Monthly Archives: January 2020

TOKYO -- Once in every ten years, Tokyo and Beijing engage in psychological warfare over the Chinese leader's official visit to Japan, no matter how well or badly the two Asian powers get along at a given time.

Ever since the two countries normalized relations in 1972, the Chinese top leader's trip to the nearby country has been a major bilateral diplomatic event.

The last two such trips were in 1998, by then-President Jiang Zemin, and in 2008 by successor Hu Jintao.

In a long-awaited move, current Chinese President Xi Jinping, who also heads the Communist Party, will come to Japan this April in his first official visit since taking office. (He has been to Osaka for the Group of 20 summit).

The treatment of Xi on this trip has emerged as Tokyo's biggest diplomatic bargaining chip.

The diplomatic wrangling was visible when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Beijing and held talks with Xi this past December. Abe took an unusually strong stance over "sensitive issues" between the two countries.

Abe first urged Xi to address intrusions by official Chinese vessels into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu.

"Without stability in the East China Sea, there will be no true improvement in bilateral relations," he said.

Abe also called for the early return of Japanese nationals detained in China on espionage charges and expressed concerns over the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong as well as human rights issues in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

In the past, even when there had been a delicate exchange of words between the Japanese and Chinese leaders, Tokyo had often refrained from revealing or detailing such exchanges in public out of consideration for China.

But this time, Abe forthrightly told a news conference the next day that "I raised our pending problems directly with President Xi."

Abe's tougher stance stems back to a heated discussion at a top party meeting at his Liberal Democratic Party a few weeks prior.

At the General Council, the party's top decision-making body, on Dec. 12, some LDP lawmakers had objected to having Xi visit Japan as a state guest.

Seishiro Eto, a former director general of what is now the Ministry of Defense, was the first to speak out. "If we are going to invite him as a state guest, we should ask China to halt intrusions into Japanese territorial waters," he said, regarding the Senkaku Islands. Other LDP lawmakers echoed Eto's remarks.

Within the LDP, legislators have also worried about hosting Xi as a state guest, at a time when China is subject to international criticism over the handling of the Hong Kong protests and the Uighur internment camps.

After the meeting, General Council chairman Shunichi Suzuki sent a message to the prime minister's office, through a member of Abe's faction, that he looks to put to rest any intraparty objection to Xi's state visit in the coming months by officially calling for the Japanese government to address these issues of concern.

While LDP conservatives have grumbled over the state visit invitation in the past, but a formal request from a formal body of the party carries more weight.

Behind the scenes, China's own Foreign Ministry has warned Japan that if Xi would not be welcomed, he will not be making the trip.

Chinese presidents are usually treated as state guests when they visit foreign countries, except when attending international conferences.

This is because China attaches great importance to its top leaders' honor and does not agree to have them visit foreign countries unless they can do so as state guests.

It was Abe who first proposed inviting Xi as a state guest in their talks last June. Therefore, by protocol, Japan is in no position to retract the offer, no matter the objection in the public.

In light of such history, one would suspect that the prime minister's office would wish the objections to die down.

But sources inside the prime minister's office tell a different tale.

In fact, some of the prime minister's aides seem to have lobbied members of the LDP General Council to raise more commotion. "We want the party to speak out about Japan's stance more."

Their ulterior motive is to extract as many concessions as possible from China in return for arranging a successful visit, amid the opposing voices.

When Hu Jintao came in 2008, Tokyo leveraged the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics, offering to help in making the historic games a success. The strategy worked. China agreed to conduct joint development of gas fields in the East China Sea, an issue it had not said yes to until then.

Jiang Zemin's visit in 1998 is a model of a failed visit. The two countries could not come to terms over historical issues, resulting in the Chinese leader calling out Japan for past "militarism" in an Imperial Palace banquet.

Deng Xiaoping came to Japan in 1978. Half a year earlier, more than 100 Chinese fishing vessels had gathered around the Senkakus.

The environment surrounding Xi's planned visit is even more fraught.

