PRC Economy and Industry: News and Discussions

[wrdos]

Shanghai’s suburban rebellion

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ef7b534-54fe ... 07658.html

[wrdos]

China Surpasses U.S. in Number of Internet Users

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/busin ... ref=slogin

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By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: July 26, 2008

SHANGHAI — China said the number of Internet users in the country reached about 253 million last month, putting it ahead of the United States as the world’s biggest Internet market.



An Internet cafe in China. The majority of the country’s Internet users are 30 or younger.

The estimate, based on a national phone survey and released on Thursday by the China Internet Network Information Center in Beijing, showed a powerful surge in Internet adoption in this country over the last few years, particularly among teenagers.

The number of Internet users jumped more than 50 percent, or by about 90 million people, during the last year, said the center, which operates under the government-controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences. The new estimate represents only about 19 percent of China’s population, underscoring the potential for growth.

By contrast, about 220 million Americans are online, or 70 percent of the population, according to the Nielsen Company. Japan and South Korea have similarly high percentages.

Political content on Web sites inside China is heavily censored, and foreign sites operating here have faced restrictions. But online gaming, blogs, and social networking and entertainment sites are extremely popular among young people in China.

The survey found that nearly 70 percent of China’s Internet users were 30 or younger, and that in the first half of this year, high school students were, by far, the fastest-growing segment of new users, accounting for 39 million of the 43 million new users in that period.

With Internet use booming, so is Web advertising. The investment firm Morgan Stanley says online advertising in China is growing by 60 to 70 percent a year, and forecasts that by the end of this year, it could be a $1.7 billion market.

China’s biggest Internet companies, including Baidu, Sina, Tencent and Alibaba, are thriving, and in many cases are outperforming the China-based operations of American Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and eBay.

“The Internet market is the fastest-growing consumer market sector in China,” said Richard Ji, an Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley. “We are still far from saturation. So the next three to five years, we’re still going to see hyper-growth in this market.”

Baidu, for instance, said on Thursday that its second-quarter net profit had jumped 81 percent. During that period, Baidu had a 63 percent share of China’s search engine market, while Google had about 26 percent, with Yahoo trailing far behind, according to iResearch, a market research firm based in Beijing.

Tencent, a popular site for social networking and gaming, now has a stock market value of $15 billion, making it one of the world’s most valuable Internet companies. In comparison, Amazon.com is valued at about $30 billion.

One measure of the growth of the Internet here, and its social and entertainment functions, is the popularity of blogs.

The site of China’s most popular blogger, the actress Xu Jinglei, has attracted more than 174 million visitors over the last few years, according to Sina.com, the popular Web portal, which posts a live tally. According to Sina, 11 other bloggers have also attracted more than 100 million visitors in recent years.

The Internet’s popularity often poses serious challenges to the government. Online gambling, *****, videos of protests and addiction have led to regular campaigns to crack down on what the government views as vices. But Internet users have also used the Web for nationalist campaigns to criticize the Western news media or foreign companies, as was the case after riots broke out in Tibet this year.

While several organizations had projected that China would surpass the United States in Internet users this year, the new survey results were the first time a government agency had released figures showing China’s market to be larger than that of the United States.

[wrdos]

From the Erotic Domain, an Aerobic Trend in China
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Students taking a lesson at Lolan Pole Dancing School in Beijing. The school has five studios and plans to open six more this year.
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By JIMMY WANG
Published: July 25, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/world ... ina&st=cse



BEIJING — Clad in knee-high leather boots, spandex shorts and a sports bra, Xiao Yan struck a pose two feet off the ground, her head glistening with sweat and her arms straining as she suspended herself from a vertical pole.

“Keeping your grip is the hardest part,” she said. “It’s really easy to slide downward.”

Ms. Xiao, 26, who works as a supermarket manager, is one of a growing number of women experimenting with China’s newest, and most controversial, fitness activity: pole dancing.

“I used to take a normal aerobics class, but it was boring and monotonous,” Ms. Xiao said. “So I tried out pole dancing. It’s a really social activity. I’ve met a lot of girls here who I’m now close friends with. And I like that it makes me feel sexy.”

A nightclub activity mostly considered the domain of strippers in the United States, pole dancing — but with clothes kept on — is nudging its way into the mainstream Chinese exercise market, with increasing numbers of gyms and dance schools offering classes.

The woman who claims to have brought pole dancing to China, Luo Lan, 39, is from Yichun, a small town in Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. Her parents teach physics at the university level.

“I’m not good at science like my parents. I’m the black sheep of my family, in that sense,” she said.

Ms. Luo said she struggled in 20 different occupations — secretary, saleswoman, restaurateur and translator among them — before deciding to take a break. She traveled to Paris in 2006 for vacation. It was there that she first saw pole dancing.

“I wandered into a pub, and there was a woman dancing on the stage,” she said. “I thought it was beautiful.”

Ms. Luo, who quickly discovered that pole dancing for fitness was popular in America, realized that if she could take away the shadier aspects of the erotic dance and repackage it into an activity more acceptable to mainstream Chinese women, she might create a Chinese fitness revolution. Here was an exercise that would allow women to stay fit and express their sexuality with an unprecedented degree of openness and freedom.

But she remained keenly aware of the challenges in a society where traditional values dictate that women be loyal, faithful and modestly dressed.

Upon her return to Beijing, Ms. Luo invested a little under $3,000 of her savings to start the Lolan Pole Dancing School. She placed advertisements in a lifestyle newspaper and called friends to get the word out.

Slowly, young women trickled in to take a look.

“People here have never seen a pole dance, and for that reason they don’t associate it with stripping or women of ill repute,” Ms. Luo said. “I knew if I could give people a positive first impression of this as a clean, fun, social activity, people wouldn’t just accept it, they’d embrace it.”

Before long, Ms. Luo was contacted by several magazines. In March 2008, Hunan Television, a nationally broadcast network, invited her and a group of her students to perform on a talk show.

“Most of the people in the audience had no idea what this was,” said Hu Jing, 24, an instructor at the Lolan School. “They just thought it was fun and clapped afterward.”

Since the broadcast, pole dancing for fitness has spread through China. The school now has five studios with plans to open six more this year. A rival pole dancing school, Hua Ling, opened half a year after the Lolan School.

Pole dancing’s move onto the fitness scene, however, has been a rocky one. Many Chinese, who disapprove of its sexual movements, consider it unruly and licentious.

“Five years ago, this wouldn’t have been permitted,” said Zhang Jian, 30, a manager in an interior design firm. “I think this is just a fad, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for women.”

Ms. Luo said she had received prank calls and plenty of criticism. “I’ve been contacted by many people who don’t like what we’re doing,” she said.

But those who embrace pole dancing for fitness are a snapshot of urban youths whose values are changing from those of their parents.

Although China has no state religion, study of Confucianism and Taoism, two conflicting philosophies that underlie much of modern Chinese thought, is mandatory in China’s education system. While Confucianism emphasizes achievement and propriety, Taoism stresses the unseen strengths in being humble and, in some cases, being perceived as average.

Although Jiang Li, 23, a pole dancing student, studied both philosophies in school, she said she could subscribe to neither.

“A lot of people expect Chinese women to be subdued and faithful, that we should marry and take care of kids at an early age,” she said. “But I don’t think that way — I want to be independent. I’ve been studying traditional Chinese dance for many years, but this is totally different. I feel in control when I do this. If I learn this well, I feel I can be a superstar. I want to be a superstar.”

Lucy Liang contributed research.

[sanjaykumar]

edited

sanjaykumar, this post has been reported as being vulgar.
I've to agree. so, don't be vulgar !
regards.
Rahul.

[zlin]

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2 ... 877764.htm

Four new railways approved for constructionBy Shangguan Zhoudong (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-07-25 15:17 Comments(0) PrintMailFour new railways, including one dedicated passenger line, have been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, for construction, said the commission in statements released on its website yesterday.


The 261.3-km dedicated passenger line, linking Tianjin Municipality and Qinhuangdao in neighboring Hebei province, will begin from the Tianjin Railway Station and pass through Tianjin's Binhai New Area, Tangshan and Beidaihe in Hebei province.


The second one is the Lijiang-Shangri La Railway with a total length of 161km. The interprovincial railway starts from the Lijiang Railway Station and will route through Tiger Leaping Gorge and Xiaozhongdian, scenic spots in Yunnan province.


The longest one among the four newly-approved railways is the Xinjiang Kashi-Xinjiang Hetian Railway. Located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the 487 km-line will pass through counties like Yingjisha, Shache, Yecheng and Pishan.


The last one is the Xi'an-Pingliang Railway that starts from Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province and goes through Liquan, Qianxian, Yongshou, Binxian and Changwu counties in the province and Jingchuan county in Gansu province. Finally, the railway will link up with the Baoji-Zhongwei Railway at the Pingliang South Railway Station.


China's railway construction is in full swing in recent years. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, the most expensive construction project with a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, started construction in April this year.


Additionally, the country's first 350kmh-passenger line between Beijing and Tianjin, which is now under trial operation, is scheduled for launch on August 1 this year.


China plans to build a total of 7,820 km rail lines this year and foreign investment shall be introduced in the construction of railways, according to the Ministry of Railways. The ministry also said a total of 300 billion yuan ($42 billion) will be invested in China's railway construction this year.


China now has more than 76,000 km of railways, ranking third in the world by length after the United States and Russia.

[Ameet]

Doesn't seem like the pollution levels are getting any better in Beijing. Some of the photos are incredible, possible psy-ops taken at the worst possible time of day. Granted you have to love the bureaucrats reasoning and optimism on the improving conditions for when the games actually start.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... r-air.html

Worst smog in a month hits Beijing as Olympic athletes leave it to the last minute to acclimatise to poor air

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 9:33 PM on 27th July 2008

With only 11 days to go until the start of the Beijing Olympics, this was the smoggy scene in the Chinese capital yesterday.

Visibility was down to half a mile in some parts, including the National Stadium, while the Athletes' Village complex could not be seen from the nearby Olympic Green.
The city's notoriously polluted air has cast a cloud over the Games, with organisers threatening to postpone events if it is bad.

