Articles about China

 

Also see:

http://eclecticisms.jimdo.com/mixed/china/

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

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Mon

24

Mar

2014

Relocating Farmers to City

From New York Times

BEIJING — China has announced a sweeping plan to manage the flow of rural residents into cities, promising to promote urbanization but also to solve some of the drastic side effects of this great uprooting.

 

The plan — the country’s first attempt at broadly coordinating one of the greatest migrations in history — foresees 100 million more people moving to China’s cities by 2020, while providing better access to schools and hospitals for 100 million former farmers already living in cities but currently denied many basic services. Underpinning these projections would be government spending to build roads, railways, hospitals, schools and housing.

New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

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Wed

18

Sep

2013

The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator

Battushig Myanganbayar and his sister outside their home in Mongolia.

 

From the New York Times http://

www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/the-boy-genius-of-ulan-bator.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

 

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Wed

19

Jun

2013

Jon Stewart and China

From  THE NEW YORKER  on JUNE 17, 2013

N.Y.U., CHINA, AND CHEN GUANGCHENG 

jon-stewart-china-580.png

 

Jon Stewart has decided, as he put it this week, that he might be working the wrong continent. In a segment called “Big Ratings in Giant China,” Stewart expounded on his recent discovery that he is racking up millions of hits, and thousands of favorable comments, from Chinese viewers, who see the show in scattered subtitled clips posted on Chinese sites.

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Sat

27

Apr

2013

Baoxing gets back to business, but quake fears linger

Shu Wei, his wife Yang Xiaoli and younger daughter mourn the family’s 5-year-old elderdaughter who was killed in last Saturday’s earthquake in Lushan county, Sichuan province.CUI MENG / CHINA DAILY

 

SEE MAP of SICHUAN

 

Article In China Daily

Updated: 2013-04-27 02:28

By Tang Yue and Yang Wanli

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Wed

17

Apr

2013

One of Three deaths in 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings

From CHINA DAILY   One Chinese dead in US marathon blasts

Updated: 2013-04-17 08:03

( Agencies/Xinhua)

 

An official at the consulate's press section, who was not authorized to give

his name, said thatone Chinese student was injured and another died in the

blast.

 

The official said a work group from the consulate was in Boston to investigate the situation andassist relatives of the victims.

 

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that relatives have

requested that thedeceased not be identified.

 

Zhou Danling, the Chinese student injured in the Boston Marathon blasts,

is out of danger.Zhou was injured in the stomach and was sent to a local

hospital.

 

She is now in stable condition. The Chinese Consulate General in New York

went into emergency mode after the blasts, sending staffers to Boston and getting casualty informationabout Chinese nationals

 

0 Comments

Mon

15

Apr

2013

HOW JON STEWART BLEW UP IN CHINA

Letter from China - Dispatches by Evan Osnos.

APRIL 12, 2013

HOW JON STEWART BLEW UP IN CHINA

POSTED BY 

To Original NEW YORKER Article

 

Jon Stewart has decided, as he put it this week, that he might be working the wrong continent. In a segment called “Big Ratings in Giant China,” Stewart expounded on his recent discovery that he is racking up millions of hits, and thousands of favorable comments, from Chinese viewers, who see the show in scattered subtitled clips posted on Chinese sites.

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Mon

25

Mar

2013

Pollution in China


New York Times

 

As Pollution Worsens in China, Solutions Succumb to Infighting

 

Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

Smog veiled the China Central Television Building in Beijing last week. Air pollution hit record levels in north China last month.

By EDWARD WONG
Published: March 21, 2013 17

 

BEIJING — China’s state leadership transition has taken place this month against an ominous backdrop. More than 16,000 dead pigshave been found floating in rivers that provide drinking water to Shanghai. A haze akin to volcanic fumes cloaked the capital, causing convulsive coughing and obscuring the portrait of Mao Zedong on the gate to the Forbidden City.So severe are China’s environmental woes, especially the noxious air, that top government officials have been forced to openly acknowledge them. Fu Ying, the spokeswoman for the National People’s Congress, said she checked for smog every morning after opening her curtains and kept at home face masks for her daughter and herself. Li Keqiang, the new prime minister, said the air pollution had made him “quite upset” and vowed to “show even greater resolve and make more vigorous efforts” to clean it up.

