To buy or not to buy: that is the question

Controversial Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara provoked an angry reaction from China yesterday after saying taxpayers in Japan's capital will buy a small chain of uninhabited islands at the centre of a damaging territorial dispute. Ishihara, an outspoken critic of Beijing who has made a career out of provocative nationalistic remarks, said he has approached the owner of the islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyou in China. If accepted, the offer would put the question of sovereignty to bed once and for all. However, I do not believe that this can be the best way to sort out the dispute. If it was, then Taiwanese taxpayers could be paying higher tax rates just so the Republic of China could buy huge expanses of land which were already rightfully theirs to begin with. In other news, Warren E. Buffett disclosed yesterday that he had prostate cancer, a development that would probably heighten the questions over his successor as the chief executive of his conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway.