Beijing is engaged in systematic cyber spying on the US military and private businesses to acquire technology to boost military modernisation and strengthen its capacity in any regional crisis, according to the Pentagon.

In its annual report to Congress on the People’s Liberation Army, the Pentagon gives new emphasis to the threat of cyber-espionage from China, an issue that has been the subject of top-level complaints to Beijing by Washington.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Liao Yiwu was a reluctant dissident.

A Chinese poet and storyteller nourished on Beat generation literature, he picked fights, drank to excess and despised politics.

“I have never taken an interest in mass movements or foreign imports such as democracy, freedom, human rights and love,” he declared as the student pro-democracy movement unfolded in Beijing in 1989. “If destruction is inevitable, let it be.”

Then came the Tiananmen crackdown. Mr. Liao was transformed....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Poetry & Literature • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

The fascinating story of the recovery of Christianity and other religions going on in China today.

Listen to it here

Filed under: * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China surpassed the U.S. to become the world’s biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports of goods, official figures from both countries show.

U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China’s customs administration reported last month that the country’s trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Even if her dream is only dorm-room reverie, China has tens of millions of Ms. Zhang [Xiaoping]s — bright young people whose aspirations and sheer numbers could become potent economic competition for the West in decades to come.

China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using the G.I. Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of millions of young people as they move from farms to cities.

The aim is to change the current system, in which a tiny, highly educated elite oversees vast armies of semi-trained factory workers and rural laborers. China wants to move up the development curve by fostering a much more broadly educated public, one that more closely resembles the multifaceted labor forces of the United States and Europe.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Globalization • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

"Dozens of companies have been delisted from our exchanges due to economy irregularities and outright fraud," said Dan David, vice president of GeoInvesting, LLC, a firm that monitored the Asian investment craze. "They raised hundreds of millions, some companies, that is outright money that was taken from investors that they'll never see again."

[Mary] Schapiro said the SEC opened 40 cases against Chinese firms during her tenure, targeting financial schemes she described as "brazen" and "extraordinary." Schapiro, who stepped down in December, said that when she asked Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan for help during a trip to Beijing in July her requests were rebuffed.

"We haven't yet achieved a level of cooperation that makes it possible for us to get access to Chinese companies the way we need," Shapiro said. "We will fight hard to try to secure recovery for U.S. investors. But it's harder when we don't have the cooperation of the foreign government."

Read it all and watch the video report (recommended)

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Understanding the developing attitude of the central banks, and the effects of their actions, obviously remains central for investors in all financial assets. The “big picture” for global financial assets, involving very low government bond yields and a gradual shift of risk appetite into credit and equities, is unlikely to change until one of two events takes place.

The first would be a decision by the central bankers themselves that the era of unlimited quantitative easing must end, either because of the risk of inflation and asset price bubbles, or because of concerns about fiscal dominance over the monetary authorities. The second would be a realisation by the markets that further action by the central bankers is irrelevant because they have run out of effective ammunition. Either of these events would probably remove the central prop from the equity bull market which began in March, 2009, but neither seems very likely in 2013.

There is certainly no sign that the central bankers themselves will call a halt to the extension of their balance sheets.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Japan • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010

The Chinese government is once again imposing new restrictions on Internet use.

A decision approved today by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress institutes an "identity management policy," according to China's official Xinhua news agency. Such a policy requires Internet users to use their real names when registering with an online provider or mobile carrier.

Though most Chinese Internet users already use their real names to sign up for online accounts, the new policy makes it the law.

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Chinese leaders issued an order last year quietly directing universities to root out foreigners suspected of plotting against the Communist Party by converting students to Christianity.

The 16-page notice — obtained this month by a U.S.-based Christian group — uses language from the cold war era to depict a conspiracy by “overseas hostile forces” to infiltrate Chinese campuses under the guise of academic exchanges while their real intent is to use religion in “westernizing and dividing China.”

The document suggests that despite small signs of religious tolerance in recent decades,China’s ruling officials retain strong suspicion of religion as a tool of the West and a threat to the party’s authoritarian rule. And with the country’s top leadership in transition and looking to consolidate power, Chinese religious leaders worry that the stance is unlikely to change in the near future.

Read it all and note there is a link to the 16 page document itself for those interested.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In my two most recent novels, “The China Gambit,” and “The Spanish Revenge,” I deal with China’s rising military power, the growth of Islam, and the possibility of collaboration between Islamic nations and China. Based upon recent developments, there are strong reasons to believe that Islam and China will form an alliance.

As the 21st century unfolds, the trend is toward three major power blocs in the world: The West, led by the United States; China; and the Islamic nations. Increasingly, these nations are coming together for a common purpose, which was demonstrated by the recent cease-fire negotiations in which Turkey worked with Egypt to support Hamas, a pawn of Iran. What all of these have in common is their Islamic religion. In contrast, in China, Mao suppressed religion....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

Students across the United States have made some gains but continue to lag behind many of their Asian counterparts in reading, math and science, according to the results of two international tests released Tuesday.

U.S. fourth-graders’ math and reading scores improved since the last time students took the tests several years ago, while eighth-graders remained stable in math and science. Americans outperformed the international average in all three subjects but remained far behind students in such places as Singapore and Hong Kong, especially in math and science.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Globalization • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Asia will wield more global power than the US and Europe combined by 2030, a forecast from the US intelligence community has found.

Within two decades China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy, the report adds.

It also warns of slower growth and falling living standards in advanced nations with ageing populations.

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During a recent book launch in Rome, a noted theologian said that China will be home to the majority of the world's Christians within the next two decades.

“Interfaith dialogue is something that China, which will have the world's largest Christian population in 20 years, lives with every day,” said Harvey Cox during the presentation at the city's Jesuit Gregorian University.

Cox presented the book “Catholic Engagement with World Religions: A Comprehensive Study, in dialogue with its two editors” on Nov. 30 with Cardinal Karl Josef Becker, a German theologian of the Vatican's the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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Xi Jinping has been confirmed as the man to lead China for the next decade.

Mr Xi led the new Politburo Standing Committee onto the stage at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, signalling his elevation to the top of China's ruling Communist Party.

The party faced great challenges but would work to meet "expectations of both history and the people", he said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

[China's]...economy has gone from being rather smaller than Italy's to the world's second largest, and is now home to one million US$ millionaires. By the time the new generation of leaders hands over power to the next in 2022, China could be challenging the US for top spot.

