China’s May 12 earthquake was massive in scope and ruthless in intensity, visiting destruction on a mountainous, peripheral region where the Tibetan plateau meets the Sichuan basin in the southwest. The death toll is now more than 12,000 and is sure to climb higher as soldiers and rescue teams pull bodies from the rubble. The initial temblor was magnitude 7.9, but there were nearly 2,000 aftershocks within the first day, three of which were magnitude 6 or greater at the epicenter in Wenchuan County.

As the death toll continues to climb in Sichuan and surrounding provinces, it is hard not to think back to the Tangshan earthquake of 1976. That quake, which unexpectedly struck the heavily populated city in China's northeast, left an estimated 250,000 dead. Just a month before the Tangshan quake the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW published a tragically prescientarticle, recounting China's chronic seismic troubles in the wake of a 1975 quake in Liaoning and a 1976 quake in Yunnan. It is easy to forget that China, in spite of its large population, covers a geographically inhospitable region, straddling deserts, mountain chains and several fault lines.

Tokyo—Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Chinese President Hu Jintao were all smiles this week as Mr. Hu toured Japan and the two men did their best to improve strained relations between their two nations. But political conditions within Japan make it unlikely that the two leaders will make significant progress in solving the contentious issues in the relationship.

While the cyclone that killed possibly 100,000 people in Burma is on everyone’s mind, it must not be forgotten that on May 10, the Burmese people will go to the polls for the first time in almost 20 years, to vote “yes” or “no” on the adoption of the military junta’s proposed constitution. Apparently, it doesn’t matter much to the junta that perhaps up to 50,000 of Burma’s people were killed by Cyclone Nargis, and millions made homeless. They have put off polling in cyclone-affected areas, but are proceeding with the national referendum.

Hu Jintao's visit to Japan this week marks a recent apex in the fitful relationship between China and Japan since they first resumed diplomatic ties in 1972. That year THE FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW reported on then Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei's historic trip to Beijing and the resulting joint communiqué, which re-established diplomatic ties between the two countries. Here are two articles from our archives that report and comment on Tanaka's trip and the many obstacles that stood in the way of amicable Sino-Japanese relations.

Taipei—Last week saw an uproar here over incoming President Ma Ying-jeou’s pick of a “pro-independence” figure to head Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council. One Kuomintang legislator likened Mr. Ma’s pick to offering “pork to Muslims,” saying China would be outraged. The stock market tumbled. And the airwaves and headlines screamed that Mr. Ma, who will take office on May 20, may have written a “bad check”—in other words, that he’d made promises on cross-Strait improvements that he now can’t deliver on. All this was an over-reaction, to say the least.

Considering the number and frequency of the suicide attacks taking place, there was little doubt that the Pakistan government had no option but to open negotiations with the insurgents in Waziristan and even the established terrorists. I do not subscribe to the theory that “one does not negotiate with terrorists." One might as well say, “one does not negotiate with the enemy.” Who else will one negotiate with, if not those that pose a threat? Having stated as much, there is also little doubt that negotiations, particularly with active terrorists is a highly complicated and delicate process.

When tropical Cyclone Nargis ripped into southern Burma on May 3, it wrought untold havoc throughout much of the country. Early indications are that more than 22,000 lives were lost in five of Burma’s 14 divisions and states—Irrawaddy, Rangoon, Pegu, Mon and Karen. In Bogalay, in the heart of the Irrawaddy delta, 10,000 people died when a tidal surge 3.5 meters high destroyed 95% of the town’s houses. Across the many affected areas, 41,000 people are still missing. Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the toll on human life could soon escalate. In towns and villages devastated by the storm, electricity supplies have been cut, water is contaminated, food is scarce, and up to one million people are living without shelter.

Burma’s military dictators now say Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest or in prison for 12 of the past 18 years, can cast her vote in the May 10 constitutional referendum—a bitter irony if ever there was one. Ms. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy are calling on voters to reject the military-backed constitution, calling it “undemocratic.” Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council perpetuates the charade that the referendum is legitimate by asking the ruling junta to respect “fundamental political freedoms” at the polls.

The world experienced a surreal moment in the five-year, multilateral effort to denuclearize North Korea last week. Just as American diplomats were finalizing a deal in Pyongyang on April 24 to implement the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear programs, U.S. intelligence agencies were privately briefing members of Congress and showing a video they say is proof of North Korean involvement with the secret Syrian construction site that Israel not-so-secretly bombed last September. The video images, according to the U.S., are clear evidence that North Korea has been helping Syria for years to build a carbon copy of its own plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.