 

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Tue

12

Mar

2013

China vows to ease students' burden

From       China Daily.com.cn

Updated: 2013-03-12 15:10

 

China vows to ease students' burden

BEIJING - A new national campaign will be launched in China to alleviate the heavyworkloads of students in the compulsory education system, the Ministry of Educationsaid Tuesday.

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Sun

03

Mar

2013

THE PRICE OF IVORY: From Elephants’ Mouths, an Illicit Trail to China

From The New York Times  By Dan Levin   Published: March 1, 2013 

 

China’s hunger for ivory carvings is growing despite evidence that many tusks are taken illegally

 

PUZHAI, China — Chinese investors have anointed it “white gold.” Carvers and collectors prefer the term “organic gemstone.” Smugglers, however, use a gruesomely straightforward name for the recently harvested African elephant tusks that find their way to this remote trading outpost on the Vietnamese border.

 

For more of this article press here


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Thu

28

Feb

2013

Grassroots get a bigger say in top legislature

From  China Daily and Xinhua      Updated: 2013-02-28 00:41

 

Greater diversity at NPC helps to better reflect the will of the people

The National People's Congress is becoming more representative and connecting with the grassroots as increasing numbers of imigrant  

workers, women and rural deputies join the toplegislative body, experts said.

 

 To Read more press here and see the article

0 Comments

Thu

24

Jan

2013

Chinese and English - Chinglish

It's gelivable! The whole world's speaking Chinese

By Jules Quartly (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-17 09:45

 

It's gelivable! The whole world's speaking Chinese

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Sat

16

Jun

2012

Disagreements in Rio+20 Negotiations

15 JUN 2012: SHARP DIVISIONS EMERGE 
AS RIO+20 NEGOTIATORS SEEK CONSENSUS

From Environment360 - Yale


With the United Nations Rio+20 summit on sustainable development set to open next Wednesday, negotiators from developing nationswalked out of a key working group over disagreements with wealthier nations about funding environmentally responsible development and the transfer of green technology. As negotiators attempted to forge an agreement, the G77 bloc of developing nations, led by China, proposed that wealthy countries finance a global fund for sustainable development with an initial annual budget of $30 billion. But European Union nations said they were unable to afford that because most EU states faced an economic crisis. Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, rejected that argument, saying, “We cannot be held hostage to the retraction resulting from financial crises in rich countries.” As 130 world leaders (with the notable absence of the leaders of the U.S., Britain, and Germany) prepared to arrive, a top Brazilian diplomatlamented the summit’s disparate blocs, saying the traditional north-south divide was only one of many divisions.

 

0 Comments

Sun

29

Apr

2012

With Bo Xilai’s ouster, China’s premier pushes more reform

Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images -  China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao – in his final months in office – is pushing for new reforms, including calling for a breakup China’s powerful state banking monopoly and giving foreign companies more access to governme
Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images - China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao – in his final months in office – is pushing for new reforms, including calling for a breakup China’s powerful state banking monopoly and giving foreign companies more access to governme

From The Washington Post By Published: April 26


BEIJING — Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has seized upon the ouster of his Communist Party rival Bo Xilai to reinvigorate what had until recently seemed a lonely campaign for Western-style economic liberalization and a battle against corruption.

 

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Fri

27

Apr

2012

Chen Guangcheng, blind Chinese lawyer-activist, escapes house arrest

Escaped dissident said to be under protection of U.S. diplomats in China

Washington Post By Keith B. Richburg, Updated: Friday,April 27, 11:47 AM

 

BEIJING — Chen Guangcheng, the blind, self-taught lawyer known for his outspokenopposition to China’s forced abortion and sterilization policies, has escaped from house arrest and posted a dramatic YouTube video calling on Premier Wen Jiabao to investigate his case and protect his family.

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Sat

21

Apr

2012

A letter from my Senator: Carl Levin

Levin, McCain: GAO report shows China is failing to crack down on bogus electronic parts Monday,

 

March 26, 2012

WASHINGTON – A government investigative report released today provides further evidence that China is failing to crack down on the flood of bogus electronic parts making their way into U.S. military systems and endangering the safety of U.S. troops and U.S. national security.

