tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-76390920562253790172024-03-13T06:11:41.503-07:00woainichina, chinese, guangzhou sometimes...penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-51125842005432733432012-11-24T05:21:00.005-08:002012-11-24T23:35:03.258-08:00Land rights in China<br />
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<a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/22/in-one-chinese-province-the-government-literally-paves-a-highway-around-homeowners-who-refuse-to-move/" target="_blank">The law behind China’s ‘nail houses’: Why the government was forced to pave highway around stubborn homeowners</a>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-75334764112467432972012-11-09T03:13:00.001-08:002012-11-09T03:13:10.894-08:00Guangzhou over time<br />
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<object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://2.gvt0.com/vi/2o_hHWshcHI/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2o_hHWshcHI&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2o_hHWshcHI&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
<br />penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-402722501649670742012-10-27T15:56:00.000-07:002012-10-27T18:09:45.154-07:00Chinese protest petrochemical plant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/residents-in-east-china-city-clash-with-police-in-protest-of-expansion-of-chemical-factory/2012/10/27/96a6365a-2001-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_story.html">Residents in eastern Chinese city clash with police in protest over chemical factory expansion</a><br />
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BEIJING — Thousands of people in an eastern Chinese city clashed with police during a protest over the proposed expansion of a petrochemical factory that they fear would spew pollution and damage public health, townspeople said Saturday.<br />It was the latest in a string of protests in China this year over fears of health risks from industrial projects, as members of the rising middle class become more outspoken against environmentally risky projects in their areas.<br />Past protests have targeted a coal-fired power plant in southern China, a waste-water pipeline in eastern China, and a copper plant in west-central China.<br />The Zhenhai district government in Zhejiang province’s Ningbo city said in a statement Saturday that “a few” people disrupted public order by staging sit-ins, unfurling banners, distributing fliers and obstructing roads. It said the proposed project is under evaluation and the public has opportunities to offer its input.</blockquote>
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Video: <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2012/10/20121027111233316983.html">Chinese rally against petrochemical plant</a><br />
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Also in the news: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&">Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader</a><br />
<br />penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-53666018813550546172012-04-11T06:04:00.000-07:002012-04-11T06:29:39.146-07:00Between a rock and a fallen star<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20120410&t=2&i=593083090&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=700&pl=300&r=CBRE839155E00" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20120410&t=2&i=593083090&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=700&pl=300&r=CBRE839155E00" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/10/us-korea-north-china-idUSBRE8390SB20120410"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">China, between a rocket and a hard place on North Korea</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"China does not want to see this because Beijing and Shanghai are within range" of North Korean ballistic missiles, he said, referring to China's political and financial capitals and providing further evidence that Beijing does not have fully warm and friendly ties with its unpredictable neighbor.</span></blockquote>
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<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/11/us-china-politics-bo-drama-idUSBRE83A0JL20120411"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">China braces for next act in leadership drama</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Revelations about the former Chongqing party chief issued by the government on Tuesday, and above all that his wife Gu Kailai is suspected of murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, have upset China's carefully staged power succession, </span></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/10/bo-xilai-wife-suspected-murder-neil-heywood"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Chinese politician Bo Xilai's wife suspected of murdering Neil Heywood</span></span></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The scandal erupted after Britain announced it had asked for the circumstances of Heywood's death to be reinvestigated. The 41-year-old businessman died last November in the south-western city of Chongqing, where Bo was party secretary until his dismissal last month. Heywood's family have dismissed suggestions of foul play and said they believe he died of a heart attack.</span></span><br />
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</blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-25059081839848786772011-12-27T03:46:00.000-08:002011-12-27T03:46:34.477-08:00Electric Cars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Forbes Conrad for The New York Times</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/business/global/chinas-push-for-electric-cars-flows-through-grid-operators.html?_r=1">Charging an electric car at the China Southern Power Grid center in Guangzhou, China.</a><br />By KEITH BRADSHER </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">GUANGZHOU, China — Three years ago, as part of its green-energy policy, the Chinese government set an ambitious goal: by the end of 2011, the nation would be able to produce at least 500,000 hybrid or all-electric cars and buses a year.</span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With only about a week to go, it is clear China will fall far short of that target. Despite dozens of electric-vehicle demonstration projects around the country, analysts put China’s actual annual production capacity at only several thousand hybrid and all-electric cars and buses.</span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“It’s pretty trivial at this stage — they hardly sell any,” said Lin Huaibin, the manager of China vehicle sales forecasts at IHS Automotive, a global consulting firm.</span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Obstacles include continued technological hurdles, disputes over technology transfers by multinational automakers, and a broad wariness by the Chinese public regarding alternative-technology cars. </span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Unlike in other nations, where automakers are leading the push for electric vehicles, in China the effort is being led largely by one of the country’s most powerful industries — the state-run electric companies that operate the national power grid.</span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This month in this sprawling southern industrial city, for example, the giant China Southern Power Grid company opened a sales and service center for electric cars.</span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The new three-story building, resembling a giant lizard egg of lime-green glass, is a showcase for technology supplied by Better Place, a start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif. Under the Better Place business model, customers do not recharge their electric cars but instead periodically stop at an electric filling station to swap their nearly depleted batteries for freshly charged ones. </span><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><br style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Though automakers in other countries have supplied charging equipment to be installed at homes and parking lots, China’s power industry has already made it clear that it wants to dictate when and how plug-in gasoline-electric hybrids and all-electric cars are charged, by owning the charging equipment and setting technical standards.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some of the obstacles that have slowed deployment of all-electric cars in China also exist in other markets. The cars’ range, less than 200 miles even under ideal conditions, falls steeply in cold weather, if the air-conditioner is turned on or if the car was not fully charged overnight. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">“I’m not interested in them — I worry I’d run out of electricity and get stuck,” said Mu Zhongbao, a 31-year-old businessman who paid the equivalent of $130,000 for an Audi Q7 minivan on a recent afternoon here at one of the many dealerships near the Better Place site.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Some executives say that China has fallen behind its schedule for hybrid and all-electric cars because it has put heavy pressure on multinationals to transfer technology to their Chinese partners to be eligible for generous subsidies for the sale of alternative-energy vehicles in China.</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But the betting in China is that China Southern Grid and another big grid operator, the State Grid Corporation, and their allies among the country’s five main electricity generation companies have much more influence in Beijing than the auto industry. </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But what is not clear is which of three experimental approaches to recharging will eventually dominate the field: the so-called fast charging of vehicle batteries at recharging centers; overnight charging options at homes and parking lots; or battery swapping à la Better Place. </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The government wants to build an electric car industry that can export vehicles all over the world. But it does not want to someday face W.T.O. trade complaints from other countries that might accuse China of violating free-trade export rules by subsidizing the industry’s development.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The most promising trade strategy for China to avoid legal pitfalls might be for the government first to subsidize the development of a network of charging stations for electric buses and other municipal vehicles, the Chinese official said. Mass transit subsidies are hard to challenge at the W.T.O. because they involve an almost purely domestic government service.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The bus recharging stations, and the lessons learned in building them, might then be used in a more extensive network of electric car recharging stations. Subsidizing the charging stations could help make electric cars more affordable, and in turn help Chinese automakers achieve economies of scale in their home market that would help them build up an export business.</span></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-91504414466382298532011-12-22T03:53:00.000-08:002011-12-22T04:12:54.887-08:00Wukan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong, rallied on Thursday to demand action against illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader. <br /><br />Credit: Agence France-Presse — Getty Images</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/12/16/world/asia/20111216-CHINA.html"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Wukan Residents Continue Their Protest</span></span></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.chinahush.com/2011/12/21/government-cadres-infamous-speech-on-the-siege-of-wukan-village/"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Government cadre’s infamous speech on the siege of Wukan village | ChinaHush</span></span></a><br />
