And for the record I'm aware a lot (but not all) of it's just by one faggot. (Looking at you 96.237.X.X; don't think I've forgotten your past bullshit) If you start posting Malaysia threads or some shit instead, I'm just going to nuke every single one of your posts whenever you spam, replies included.

So are all other China posts/threads going to be deleted?

>>240524
Newer threads, yes. I'll probably lock others.

If this sticky stays as empty as I think it's going to, I'll take it down and just have a ban on china local news.

Are you mad? What have you done? You'll cut posting on here in half!!

Anti-China News is what sets us apart now that /new/ is back.

>>240527
>Anti-China News is what sets us apart now that /new/ is back.

And now we have an entire thread dedicated to it.

>>240527
>Anti-China News is what sets us apart now that /new/ is back.
No, it's what's ruining this board. Thank you Anonex, apparently we're all too retarded/full of trolls to not respond to obvious trollbait.

Just gotta say thanks for making this thread Anonex, the shit's really getting out of hand these days.

At least 18 provinces, including big cities like Beijing and Shenzhen, have increased the minimum wage by an average of 20 percent from Thursday as officials hint cheap labor may no longer be considered China’s sole competitive edge.

Jiangsu province was the first to increase its minimum wage this year, ushering in the beginning of a nationwide wave that will be followed by 27 provinces and municipalities by the end of this year, the First Financial Daily reported.

Sun Qunyi, an expert with Wage Research Institute at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said this round of wage increases is compensation to low-income workers since the global economic crisis froze wages in 2009.

The share of personal income in China's gross domestic product has fallen to 39.7 percent in 2005 from 56.5 percent in 1983, statistics released by All-China Federation of Trade Unions showed. Wage increases were also far behind the economic growth.

Despite the increase, the minimum wage is still quite low compared with the average wage level. The average wage in Hainan was 2,077 yuan, but the minimum wage stood only at 630 yuan.

Amid worries that the wage increase may add to the company's operations costs and end China's status as a low-wage manufacturer, Yao Jian, a spokesman with the Ministry of Commerce, explained that China's attraction to foreign investors is not all about cheap labor force, but includes a great market and a complete industry chain.

Yao also said that the wage increase is both in accordance with the government’s efforts to adjust industrial policy and to assist more people to share the achievements of economic development.

Lu Ning, chief commentator of The Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post, thought the wage increase will not force foreigner-owned companies to pull out China, but can help different regions in China to adjust the economic structure.

The latest round of wage increases also happened after a series of strikes for higher pay at foreign-owned factories, and an expectation of increasing income among Chinese young migrant workers.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/02/content_10053553.htm

A couple in a village in South China's Guangdong province has devoted themselves to 10 adopted children, even though they are both jobless and the husband has a walking disability, the local Guangzhou Daily reported Friday.

The couple, both in their 30s, take care of eight girls and two boys, who are between 3 and 17 years old, and their own 2-year-old son. They live in a rented three-story building, which cost them 1,200 yuan ($180) a month, in a remote rural area in Guangdong.


The big family. [Photo/Guangzhou Daily]
The big family has been living on their savings and other people's donations.

The mother was deeply touched by a book that portrays the good deeds of a Western nun in 1998. Since then, she has been interested in finding homeless children. In 2005, she took her first step in setting up the big family by adopting her first child in Chongqing.

After that she came across a man named Zhang Zhongliang on the Internet. Zhang suffered from a walking disability after an illness at the age of 23. The two later got married, but with her condition that Zhang must accept her adopted child, which was just fine with him.

The education of the children was carried out by the couple themselves in an American-style homeschooling.

The father, who studied traditional Chinese medicine, and the middle school graduate mother teach the children about how to be a good and diligent person, in addition to the normal lessons including Chinese, mathematics, music and English.

The children start their lessons at 9:00 am every day. Lessons in the morning include Chinese, music and English. They would also have 25 minutes to do housework during the morning session. After taking dancing, calligraphy and painting lessons in the afternoon, they have plenty of time to play.


http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/02/content_10053391.htm

Hot weather hinders firefighting in north China forest

HUZHONG, Heilongjiang -- More than 20,000 firemen are battling lighting-triggered forest fires in north China as continuous hot weather undermines their efforts, forest fire prevention authorities said.

The fire spotted Saturday continued to spread Wednesday due to high temperatures after having weakened overnight, Sun Zhagen, deputy director of China's National Forest Fire Prevention Headquarters, said.

The forest fire in the Greater Hinggan Mountains in Heilongjiang Province.
More fire fighters and equipment will be sent to control the fire, Sun said.

"As it is too hot to get close to the scene to put out the fire, we have to build fire barriers during the day and battle the blaze at night," said Pang Zhiqiang, a forest policeman.

Temperatures in the Greater Hinggan Mountains Region have been over 37 degrees Celsius recently and seven counties and districts have witnessed record-high temperatures.

Temperatures in Huzhong District hit 39.7 degrees Celsius Saturday, said Na Jihai, the provincial meteorological bureau's chief.

Precipitation from winter to spring was 45 percent lower average, Na said.

Two helicopters were dispatched to conduct artificial precipitation operations but failed.

The dry and hot weather will continue for the next three days, according to the National Meteorological Center of China Meteorological Administration.

"This is a battle between human beings and nature. We have to work hard to win," Sun said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-06/30/content_10042408.htm

>>240550

CHINA CORRUPT GOVERNMENT CAUSE THE LIGHTNING !!!!!!!!

MODS ARE GODS

You have got to be kidding me.

>>240564
Better one sticky than the entire front page of china.