City officials confidently - and possibly unwisely - predict that air quality will be good for the Games. Their efforts to curb pollution include taking half of Beijing's 3.3million vehicles off the roads and closing factories.

The grayish haze was one of the worst seen in Beijing in the past month despite tough traffic restrictions imposed a week ago to help reduce pollution.

The city's notoriously polluted air remains one of the biggest question marks hanging over the games, which begin on August 8.

'The air quality in August will be good,' Du Shaozhong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, told reporters on Sunday. He did not explain the reasons for his optimism.

Du blamed the thick haze on a combination of fog and light wind unable to blow away the pollution, but he said pollution levels now are 20 per cent lower than one year ago in similar weather conditions. He did not provide any details.

'Our job is to decrease the pollution as much as possible, but sometimes it is very common to have fog in Beijing at this time,' Du said.

Olympic athletes have been trickling into Beijing, but are expected to begin arriving in larger numbers this week.

Some, though, were headed to training sites in South Korea, Japan and other places to avoid the Beijing air until the last possible minute.

'No, it doesn't really look so good. Yesterday was better but the day I arrived, Tuesday, was awful,' said Gunilla Lindberg, an International Olympic Committee vice president from Sweden who is staying in the Athletes' Village.

Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, has warned that outdoor endurance events will be postponed if the air quality is poor.

Drastic efforts to curb pollution include pulling half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, closing factories in the city and in a half dozen surrounding provinces, and halting most construction in the capital.

Some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles, such as aging industrial trucks, have been banned since July 1.

Experts have said that while the measures are sure to reduce pollution, they are not a guarantee for blue skies during the games.

Wind can blow pollution to Beijing from thousands of miles (kilometers) away, while a lack of wind can cause chemicals and particulate matter to build up in the city.

'There's only so much you can do with local emission reduction,' said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

He is leading a team that is studying the impact of Beijing's pollution reduction measures.

'You're basically at the mercy of the winds,' he said.

[wrdos]

China’s dash for freedom

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displa ... D=11848192

Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition
China’s rise is a cause for celebration—but despite the Beijing Olympics, not because of them



“SPORT”, as George Orwell noted more than 60 years ago, “is an unfailing cause of ill-will.” This newspaper generated some of its own in 2001, when we argued against the award of the 2008 Olympics to Beijing, and drew comparisons to the Nazi-organised games in Berlin in 1936 (see article). Chinese officialdom and many ordinary citizens were furious: another petulant effort by Western foes to thwart China’s inexorable rise.

A futile effort, too: Beijing won the games, and some would say the argument. As tourists land at the city’s futuristic airport, or troop into the spectacular new stadiums, many will catch their breath in wonder at the sheer scale of the modernisation China has wrought so quickly. China’s rise has indeed continued, in double-digit rates of economic growth, and in the growing recognition that it is a future superpower that cannot be ignored on any global issue, whether global warming or, as our leader on the collapse of the Doha round argues, global trade. Surely the Olympics, a bonanza for business as much as for athletes (see our special report this week), are the fitting symbol for this? The precedent is not Berlin 1936, but Tokyo 1964 or Seoul 1988, celebrating the coming of age of an economic power: only bigger and better, as befits the peaceful reintegration into the world of one in five of its inhabitants.
Games but no fun

This is indeed a cause for great celebration. But the Olympics have had little to do with it. On balance, the award of the games has done more harm than good to the opening up of China. The big forces driving that opening are independent of the games (see article). One is the speed with which China globalised in the 1980s and 1990s and then accelerated to a breakneck pace after accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001. The other is the spread of the internet and mobile telephony that have transformed society. The Olympics, by contrast, have seen the Communist Party reassert an authoritarian grip over Beijing. It has used the pretext of an alleged terrorist threat to impose a restrictive security cordon on the city and curtail visas even for harmless businessmen.

The intense international scrutiny may have moderated the response of the security forces for a brief period at the beginning of the riots in Tibet in March. It may have had some effect on the way the authorities handled the relief effort after May’s earthquake in Sichuan province. The government has also made it easier for foreign reporters to travel round China. But in most cases the security forces are as thuggish as ever; and the internet was anyway forcing the party’s information-management systems to cope with new pressures.

Those who have argued for the beneficial effect of the Olympics on China have made three specific claims, none of which holds water. First, Chinese officials themselves said the games would bring human-rights improvements. The opposite is true. China’s people are far freer now than they were 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. The party has extricated itself from big parts of their lives, and relative wealth has broadened horizons. But that is not thanks to the Olympics, which have brought more repression. To build state-of-the-art facilities for the games, untold numbers of people were forced to move. Anxious to prevent protests that might steal headlines from the glories of Chinese modernist architecture or athletic prowess, the authorities have hounded dissidents with more than usual vigour. And there are anyway clear limits to the march of freedom in China; although personal and economic freedoms have multiplied, political freedoms have been disappointingly constrained since Hu Jintao became president in 2003.

Second, these would be the first “green” Olympics, spurring a badly needed effort to clean up Beijing and other Olympic venues. This was always a ludicrous claim. Heroic efforts to remove toxic algae blooms from the rowing course do not amount to a new environmentalism. The jury is still out on whether Beijing will manage to produce air sufficiently breathable for runners safely to complete a marathon. If it does, it will not have been because of any Olympic-related change of course. Rather it will be the result of desperate measures introduced in recent weeks: production cuts by polluting industries, or simply closing them down; and the banning from the road of half of Beijing’s cars.

The third boast was not one you would ever hear from the lips of Chinese diplomats. A belief in the inviolability of Chinese sovereignty is often not just their cardinal principle, but their only one. Yet some foreigners claimed that the Olympics would make Chinese foreign policy more biddable. Western officials have been quick to talk up China’s alleged helpfulness: in persuading North Korea at least to talk about disarming; in cajoling the generals running Myanmar into letting in the odd envoy from the United Nations; in trying to coax the government of Sudan away from a policy of genocide. But last month China still vetoed United Nations sanctions against Zimbabwe; it wants a UN vote to stop action in the International Criminal Court against Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir.
Beijingoism

China’s leaders remain irrevocably wedded to the principle of “non-interference” in a country’s internal affairs. In so far as China itself is concerned, they seem to have the backing of large numbers of their own people. The Olympics are taking place against the backdrop of the rise of a virulently assertive strain of Chinese nationalism—seen most vividly in the fury at foreign coverage of the riots in Tibet, and at the protests that greeted the Olympic-torch relay in some Western cities.

And all that was before the games themselves begin. Orwell described international sport as “mimic warfare”. That is of course infinitely preferable to the real thing, and there is nothing wrong in China’s people taking pride in either a diplomatic triumph, if that is how the games turn out, or a sporting one (a better bet). But there is a danger. Having dumped its ideology, the Communist Party now stakes its survival and legitimacy on tight political control, economic advance and nationalist pride. The problem with nationalism is that it thrives on competition—and all too often needs an enemy.

[wrdos]

True or False: China Is Fit to Play Host

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/sport ... ref=slogin

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BY TOM SCOCCA
Published: August 3, 2008


HAZE AND HEROIC ARCHITECTURE: The park outside the National Stadium.

Four years ago, as I rode into Beijing for the first time, the poplar trees along the airport expressway struck me as a false and futile gesture. This was what’s now the old airport expressway, coming from what’s now the old international terminal. At that moment, it was all new to me, and it seemed only reasonable to make some assumptions about what was passing outside the taxi window. The trees, I could see, were puny — slender gray-green things, planted in ruler-straight rows, half-vanishing as they receded in the brownish smog.

Times journalists and special contributors explore the Olympics in Beijing and on the Web from every angle — the politics, the culture and the competition.

So here was the New China: a sprig of baby’s breath dropped into a smokestack.

I’ve made a few dozen trips along the expressway since then, as a recurring visitor and eventually,

for the last couple of years, as a Beijing resident. I say “resident” in the sense that my wife and I live here, lease an apartment and have bought a sofa and that our son was born in the city — though legally, as a foreign journalist without a certified permanent bureau, I depend on a string of temporary visas. Four years is a long time in Beijing, a city frantically reinventing and rebuilding itself. The poplars have filled out into a wall of green that seems no more or less dishonest than the strips of woods I grew up with in America, concealing subdivisions and the interstate from one another.

The air has gotten cleaner, too — not clean, not even close to what most Americans would call clean, but not the unbroken, choking fug of 2004. Automobile traffic is thicker all the time and dust is endemic, but the gradual relocation of heavy industry away from the city center has made things less suffocating. How much less suffocating is an ongoing mystery; a critical reading of official statistics strongly suggests that the authorities have been fiddling with the air-quality numbers to meet the ever-growing annual quota of “blue sky” days promised to the International Olympic Committee. Still, the skies are bluer, and blue more often, than they were a few years ago. The government has abandoned the fiction of calling the murk “fog” instead of “haze,” and weeks can go by between the worst episodes of it. Sometimes at night there are stars.

Better yet, it rains: in a city parched by years of drought, made worse by rain-stifling pollution, the June just past was the wettest in 15 years. True, the municipal Weather Modification Office has been blasting the clouds with silver-iodide artillery shells to help the rain along, but the lush plant growth is comforting anyway.

Will conditions be healthy enough for the athletes? Now we are getting to the difficult part. From up close, the answer seems to be that the air probably shouldn’t be too bad — if traffic restrictions succeed in keeping half of the three million private cars off the streets, if factories do curb production, if construction digging does halt on schedule, if the wind blows from the north instead of the industrial south and southeast.

But that’s only one small part of the underlying, animating question (or problem): is China fit to host the Summer Olympics? For some segments of the West, it can be answered by a simple syllogism: the Olympics are good. China is bad. China should not host the Olympics.

Like an expandable roller bag, that conclusion can be unzipped to hold whatever ideology you’d like to carry along in it: anti-Communism, democracy, Tibetan independence, press freedom, environmentalism, workers’ rights, Internet openness, Darfur. China can be a disturbing and provoking place to live — a state so regulated that uniformed police have knocked on the door and come in to check my family’s papers; an enterprise system so unchecked that a hospital demanded money upfront before an emergency C-section. Outside dissent is suppressed by censors, and internal dissent is suppressed by prisons.