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<br />penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-12396102445283291482011-11-28T03:58:00.000-08:002011-11-29T02:30:54.798-08:00Forever Young<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GItm_-TGrkQ?fs=1" width="480"></iframe><br />
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The studio version. Times they are changing. <br />
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Dylan gigs are famously variable: songs are often transformed beyond recognition. Tonight, however, he was singing to the culture ministry's tune: the concert was performed "strictly according to an approved programme", a sign of official nervousness that has persisted since Björk's 2008 Shanghai concert, when she chanted "Tibet! Tibet!" while singing her song Declare Independence.<br />
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Why the change of heart? One former culture ministry official, Shi Baojun, told the Guardian it may be something as simple as fresh thinking at the Chinese embassy in Washington, where officials pore over the record of any artist hoping to play in China, examining their biography, opinions and – above all – previous comments on China. "As personnel change all the time, changes in decisions often only reflect who is in charge. Some are bold, some are cautious," Shi said.<br />
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That doesn't entirely explain why now, though: "You have to understand, the government's always balancing the need to look liberal with the need to keep control," said Shi. "They have so many audiences, and there's often no point in looking for logic because there isn't much, or any."</blockquote>
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/apr/06/bob-dylan-china-ai-weipenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-14116391725468311012011-01-06T04:11:00.000-08:002011-01-06T18:30:34.284-08:00Stealth fighters<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TSWybsB7TWI/AAAAAAAAAR4/CQIJuKH8IcA/s1600/stealth.bmp"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 692px; height: 229px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TSWybsB7TWI/AAAAAAAAAR4/CQIJuKH8IcA/s400/stealth.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5559045503804198242" border="0" /></a><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808704576061674166905408.html">A Chinese Stealth Challenge?</a> WSJ<br /><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/05/china.us.fighter.jets/?hpt=T2">Is China closer than thought to matching U.S. fighter jet prowess?</a> CNN<br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/world/asia/06china.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1">China’s Push to Modernize Military Is Bearing Fruit</a> NYTimes<br /><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-military-20110107,0,3324067.story">China's development of stealth fighter takes U.S. by surprise</a> LATimespenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-42469918176409319652010-11-13T04:25:00.000-08:002010-11-14T19:24:48.336-08:00Asian Games<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TN6EQvS-HgI/AAAAAAAAARk/jn7VtwguRCU/s1600/a02_25903347.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 556px; height: 354px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TN6EQvS-HgI/AAAAAAAAARk/jn7VtwguRCU/s400/a02_25903347.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539010014821096962" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">The sun sets behind Haixinsha Stadium shortly before the start of the opening ceremony of the 16th Asian Games in Guangzhou on November 12, 2010. (TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images)</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/2010_asian_games_opening_cerem.html">2010 Asian Games Opening Ceremony </a><br /><br />Earlier today, in Guangzhou, China, the Opening Ceremony for the 16th Asian Games took place, with lavish stagecraft, costumes, fireworks and performers welcoming participants. Some 14,000 athletes from 45 countries and territories will compete in 42 sporting disciplines until November 27. Collected here are colorful scenes from Guangzhou, China.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11746264">In pictures: Asian Games open</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.gz2010.cn/en">The Official Website of the 16th Asian Games</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201011140178.html">Guangzhou using Asian Games as spark for urban redevelopment</a><br /><blockquote>The Guangzhou city government has earmarked more than 1 trillion yen ($12.1 billion) for urban redevelopment and infrastructure projects.<br /><br />At the same time, the city must grapple with glaring contradictions, not the least of which is a growing disparity in wealth among residents. </blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-43611174563527815522010-10-30T05:37:00.000-07:002010-11-10T18:37:30.399-08:00Rare Earth<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TMwSIvNMpVI/AAAAAAAAARc/VXJ2ec2pYkE/s1600/30RARE-articleLarge.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 550px; height: 288px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TMwSIvNMpVI/AAAAAAAAARc/VXJ2ec2pYkE/s400/30RARE-articleLarge.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5533817983451571538" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">This lake outside of Baotou, China, contains sludge laced with toxic chemical compounds from rare earth processing (NYTimes). </span><br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/business/global/30rare.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=busln">After China’s Rare Earth Embargo, a New Calculus</a><br /><br />By KEITH BRADSHER<br />Published: October 29, 2010<br /><br />BAOTOU, China — When Japanese mineral traders learned in late September that China was blocking shipments of a vital commodity, the word came not from a government announcement but from dock workers in Shanghai.<br /><br />And on Thursday, the traders began hearing that the unannounced embargo of so-called rare earth minerals was ending — again, not from any Chinese government communiqué, but though back-channel word from their distributors.<br /><br />Throughout the five weeks of the embargo, even when China expanded the rare earth shipping halt to include the United States and Europe, Beijing denied there was a ban.<br /><br />Whatever it was called, a shipping suspension that started amid China’s diplomatic dispute with Japan over a wayward fishing trawler escalated into a broader international trade issue.<br /><br />The episode alarmed companies around the world that depend on rare earths, minerals that help make a wide range of high-tech products, including smartphones and smart bombs. China currently controls almost all of the world’s supply of rare earths, for which demand is soaring.<br /><br />To many outsiders, the undeclared embargo looked like a pure power play — a sign China would wield its growing economic might and apply its chokehold on an important industrial resource with little regard for the conventions of international trade. The export quotas China continues to impose on rare earths, even when it does let ships leave the docks, are restricting global supplies and causing world market prices to soar far beyond what Chinese companies pay.<br /><br />From the Chinese perspective, though, the issue looks very different.<br /><br />China feels entitled to call the shots because of a brutally simple environmental reckoning: It currently controls most of the globe’s rare earths supply not just because of geologic good fortune, although there is some of that, but because the country has been willing to do dirty, toxic and often radioactive work that the rest of the world has long shunned.<br /><br />Despite producing 95 percent of the world’s rare earths, China has only 37 percent of the world’s proven reserves. Sizable deposits are known to exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Brazil, among other places.<br /><br />Many of those countries, responding to the rising demand for rare earths and alarmed by the recent embargo, are now scrambling to develop new mines or renovate ones long considered not to be worth the effort. That includes an abandoned mine in California that the American company Molycorp is trying to refurbish.<br /><br />But experts say that any meaningful new production from outside China is at least five years away, and that it will come with its own environmental cost calculus.<br /><br />“China’s rare earth output cannot be raised fast enough to meet the entire world’s needs, as there are environmental factors to be taken into consideration with an increase in rare earth production,” said Zhang Peichen, the deputy director of the government-backed Baotou Research Institute of Rare Earths, the main research group for the Chinese industry.<br /><br />Across China, rare earth mines have scarred valleys by stripping topsoil and pumping thousands of gallons of acid into streambeds. The environmental costs are palpable here in Baotou, a smoggy mining and steel city in China’s Inner Mongolia, where the air this week had an acrid, faintly metallic taste.