Australians are voting today, and a major issue is which party will crack down hardest on illegal immigration, with the ruling left-of-center Labor party playing catch-up against the the right-of-center Liberal party.
Here's an NYT article from a couple of months ago:
July 19, 2013
Australia Adopts Tough Measures to Curb Asylum Seekers
By MATT SIEGEL
SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd [Labor] of Australia moved on Friday to curtail the record number of people trying the dangerous boat journey to claim asylum in the country, pledging that no one who arrives by boat without a visa will ever be granted permission to settle in Australia.
Under the tough policy, all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat will be sent to a refugee-processing center in nearby Papua New Guinea, which like Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. If the asylum seekers are found to be genuine refugees, they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea, but forfeit any right to asylum in Australia.
Mr. Rudd, who is facing a hotly contested federal election within weeks, acknowledged that the policy was harsh and likely to face legal challenges. But he said that something had to be done to protect the lives of asylum seekers and to restore the integrity of the country’s borders.
“Australians have had enough of seeing people drowning in the waters to our north,” Mr. Rudd said at a news conference. “Our country has had enough of people smugglers exploiting asylum seekers and seeing them drown on the high seas.”
“As of today asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia,” he said.
No issue looms larger over Australian politics than how to deal with asylum seekers, and it is unclear whether Mr. Rudd’s tough new policy will score him any political points.
... Under the so-called Pacific Solution of Prime Minister John Howard a decade ago, asylum seekers were transported to nearby island nations like Papua New Guinea and Nauru for a lengthy processing intended to remove the incentive for claiming asylum on Australia’s shores. The policy, which was roundly criticized by human rights advocates, was abandoned when Mr. Rudd became prime minister for the first time in 2007.
But Mr. Rudd’s change of policy backfired spectacularly, leading to an explosion in the number of arrivals from a mere 161 in 2008 to 11,599 in just the first three quarters of 2012-13, the latest period for which official statistics have been published. The majority of arrivals are from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka.
In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard effectively revived the Pacific Solution, opening offshore detention centers in Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. However, those two centers could not accommodate the steady stream of new arrivals and Australia is now facing a backlog of some 20,000 people awaiting processing.
... Given the success of the opposition leader Tony Abbott’s use of the governing Labor Party’s failed refugee policies as a cudgel, and with an election approaching, the political calculus may prove more relevant than the fiscal.
The new asylum policy appears to be part of a concerted effort by Mr. Rudd to nullify Mr. Abbott’s main lines of attack ahead of the election. Earlier in the week he announced an end to another of Ms. Gillard’s unpopular programs — a tax on carbon emissions of which Mr. Abbott was highly critical.
First, Australia is not the outlier here, the Schumer-Rubio American establishment is the ones out of step with global opinion. The political tides in most of the world are moving against illegal immigration.
Second, the Australian opposition to phony refugees wasn't even driven by hard times. Australia has enjoyed a huge boom due to Chinese raw materials purchasing (recently ramping down). Much of the Australian opposition to illegal immigration has to do with environmentalism: Australians are worried about carbon emissions and water conservation, and, as frequent visitor to Australia Jared Diamond noted in 2005, those concerns aren't consistent with massive immigration.
It would be worth asking how American elite opinion on immigration remains in such a bubble of provincial ignorance. Except that we already know the answer: ignorance is easy.
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44 comments:
steve, i don't mean to be a party pooper here the boat people don't arrive here illegally. as long as australia is a signatory of the UN refugee treaty it is against the law to seek asylum here by boat. the method of arrival is irrelevant. the only time a person arriving in australia by boat would be considered illegal is if their asylum claims are assessed to be fraudulant. afaik most boat arrivals are assessed to be genuine.
its so called 'skilled' and non-refugee stream migration here thats the big fish to fry here, and neither of the two big parties are showing any signs of doing anything about it. in fact it seems like they're both going to increase our annual immigration quota.
