New Geography

Author: Todd Crowell

  • China’s Navy: A Maritime Power?

    When China’s navy looks beyond its coastal waters, which it increasingly does, it sees a kind of Great Wall. The Chinese call this the “First Island Chain,” a line of islands, some small, others huge, extending from the Japan archipelago to the north, the Ryuku island chain past Taiwan, and the Philippines to the south. The waters within this arc are considered an integral part of China itself.

    Increasingly, China’s sailors are penetrating this barrier through various choke points to gain access to the broader Western Pacific Ocean. In late November, a large formation of Chinese long-range bombers and support craft passed through the gap between Okinawa and the island of Miyako, the so-called “Miyako Channel”.

    The Miyako Channel is strategically vital for China because it is one of the few international waterways through which the Chinese navy and air can access the Pacific Ocean without violating somebody’s space. It is also located close to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands which are also claimed by China.

    The first time a Chinese H-6K bomber passed through the channel was September, 2013; the first multi-plane formation to use this passageway was in May this year, and late this year an unusually large formation of eight bombers and support aircraft passed through the gap, flew around the Pacific, and then returned to home base through the channel.

    The H-6K is a modified and much improved version of an old Soviet Tu-22 bomber, known as a “Badger”. It has been configured to hold cruise missiles under its wings or in its bomb bay. The planes reportedly flew about 620 miles into the Pacific before returning to their home base near Shanghai.

    Both the Chinese navy and the air force are learning to conduct extended maritime operations far from home waters and into the wider Western Pacific. Of course, China has maintained a permanent, rotating flotilla of two destroyers and a supply ship in the waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden since 2009. Unlike Japan, it does not have a permanent base in that region, although it is seeking one.

    In March, 2014, two Chinese warships docked at Abu Dhabi, the first time a Chinese fleet had made a port call on the Arabian Peninsula since the days of the Treasure Ships of Admiral Zheng He. In 2013, the Chinese navy made its first goodwill visit to South America, and it stationed a guided missile frigate in the Mediterranean to help escort ships removing chemical weapons from Syria.

    These missions are not war fighting, but the ships have enhanced capabilities for operating in seas far from home. They have gained experience in coordinating with other naval services on anti-piracy patrol, and exercised with other navies, including those of South Korea and Pakistan.

    In the summer of 2013 a Chinese naval flotilla passed through the Soyu Strait, which separates Hokkaido from the southern tip of Russia’s Kurile islands; they returned to their home base through the Miyako Channel. The People’s Daily trumpeted this maneuver as if it were a major triumph. Never mind that these narrow waters are international passageways or that they could easily be closed off if the Japanese decided to do so.

    China routinely conducts naval and air exercises beyond the First Island Chain as far away as the Philippine Sea, and the number of Chinese naval flotillas passing through the First Island Chain has increased significantly in recent years. There were two in 2008 and 2009, four in 2010, five in 2011, and eleven in 2012. In 2012 surface combatants were deployed seven times to the Philippine Sea; they were deployed nineteen times in 2013. The Maneuver-5 exercise in the Philippine Sea involved units from all three of China’s fleets, its largest open-ocean exercise to date.

    The Chinese navy has now penetrated all of the Western Pacific choke points along the chain, from the Tsuruga Strait separating Hokkaido from Honshu in northern Japan to the Bashi Strait separating Taiwan from the Philippines and the Sunda Strait in Indonesia. In October, 2012 a flotilla exited the East China Sea through the narrow passage way between Taiwan and Japan’s Yonaguna island in the Ryukyu chain (where the Japanese army has constructed a surveillance radar).

    This is thought to have been a signal from Beijing of displeasure over Tokyo’s decision to buy the Senkaku islands a month earlier. Later, two Sovremnny Class destroyers and two frigates exited the chain through the Miyako Strait and returned via the waters separating Yonaguna from Taiwan.

