South Korean army chief resigns

(CNN) -- The South Korean presidential office accepted the resignation of the chief of the Army Tuesday, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Hwang Eui-don had received criticism about a property investment before submitting his letter of resignation, Yonhap reported.

Hwang was named to the position in June and was quickly accused of using insider information to make money off of a property investment, Yonhap reported.

This resignation comes weeks after the country's defense minister resigned.

Kim Tae-young, a former general, came under heavy criticism after the March sinking of the South Korean war ship Cheonan and again after North Korea struck Yeonpyeong Island in November.

Kim resigned in late November and was replaced.

Booming Asia drives Google's Android

Rapid growth in Asia has been behind the latest jump in sales of smartphones running Google's Android operating system, putting the internet group comfortably ahead of Apple in the race for leadership in mobile computing.

Sales of handsets that run on the Google software have exploded since the summer, based on figures released late last week, and are now running at twice the most recent rate disclosed for Apple's iPhone.

Andy Rubin, the executive in charge of Google's mobile software effort, said that international expansion lay behind the latest advance. Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times, he also predicted that a boom in sales in India, Brazil, Indonesia and other emerging countries would contribute to the fast growth rate for the foreseeable future.

The cost of handsets is falling fast and many emerging countries are building advanced mobile networks, he said, adding: "It's set up for a perfect storm."

Quoting independent research suggesting that Android has also come to account for half of smartphone shipments in China, Mr Rubin said that the open-source nature of the software had made it popular there. However, in the wake of Google's dispute over censorship with the Chinese government, Android handsets shipped by China Mobile, the dominant supplier, do not carry the company's search or e-mail services.

Google's mobile software push is meant to guarantee it can continue to reach users with its search and advertising services, rather than be forced to rely on handsets made by rivals such as Apple. The software has been taken up by many handset makers looking to create alternatives to the iPhone and the BlackBerry.

While cheap, flat-rate data services made the US the world's first big market for smartphones, recent months have seen other countries catch up fast, Mr Rubin said.

"After the US, we saw Asia go crazy," he said, with sales in South Korea in particular going "berserk" in the past four months.

More than 300,000 Android handsets are activated each day, according to Google, up from 200,000 in August. By contrast, Apple reported shipments of 14.1m iPhones during its most recent quarter, to September 25, or roughly 150,000 a day.

Club Med looks to profit from China's skiing craze

French leisure group Club Med formally opens its first resort in China on Tuesday in the icy northeast, cashing in on a newfound love for winter sports among an increasingly wealthy middle class.

Club Med is hoping to attract clients from across China, and even Southeast Asia, to its new village in Yabuli, which features 18 ski slopes -- and winter temperatures often below minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit).

"Most of the industry is in decline. China is really the only place where the industry is growing," Justin Downes, a Canadian from the ski resort of Whistler who advises investors on the winter sports sector in China, told AFP.

Club Med will also offer plenty of indoor winter pursuits such as karaoke and mah-jong for those not willing to brave the frigid Siberian winds.

Chinese clients "are not keen on skiing eight hours a day. They want to have other things to do," Downes said.

The Canadian consultant said he was working on a project with Lim Chee Wah, an heir to Malaysia's Genting group, to develop what will be the largest ski resort in Asia, three hours outside Beijing in the northern province of Hebei.

The project, called "Secret Garden" and due to open in 2012, is expected to be able to accommodate 18,000 tourists a day, and would include a theme park and golf course for the summer months.

"There are about five million ski tourists in the country, which is tiny by global standards," acknowledged Downes, who estimates the number could jump to 20 million by 2020 as new ski resorts are built and others are expanded.

Skiing only caught on for ordinary Chinese in the mid-1990s in the country's north and northeast, but has since blossomed into a pastime that can be practised nationwide.

So far, more than 200 ski resorts, most of them quite small, have opened everywhere from western China's Xinjiang region and the Tibetan plateau to the southwestern province of Yunnan and Inner Mongolia in the north.

On the outskirts of Beijing, about 10 ski areas are in operation, most of them using artificial snow to lure weekend daytrippers, as the region's winters have seen less and less precipitation.

"I spend between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan each year on skiing," Luo Xiaoheng, a 34-year-old businessman who took up the sport 10 years ago, told AFP while checking out a new pair of skis at a sporting goods store in the capital.

"The conditions are not that great in China, but the level of the skiers on the slopes is improving rapidly," said Luo, who said he once travelled to Chamonix in the French Alps to pursue his hobby.

Club Med said last week its sales in China had increased by over 40 percent in 2010. The country is expected to become the group's second-largest market by 2015, with the opening of five villages.

China, India meet to focus on trade, despite mistrust

The leaders of India and China meet this week to try to boost trade and soothe tensions between two nations accounting for more than a third of humanity and crucial for driving global economic growth.

Wen Jiabao's three-day visit from Wednesday is the first by a Chinese premier in four years. He will be accompanied by more than 400 business leaders.

"Economic ties constitute literally the bedrock of our relations... Both sides are keen to further enhance mutually beneficial trade and are looking at new initiatives," said an Indian foreign ministry spokesman.

China's ambassador to India said he was hopeful that free trade talks could start, but there is some skepticism in New Delhi that Beijing may only want to dump cheap manufactured goods on India's booming $1.3 trillion economy.

While the two are often lumped together as emerging world powers, China's GDP is four times bigger than India's and its infrastructure outshines India's dilapidated roads and ports, a factor that makes New Delhi wary of Beijing's growing might.