its funny you just posted about this because i just voted. i made sure to preference kevin rudd and the labor party last. , i preferenced clive palmer (eccentric australian billionaire who wants to reconstruct the titanic and builds life sized robotic dinosaurs on his golf courses) and the right wing nationalist parties first. heres my voting sheet:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2ebvoyg.jpg
also: its only 5 days into spring here and already its 85 farenheit out! yikes!!
i mean, it isnt against the law to seek asylum by boat. all the more reason in my opinion to withdraw our signature from that treaty.
the GOP will regret passing the Gang of 8 bill because all the flaws will be apparent after it's passed, and all the promises were made (that this is the last amnesty bill) will be easily proven wrong because of the way the bill is constructed (clue: schumer designed the bill)
Anti immigrant sentiment will actually rise in the US after the passage of the Gang of 8 bill.
Unfortunately where I vote, there were no proper anti-immigrationist house candidates. I voted liberal first for the house. For the senate, I voted "Stable Population Party" and then "Liberal", and after that the various lesser evils.
Not that Liberals are particularly good, but as long as illegal immigration is an issue, the parties aren't differentiating themselves along the lines of legal immigration. So better to send a message to the ALP.
Also I would never vote Green because of their split personality about environmental issues and immigration.
Article on "Ghetto Tracker" on CNN. Comments are a revelation.
Yeah, but most of the British settler societies, while believing themselves to be exceptional (like the US), have never been dumb enough to believe they are "creedal" nations.
Despite the best efforts of the multiculturalists in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, most citizens of these nations are aware of their ethnic antecedents -- and this tempers the urge to swallow obviously suicidal ideas.
Sam Francis once said there was more to being an American than simply crossing the Rio Grande and repeating portions of the Declaration of Independence in pidgin English.
This isn't something that one would need to explain to a Canuck an Aussie or a Kiwi.
No illegal immigrants, no guns.
Know illegal immigrants, know guns.
OT. The Harvard Crimson has published a four-part series on the demographics of their class of 2017.
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/6/freshman-survey-part-iv/?page=single#”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/9/6/freshman-survey-part-iv/?page=single#</a>
I'm not an Australian, and i've never been to Australia, but as a veteran observer of world politics it seems to me that Australia is run by a generally sensible and tough-minded political class that doesn't suffer fools gladly, unlike the UK, for example. Basically, th Australian political class seems to have a knack for calling things as they are and doing the right thing regardless. The UK by contrast always seems to be shrouded by a fog of inaction, cowardice, futility and lack of real leadership.
Case in point, what's really riling te Aussies is that the so-called "refugees" who are targetting Oz for invasion literally hail from thousands and thousands of miles away and plan boat-born landings from ports far, far away across the Indian Ocean.
Australians don't like being aken for fools - even the politicians, (such a rarity in today's world), _ hence illegal immigration dominating the election.
Article on "Ghetto Tracker" on CNN. Comments are a revelation.
Yeah, that was pretty good.
Despite the best efforts of the multiculturalists in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, most citizens of these nations are aware of their ethnic antecedents -- and this tempers the urge to swallow obviously suicidal ideas.
Sam Francis once said there was more to being an American than simply crossing the Rio Grande and repeating portions of the Declaration of Independence in pidgin English.
This isn't something that one would need to explain to a Canuck an Aussie or a Kiwi.
I've lived in both places and I don't agree with you. It's just as bad as here as it is there. Probably worse. Australia is number 10 in the world for immigration, and most of the others above are small islands. USA is number 16.
Boat people number 17k/year, legal immigration is 237k/year or so. After this election we can focus on the real problem, which is legal immigration, as hopefully boats will become a non-issue.
"Australia is run by a generally sensible and tough-minded political class that doesn't suffer fools gladly, unlike the UK"
*sigh*
If only that were true. If you have ever witnessed the Australian parliament in session, it's simply a bunch of morons screaming insults at each other. The political discourse in the Australian media is even worse.
To me it seemed like the only two issues brought up in this election were "boat people" and "Rudd/Abbott will be worse". I haven't heard a mention of the Reserve Bank of Australia's policies, the terms M0,M1,M2,M3 money supplies, inflation and deflation, should we be in organisations like NATO and the UN that override Australian sovereignty, how to actually reduce our 250 billion national debt or restricting legal immigration. Of course regular Australians just go along with the current state of politics because they're simply not intelligent enough to know any better.
