a measurable effect at the box office. But spokeswoman P.J. Prokop said the theater intends to keep the program through the end of the year, and then evaluate it. Those who sit in the tweet seats get their tickets for free.

Kirsten DiChiappari, who has tweeted three shows there to her nearly 1,400 followers, grew up in New Jersey going to Broadway musicals, plays and the opera. The 41-year-old social media consultant from Bristol sees her live-tweeting as a way to lure people from their living rooms, where many are glued to “horrible reality television.”

“It’s kind of a way to tease people back to support the live arts, the real arts, the original arts,” she said. “I feel like once they go, they’ll go again.”

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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