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Thu

01

Mar

2012

Chinese villagers have hope for first real election

Hong Ruiqing, 35, left, and her brother, Hong Ruichao, 28, are running for office in a rebel village now buzzing with democratic fervor. / By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY
Hong Ruiqing, 35, left, and her brother, Hong Ruichao, 28, are running for office in a rebel village now buzzing with democratic fervor. / By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

WUKAN, China (USA TODAY) — On a temple stage honoring a Taoist immortal, under a triple-tiered roof topped by dragons, Lin Zuluan made his modest bid for office.

 

"I'm an old guy, without much ability, but I do have a heart that keeps close to the villagers," said Lin, 67, to the applause of hundreds of onlookers Wednesday.

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Fri

17

Feb

2012

Noam Chomsky: American Decline in Perspective, Part 2

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere.  In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery.  They have also rid themselves of all U.S. military bases and of IMF controls.  A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada.  If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard.”

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Mon

13

Feb

2012

Views From China’s Vice President

PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES -  Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping during a visit to Bangkok in December.
PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping during a visit to Bangkok in December.

 

Vice President Xi Jinping of China is scheduled to meet with President Obama on Tuesday at the White House. In advance of his visit, the Chinese government invited The Washington Post to submit written questions to the vice president. Following is a transcript of his written answers, as translated and provided to The Post by the Chinese government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/views-from-chinas-vice-president/2012/02/08/gIQATMyj9Q_story_1.html ]

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Sun

22

Jan

2012

China city dwellers exceed villagers for first time

17 Jan 2012 10:51

Source: Reuters // Reuters

 

* China urbanisation ratio above 51 pct, slightly higher than world average

 

* China labour costs to rise steadily as supply falls, analysts say (Add background, China economist view)

By Zhou Xin and Koh Gui Qing

 

BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - More people lived in China's cities than in the countryside last year for the first time in history, a milestone that also points to labour supply strains in the world's No. 2 economy that could redraw the global manufacturing landscape.

 

Just over 51 percent of the 1.35 billion mainland Chinese lived in towns and cities at the end of 2011, China's National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday, crossing the halfway mark after three decades of rapid growth in the world's most populous nation.

 

Factories along the Pearl River Delta boomed in the same period as hundreds of millions headed to cities in search of jobs, helping to keep costs low. But an expert on development in the delta said workers are now increasingly demanding higher wages and better terms as urban property and living costs soar.

 

"It's a clear signal to all investors -- China's cheap labour is fading into the past and will never be back," said Cheng Jiansan, a professor with the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, the top think-tank in China's export hub.

 

"As far as I know, many plants here are relocating to places like Vietnam and Cambodia -- simply for cheap labour."

 

China became the factory to the world since economic liberalisation began in the early 1980s, exporting goods such as high-end running shoes and television sets as low-cost labour spurred manufacturers around the globe to setup operations mainly in special economic zones along the southern coast.

 

In 2011, China's rural population fell 14.6 million, equal to the number of people in Cambodia, data showed.

But the rate of urbanisation has slowed, dragging on labour supply, even though the massive shift of people will keep driving China's economy for years to come.

 

A rapidly ageing Chinese population further reduces the labour pool with the number of people over 65 at nearly 123 million, almost equal to Japan's population.

 

Ma Jiantang, the statistics agency head, said falling labour supply underpinned a forecast by China for 7 percent economic growth between 2011 and 2015, well below frequent double-digit annual growth rates for much of the past decade.

 

China's economy grew at its weakest pace in 2-1/2 years in the latest quarter to 8.9 percent, data released on Tuesday showed.

But there is debate among analysts about whether the country is near or crossing the Lewis turning point, a theory that wages in a developing nation start surging once there is a shortage in surplus rural labour.

Globally, about 51 percent of the world's 7 billion people live in cities, the United Nations says, with developing countries generally more rural than rich countries. In India, the world's second-most populous nation, only 30 percent live in cities while 82 percent of Americans are urbanites.

 

"It's a milestone in China's urbanisation, but that's too early to say that China's labour supply is drying up," Su Hainan, the deputy head of China Association for Labour Studies, a Beijing-based think-tank.

 

"China is still in the middle of urbanisation, and that means a lot of people have to move into cities."

