JAPAN

JAPAN
Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, Aug. 28: Labor costs in China are skyrocketing. The low-cost environment in the country where abundant, talented human resources can be obtained cheaply is declining.
If labor costs continue to climb in China, foreign companies doing business there may have to revise their management strategies.
Furthermore, China is reviewing its policy of giving favorable treatment to foreign companies.
The State Development and Reform Commission has recently announced the unification of corporate income tax rates. Until then, China has given a preferential tax rate to foreign firms in an attempt to procure funds from overseas as it has suffered from a shortage of capital.
"Quantity" to "quality"
At the same time, the commission said it would shift its policy of luring foreign companies from "quantity" to "quality." To enhance its international competitive edge, China will probably become more selective toward foreign businesses, giving priority to foreign companies in high-technology industries.
If the new policies are put into effect, China's attraction as a target for investment will inevitably decline for foreign firms.
However, compared with other Asian countries, China still holds economic advantages. Increases in labor and other costs will promote advancement of domestic markets and industrial structures.
Both positive and negative aspects of the increased costs in doing business in China must be thoroughly examined.
BRITAIN
The Times, London, Aug. 30: A year after the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, the superpower that failed to save its most beguiling city put aside a day to remember it.
It is unlikely ever to return to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels, as refugees in neighbouring states build new lives there while those who cling to visions of a revitalised New Orleans fail to agree which one to build.
President Bush admitted that government at all levels had failed in the aftermath of the storm and since. He promised a better response next time.
Temporary repairs
It is not hard to depict Katrina's aftermath as more disastrous than the hurricane itself. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers admits its repairs to New Orleans levees are temporary at best. ... Swifter action and better co-ordination by myriad government agencies would undoubtedly have saved lives and lowered the cost of reconstruction, now put at $110 billion from federal funds alone.
But individuals, not government, will decide New Orleans' fate. In the absence of clear, quick answers from federal and state governments, ad hoc groupings of current and former New Orleans citizens have been voting with their wallets and their removal vans.
Rebuilding has been brisk in largely white middle-class neighbourhoods which did not need to wait for federal grants to begin reconstruction but almost non-existent in poorer black ones, whose former residents account for more than half the 255,000 people who left last August and have yet to come back.
Some have been quick to see a plot to reinvent New Orleans as a smaller, richer, whiter city. It will, inevitably, be all these things but it will remain the home of jazz and gumbo even as it becomes more like the rest of America. That change is not tragic or sinister. It is an object lesson in the power of a highly mobile and resilient society to adapt and thrive.
ITALY
La Stampa, Torino, Aug. 30: One has the impression that those who govern us consider the United Nations mission to Lebanon an absolute obligation; to escape it, it would be cowardice.
They say that a Great Nation cannot withdraw from the historic duty to save the endangered peace in the Lebanese inferno. We are not a Great Nation, rather a medium-sized quarrelsome power.
Risk calculation
Our participation among the ranks of the international peace force is honorable, but at the same time, we enter a situation for which we do not know how well we have calculated the risk.
Perhaps we are wrong, but our governors, certainly without wishing it, have characterized the effective tasks of our contingent with unusual euphoria, even if, up to now, the public opinion does not know where we are going and what exactly we are doing over there.
In fact, our boys should cut off the supplies to the Shiite guerrillas, and possibly even disarm them.