This transformation has changed the way the world does business. Cheap Chinese labour has helped dampen prices in the West for everything from moccasins to mops to mobile phones. It is now the biggest investor in Africa, promising to shift the continent's focus away from Europe and the US for the first time in two centuries. And China is now the biggest foreign holder of US government debt - a threatening stick, or a foolhardy bet?

The key question now is whether the new leaders can keep the economy growing at the same rate as in the past, and help the rest of the world recover. Most Western analysts expect it to slow from 10% a year to a still impressive 6-7%, but argue that deep reforms are needed if China is to become a rich rather than middle-income country.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Both India and China have intense national testing programs to find the brightest students for their elite universities. The competition, the preparation and the national anxiety about the outcomes make the SAT testing programs in the U.S. seem like the minor leagues. The stakes are higher in China and India. The "chosen ones"—those who rank in the top 1%—get their choice of university, putting them on a path to fast-track careers, higher incomes and all the benefits of an upper-middle-class life.

The system doesn't work so well for the other 99%. There are nearly 40 million university students in China and India. Most attend institutions that churn out students at low cost. Students complain that their education is "factory style" and "uninspired." Employers complain that many graduates need remedial training before they are fully employable.

For now, the U.S. university system is still far ahead. But over the next decade, there will be a global competition to educate the next generation, and China and India have the potential to change the balance of power.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • India

At 4pm on September 14, 2012, Pastor Bike (Zhang Mingxuan), Chairman of China House Church Alliance, and 17 co-workers from Yunnan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and South Korea, began distributing gospel tracts at the train station of Dezhou city, Shandong Province. Twenty minutes later, police from the police station of Decheng District took them away for interrogation.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

(Read this for background first if you are not aware of the story).

Steven Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute, has weighed in on speculation that forced abortions in China may be halted in some areas. He says there is very little chance of that happening.

“Reports that the Chinese Party-State has ended its practice of forcibly aborting women pregnant in violation of the one-child policy are premature,” he said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

In character and location, the city of Hefei in China's Anhui province and the privileged seaside resort of Beidaihe on China's eastern coast could not be more different. But today they will be intimately connected, as the trial opens of Gu Kailai – until recently known as the Jackie Kennedy of China – for complicity in the murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood.

The link is Ms Gu's husband, the former Communist Party boss of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, whose lineage and ambition would doubtless have qualified him for a villa at Beidaihe – the traditional summer retreat of China's politial elite – this crucial year had the Heywood affair not intervened. As leader of one of China's fastest growing cities, he was a serious player, but a contentious one, too, because of what were seen as his unfashionable – and perhaps dangerous – conservative views.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • England / UK

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

The scandal engulfing four Olympic badminton teams has abruptly ended the career of one of China's most promising players.

Yu Yang announced Wednesday she was quitting the sport after the Badminton World Federation disqualified her and her doubles partner, along with three other teams, for "not using one's best efforts to win a match."

"This is my last match," Yu Yang wrote in a microblog to her 1.3 million followers. "Farewell Badminton World Federation; farewell my beloved badminton."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Sports • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Recent reports of women being coerced into late-term abortions by local officials have thrust China’s population control policy into the spotlight and ignited an outcry among policy advisers and scholars who are seeking to push central officials to fundamentally change or repeal a law that penalizes families for having more than one child. Pressure to alter the policy is building on other fronts as well, as economists say that China’s aging population and dwindling pool of young, cheap labor will be a significant factor in slowing the nation’s economic growth rate.

“An aging working population is resulting in a labor shortage, a less innovative and less energetic economy, and a more difficult path to industrial upgrading,” said He Yafu, a demographics analyst. China’s population of 1.3 billion is the world’s largest, and the central government still seems focused on limiting that number through the one-child policy, Mr. He said. Abolishing the one-child policy, though, might not be enough to bring the birthrate up to a “healthy” level because of other factors, he said.

Read it all and make sure you have perused this earlier article also.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • Women • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China is on the cusp of a deflationary vortex.
This was signalled late last year by the sharpest contraction in the (real) M1 money supply since modern records began. The hard data is now confirming the warnings.
Consumer prices have been falling for the last three months, producer prices have been falling for four months. This is not a food cost story. It is systemic.
"While an economy-wide generalized deflation is yet to be seen, the deflationary spiral looks to have started in some industrial sectors, attesting to considerable stress with the economy. Persistent deflation can be poisonous," said Xianfang Ren from IHS Global Insight in Beijing.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

The meeting will take place from 9 to 16 June, organized by the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) and hosted by the China Christian Council (CCC) and the National Committee of the Three Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China. The CCC, with its 23 million members, is the largest member constituency of the WCC in Asia.

The WCC general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will attend the meeting. This will be his first visit to China since he took office in 2010.

The main deliberations of the CCIA meeting will take place in Nanjing. This will include a seminar on “Understanding China” invoking diverse perspectives on market reforms and development in socialist systems, poverty eradication and environmental sustainability, China’s religions and religious polices, churches in China and other themes.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations

When the Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng stole the show at an emergency Congressional hearing this month by calling into the chamber during a live television broadcast, few people noticed who was holding the cellphone.

But those within the tightknit community of Chinese dissidents in the United States, and their supporters, immediately recognized the man, who had arranged for Mr. Chen’s voice to be carried to Washington directly from his Beijing hospital bed: Bob Fu, a Chinese-born pastor who operates out of a squat, whitewashed house opposite a Family Dollar store here in Midland.

“When it comes to contacts in China, Bob’s network can’t be beat,” said Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, who convened the hearing to put pressure on the Obama administration and help ensure that Mr. Chen, a self-taught lawyer, would be allowed to leave China with his family to study law in the United States....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • House of Representatives • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

As China’s leaders have been preoccupied with a political struggle leading up to a once-in-a-decade leadership change this autumn, there are increasing signs that the Chinese economy may be running into trouble.

China announced Thursday that growth in imports had unexpectedly come to a screeching halt in April — rising just 0.3 percent from the same period a year earlier, compared with expectations for an 11 percent increase. Businesses across the country appeared to lose much of their appetite for products as varied as iron ore and computer chips.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Going to a U.S. high school and learning to learn like Americans are what increasing numbers of students in China are hoping to do in order to improve their chances of getting into an American college, CCHS says. As an evangelical private high school with experience teaching students from China, CCHS has been taking in more of these overseas students and is starting to refer others to like-minded Christian high schools in the U.S.