Just for disclosure, I put one big line across my ballot sheet.
You might think the UK is being "hostile" to immigration too, but it doesn't feel like that when you're living there. The mainstream parties know the so-called native so-called white so-called British don't like it, but they don't want to stop it and take no effective steps against it. After all, the people who really matter are happy with it.
Praise the Lord -- and Pass the Cash
Why are there no moves towards immigration restriction in the US? Why are there no proposals to reform the 1964 immigration act? Judging by every other Western nation this is what I'd expect to be seeing. Outside the US, talk of legalising illegals and encouraging *more* immigration is a fringe view. US immigration law clearly needs wholesale reform, to keep out undesirable and possibly to make high-skill immigration from Western nations easier. As far as I can tell there is nothing like this even on the Right, it's all about rearguard actions vs the latest New York Times-led more-immigration insanity.
Rudd's opposition will be to some extent driven by the upcoming election (which he's about to lose).
But Oz, Canada and NZ actually seem to like being high-wage societies. They're also very fussy about the human capital they allow to come in.
Aussie hedgie John Hempton wrote about differences between Oz and US here :
http://brontecapital.blogspot.it/2010/12/lessons-in-my-laundry-part-1.html
http://brontecapital.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/lessons-in-my-laundry-hong-kong-edition.html
"I dropped my laundry off at a Chinese Laundromat and got back a few pressed shirts, my jeans, socks etcetera and paid $11.75. I figure the same basket would cost me $28 in Australia. Why would you bother to wash and iron if you were prosperous and laundry was that cheap... moreover there was at least two laundries between my home and the subway. I did not need to go out of my way.
This was all because of something I knew on paper - but the price of washing made it personal. Australia does not have large numbers of very low wage employees and - even in the days machines - laundry is a labor intensive and non-traded commodity. Laundry is expensive in Australia because the person doing it expects to make $15 plus per hour. Sure minimum wages are a little lower than that - but most lowly skilled workers are paid more than the minimum. The laundries I pass in Brooklyn take the clothes to a large warehouse-type room filled with Chinese women who speak little English and who almost certainly work for less than minimum wages. And a upper middle-class New Yorker either never sees them and can ignore them. A large low-wage group make the (very rich) lifestyles of the American elite possible. They make it possible to never do your washing, eat in up-market restaurants, have nannies look after your children and have a material standard of living that even very rich Australians might envy."
At the moment thousands of young middle class (middle class because you need to assure them that you won't be a burden on them - you have to show you have access to several thousand dollars in case you can't find work) Brits who can't find UK work are in Australia on a one-year visa. My son is working on a Queensland farm for $26 an hour. He knows half a dozen college friends who are also out there.
I may not move in the right circles, but I don't think 'environmentalism' is the main reason for opposition to illegal immigration in Australia (most greenies are actually socialists out to destroy the civil society, and so they mostly favour illegal immigration).
No, I think opposition to illegal (or too much legal) immigration can be gleaned from a popular bumper sticker here consisting of a map of Australia with the words "Fuck off, we're full" proudly plastered over it.
Mass immigration is a ruling strategy in America in a way it's not in other nations. It should tell us the degree to which the ruling elite hates and fears the native population.
"the GOP will regret passing the Gang of 8 bill..."
With all due respect, no they won't, anymore than the Whig party abolitionist faction regretted dumping incumbent president Millard Fillmore in the 1852 election, which they lost, relegating the party to the dustbin of history. The Whigs committed political suicide on behalf of the Negroes. The abolitionist faction joined Lincoln and the Republicans. The southern faction left politics altogether and many later joined the Confederacy, the ultimate opposition party.
The GOP is committing suicide as the Whigs did. No regret required.
I think this is wrong. I doubt our elites are comprehensively ignorant. It seems more likely "ignorance is easy," they figure, for the masses; that such news is deliberately underreported in the mainstream media; that the result is an American population out of touch with the world; that this suites our elites dandily and they'll go as far as they can with it.
