Asia

I was in Hong Kong a couple of days ago. It was mainly a business trip but I also managed to hook up with a chef friend named Rolando Schuller who recently opened a new restaurant called Aspasia in a boutique hotel in Kowloon, the Luxe Manor on Kimberely Street. I headed over there on Thursday evening afire with happy anticipation. …

The Guardian had a story over the weekend about a floating menagerie found on the south China coast. An abandoned boat was discovered with thousands of rare animals, the story reported, including 2,720 monitor lizards, 1,130 Brazilian turtles and 31 pangolins, a type of scaly anteater. The sheer numbers and the “Noah’s Ark” touch ensured …

It’s all there in black and white, at least according to this poll. Despite the relative health of the US economy, US citizens seem paranoid when it comes to China.

These are the results of interesting UPI/John Zogby poll of US citizens responding to various questions about China.
Couple of random thoughts: what’s the difference …

Interesting report by Xinhua, China’s national news agency, over the weekend. The story describes how the authorities have decided to suspend work on a $5 billion Maglev train that would have cut journey time between Shanghai and the lake resort city of Hangzhou to around half and hour. I currently takes more than two hours, so it would …

Oops indeed. Just back from a trip in southern China, I see that, as several helpful readers have pointed out, my post a couple of days ago about the new adoption rules was, er, recycled, to put it politely. I had written it on a different computer and thought for some confused reason that it hadn’t been posted. Anyway, I have been …

For a guy who lost his job and saw his publication closed down, Li Datong seems like a remarkably upbeat guy. The former editor of Freezing Point, a supplement of the China Youth Daily that was shuttered by propaganda authorities in 2006 in response to his critical stance, spoke to a media association in Hong Kong last night. While …

The China Fantasy debate rocks on…

David Lampton, a leading US China scholar at Johns Hopkins, excoriates Jim Mann, author of the recently published “The China Fantasy”, effectively saying that the political/business establishment view of China in the US has NOT held out the prospect of eventual political liberalization, driven (in …

More than other city in China—and maybe the world?—Shanghai has one thing on its mind: money and how to make it. That is intensely true right now, with the city wholly in the grip of stock market mania. (Market up again today, to another record.)
This can get a little tedious; you can’t go anywhere without hearing somebody talking …

More on divesting Darfur, with Chinese companies again in the crosshairs. Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner for her work (I think) in banning landmines, and (retired?) actress Mia Farrow take on the Oracle of Omaha directly in a WSJ piece today about why Americans should divest any holdings they may have in Chinese oil …

Flying back to Beijing from Sichuan, I come across a jolly group of newly-minted parents in the Chengdu airport. It’s a familiar sight to anyone who has traveled in China in the last decade or more, middle-aged westerners, some awkwardly cradling Chinese babies, others chasing after toddlers, their faces filled with a peculiar …

They held the debate, sponsored by NPR (public broadcasting in the United States) I posted about last week in New York; am posting now a transcript of the entire thing for those interested. According to a poll of the live audience attending, those arguing AGAINST the motion “A booming China spells trouble for America” prevailed. …

So the People’s Bank of China has spoken, but will China’s legions of punters listen? Of course not. On Friday after the market closed, the central bank imposed three separate new measures aimed at curbing liquidity and slowing economic growth–and also reining in the current stock market frenzy. There were always doubts about whether …

Trying to get a sense of China’s place in the American public consciousness—to the extent it exists at all– isn’t easy. As we’ve seen, China barely registers in presidential campaign, and when it does (as in the Republican debate the other night) the subject tends to elicit absurdly simplistic soundbites (which ,as I write …