And yet there are any number of complications in the contemporary brief against China: the tension between the central government and despotic local officials, the tentative expansion of property rights, newly cordial relations with Taiwan, an increased emphasis by the leadership on abating environmental damage. The tyrannies and intrusions coexist in an ever-shifting balance with progress, possibility and hope. How clean is clean enough? How open is open enough? How free is free enough?
......

[svinayak]

http://www.hindu.com/holnus/006200808060301.htm

‘China has run out of road with its low-cost labour strategy’
Acharya ji,
at least post a header to go with the link !!
Rahul.

[wrdos]

China to overtake US as largest manufacturer

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2aa7a12e-6709-1 ... ome%2Fasia

By Peter Marsh in London

Published: August 10 2008 22:37 | Last updated: August 10 2008 22:37

China is set to overtake the US next year as the world’s largest producer of manufactured goods, four years earlier than expected, as a result of the rapidly weakening US economy.

The great leap is revealed in forecasts for the Financial Times by Global Insight, a US economics consultancy. According to the estimates, next year China will account for 17 per cent of manufacturing value-added output of $11,783bn and the US will make 16 per cent.

[Ameet]

cross posting from the other forum - Iraq and China to revive oil deal signed during Saddam era.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080810/ap_ ... _china_oil

[wrdos]

China's July inflation eases to 6.3 percent

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/consumer- ... aYnZ9v24cA

By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 56 minutes ago

BEIJING - China's politically volatile inflation eased in July as sharp rises in food costs slowed, according to data reported Tuesday, giving Beijing more leeway to try to boost slowing economic growth.
ADVERTISEMENT

Consumer prices rose 6.3 percent in July over the same month last year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. That was driven by a 14.4 percent rise in foods costs, though that rate was down from 17.3 percent in June. The overall rate, the lowest in nearly a year, was a decline from June's 7.1 percent.

Chinese leaders have been trying for a year to rein in sharp rises in living costs with price controls and efforts to raise farm output. They worry that continued high price hikes could erode living standards, fueling public frustration and possible protests.

But Beijing's focus on inflation has been complicated by concerns about a slowdown in China's rapid economic expansion and weaker export growth. Communist Party leaders issued an economic plan last month that switched the government's focus from fighting inflation to the dual mission of ensuring fast, stable growth while also cooling price rises.

"Falling inflation suggests that the government's macro-tightening measures have been effective, which will both reduce investor fears of the possibility of policy missteps and increase the chances of a shift to targeted pro-growth policies," Jing Ulrich, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s chairwoman for China equities, said in a report to clients.

China's inflation and how the government responds could have an impact on global markets as well as Chinese consumers. A decision by authorities to shift emphasis to economic growth could boost Chinese imports, narrowing the swollen trade surplus.

The economy grew by 10.1 percent in the three months ended June 30 — the strongest rate for any major economy, but a decline from the previous quarter's 10.6 percent.

Economists expect Beijing to try to help individual industries with tax rebates or other targeted measures, rather than an across-the-board easing of credit controls and investment curbs that have been steadily ratcheted up over the past two years.

Economists expect consumer inflation to ease further, though the full-year rate should overshoot the government's target of 4.8 percent, coming in at up to 6.5 percent.

July's food price rise included a 30.8 percent increase for cooking oil, 16 percent for meat and 18 percent for fish, the statistics bureau said. It said July figures brought consumer inflation to 7.7 percent for the first seven months of the year, compared with the same period last year.

Analysts are watching inflation figures closely for signs of how Beijing will move on possible interest rate changes or its handling of China's currency, the yuan.

A stronger yuan would help to fight inflation by making Chinese goods more expensive abroad and slowing the flood of export revenues pouring into the economy. But the central bank has slowed the yuan's rise against the U.S. dollar in recent months, possibly to help struggling exporters.

On Monday, the government reported that wholesale inflation rose to a 12-year high of 10 percent in July, driven by sharp increases in the cost of energy and raw materials. That is expected to add to pressure on Chinese companies to pass on higher prices to consumers while also squeezing thin profit margins.

"The focus will now switch to the high cost of raw materials, where prices remain elevated despite coming off recent peaks," Ulrich said.

___

[Katare]

Just to clarify some of the data for comparision purposes. The headline inflation number in India is Wholesale or WPI which is at 12% in india and 10% in China.

CPI in India and China are around ~ 6%.

WPI is what matters to businesses and economy and CPI is what matters to citizens and politicians. Since WPI in China at 10% is pretty high (for Chinese standards) and still increasing, money tightning efforts of central banks will continue. In India it seems WPI has stabilized at 12% but I do not think RBI would be relaxing its frictional money supply approach but upside for interest rate hikes is limited.

[wrdos]

The Beijing Olympics
Five-ring circus

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/dis ... d=11921189

Aug 14th 2008
From The Economist print edition
News from the Forbidden Citius, Altius, Fortius

Producers of the dazzling Olympic opening ceremony on August 8th acknowledged that an adorable nine-year-old girl in a red dress was miming her solo rather than singing, and that the actual singer had been removed at the last minute because of her round face and uneven teeth. They also revealed that the impressive 29-step progression of firework “footprints” that on television appeared to lead across Beijing to the stadium was a computer-generated graphic.

Population control

Despite ugly scenes in July when thousands of people queued for hours, pushed, shoved and tussled with police to buy the last available Olympic tickets, many seats were vacant during the first week of competition. When Michael Phelps, an American swimmer, won his third gold medal of the games on August 12th, hundreds of seats at the pool were empty. That day nearly half the venues were less than four-fifths full, and some two-thirds empty. The International Olympic Committee and the games’ sponsors have asked Beijing to increase attendance by easing access to the tightly secured Olympic complex.

1962 avenged at last

India saw further proof of its rise as a global power when it won its first individual gold medal in Olympic history. Abhinav Bindra took the men’s 10-metre air-rifle event. Bindra’s victory came at the expense of Zhu Qinan of China, who took silver, a rare win for the world’s second-most populous nation over its first. As a reward, Mr Bindra was accorded another rare honour: a lifetime rail pass. Air-conditioned, of course.

Weather? Or not?

Worried it might rain on the opening parade, games organisers launched 1,110 cloud-seeding missiles in the hours leading up to the big event. Fired from 21 sites surrounding the city, the missiles carried silver iodide to make it rain in those areas rather than over the ceremony in the Bird’s Nest stadium.

Is it in the 1,500 metres?

“That’s the decision made by the relevant authorities. I don’t think it’s going to be a big threat.” Wang Wei, of the Beijing Olympic Committee, on why an armoured personnel carrier was stationed outside the main Olympic media centre.

[Avinash R]

Chinese hurdler's pullout a blow to advertisers

By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 34 minutes ago

BEIJING - Hurdler Liu Xiang's surprise departure from the Olympics was a blow to advertisers including Coca Cola and Nike that made the 25-year-old hurdler a star of campaigns aimed at Chinese consumers.

"His marketing value has been seriously diminished," said Chris Renner, president for China of sports marketing agency Helios Partners.

Liu has become one of China's most familiar faces, appearing in advertisements on TV, billboards and public buses for Coca Cola Co., Nike Inc., Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group and telephone company China Mobile Ltd.

Liu's endorsements have made him one of China's richest athletes, bringing in 163 million yuan ($23.8 million) last year, according to Forbes magazine. He ranked No. 2 on its list of China's most powerful celebrities, behind basketball star Yao Ming.

Nike plans to continue showing television commercials in China featuring Liu, said a company spokesman, Derek Kent. Asked whether Liu's advertising value had declined, Kent said, "He's an icon here in China. He has a very bright future."

On Monday, state TV broadcast a Nike commercial featuring Liu just hours after he pulled out of the first heat of the 110-meter hurdles due to leg pain. It showed Liu getting into starting blocks and the company slogan, "Just Do It."

With Liu out, Nike's advertising loses some of its punch, Renner said.

"If anybody takes a hit from it, it's certainly Nike, simply because they're all about performance, whereas the others are about brand image," he said. "Nike's all about, you don't win silver, you lose gold. With that attitude, it's much tougher for them, because he was certainly the cornerstone for their program."

Advertisers that want to expand in China's fast-growing consumer market have spent heavily to build high-profile campaigns around its Olympians. Others include Yao, who is playing for the Chinese basketball team, and divers Guo Jingjing and Wu Minxia.

But Liu was seen as the most valuable. Softspoken and boyish, the 25-year-old was a national hero after winning the 110-meter hurdles at Athens in 2004. While even with Yao the Chinese basketball team was thought unlikely to take gold, Liu was expected to dominate the Beijing games by repeating his triumph.

Coach Sun Haiping, who broke down in tears at a news conference as he discussed Liu's withdrawal, suggested the public exposure added to pressure on him.

"Whenever he goes out, he sees his own picture in the streets," Sun said.

A Coca Cola spokeswoman, Christina Lau, said the company will continue to use Liu in marketing. But she declined to give details of advertising plans or say whether Liu's role would change after his injury.

Liu was one of a "Chinese dream team" of Olympians who appeared on a special edition Coca Cola can issued in China last year.

"We will continue to count on Liu Xiang as an ambassador for our company and our brand because his achievements both on and off the field will continue to inspire fans and consumers throughout China," Lau said.

Liu was the only Chinese competitor among 11 athletes sponsored by Lenovo in its "Olympic Champions" program.
Lenovo spokesman Bob Page said Liu's photo would appear on brochures and posters released through the autumn but he said he had no information on what would happen after that.

Nike has run full-page newspaper ads in China showing athletes who won gold medals this week, including the diver Wu.

On Tuesday, Nike published the same newspaper ad showing Liu — the first non-medalist of the series. The company said it would appear in at least seven newspapers in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities, as well as on Web sites.

"It's about picking yourself up when you're down and coming back stronger," Kent said.

