(This is my original post; see previous post for an explanation)
Monday we finally got to meet the members of the new, nine-man Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party. This group, who run China, have been selected after months of factional maneuvering which culminated in the 17th Party Congress, a five-yearly, seriously retro …
This was to have been a post introducing a shaky but somehow still charming video I shot at this morning’s announcement of China’s new ruling Politburo. However, in her wisdom the Great Firewall Nanny person has seen fit to block youtube, through which I was attempting to upload. Even behind a VPN this proved impossible. Anyway, it means …
Just how badly China’s `brand’ has been hurt this year by the slew of product and food safety scandals surrounding exports from this country has been a question policymakers and business people have been wrestling with for months. Now comes an interesting poll from the NY Times and CBS News which provides some insight. (The TIME’s …
Various lists have come out recently that detail China richest (see here and here). It’s a testament to the madness of the stock market that Bill refers to below the country now boasts no less than 345,000 millionaires and–get this–106 billionaires, second only to the U.S. A lot of it is funny money/paper money but the figures are …
China’s stock markets—not to mention its real estate market—are in full, irrational exuberance mode. I’ve no idea how long this will continue, when the “bubble” will burst, or if it is really a “bubble.’’ The key thing to remember here is markets can and will overshoot, even if the underlying assumptions driving them …
The White House didn’t release any details about what Bush said to the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, but Slate has taken a guess. Some highlights:
It’s awful, but I just can’t help it. Whenever I see the Buddha, I think of Rove. We used to call him “Buddha.” Karl’s lost weight. Still, if you ever pictured him in a diaper, you never forget
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Bush went ahead with his meeting with the Dalai Lama on Tuesday, though the White House took a few steps to downplay the event, like holding it in the president’s private residence and not releasing a photo. White House spokesperson Dana Perino said, “We in no way want to stir the pot and make China feel that we are poking a stick in …
Naomi from OCDF writes to point out that the figure of four hours heating a day is before the orphanages get their extra supplement from the program. With the additional coal they can heat 16 hours a day, a huge difference. Incidentally, it occurs to me that some of our more frequent commenters might actually want to use this as an …
Having written before about what I believe are bogus notions of “intra-party democracy” it’s probably worth mentioning again that despite a great deal of talk, the idea that democracy outside the party is making any headway is even more fallacious. That despite the fact that President Hu Jintao mentioned the word democracy no less than …
Driving back from a hike near the Great Wall on Sunday we passed the rail line that comes from Datong in Shanxi province. Shanxi is the coal mining capital of China (about whose appalling conditions I’ve written previously) and this line appeared to be dedicated solely to coal transport. We watched in amazement as four locomotives pulled …
I was in Hong Kong over the weekend and thus subjected to repeat viewings of Donald Tsang’s controversial remarks from Friday. If you missed it, the Bowtied One declared that China’s Cultural Revolution was an example of the dangers of democracy. When the interviewer challenged him on that point, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive dug in and …
In response to my post on the police in Beijing taking a close look at the registration of foreign residents, Josh Gartner at the China Expat blog points out his entry from last month about the attentions he’s received from the Public Security Bureau.
He also asks how, as a journalist, I could not be registered. When I came to Beijing …
Yes indeed, top Chinese leaders are now saying what everyone else has been pointing out for decades: the $150 billion Three Gorges dam was a seriously bad idea. My colleague Lin Yang has a story on the Time.Com website.