 

Average Chinese salaries are already rising, albeit from low levels. Per capita urban disposable income rose 14 percent to 21,810 yuan ($3,500) in 2011 from a year ago, while per capita rural income rose 18 percent, although still only to an annual 6,977 yuan ($1,105).

But the income gap between those working in cities and the country is hard to verify as China does not publish a nation-wide "Gini Coefficient", a widely-used measure for wealth divides, likely because of the difficulty of getting true income data on high-income urban residents.

 

But the Gini index for rural China, which is calculated , stood at 0.4 at the end of 2011, suggesting a middle-of-the-road income divide with 1 being most severe and 0 indicating equal distribution of wealth.

 

However, Su said that even a relatively accommodative labour supply from rural areas is not going to prevent factory and other wages from rising.

 

"Labour supply will continue to be abundant, but workers will be more demanding in terms of salaries and other benefits."

 

($1 = 6.3165 Chinese yuan)

 

(Reporting by Zhou Xin and Koh Gui Qing Editing by Nick Edwards; Ken Wills and Ed Lane)

5 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

China's riot town: 'No one else is listening'

A photo dated June 12 shows damaged police cars overturned by protesters in Xintang, China
A photo dated June 12 shows damaged police cars overturned by protesters in Xintang, China

China's riot town: 'No one else is listening'

By Eunice Yoon, CNN
June 17, 2011 9:35 p.m. EDT
Xintang, China (CNN) -- The authorities here are obviously nervous. My crew and I are sitting in a local government building being questioned by six propaganda officials.
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Fri

11

Mar

2011

Tibet Riots Due To Failed Chinese Government Policies: Report First Posted: 05-26-09 09:43 AM | Updated: 06-26-09 05:12 AM

Time:

A new report from a group of Chinese scholars has for the first time challenged China's official explanation that the deadly riots that broke out across Tibet in March, 2008, were inspired by "overseas forces" -- namely the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile. (Read "One Year After Protests, an Enforced Silence on Tibet.")

Read the whole story: Time

 

0 Comments

Mon

21

Feb

2011

China protests: China police show up en masse at hint of protest - latimes.com

A police officer disperses members of the public, most of them onlookers, and media outside a McDonald's after internet social networks called for a "Jasmine Revolution" protest in Beijing. (How Hwee Young / EPA / February 20, 2011)
A police officer disperses members of the public, most of them onlookers, and media outside a McDonald's after internet social networks called for a "Jasmine Revolution" protest in Beijing. (How Hwee Young / EPA / February 20, 2011)

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times.  February 21, 2011

Pre-announced demonstrations in 13 Chinese cities bring plenty of paramilitary, uniformed and undercover police, but not many protesters. Six people are reportedly detained overall


 

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Sat

05

Feb

2011

China restricts news, discussion of Egypt unrest

Chinese censors are apparently blocking online discussion of unrest in Egypt and sanitising news reports about it in a sign of official unease that the uprising could fuel calls for reform at home.

By AFP    Published: Monday, January 31, 2011


Chinese censors are apparently blocking online discussion of unrest in Egypt and sanitising news reports about it in a sign of official unease that the uprising could fuel calls for reform at home.

Read More 1 Comments

Sat

29

Jan

2011

Drought in China. Millions face water shortage

Sun Minghua, a rural resident of Bozhou in East China's Anhui province, checks out withering wheat seedlings on his farm on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]
Sun Minghua, a rural resident of Bozhou in East China's Anhui province, checks out withering wheat seedlings on his farm on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]

Millions face water shortage in China

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-29 07:45

JINAN - More than 2.2 million people and 2.7 million livestock are facing a water shortage as the worst drought in decades continues to linger in many parts of China.

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Sat

29

Jan

2011

Stem cell research promising

Stem cell research promising

By Chen Jia and Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-29 07:42

 

BEIJING - After seeing the fastest development worldwide in stem cell research during the past 10 years, China is "on the verge of achieving a breakthrough", says a top scientist in the field.

 

 

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Wed

26

Jan

2011

China and all of it's largest cities.

China has about one fourth of the total population of the world and many of those people live in the big cities on the Eastern side of China.

Beijing is the capitol city, and Shanghai has the largest population.

 

0 Comments

Sun

23

Jan

2011

Map Comparison of China and USA

I was chatting with Lisa on English Share and we spent a minute commenting on the size of USA and China.  I was sure that China was much bigger.  I was sure wrong.