[Avinash R]

China sells 3 billion US treasury bonds, may explore other markets

Beijing, Aug 19 (PTI) China, the second largest holder of US treasuries after Japan, has sold three billion dollars of treasury bonds, signalling a plan to look for greener pastures elsewhere, the state media reported.

As of June, China held USD 503.8 billion worth of US treasury bonds, 3 billion less than in May, the reports quoted a statement issued by the US Department of the Treasury.

This is the first time since February that China has cut its holding in the US government finance department, it said.

In the latest Treasury International Capital (TIC) report, China remains the second largest holder of US treasuries by June after Japan, whose holding increased by USD 5.1 billion in June to 583.8 billion.

The UK, the third largest holder, bought an additional USD 7.9 billion of bonds to reach 280.4 billion.

Although the TIC data showed China had cut US treasury holdings in June, there is a chance it may turn to other markets for the bonds such as Europe, said professor Ding Zhijie from the University of International Business and Economics.

Moreover, the large depreciation of the US dollar in June might dash investors confidence and lead to a slash of dollar-denominated assets in the foreign reserves of many countries, the state-run China Daily quoted Ding as saying.

Given the expectation of the weakening dollar, measures should be taken to prevent further deduction of dollar assets, Ding suggested. PTI

[Katare]

For large sums that China holds there is no other place to park them except in US treasuries. Anything else would cause enough torbulance that it would hurt both China and USA equally. Sorta like there is no alternative large enough market for chinese goods similarly there is no large enough alternative market for Chinese reserves.

They should focus on raising the life standars of common Chinese by consuming those large reserves. Anything else would them right next to Japan in next couple of decades, too old, flushed with cash but stagnating.

[paramu]

What is the purpose of this psy-ops?

The Beijing Olympics
...
1962 avenged at last

India saw further proof of its rise as a global power when it won its first individual gold medal in Olympic history. Abhinav Bindra took the men’s 10-metre air-rifle event. Bindra’s victory came at the expense of Zhu Qinan of China, who took silver, a rare win for the world’s second-most populous nation over its first. As a reward, Mr Bindra was accorded another rare honour: a lifetime rail pass. Air-conditioned, of course.

[SaiK]

Rank NOC Name Men Women Open/Mixed Total Rank by Total
G S B T G S B T G S B T G S B T
1 CHN - China 20 7 5 32 25 7 14 46 1 1 45 14 20 79 2
2 USA - United States 14 8 14 36 11 18 14 43 1 2 3 26 28 28 82 1
3 GBR - Great Britain 8 6 4 18 7 4 5 16 1 2 3 16 10 11 37 4
4 RUS - Russian Fed. 7 5 14 26 6 9 4 19 13 14 18 45 3
5 AUS - Australia 3 5 7 15 8 6 6 20 1 1 11 12 13 36 5

45 Golds, aganast 26 golds of USA.. makes the chinese, the king of olympics. need to congratualte them.. they are adding economy by securing these golds as well.

[Singha]

the latest threat to the panda. two 77 and 79 year old grandmas.
one year of re-education through labour for both!

timesonline.co.uk

August 21, 2008
Elderly Chinese women ordered into re-education for daring to protest
79-year-old Wu Dianyuan and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77

(Ng Han Guan/AP)

Jane Macartney in Beijing

Two elderly women who applied five times for permission to demonstrate in China’s Olympic protest parks against the demolition of their homes have been ordered to serve a year of re-education through labour, according to a human rights group.

It is the toughest penalty to be reported against any of those who followed up an announcement by the Government that it would allow protests in three Beijing parks during the Games. So far, police say that they have received 77 applications. None has been approved.

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, have been petitioning the Government since they were forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing in 2001 as part of a series of huge renovation projects across the city.

They applied five times between August 15 and August 18 to the Beijing city Public Security Bureau for permission to demonstrate in the newly designated protest parks.

Those who took advantage of the brief Beijing Spring of 1979 to call for democracy are serving indeterminate sentences in "re-education through labour centres"

The former neighbours wanted to protest against their evictions seven years ago. Their application was neither granted nor denied but on August 5 they were held for ten hours for questioning by police, the son of one of the women told Human Rights in China.

On August 17 they each received a document from the city authorities ordering them to serve one year of re-education through labour — an administrative punishment that does not require any judicial process — from July 30 this year to July 29, 2009, for “disturbing public order”. The two would be allowed to serve their term outside a camp but the notice restricts their movements and states that if other regulations are violated they could be moved to a camp.

Li Xuehui, the son of Mrs Wu, told the Associated Press: “Wang Xiuying is almost blind and crippled. What sort of re-education through labour can she serve? But they can also be taken away at any time.” The women remained at home but were under observation by a neighbourhood watch group, he said.

Another Beijing resident, Zhang Wei, who had been trying for two years to gain compensation after the demolition of her home to make way for a development south of Tiananmen Square, was another who saw the protest parks as an opportunity to express her views.

After she applied for a protest permit she was ordered in early August to serve 30 days in custody for “disturbing public order”. She will not be free until after the Olympics.

Sharon Hom, of Human Rights in China, said: “Punishing Wu and Wang after they applied for protest permits and actively petitioned the Government demonstrates that the official statements touting the new Olympics ‘protest zones’ . . . were no more than a show.”

[Singha]

- land taken at will
- punishments with no judicial process or appeals
- neighbourhood watch groups
- kids encouraged to snitch on their siblings and parents maybe
- religion and organizations of any sort discouraged
- parents punished for asking how their kids schools collapsed

its right out of "Equilibrium" ... even the mao jackets are similar.
so are the stone faced security guards and special "fist" police
units - the gramaton clerics.

I am most glad not to be born there thank you dear Lord.

[wrdos]

China ousts US as top Japanese market

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/938fdeb8-6fab ... fd18c.html

By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo

Published: August 21 2008 19:11 | Last updated: August 21 2008 23:39

Mainland China overtook the US as Japan’s largest export destination for the first time last month, underlining the growing importance of Chinese demand to the world’s second-largest economy.

Exports to China, which have risen in each of the last 38 months, expanded by 16.8 per cent in July to their highest level since the Japanese government began compiling statistics in 1950.

At the same time, exports to the US declined by 11.5 per cent, marking the 11th consecutive monthly drop. Overall, shipments rose by 8.1 per cent by value, after falling in June for the first time since 2003, the finance ministry said.

Japanese companies such as Toyota, Honda Motor and Komatsu have recently identified an increasing reliance on China and other emerging markets for sales growth as the US economy slows. Honda last month announced double-digit increases in the volume of China sales in the three months to June, compared with a 5 per cent fall in the US.

However, the export growth will provide little cheer to policymakers, faced with rising input costs and an uncertain outlook in the economies of Japan’s main trading partners.

Japan’s July trade surplus suffered an unexpectedly large decline of 86.6 per cent to Y91.1bn ($829m, €562m, £445m) because of an 18.2 per cent surge in imports by value. The market forecast was for a trade surplus in July of more than Y200bn.

The fall, the fifth monthly decline in a row, reflected a near 70 per cent rise in the price of crude oil and a more than doubling of the price of coal.

Many analysts expect exports to fall again in coming months as the slowdown in western economies begins to have an impact on demand in emerging economies such as China.

“It is difficult to believe that Japan will be able to maintain the kind of growth in exports that it saw in July. I think there is a higher chance of a slowdown,” said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo.

Given China’s growing dependence on the EU as an export destination, Chinese growth was likely to decelerate, leading in turn to a slowdown in Japanese exports to China, Mr Morita said.

Royal Bank of Scotland said demand from Asia would probably continue to support overall export levels, but “we no longer expect it to offset completely the negative shock from the US”.

Commentators also said the strength of exports in July appeared to have been a temporary reaction to a relatively sharp decline in the April to June quarter.

The Bank of Japan pointed to the weakening prospects for exports earlier this week when it lowered its assessment of economic prospects for the second month in a row. It voted to keep interest rates at 0.5 per cent, the lowest level among developed economies.

The Japanese government is expected to unveil an economic stimulus package shortly, possibly as early as Friday.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[wrdos]

Olympics Are Ratings Bonanza for Chinese TV
Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/sport ... ref=slogin

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Residents crowded around a television on a Beijing street to watch the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics. At least 840 million Chinese caught at least some of the ceremony on China Central Television.

The broadcast was the first in a series of Olympic bonanzas for China Central Television, or CCTV, one of the chief propaganda arms of the Chinese state and perhaps also a new global media titan.

Analysts say global corporations seeking a foothold in this potentially huge market have begun to notice CCTV, whose audience is vastly larger than every major television network in the United States and Europe combined.

So, while NBC is celebrating average prime-time audiences of 29 million viewers in the United States, CCTV is smashing ratings records everywhere. The opening ceremony had an average audience of nearly half a billion people, and 842 million watched at least a minute of it, according to CSM Media Research, based here.

More than 80 percent of Chinese households have tuned in to some broadcasts, guaranteeing the $2 billion company a huge pot of advertising gold.

CCTV paid about $17 million for exclusive broadcast rights in China but could reap $394 million in Olympic advertising revenue, according to Group M, a media company that tracks television advertising revenue here. By comparison, NBC paid $894 million for broadcast rights in the United States and is expected to garner more than $1 billion in ad revenue.

“They’re a TV powerhouse in China,” said Richard Ji, an Internet and media analyst at Morgan Stanley, referring to CCTV. And they are likely only to grow more powerful. “Global brands want to tap into China’s consumer market. So they’ll be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Olympics,” Mr. Ji said.

The company is also a model of how the Communist Party in China manages to keep state-owned companies profitable as it moves the nation toward a market economy with less government influence.

That the biggest corporations in the world are bankrolling that evolution — as well as party propaganda — is one of the ironies of modern China.

CCTV’s 18 channels reach more than a billion viewers. Its advertisers include Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Adidas. It has cut television and marketing deals with the National Basketball Association and IMG Worldwide, the global sports and entertainment giant.