    The navy has steadily progressed from a handful of vessels, to multi-fleet (i.e. elements from all three of China’s fleets), to combined operations with submarines, drones and long-range bombers. Not only does China maintain a permanent anti-piracy force in the Indian Ocean, it now routinely conducts naval exercises and operates beyond the First Island Chain, says the US National Defense University.

    This year China was invited to participate in the Rimpac exercise in waters near Hawaii. It sent a destroyer, but also an intelligence-gathering ship, making it possibly the first time a nation spied on an exercise in which it was a participant.

    When queried as to its purpose and intentions of these missions, Beijing has a standard reply: “The training is in line with the relevant international practices and is not aimed at any one country or target and poses no threat to any country or region.”

    In June, 2015, Beijing issued a white paper on its defense priorities in which it stated what has been obvious to any naval planner paying attention: that China’s naval interests are no longer limited to its coastline, but span the globe. “The traditional mentality [going back to Mao Zedong] that the land outweighs the seas must be abandoned,” the paper states.

    That the Chinese navy will enhance its capabilities for “open seas protection” just puts into words what is actually happening. The white paper leaves little doubt that China is intent on transforming itself into a modern maritime power, capable of challenging Japan or the US in Asia and elsewhere.

    Todd Crowell is the author of The Coming War, published by Amazon as a Kindle Single.

    First Island Chain (perimeter marked in red) map by Suid-Afrikaanse (GFDL) via Wikimedia Commons

  • The Sea of Japan: Wading Into the Name-Game Waters

    Call it ‘Nomenclature Nationalism’, or ‘The Tyranny of Also Known As’. The Virginia state legislature ventured into unfamiliar foreign policy waters earlier this month when it passed a law that requires school text book publishers to add six little words in reference to the body of water usually known as the Sea of Japan: “also known as the East Sea”. New York and New Jersey have now also placed the item on their state agendas. The moves reflect a trend: Geographic nomenclature is becoming a frontline in nationalism, particularly in Asia.

    The legislation in Virginia would seem to be a rather small bore triumph of South Korean sentiments and organization by Korean voters in local U.S. elections. But it is being treated as a major victory in Seoul, and as a defeat for Japan, which went out of its way to try to forestall the legislation, even hinting that the language might jeopardize Japanese investment in the state.

    For the past twenty years, South Korea has been laboring mightily to persuade the rest of the world to use its designation for the body of water that separates it from Japan, or, if not, to at least acknowledge an alternative designation.

    Until recently, those efforts have not met with much success. In 2012, South Korea officially asked the International Hydrographic Organization to use the term ‘East Sea’ for the Sea of Japan. It turned down the request after Washington officially advised the organization against it.

    The U.S. Board of Geographic Names, which guides the government on nomenclature issues, also uses Sea of Japan alone, and China and Russia, two countries contiguous to the waters, use variations of the words Sea of Japan in their own languages. The Google Maps search bar brings up ‘also known as the East Sea’ in Sea of Japan searches, but designates the waters as Sea of Japan on its map.

    The number of “also known as…” constructions are proliferating in Asia, clogging up prose and imposing a kind of political correctness on international publications. When writing about Asian issues, journalists and other writers now routinely struggle to appear even-handed.

    It has become, of course, common place to now refer to the uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea — the area that is bringing China and Japan closer to war — as ‘Senkaku, also known as Diaoyu’. Never mind that the English language publications in China, such as South China Morning Post, don’t bother with such even-handedness, simply calling them ‘the Diaoyu’.

    Similarly, the disputed islands in the Sea of Japan are usually described as ‘Dokdo, also known as Takeshima’, though there is, in this case, a third neutral term. The U.S. officially calls them the Lioncourt Rocks, after the French vessel that “discovered” them.

    How far down this road must we travel? A half a dozen countries border on the body of water commonly known in English as the South China Sea, each one with its own geographic name for it. So must we, in total neutrality, of course, write ‘South China Sea – also known as Nan Hai (Chinese), Bien Dong (Vietnamese) or the West Philippine Sea’?

