WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Japan, on the eve of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said on Thursday it would not postpone a decision on the future of a U.S. air base that has strained ties between the two allies.

But Japan’s ambassador to Washington, Ichiro Fujisaki, cautioned in an interview with Reuters that it was still not clear whether both sides would be able to find a new way to resolve the dispute over the air base on Okinawa island.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama “has made it very clear that he will do his utmost to come to a resolution of this issue by the end of May. That is only 10 days away,” the ambassador said in Washington.

When running for office last year, Hatoyama raised hopes that the Futenma Marine air base might be moved off Okinawa entirely despite a 2006 deal with Washington to move it from a crowded city to a less populous site on the island.

With his self-imposed deadline of settling the matter by the end of May approaching, Hatoyama has changed tack, saying he has come to realize some Marines must stay on the island to deter threats.

Fujisaki dismissed as speculation a report in Japan’s Sankei Shimbun daily last week that Hatoyama had decided to put off a decision on the thorny base issue until November.

“He has never said I’m going to postpone it for six months,” he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will use economic talks next week with China to focus on intellectual property rights protection and China’s “indigenous innovation” industrial policy which discriminates against foreign firms, U.S. Trade representative Ron Kirk said on Tuesday.

“Our next steps with China include continued pressure to strengthen their IPR regime — and to step back on their flawed and troubling policies across the industrial sector, like indigenous innovation,” he said in remarks prepared for a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

Many foreign companies have objected to Chinese policies aimed at increasing China’s share of the world’s most valuable patents and trademarks by requiring companies to develop and register intellectual property in China to qualify for government procurement preferences.

The so-called indigenous innovation policy — seen by outsiders as a sign that China is retreating from steps it has taken to open its economy to foreign companies — will be raised by top U.S. officials in the bilateral Strategic & Economic Dialogue in Beijing on May 24-25, Kirk said.

The issue of intellectual property rights stems from China’s failure to curb counterfeiting of manufactured products ranging from software and Hollywood movies to pharmaceuticals.

Kirk said he and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke would also pursue those issues at the bilateral Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, which follow those talks.

Efforts to conclude the stalled Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks faced a “key road block” from the developing countries, he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and Chinese officials agreed after two days of talks on human rights to start exchanges of legal experts and hold another rights dialogue in China next year, a State Department official said on Friday.

While Assistant Secretary Mike Posner said he valued the “candid and constructive” tone of the talks and raised specific cases of jailed lawyers and democracy activists, he indicated the meetings did not win the release of Chinese political or religious prisoners, as sought by the human rights community.

“We have, we will continue to raise our concerns about specific cases,” Posner told reporters.

He declined to discuss the cases in detail, including the hacking and censorship that prompted U.S. Internet search giant Google Corp to quit the Chinese market this year.

The cases of Liu Xiaobo, jailed last year for 11 years for advocating political reforms, and detained human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng were among those raised in the discussions that covered topics like religious freedom, labor rights, freedom of expression, the Internet and racial discrimination.

“I was encouraged by the degree to which we had a back-and-forth dialogue,” Posner said.

The talks, last held in 2008 and before that in 2002, were the first under the Obama administration. They were viewed skeptically by rights experts, who complained that President Barack Obama has not been full-throated in support of the cause even as conditions in China have worsened in recent years.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – China’s theft of intellectual property and a troubling new industrial policy harm U.S. business, but America is also hurting its own workers by failing to complete key free trade agreements, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said on Friday.

Chamber President and Chief Executive Thomas Donohue said he would visit China next week and discuss currency, counterfeiting and the “indigenous innovation strategy” with Chinese leaders.

Donohue echoed the objections of many foreign companies to Chinese policies aimed at increasing China’s share of the world’s most valuable patents and trademarks by requiring companies to develop and register intellectual property in China to qualify for government procurement preferences.

“China, for instance, is using industrial policies and an array of regulatory tools to foster national champions and to promote the transfer of technology and innovative capacity to to their country,” he said in a speech in Washington.

The policy — seen by outsiders as as a sign that China is retreating from steps it has taken to open its economy to foreign companies — is likely to be a key point raised by top U.S. officials in the bilateral Strategic & Economic Dialogue in Beijing on May 24-25.

Asked about the value of China’s currency, another contentious issue, Donohue said he believed the yuan exchange rate “should be adjusted” but that moderate change would have little impact on China’s huge trade surplus.