Perhaps the most striking symbol of its ascent is its new corporate headquarters here, a gleaming $700 million architectural landmark designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

CCTV is this country’s only national television network and is under the direct control of the powerful State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. CCTV journalists travel with the president and politburo leaders; they disseminate government news bulletins and often get approval for “exclusive” interviews with important public figures.

For instance, CCTV was the only media outlet to interview Liu Xiang, the Chinese track star who pulled out of the Games on Monday with a foot injury, guaranteeing he would not face any embarrassing questions.

Surveys by Nielsen Media Research indicate that up to 96 percent of Chinese households with television sets have tuned into some portion of the Olympics, which can be seen on seven different channels operated by CCTV.

The viewership numbers are staggering. A women’s weightlifting contest on Aug. 9 drew 155 million television viewers and the men’s basketball game between the United States and China attracted 170 million. The women’s table tennis gold medal match — won by China — drew 330 million viewers last Sunday, according to CSM, more viewers than the entire population of the United States.

CCTV says that in the first 10 days of the Games, more than 100 million people in China watched streaming video on its Web site, CCTV.com.

“That was part of the idea of having the Games in China — opening new markets for the Olympics,” said Ben Seeley, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, which awarded the Games to Beijing in 2001.

Perhaps that desire helped CCTV get a good deal when negotiating broadcast rights in the 1990s — or at least an enviable position. The company acquired the rights through the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, a consortium of dozens of Asian nations (not including Japan or South Korea). But CCTV is also an instrument of the state, a network of television channels whose news and programming is censored and packaged largely to show the country’s happy, harmonious moments, to inspire pride in the people and, if necessary, unify them against a common enemy.

The mission this summer, however, is simpler: cheer on Team China as it racks up a record haul of gold medals at home.

“All of our planning has been geared toward the scale of our coverage of the Olympics,” said Jiang Heping, executive director of CCTV 5, called the Olympics channel.

For CCTV 5 and its sister channels, that has meant running documentaries about the Olympics, profiles of Chinese and foreign athletes and even primers on sports like fencing and sailing. Advertising rates on CCTV channels have jumped 200 to 400 percent during the Olympics, according to R3, a media research company with offices in Beijing.

By the time the Olympics end on Sunday, CCTV says it will have broadcast 2,900 hours; the NBC networks are planning to broadcast about 1,400 hours of coverage in the United States.

“We’ve got programs looking at high-tech shoes and swimsuits, telling the stories of Olympians, past and present. And a show called ‘Rivals,’ which looks at who’s the No. 1 American, No. 1 Kenyan. We want to cover the games from an international perspective, not just a Chinese perspective,” Mr. Jiang said.

Because of its reach and its monopoly, the network plays a huge role in shaping public opinion. After the huge earthquake in Sichuan Province last spring, CCTV reporters were among the first allowed to report from the scene, beaming images of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao consoling victims and reporting tales of heroic rescue efforts. Images of death and anger over shoddy school construction were censored from news coverage. But government censorship does not seem to hurt the company’s bottom line.

The network’s annual auctions of its prime advertising slots are fiercely competitive, with rates rising 20 to 30 percent each year. This year, CCTV revenue is expected to top $2.5 billion, from about $1 billion in 2002 — a huge sum in a country where the average worker earns less than $200 a month.

“Their revenues look rather small for a company that is a fusion of ABC, CBS and NBC,” Mr. Ji at Morgan Stanley said. “It can get a lot bigger.”

That may be one reason Cleveland-based IMG, which owns and manages sports and entertainment events like Wimbledon and represents athletes like Tiger Woods, is teaming with CCTV to tap China’s growing love affair with professional sports.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a Citigroup adviser and partner in the IMG deal with CCTV, said IMG could help commercialize and market China’s huge sports industry.

“Our joint venture would create events and CCTV would broadcast the events,” he said. “It is arguably the world’s largest broadcaster in terms of eyeballs and potential for growth. And they dominate televised sports in China.”

Sports are only part of the story. CCTV reaches 30 million Chinese living overseas. It has broadcasts in English, Spanish and French.

And while American television networks are closing foreign bureaus, CCTV is expanding its global newsgathering presence.

Today, the network can cash in on foreign brands that want to get into China, because foreign broadcasters are shut out. But one day, it could do a lot more, like bring the world to China and China to the world.

[Avinash R]

Three killed in southwest China earthquake

Friday, 22 August , 2008, 11:56

Kunming (China): At least three people have been killed and 100 injured when a 5.9-magnitude earthquake hit a border region in southwest China.

Twenty people were seriously injured in the quake that struck at 8.24 pm. On Thursday in Yingjiang county, said Gu Zhongshou, a deputy with the Publicity Department of Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

At least 120,000 people had been forced to evacuate their homes, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Power and telecommunications networks were cut in the main districts of the county.

The epicentre was at 24.9 degrees north and 97.8 degrees east.

Earlier, a tremor measuring five on the Richter scale struck the county at 5.35 am on Wednesday.

More than 110 aftershocks of up to 3.6 on the Richter scale had been recorded till 6 pm on Thursday.

Livelihoods of more than 14,000 people were affected and 3,400 others were evacuated after Wednesday's tremor. No one had been reported injured.

The tremor destroyed six homes and damaged 4,056 other structures in the county. Most of the damaged structures were in a dangerous state.

The quake also damaged 17 school buildings, 28 dormitories and some communication facilities.

The Civil Affairs Ministry sent a special working group to assess the situation and offer assistance in the quake zone.

At least 70,000 people were killed on May 12 in a devastating earthquake in the neighbouring province of Sichuan.

[svinayak]

POLIticS
Whither China?
Three scenarios.
by Terence Halliday

Like a giddy debutante ball, the Olympic Games mark China's long-delayed coming out into Global Society. At once a moment of international recognition where China can display its modernity and maturity, 2008 will be the symbolic event when the humiliations of 19th-century Western tutelage, the slaughter of millions by the Japanese, the Cold War isolation of China from the non-Communist world, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the bloody pavements of Tiananmen Square, will all be forgotten in a blaze of national glory and international acclamation. The world's eyes will be on Beijing, and neither China nor the rest of the world will be the same again. Or that ostensibly is the hope of China's leaders and the aspiration of its people.

In the aftermath of the catastrophic Sichuan earthquake, there will be considerable international sympathy for China, perhaps defusing some of the criticism that built in the months leading up to the games, as the Olympic torchbearers ran gauntlets of foreign protesters. But which China will follow the Beijing Olympics? The hot China of spectacular economic growth or virulent anti-Japanese demonstrations? The warm China of pandas and cultural exchanges? The cool China of military build-up and hard-headed Communist Party rule? Or the cold China of Tiananmen Square and support for the genocidal Sudanese government?

Answers to these questions diverge sharply. Three significant books display strikingly incompatible interpretations of China's present and prognostications about its future. From their respective angles of orientations, these China-hands position themselves along a rough continuum from bright optimism to dark skepticism. In so doing, they effectively caution that this vast and exceedingly diverse country belies any naïve characterizations or glossy snapshots. They also exemplify how easy it is to allow faulty methodology and incomplete theory to produce flawed historical extrapolations.

Certain facts about China are unassailable. Over thirty years China has sustained annual economic growth of around 8-10 percent, lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, become the world's industrial factory, enacted hundreds of new laws, moved from a command economy to a predominantly private market, graduated from amongst the poorest countries in the world to a mid-level developing country, risen from a country of bicycles to only the third nation in history to put a man in space. China now pronounces itself committed to the rule of law and to a "peaceful rise." The China of Mao jackets and Little Red Books is a distant memory, displaced by ubiquitous Western fashions and technology of every kind. By any standard these are extraordinary accomplishments.

For Randall Peerenboom, an authority on China's legal system, the straight line of rising economic growth will likely continue at a gallop towards full modernization. China's rise offers a paradigm of development, emulating the East Asia Model (EAM) that he finds in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. "I argue," Peerenboom says, "that China is now following the same general path—modified slightly in light of the realities of the 21st century—of other East Asian countries that have achieved sustained economic growth, established rule of law, and usually developed constitutional democracies, albeit not necessarily liberal democracies."

Peerenboom celebrates each of China's "four main pillars of modernity," as he styles them. The economic pillar surely merits applause. Few countries have managed to compress so much growth in a scant three decades. To achieve this feat, China's leaders have prioritized economic growth and taken a pragmatic rather than ideological path to reforms. As a tradeoff, however, they have postponed democracy, settled for a "thin" rule of law, delayed constraining constitutionalism, and left to the future possible civil and political rights. This is the EAM, says Peerenboom, that distinguishes the Asian Tigers from the relative sluggards: Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, and India.

He endeavors to set the story straight on the second pillar—human rights. China, he avers, has done extremely well on social and economic rights. On the UN Human Development Index China progresses well. More than 150 million have been lifted from poverty in ten years. Adult literacy is up. Diet is improved. Infant mortality is down. Life expectancy has lengthened. Women's rights are at a similar level to other nations at a similar income level, though serious problems remain. Most rights for its fifty-five ethnic groups (about 8-9 percent of the population) are reasonably protected. Accusations of cultural genocide in Tibet are overstated.

Civil and political rights are another matter. On "physical integrity rights," Peerenboom disputes China's low ranking on Amnesty International's Political Terror Scale, a rank signifying that "murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life." China's critics, he says, seize unfairly on dramatic stories about torture of Falun Gong adherents or police brutality. He accepts government statistics on rates of police torture and asserts there are few "extra-judicial killings," though he does acknowledge that China is ranked in the bottom 10 percent of Asian countries on civil and political rights and deservedly so.

On political rights—freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of assembly—the government takes a harder line. Here social stability is its touchstone. The Communist Party will brook no rivals. That includes religion, because of a "long history of religious movements toppling dynasties in the past." The Propaganda Department and State Security Ministry control tightly discussion of politically sensitive topics. Domestic debate and overseas news daren't touch Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong, attacks on the Party, Taiwan, criticism of top leaders, or loose talk about democracy. Yet, says Peerenboom, while not defensible, such stifling of freedom is understandable. China has chosen "economics first," not "freedom first." If it follows the EAM trajectory, freedom will come. In any event, he protests, China is subject to a double standard on rights, unfairly criticized when other nations get handled with kid gloves.