    Manila was perfectly content to refer to the waters in question as the South Sea, until several atolls became objects of disputed ownership. Beginning in 2012, it decided to call the waters ‘the West Philippine Sea,’ to reinforce its claims to these atolls and islands. The ocean to the east of the Philippines is still known simply as the Philippine Sea.

    Issues on dry land include ‘Myanmar, also known as Burma’, as many publications now refer to the Southeast Asian country. Both words approximate what Burmese call their country, but Myanmar has an unsavory pedigree. In 1989 the military junta known as the State Law and Order Council (SLORC) decreed that Burma was a colonial-era name, and that henceforth it would like to be called Myanmar.

    Coming only a year after the bloody suppression of pro-democracy protests in Rangoon (Yangon), there were grounds to question the legitimacy of the name change. The SLORC has passed into history, and Myanmar has gained acceptance almost everywhere except, significantly, the U.S. State Department and among some dissident publications based in Thailand.

    A similar situation arose in India when the Shiv Sena, an unsavory, right-wing nationalist party, won control of Maharashita State and declared that the name of its capital, Bombay, was also a colonial relic and would henceforth be known as Mumbai. The Shiv Sena are long out of power, but Mumbai has out-grown its origins and gained international acceptance — along with Chennia (Madras) and Kolkata (Calcutta).

    One should probably be grateful that other Asian countries haven’t yet joined the nationalist nomenclature bandwagon to dump “colonial era” names. The Thais don’t insist that we call their capital city Krungthep instead of Bangkok. Beijing doesn’t insist that we exchange ‘China’ for the tongue twister Zhonggou, and Tokyo doesn’t insist we use Nippon – also known as Japan.

    Todd Crowell is author of the forthcoming The Dictionary of the Asian Language. He is based in Tokyo.

    Flickr photo by paukrus: Sea of Japan near Nahodka

  • Can Kamaishi, Japan Recover From the Tsunami?

    KAMAISHI, Japan – Two years after the disastrous 2011 earthquake and tsunami, most of the debris from the deluge has been cleared away in this small city on the northern edge of Japan’s tsunami coast. The cars and vans once piled on top of each other like some kind of apocalyptic traffic jam have been sorted out or sold for scrap. My guide, a local teacher who lost three of her aunts in the deluge, drives us up to a lookout. Spread out below us is the coastal village of Unosumai, or, more accurately, what once was the village of Unosumai. The view reminds me of pictures taken of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb had flattened almost everything. The only exception there was one surviving building, the former Industrial Promotion Hall in Hiroshima’s Peace Garden.

    In Unosumai, the village hall is still standing, broken windows and all, with the huge clock over the main entrance still fixed forever on 3:25 p.m., the time on March 11 of 2011 when an enormous wall of water washed into the building, drowning many of the village workers. A small shrine with flowers is set in front. While we stopped there, several people arrive to pray and give obeisance.

    Kamaishi is a hilly city with little flat land. Rising directly behind the central business district are three steep hills, covered with a network of wooden ladders, stairways and pathways that have long provided a natural shelter against tsunami, a kind of local version of the storm shelters in Oklahoma. Tsunami is an historic threat here in the same way that deadly tornadoes are there.

    These routes upward were critical in saving many lives. The town is extremely proud that not one of the approximately 3,000 elementary through high school children was killed in the surge, even though their schools, located along the shore, were inundated. It is often called the “Kamaishi Miracle.” By all accounts, the teachers and students performed admirably in the thirty minutes or so between the earthquake and the tsunami. Teachers had the presence of mind to tell their charges to literally ‘take to the hills’. Don’t wait. Older students carried the younger elementary school children on their backs as they climbed to safety.

    Kamaishi was famous for its network of seawalls, built at considerable expense before the tsunami. The seawalls utterly failed to hold back the surging tide. Plans to rebuild or strengthen them, using money from the national reconstruction fund, have become a source of controversy. Why spend so much money on a system that demonstrably failed its ultimate test?

