Pacific Rim

The World Report of June 7 gave readers an excellent review of Pacific Rim trade. While it is true that Rome and China were trading via the Silk Road by 200 BC, seaborne trade also began over segments of the route from Europe to Japan. Trade became a regular activity from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf via the Indian Ocean to India; then, from India to Southeast Asia, and from Southeast Asia north to China and Japan. In fact, the volume of seaborne trade grew significantly as navigators learnedto make effective use of the monsoons.

Despite mounting pressure to cut the U.S. Defense budget, the Pentagon is investing in new weapons systems, expanding military alliances and formulating a combat doctrine to counter a modernizing China and other potential rivals in Asia, according to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. On the first stop of a round-the-world farewell tour before he retires at the end of the month, Gates sought to reassure allies and warn adversaries that the United States would not pull back forces from the Pacific Rim or scale back its military commitments.

The Pacific once conjured exotic images but now represents explosive change. In a special issue today, World Report looks at that change and the way it is redefining Power on the Pacific Rim.

Strong aftershocks and a second sizable earthquake rattled Japan through the night after the island nation's worst quake in recorded history, but the tsunami waves that drowned hundreds in northeast Japan mostly spared other countries around the Pacific Rim. Tsunami warnings had been issued for the entire Pacific basin after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that toppled thousands of buildings and sent a 30-foot wall of water across the coastal area...

Businesses must learn to respond to the diversity of "Pacific Rim peoples" if they are to be successful in selling their products in the various Asian communities, said business owner Lilly Lee, chairman of the United Way's Asian Pacific Research & Development Council.

Related reprints of Times stories on the Pacific Rim, including June 7's special World Report on Pacific Rim trade, are available by fax or mail from Times on Demand. For a free directory, call 808-8463 and enter *8630. Order item No. 6000. Among the stories listed: -- Pacific Rim Trade: Asian Dynamism Fills an Ocean of Commerce. The Pacific Ocean and the sky above it have become the modern equivalent of the storied Silk Road from the Orient to Europe in ancient times. No. 6012.

Trade between Asia and the Americas evolved from silk and silver in the 17th Century to aircraft and automobiles today. Where once the routes were few and hazardous, plied by galleons and clippers, today they are countless and routine, plied by giant containers and supertankers. HISTORIC TRADE ROUTES Circa A.D. 1600 Route: Manila to Acapulco to Callao, Peru. Major products: Silver from Mexico. Silk from China; re-exported to Callao * Circa A.D.

Asian and Hispanic cuisines will receive major emphasis in the curriculum of the Los Angeles International Culinary Institute, which is projected to open in January, 1991. "We'll try to create a network of (international) exchange for the instructors," said Raimund Hofmeister, institute president, during a pre-renovation open house at the school site in Santa Monica. "We want to concentrate on the Pacific Rim, number one."

Last week in New York, I saw a Japanese tourist on the corner of 5th Avenue and 79th Street wearing a T-shirt satirizing the "I heart NY" marketing meme. His version read, "Heart Your Own City." That's great advice. As the home of the film industry along with huge chunks of the music and television industries, Los Angeles is always going to be a player among U.S. cities. But recent trends in politics and media have increasingly made Washington and New York the locus of much of our national culture.

Lucie Cheng, a UCLA sociologist whose imaginative scholarship on Chinese Americans and other Asian immigrants helped propel the field of Asian American studies in new directions, examining such issues as class and gender in immigrant societies, died Jan. 27 in Taipei. She was 70 and had battled cancer for several years, a UCLA spokeswoman said. Cheng was director of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center from 1972 to 1987 and founding director of its Center for Pacific Rim Studies, which opened in 1985.

Rolling out his approach toward the Pacific Rim, President Obama stressed in Tokyo today that he wants a cooperative relationship with China in which the two nations act as responsible global powers, setting aside differences to cope with climate change, nuclear proliferation and economic instability. Obama said the U.S. has no wish to "contain" China, a strategy that grew out of the Cold War era when the American government strove to block the spread of communism. "I know there are many who question how the United States perceives China's emergence," he said.

Remember the Pacific Rim? The term isn't heard much in art circles anymore, but in the last dozen years of the 20th century, it was everywhere. The 1980s had seen the prominent return of European art (especially from Germany) and the lively resurgence of Los Angeles art to a contemporary scene long narrowly centered in New York.

SAN JOSE -- Paul Hamm took more than two years off from competition after winning the all-around gymnastics gold medal in a controversial decision at the Athens Olympics. Watching his daring release moves on the horizontal bar, powerful vault and precise parallel bars routine Friday at the Pacific Rim championships, it seemed as though he never left. Hamm, 25, overcame a slip off the pommel horse to win the all-around title and lead the U.S. men to victory at San Jose State's Event Center.

As officials work on the details of a much-heralded plan to combat pollution at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex, the two ports are gearing up to fortify their dominance of the nation's Pacific Rim trade with long-delayed expansion projects. The projects call for enlarging terminals and rail yards, building a marine terminal for crude oil and widening roads.

Re "Times wins Pulitzer for series on ocean pollution," April 17 The Los Angeles Times' series on our troubled oceans offers the best coverage I've seen during the past year or so, in any newspaper, of a critical environmental issue. I shared the articles with friends, acquaintances and students. A group of citizens in my city of Laguna Beach has drawn on those articles in its efforts to address the issue of urban runoff onto our beaches. The reading public is indebted to the journalists who researched and wrote the series.

Eight times a week, travelers arrive at Los Angeles International Airport after a long journey from Sydney, Australia, eager to stretch their legs and spend money at tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. These visitors, about 380 a day who spill out into the sunshine from Qantas Airlines flights and make Southern California their destination, stay in the area three weeks on average, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. They contribute $183 million a year to the region's economy.