On the third pillar of modernity, the legal system, Peerenboom is an eminent specialist and, perhaps not coincidentally, his optimism is tempered. China has come a tremendous distance since the Cultural Revolution as it pushes toward a "socialist rule of law state." But despite clear advances in the prominence, efficiency, and fairness of the legal system, "the assumption that China is moving toward a liberal democratic conception of the rule of law is unfounded," at least in the short term. Criminal law reforms, which are most salient to human rights, have largely failed. China has taken enormous strides to implant a commercial law regime. But progress is slowing as "reform fatigue" sets in with diminishing returns. A competent, strong, independent judiciary is a distant dream, and without decisive movement towards a "thick" rule of law the government's own goals won't be realized, let alone those of western optimists.

And democracy, the fourth pillar? Decidedly downbeat, Peerenboom says democracy in Asia disappoints. Indeed, progress toward democracy for "Third Wave" countries worldwide with low levels of wealth has been "stunningly disappointing." China's leaders have essentially postponed it until later—when the "country is richer and more stable." Given that "most Chinese citizens are happy with their lives, optimistic about the future, and relatively satisfied with the government as a whole," he sides with the decision of China's leaders "to put democracy on the back burner."

This rose-hued portrait of an inexorable march to prosperity and freedom would have us sit back, defer to the wisdom of China's leaders and the supposed choice of its people, and allow events to take their course. If all goes well China will be a South Korean success story—a rich, stable, democratic, open society—in a few decades. It might even become, as the book's subtitle provocatively suggests, "a model for the rest."

This is not the China that Susan Shirk observes. A distinguished China scholar and former Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for China in the Clinton Administration, Shirk has been closely following Chinese politics for three decades. As her 1971 photo with Zhou Enlai signifies, she has been meeting with and writing on China's leaders since she was a young political scientist. In China: Fragile Superpower, what we find is less a nascent superpower than a fragile society, teetering on the brink of domestic chaos that could lead to war. Yes, war with the United States.

Shirk doesn't dispute the remarkable economic progress made by China, nor its increasingly symbiotic economic relationship with the United States and its integral place in the world economy more generally. But, in contrast to Peerenboom, she argues that emerging economic problems augur badly for social and political stability. The social security of the "iron rice bowl has gone," and with it guaranteed health care, permanent employment, and assured retirement pensions. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs, especially in China's northeast rustbelt. China's west and hundreds of millions of its rural population are being left behind in a widening inequality that could trigger "massive unrest." Opportunistic speculators, often in complicity with local officials, seize land without adequate compensation. Corruption is rampant among officials. Environmental problems make domestic headlines daily.

Add these together—rising mass protests, ethnic unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang, labor unrest, rural unrest, student unrest over international incidents, social unrest—mix them with flammable nationalism, and the paranoia of China's authoritarian leaders intensifies. From this vantage point, a white-hot economy merely buys time for China's vulnerable leaders who can barely stay in the saddle of their writhing dragon.

China's Communist leaders, Shirk believes, have made a Faustian bargain. Above all, they strive to stay in power. Yet they are "haunted by the fear that their days in power are numbered." They struggle to maintain political control, fear their own citizens and exude "a deep sense of domestic insecurity." They look back to Tiananmen Square, where they came within a hairsbreadth of losing the country. They look across their long borders to Communist regimes that cracked and crumbled with stunning speed. They look outside their cloistered redoubt alongside the Forbidden City and see a population that has abandoned the very ideology that defines the Party.

To maintain their "brittle authoritarian regime" over a public that finds Communist ideology bankrupt, they have stoked the fires of nationalism. China's new ideology whips restive publics into support of its grey, "colorless, cautious" technocratic leaders by turning their emotions outside—to chest-thumping against real and supposed offenses to China's pride by the United States, Taiwan, and, above all, Japan. But this bargain—beating the nationalist drum and keeping the economy going in exchange for keeping the Party in power—may end up driving China into the very fate it should avoid, a war that will derail China's rise and plunge the country into a maelstrom.

Nationalism can explode in the hands of the Party leaders who wield it. Headlines grow ever more incendiary as papers competing for survival in the market find common cause with propagandists. Despite a massive apparatus of media censorship, however, the Propaganda Department and public security find that the internet and cell-phones in the hands of adept youngsters can spill protesters into the streets with little or no warning.

While the Party-state security apparatus spreads its tentacles widely to contain political speech, the media paradoxically tie the hands of cool-headed leaders. Oddly enough, the very media that Party censors tightly control are also a primary source of information for Party cadres and even top leaders. Without the varied outlets that democracies have to inform leaders of strong public sentiment, top Party officials gauge public opinion by relying too uncritically on their own censored publications.

How might the domestic fragility Shirk describes lead to war? China takes the line that in international relations it is "a responsible power." It seeks friendship with its neighbors in Asia. It conciliates potential rivals, like India. It prides itself as a team player in multilateral organizations. It joined six-party talks to help resolve North Korea's nuclear ambitions. It participates in UN peacekeeping operations. It has used its economic ties to make friends. Joining the WTO has brought it into the world's dominant trading regime. But while such gestures may have convinced most of the world that it is "a benign and peaceful rising power," a central contradiction remains in its foreign policy. Can China resolve the contradiction between its public opinion and a constructive foreign policy?

To solidify its nationalist support, says Shirk, the Party has used the United States, Taiwan, and Japan as triggers to arouse passion. Japan's brutal occupation of eastern China during the 1930s and 1940s remains fresh. For many Chinese, Japan compounds its perfidy by refusing to acknowledge honestly the measure of its atrocities, from the Nanking Massacre to the approximately 10 million Chinese war dead. When Japan approved a new textbook in 2005 that played down its wartime culpability, 10,000 students demonstrated in Beijing, smashed Japanese storefronts, overturned Japanese cars, bombarded the Japanese embassy with bottles, stones, and eggs, and called for a boycott of Japanese goods. Possibly 100,000 demonstrators turned out in Shanghai and many more elsewhere. Each time Japan's leaders visit Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are interred, tensions re-ignite. Chinese popular sentiment, fanned by Party leaders, is inflamed by any slights to national "face," including competing claims to oil and gas fields in the East China Sea, and, not least, Japan's support of Taiwan.

It is this last flashpoint, this potential affront to China's national honor, that is most likely to lead to war. Said a senior People's Army officer to Shirk, "If the leaders stand by and do nothing while Taiwan declares independence, the Communist Party will fall." To Chinese media and the publics they inform, Taiwan's leaders seem intent on provoking China to an armed response. In the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the United States gave a visa to Taiwan's president to attend a ceremony at his alma mater, Cornell University. The incident escalated when China fired missiles in the direction of Taiwan and the United States responded by sending in two battle fleets. Periodically since the late 1990s, pro-independence leaders in Taiwan have issued statements that engender heated Chinese reactions. Shirk believes China's current leaders are too weak to tone down shrill reactions and engage in meaningful negotiations to produce a long-term solution. In the meantime, Taiwan could precipitate an armed response from China that would pull in Japan and the United States.

The Chinese public, Shirk contends, is "highly mistrustful of the U.S. government," while top leaders believe that the United States wants to slow China's aspirations to become a world power. Periodic incidents reinforce this outlook. On top of the spy-plane confrontation in 2001 and the bombing of the Belgrade Embassy, the Chinese point to U.S. criticism of China's human rights record, not to mention steady U.S. support for Taiwan and, possibly, the re-armament of Japan. The invasion of Iraq demonstrated how far the United States will go to project its power.

Here again Shirk sees a leadership hard-pressed to pursue China's long-term interests. While top leaders have worked at improving Sino-American relations, and fully recognize that a peaceful rise—and their own power—depends upon U.S. cooperation and comity, they confront a fractious public which demands they stand up to the U.S. Their anti-American Propaganda Department is not entirely under top leaders' control. Their crisis-management machinery works too slowly for defusing of explosive incidents.

Not least, says Shirk, ultimately the Party relies on the People's Liberation Army to keep it in power, as Tiananmen bloodily revealed. Leaders who lack the gravitas of Mao or Deng Xiaoping have bought loyalty by spending heavily on military modernization. The military is projecting its naval power farther and farther from China's coasts; its rockets can destroy satellites in space; its missiles become ever more accurate and farther reaching. A stronger military tolerates slights less willingly. On a future hot-button issue, hard-line military leaders may demand action, not diplomacy. Thus Shirk confronts us with her worst-case scenario: "A future crisis with the U.S., especially one involving Taiwan or Japan, could arouse the public's ire to the degree that China's leaders might believe that the regime would fall unless they respond militarily to the insult to national honor."

For James Mann, former Beijing Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times, neither Peerenboom's relentless optimism nor Shirk's sober realism hits the right note. Mann tilts his lance toward The China Fantasy, the predilection of U.S. policymakers and opinion-leaders to engage in massive collusion with China's Party leaders to pretend all is well on the China front, both domestic and international. Their "Soothing Scenario," as he styles it, insists that China is heading in the right direction. The economy booms. People are getting richer. Eventually a big middle class will demand more political voice. Authoritarianism sooner or later will yield to liberal democracy. In short, Peerenboom's East Asia Model.

American business leaders and the foreign policy establishment buy into this sort of pollyannaish thinking because it suits their interests. Corporate CEOs can concentrate on profits while blithely assuming that democracy will follow. China experts get bought as expensive private consultants to tell politicians what they want to hear. And China élites in the United States insist that "the good guys in America and the good guys in China" have to team up and not rock the boat.

To rock the boat would be to tell the truth, Mann says, and the truth is ugly. China is a repressive state run by the Party (7-8 percent of the population) for its narrow interests. He concurs with Shirk that the Party will do anything to stay in power—mow down weaponless protesters with tanks, spirit away tens of thousands of political prisoners to remote camps, use torture and executions to silence dissidents. One way or another, political dissent is ruthlessly silenced. A peaceful demonstration, such as Falun Gong's brilliant organizational feat of ringing the entire leadership compound of China's leaders, was met with mass deportations, incarceration without legal redress, torture, and death. China's former Premier, Zhao Ziyang, was held under house arrest for fifteen years—from 1989 until his death—for being on the right side of Tiananmen. The United States, Mann charges, legitimates Chinese anti-terrorist programs that lock up Tibetan and Uighur activists.