    Some argue that the sea walls gave the residents a false sense of security. “I do believe that, unconsciously, the breakwater’s presence did give people a false sense of security,” says Mayor Takenori Noda. Loud speakers all over the city had warned people to flee, with enough time to get to higher ground. Most of the town is within about two hundred yards of the nearest evacuation stairway.

    Today, there isn’t much evidence of new construction going on. The national government has appropriated billions of yen to facilitate rebuilding in the tsunami-devastated zone, but not much is being spent in this town. When the slate is wiped totally clean, it is not surprising that it takes time to decide what to write as a replacement.

    Kamaishi and other Japanese towns along the northeastern tsunami coast need something more basic than millions of yen in reconstruction aid sunk into greater seawalls, namely, a rationale for their existence. For more than a hundred years, the city’s reason for being was grounded on its famous Steel Works.

    The location of Japan’s first steel mill blast furnace, Kamaishi started to rise even before the Meiji Restoration began Japan’s transformation into a modern, industrial society. Built in 1857, the furnace was initially established to provide the steel needed for modern artillery to defend the country.

    The city’s heyday was probably in the 1950 and 1960s, when some 12,000 people were employed by the mill, and the town had a population or more than 90,000. Nippon Steel closed the works in 1988, putting thousands out of work. The town’s population has steadily declined, and is now around 40,000.

    Kamaishi Steel Works never found a niche to justify itself, unlike Japan Steel Works a little further north on the island of Hokkaido. It, too, supplied the steel needed to build the large guns for the Imperial Japanese Navy, but it then evolved into a lucrative niche business to forge reactor pressure vessels for nuclear power plants, which it developed into virtually a global monopoly.

    Kamaishi struggled to find a substitute for defense production. It recruited various metal-working enterprises. Some stayed, but others left because the location was too far from regular supply networks. The small harbor was thought to have container-ship potential, but it never developed into the kind of terminal that some of the city fathers had envisioned. The day I visited it was quiet and empty of ships.

    In 2010, Foreign Policy Magazine used Kamaishi as an exemplar of what it thought ailed Japan’s economy, especially the propensity to spend billions of yen on unneeded and ultimately useless public works projects, including Kamaishi’s famous city breakwater.

    Has Kamaishi’s story changed since then? One element of the town’s new reconstruction plan involves a request for funds to build a rugby stadium. With the once formidable Kamaishi Nippon Steel Rugby team long gone, one has to wonder who would play there.

    Todd Crowell is a Tokyo-based journalist.

    Flickr photo by Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock, 1st Combat Camera Squadron 1. Posted by DVIDSHUB: “Petzel, a search and rescue dog with the Fairfax County, Va., Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue team waits for his master before heading out to search structures and debris on March 17, 2011, in Unosumai, Japan. A 9.0 earthquake hit Japan on March 11 that caused a tsunami that destroyed anything in its path.” Related Photos: dvidshub.net/r/sojri7.

  • The Collapse of Racial Politics in Southeast Asia

    The recent general election in Malaysia left behind a bitter legacy of political divisions, threats of lawsuits, growing demonstrations, and arrests under the Sedition Act. In a larger sense, however, it was another sign that the race-based political order in Malaysia, and to a certain extent in neighboring Singapore, is breaking down.

    Ever since Malaysia won independence in 1957 it has been governed by a coalition – the National Front or Barisan Nasional (BN) – made up of as many as a dozen parties, representing the ethnic and racial makeup of this multicultural country.

    The quintessential representative of the old order was Mahathir Mohamad, who served 22 years (1981 to 2003) as prime minister. He spoke in Tokyo shortly after the May 5th general election and defended the coalition system as a means of apportioning the power and wealth of the country among its diverse groups.