<br /><br />Half of the global supply of rare earths comes from a single iron ore mine in the hills north of Baotou. After the iron is removed, the ore is processed at weather-beaten refineries in Baotou’s western outskirts to extract the rare earths minerals.<br /><br />The refineries and the iron ore processing mill pump their waste into an artificial lake here. The reservoir, four square miles and surrounded by an earthen embankment four stories high, holds a dark gray, slightly radioactive sludge laced with toxic chemical compounds.<br /><br />The deadly lake is not far from the Yellow River watershed that supplies drinking water to much of northern China. The reservoir covers an area 100 times the size of the alumina factory waste pond that collapsed this month in Hungary, inundating villages there and killing at least nine people.<br /><br />Even before the Hungary disaster, Baotou authorities had begun a program to reinforce the levee here. Huge bulldozers are adding a thick surface layer of crushed stone to the embankments to protect them from the region’s harsh weather.<br /><br />But the bottom of the reservoir was not properly lined when it was built decades ago, according to a rare earth engineer who insisted on anonymity because of the Chinese government’s sensitivity about the problem. The sludge, he said, has caused a slowly spreading stain of faint but detectable radioactivity in the groundwater that is spreading at a rate of 300 yards a year toward the Yellow River, seven miles to the south.<br /><br />Much of the radioactivity associated with rare earths comes from the element thorium, which is not a rare earth but is typically found in the same ore. With the exception of unusual clay formations in southern China that contain medium and heavy rare earths with virtually no thorium, every other known commercial-grade rare earth deposit in the world is laced with thorium.<br /><br />To point out China’s environmental and supply concerns is not to overlook the economic benefits the nation accrues by restricting exports. The global shortage gives foreign companies a reason to move even more of their rare earth-dependent operations to China, to produce key components for a wide range of products.<br /><br />A Chinese official has acknowledged as much. “To use moderation in the control of the production of rare earth resources and reduce exports to an acceptable level is to attract more Chinese and foreign investors into the region,” Zhao Shuanglian, the vice chairman of Inner Mongolia, said last year, according to China’s official Xinhua news agency.<br /><br />Meanwhile, China’s own fast-growing manufacturing industries now consume more rare earths than the rest of the world combined. And Beijing has done nothing to curb that domestic demand.<br /><br />That apparent double standard could prove important if, as some trade experts have predicted, the United States, Europe and Japan bring a World Trade Organization case accusing China of unfairly restricting exports through a system of quotas and duties.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69R0DD20101028?pageNumber=1">Analysis: China's rare earth hammer hits economic raw nerve</a><br /><blockquote>(Reuters) - China wants to use its monopoly over global rare earth supplies to win the race for clean energy technology that depends on the metals, but it is a strategy that could backfire, costing Beijing its advantage.</blockquote><br /><a href="http://oilandglory.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/21/is_chinas_rare_earth_power_play_really_such_a_big_deal">Is China's rare earth power play really such a big deal?</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201011100435.html">Three ways to end China's rare earth monopoly</a>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-52005740342454327902010-10-09T01:01:00.000-07:002010-10-10T00:47:06.686-07:00Nobel Peace Prize 2010<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TLFtleKUmVI/AAAAAAAAARU/zyRmgrNn3NU/s1600/liuxiaobo.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 602px; height: 341px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/TLFtleKUmVI/AAAAAAAAARU/zyRmgrNn3NU/s400/liuxiaobo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526318708279253330" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/10/08/nobel.prize.detainees/?hpt=C1">Imprisoned Liu follows in footsteps of Suu Kyi, Sakharov</a><br />By Simon Hooper, CNN<br /><br />(CNN) -- The award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo follows an occasional precedent of recognizing human rights campaigners who are either imprisoned or subjected to state restrictions or harassment.<br /><br />In announcing the prestigious award, Norwegian Nobel Committee President Thorbjoern Jagland cited Liu for his "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." Liu is currently serving an 11-year jail sentence in China for inciting subversion of state power.<br /><br />Reacting to the award, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Mao Zhaoxu said Liu was a "convicted criminal" whose actions had been "in complete contradiction to the purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize."<br /><br /><a href="http://mobile.latimes.com/wap/news/text.jsp?sid=294&nid=24321709&cid=16692&scid=-1&ith=1&title=World">Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo: Inside the heart of a gentle 'subversive'</a><br /><blockquote>His unwavering conviction that no authority could permanently block the natural human impulse to freedom struck an almost anachronistic tone, harking back to the crumbling of the Soviet bloc. (Charter 08 was modeled partly on Charter 77, the document that called for political change in communist Czechoslovakia.) </blockquote><br /><br /><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6971XY20101009">Nobel euphoria fails to mask tough reality in China</a><br /><blockquote>Where once human rights were a hot topic of discussion during meetings between Chinese leaders and their counterparts in the West, these days the lure of China's red hot economy amid a global downturn has muted criticism.</blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-90206997883747440282010-04-30T04:17:00.000-07:002010-05-01T23:40:39.011-07:00Soft power<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S9q89L3XcYI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/mYhb-waYEK0/s1600/0429-OEXPO-CHINA_full_380.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S9q89L3XcYI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/mYhb-waYEK0/s320/0429-OEXPO-CHINA_full_380.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5465888857110573442" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:78%;" >The China Pavilion is seen during the light testing at the Shanghai World Expo site in Shanghai December 30, 2009. Shanghai unveils to the world on Friday its multi-billion dollar World Expo. Reuters<br /></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0429/On-eve-of-Shanghai-Expo-2010-China-finds-soft-power-an-elusive-goal">On eve of Shanghai Expo 2010, China finds 'soft power' an elusive goal</a><br />By Peter Ford<br />Shanghai, China<br /><br />At the heart of the Shanghai World Expo stands the host nation’s pavilion, a giant latticed crown painted crimson. Packed with exhibits portraying daily Chinese life, China’s ethnic diversity, and the standard bearers of Chinese philosophy, the display shows China’s friendliest face to the world.<br /><br />Hard on the heels of the Beijing Olympics, the authorities here have seized on the Expo – the largest in history – as another chance to improve the rising giant’s international image. Learning how to win friends and influence people is a task to which the government has attached the highest priority in recent years.<br /><br />“The government is putting a lot of resources and a lot of attention into boosting China’s ‘soft power,’ but they’ve got a lot of problems with the message,” says David Shambaugh, head of the China Policy Program at George Washington University in Washington. “The core aspects of their system” – such as one-party rule, media censorship, and suppression of critics – “are just not appealing to outsiders.”<br /><br />Chinese policymakers and academics are increasingly fascinated by “soft power,” whereby nations coopt foreign governments and citizens through the spread of their cultures, values, diplomacy, and trade, rather than coerce them by military might.<br /><br />Frustrated by Western domination of global media, from entertainment to news, and by what it sees as unfair coverage, China has launched a $6.6 billion campaign to tell its own story to the world by building its own media empires.<br /><br />Li Changchun, the ruling Communist Party’s top ideology official, was blunt in a 2008 speech: “Whichever nation’s communications capacity is the strongest, it is that nation whose culture and core values spread far and wide ... that has the most power to influence the world,” he said.<br /><br />But this is not enough, says Li Xiguang, head of the International Center for Communications Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Even the best-paid messengers need a convincing message.<br /><br />“The United States has built its soft power by making its value and political system … universal values,” he says. “China will not beat the US in soft power until we have a better and newer form of democracy, freedom, and human rights.”<br /><br />China has had some success in projecting soft power in developing countries, especially in Africa. “Wherever you go in Africa, roads are being built, and the people building them are Chinese,” says Aly Khan Satchu, a financial analyst in Nairobi. “China expresses its soft power through building infrastructure.”<br /><br />China’s rapid economic development is an inspiration to many Africans, says Mr. Satchu. “The Chinese are selling themselves as having experienced catch-up and offering to help African governments do the same,” he says.<br /><br />Part of the problem, suggests Pang Zhongying, of Beijing’s Renmin University, is that English, unlike Chinese, is an international language. Even with the creation of more than 200 Confucius Institutes around the world teaching Chinese, “I don’t think China can overcome this difficulty in the short term.”<br /><br />At the same time, says François Godement, director of the Asia Centre in Paris, however admired Chinese culture may be, “it is less easily translatable” to other cultures.