Read More 1 Comments

Wed

10

Nov

2010

China Rights Advocates Cannot Travel

Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Peter Parks/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mo Shaoping, a human rights lawyer, shown above in 2008, was stopped from from leaving China on Tuesday on charges that his departure might endanger national security

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Tue

19

Oct

2010

Pictures unknown source

Someone sent me a set of pictures in QQ E-Mail.  The defining characteristics of the mail are Chinese, a language with which I am not familiar.  So I use Google's Translator.  It does a poor job.

 

The gist of the message before the pictures appears to reflect my feelings well, and the pictures are so good, that I wanted to preserve them on my blog.

 

Read More 0 Comments

Sat

09

Oct

2010

China's Liu Xiaobo wins Nobel Peace Prize

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010; 5:20 PM

 

The first citizen of the People's Republic of China to win a Nobel prize was awarded the honor Friday for advocating greater freedom in his country.

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Fri

24

Sep

2010

US Backs Japan Move To End Row With China

3pm 9/24/2010 New York USA time.  (AFP) – 1 hour ago

NEW YORK — The United States on Friday backed US ally Japan's decision to release a Chinese ship captain and end its row with China, expecting the move will "significantly reduce" tension in the region.

Read More 6 Comments

Thu

23

Sep

2010

China<>Japan - President Obama's schedule for Sept. 23, 2010

From email received: info@messages.whitehouse.gov which contains the President's daily schedule.  The important parts are marked in red.  Are they connected with thread: China Takes a Sharper Tone in Its Dispute With Japan?

Read More 1 Comments

Wed

22

Sep

2010

China Takes a Sharper Tone in Its Dispute With Japan

"...rapidly becoming the most serious territorial dispute..."

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

20

Sep

2010

Chinese hold anti-Japan protests over boat dispute

Read More 0 Comments

Thu

16

Sep

2010

China: 'Legal procedures' must end

By Bao Daozu, China Daily

 

BEIJING - The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday accused Japan of provoking a serious situation in bilateral relations and once again demanded the immediate return of the captain of a Chinese trawler, still illegally detained in the country.

Read More 1 Comments

Wed

15

Sep

2010

The Moon (Mid-autumn) Festival

Read More 7 Comments

Sun

12

Sep

2010

China: Submersible dives into ocean elite of nations

This file photo shows a submersible under construction at an undisclosed location. [Photo/China Daily]
This file photo shows a submersible under construction at an undisclosed location. [Photo/China Daily]
Read More 0 Comments

Sat

11

Sep

2010

The next billionaire challenge: China's wealthiest

Chen Guang-biao, 42, made a fortune in the demolition business. He pledges to give it all away.
Chen Guang-biao, 42, made a fortune in the demolition business. He pledges to give it all away.
Read More 2 Comments

Thu

09

Sep

2010

Chinese One-Child Policy

TIME:  News Feed by Allie Townsend, September 9, 2010

 

The Chinese government is beginning to rethink its famed one-child limit as it begins to lift the restriction in five provinces with low birth rates.

Read More 2 Comments

Wed

01

Sep

2010

Poor porters

     We moved office at the end of August with loads of office supplies including lockfast,office seatings and so on. We hired a moving company to move and transport. As soon as the porters reached our apartment, they were astonished to see lots of heavy things. Things were so many that may not be contained in a wagon whose capacitance were 1.5 Litre though.

Read More 9 Comments

Wed

25

Aug

2010

China Plane Crash:Henan Airlines Passenger Plane With More Than 90 On Board Goes Down

Read More 2 Comments

Wed

25

Aug

2010

China traffic jam enters 10th day,spans over 60 miles

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

23

Aug

2010

Two PKU Professors on China’s Youth

The China Beat               

Blogging How the East Is Read

 

Two PKU Professors on China’s Youth

By Alec Ash

July 13, 2010 

Also see School Of Hard Knocks

 

In late May and early June, I interviewed professors Zhang Weiying and Pan Wei of Peking University (known as ‘Beida’). I wanted to know what the generation who grew up in the Cultural Revolution thought of the generation who grew up in the Consumer Revolution – and who could be leading China in thirty years. Here’s what they said.