Foreign students like Mr. [Tom] Zhou now make up about a third of the 217-person student body at CCHS, the U.S.'s oldest accredited school founded by and catering to evangelical Christians from China, according to superintendent Robin Sun Hom. The school also has students from Taiwan and even one Mandarin speaker from Venezuela.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • Teens / Youth • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

The Chinese government clamped down on activists and online media in the wake of the dramatic escape of a blind human-rights advocate from home imprisonment, an embarrassing development for Beijing that could complicate U.S.-China relations if he is found to be in U.S. protective custody.

At least three activists were detained following the escape last week of Chen Guangcheng, a legal advocate who has fought forced abortions under China's one-child policy.

Meanwhile, popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo blocked use of the words "blind man" and "UA898," a United Airlines flight from Beijing to Washington that Mr. Chen was rumored to have taken out of China. News of his escape hasn't appeared in major state-run media.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Some of the same spoilers that interrupted the recovery in 2010 and 2011 have emerged again, raising fears that the winter’s economic strength might dissipate in the spring.

In recent weeks, European bond yields have started climbing. In the United States and elsewhere, high oil prices have sapped spending power. American employers remain skittish about hiring new workers, and new claims for unemployment insurance have risen. And stocks have declined.

There is a “light recovery blowing in a spring wind” with “dark clouds on the horizon,” Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Thursday....

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe

Moving hastily to curb possible political fallout from a scandal involving Bo Xilai, a major Communist Party figure, China’s top leaders have decided to expel him from the Politburo, the 25-member body that runs China, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.

Already ousted from his regional party role and under house arrest, Mr. Bo will placed under formal investigation, the sources said.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Hearkening back to Cold War anxieties, growing signs of spying on U.S. universities are alarming national security officials. As schools become more global in their locations and student populations, their culture of openness and international collaboration makes them increasingly vulnerable to theft of research conducted for the government and industry.

“We have intelligence and cases indicating that U.S. universities are indeed a target of foreign intelligence services,” Frank Figliuzzi, Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director for counterintelligence, said in a February interview in the bureau’s Washington headquarters.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Globalization • Science & Technology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

The senior leadership of the Chinese government increasingly views the competition between the United States and China as a zero-sum game, with China the likely long-range winner if the American economy and domestic political system continue to stumble, according to an influential Chinese policy analyst.

China views the United States as a declining power, but at the same time believes that Washington is trying to fight back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China’s becoming the world’s most powerful country, according to the analyst, Wang Jisi, the co-author of “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust,” a monograph published this week by the Brookings Institution in Washington and the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.

Mr. Wang, who has an insider’s view of Chinese foreign policy from his positions on advisory boards of the Chinese Communist Party and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, contributed an assessment of Chinese policy toward the United States. Kenneth Lieberthal, the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings, and a former member of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, wrote the appraisal of Washington’s attitude toward China.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

An urbanization drive perhaps unparalleled in human history has turned China into a continent-sized construction site. Some of the new buildings have won international acclaim, such as Beijing's "Bird's Nest" stadium built for the 2008 Olympics. But far too many are eyesores, complain architects and online critics.

When the architecture website http://www.archcy.com asked readers to vote for China's top 10 ugliest buildings, Li Hu, a Beijing-based partner at U.S. Steven Holl Architects, said, "Choosing 10 is very hard, choosing a million is perfectly possible.

"Development is too quick. Architects don't have time to reflect," says Li, who blames the ugly edifices in part on interference by government officials, a lack of imagination by architects and corruption.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Housing/Real Estate Market • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

The US, Japan and the European Union have filed a case against China at the World Trade Organization, challenging its restrictions on rare earth exports.

US President Barack Obama accused China of breaking agreed trade rules as he announced the case at the White House.

Beijing has set quotas for exports of rare earths, which are critical to the manufacture of high-tech products from hybrid cars to flat-screen TVs.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Japan • Europe

China’s defense budget will double by 2015, making it more than the rest of the Asia Pacific region’s combined, according to a report from IHS Jane’s, a global think tank specializing in security issues.

Beijing’s military spending will reach $238.2 billion in 2015, compared with $232.5 billion for rest of the region, according to the report. That would also be almost four times the expected defense budget of Japan, the next biggest in the region, in 2015, the report said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • The U.S. Government • Budget • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Chinese officials denied a visa to a top State Department envoy and refused to meet with her to discuss issues of religious freedom days before this week’s high-profile visit to Washington by China’s vice president, according to rights advocates and others.

Suzan Johnson Cook, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, was scheduled to travel to China on Feb. 8, according to several rights advocates who were invited to brief her ahead of the visit. But as the date drew near, Chinese leaders refused to grant her meetings with government officials.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

There was a time when Devon Chang had difficulty reconciling his two chosen faiths: Christianity, which he embraced in 2005 at the age of 19, and the Communist Party of China, which had embraced him a year earlier. Did his submission to an almighty God not mean he must renounce the godless club of Marx and Mao?

Not necessarily. A fellow convert’s university lecturer suggested that if all Communist Party members found Jesus, then Christianity could rule China. “So it’s a good thing for me to become a Christian,” Mr Chang reasoned.

The party does not quite see it that way.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as a "travesty" Russia and China's veto of a UN resolution condemning Syria's crackdown against anti-government protesters.

Speaking in Bulgaria, Mrs Clinton said efforts outside the world body to help Syria's people should be redoubled.

The US, she said, would work with "friends of a democratic Syria" to support opponents of Syria's president.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

[A]..mix of political control and market reform has yielded huge benefits. China’s rise over the past two decades has been more impressive than any burst of economic development ever. Annual economic growth has averaged 10% a year and 440m Chinese have lifted themselves out of poverty—the biggest reduction of poverty in history.

Yet for China’s rise to continue, the model cannot remain the same. That’s because China, and the world, are changing.

China is weathering the global crisis well. But to sustain a high growth rate, the economy needs to shift away from investment and exports towards domestic consumption. That transition depends on a fairer division of the spoils of growth. At present, China’s banks shovel workers’ savings into state-owned enterprises, depriving workers of spending power and private companies of capital. As a result, just when some of the other ingredients of China’s boom, such as cheap land and labour, are becoming scarcer, the government is wasting capital on a vast scale. Freeing up the financial system would give consumers more spending power and improve the allocation of capital.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They thought it might get them executed. Instead, it wound up transforming China's economy in ways that are still reverberating today.

