Back from vacation and on the fifth day we have blue skies and sunshine, as the intermittent Time Beijing BureauCam records. As Austin noted below, the four day banning of roughly half of the vehicles on Beijing’s roads didn’t seem to have made much impact yesterday. Today, with the aid of some helpful wind gusts in the morning, we …
Something in the Air
Over the past few days, Beijing has seen an abundance of a very rare entity: happy cab drivers. Sure, I got a ride with one cranky driver who seemed preoccupied with not being confined to a single lane. But most were like Ma Kuishan, who was dangerously close to giddy as he drive through northeast Beijing on Friday evening. “Normally, …
Please Pass Me My Shades
I used to look at the Hong Kong skyline, blazing in the night, and see a thing of beauty. Now of course—having become a good, bottle-recycling, plastic bag-declining, yoga-practicing bourgeois—I see nothing but wasted resources. Check out those untold tons of carbon, emitted so that the names of evil multinationals may be burned into …
What’s in an @
Andy Lau is one of the most popular Chinese actors of the past 20 years, the singer of dozens of pop hits, the man that women in one survey most said they would like to father their child, a successful film producer and a pretty good bowler. Not that I’m jealous. In fact, in one way at least he’s is pretty average.
Lau, who is better …
“We knew about the situation”
An official from the China Toy Association told Reuters that the group knew about the problems with magnets in toys as far back as March, but could offer no explanation for why nothing was done about it. Before that quote came out it appeared that the blame for the toys with magnets was squarely on the shoulders of Mattel and U.S. …
Toy Story (part II): Mattel Recalls Again–and Apologizes…
Now it’s Batman and Barbie Playsets and Polly Pocket dolls– all apparently made in China. The CEO of Mattel, Robert Eckert, took out a full page ad in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today, which showed a picture of three children playing together.
”Fellow Parents” Eckert wrote. “Nothing is more important …
A Dream of Freedom
It’s hard to think of two more discordant images. Less than a week after Beijing kicked off the one-year countdown to the 2008 Summer Olympics, a new report emerges of even more people found working in slave-like conditions in central China. On one hand the plastered smiles of syncopated dancers and their Olympic dreams, on the other the …
All Rise for the Secretary of Demolition
Hong Kong’s secretary for development, Carrie Lam, is also the government official with ultimate authority over our antiquities and monuments. This startling conflict of interest emerged during last week’s judicial review of the fate of Hong Kong’s Queen’s Pier—a Grade 1 historic monument that Lam is about to bulldoze and tastefully …
China’s `Toy Story’ Gets Even Grimmer
The tale of China’s tainted exports—from pet food to Thomas the Tank Engines and Barbie Dolls — turned even grimmer today. Southern Metropolis, a Guangzhou based daily, reported that Cheung Shu-hung, the owner of Lee Der Industrial Co., the Hong Kong based company that had shipped toys containing lead paint to Mattel, the maker of …
Let us know when the 08 ‘charm offensive’ begins…
Wouldn’t it be nice if, as part of a charm offensive in this, its ostensibly historic Olympic year, the Chinese government would allow those of us who live here to access websites like this–
The widening gap between rich and poor in China–see the ADB report I posted earlier–has set off of a debate among China hands as to just how big a deal it is, and whether it’s unusual given where China is in its economic development. What follows is what Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Beida (Peking University) had to say … From my colleague Jodi Xu, some thoughts on Beijing’s temporary car ban, which was announced yesterday: In one week Beijing expects to have some clearer skies and emptier streets. This is by far the best news I’ve heard recently, even better than someone telling me the price of pork is going to go down. Officials announced yesterday … In China, according to the latest survey by the Asian Development Bank, the income gap between rich and poor widened sharply last year—more than in any other country in Asia save Nepal. Now it’s true that academic studies suggest that this is fairly normal for a rapidly growing, newly industrializing economy. And anecdotally, my … Mind the Gap–II
Curing the China Cough
Mind the Gap…