“I am probably more concerned about the theft of our intellectual property, about the changes that the Chinese are making on the innovation side trying to domestically control a lot of that, (and) the counterfeiting of American products,” he said.

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) – The United States and China resumed a formal dialogue on human rights on Thursday after a two-year hiatus in which the countries have worked to keep ties stable amid disputes over Tibet, Taiwan, Internet freedom and the value of the yuan currency.

Although the first such talks under the Obama administration follow ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet and an overall deterioration in conditions in China, the Asian nation’s growing economic power and international clout make it easier for it to shrug off critics, human rights experts said.

The U.S. State Department said the two-day, closed-door meeting in Washington would address areas including religious rights, rule of law and Internet freedom, an issue that put Google Inc <GOOG.O> on a collision course with Beijing last year and led the Web search giant to quit the Chinese market.

The dialogue, which was frozen between 2002 and 2008, is expected to include cases of numerous Chinese lawyers and human rights activists who have been detained or harassed by their government, the State Department said.

“Rule of law, religious freedom, freedom of of expression, labor rights and other human rights issues of concern will be raised over a two-day period,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.

“Internet freedom is a dimension of our pursuit of freedom of expression,” he said, adding that he wasn’t sure whether the Google issue would be raised but wouldn’t be surprised if it did come up.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. group Human Rights Watch urged the United States to raise specific cases of detained lawyers and activists, as well as to prevent the talks from being “largely a rhetorical shell” as they are seen by much of the rights community.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and China will resume a formal dialogue on human rights on Thursday after a two-year hiatus during which the countries have worked to keep ties stable amid disputes over Tibet, Taiwan, Internet freedom and the value of the yuan currency.

Although the first such talks under the Obama administration follow ethnic unrest in Xinjiang and Tibet and an overall deterioration in conditions in China, the Asian nation’s growing economic power and international clout make it easier for it to shrug off critics, human rights experts said.

The U.S. State Department said the two-day meeting in Washington would address areas including religious rights, rule of law and Internet freedom, an issue that put Google Inc. on a collision course with Beijing last year and led the Web search giant to quit the Chinese market.

The dialogue, which was frozen between 2002 and 2008, is expected to include cases of Chinese lawyers and human rights activists who have been detained or harassed by their government, the State Department said.

“This is about helping them understand and identify issues that are part of our core agenda but also clearly areas of weakness that China will have to improve on as it goes along,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said this week.

“This not about lecturing,” he said. “It’s about helping them understand why we think these issues are important.”

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. group Human Rights Watch urged the United States to raise specific cases of detained lawyers and activists, as well as to prevent the talks from being “largely a rhetorical shell” as they are seen by much of the rights community.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Chinese policies aimed at elbowing out multinationals and reserving large parts of China’s market for domestic firms could cause confrontation with the United States and other Western countries, a U.S. political risk expert warned on Monday.

Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer said the global financial meltdown has made the United States and other Western economies seem “less indispensable” as China pursues its main priority of political stability through economic growth.

“There is a war coming between Western multinational corporations and privately owned national champions and state-owned enterprises in China in many, many sectors,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Western multinationals operating in many sectors in China are finding “that there are competitors in China, it’s not an equal playing field, the Chinese don’t need foreign direct investment dollars,” Bremmer said.

“From an investment perspective, suddenly strategies that you thought were going to lead to a lot of money and profit are looking unsustainable in that country, and that’s going to cause tensions — very big tensions — between the two largest economies,” he said.

Bremmer book, “The End of the Free Market,” identifies China as a foremost practitioner of “state capitalism” — an economic policy that applies authoritarianism, mercantilism and free markets in the service of a government’s political goals.

China’s state capitalism contrasts with the U.S. approach, in which many teams compete under a free market while the government serves as a referee, upholding rules and punishing those that break the law, he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Global press freedom deteriorated last year as political turmoil or drug violence engulfed emerging democracies like Thailand and Mexico and authoritarian China and Russia tightened controls, a U.S. annual survey said on Thursday.

Freedom House, which has been conducting such polls since 1980, said 2009 marked the eighth-straight year of deterioration of media freedom, with setbacks in nearly every region creating a situation in which only one of six people in the world live in countries with a free press.

“While there were some positive developments, particularly in South Asia, significant declines were recorded in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East,” said Freedom House, a watchdog group funded by private and Western government donations.