Of course, China's leaders skillfully disguise their repression. Except for bank notes and the huge portrait of Mao at the entrance to the Forbidden City, visitors to Beijing would be hard-pressed to know that China is a one-party authoritarian state. Tourists and even business people do not see online bulletin boards shut down whenever their exchanges became too wide-ranging and thereby too appealing; they know nothing of arbitrary detention of unknown numbers in labor camps; they cannot observe lawyers who are intimidated and occasionally imprisoned if they defend their clients too vigorously; they are scarcely aware of surveillance cameras flowering in public meeting sites all over the country—a fitting symbol for a political system that fears its own people and stands ready to crush swiftly any seeds of dissent.

Champions of the "Soothing Scenario" explain all this away, says Mann. Jailing of dissidents is ignored. New headlines are treated as old news. China's leaders are excused for taking two steps forward and one step back, or by suggestions that leaders miscalculated. If evidence of China's authoritarianism is repressed, positive developments are over-hyped. Village "elections" become harbingers of state-wide democracy. Rule of law in business, to the extent it exists, gets generalized to basic freedoms. China's lapses are compared to those of India or, even more convincingly, of the United States. If critics talk of repression, they are "China Bashers," "anti-Chinese," tainted with a "Cold War mentality." They are "troublemakers" who are "ideological" and "provocative."

In Mann's view, purveyors of the "Soothing Scenario" subscribe to the "Starbucks Fallacy": more middle-class consumers will eventually lead to more political choice. In fact, China's population, it is said, is pretty happy. "People in China don't care about politics," they just care about "making money."

In response, Mann doesn't fall back on a fragility analysis, à la Shirk. He acknowledges that there is an "Upheaval Scenario" in which disaster looms through economic downturns and political disintegration in response to inequality, corruption, rural protests, land seizures, and ethnic struggles. But he cautions that China is a big and surprisingly resilient country that can bounce back under extreme domestic and international pressures.

A more plausible path, he proposes, is "The Third Scenario." The current economic trajectory is maintained. The middle class thrives and is contented. Rather than mobilizing against Party dominance, it accepts ongoing repression as a tradeoff. So long as material benefits improve, Party leadership will be accepted. No political opposition, no freedom of the press, no religious freedom, no elections beyond the local level, no substantive rule of law but a persistence of repression, a tightening of the security noose, and a non-democratic recasting of "democracy with Chinese characteristics."

It is sobering for foreigners to be reminded by Shirk and Mann that all is not as it seems. Tourist traffic to five-star hotels, the Great Wall, Xian's terracotta soldiers, Tibet's monasteries, the Three Gorges, Hangzhou's lovely West Lake, and Shanghai's bustling cosmopolitanism will never see the China described by Mann and Shirk. Since westerners are not well trained to recognize state-directed propaganda, and face formidable language and cultural barriers, too often they fail to observe the social unrest, stirrings of discontent, poverty, inequality, anger at official corruption, and persecution of minority races and religions that have been papered over. Mann properly advises us to sharpen our critical faculties, to be open to the diversity of opinions on China, even by specialists.

But specialists themselves are not immune from methodological lapses that undermine their premises and evidence for China's alternative futures. Peerenboom, for instance, consistently and properly urges readers to appraise China not only by some absolute standard or by those of advanced or modern countries but by its peers. Yet how those peers are selected substantially determines what conclusions result. It is conventional to compare China to Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore, all countries that experienced extraordinary economic development over fifty years. Except for Singapore, their economic growth led to increasingly open societies with vigorous multi-party liberal politics. But Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are small and homogeneous compared to China, and they all benefited economically and politically from shelter under the U.S. security umbrella as close U.S. allies. Korea and Taiwan would never have liberalized politically without significant pressure from the United States, particularly on repressive military leaders in the 1980s, pressure that helped widen the democratic opening that sprang from domestic reformers. Moreover, none of these countries had the scope and complexity of the fragilities portrayed by Shirk. And as for a hope that China will become a 21st-century version of late 20th-century Singapore—rich but authoritarian—the differences in history, size, law, and territory are so great as to render any extrapolation very doubtful. If there is an East Asia Model, China may not share its fundamental attributes.

False historical comparisons can also bedevil China predictions. If the end of the Cultural Revolution constitutes the baseline for contemporary comparisons, then conveniently the worst chapters of China's modern history get excised from the narrative. But this is like talking about American race relations beginning in 1867, without slavery or the Civil War. China's Communist Party rule looks benign if we are able to forget that under the rule of the ccp, China's leaders managed to kill tens of millions of their own people—many more than the Japanese. By pitching a thesis based on China only after the Cultural Revolution, it is possible for Peerenboom to compare China favorably to India, a country with an exceedingly diverse population speaking more than a dozen languages where hundreds of millions are poor, but which has nonetheless maintained a robust democracy and open society for a half-century and avoided a Great Famine in the meantime.

In China studies as elsewhere it is too easy to settle for straight-line projection from some series of points aligned in the same direction. For instance, observers look back over a period of 20 or 30 years, discover a steady line of growth and development, and simply extend it into the future as if history brings no surprises. But one does not need to be a historian to recall the society-transforming shocks of the 1929 market crash, Pearl Harbor, the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, the Asian Financial Crisis, 9/11, or Tiananmen Square. Who expected them?

Shirk skillfully points to contingencies for China's future, to pressure points and faultlines in Chinese society and politics from which seismic shocks might abruptly alter the course of China's economy and position in the world. An international political incident could escalate out of control, shattering the fragile porcelain that is China's present creation. Or an economic shock—contamination of Chinese food, an international backlash against Chinese competition, an over-reaction to Chinese product safety—could precipitate a crash "that throws millions of workers out of their jobs or sends millions of depositors to withdraw their savings from the shaky banking system." The threat of such an event, Shirk warns, is the "greatest political risk" facing China's leaders.

Not only is history fraught with contingency, unexpected turns, and sudden jolts, but social and economic theories of democracy and markets cannot naively assume that one necessarily or inevitably accompanies the other. Mann does us the service of calling into question the widely held assumption that democracy in China is just over the horizon if we only wait long enough and don't interfere. As he rightly observes, another model altogether is possible—an economically developed country that is also politically repressive. Some recent empirical research on Latin America lends support to this argument. As countries get richer they don't necessarily get democratic. That research indicates that citizens tend to support the kind of regime that brought them material benefits. If the quality of life improved under an authoritarian regime, they are likely to continue to support it. China may get richer and use its wealth to clamp down on basic legal and political freedoms.

What then to do? From each diagnosis follows a prescription. Peerenboom's optimism leads to implicit counsel that China should be left alone to succeed on its own terms. In his defense, when Peerenboom speaks behind closed doors to China's senior officials, he takes a more contingent line. China's leaders should recognize, he says, that many countries stall somewhere along the upward climb to economic success. To break through requires hard and wise decisions, which include stronger rule of law. But his emphasis falls much more strongly on material than political values, on property rights than basic legal freedoms.

Shirk's counsel vividly illustrates Mann's complaint. After showing that China's domestic fragility could propel its weak leaders into dangerous military overreactions to an international incident, she might serve as an exemplar of Mann's "Soothing Scenario" on how to mitigate impending disaster. Like Peerenboom she urges U.S. leaders, whether politicians or monitors of human rights, to exercise restraint. The more noisome foreign pressures, the more muscle China's weak leaders will need to flex. Dramatizing human rights abuses merely raises the hackles of China's leaders and inflames their publics.

Mann will have none of this. The United States must care about democracy in China. American citizens cannot turn their backs on the fate of 1.3 billion fellow humans. Moreover, contra Peerenboom, an undemocratic political system is unstable because it provides no way to resolve high level disputes, a judgment likely shared by Shirk. And an undemocratic China clearly poses problems for the rest of the world. If China's rise manages to combine wealth with repression, this will become a perverse "model for the rest." Indeed, Mann warns, in such circumstances "China will serve as an exemplar for dictators, juntas, and other undemocratic governments throughout the world." The Burmas, Zimbabwes, and Sudans among nations will gain solace from a paradigm that combines wealth with secret police. They will also find an ideological compatriot to stand against pressures for human rights and democracy. Finally, Mann notes, a politically liberal regime in China would lower the threat of war.

It follows that we must not accept clichés of exotic China, or Panda China, or Olympics China. Compare, Mann says, the Rome Olympics of 1960, Tokyo in 1964, Seoul in 1988—all celebrations of countries that had emerged from authoritarianism—with the Berlin Olympics of 1936, which hoodwinked the credulous into believing that all was well in the Third Reich. All is not well in China, and U.S. leaders should not collude with China's Party hierarchy to pretend it is. Now is the time to forestall the installation of a permanent Chinese authoritarianism, not in those roseate decades ahead when it may be too late.

Although a mere coda, Mann's bottom-line deserves serious reflection. He calls for a vigorous domestic debate over what the United States should do about human rights and democracy in China. Such a debate might conclude, with Shirk, that direct public pressures on China's leaders harm democratic prospects. Or the debate might arrive at Peerenboom's position—that nothing can be done or should be done, since history will take care of itself. But the debate could conclude that the fate of China and its citizens requires action. Mann gives us few clues about what kind of action, but presumably prudence would lead in directions that would at least keep Shirk's cautions in mind.