The number of official Chinese vessels confirmed in the 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone around the Senkaku Islands in 2019 exceeded 1,000 on a cumulative basis, hitting a record annual high.

Japan has confirmed that 10 of its nationals detained in China on spying and other charges have yet to return home.

China concerns transcend Japan's party lines. Even the Japanese Communist Party criticized Beijing for its strengthening hegemonism in a revised platform this month.

China has stressed the need to improve the Japanese public's feelings toward it and has repeatedly asked the government here to provide proper guidance to domestic media outlets.

Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono offered a counterargument when meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing this past December.

"There is freedom of the press in Japan," which "cannot control public opinion like China," he said at the time. "In order to create a welcoming mood among the Japanese people for Mr. Xi's Japan visit, your side needs to make considerable efforts."

In late 2017, President Xi told Chinese officials to "improve relations with Japan even if there are problems."

Xi issued the instruction at an internal meeting after deciding that building better relations with surrounding countries was crucial, given the inevitability of a confrontation between China and the U.S.

On the other hand, Xi also told Chinese officials to resolutely protect national sovereignty. These instructions lie behind the increase in Chinese vessels heading toward the Senkakus and the continued detentions of Japanese, despite improved Sino-Japanese ties.

After his 2008 Japan visit, Hu came under criticism at home for caving in to Japan, destabilizing his political power base. Xi cannot afford to make the same mistake.

The psychological warfare continues as each side seeks concessions from the other.

In late December, after returning from his China trip, Abe called ex-defense chief Eto, the lawmaker who opposed the state visit at the party meeting, and briefed him about the meeting with Xi. "I properly conveyed Japan's position" the Japanese leader explained.

Eto did not take Abe's remarks as a request to sheathe his sword, but as an encouragement to continue to stand up for Japan.

Official Chinese vessels continue to intrude into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands even after Abe directly urged Xi to address the issue. Eto said that "if the situation does not improve, I will speak out again."

Another LDP lawmaker, Masahisa Sato, a respected former colonel of the Self-Defense Forces, has also stressed both within and outside the party that "a state guest is a guest of the emperor, a symbol of the unity of the people," and that the explanation for inviting Xi as a state guest has been insufficient.

The Japanese side is also throwing another curve ball.

Abe's younger brother Nobuo Kishi, an LDP lower house member, visited Beijing from Jan. 8 to Jan. 10 for exchanges between Japanese and Chinese lawmakers and emphasized the importance of stability in the East China Sea.

Kishi then flew to Taiwan on Jan. 12 and met with President Tsai Ing-wen, who had won reelection earlier that month.

While showing Tsai Japanese newspapers reporting her victory, Kishi congratulated her on her win and said: "All of the Japanese newspapers published articles about your win on their front pages. Even the [Japanese] prime minister does not always get front page coverage."

Xi is alarmed by Abe's closeness to Taiwan. During their meetings, Xi has always tried to gauge whether Japan's Taiwan policy has changed. Kishi's recent visit to the island can also be said to be part of the ongoing mind games.

Inside Japanese Politics is a column that focuses on the details and inner workings of Tokyo statecraft, policy and foreign relations.

Original post:

Japan's once-a-decade mind games with China over top leader visit - Nikkei Asian Review

Stillwater was far too much for Woodbury, especially in the second half of the Ponies 90-54 victory on Friday.

The Royals hung with their hosts in the first half, taking a 50-39 deficit into the break. But Stillwater ran all over in the second half, outscoring Woodbury 40-15.

Carley West had 18 points in the loss while fellow Royal Lexy Paulson had 11.

Alex Pratt had a game-high 24 for Stillwater, which had four players in double-digits. The Ponies hit eight 3-pointers to Woodburys one.

The Royals have a two-game week beginning at home on Tuesday against Mounds View. The Royals visit Irondale on Friday.

Forest Lake 74, Woodbury 57

The Royals kept it close for a while, but Forest Lake surged to a 74-57 win over Woodbury on Tuesday, Jan.21, thanks to a 48-point second half.