<br /><br />Adding to the government’s difficulties is its insistence on controlling all expressions of contemporary Chinese culture.<br /><br />Beijing squandered an opportunity at last year’s Frankfurt book fair, which showcased Chinese literature, by pressing for a ban on exiled writers. Press coverage focused not on Chinese authors but on Beijing’s heavy hand.<br /><br />This desire for complete political control, says Professor Godement, means that “they don’t give creators the freedom to create works that would project soft power.”<br /><br />“There is a huge gap between the official Chinese judgment and that of outsiders,” adds Professor Pang. “There are many intellectuals in China, but a good intellectual is not necessarily an officially recognized one.”<br /><br />The government has opted instead to pursue public diplomacy, or “overseas propaganda,” as it is known here.<br /><br />Rarely does a month pass without a visit to Beijing by media managers and journalists from one developing country or another. But this is not the same as projecting soft power, Mr. Shambaugh notes.<br /><br />“China has a huge soft power deficit,” says Pang. “The current Chinese model solves problems, of course, but it is also part of the problem. People outside China will pick China’s virtues, but try to avoid its disadvantages. We should learn from such natural choices, from the impression that China can only build roads and schools. That is a problem we must address.”<br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://expo.cn/">Shanghai Expo 2010</a>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-14165430033219039932010-04-26T07:55:00.000-07:002010-04-26T08:30:45.262-07:00No.3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/0426-china-world-bank/7777330-2-eng-US/0426-china-world-bank_full_380.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 380px; height: 253px;" src="http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/images/0426-china-world-bank/7777330-2-eng-US/0426-china-world-bank_full_380.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:78%;" >China's Finance Minister Xie Xuren takes his place for a meeting of the Development Committee at the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Spring Meetings at IMF headquarters in Washington, Sunday.</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:78%;" > Jonathan Ernst/Reuters</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/2010/0426/Economic-clout-rising-China-takes-No.-3-seat-on-World-Bank">Economic clout rising, China takes No. 3 seat on World Bank</a><br />By Peter Ford<br /><br />“It will enhance the role that developing countries can play in World Bank affairs and also help the bank play a greater role in helping developing countries improve economic development and reduce poverty,” Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren said in a statement.<br /><br />The World Bank, started after World War II, lends money to low- to middle-income nations at low interest rates to spur development and fight poverty.<br /><br />China’s voice has resonated with growing volume in international economic bodies as its economy is now the second largest (by gross domestic output) in the world, behind the US. The international financial and economic crisis amplified that voice, especially since the G20, where China is a leading member, has become more influential in setting global policy than the G8 of developed capitalist countries.<br /><br />At the personal level too, China has become more visible. Since 2008 the World Bank’s chief economist, a key figure, has been Justin Yifu Lin, a distinguished Chinese economist.<br /><br />Sunday’s move “is symbolic recognition of what is happening anyway” says Michael Pettis, who teaches finance at Peking University in Beijing. “China is getting a bigger voice … if for no other reason than its investments abroad are growing much more significant. It has reserves and it is prepared to fund development.”<br /><br />The World Bank’s 186 members decided Sunday to increase China’s voting power from 2.77 percent to 4.42 percent. This is still well behind Washington, whose 15.85 percent share gives it effective veto power, and also short of Japan’s 6.84 percent. The bank requires an 85 percent vote to pass decisions.<br /><br />Mr. Xie said he saw Sunday’s reform as “an important step towards equitable voting power between developing and developed members,” but he clearly expects more, both for his country and other developing nations.<br /><br />“The future shareholding principles should continue to be based on economic weight,” he added “and aim to achieve the ultimate goal of equitable voting power.”<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/234928">It’s China’s World. We’re Just Living in It.</a></span>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-39185926323841201082010-03-22T00:56:00.000-07:002010-03-29T22:36:25.543-07:00Eating babies and currency manipulators<blockquote>ABOUT THE April 13, 1995 report in the Daily Telegraph on the promotion of aborted-fetus-eating by the Shenzhen Health Centre, I'm much more dubious--but, again, the debunkings are less than complete. The Snopes report says that "nothing apparently" came of a Frank Wolf demand for an investigation, "leading us to believe" that the story isn't true. You can find a more determined attempt to discredit the story here (http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sex/chinese_eating_fetuses.html) , which I like primarily because it quotes with approval Judie Brown of the American Life League, perhaps the hardest-liner among mainstream anti-abortion activists and a woman this odd site wouldn't touch with a barge pole in any other context.<br /><br />The story began with an Eastern Express article by the China reporter Bruce Gilley, author of the 1998 "Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite." A few other newspapers picked up the story, including the Telegraph, but the Internet and e-mail lists were the primary vehicles for its transmission, and it picked up along the way the usual set of confusions, pet peeves, and distortions that computer connectivity has made a daily feature of our lives. (A note to the reader: Don't believe those e-mails you get from the widow of the assassinated finance minister of Bulungi who will split $5 million with you later if only you send her $10,000 now.)</blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">By J. Bottum January 9, 2003</span><br /><a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/090gwgqq.asp?page=2">Eating Babies II: Coming Back for Seconds | The Weekly Standard</a></span><br /><br /><blockquote>Blood libel is the practice of accusing one's enemy of eating children. Originally traced to pagans slandering early Christians it quickly adopted the form it would take for the next two thousand years - that of Jews murdering and eating Christian children, primarily for Passover. The practice of blood libel has been revived in the US by Christian conservatives, and is now aimed at their latest enemy, and most promising market: the Chinese.</blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S6ck3TgEnFI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/gmdk-UKyU5M/s1600-h/eating_fetus.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 161px; height: 216px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S6ck3TgEnFI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/gmdk-UKyU5M/s320/eating_fetus.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451366406501473362" border="0" /></a>Beijing, 1995: The Godless Triad<br />The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, was hosted live on the Internet - one of the first of such events<br />on the Web, and thousands of women the world over logged on. James Dobson, of the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family book and radio empire, covered the event in his August 1995 newsletter titled, Position on United Nations Conference on Women...Dobson quoted a World Magazine article about the Chinese dining on aborted fetuses as evidence of this godless triad.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br />Painting by John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute</span><br /><br /><br /><blockquote>Are Bruce Gilley, Mindy Belz, and Representatives Wolf, Smith,<br />Ros-Lehtinen, and Souder so unconcerned with their own credibility<br />that they will repeat any story they hear as long as it furthers their own political agendas, or careers? The vicious practice of blood libel goes back thousands of years. And the commandment against bearing false witness against your neighbor goes back even further. Bruce Gilley, Mindy Belz, and Representatives Wolf, Smith, Ros-Lehtinen, and Souder need to be held accountable for the racist slander and libel that they've perpetuated against the Chinese.<br /></blockquote><span><span style=";font-family:helvetica,arial;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">By Poppy Dixon, 10.2000</span><br /><a href="http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sex/chinese_eating_fetuses.html">Eating Fetuses: The lurid Christian fantasy of godless Chinese eating "unborn children."</a></span></span></span><br /><br /><br /><blockquote>"If some congressman insist on labeling China as a <a href="http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/currency-manipulation-why-blame-china-for/">currency manipulator</a> and slap punitive tariffs on Chinese products, then the China government will find it impossible not to react,"<br /></blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/21/AR2010032101111.html">China warns U.S. that 'trade war' will hurt Americans even more</a></span><br /><br /><blockquote>The popular argument is global imbalances were a major cause of the current global financial crisis. These imbalances were exemplified by a large US trade deficit, which was fuelled by the promotion of cheap Chinese exports though an under-valued Renminbi. If the RMB is suddenly revalued, the argument continues, U.S. imports from China will fall and U.S. exports to China will rise, reducing and perhaps eliminating the U.S. trade deficit.</blockquote><blockquote>A closer look, however, shows it is an article of faith held by many, including economists, that the U.S. trade deficit with China and the world will decline following a simple revaluation of China's currency. The large U.S. trade deficit with the world has existed since 1998. Since July 2005, the Renminbi has appreciated more than 20 percent in both nominal and real terms, yet the bilateral trade gap has continued to increase.