The contract was so risky — and such a big deal — because it was created at the height of communism in China. Everyone worked on the village's collective farm; there was no personal property.

"Back then, even one straw belonged to the group," says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. "No one owned anything."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Enraged Chinese shoppers pelted Apple Inc's flagship Beijing store with eggs and shoving matches broke out with police on Friday when customers were told the store would not begin sales of the iPhone 4S as scheduled.

Apple said later after the fracas at its store in Beijing's trendy Sanlitun district that it would halt all retail sales of the latest iPhone in China for the time being, but said the phones would be available online, through its partner China Unicom or at official Apple resellers.

Sales at Apple's other store in Beijing and three in Shanghai went more smoothly, with stocks quickly selling out.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Christmas means different things around the world, but in China one of the things it’s come to stand for crackdown. In recent years Chinese courts have chosen the holiday season as the time to hand down the harshest sentences to political dissenters, possibly in the belief that their rulings will received the least attention abroad. On Dec. 26 a court in the southwestern city of Guiyang sentenced longtime dissident Chen Xi to 10 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power,” Reuters reported.

Chen was active in the 1989 protest movement, organizing a pro-democracy group in Guiyang and later serving 13 years in prison after the government crushed the Tiananmen demonstrations. Chen Xi, who is also known as Chen Youcai, was arrested on Nov. 29, a week before the Guizhou Human Rights Forum, a group to which he belonged, was declared illegal, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an activist group.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

We believe that this pivot toward Beijing is no routine oscillation in North Korean policy. The drive to normalize relations with the U.S. from 1991 to 2009 had been real, sustained and rooted in Kim Il Sung's deep concern about the regime's future in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps there was no better demonstration of the North's approach in those years than the situation on Oct. 25, 2000 — the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the Korean War. Who was in Pyongyang on that date meeting Kim Jong Il? The Chinese defense minister? No, he was cooling his heels while Kim met with the U.S. secretary of State. That was no accident of scheduling on Pyongyang's part; it would not happen again today.

If the paradigm shift is real, we expect the North in the near to medium term to make far less overt trouble. Less tension on the Korean peninsula? What could be wrong with that? Nothing, as long as it is understood that such tranquillity will also provide a veil for the North's continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated delivery systems. With the onset of stability and growing Chinese-North Korean cooperation, Pyongyang may well calculate that the outside world's focus on the North Korean nuclear program will become diffuse.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Korea • North Korea

Buddhists from around the world chose India on Wednesday as the headquarters of a new international Buddhist organization and united in their criticism of the Chinese government for trying to prevent the Dalai Lama from speaking at their meeting here in New Delhi.

It was something of a victory for India in what observers increasingly see as a contest with China to win the favor of Buddhists around the world. India is the land where Buddha gained enlightenment and taught, but China has the largest population of Buddhists today.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • India • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Buddhism

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy Servant Channing, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Asia. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Saviour Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Missions • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Critics say Germany is falling between two stools. It has backed EMU rescues on a sufficient scale to endanger its own credit-worthiness, without committing the nuclear firepower needed to restore confidence and eliminate default risk in Spain and Italy. It would be hard to devise a more destructive policy.

There is no change in sight yet. Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated on Thursday that Germany would not accept joint EU debt issuance or a bond-buying blitz by the ECB. "If politicians think the ECB can solve the euro's problems, they're trying to convince themselves of something that won't happen," she said.

Yet she offered no other way out of the logjam, and each day Germany is sinking a little deeper into the morass.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • Germany

President Obama announced Wednesday that the United States planned to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia to shore up alliances in Asia, but the move prompted a sharp response from Beijing, which accused Mr. Obama of escalating military tensions in the region.

The agreement with Australia amounts to the first long-term expansion of the American military’s presence in the Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War. It comes despite budget cuts facing the Pentagon and an increasingly worried reaction from Chinese leaders, who have argued that the United States is seeking to encircle China militarily and economically.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in response to the announcement by Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Australia / NZ

When the novelist Murong Xuecun showed up at a ceremony here late last year to collect his first literary prize, he clutched a sheet of paper with some of the most incendiary words he had ever written.

It was a meditation on the malaise brought on by censorship. “Chinese writing exhibits symptoms of a mental disorder,” he planned to say. “This is castrated writing. I am a proactive eunuch, I castrate myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel.”

The ceremony’s organizers forbade him to deliver the speech. On stage, Mr. Murong made a zipping motion across his mouth and left without a word. He then did with the speech what he had done with three of his best-selling novels, all of which had gone through a harsh censorship process: He posted the unexpurgated text on the Internet. Fans flocked to it.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Books • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Privately, U.S. officials have long complained that China and Russia are out to steal U.S. trade secrets, intellectual property and high technology. But in public they've been reluctant to point fingers, and instead have referred obliquely to "some nations" or "our rivals."

That changed Thursday, with the release of a new report by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive to Congress titled "Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace." The report names China as the world's leading source of economic espionage, followed by Russia.

"China and Russia, through their intelligence services and through their corporations, are attacking our research and development," said Robert Bryant, U.S. national counterintelligence executive, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., presenting the espionage report.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • Russia

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Breathless but beaming, Sheng Zisu sounds confident after five months in a maze-like Buddhist encampment high on the eastern Tibetan plateau, nearly 400 miles of bad road from the nearest city.

"Look around. They could never find me here," Sheng, 27, says of parents so anxious about their only child's turn to Tibetan Buddhism that they have threatened to kidnap her.

Sheng is far from her home — and from the bars where she used to drink and the ex-boyfriends she says cheated on her. She is here with 2,000 other Han Chinese at the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Serthar, Sichuan province, the rain-soaked mountainous region of southwest China.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Buddhism

European leaders have reached a "three-pronged" agreement described as vital to solve the region's huge debt crisis.

They said banks holding Greek debt accepted a 50% loss, the eurozone bailout fund will be boosted and banks will have to raise more capital.

Shares on European markets rose sharply on news of the deal.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • G20 • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • France • Germany • Greece • South America • Brazil

As a child growing up in Kaifeng in central China, Jin Jin was constantly reminded of her unusual heritage.

"We weren't supposed to eat pork, our graves were different from other people, and we had a mezuza on our door," said the 25-year-old, referring to the prayer scroll affixed to doorways of Jewish homes.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Middle East • Israel

O God, who in thy providence didst call Joseph Schereschewsky from his home in Eastern Europe to the ministry of this Church, and didst send him as a missionary to China, upholding him in his infirmity, that he might translate the holy Scriptures into languages of that land: Lead us, we pray thee, to commit our lives and talents to thee, in the confidence that when thou givest thy servants any work to do, thou dost also supply the strength to do it; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Spirituality/Prayer • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

The Primates of the Global South coalition of provinces have opened ecumenical relations with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) — China’s official state Protestant Church.