I can understand the diplomacy for a writer in your position to take the "it is ignorance, not malice" approach, if that is your approach. I acknowledge you call out scurrilous motivations other times (e.g. recently the case of Zuckerberg et al).
But I doubt their ignorance, therefore tipping the suspicion toward malice. I think it at least deserves mention as a primary possibility. Perhaps I should say the malice possibility deserves consideration for practical purposes.
After all, it is printed in the Times itself--the information itself comes from an "elite" source.
Steve said: "Much of the Australian opposition to illegal immigration has to do with environmentalism: Australians are worried about carbon emissions and water conservation, and, as frequent visitor to Australia Jared Diamond noted in 2005, those concerns aren't consistent with massive immigration."
Anonymous @ 9:58 pm said: "Also I would never vote Green because of their split personality about environmental issues and immigration."
Steve, this sounds like a job for our old friend, the Crying Indian. We need to shame anyone with an environmentalist, conservationist bone in their body to turn their attitude on immigration, tout suite. The quickest way to get that message out is on a screen: TV, Youtube, whatever. It worked before, it can work again.
"Despite the best efforts of the multiculturalists in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, most citizens of these nations are aware of their ethnic antecedents -- and this tempers the urge to swallow obviously suicidal ideas."
I don't know- there's a lot of non-whites walking around Toronto and Vancouver these days.
Steve asked: It would be worth asking how American elite opinion on immigration remains in such a bubble of provincial ignorance.
Hunsdon offered: American exceptionalism, baby!
I think you are greatly exaggerating the degree to which elite opinion in the rest of the world is opposed to mass immigration. The British government recently announced that it would no longer be conducting a census. Many suspect that this is to conceal the changes being wrought to the nation's demographics by mass immigration.
America has adopted a "grow or die" philosophy from which spawns "bigger is better", "economies of scale", "up or out", yada yada. The WWII experience seemed to really get this idea going but it's been around at least since the Civil War. I was listening this week to that guy from Shark Tank, Kevin O'Leary, pontificate about how he advises young people looking for work to move to China, India or Brazil since they will be the few countries with real growth above 1% over the next decade. Our elite masters seem to believe that immigrants are needed to boost consumer demand and to lower production costs, Americans just aren't doing the job. Americans believe they can grow their way out of most problems, just ask a Congressman about the public debt.
I'm starting to believe we need a new national philosophy for dealing with a zero-growth future. I don't see how we can indefinitely increase the size of the pie, therefore, if the pie isn't getting any bigger, mass immigration makes each slice smaller.
If you need a high-growth economy to be happy, take Kevin O'Leary's advice and move to China. Sounds like paradise.
Tony Abbott was an Attorney General in a John Howard government that tried to railroad Pauline Hanson into jail. I bet Abbott was just doing election season posturing. Now that he's going to be PM, we'll see if I'm right or if I'm right.
Cynical, you say? Yeah, that and I've seen the way lamestream conservatives all over the white world run their game.
The Catholic Bishops' Conference has called on priests to lecture their congregations on Sunday in support of the open borders/amnesty bill.
I might have to demand rebuttal time after Father George's sermon!
Leftie Rudd altered course because his voters would not support his policy, whatever the elite said. I wonder if in the US it would be so different; assuming US elites were trying to have an open door policy, but whites stopped voting Democrat, I think both parties would have to reverse course.
Anyway, Australia is an third world country with a first world lifestyle on the back of extraction industries. Sadly, their good life is slowly but surely coming to an end.
Despite the best efforts of the multiculturalists in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, most citizens of these nations are aware of their ethnic antecedents -- and this tempers the urge to swallow obviously suicidal ideas.
[...]
This isn't something that one would need to explain to a Canuck an Aussie or a Kiwi.
I'd love to believe that, but is it true? (Off the top of my head, isn't Auckland, e.g., now - or soon to be - majority non-white? What about "Hongcouver", etc?) The vaunted immigration "points system" may end with a better class of usurper, but you lose your country and culture all the same.
