Well if that’s your point, you may well be right. I don’t read him often enough to be able to judge.

Even taking the case in point: an Asian coordinating fund makes a lot of sense on paper, but there is a leap of ‘faith’ involved in seeing it as realisable anytime soon.

At the same time ’stuff does happen’ and things do change, so it may be better not to be too cynical either.

In terms of the Chinese administration (which no-one could imagine was even ‘quasi idealist’), I am still struck by the way Japanese technology is being bought, and even retired Japanese managers extensively employed, even while the volume of diatribe is turned up.

Yeah, the man just publishes less than practical quasi-idealist drivel on a regular basis hence my concern.

“Now, a short-sighted dispute over those rocks threatens to undermine long-term trade between Japan and South Korea and, ultimately, economic growth.

Toyota officials acknowledge that demand for their cars among Koreans has dropped since island-related tensions flared. The company sold 5,362 vehicles, mostly from its Lexus range, in South Korea last year.”

Yes, and a dispute over a tract of desert recently saw demand for French wine plummeting in some parts of the world. I don’t see why the fact that Pesek finds this kind of thing frustrating makes him a t**t.

On another topic: if you like Robert D Kaplan and Salonica, you could try a viewing of the first installment of Angelopoulos’s “weeping meadow” trilogy, although now I come to think of it there isn’t much evidence of Salonica’s multi-ethnic history to be found there.