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Sun

22

Aug

2010

Severe Flooding Hits China and North Korea

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/35925/severe-flooding-hits-china-and.asp Aug 22, 2010; 11:40 AM ET

Heavy rain from Friday night through Sunday along the border of North Korea has caused major flooding in the Chinese port city of Dandong, causing more than 90,000 people to be evacuated.
Read More 0 Comments

Sun

22

Aug

2010

School of Hard Knocks

China’s Ivy League Is No Place For Peasants.

As China tries to graduate from the world’s factory to a nation with a strong middle class, its peasants still aren’t ready to make the leap.

Read More 4 Comments

Tue

17

Aug

2010

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

NEW YORK TIMES

 

August 15, 2010

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures released early Monday.

The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

Read More 0 Comments

Tue

17

Aug

2010

China - Banks - Workers who have been let go

 

  The New York Times

 August 15, 2010

 

Workers Let Go by China’s Banks Putting Up Fight

By ANDREW JACOBS

 

BEIJING — These are heady days for China’s state-controlled banks. Last month, the Agricultural Bank of China made its stock market debut, bringing in $22 billion for the largest public offering ever. A sister government-run bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, now has the highest stock market value of any bank in the world.

Read More 1 Comments

Fri

13

Aug

2010

China Floods August 2010

 

 

washingtonpost.com



24 more die in China's flood-hit northwest

By DAVID WIVELL
The Associated Press
Friday, August 13, 2010; 8:05 AM

 

ZHOUQU, China -- New landslides killed 24 people and left 24 missing in China's remote northwest as downpours threatened more devastation and made rescue work nearly impossible Friday in a region where more than 1,100 people have died.

Read More 1 Comments

Mon

09

Aug

2010

Landslides in China

 

August 8, 2010

Landslides Kill 127 in China

By MICHAEL WINES
 

BEIJING — A landslide buried and flooded hundreds of homes over the weekend in a remote mountainous region of Gansu Province. Officials said Sunday evening that 127 bodies had been recovered and that nearly 2,000 people were missing.

 

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Mon

02

Aug

2010

China Floods

Read More 8 Comments

Sun

11

Jul

2010

China and Polution Control

July 4, 2010

China Fears Consumer Impact on Global Warming

 GUANGZHOU, China — Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to use an “iron hand” this summer to make his nation more energy efficient. The central government has ordered cities to close inefficient factories by September, like the vast Guangzhou Steel mill here, where most of the 6,000 workers will be laid off or pushed into early retirement.

Read More 6 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

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Mon

24

Mar

2014

Relocating Farmers to City

From New York Times

BEIJING — China has announced a sweeping plan to manage the flow of rural residents into cities, promising to promote urbanization but also to solve some of the drastic side effects of this great uprooting.

 

The plan — the country’s first attempt at broadly coordinating one of the greatest migrations in history — foresees 100 million more people moving to China’s cities by 2020, while providing better access to schools and hospitals for 100 million former farmers already living in cities but currently denied many basic services. Underpinning these projections would be government spending to build roads, railways, hospitals, schools and housing.

New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

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Wed

18

Sep

2013

The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator

Battushig Myanganbayar and his sister outside their home in Mongolia.

 

From the New York Times http://

www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/the-boy-genius-of-ulan-bator.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

 

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Wed

19

Jun

2013

Jon Stewart and China

From  THE NEW YORKER  on JUNE 17, 2013

N.Y.U., CHINA, AND CHEN GUANGCHENG 

jon-stewart-china-580.png

 

Jon Stewart has decided, as he put it this week, that he might be working the wrong continent. In a segment called “Big Ratings in Giant China,” Stewart expounded on his recent discovery that he is racking up millions of hits, and thousands of favorable comments, from Chinese viewers, who see the show in scattered subtitled clips posted on Chinese sites.

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Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


shutterstock_222422665_151112


DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

2 Comments

Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
0 Comments

Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”

 

This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”

 

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

 

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

 

And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.

 

Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.

 

But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.

 

Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.

 

So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.

 

In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.

 

Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.

 

Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”

 

There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.

 

“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.

 

Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.

 

There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.

 

________________________________

 

A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.

0 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.

 

Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.

Zhou Family Ties

1 Comments

Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


shutterstock_222422665_151112


DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

2 Comments

Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
0 Comments

Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

Read More 1 Comments