Not believing the multiculturalists (most Americans don't, either) is not at all the same thing as wresting political power from them. As far as I can see (and I'd love to be dead wrong), citizens everywhere in the anglosphere are always complaining about and "fixing" immigration, but the inflow continues at the same, or usually accelerated, pace. Do any of these countries any longer have policies favoring immigrants from the founding ethnies, or quotas restricting others? If not, they're just as suicidal as we are.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/neocons-are-back-but-not-in-the-gop/
"PNAC later resurfaced as the Foreign Policy Initiative, which, along with the kindred Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has pushed for an extended presence in Afghanistan, big defense budgets, and Syria as the next beachhead of regime change in the Middle East."
Just change the name and back in business.
So the Aussies are pretty picky about who they let in. So are the Cannucks and the Kiwis. So we need some dumb schmuck nation to allow in all the misfits of the world, who flee from crappy countries and then try to take over their new hosts' country and run it into the ground like the countries from which they fled. That would be the United States. Goofy as a Disney movie.
steve i would hate to be pessmesstic but you really think what voters vote on matter? Gay marriage ? The elite will keep doing whatever they want.
Had to drop this in since our boy Steve spoke at the Mencken event a year or so back. Considering the last 5 years, watching this POTUS, this is another time Mencken's gifts are revealed:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron."
---H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920.
John McCain keeps telling us that "U.S. credibility is on the line" if we don't intervene in the Syrian conflict.
I would think a nation's credibility depends first and foremost on its ability to control its own borders, but that's something that John McCain hasn't the slightest concern about.
Strange, isn't it?
Wild, feral out of control "youfs" beating a 14-year old!
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/former-marine-brutally-beaten-while-saving-teen-says-142639150--abc-news-topstories.html?vp=1
Reply to x said:
All the more reason for western countries to withdraw from those dreadful U.N. treaties (and withdraw from the U.N. period). The U.N. has been nothing but a burden to western countries, providing an excuse and a vehicle for third worlders to invite themselves in.
Btw, John Derbyshire wrote an excellent column on Vdare on this. See NICE GUYS GET ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, written on September 4th 2001.(Sorry I don't know how to establish a link with my posts.)
Except Steve Italy is awash in Egyptians and has a Congolese born immigration minister determined to bring in millions of her countrymen and women. She is hailed as a hero, only "ebil rightists" like Berlusconi would oppose that. Greece is even worse, as is France, Spain, and Ireland awash with Africans and Pakistanis.
I would argue Australia is the outlier sadly.
"Under the tough policy, all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat will be sent to a refugee-processing center in nearby Papua New Guinea, which like Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention."
I imagine that this policy will still be subject to legal challenges, and the bases of those challenges will be the UN convention. Australia should withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention. Every nation should.
"Australians have had enough of seeing people drowning in the waters to our north,” Mr. Rudd said at a news conference. “Our country has had enough of people smugglers exploiting asylum seekers and seeing them drown on the high seas.”"
So they can't even state their opposition to being flooded with foreigners in terms of their own self-interest. They have to couch it in terms of concern for the "holy other" - the poor, poor, oppressed brown people.
"It would be worth asking how American elite opinion on immigration remains in such a bubble of provincial ignorance."
Are you being, at least partly, disingenuous here, Steve? As we all know, a lot of elite opinion is not ignorant at all when it comes to immigration. Sure, some of them really are ignorant fools - actually some of them aren't just ignorant fools - they are stupid fools. But a lot of the elite aren't ignorant in the least about the effects of immigration; they know exactly what it is they are doing.
"So they can't even state their opposition to being flooded with foreigners in terms of their own self-interest. They have to couch it in terms of concern for the "holy other" - the poor, poor, oppressed brown people."
And by whom are the poor poor brown people perennially oppressed?
Opposition to immigration in Oz is restricted to "illegal immigration", what the Australian Press Council demand be referred to as "asylum seekers".
I don't recall any objection to illegal immigration, or legal immigration, with reference to "the environment" or "environmental issues".
In fact, the Greens and Labor are thoroughly committed to maximum immigration, legal and illegal. What Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, call "a big Australia".