The 12-day visit to China by 11 senior archbishops led by Singapore’s Archbishop John Chew — who represent a majority of the communion’s members — has sparked public controversy in evangelical circles with some conservatives perturbed by the outreach to the Communist Party-approved state church.

The visit will also pain supporters of the current institutional structures of the Anglican Communion, as the China trip marks the establishment of an international Anglican ecumenical movement independent of the London-based instruments of communion.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Global South Churches & Primates • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China and Russia have vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria over its crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The European-drafted resolution had been watered down to try to avoid the vetoes, dropping a direct reference to sanctions against Damascus.

But Moscow and Beijing said the draft contained no provision against outside military intervention in Syria.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe • Russia • Middle East • Syria

On the surface, economists at the International Monetary Fund and most banks are still estimating China’s growth rate to be over 9 percent this year. China continues to run very large trade surpluses. New construction starts have soared with a government campaign to provide more affordable housing.

And yet, the country’s huge manufacturing sector is starting to slow and orders are weakening, especially for exports. The real estate bubble is starting to spring leaks, even as inflation remains stubbornly high for consumers — despite a series of interest rate increases and ever-tighter limits on bank lending.

Because China’s mighty growth engine has been one of the few drivers of the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008, signs of deceleration could add to worries about the global outlook.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • England / UK • Europe

...China itself must ultimately be a victim of this warped structure as well, and that is where we are in late 2011. Act III of the global denouement is unfolding. The world will have to lance the debt boils of Asia as well before clearing the way for another cycle of global growth.

The facts are simple. China dodged the Great Contraction of 2008-2009 by unleashing credit on a massive scale.

Zhu Min, the IMF's deupty chief and a former Chinese official, said loans had jumped from 100pc of GDP before the crisis to around 200pc today -- if you include off-books financing from letters of credits, trusts, and such like.
To put this in perspective, a study by Fitch Ratings found that credit in America rose by just 42pc of GDP in the five-year period before the housing bubble popped. It rose by 45pc of GDP in Japan from before the Nikkei cracked in 1990, and 47pc before the Korean crisis in 1998.

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Premier Wen Jiabao said his country and will play its part to "prevent the further spread of the sovereign debt crisis," but warned that China will not sign a blank cheque for states that have failed to carry out full reform.

"Countries must first put their own houses in order," he told the World Economic Forum in Dalian.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • Italy

At All Saints Roman Catholic Church Cathedral in Nairobi, African workers were recently singing lively Christian worship songs as they broke ground for the construction of a new office block for the Nairobi Archdiocese.

However, they were not working for an African or British construction company. China Zhongxing Construction is building Maurice Cardinal Otunga Plaza, one of many church contracts Chinese construction companies have won in recent years as China has expanded its influence in Africa. Now, Chinese firms build many bridges, roads and stadiums across the continent.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Kenya • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

The Chinese have long understood that America's sea control in the western Pacific has been the military foundation of its strategic primacy in Asia, and that the US Navy's carriers are the key. They have therefore focused the formidable expansion of their naval and air forces over the past 20 years on trying to deprive the US of sea control by developing their capacity to sink American carriers. In this they appear to have been strikingly successful, to the point that US military leaders now acknowledge that their sea control in the western Pacific is slipping away.

But for China, depriving America of sea control is not the same as acquiring it themselves. Its naval strategy has focused on the much more limited aim that strategists call ''sea denial'': the ability to attack an adversary's ships without being able to stop them attacking yours. These days, sea denial can be achieved without putting ships to sea, because land-based aircraft, long-range missiles and submarines can sink ships much more cost-effectively than other ships can. This is what China has done.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Europe

... let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once — when the world has never been more interconnected — is mind-boggling. We are again “present at the creation” — but of what?....

As for America, we’ve thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subprime mortgages and construction work) and less muscle-building (education, skill-building and innovation). It’s put us in a deep hole, and the only way to dig out now is a new, hybrid politics that mixes spending cuts, tax increases, tax reform and investments in infrastructure, education, research and production. But that mix is not the agenda of either party. Either our two parties find a way to collaborate in the center around this new hybrid politics, or a third party is going to emerge — or we’re stuck and the pain will just get worse.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • European Central Bank • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Taxes • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • Asia • China • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • Middle East

This was the subject of today's Adult Sunday school. Make sure you did not miss Walter Russell Mead's piece wherein he uses Daniel 5 as a means by which to understand our times. His reflections formed the basis of our deliberations--KSH.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • * Culture-Watch • History • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Japan • Europe • * South Carolina • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Though Beijing has few options other than to continue to buy United States Treasury bonds, Chinese officials are clearly concerned that the country’s substantial holdings of American debt, worth at least $1.1 trillion, are being devalued.

“The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the commentary, which was published in Chinese newspapers.

Beijing, which did not release any other official statement on the downgrade, called on Washington to make substantial cuts to its “gigantic military expenditure” and its “bloated social welfare” programs.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China, Europe, America, Japan: each of in its own way is moving toward comprehensive bankruptcy: financial, spiritual, social. Recent tremors in world financial markets are a warning from the invisible hand that we are skirting dangerously close to that final frontier, but we will miss the point if we do nothing more than put our financial affairs in slightly better order.

The great crime of Belshazzar and his cronies was to become disconnected from real values and real events. They used the sacred vessels of the Temple for an unholy palace banquet; at a time of great danger to the realm they distracted themselves with good food and good wine. They ignored the great source of meaning that enlightens and guides the world to focus their attention on shiny objects: gold, silver, brass.

All this and more describes our global leadership today.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • European Central Bank • The U.S. Government • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010

Chinese rating agency Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. said Wednesday it has cut the credit rating of the United States from A+ to A with a negative outlook after the U.S. federal government announced that the country's debt limit would be increased.

The decision to lift the debt ceiling will not change the fact that the U.S. national debt growth has outpaced that of its overall economy and fiscal revenue, which will lead to a decline in its debt-paying ability, said Dagong Global in a statement.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Charities/Non-Profit Organizations • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

On a recent Sunday at the Beijing Zion Church, Pastor Jin Mingri laid out a vision for Christians in China that contrasts starkly with the ruling Communist Party's tight reins on religion.