    After each general election the Barisan distributed cabinet posts to the leaders of the various partners, assuring that some posts went to ethnic Chinese, to ethnic Indians, and to representatives of aboriginal and indigenous peoples in the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo.

    Mostly, these were second and third-tier portfolios. The plum jobs, such as defense, foreign affairs, finance, and of course the prime minister’s post itself went to the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) that represented, in this racial scheme, the Malays, who make up about 60 percent of the population.

    This year, for the first time, no ethnic Chinese will be serving in the cabinet. Chinese voters deserted the main Chinese coalition parties in droves to vote for an opposition coalition under the leadership of Anwar Ibrahim, leaving hardly anyone available to take up the jobs. Prime Minister Najib Razak called it a “Chinese tsunami”.

    Increasingly, the BN is dependent on East Malaysian parties to maintain a majority. The 47 seats that the Barisan won in Sabah and Sarawak saved Najib’s bacon last month. Without them, he might have fallen short of the majority needed to form a government under Malaysia’s Westminster style of government.

    But it is an unstable base, as it depends on continued malapportionment. For example, the capital, Kuala Lumpur, with a population of 7 million has 11 seats, while Sabah, with 3.5 million people sends 25 members to parliament. That kind of imbalance cannot persist in a democratic country, especially as more young people drawn to the under-represented areas see themselves left out.

    In his recent talk, Mahathir lamented that Malaysia is still a divided country, without seeming to acknowledge that the system of race-based politics might itself have contributed to the divisions. The Chinese, who make up a quarter of the population, refuse to assimilate, unlike ethnic Chinese in Indonesia or Thailand, he said.

    He might have noted that for years, the Suharto regime in Indonesia suppressed outward manifestations of ethnicity, to the point of banning celebrations of Chinese New year, Chinese language schools even the use of the Chinese script. These restrictions were lifted only with the end of the New Order regime in 1998.

    In neighboring Singapore, the old order, built around a monopoly of power for the governing Peoples’ Action Party, is slowly crumbling, too. In the 2011 general election the PAP garnered about 60 percent of the vote, better perhaps than the Barisan’s 47 percent this year, but still the lowest percentage since independence.

    For the first time, the opposition captured a Group Representative Constituency, a unique Singaporean form of electoral machinery whereby five candidates run as a slate. The system was ostensibly designed to ensure racial balance, since at least one member had to come from a Malay, Indian or other minority community.

    That is the rationale, anyway. Many believe it was meant to disable the opposition by making it harder to recruit enough candidates and pay the costs of running, while at the same time providing electoral refuge for weaker PAP candidates who might lose in face-to-face encounters.

    Overnight, the opposition tripled its numbers in parliament. Capturing the Aljuniad GRC was like climbing Mount Everest. It will be easier next time. The opposition in Singapore, such as it was, once was made up of gadflies and loners. But a new breed of highly educated Singaporeans is aspiring to lead, exemplified by the new opposition MP Chen Shaw Mao, a former Rhodes Scholar.

    Malaysia’s prime minister returns to office considerably weakened. His coalition performed even worse than it did in 2008 under his predecessor, Abdullah Badawi, who resigned, taking the blame for the poor showing. Najib faces threat of coalition defections and the possibility, though remote, that some of his members may be disqualified through successful challenges based on voter fraud.

    He is fighting back, in part by wielding the Sedition Act against demonstrators, and by packing the cabinet with Malay nationalists. Najib has to stand for re-election as leader of UMNO at a party conference later this month, where he may be challenged by his deputy, Muhyidden Yassin.

    Mahathir predicted that, in the end, the party and the coalition will come around to supporting Najib because “there is no alternative.” That maybe more true today than it will be tomorrow.

    Todd Crowell is a Tokyo-based journalist. He has covered Malaysian politics for Asiaweek magazine.

    Flickr photo by Hitoribocchi; Pakatan Rakyat Rally, general elections, Malaysia, May, 2013.