The Royals trailed just 26-25 at halftime, but were outscored 48-32 after the break.

Callie Mundahl had 15 points to lead the Royals while Carley West added 11 and Lexy Paulson had 10.

Forest Lakes Logan Anderson led all scorers with 20 points with three of her teammates scoring at least 15 as well.

Go here to read the rest:

Woodbury girls' basketball dropped two games - RiverTowns

NEW ORLEANS - Basketball is supposed to be a sanctuary.

Thats what basketball players always say in the toughest times, isnt it?

It sure didnt feel like one on this Sunday night in New Orleans. Not after Kobe Bryants tragic death. This time, stepping onto the court almost felt... wrong.

I think it was hard to play for everybody. Just around the league it was, Marcus Smart said after the Celtics loss. We still cant believe that its true. I think in the back of our minds were still wishing and hoping that its not. But its just tough. Its tough for everybody out there and it was a tough night for us.

There were discussions around the league about whether the games should have been canceled. It was obvious that everyone was affected by the news. Once it was clear the games would go on, the best that teams could do was honor Bryants memory.

Kobe would have wanted us to play was a common refrain after the game, and thats probably true. So they played, and honored the late number 24 by taking 24 second violations on alternating possessions to start the game.

If people got to watch those games and watch the 24 second violations, and they got to appreciate that as fans, then I think were happy to do whatever were asked to do, Brad Stevens said, acknowledging that the decision on whether to play was a tough one. "If it brings somebody, somewhere a little bit of a distraction in an otherwise tough day, then thats OK too.

As Stevens said before the game, Bryant is Jordan-esque in the eyes of some of the younger players. Jayson Tatum couldnt talk to the media after the game. He idolized Bryant, posting a touching tribute to his idol on Instagram. He left the arena the way he walked in; the way he spent his entire time there, with his hood up over his bowed head.

Others admitted they were also distracted.

Yeah, it was hard to play. It was tough, Jaylen Brown said. I take a lot of the blame, a lot of responsibility, the things that I do well, the things that I do great, I didnt do great today. It was just one of those games."

Stevens said the team made some uncharacteristic mistakes that cost them this game, and Brown certainly had his fair share. He wasnt alone.

Both teams played. Both teams had their Kobe connections. Both teams had their struggles. They played as best they could considering the circumstances. They did it because they had to.

It wouldnt have bothered me at all if we didnt play. I didnt feel like playing today, Gordon Hayward said. "I dont think anybody on either team would have minded if we didnt.

See the rest here:

Kobe Bryant tragedy: Boston Celtics torn on whether games should have been canceled, but would have been OK n - MassLive.com

Run N Gun launches at Drapers Mills next month

A real life Fortnite-style experience with airsoft game play is being launched in Thanet on February 8.

Civil servant Matt Woodward, from Margate, came up with the Run N Gun Airsoft venture as a way to entice son Tyler, 11, away from the X-Box.

The adventure described as paintballing without the mess is based on battle survival games.

It has three scenarios Capture the Flag, Zombies and the popular video game Fortnite. There are up to 15 different game modes.

Dad-of-three Matt, 35, said: I work for the civil service and was liaising with local councils, when I found that there is a huge drive in getting children all of all ages to become more active.

I have an 11 year old son and, although he plays football three times a week, I know how hard it is to drag him away from his X box. I started to think of a way that he could do both and am now running Fortnite styled airsoft events.

Kids and adults can come and play the game they love with their friends in a real life immersive simulation.

I spoke to Drapers Mill school, who are as driven as I am in giving the kids of Thanet something to do and getting them out the house and become more active.

Run N Gun will be held at Drapers Mills primary school in St Peters Footpath, Margate, every Saturday from February 8, 9am to 7pm. The activity is for those aged 11 and over,

Bookings are for 90 minutes and cost 20pp.

Individual and party bookings can be catered for, including birthday, corporate, stag and hen events.

There are no extra charges for ammunition used in the plastic guns.