"Relations are very fragile, very easy to be damaged and very difficult to repair. Therefore they need special care in the information age." China's envoy to India, Zhang Yan, told reporters in New Delhi.

While India and China have cooperated on global issues such as climate change, they have clashed over China's close relationship with Pakistan and fears of Chinese spying. A longstanding border dispute also divides them.

India fears China wants to restrict its global reach by possibly opposing its bid for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat or encircling the Indian Ocean region with projects from Pakistan to Myanmar.

But India knows it must engage China as both nations exert their global clout. Wen's trip comes a month after U.S. President Barack Obama's visit. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron also visited India this year.

Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue said on Monday that everything would be up for discussion during the December 15-17 visit to New Delhi.

Wen then travels straight to Pakistan, India's nuclear armed rival, for another two nights.

"No issues are off the table," Hu told reporters in Beijing on Monday, adding the visit was to expand bilateral trade, increase cooperation and promote regional peace and stability.

China and India plan to sign a series of business deals, including one agreed in October for Shanghai Electric Group Co to sell power equipment and related services worth $8.3 billion to India's Reliance Power.

India has sought to diversify its trade basket, but raw materials and other low-end commodities such as iron ore still make up about 60 percent of its exports to China.

In contrast, manufactured goods -- from trinkets to turbines -- form the bulk of Chinese exports

Activists say Chinese dam hurts Myanmar traders

A recently built dam in southern China is hurting the livelihoods of thousands of villagers downstream in Myanmar, environmental activists said Tuesday in the latest complaint about management of Southeast Asian rivers that cross national boundaries.

Two groups associated with Myanmar's Shan ethnic minority said in a new report that the hydropower dam on the Longjiang River in China's Yunnan province causes changes in the river's level that hinder traders dependent on water transport.

Groups in several countries have criticized China's construction of dams on the Mekong River and other waterways because of their impact on downstream communities. Beijing has rejected charges that its dams are to blame.

The report, "High and Dry," by the Shan Sapawa Environmental Organization and the Shan Women's Action Network, said local trade and transport on the river in northern Myanmar near a border trade crossing with China has been severely affected by unpredictable daily changes in the water level since the completion in mid-2010 of the 360-foot- (110-meter-) tall Longjiang Dam about 19 miles (30 kilometers) upstream.

The report estimated that some 16,000 villagers — ferry operators and the traders and services that depend on them — have had their incomes decline drastically, as boats face both grounding and flooding.

"The Longjiang dam represents an example of what we are facing," said Premrudee Daoroung of the Bangkok-based, nonprofit Foundation for Ecological Recovery, speaking at a press conference. "First, the issue of the ecosystem of the river needs to be considered. What happens upstream can have an immediate affect on downstream people. "

The reports said it was encouraging that "Chinese government officials have begun to publicly state their commitment to the ecological integrity of transnational rivers and to developing the Mekong River for the 'mutual benefit' of all countries along the river."

But it also called for Chinese authorities "to investigate and mitigate the disruptive impacts of the dam" and to make cross-border impact assessments for any future dams built in China.

In April, China strongly rejected claims that its dam-building policies are environmentally harmful. It held a one-day meeting with leaders of the four Mekong Basin nations — Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to address climate change and other challenges to the health of the Mekong River.

The meeting in Thailand of the member-nations of the Mekong River Commission, along with China and Myanmar — through which flow the upstream reaches of the river — came as the Mekong's water levels were at their lowest in nearly 20 years.

The commission's scientists said this year's low flow and consequent drought could be attributed to an early end to the 2009 wet season and low rainfall during the monsoons.

Tokyo bill set to restrict 'extreme sex' manga

Japan's capital city was expected Wednesday to restrict the sale of manga comics and anime films with extreme depictions of rape, incest and other sex crimes, a plan that has brought cries of censorship.

The bill before the Tokyo assembly would require publishers and shops to sell only to readers aged over 18 any material that depicts "virtual sex crimes" if the images are "unjustifiably glorified and exaggerated".

A group of 10 major comic publishers has protested against the bill and said it will boycott the biggest industry show, the Tokyo International Anime Fair, to be hosted next March by Tokyo's conservative Governor Shintaro Ishihara.

Manga comics are highly popular in Japan with both children and adults. The graphic novels deal with themes from high school romance to the literary classics -- but also with pornography, much of it hardcore and violent.

Ishihara has pushed for restrictions on the sale of "unhealthy" manga and anime within the city of more than 13 million people.

Japan has long been a major source of child pornography. Although producing and distributing it is illegal, possession is not criminalised, and images of "non-existent" underage characters in manga, anime and video games are legal.

Since the proposal to restrict strong sexual-content manga was first floated in Tokyo earlier this year, manga and anime artists have been up in arms over what they consider a limit on their creativity and free expression.

In March a group of cartoonists, including prominent artists Machiko Satonaka and Tetsuya Chiba, protested against plans for a stricter bill to restrict sexual images of characters that people would assume to be underage.

"This could violate freedom of expression," they said at the time.

Ishihara -- a controversial conservative and nationalist politician -- has attracted special scorn from manga artists because he does not just oppose extreme sexual manga but has also spoken out against homosexuality.

His bill to revise Tokyo's "ordinance seeking the sound upbringing of youth" was approved Monday by a multi-party assembly panel and was expected to clear a plenary session Wednesday for its enactment, Kyodo News reported.

The group of 10 major manga publishers -- including Kodansha, Shueisha and Shogakukan -- in a collective statement last Friday said that they would withdraw from participation in the Tokyo International Anime Fair.