  • Tokyo Dust: The Geography of Pollen

    TOKYO – The weather here is turning warmer, the cherry trees are blossoming and the waiting rooms in clinics that specialize in nose and eye problems are filling up with people suffering from runny noses, sneezing and bloodshot eyes.

    Tokyo is known for many things: the Imperial Palace gardens, cherry trees in the springtime, super-crowded commuter trains. But it has a more dubious distinction. It is also the world capital for allergies, especially for hay fever, known to the Japanese as pollen sickness.

    Of course this is no secret to the bulk of the people living here, especially the estimated six or seven million who are prone to pollen allergies (based on general rule that 15- 20 percent of the Japanese population suffers from hay fever).

    Tokyoites know that by the time the plum trees start to blossom in March, it’s time to stock up on antihistamine tablets, eye drops, herbal medicines and face masks. Those most susceptible to pollen sometimes also avail themselves of allergy shots and other more exotic remedies.

    One might wonder, why Tokyo? The answer goes back to just before World War II, and just after its end. In those hardscrabble years, people denuded the forests of the nearby mountains to repair burned out homes, keep warm and cook food.

    In the 1950s and 1960s the Japanese government undertook a successful reforestation program, planting millions of cedars, a cheap, fast-growing native tree and a prodigious pollen producer. Unlike the US, where ragweed is the main pollen source, most of Japan’s suffering is caused by cedar and cypress trees.

    It was expected that these trees would be cut to produce timber, but Japan has found it more economical to import lumber from the US and Canada, so they have been left standing. Now 40 to 50 years old, they have reached their pollen producing peak, pumping literally tons of the irritant into the atmosphere.

    The cedar pollen season peaks in March, but just as it dies down the pollination of the cypress trees begins to kick in. So for those who suffer from both pollens, there is an unbroken period of sneezing and sniffling through the end of April.

    Ironically, it is Tokyo’s urban nature that compounds the problem, since the pollen particles fall on asphalt pavements or on the roofs of buildings rather than being absorbed in the soil. From there, they are picked up and blown around in little invisible eddies and whirlwinds.

    The inexorable march of suburbia to the west has eliminated many of the farms and windbreaks that had once helped keep much of the pollen from reaching the city. But now the urban area of Tokyo extends to the very foothills of the mountains.

    The forest agency, which had planted 4.5 million hectares (11.1 million acres) of cedar trees, now proposes to cut them down and reseed the areas with different broadleaf trees that produce less pollen. The goal is to halve the number of cedar trees by 2017.

    Hay fever is thought to have a measurable impact on Japan’s economy, both in a negative and a positive way. The Dai-Ichi Life Insurance Research Institute estimates that the economy lost about $3 billion due to absenteeism in the memorable hay fever year of 2005. On the other hand, Dai-Ichi Life also estimates that Japanese spend more than $6 billion a year on hay fever prevention products, such as eye drops and face masks.

    Dust that originates in China’s Inner Mongolia province and other parts of Central Asia and is blown east in prevailing winds is called “yellow dust” by the Japanese. In recent years, the hay fever season has merged with the yellow dust peril to aggravate the woes of allergy sufferers.

    When it settles, cities are bathed in a kind of yellow haze, similar to smog, and the dust particles get into everything. Weather reports on local television stations plot the approaching dust and recommend that people refrain from hanging washed clothing out of doors. In more extreme cases, the yellow dust can cut visibility to the point where airports close temporarily.

    Of late, the yellow dust has been augmented by real smog from China. In Fukuoka city on Kyushu, the average amount of particulates is estimated to have reached 50 micrograms per cubic meter. The air pollution from China has caused the first official smog alerts in Japan.

    This being Japan, various exotic remedies have been proposed over the years to lessen the burden. One pharmaceutical company touts its olive leaf extraction as a way of alleviating hay fever symptoms without causing side effects such as drowsiness.

    An institute associated with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries touts a new kind of genetically engineered rice. Eating it may produce an immune tolerance. The rice is said to produce an amino acid that mimics the cedar pollen and helps produce immunities.

