Japan debt exceeds one quadrillion yen; The painful risk in China's one-child policy; India -- A regional power without a plan

1 Japan debt exceeds one quadrillion yen (Mayumi Otsuma, Bloomberg) Japan’s national debt exceeded 1,000 trillion yen for the first time, underscoring the case for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to proceed with a sales-tax increase to shore up government finances. The country’s outstanding public debt including borrowings reached a record 1,008.6 trillion yen ($10.46 trillion) as of June 30, up 1.7 percent from three months earlier. Larger than the economies of Germany, France and the UK combined, the amount includes 830.5 trillion yen in government bonds.

The world’s heaviest debt burden will weigh on Abe when he decides next month whether to implement a two-step plan to double the tax on consumers in a nation with ballooning welfare costs. While boosting the levy would drag on growth, Moody’s Investors Service warned that a worsening of finances would erode confidence in government bonds.

The country’s debt is more than twice the size of the economy, and its fiscal deficit will expand to 10.3 percent of GDP this year from 9.9 percent in 2012, according to OECD data compiled by Bloomberg. Japan will still run a primary budget balance deficit equivalent to 2 percent of the economy in the fiscal year starting April 2020 even if it raises the tax as planned, a Cabinet Office estimate showed yesterday. Overall social welfare benefits rose to 103 trillion yen in 2010 from 47 trillion yen in 1990, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

2 The painful risk in China’s one-child policy (William Wan in Sydney Morning Herald/ Washington Post) For more than three decades, debate has raged over China's one-child policy, imposed in 1979 to rein in population growth. It has reshaped Chinese society - with birth rates plunging from 4.77 children per woman in the early 1970s to 1.64 in 2011, according to UN estimates - and created the world's most imbalanced gender ratio, with baby boys far outnumbering girls.

Human rights groups have exposed forced abortions, infanticide and involuntary sterilisations, practices banned in theory by the government. Officials are increasingly deliberating whether the long-term economic costs of the policy - including a looming labour shortage - now outweigh the benefits. The government announced last weekend that it is studying possible ways to relax the one-child policy in coming years, state media report.

Largely ignored, however, is a quiet devastation left in the policy's wake: childless parents.

A parent's worst nightmare in any country, the deaths of children in China are even more painful because of the cultural importance of descendents, increasing financial pressures on the elderly and the legal limits on bearing additional offspring. One study at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that there are already more than one million parents who have lost their only child, a number expected to rise rapidly.

3 India – A regional power without a plan (Harsh V Pant in The Wall Street Journal) Five Indian soldiers were killed Tuesday in the Poonch sector of disputed Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Minister of Defense pointed the finger at "approximately 20 heavily armed terrorists along with persons dress in Pakistan Army uniforms," only to change it two days later to suggest that a specialist group of the Pakistan Army was behind the attack and that no attack on the Indian Army is possible without the help of the Pakistani Army. Pakistan denied the charge.

This incident is the latest symptom of the rapid and recent deterioration in India's regional security environment. Just days ago, suicide bombers targeted the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, killing nine people and wounding 21. Yet Indian policy makers have given little indication that they comprehend the magnitude of the challenges they face. They need to catch up fast, because such attacks will only accelerate in the face of perceived diffidence from Delhi, with potentially serious consequences for the politics of national security in India.

Over the last decade, India's regional policy, despite the nation's self-image as a rising regional and global power, has been unusually dependent on the actions of other actors. Until very recently, there was a widespread belief in the Indian policy making community that the American presence in the region would continue and this would be enough to secure Indian interests. India seems to have been unprepared for the possibility that the US really would withdraw. Now as Western forces draw down, Delhi is at a loss how to respond to the new strategic environment.

All this indecision has costs, especially in a democracy where the public increasingly expects a plan to address mounting security threats to Indian citizens. As the Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan in the coming year, India stands at a crossroads, keen to preserve its interests in Afghanistan but refusing to step up its role as a regional security provider. India needs to recognize that there is no short-cut to a major power status. Unless it articulates its own strategy, its weaknesses will continue to provoke its adversaries, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.