Curiously, none of these authors has much to say about religion in either China or the United States, now or in the future. Since Peerenboom emphasizes property rights over human rights, it is not surprising that more is not said about basic freedoms. But Christians in house churches and even official churches across China would be startled to read "that freedom of religion exists side by side with state-endorsed atheism in China" and that "despite the official endorsement of atheism, China tolerates religious practice subject to concerns about social stability." So, too, would Buddhists, some of whose holiest sites are devoid of monks and guarded by uniformed soldiers. Peerenboom surely is correct that Christianity in China could be de-stabilizing, if by this he means that China's Christians will inexorably—some quietly, others more vocally—press for conditions under which their faith and witness can thrive, conditions that cannot exist alongside a one-Party state intolerant of competing ideologies. Shirk by contrast attributes none of China's fragility to religious restiveness, although she hints that rights-champions in the United States, some of whom are religious activists, might be among those whom China's leaders and publics find confrontational. Neither Christians in China nor their counterparts in the United States find their way into Mann's critique, though the former would be prime beneficiaries of the democratic China he advocates, while the latter could emerge as their international vanguard.

Friends of China rightly applaud its tremendous strides over the past twenty-five years, the achievements sympathetically documented by Peerenboom. Yet we do well to heed the cautionary voices of Mann and Shirk as well. The hand of friendship means little if China's people are abandoned to repression once the world's television cameras leave Beijing in August 2008. Then we will discover which of Beijing's Olympic predecessors Party leaders have chosen to follow.

Terence Halliday is Co-Director, Center on Law and Globalization, American Bar Foundation and University of Illinois College of Law. He writes on commercial law-making and the criminal justice system in China. He has consulted with the World Bank, OECD, and State Council Office on Restructuring the Economic System, PRC.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/004/8.30.html

[Vivek Sreenivasan]

Guys we need to be realistic with regards to China. They are a MASSIVE power. Their infrastructure is excellent and makes India's infrastructure look pathetic. In addition to this China has been very lucky. They have been given back Hong Kong. Which is a major financial center and also macau. If they get back Taiwan as well, they are going to be at the cutting edge of modern technology as well. In my opinion China is already a superpower. We need to deal with realities.

[Suraj]

Guys we need to be realistic with regards to China. They are a MASSIVE power. Their infrastructure is excellent and makes India's infrastructure look pathetic. In addition to this China has been very lucky. They have been given back Hong Kong. Which is a major financial center and also macau. If they get back Taiwan as well, they are going to be at the cutting edge of modern technology as well. In my opinion China is already a superpower. We need to deal with realities.

Who is being 'unrealistic' here, and how ? Specific names and examples please.

[Nayak]

Ahhh one more weak-minded SDRE throwing in his Towel/shalya/chopsticks.

Can you please add some more pearls of wisdoms along with the ?

[Singha]

a fresh set of khakis is available should it be needed.

[Raj]

Guys we need to be realistic with regards to China. They are a MASSIVE power. Their infrastructure is excellent and makes India's infrastructure look pathetic. In addition to this China has been very lucky. They have been given back Hong Kong. Which is a major financial center and also macau. If they get back Taiwan as well, they are going to be at the cutting edge of modern technology as well. In my opinion China is already a superpower. We need to deal with realities.

How do we deal with this new reality? Would 101 tonnes of Gold , 208 tonnes of Silver , 108 Elephants, 1008 Horses offering every year to China, enough?

[Nayak]

Dood is from bangalore, kerala. Dontcha gettit ?

Somebody had posted a link of b/w photos of the real face of China. The poverty shown was abysmal. They aint no phucking supel-powel. Lets admire the americans and their values of liberty, freedom and happiness. Last thing we need is to start imitating the genocidal chimps.

[Sanjay M]

China Beefs Up Indigenous Godson Processor for MultiCore

[Singha]

godson seems to be a unlicensed use of the MIPS instruction set. in true PRC fashion
they kinda forgot to tighten the boring legal stuff. can it be sold outside PRC without
attracting legal action from mips consortium?

here is another interesting nugget: a doctorate from a prestigious place like UT Austin
stoops to this level. you can well guess the total amorality of that society. these people
do not seem to have any moral compass at all. they will eat humans alive if thats what
it takes to get ahead.

China rocked by 'sandpaper' chip fraud

Respected professor accused of relabelling Motorola chips as his own invention
Simon Burns in Taipei, vnunet.com 15 May 2006


The revelation that a groundbreaking mobile phone chip is a fake has shocked China, where the home-grown 'invention' had become a source of considerable national pride.

Shanghai's prestigious Jiaotong University announced at the weekend that the Hanxin DSP (digital signal processing) chip had been faked by inventor Professor Chen Jin, who was also the dean of the university's School of Microelectronics.

Rumours of foul play have been swirling around the project for several months, and appear to have provided the impetus for the investigation of Professor Chen.

One anonymous online forum post that began circulating in China in January claimed that Professor Chen had created the original Hanxin chips simply by grinding away the top surface of some of Motorola's Freescale DSP chips with sandpaper and having them reprinted with the Hanxin logo.

The university did not confirm this version of events, but investigators told local media that the chip had used "foreign" technology.

They also said that, contrary to claims by the design team, Hanxin's performance in tasks like media encoding and fingerprint image matching had failed to meet targets.

Professor Chen, a 38 year-old who earned his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, has been lauded by the media and feted by China's political leaders during the past three years.

However, he has now been fired from his post and will have to repay millions of dollars in government funds invested in the project, reports say.

Angry comments on Chinese forums and blogs have called for everything from criminal charges to execution for the disgraced academic.

[pradeepe]

China Beefs Up Indigenous Godson Processor for MultiCore

You got to hand it to them, the way they go about it. Its a RISC implementation for the low end market and has an integrated memory controller. So designed for SoC type implementations. Seems to be pretty scalable and with good thermals. A couple of generations behind anything current, but I expect the dragon to keep grinding away usually trailing a lot of blood. If it needs to get into the current SW eco system, it needs x86 translation and that will be the tricky part. It will be patent minefield. But then INTC has exposed its soft underbelly by setting up a fab there, so the dragon will have a couple of daggers positioned just below it, if INTC acts too uppity. Sheer stupidity IMO.

[Singha]

afaik INTC first setup a assembly & test facility in Chengdu not a fab. I dont think US cos have
fabs there, only the taiwanese USMC and TSMC, maybe the eurobunnies like philips, infineon and local cos. then INTC demanded xyz from Yindu, did not get it and went off to setup in Vietnam
which is the new munna in that region that way Soko was once.

some of the stuff people demanded to setup semiconductor manufacturing in Yindia was a bit
absurd. like 5000 acres of land no doubt partially dedicated to lucrative apartments, hotels,
services apartments, villas and spas for the burra sahibs to relax in. someone called the emperor
naked and pointed out INTC Israel fab-x operates on 19 acres of land

[pradeepe]

GD, not an assembly&test facility, they are building a 65nm fab there. Finally got GOTUS nod to down grade to 65nm IIRC. I am sure Panda was clamoring for 45nm or 32nm. I dont know what stage its at yet now. If I remember the hallway discussions properly, it was to allow access to the market and internal distribution channels.

GoI as usual blew its chances. I am farily miffed at INTC as well.

Intel has 2 fabs in Israel iirc. Fab 18 is the older one. They added another one recently.

[Singha]

it was to allow access to the market and internal distribution channels.

thats the JV strategy they always use. puts in a place a well-trained local chipanda to
ingest and steal as much TOT as possible.

GOI under its 'lifesaver' clause to keep ITI afloat guarantees a certain share of BSNL
contracts for instance to ITI who promptly import it from ALca-Lu and make a living
turning out the assembled produce. Alca-Lu by virtue of its 'contacts' is guaranteed
this share. and ITI is not the huawei or zte for sure.

shambolic looseness in using our power!

[Avinash R]

Hong Kong bans mainland Chinese from giving birth

[chandrabhan]

This sounds so Eerie. This is very similar to Tesla's death ray. He conducted this experiment around WWII (by sending energy beams through antennae in the ionosphere and converged it on a small part of Siberia). landed up destroying the kilometers of vegetation or whatever.
The great humanitarian he was, destroyed the entire structure immediately realising the potentital of this weapon in the hands of wrong people. He invented it to stop wars and break rockets and projectiles in atmosphere. Unkil's fraud bureau of investigation(FBI) cleaned off all his papers from New york hotel room and returned almost nothing to serbia. This is dangerous in fact ominous

Weather warfare
Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, says Michel Chossudovsky

Date:22/05/2008
Author:Michel Chossudovsky

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.

During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’........


The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, http://www.haarp.alaska.edu, HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

But Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’. Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.

.....
BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research. The installation of 132 highfrequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.

The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.

Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate ‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change’. This mandate includes environmental warfare. ‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists.

‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Michel Chossudovsky is a Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and an editor at the Centre for Research on Globalization,

http://www.globalresearch.ca

[chandrabhan]

Sir,
I have been a regular visitor to china for some years, atleast 2-3 times an year. I have seen rapid developments ( in terms of infrastructure) in the country. Shanghai has changed beyond recognition in past 5 years and so has beijing. However, IMHO most of their infrastructure is non efficient and the returns are pathetic..... good for us.
These 6 lane highways and Levi train are good projects but it is an overkill. It is a simple Equation of ... = C+I+G wherein 'G' stands for government investment to shore up the economy on sluggish times. After that the multiplier effect takes over and the result is many times over of amount invested under 'G'. The big problem with china is that their internal consumption is just 37% of GDP( in case of India it is around 66%). They are more of an export economy but due to such large investment in infra projects they release too much liquidity and economy can not consume it, Overheats in a way. Not much resultant return on this capital. All this infrastructure in useless in a way as it just breeds inflation and huge NPA's for Chinese banks wherein lot of industries regularly close down. THEY SIMPLY CAN'T DUMP DOLLORS AS THEIR ASSETS WILL JSUT MELT DOWN.
During the current $ crisis US was helped by UK, Japan and Saudi by buying up currency to shore it and avert a crisis.

For large sums that China holds there is no other place to park them except in US treasuries. Anything else would cause enough torbulance that it would hurt both China and USA equally. Sorta like there is no alternative large enough market for chinese goods similarly there is no large enough alternative market for Chinese reserves.

They should focus on raising the life standars of common Chinese by consuming those large reserves. Anything else would them right next to Japan in next couple of decades, too old, flushed with cash but stagnating.