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.

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.

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.

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.

Chinese officials have reported that the country’s fifth outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu this year is killing chickens in poultry markets in the southern city of Guangzhou. Although this particular outbreak is not known to have affected humans, China has already reported three human avian-flu deaths this year. Far more worrisome is the April 3 confirmation by the government of Pakistan and the World Health Organization of three cases in a family cluster in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province late last year, suggesting limited human-to-human transmission.

The news that North Korea was assisting Syria with a nuclear power plant on the Euphrates—indeed that the Syrian plant, before Israel bombed it into nonexistence last September, appeared to be a near replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor—is bad news not only for efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, but for being able to keep planned “peaceful” nuclear projects in the Middle East from becoming the next set of bombing targets.

Want to win votes in a Muslim country in Asia? Keep your Islamic agenda hidden. This is the lesson taught by recent elections in Malaysia and Pakistan, among other Islamic nations. In the Malaysian parliamentary election last month, the group known as PAS (Parti Islam se-Malaysia) increased the number of its seats from six to 23 while the governing National Front, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi suffered its heaviest defeat since 1969.

Last September, as the demonstrations in Burma were growing, I was on the India-Burma border visiting Burmese refugees. The stories I heard illustrate the horror occurring on a daily basis inside Burma. I met a man who had been arrested by the Burma Army, and hung upside down for an entire night, with soldiers beating him and banging his body against a pillar continuously. Another man was beaten so badly he is now paralyzed. Yet another described how in Burma’s prison camps, prisoners are shackled and chained, yoked like oxen and forced to plough fields.

As the world’s attention turns to Buddhist protests against Chinese rule and cultural domination in Tibet, another neighbor of China is protesting in a less peaceful manner. In Mongolia, anti-Chinese sentiment has taken a nasty turn. The ultra-nationalist group Blue Mongolia, for example, shaves the heads of women caught sleeping with Chinese men. “It is for their own good,” says Gansuren Damdinsuren, a Blue Mongolia board member. “A small nation can only survive by keeping its blood pure.”

America has been the most benign dominant power in world history.