Asia

TIME’s Deena Guzder and Ann Binlot examine an historic gay-pride event in Hong Kong.

Some random anecdotal evidence of the grim turn things are taking in China and how quickly it has happened.

Exapts are leaving: rentals in apaprtment buildings popular with foreigners in Beijing have fallen by about half in recent months. This is good news for me as I am looking to move to a cheaper place. But landlords are already …

Comment from Consciencechina on the deflation issue. What’s particularly interesting here is that regardless of official figures (dodgy of course at best), it’s people’s perception of how high prices ar and what they can afford to buy that are critical to their spending behavior. If many Chinese consumers think like consciencechina, we …

Just when you thought the economic news out of China couldn’t get much worse (see any number of previous posts including Austin’s last), along comes a new threat: deflation. Along with plummeting industrial production and exports, inflation–once the specter haunting Beijing (and, yes, that is a reference to the Communist Manifesto) — …

TIME’s China coverage today is all about the economy. Michael Schuman’s latest story looks at the decline of China’s car market, I have a piece on the drop in exports and Bill Powell examines how China can recreate the success of the past 30 years of economic reform.

Danwei.org has more details on just who has been hurting China’s feelings, including a list and map of the culprits.

Reading the People’s Daily is a bit like recess in elementary school. Someone always gets their feelings hurt. And more often than not, that someone is the “Chinese people.” For reasons that have defied analysis, Chinese state press wordsmiths and government spokespeople love to say that acts by other countries or world leaders which …

From Michael Elliott, a look at what Deng Xiaoping means to today’s China. He writes:

I’d give anything to have sat down with a tiny — barely 5 feet tall — bridge-playing chain smoker who used the spittoon liberally and had a weakness for croissants. And I’d ask him: Did you have any idea what you were doing?

A group of overseas Chinese including novelist Ha Jin and dissent physicist Fang Lizhi have signed a letter in support of Charter 08, the pro-democracy manifesto issued this week by several hundred mainland writers, lawyers and activists. Here’s a link to a Chinese version over the support letter by the overseas Chinese, and also our …

The latest statics on Chinese exports have economists worried. How worried? Take a look at this new report from Ben Simpfendorfer, chief China economist for the Royal Bank of Scotland:

Exports fell -2.2%YoY versus +19.2%YoY the previous month. This is a shock figure. I had expected export growth to collapse in the final two months, but

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The detention of two prominent intellectuals in Beijing this week, which Simon discusses below, was touched off by the release of “Charter 08,” a human rights manifesto signed by more than 300 Chinese scholars, activists, lawyers and retired officials. China scholar Perry Link has produced an English translation of the document, which is …

The statement below is from Human Rights in China. Not a good sign, though not exactly surprising either. The questions is, as HRIC notes, whether this is the start of a more general battening down of the hatches ahead of the economic storm that is brewing. More on that in the next few days.

For Immediate Release

Date: December 9,

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