To find out more find Run N Gun on facebook here

Or online here

Related

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'Real life' Fortnite-style gaming is coming to Thanet - The Isle of Thanet News

Bradley Lynch was nervous. It was April 2016, and he was in the News 6 studio in Orlando to film a segment for an upcoming broadcast. Lynch had been running his own YouTube channel for some time, so it wasnt the prospect of being on camera that had him on edge. No, he was nervous because he didnt want to mess up a rare chance to showcase the magic of virtual reality to viewers his videos didnt usually reach.

I had some prototype equipment and I wanted to help introduce VR to a mainstream audience, Lynch told me over video chat in October of last year. I thought hey, I can introduce VR to a lot of people who probably wouldnt see it for a number of years. VR was young and wasnt known well. I partnered with the news station to demo a few of the experiences I had.

The news segment showed off a prototype version of the Vive, an HTC-built headset that Lynch had gotten his hands on early after winning a contest. He had some of the stations anchors and reporters test out some short demos. The news crew got to live out every gamers fantasy: hitting tennis balls directly into the sky and walking into the green screen with their headsets on. Its clear these newscasters didnt have much gaming experience, but all of them still walked away impressed, raving about the time they spent with the Vive.

For Lynch, the segment was part of his mission, still ongoing fours years later, to spread the word about the awesome potential of virtual reality. What he didnt know at the time was how far VR would eventually take him.

Three years later, Lynch returned to News 6 to talk about his trip to Xian, China, where he competed in and won an invitational tournament for Phaser Lock Interactives Final Assault at the World Cyber Games, an event colloquially known as the Esports Olympics.

The VR stage was one of the smaller sections of the overall tournament, Lynch told me of his time in China. But on the final day people were there. It was crowded, and they were into it. I didnt even realize how many people were cheering until I took my headset off.

It was a mixed-reality stage. Each player had a perspective view wrapped around them, he said. Ive been doing mixed reality for a while so Im numb to it, but fans got to see us interact with this world. They got to see our movements translate in real time.

Bradley Lynchs story as an evangelist turned competitor is a common one in VR esports. Hes part of a small community of mostly grassroots organizers and players who compete in games like the first-person shooter Onward, the zero-gravity sports game Echo Arena, and the real-time strategy focused Final Assault on a regular basis.

The scene is still quite small, much like the rest of the virtual reality industry. Its made up of a hodgepodge of different tournament series, game studios, and several hundred players that take part because they love VR. Passion and a little hope drive the people that make the community-run VR Masters League and the ESL-run VR League possible. While there may be money from Oculus and well-known developers like Ready at Dawn floating around, the majority of what makes competitive VR tick comes from the bottom up.

The VR Masters League started with Onward about three years ago, VR Masters League organizer DaKinMan told me over Discord. Onward was all hyped up when it came out [in 2016] and we started holding tournaments on weekends. We really enjoyed playing competitively and we were looking to find more structure in how we set things up. Myself and two others started putting this together.

DaKinMan created a website to help run special VR tournaments with a ladder structure instead of the typical competitive bracket structure. The VR Master League runs on a ladder system, meaning teams play every week and they have matches set up for them based off their rank, DaKinMan said. New teams play new teams, and veterans play veterans. This engages the community and lets them have a fun match, [since] new teams wouldnt go against top teams.

A ladder tournament structure is unique, as few other competitive sports or esports make use of the model. The VR Masters League uses it to promote growth in its community and in the greater VR industry, rather than focusing primarily on competition. The League also gears its broadcasts toward new players in order to make them feel welcome. Like Lynch, the organizers consider themselves evangelists for VR as a platform.

The VR Masters League hosts tournaments for Onward, Final Assault, first-person shooters Pavlov VR and Contractors, and Ubisofts Space Junkies, with hundreds of players participating in the largest contests. The platform is also used by other games, including Ready at Dawns Echo Arena and many smaller titles.

If you encourage people to play in a more competitive atmosphere and they enjoy doing that then theyll spend more time in the game, league moderator and caster Brad SL33PY Atkins said. They then might recommend it to their friends. For games like Space Junkies, whose developer stopped official development on the game, were like life support.