Behind the declines, the worst since 1996, was strife in a number of countries that threatened independent reporting, including drug wars in Mexico; political coups in Honduras, Guinea and Niger; and political strife in Thailand, it said.

With China, Russia and Venezuela boosting already strong controls on media, Freedom House said “the year was notable for intensified efforts by authoritarian regimes to place restrictions on all conduits for news and information.”

“The Chinese regime has become a world leader in the development of new and more sophisticated methods of information control,” said the report, compiled before the U.S. search engine Google Corp quit the China market in a dispute over censorship.

BLEAKEST IN AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST

WASHINGTON, April 29 (Reuters) – Global press freedom deteriorated last year as political turmoil or drug violence engulfed emerging democracies like Thailand and Mexico and authoritarian China and Russia tightened controls, a U.S. annual survey said on Thursday. Freedom House, which has been conducting such polls since 1980, said 2009 marked the eighth-straight year of deterioration of media freedom, with setbacks in nearly every region creating a situation in which only one of six people in the world live in countries with a free press. "While there were some positive developments, particularly in South Asia, significant declines were recorded in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East," said Freedom House, a watchdog group funded by private and Western government donations. Behind the declines, the worst since 1996, was strife in a number of countries that threatened independent reporting, including drug wars in Mexico; political coups in Honduras, Guinea and Niger; and political strife in Thailand, it said. With China, Russia and Venezuela boosting already strong controls on media, Freedom House said "the year was notable for intensified efforts by authoritarian regimes to place restrictions on all conduits for news and information." "The Chinese regime has become a world leader in the development of new and more sophisticated methods of information control," said the report, compiled before the U.S. search engine Google Corp quit the China market in a dispute over censorship. BLEAKEST IN AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST Russia’s situation faltered, the report said, "as legal protections are routinely ignored, the judicial system grows more subservient to the executive branch, reporters face severe repercussions for reporting on sensitive issues, most attacks on journalists go unpunished, and media ownership is brought firmly under the control of the state." Freedom House also warned of "globalization of censorship" because some methods of control have crossed borders. Beijing pressed overseas film festivals and book fairs to ban appearances or works by China’s critics and Islamic nations have united to try to restrict speech by including antiblasphemy codes in international human rights law, it said. In a practice it called "libel tourism," foreign business and political figures used Britain’s expansive libel laws to quash critical research or commentary by journalists and scholars, the report said. Of the 196 countries and territories assessed in 2009, 69 were rated Free, 64 were rated Partly Free, and 63 were rated Not Free. By country, the "worst of the worst" in 2009, with minimal or nonexistent media freedom were Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, the survey said. The bleakest region for media freedom was North Africa and the Middle East, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa and the non-Baltic nations of the former Soviet Union, it said. Although North America and Western Europe contained the greatest concentration of countries with free media, Freedom House rapped Britain for expansive libel laws used to stifle criticism and said the United States lacked federal protection-of-sources legislation, while media diversity was threatened by the news industry’s economic troubles. Italy was rated only "partly free" as a result of government interference with state broadcasters’ editorial policies and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s clash with media outlets over coverage of his personal life, the watchdog group said. (Editing by Philip Barbara)

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) – Rising prices for food, fuel and wages are contributing to inflationary pressure that is a worry in India’s otherwise good post-crisis economic prospects, the country’s central bank governor said on Monday.

“The big picture is that growth is consolidating and getting broad-based, supply-side inflation pressures are abating but only gradual, and meanwhile demand-side inflation pressures are building up,” Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri Subbarao said in a speech in Washington.

He said the wholesale price index has risen to nearly 10 percent in March from a negative rate of broad inflation last August.

And while much of the country’s inflationary pressures were on the supply-side as a result of the 2009 monsoon failure that pushed up food prices, “recent evidence is that inflation is getting more generalized and that demand-side pressures are building up,” Subbarao said.

Price increases in nonfood manufacturing, fuel, nonskilled labor wages and real estate in big cities — “all these numbers show that demand-side pressures are building up,” he said.

Forced to respond with stimulus policies to the global financial crisis, which hit Indian exports and financial markets, India notched growth of 7.2 percent in the 2009 fiscal year.

But Indian authorities “need to be quite calibrated” in the absence of a sufficient uptick in private consumption and private investment, Subbarao noted.