"Let your descendants become great politicians like Joseph and Daniel," said Mr. Jin, referring to the Old Testament figures who surmounted challenges to become political leaders. "Let them influence the future course of this country," the pastor said in one of several sermons to his 800-member church.

Mr. Jin is one of a growing group of Protestant leaders challenging China's state-run religious system, in an escalating struggle largely unnoticed by the outside world. For the first time, China's illegal underground churches, whose members are estimated in the tens of millions, are mounting a unified and increasingly organized push for legal recognition.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China has moved to shut down several fake Apple stores found in Kunming city.

Three of the elaborate fake stores, which mimicked the look of the real thing, came to the world's attention after being exposed on a blog.

Following the publicity, trade officials investigated and found five stores in Kunming posing as official Apple retail outlets.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Chinese officials are fiercely attached to the one-child policy. They attribute to it almost every drop in fertility and every averted birth: some 400m more people, they claim, would have been born without it. This is patent nonsense. Chinese fertility was falling for decades before the one-child policy took effect in 1979. Fertility has gone down almost as far and as fast without coercion in neighbouring countries, including those with large Chinese populations. The spread of birth control and a desire for smaller families tend to accompany economic growth and development almost everywhere.

But the policy has almost certainly reduced fertility below the level to which it would have fallen anyway. As a result, China has one of the world’s lowest “dependency ratios”, with roughly three economically active adults for each dependent child or old person. It has therefore enjoyed a larger “demographic dividend” (extra growth as a result of the high ratio of workers to dependents) than its neighbours. But the dividend is near to being cashed out....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

When China's state-run Catholic Church ordained a new bishop for the Diocese of Shantou last Thursday (July 14) without the Vatican's approval, it represented the latest step back from years of progress in a complex relationship.

Yet the main causes for the shift may have little to do with Rome, experts say, and instead lie in momentous geopolitical events in other regions of the globe, and deep social changes within China itself.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

If we continue as now seems likely, a crunch is coming – in fact three crunches – our global footprint greatly exceeding what the Earth can support, climate destabilisation becoming severe, and fresh water becoming insufficient to feed the Earth’s large population. These crunches will not, by themselves, destroy humanity but they will cause a Darwinian situation; when the going gets tough there will be survival of the fittest. By mid-century, the Earth could be like a lifeboat that’s too small to save everyone.

To be politically correct, organisations don’t use the term ‘Darwinian’ or talk about ‘survival of the fittest’, but I am increasingly finding that at elite dinner parties there is already discussion of who the survivors will be. China has enormous fighting spirit and will soon be the world’s largest economy. In 2030 it will have 1.4 billion people. The average footprint of a Chinese person is a small fraction of an average American. The Chinese government does more detailed future planning than perhaps any other government and is determined that China will be one of the survivors. China has been buying the steel and resources it will need in the future. To the largest extent possible it has already cornered the market in rare Earth metals needed for high technology.

The USA combined with Canada will be a survivor, because it is economically powerful and resourceful, and with Canada it has a large amount of land, much of which will benefit from global warming – the breadbasket of the future. Europe, in my mind, is a question mark. Japan will struggle....

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...what is most striking when you talk to employers today is how many of them have used the pressure of the recession to become even more productive by deploying more automation technologies, software, outsourcing, robotics — anything they can use to make better products with reduced head count and health care and pension liabilities. That is not going to change. And while many of them are hiring, they are increasingly picky. They are all looking for the same kind of people — people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever.

Today’s college grads need to be aware that the rising trend in Silicon Valley is to evaluate employees every quarter, not annually. Because the merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Globalization • Science & Technology • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • India • Europe

More than one million websites closed down in China last year, a state-run think tank has said.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said there were were 41% fewer websites at the end of 2010 than a year earlier.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China's richest and most populous province has asked the central government to relax the law that restricts most families to one child.

Guangdong, in south-east China, wants to lead a pilot project that will allow some families to have a second child, according to state media.

The one-child policy has been in effect for 30 years and is facing growing criticism.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Pakistan's increasingly "close and effective defense ties" established with China during the past decade will allow Islamabad to "fill the gap" arising from the prospect of reduced military aid from the United States, a senior Pakistani official said on Sunday after reports emerged of cuts of up to $800 million in U.S. aid.

Amid tense relations with the United States, Pakistan officials have increasingly pointed towards Beijing as the country's natural ally, offering the possibility of becoming at least a half-substitute to ties with the U.S.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Pakistan

The Chinese Premier warned Britain against "finger-pointing" and "lecturing" the world's most populous nation about human rights abuses yesterday as he signed trade agreements worth £1.4bn with David Cameron.

The carefully-orchestrated three-day visit by Wen Jiabao had included a visit to William Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon, a tour of a Birmingham car factory and a show of pomp in London, away from demonstrators.

But the key moment came yesterday when the two leaders witnessed 24 trade agreements and memorandums of understanding between the two countries, covering banking, mining, oil and gas, alcohol and even supply of 800 pigs to China.

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Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told Chinese media the impending split of his country's south risked triggering "time bombs", but said his government's bond with China would not be shaken by Beijing's courting of the secessionist south.

He made the comments in interviews published on Monday, the day he begins a state visit to China, his powerful patron and a major buy of Sudanese crude oil.

Beijing has been building ties with the emerging state in southern Sudan but continues to be one of the major supporters of Bashir, who faces indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes charges stemming from long-running fighting in the Darfur region.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Sudan • Asia • China

Mara Hvistendahl is worried about girls. Not in any political, moral or cultural sense but as an existential matter. She is right to be. In China, India and numerous other countries (both developing and developed), there are many more men than women, the result of systematic campaigns against baby girls. In "Unnatural Selection," Ms. Hvistendahl reports on this gender imbalance: what it is, how it came to be and what it means for the future.

In nature, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. This ratio is biologically ironclad. Between 104 and 106 is the normal range, and that's as far as the natural window goes. Any other number is the result of unnatural events.

Yet today in India there are 112 boys born for every 100 girls. In China, the number is 121—though plenty of Chinese towns are over the 150 mark. China's and India's populations are mammoth enough that their outlying sex ratios have skewed the global average to a biologically impossible 107. But the imbalance is not only in Asia. Azerbaijan stands at 115, Georgia at 118 and Armenia at 120.

What is causing the skewed ratio: abortion...