    However, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has been slow to classify the engineered rice as a safe food, disappointing many sufferers who had hoped it would be available from this year’s harvest.

    Several Japanese companies are increasing the production of face masks for sale in Japan. One firm, Ohyama, has developed an improved mask to screen out micro particles. The masks are made in Dailin China.

    At this time of year newspapers carry stories filled with tips on how to prevent, or at least alleviate, the symptoms of hay fever. They all seem to boil down to the same piece of advice: find and wear a good face mask or stay indoors.

    Todd Crowell is a writer based in Tokyo.

    Flickr photo by OiMax: Yellow Dust , Tokyo, Japan

  • The Hong Kong Model for National Identity Cards

    “May I see some identification, please?” asked a retail clerk in my home town Seattle taking my check. I said certainly and handed the sales woman my Hong Kong identity card. She looked at it blankly for a moment then said, “Can I see some other kind of identification?”

    Sometimes when I’m feeling cranky or mischievous, I hand over my Hong Kong ID card when I need to produce some kind of identification. Why not? It is a perfectly valid document. It has my photograph on it. I know of no law that specifies that my state driver’s license has become a national ID card. At least not yet.

    The United States is groping towards a national ID card system, compelled both by worries about security in an age of terrorism and the need to control immigration. In doing so it could learn some lessons from Hong Kong.

    In the U. S. the driver’s license, issued by individual states, has become a de facto identity card. It is used more for cashing checks and opening bank accounts to getting on aircraft even for domestic flights.

    Call me too literal-minded, but a driver’s license is for driving. Identity verification is something else. Why should citizenship be confused with a demonstrated ability navigate through heavy traffic without causing an accident?

    I was reminded of the need for such a card by the controversy over Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law. That state has, if nothing else, put the cart before the horse. Before the police can check on somebody’s “papers” one needs to settle on what “papers” a person should be required to carry.

    The U.S. clearly has a need for some kind of identification card to cash checks, to board airplanes, even to enter a federal building to pick up tax forms. But Americans instinctively balk at the idea of having to carry around a national identity card. Since strictly speaking nobody actually has to have a driver’s license, we kid ourselves into thinking it is still voluntary.

    Before returning to the U.S., I lived for sixteen years in Hong Kong, where everybody over a certain age must obtain an ID card and carry it with him or her at all times. I never considered this a serious infringement on my freedom, although there certainly was a hassle having to obtain one (and to replace one when lost.)

    The Hong Kong police can and do stop people at random and ask them to produce their ID cards. It is not uncommon on the streets to see a couple policemen huddled around a young Chinese man inspecting his ID. That this involves profiling is undeniable. In my sixteen years there, I never once was asked by a policeman to produce my card. It was assumed that being a Westerner I had entered on a valid work permit.

    Of course, I had to produce my ID, or at least provide the number on it, numerous times during the ordinary course of living, from opening a bank account to applying for a job to voting.

    It would be far better to follow Hong Kong’s example and create a national card, probably issued through the Department of Homeland Security. It would lift a burden from state motor vehicle authorities that they were never intended or are equipped to shoulder.

    The advantage that the ID card has over a driver’s license, social security card or any of the other make-shift sources of identification now in use is that they can be coded to show at a glance a person’s status: citizen, permanent resident, foreign student, guest worker.

    In Hong Kong, ID cards are issued to everyone, whether or not they are born there, have become permanent residents or are on short-term work contracts such as the tens of thousands of domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines. In the same way, a national identity card is also a requisite if America is to have any kind of orderly guest-worker program.

    A standardized, secure national ID card issued by the federal government is essential for controlling immigration into the U.S. In short: it’s the way it’s done. Anybody who thinks a national ID card is un-American might have a valid point. But then he should stop complaining about “securing our borders.”

    Todd Crowell worked as a Senior Writer for Asiaweek in Hong Kong before returning to the U.S.