</blockquote><blockquote>Then why do people advocate a Renminbi revaluation? The primary beneficiaries would be those investment banks, private equity investors and hedge funds that have invested in China and in Renminbi-linked instruments elsewhere. They would stand to profit instantly and hugely.<br /></blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;"><a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/commentary/fl-currencyoped-0321-20100321,0,2062564.story">Debt reduction: Chinese currency doesn’t hold answer for U.S.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Update: March 23, 2010. </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://bit.ly/c70qDp">Report accuses U.S. on currency issue</a> via Twitter</span>.<br /><a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/thinktank/2010-03/23/content_9626059.htm">US is the true money meddler</a> By Zhang Monan (China Daily)penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-66553934261223889332010-03-06T13:08:00.000-08:002010-03-07T04:27:30.309-08:00Heike<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/03/hacking_in_a_nutshell"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 620px; height: 453px;" src="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/100304_hackerinanutshell620.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">A flier for a prominent Chinese hacker’s presentation on the how-tos and wherefores of hacking, drawing on sources as diverse as Shakespeare, the Diamond Sutra, and … Google. Click through to view <span class="fp_red">FP</span>'s exclusive slideshow. </span><blockquote>Western media <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100203/ap_on_hi_te/as_tec_china_google_cyberattacks_2">accounts</a> typically overlook <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/business/global/02hacker.html">freelancers</a> in favor of bluster about the Chinese government. Some pair breathy accounts of cyberwar with images dredged up from 1960s People's Liberation Army propaganda, as if to suggest China has some centrally administered cyberbureau housing an army of professional hackers. Others make improbable or unsubstantiated allegations. Two years ago, a National Journal cover story claimed Chinese hackers were responsible for the 2003 blackout that crippled much of the U.S. Northeast, an event repeated investigations have attributed to domestic negligence.</blockquote><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/03/china_s_hacker_army?page=full">China's Hacker Army</a> BY MARA HVISTENDAHL<br /><br /><blockquote>In general, Chinese hackers don't fit the Hollywood stereotype of geeky loner-geniuses in American basements or steely smooth Russian mobsters who design and execute hits, reaping all the benefits, cybersecurity experts say. On the contrary, China's hacker community is a widely dispersed, fragmented chain of digital craftsmen. In Chinese, hackers are known as "heike," or black guests.<br /><br />"As for Chinese hackers, their overall technological skill isn't as good as American or Russian hackers," Mr. Li said in an email, answering questions from the Wall Street Journal. "However, China has the biggest population of hackers in the world." Noting his own communication with foreign hackers, he added, "I often downloaded hacker software from their sites to compare them with programs I wrote or other Chinese hackers wrote."</blockquote><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S5LPo5tgDzI/AAAAAAAAAQs/Wr-lY2v_kDI/s1600-h/P1-AT883_CHACKE_NS_20100219192824.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S5LPo5tgDzI/AAAAAAAAAQs/Wr-lY2v_kDI/s320/P1-AT883_CHACKE_NS_20100219192824.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445643201037733682" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704140104575057490343183782.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop">People's Republic of Hacking</a> By JAMES T. AREDDYpenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-84860585679458491302010-02-01T20:33:00.000-08:002010-02-02T05:17:07.410-08:00History lessons<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S2es5sh3CbI/AAAAAAAAAQA/0_LjIK7XzQE/s1600-h/views.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 323px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S2es5sh3CbI/AAAAAAAAAQA/0_LjIK7XzQE/s400/views.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433501582651492786" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2010-02/02/content_9412000.htm">Japan admits war 'act of aggression'</a><br />By Li Xiaokun (China Daily)<br /><br />Japan admitted in a long-awaited report from the joint history study with China on Sunday that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War">1937-1945 Sino-Japanese war</a> was an "act of aggression", but the two neighbors are still at odds on a number of issues, such as the death toll of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.<br /><br />In the report Japan used the word "aggression" to refer to the 1937-1945 war for the first time, breaking Tokyo's long-standing reluctance to use it.<br /><br />Japan's <a href="http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100201a1.html">Kyodo</a> news agency said the move ruled out China's long-term concerns that some people in Japan are denying the nation's responsibility and even the fact that it conducted a war of aggression.<br /><br />The war "left a deep scar on China that was the battleground, and we have to say that most of the causes were created by the Japanese side," said the report.<br /><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" >Books: <a href="http://www.paulowniapress.co.uk/books/My_Fathers_Dying_Wish.html">My Father's Dying Wish</a> Legacies of War Guilt in a Japanese Family By Ayako Kurahashi Translated into English by <a href="http://www.philipseaton.net/Home/Translation.html">Philip Seaton</a><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.jca.apc.org/nmnankin/e-kurahas1.html"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S2etYOJxZoI/AAAAAAAAAQI/DCEqhzsDhtM/s400/kura12.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433502107073341058" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.jca.apc.org/nmnankin/e-kurahas1.html">My Father's Apology</a>: "I have served in the former military for twelve years and eight months. Among those years, I served tens years as a lower rank China-based army officer (ex-MP warrant officer) in the military police in Tianjin, Beijing, Shanxi Province, Lingfen, Liancheng, Old Manchuria, Dong Ning, and Donglin, etc. I participated in the war of aggression. I am very sorry for what I have done to the Chinese people. I want to apologize over and over."<br /><br /><br /></span>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-89106205491506558952010-01-30T21:45:00.000-08:002010-01-31T10:41:57.346-08:00Made in China<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S2UZet_CIZI/AAAAAAAAAPw/YqwpfiUO0XM/s1600-h/wind.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S2UZet_CIZI/AAAAAAAAAPw/YqwpfiUO0XM/s320/wind.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432776541023117714" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Components of wind turbines at a factory in Tianjin, China. Shifting to sustainable energy could leave the West dependent on China, much as the developed world now depends on the Mideast. Photo: Shiho Fukada for The New York Times</span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html">China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy</a><br /><br />By KEITH BRADSHER<br />Published: January 30, 2010<br /><br />TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.<br /><br />China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.<br /><br />These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.<br /><br />The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.<br /><br />Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.<br /><br />“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market.”<br /><br />Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.<br /><br />China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.<br /><br />As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.<br /><br />China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.<br /><br />Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.<br /><br />China’s commitment to renewable energy is expensive. Although costs are falling steeply through mass production, wind energy is still 20 to 40 percent more expensive than coal-fired power. Solar power is still at least twice as expensive as coal.<br /><br />The Chinese government charges a renewable energy fee to all electricity users. The fee increases residential electricity bills by 0.25 percent to 0.4 percent. For industrial users of electricity, the fee doubled in November to roughly 0.8 percent of the electricity bill.<br /><br />The fee revenue goes to companies that operate the electricity grid, to make up the cost difference between renewable energy and coal-fired power.<br /><br />Renewable energy fees are not yet high enough to affect China’s competitiveness even in energy-intensive industries, said the chairman of a Chinese industrial company, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of electricity rates in China.<br /><br />Grid operators are unhappy. They are reimbursed for the extra cost of buying renewable energy instead of coal-fired power, but not for the formidable cost of building power lines to wind turbines and other renewable energy producers, many of them in remote, windswept areas. Transmission losses are high for sending power over long distances to cities, and nearly a third of China’s wind turbines are not yet connected to the national grid.<br /><br />Most of these turbines were built only in the last year, however, and grid construction has not caught up. Under legislation passed by the Chinese legislature on Dec. 26, a grid operator that does not connect a renewable energy operation to the grid must pay that operation twice the value of the electricity that cannot be distributed.<br /><br />With prices tumbling, China’s wind and solar industries are increasingly looking to sell equipment abroad — and facing complaints by Western companies that they have unfair advantages.<br /><br /></div>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-61293041118968903232010-01-08T16:39:00.000-08:002010-01-08T16:56:37.085-08:00Enemies of the State<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S0fRJuDRQwI/AAAAAAAAAPo/bj9swW-F2qw/s1600-h/chinarehab.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/S0fRJuDRQwI/AAAAAAAAAPo/bj9swW-F2qw/s320/chinarehab.