The VR Masters League is as tight-knit as communities get. It isnt streaming to hundreds of thousands of viewers or caught up in huge Discord channels. Its filled with passionate people who know one another and want to help their community and platform grow. In some respects, these organizers and players arent too different from the passionate developers making the games used to compete.

Were really tight-knit with the community. Our game wouldnt be what it is without them. We embrace the grassroots nature of it, said Ready at Dawn lead designer Eric Hankins. The studio partners with both the ESL VR League and the VR Masters League to host tournaments and build the community around Echo Arena, an arena sports game where players float around in zero gravity trying to score goals on the opposing team.

As we did our initial betas, we really started to see what the game was capable of, Hankins said, noting that the studio realized Echo Arenas competitive potential early. As we saw people playing in the betas, we started to see hardcore meta games evolve. It was very natural with how many players starting playing at that level.

Ready at Dawn started listening early to its competitive playerbase to get feedback, and even built an in-game spectator system long before the first tournament. The studio knew the game would bring in high-level players, so it wanted to start organizing on the ground level. We had the interest early on before the community built around it, Ready at Dawn co-founder Ru Weerasuriya said. Were lucky that the community responded. Theyve done things better than we couldve done ourselves.

Weerasuriya mentioned that VRs unique spectating experience and physicalityplayers can build up a sweat while running around during a tournamentmake for a different kind of esport compared to games like League of Legends or Counter-Strike. We talk about how spectating is one of the magical things that happens in VR, he said. There is something about VR spectating that makes it special. You are the camera, you are there. Youre inside the match.

Other VR titles, like Onward, also have high quality spectating modes that tournament organizers and casters use to capture the best bits of action. It makes spectating VRwhich can also be done within VRunlike anything in other esports.

While a majority of the players, community organizers, and fans that are part of the competitive VR community take part because of their passion, there are a few groups who believe VR esports has a bright future ahead of it and they want to position themselves early.

Especially with something new like this that has a potentially bright future, the one thing for us was to be at the grassroots of it, Ready at Dawn CFO Mark Almeida told me. We want to be there for the revenue stream, and we also felt that the learning process would give us insight into what would matter long term.

While Almeida believes that there has been a large readjustment to the expectations for the virtual reality industry, he still believes competitive VR will grow alongside the broader VR and esports industries. Its one of the reasons Ready at Dawn jumped in to be part of the Oculus-funded, ESL-run VR League.

The VR League started in 2017 with Echo Arena and The Unspoken and has gone through three seasons and one rebranding since then. The third and most recent season touted a $250,000 prize pool and competition across four games with finals in Leicester, England, in June of 2019.

Short term, we want to help foster competition around virtual reality. Weve seen titles that have a high-level quality of play, and as developers bring more to their games the community evolves. We want to help facilitate that and work with companies like Oculus to ensure its something that continues to grow, ESLs Sean Charles told me. Long term, we see that this will, as the install base increases, gather momentum.

The VR League has hosted tournaments for a variety of games since it was founded, with the lineup changing slightly each season. Its the biggest stage available to VR competitors, but the focus for the organizers and players is still getting the word out about VR esports in general. We made a decision early on to be antagonistic with how they play, Charles said of how the league works with every brand of VR headset. We want to really open up to how we can build out esports. In the end, we are evangelizing VR.

Everyone I spoke to, from the community-driven VR Masters League and individual players to big names like ESL, talked about much of their efforts went toward simply advocating for VR as a serious platform. Theyre in it to see VR grow and they hope to see the competitions they support now grow into something far larger.

If you look at how esports have grown from 1998 to now, and then realize its only been three years since VR has really gotten going, Almeida said, its very premature to call something now. And its true that its a niche, but its too early to say its not working. We are taking baby steps. Nobody could tell you back in 1998 what esports would turn into, and no one can tell you what VR esports will turn into.

Header image courtesy of VR League.

Read more here:

Virtual Grassroots: Inside the Tight-Knit World of Competitive VR - EGMNOW