Tony Abbott hopefully will stop the boats but he will not stop immigration flows, and, to the point, he is determinedly anti-racist. As Abbott said in his acceptance speech, "Australia is open for business" which means immigration. Asian immigration.
Martin B has it in one: So they can't even state their opposition to being flooded with foreigners in terms of their own self-interest. They have to couch it in terms of concern for the "holy other" - the poor, poor, oppressed brown people.
That is the way "the boats" debate runs in this country.
With respect, Sailer has it wrong about concern for "environmental issues" in Oz. The #1 reason for Abbott's victory is his opposition to the "Carbon Tax", which he again in his acceptance speech stated will be gone in 3 years time (he will go to a double dissolution election if the upper house blocks his legislation).
The Liberal Party is a party of "the economy". The Liberal Party is resolutely opposed to any form of nationalism. Tony Abbott himself played a fundamental role in the imprisonment of the leader of the only popular nationalist party of the last few decades, Pauline Hanson of One Nation (who may have won a Senate seat in this election).
The Liberal Party is bemused and ridiculing of the Greens, but they go into full on "super saiyan" rage mode when faced with any thought, policy or party to their right. They hate with a vengeance One Nation, and now Clive Palmer's party PUP (Clive Palmer, mining billionaire, may have won his seat, as well as a Senate seat).
Labor has been losing their heartland seats in the industrial urban areas of Sydney's outer west, and those in Victoria, because it became wedded to environmental issues, even lying at the last election that it would not introduce a carbon tax, then immediately doing so when gaining government. Labor is wedded to "gay marriage", "multiculturalism", "diversity" and most of all "the audacity of hope" (Rudd even referenced that in his concession speech as one of his, and Labor's defining principles).
Abbott will stop the economy bleeding, he will stop the boats, he will tear down the carbon tax but on all the cultural-marxist issues he is a non-starter.
Continued: "Gay Marriage" may well go to a Liberal conscience vote. One of his stated goals is a focus on "indigenous" issues (which does not reference indigenous Whites - only those who migrated from Asia long before Europeans created civilisation here). Abbott is all for immigration; HBD immigration.
On that point he should get a big tick from the alt-HBD-right. He will keep Asian and Indian immigration ticking along. Sydney will become an outpost of Beijing.
The Whites will continue to migrate west of Sydney, or north to QLD.
Western Australia is an immigration destination for Kiwis, South Africans, Poms, Scots, Welsh and Irish. If any Yanks here wish to migrate, WA is your destination of choice. Plenty of work if you know the right people, and high pay. I could go on about WA but will leave it there. Suffice to say, you'd be hard pressed to find many White Aussies living in Perth. It has pretty much become a de facto mandate of the British Isles.
Meanwhile, the rest of White Australia will continue to get hollowed out. It's a moral imperative. Tony Abbott is, after all, a Novus Ordo Catholic thus committed to anti-racism wherever he should find it.
This is probably one of the most humorous things to emerge out of the election. If you want to see a useful idiot, just look in the background at them nodding away at everything dear leader Bandt says.
"Anyway, Australia is an third world country with a first world lifestyle on the back of extraction industries. Sadly, their good life is slowly but surely coming to an end."
Show me a country full of First World people and I will find a First World country. There are no Third Word countries where the majority population are First World peoples. Australia without extraction industries would be like that awful place next door. First World New Zealand. Norway without their extraction industries would be much like their awful neighbour Sweden. People adjust to what they are given. Australia is First World to the bone bucko. Mining is a sugar rush, not the whole deal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Han5fgzy4KU
George Galloway HEATED Speech British Parliament Debate On
"Anyway, Australia is an third world country with a first world lifestyle on the back of extraction industries. Sadly, their good life is slowly but surely coming to an end."
Australia has 13 Nobel laureates: 11 in science, 1 in literature, 1 in economics. Ten of them were born in Australia or are otherwise Anglo-Celtic, and only 1 is Jewish. Six of them have been awarded since 1990, and four of them in this century.
Perhaps not as great as some white/First World countries, but show me a Third World country that's done so well. Per capita, Australia has far outpaced China, Korea, India, and even Japan.
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