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424534241101824770" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Photo: From left, Han Wei and Fu Li Xin, both recovering drug addicts, and Zhang Wenjun, who runs Guiding Star, an organization that helps recovering addicts, in Beijing. </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: italic;font-size:78%;" >Du Bin for The New York Times</span><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/world/asia/08china.html">China Turns Drug Rehab Into a Punishing Ordeal </a><br />By ANDREW JACOBS<br />Published: January 7, 2010<br /><br />BEIJING — Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a “special cigarette” — one laced with methamphetamine — and Ms. Fu happily<br />inhaled.<br /><br />The next day, three policemen showed up at her door.<br /><br />“They asked me to urinate in a cup,” she said. “My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot.”<br /><br />Although she said it was her first time smoking meth, Ms. Fu, 41, was promptly sent to one of China’s compulsory drug rehabilitation centers. The minimum stay is two years, and life is an unremitting gantlet of physical abuse and forced labor without any drug treatment, according to former inmates and substance abuse professionals.<br /><br />“It was a hell I’m still trying to recover from,” she said.<br /><br />According to the United Nations, as many as a half million Chinese citizens are held at these centers at any given time. Detentions are meted out by the police without trials, judges or appeals. Created in 2008 as part of a reform effort to grapple with the country’s growing narcotics problem, the centers, lawyers and drug experts say, have become de facto penal colonies where inmates are sent to factories and farms, fed substandard food and denied basic medical care.<br /><br />“They call them detoxification centers, but everyone knows that detox takes a few days, not two years,” said Joseph Amon, an epidemiologist with Human Rights Watch in New York. “The basic concept is inhumane and flawed.”<br /><br />On Thursday, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the drug rehabilitation system that replaced the Communist Party’s previous approach of sending addicts to labor camps, where they would toil alongside thieves, prostitutes and political dissidents.<br /><br />The report, titled “Where Darkness Knows No Limits,” calls on the government to immediately shut down the detention centers.<br /><br />Under the Anti-Drug Law of 2008, drug offenders were to be sent to professionally staffed detox facilities and then released to community-based rehabilitation centers for up to four years of therapeutic follow-up.<br /><br />But substance abuse experts say the legislation, part of a stated “people centered” approach to dealing with addiction, has simply given the old system a new name. What is worse, they say, is that it expands the six-month compulsory detentions of old into two-year periods that the authorities can extend by five years.<br /><br />The “community-based rehabilitation” centers, treatment experts add, have yet to be established.<br /><br />Wang Xiaoguang, the vice director of Daytop, an American-affiliated drug-treatment residence in Yunnan Province, said the government detox centers were little more than business ventures run by the police. Detainees, he said, spend their days working at chicken farms or shoe factories that have contracts with the local police; drug treatment, counseling and vocational training are almost nonexistent.<br /><br />“I don’t think this is the ideal situation for people trying to recover from addiction,” Mr. Wang said in a phone interview.<br /><br />In its report, Human Rights Watch, which largely focused on Yunnan, says the abuses at some of the province’s 114 detention centers are even more troubling. Those with serious illnesses, including tuberculosis and AIDS, are often denied medical treatment. Many inmates reported beatings, some of them fatal.<br /><br />The Office of National Narcotics Control Commission, which administers China’s drug policy, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.<br /><br />Han Wei, 38, a recovering heroin addict who was released from a Beijing detention center in October, said the guards would use electric prods on the recalcitrant. “At least they’d give us helmets so we wouldn’t injure our heads during convulsions,” he said.<br /><br />Meals consisted of steamed buns and, occasionally, cabbage-based swill. Showers were allowed once a month. And the remedy for heroin withdrawal symptoms was a pail of cold water in the face. “They didn’t give me a single pill or a bit of counseling,” Mr. Han said.<br /><br />Despite the deprivations, Mr. Han, a former nightclub owner, said his two-year sentence achieved the desired goal: it persuaded him to kick a habit he began in 1998. “I’m never going back,” he said.<br /><br />Zhang Wenjun, who runs Guiding Star, an organization that helps recovering addicts, said such determination was most often fleeting. At least 98 percent of those who leave the drug detention system relapse within a few years, he said.<br /><br />Mr. Zhang knows something about falling off the wagon. His own addiction to heroin has landed him in detox centers and labor camps six times since the mid-1990s.<br /><br />“What the government doesn’t realize is that this is a disease that needs to be treated, not punished,” said Mr. Zhang, 42, a tattooed man who speaks in a growl.<br /><br />In some ways, he said, the stigma of addiction is as crippling as the lure of the next fix. Those arrested for drug offenses are branded addicts on their national identification cards, which makes applying for jobs and welfare benefits acts of futility. And because the local police are automatically notified when former offenders check into hotels, traveling often involves impromptu urine tests and the possibility of humiliation in front of colleagues.<br /><br />“In China, to be a drug addict is to be an enemy of the government,” Mr. Zhang said.<br /><br />Still, he and other drug treatment workers are quick to acknowledge the progress that China has made in recent years. There are now eight methadone clinics in Beijing, serving 2,000 people, and more than 1,000 needle-exchange programs have opened across the country since 2004.<br /><br />Yu Jingtao, whose organization, Beijing Harm Reduction Group, distributes 30,000 clean needles a month, said the government was slowly moving toward the drug treatment model common in much of the developed world. “We’re just caught in a transition period,” said Mr. Yu, himself a recovering addict. “Transition periods are never very pretty.”<br /><br />Zhang Jing contributed research.penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-53353946742240356272009-12-30T22:41:00.000-08:002010-01-01T09:30:16.747-08:00Verdant Mountains Cannot Stop Water Flowing; Eastward the River Keeps on Going<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/SzxIy3KXn2I/AAAAAAAAAPg/AZOUvWZrq6s/s1600-h/wen_cop15.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/SzxIy3KXn2I/AAAAAAAAAPg/AZOUvWZrq6s/s320/wen_cop15.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421288090085334882" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"He who is cautious may seem timid in the beginning, but his mettle will shine through in the end."</span><br /><br />On 26 November, the Chinese government announced the target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent from the 2005 level by 2020. The announcement was widely applauded by the international community. It was also announced on that day that Premier Wen Jiabao would attend the Copenhagen conference.<br /><br />After the opening of the conference on 7 December, Copenhagen became a stage of intense wrangling between national governments, interest groups, NGOs and research institutes. But the unending arguments, talks and negotiations never seemed to have gotten very far and an enormous gulf remained between divergent positions. The clock was ticking, and a pervasive sense of pessimism and despair began to fill the conference center.<br /><br />At 20:00 on 17th, Premier Wen attended the dinner hosted by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. It marked the beginning of the high-level segment of the Copenhagen conference.<br /><br />Something unexpected however happened during the dinner. A foreign leader mentioned to Premier Wen inadvertently that a certain country would call a small-group leaders' meeting following the dinner to discuss a new text. This caught Premier Wen's attention, because the list of invited countries held by this leader had the name China on it, yet the Chinese side had never received any notification about this meeting. Premier Wen then sought confirmation with some other leaders, who told him that indeed such a meeting was scheduled after the dinner. It was really absurd that the country who called for the meeting never informed China.<br /><br />Premier Wen concluded that this was no small matter. Since the start of the conference, there had been cases where individual or small group of countries put forward new texts in disregard of the principle of openness and transparency, arousing strong complaints from other participants. He immediately left for the hotel, where he convened a meeting to discuss how to respond.<br /><br />Upon Premier Wen's instruction, Vice Foreign Minister He rushed to the venue of the small-group meeting and raised serious concerns with the host for arranging such a meeting with hidden motives. He stressed that the principle of openness and transparency must be respected. No one should try to form small circles or force decisions upon others, or they would risk leading the conference to failure.<br /><br />In the meantime, speculations and rumors of all sorts were prevalent: some developed countries were planning together privately to put more pressure on China; major emerging countries were vehemently obstructing the negotiation process, and the conference was therefore very likely to end in failure; developed countries, unhappy with China's rejection of MRV, refused to offer more financial assistance to small island states; the developing camp was beginning to fall apart; a certain big power intended to propose its own text, and so on and so forth. All signs pointed to a less and less optimistic picture.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/t648096.htm</span><br /><br />Earlier on:<br /><br />More than a year ago, Mr. Obama said of climate change: “Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response.”