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Children • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Asia • China • India • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Already, in nine major cities tracked by Rosealea Yao, an analyst at market-research firm Dragonomics, real-estate prices fell 4.9% in April from a year earlier. Last year, prices in those nine cities rose 21.5%; in 2009, the increase was about 10%, as China started to recover from the global economic crisis, with much steeper increases toward the end of that year.

A downturn in property and apartment prices would harm Chinese industry and investment, and crimp consumer spending. China is a "housing-led economy," says UBS economist Jonathan Anderson, who estimates that property construction alone accounted for 13% of gross domestic product in 2010, twice the share of the 1990s.

While China's anticipated growth is still well above that of other large economies, any reduction could have deep consequences. The global economy is now even more dependent on China for demand for anything from commodities to luxury goods, given the tepid recovery in the U.S. and Europe's continuing sovereign-debt problems.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Asia • China

...this is not about technology alone. As Russian historian Leon Aron has noted, the Arab uprisings closely resemble the Russian democratic revolution of 1991 in one key respect: they were both not so much about freedom or food as about ''dignity''. They each grew out of a deep desire by people to run their own lives and to be treated as ''citizens'' - with both obligations and rights that the state cannot just give and take by whim.

If you want to know what brings about revolutions, it is not GDP rising or falling, says Aron, ''it is the quest for dignity''. We always exaggerate people's quest for GDP and undervalue their quest for ideals. ''Dignity before bread'' was the slogan of the Tunisian revolution. ''The spark that lights the fuse is always the quest for dignity,'' said Aron. ''Today's technology just makes the fire much more difficult to put out.''

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Asia • China • Middle East • * Theology • Anthropology

China’s official Communist Party newspaper issued a caustic response on Monday to Google’s charge that Chinese hackers had taken aim at influential users of its Gmail service, calling the accusations “political gaming” aimed at fomenting new discord between the Beijing and Washington governments.

The newspaper, People’s Daily, published a front-page editorial in Monday’s international editions that also suggested that Google’s actions could cost it credibility in the business world.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Google Inc. is blaming computer hackers in China for a high-tech ruse that broke into the personal Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials, military personnel and political activists.

The breach announced Wednesday marks the second time in 17 months that Google has publicly identified China as the home base for a scheme aimed at hijacking information stored on Google's vast network of computers.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Foreign Relations • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

Leading Chinese author Xiaolu Guo has revealed that China still views America as its biggest enemy and competitor.

Speaking on a panel simply entitled, ‘China’, at the Hay Festival, the author of ‘A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary’, said: “For the last 20 years China thinks America as a model but is also the enemy.”

Talking about her experience of education in Beijing, Chinese-born Guo who now lives in London, revealed that anti-Americanism was still very strong and people were told to intensively study American work and texts, such as J.D Salinger’s Catcher in Rye, in order to know everything about the “enemy”.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China

...Li Yinhe, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), says that education alone will not be the answer to a problem so deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. "This is a social custom, and it's well known that social customs are the hardest to change," Li says. "In traditional society, people believed that the more wives a man had the more successful he was. Now this tradition has found room to grow again."

Throughout China's dynastic history, keeping mistresses was not only tolerated, but actually had the official seal of approval from the men at the top. The country's emperors maintained legendary harems of concubines, as did noblemen, wealthy merchants and anyone seeking to enhance their social status. Indeed, the country's most famous classic novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, relates the story of an imperial concubine in the Qing dynasty who supports her entire family, including its own numerous concubines, thanks to the emperor's patronage.

That historical context has perpetuated the notion that having a mistress equates to having status and power. Now, in today's status-hungry China, keeping a mistress is once again the fashionable thing to do.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Marriage & Family • Psychology • Women • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

Contrary to what some headlines might have suggested, [President Obama's speech to Parliament]'s central theme was not division and weakness, but strength – the strength of what has traditionally been seen as the Western way, but is really something much broader. As such, it offered an upbeat prelude to the G8 summit which concludes in Deauville today, a prelude as fitting as it was unfashionable.

Unfashionable, because the prevailing transatlantic mood is pessimism. The philosophical consensus has been that the West, as embodied by the US, is in terminal decline and the future belongs to the emerging economies, chief among them China, with India snapping at its heels. Viewed from this perspective, the only realistic task for the "old" countries is to slow their decline and use the last years of their ascendancy to fix international rules to guard their way of life....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • India • England / UK • Europe

If it wasn’t already clear, India’s announcement of $5 billion in development deals in Africa should certainly put to rest any question of whether India is dedicated to doing business on the African continent over the long haul.

The pledge of development aid to African countries – essentially a fund to help African countries to meet their development goals – stands in stark contrast to Africa’s largest single trading partner, China.

While China trades large infrastructure projects (built mostly by Chinese labor) for access to African raw materials, India spends money on training Africans to develop their own countries. And while Indian countries certainly have come into Africa as investors, Indian diplomats are quick to stress that the relationship between India and African countries is more one of equal partners.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Energy, Natural Resources • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Asia • China • India

The persecuted Catholic Church in China needs and deserves the prayers of Catholics throughout the world, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"There, as elsewhere, Christ is living his passion" because of government restrictions and pressures on the church, the pope said May 18 at the end of his weekly general audience.

He asked Catholics everywhere to observe May 24, the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, as a day of prayer for Catholics in mainland China. Pope Benedict established the annual day of prayer in 2007 when he wrote a letter to Catholics in China outlining ways to promote greater unity between those exercising their faith clandestinely and those participating in communities overseen by the government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

Communist China has earned praise in the past few years for a perceived thaw in its strict opposition to religious observance—particularly Christianity. A visitor to China will see Christian churches out in the open; a printing facility in Nanjing is the largest Bible publisher in the world. There is the appearance, at least, of a faith that is free and tolerated.

This helps explain some of the shock over a series of brutal crackdowns that have come as startling departures. Over Easter, Chinese authorities escalated their campaign against a Protestant “house church,” Shouwang, detaining dozens of believers and placing hundreds more under house arrest for the “crime” of worshipping in a public square. And late last month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report, which flagged several incidents of horrific abuses of Christians in China​—​including “disappearances,” beatings, the destruction of churches, and forced “re-education through labor.”

But these two trends are not in fact contradictory. The “thaw” in China’s treatment of Christians was nothing more than a savvy and sophisticated new twist on its longstanding assault on religious freedom....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

Some time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: “Please God, just one more bubble.” That wish has now been granted. Compared with the rest of America, Silicon Valley feels like a boomtown. Corporate chefs are in demand again, office rents are soaring and the pay being offered to talented folk in fashionable fields like data science is reaching Hollywood levels. And no wonder, given the prices now being put on web companies.