<br /><br />But when Mr. Obama and other world leaders met last month, they were forced to abandon the goal of reaching a binding accord at Copenhagen because the American political system is not ready to agree to a treaty that would force the United States, over time, to accept profound changes in its energy, transport and manufacturing sectors.<br /><br />So the leaders said they planned to leave Copenhagen with an interim political deal and work toward a binding treaty next year.<br /><br />Delay, it turns out, was the only option.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/weekinreview/13broder.html?_r=2&ref=global-home</span><br /><br />Blame China.<br /><br /><blockquote>To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China's representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. "Why can't we even mention our own targets?" demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil's representative too pointed out the illogicality of China's position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord's lack of ambition.<br /><br />China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak "as soon as possible". The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.</blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas</span><br /><br />Don't blame China.<br /><br /><blockquote>The accord itself is weak mainly because it does not contain any commitments by the developed countries to cut their emissions in the medium term. Perhaps the reason for this most glaring omission is that the national pledges so far announced amount to only a 11-19% overall reduction by the developed countries by 2020 (compared to 1990), a far cry from the over 40% target demanded by the developing countries and recent science.<br /><br />To deflect from this great failure on their part, the developed countries tried to inject long-term emission-reduction goals of 50% for the world and 80% for themselves, by 2050 compared to 1990. When this failed to get through the 26-country meeting, some countries, especially the UK, began to blame China for the failure of Copenhagen.<br /><br />In fact, these targets, especially taken together, have been highly contentious during the two years of discussions, and for good reasons. They would result in a highly inequitable outcome where developed countries get off from their responsibilities and push the burden of adjustment onto the developing countries.<br /><br />Together, they imply that developing countries would have to cut their emissions overall by about 20% in absolute terms and at least 60% in per capita terms. By 2050, developed countries with high per capita emissions – such as the US – would be allowed to have two to five times higher per capita emission levels than developing countries. </blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/28/copenhagen-denmark-china</span><br /><br /><blockquote>In a UN context, the drama of Copenhagen was in itself not new. All recent major UN conferences have played by this script: days of haggling, recriminations, walkouts, all-night sessions and personal meltdowns before a final agreement emerges that suits almost no one. If two political parties in the United States cannot work out a deal on healthcare, more than 190 nations are up against an even bigger hill to climb. Unlike at meetings of the old G8, agreements at UN events are not pre-cooked. They are flimsy drafts festooned with brackets revealing the holes where important decisions should be. Weeks before Copenhagen it was clear, and publicly proclaimed, that a legally binding accord was not in the cards. Onward to the next round in Mexico in 2010.<br /><br /><br />In Copenhagen, Obama pulled off what was perhaps the only possible agreement by working in tandem with Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister. They then brought in major developing nations such as Brazil, India and South Africa. India, a country with a poor environmental record now in the top half-dozen emitters of greenhouse gases (and soon to be the world's most populous country), has been adamantly opposed to binding pacts and international monitoring, even more than China. India's power to obstruct had to be calculated into cobbling together what was realistically doable. </blockquote><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/crossette</span>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-88437935935711652622009-11-18T06:29:00.000-08:002009-11-18T06:51:53.343-08:00Who was Mao Zedong?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://astore.amazon.com/ricecooker-20/detail/0415493307"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 333px; height: 500px;" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YdrYX6nJL.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://chinastudygroup.net/2009/10/was-mao-really-a-monster/">Was Mao Really A Monster?</a><br />by Gregor Benton and Lin Chun | 27 October 2009<br /><br />In 2005, the British publisher Jonathan Cape launched Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown Story, to great fanfare. The book pictures Mao as a liar, ignoramus, fool, philistine, vandal, lecher, glutton, hedonist, drug-peddler, ghoul, bully, thug, coward, posturer, manipulator, psychopath, sadist, torturer, despot, megalomaniac and the greatest mass murderer of the twentieth century – in short, a monster, equal to or worse than Hitler and Stalin. He cared nothing about the fate of the Chinese people and his fellow human beings, or even his close friends and relatives. He was driven by bloodlust and the craving for power and sex. He ruled by terror, led by native cunning, and defeated Chiang Kai-shek by leaning towards Stalin and treacherously insinuating moles and sleepers into the Guomindang.<br /><br />The book rocketed to the top of the best-seller list in the UK and elsewhere and was hailed as a bombshell, triumph and irrefutable authority. Its success was due in part to the popularity of Wild Swans (1991), a family biography of Chang herself, her mother, and her grandmother, which sold 12 million copies and made her an international celebrity; but also due to the rapturous welcome press reviewers gave the expertly marketed Mao. The media ferment was in turn part of the larger political context of selective China-bashing in the long aftermath of the Cold War, with Mao still haunting the intellectual debates beyond China’s borders about the legitimacy of its post-Mao order. Non-specialist commentators marvelled at the ‘authenticity’ of the book’s scholarship and its 139 pages of references.<br /><br />Because the book has sold so many copies, was so widely and favourably reviewed in the commercial press, and has such ambitious political goals, we thought it would be a good idea to bring out a collection of commentary on it by experts and thus give its many readers the chance to view its subject from other angles. The collection is also intended as a resource for use in classroom discussions. Chang and Halliday’s findings and conclusions have begun to figure increasingly in essays by students on China courses, impressed by its apparent solidity and authority. Some teachers and scholars who distrust the authors’ methods and approach see this development as a disaster for modern China studies. To them, we offer this work as an antidote.penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-82792621527537052792009-10-20T16:15:00.000-07:002009-10-20T16:41:52.595-07:00Where are the drums and gongs?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46571000/jpg/_46571077_smeltergrab.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 170px;" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46571000/jpg/_46571077_smeltergrab.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-10/17/content_8806394.htm">15,000 living near lead smelters will be relocated soon</a><br />By Hu Yongqi (China Daily/Xinhua)<br /><br />About 15,000 residents in 10 villages around lead smelters in Jiyuan, China's biggest lead smelting base, are going to move away from the threat of lead poisoning, after more than 1,000 children were found to have excessive lead in their blood, officials said yesterday.<br /><br />Zhao Suping, mayor of the city in central Henan province, said on Friday the mass relocation would cost 1 billion yuan ($146 million). About 70 percent of the cost will be paid by the government and the smelters, and the other 30 percent will be funded by local residents.<br /><br />The government is now looking for sites for the new settlements, he said.<br /><br />The health bureau of Jiyuan initiated blood tests for children on Aug 20 in the wake of a lead poisoning scandal in neighboring Shaanxi province.<br /><br />The mass lead poisonings in Henan, and earlier this year in Shaanxi, Hunan and Yunnan, sickened thousands of children. The poisonings shed light once again on the dilemma facing many parts of China as industrial development poses threats to the environment and people's health.<br /><br />A local resident surnamed Li who is in her 60s has two small granddaughters, one who was tested to have 360 mg of lead per liter (mgl) of blood and the other had 520 mgl. The normal content levels of lead in blood range from zero to 100 mgl. Experts say that human health is severely harmed when the content reaches more than 200 mgl.<br /><br />"I am not satisfied with the current steps by the government," she said. "Many villagers won't use lead-removing medicine because they fear the possible side effects.<br /><br />"More importantly, I think the government should respond faster and do more to prevent similar cases from occurring."<br /><br />An official surnamed Li at Shibin village, a national model village, said three relocation sites are available for the villagers.<br /><br />They will more than likely move to a place about 4 km away from their houses, she said.<br /><br />"There are serious cases among the affected children, and we understand parents' anxiety about the health condition of their children," she told China Daily yesterday.<br /><br />"But we need time to cure kids and finish the relocation process."<br /><br />Once the residents move away from the smelting plants, the companies will rent the surrounding land and then plant trees that will act like a natural barrier to the spread of pollution, officials said.<br /><br />Yang Anguo, board chairman of China's biggest lead smelter, Yuguang Gold and Lead Group, had mixed feelings when he saw local villagers protesting in front of his plant.