Facebook and Twitter are not listed, but secondary-market trades value them at some $76 billion (more than Boeing or Ford) and $7.7 billion respectively. This week LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, said it hopes to be valued at up to $3.3 billion in an initial public offering (IPO). The next day Microsoft announced its purchase of Skype, an internet calling and video service, for a frothy-looking $8.5 billion—ten times its sales last year and 400 times its operating income. And those are all big-brand companies with customers around the world. Prices look even more excessive for fledgling firms in the private market (Color, a photo-sharing social network, was recently said to be worth $100m, even though it has an untested service) or for anything involving China. There has been a stampede for shares in Renren, hailed as “China’s Facebook”, and other Chinese web giants listed on American exchanges.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

A fightback by repressive governments is putting at risk a historic struggle for freedom and justice in the Arab world, Amnesty International says.

Publishing its annual report, the rights group highlights the fight for control over communications technology.

It criticises Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen for targeting peaceful protesters to stay in power.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • Asia • Bahrain • China • Yemen • Middle East • Iran • Syria

Chinese police are holding a South Korean Bible instructor and his wife following a raid on an underground Protestant church, an activist group said Wednesday, as the government pressures Christians worshipping outside the Communist-controlled church.

The instructor, whose Chinese name was given as Jin Yongzhe, was detained Tuesday along with dozens of other Christians during a police assault on a three-floor church building in the central province of Henan's Weishi county, the U.S.-based China Aid Association said.

The church building was searched and thousands of dollars worth of property seized during the raid, which the association said targeted a religious education seminar being held there.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • South Korea

The federal government will not run short of money to pay its bills on May 16, when the federal debt reaches the legal maximum of $14.3 trillion.

Even after Aug. 2, the deadline the Treasury Department set this week for Congress to lift the borrowing limit, the government might be able to delay a crisis, perhaps even for a few months, through extraordinary measures such as asset sales.

But with every passing week of stalemate over the debt ceiling, the risk increases that investors will start to fret that the United States will not pay its debts, and demand higher interest rates for loans to the federal government.

Should that happen, the cost could be vast and the damage difficult to reverse.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • The U.S. Government • Budget • Social Security • The National Deficit • The United States Currency (Dollar etc) • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

A powerful arm of China’s government said Wednesday that it had created a new central agency to regulate every corner of the nation’s vast Internet community, a move that appeared to complement a continuing crackdown on political dissidents and other social critics.

But the vaguely worded announcement left unclear whether the new agency, the State Internet Information Office, would in fact supersede a welter of ministries and other government offices that already claim jurisdiction over parts of cyberspace.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Law & Legal Issues • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China on Tuesday stood by its ally Pakistan amid growing questions in the U.S. about whether the country was complicit in harboring Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader killed in a sprawling mansion in a garrison city close to Islamabad.

Meanwhile, an outpouring of discussion on the Chinese Internet revealed mixed views of bin Laden. Many users said the world was safer following his killing while others—including some prominent social and political commentators—expressed sympathy, and even respect, for the mastermind of the World Trade Center attacks.

After hailing bin Laden's death as a "positive development in the international struggle against terrorism," the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday swung to the defense of Pakistan.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • Pakistan

Police in Beijing detained more than 30 evangelical Christians as they attempted to gather outdoors for Easter services and confined about 500 to their homes, continuing a broad crackdown on dissent that has also targeted lawyers, bloggers and human-rights activists.

Church leaders as well as U.S.-based ChinaAid, a group that tracks cases of religious persecution of Christians in China, confirmed at least 34 worshipers were detained in northwest Beijing's Haidian district. It was the third time in recent weeks that police have detained church members as they attempted to gather for services.

The recent crackdown comes during a period of heightened tension in Beijing as anonymous online calls for a "Jasmine Revolution" have set the country's security apparatus on edge. Ai Weiwei, the widely known artist and activist, is in police custody on what authorities describe as an investigation into "economic crimes."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

China needs to guard against volatility in US Treasury prices should investors demand higher returns from US government debt, a researcher at the Chinese central bank said on Monday.

Zhang Jianhua, a head of research at the People’s Bank of China, said worries that the heavily indebted US government may not repay its debt could drive Treasury yields higher and cause US debt prices to fluctuate.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • The U.S. Government • Budget • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

China will implement a new regulation to further control the online industry after a dispute between two Chinese Internet giants, Tencent and Qihoo 360, caused harm to their users, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Wednesday.

Zhang Feng, director of the ministry's Department of Communications Development, made the announcement at a press conference concerning China's first-quarter industrial operations.

"We have finishing soliciting opinions for the new regulation and will publish it soon," Zhang said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Law & Legal Issues • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China

The days leading up to Easter are always a sombre time for Christians. But this year in Beijing, many believers have the added concern of not knowing if or where they’ll be allowed to celebrate the holiest day of the year on the Christian calendar.

Nearly 50 members of one of Beijing’s largest Protestant house churches, including its two pastors, were detained and hundreds of police were deployed in a commercial district in the northwest of the city in order to prevent the congregation from holding an outdoor Palm Sunday service. The leaders of the Shouwang church said they would nonetheless try again next week – Easter Sunday – unless they are given permission to celebrate the mass indoors at their usual premises.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches

Like so much else under Heaven, repression in China has often seemed to go in cycles. Every now and then it has suited the country’s leaders to relax their steely grip on the country and allow a modicum of political liberty.

Freer criticism in the media has helped give the party a veneer of credibility. Lip-service to the law and due process has won plaudits overseas and boosted the economy at home. So a thaw would set in for a while, a “Beijing spring”. A freeze would always follow. But, until lately, in each new cycle the springs were seeming warmer and the freezes not quite so harsh. When the country was starting to liberalise, Westerners justified doing business with China on just such grounds. More economic openness would surely lead to more openness of other kinds.

The latest freeze casts this widespread hope into doubt, for three reasons. The first is the scale of the crackdown. Ai Weiwei, China’s best-known artist and dissident, who was detained at Beijing airport on April 3rd, is only the most notable figure to be caught by it. Calls on the internet for a “jasmine revolution” have prompted armed police and plain-clothes goons to descend in huge numbers on public places to stop people from “strolling”, as a veiled form of protest.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Asia • China