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.filestube.com/988169f1e960ed7703ea/details.html">'Slower Than Guns'</a> was a fav from Iron Butterfly's <a href="http://www.ironbutterfly.com/discography.php">Evolution</a> LP. In the early 70's I was clueless about pollution.</span>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-74311273751463991272009-09-24T19:40:00.000-07:002009-09-24T20:01:52.489-07:00Prog in China<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/SrwvXbzYMYI/AAAAAAAAANA/2S1ZAW9tdBY/s1600-h/toyotacelica1973.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 164px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/SrwvXbzYMYI/AAAAAAAAANA/2S1ZAW9tdBY/s200/toyotacelica1973.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385231334075019650" border="0" /></a><br />I was a latecomer to the prog scene. These are <a href="http://astore.amazon.com/ricecooker-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=1">records</a> I listened to as a kid, some of which were brought home by older siblings. Just found out they had something going in <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/japan_old_prog/">Japan</a>. See what I mean.<br /><br />Next stop China. Two bands I found on Google: <a href="http://prognotfrog.blogspot.com/2007/03/second-hand-roses-second-hand-roses.html">Second Hand Rose</a> & <a href="http://progressive.homestead.com/China.html">Cold Fairyland</a>. Something tells me I'm going to be way behind with the progs on the ground.penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-5416782169732912872009-04-03T04:22:00.000-07:002009-04-08T22:34:30.196-07:00Going broke turning green<blockquote></blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.businessweek.com/mz/09/15/600/0915_46china15.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 600px; height: 300px;" src="http://images.businessweek.com/mz/09/15/600/0915_46china15.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">A worker removes equipment from a garment factory closed last year <span class="photoCredit">Imaginechina via/AP Photo</span></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126046291682.htm">As Factories Fail, China's Business Law Does, Too</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">With the bankruptcy law in its infancy, violence often erupts when factories collapse</span><br /><br />By Dexter Roberts<br /><br /><blockquote>Dongguan, China - Business had been good, even great. But by early 2008, the lighting manufacturer realized his factory in China was heading for failure. The collapse of the U.S. housing market had devastated demand for his lamps and fixtures sold at American retailers. Costs kept rising in Dongguan, the southern city where he had expanded his operations. So the 43-year-old boss quietly slipped out of China, leaving behind $100,000 to cover the final month's rent and salary for his 400-plus workers. Suppliers were left unpaid.<br /><br />Lucky he left early. As word spread about the factory's closure, furious employees streamed onto the nearby street, a narrow passage lined with Internet bars and outdoor pool tables. Suppliers drove up in blue moving trucks, blocked the gate, and sent in hired thugs to grab computers, cables, machinery—anything of value. Unable to find the boss, the gang roughed up the company's lawyer and held him hostage for much of the day. "It was a new factory and looked like a gold mine. They were going to take everything out," says the boss, a European who has been in hiding in Taiwan for almost a year.<br /><br />Order was restored only after the landlord called in five truckloads of police to protect his property. And suppliers who arrived too late were out of luck. Xiao Xiaosan, a maker of metal parts for lamps, says he is owed $76,000. Although he rushed to the factory on the day of the closing, he doubts he'll ever see his money. "It's impossible for me to find the owner outside of China," he says. <p>As the global recession slams China, bankrupt business owners are shutting factories overnight. Often, they leave the mainland, afraid of angry suppliers and workers and uncertain about legal protections. Dongguan alone last year recorded 673 cases—up 24%—of owners fleeing their factories, leaving behind 113,000 unemployed workers owed $44.1 million. Labor disputes almost doubled, to nearly 80,000.<br /></p><p></p></blockquote><p></p><p><a href="http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=14906&size=A">Migrant worker blows himself up because he was not paid</a></p><blockquote>Yesterday afternoon, Han Wushun, a 42-year-old ethnic Chinese migrant worker from Sichuan, asked his bosses at Xinjiang Beixin Road and Bridge Construction Company for back pay of 4,500 yuan (about 450 euros). When he found out that he would not receive this, he blew himself up with a homemade bomb he was carrying in his backpack. The explosion killed him and injured the two managers, who were trying to get away<br /></blockquote><a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/03/china-india-entrepreneurs-schumpeter-opinions-huang.html">Schumpeterian Economics For 'Chindia'</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Because small, entrepreneurial businesses are responsible for much of the job creation, rising unemployment is a good indicator both of the severity of the economic slowdown and of the fate of small-business entrepreneurs.<br /></blockquote><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/2/1238678748231/BYD-electric-car-001.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 460px; height: 276px;" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/2/1238678748231/BYD-electric-car-001.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">A BYD Auto advert in China. Photograph: Richard Jones/Sinopix</span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/02/china-e6-electric-car">China's E6 electric car: 'We're not trying to save the world – we're trying to make money'</a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Its release imminent, BYD Auto's revolutionary E6 electric car is integral to China's plan to dominate the global market for 'clean-transport'. Jonathan Watts reports</span><br /><br /><blockquote>When BYD Auto launches one of China's first mass produced fully electric sedans later this year, it will be trying to conquer the world rather than save it. But such is the explosive growth of China's car market and thirst for petrol that the two goals are likely to become ever more synonymous.<br /><br />The E6 plug-in is currently under wraps at the company's sprawling industrial complex in Shenzhen, but it will soon be at the vanguard of a company's – and a nation's – plans to dominate the global market for "clean-transport".<br /><br />Senior government leaders have initiated a major push for hybrid and electric vehicles in a bid to bypass car makers overseas and avoid an environmental meltdown at home.<br /><br />BYD is likely to be a major beneficiary. The initials stand for Build Your Dreams, which prompted snickers when the company debuted in US car shows last year, as did the soaring ambitions of the founder Wang Chuanfu, who has stated that BYD will be the biggest carmaker in China by 2015 and the biggest in the world by 2025.<br /><br />Despite it making a third of the world's mobile phone batteries, until recently few people outside of China had heard of BYD. But the company exploded into the international consciousness late last year by beating Toyota and General Motors to launch the world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid.<br /></blockquote><a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/byd-electric-car-e6-crossover-mpv.php">Introducing the BYD E6 Electric Car</a><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-69944073193194067262009-03-30T22:13:00.000-07:002009-03-31T00:34:16.310-07:00China Goes to Africa<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884396_1854944,00.html"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 317px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N8bta6HDLOE/SdGqk1xALmI/AAAAAAAAAL4/8z9eQHIZhHA/s320/chinafrica.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5319220184785890914" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884396_1854944,00.html">Imboulou Dam, Democratic Republic of Congo</a><br />Funded by the China National Mechanical and Equipment Corporation, this 120-megawatt power plant will double the DRC's national production of electricity and bring light to a large part of the country. Photo by Paolo Woodspenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7639092056225379017.post-15877144873139495112009-03-19T21:12:00.000-07:002009-03-19T21:29:01.956-07:00Correction: China<a href="http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/03/correction_chinese_coal_mine_d.php">Correction: Chinese coal mine deaths</a><br /><br /><blockquote>And for foreigners there's a particular problem of having your usual standards of judgment mismatched to China's scale. I have been in cities that looked middling-size. Based on the street grid and downtown area, I would have estimated the population at maybe 100,000 -- then I'm told that two million people live there. (True? I don't know.) Every reporter in China knows about the government statistics reporting 60,000 to 70,000 mass disturbances throughout the country each year. Could that possibly be true? Two hundred a day? It doesn't seem plausible, but I see the figure quoted all the time.<br /><br />In the corrected version, ninety thousand people had died in accidents of all sorts in China last year, not just in coal mines. The coal mine fatality rate was more like nine per day, not 250.</blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><br /><a href="http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2009/02/25/correction_china_reluctant_maids_story/">Correction: China-Reluctant Maids story</a><br /><br /><blockquote>GUANGZHOU, China—In a Feb. 19 story about Chinese university graduates taking jobs as housekeepers, The Associated Press erroneously quoted the general manager of a training school and placement service for domestics saying her agency has yet to receive an application from a man.<br /><br />Cong Shan, general manager of Guangzhou Home EZ Services, said males are currently enrolled in training courses.<br /><br />The story also quoted Shan as saying that she had never had a university graduate apply for training until last year. She now says some university graduates applied before 2008, but their numbers have jumped since last August to 90 percent of the 500 to 600 women applicants.<br /></blockquote>penhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05890750405202127503noreply@blogger.com0