>Looking at you 96.237.X.X; don't think I've forgotten your past bullshit

What else did he do? Was it the political cartoon spammer?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Oh God I'm loling my ass off. But finally, ISN and gweilofag will have to keep this China shit confined to one thread, we can finally discuss Jews and niggers again without them tediously responding to and bumping every single fucking China thread.

>>240573
>implying they wont now discuss other news articles.

Anonex, what about threads that are obviously posted to troll "gweilos"?

I have a feeling we'll be needing an Oakland sticky soon...

http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_demo_ip?ips=96.237.160.255

http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_demo_ip?ips=96.237.50.100

I was sitting here a bit bored and tried out looking up some IP ranges. Looks like the 96.237.X.X range is generally for Massachusetts, United States.

If you want to see what's wrong with Africa, take a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The size of Western Europe, with almost no paved roads, Congo is the sucking vortex where Africa's heart should be. Independent Congo gave the world Mobutu Sese Seko, who for 32 years impoverished his people while traveling the world in a chartered Concorde. His death in 1997 ushered in a civil war that killed 5.4 million people and unleashed a hurricane of rape on tens of thousands more. Today AIDS and malaria are epidemics. Congo, then, is not a place you'd normally associate with a yuppie.
Tell that to Mathis Xu, 26, a manager at a Chinese state construction company whom I met last year. As a languages student in Beijing, Xu took French to be different — and different is what he got. In April 2008, he was selected to translate for the Congolese government and the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corp. (CREC) in negotiations over a $9 billion deal. CREC and others would build thousands of kilometers of roads and railways, 32 hospitals, 145 health centers and two universities — an investment of $6 billion in the kind of infrastructure Congo desperately needs. As partial payment, China would receive $3 billion in concessions to mine the copper and cobalt essential to its growing industries. When the deal was struck that month, Xu found himself posted to Kinshasa as CREC's liaison with the government. "We will transform this city," he exclaims, watching CREC's giant road builders level a hillside in Kinshasa next to the Congo River. "It will be fantastic!"


As more than 300 political figures, business leaders and champions of civil society gather in Cape Town for a forum sponsored by TIME and our corporate cousins at Fortune and CNN, China's role in Africa will be a key part of the discussions. Notwithstanding the Great Recession, many observers think the African economy is poised for great things. Fueled by a commodities boom, the continent's output grew 5% to 7% in both 2007 and '08 and even managed 2% growth in 2009. China is not the only nation that has noticed opportunities in Africa, but it is the one that has taken them most seriously, in ways that may change not just the region's economic landscape but its political one too.
The ambition, speed and scale of Chinese involvement in Africa is extraordinary. According to Chris Alden, author of China in Africa, two-way trade stood at $10 billion in 2000. By 2006, it was $55 billion, and in 2009 it hit $90 billion, making China Africa's single largest trading partner, supplanting the U.S., which did $86 billion in trade with Africa in 2009. Today the Chinese are pumping oil from Sudan to Angola, logging from Liberia to Gabon, mining from Zambia to Ghana and farming from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Chinese contractors are building roads from Equatorial Guinea to Ethiopia, dams from the Congo to the Nile, and hospitals and schools, sports stadiums and presidential palaces across the continent. They are buying too. Acquisitions range from a $5.5 billion stake in South Africa's Standard Bank to a $14 million investment in a mobile-phone company in Somalia.


Beijing insists it is a partner in Africa's development, delivering investment and gaining a new market for its products and new access to resources. Western business leaders say China is on a resource grab. They worry that it is playing unfairly, undercutting them by paying low wages; skirting standards on safety, the environment and human rights; and coordinating commerce, assistance and diplomacy in ways impossible, not to say illegal, in the West. The truth is somewhere in between. To the extent that China is using Africa as an experiment — to try out ideas of how it might be in the world — it is worthy of close study. To do that, we must answer two questions: How is China changing Africa? And how is Africa changing China?
Let's go back to Kinshasa. Congo's got problems. The Western way of helping has been with aid — multilateral, bilateral or through self-funding religious groups and NGOs. To stem fighting in the east, Congo has a 21,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force, MONUC, the biggest in the world. These efforts have had mixed success. The war hasn't ended, and the world's loans to Congo have helped fuel corruption. Little has been done to address Congo's infrastructure. Coordinating aid among so many groups and nations remains difficult.
Enter China. Beijing doesn't do gifts; it does deals. In Congo, China's infrastructure-for-mines deal irked the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF argued that Congo's guarantee to China that it would recoup at least $3 billion in minerals was an IOU on Congo's national assets and therefore a new debt. That fell afoul of debt-write-off conditions, which require that the debtor take on no new loans. "If the Congolese take the Chinese deal," said a Western official familiar with the negotiations in mid-2009, "they will not get any more [Western] support." A standoff ensued. An earlier deal, in 2007 with Angola, had also outraged the IMF, which had been negotiating a new loan with Angola for years, with carefully calibrated conditions to block corruption and alleviate poverty. By paying Luanda $5 billion in return for oil concessions and infrastructure contracts, China effectively made the IMF redundant. Diplomats across Africa like to say the continent offers space for everyone. But what's happening in Angola and Congo is a new scramble for Africa. Xu, the translator, has no doubt that he is engaged in an intense rivalry. "Not everybody is pleased to see us here, that's for sure. But we are not going to lose."
For all the heat, IMF officials admit that the Chinese model for African development has some advantages. First, it's quick. Loan talks with multilateral agencies take years. The China-Angola discussions took weeks. "With the West, there are studies, analyses and bureaucracy," says the Western official. "The Chinese just ask what the government wants, and they don't question or comment or judge. They just do it." China also works as visibly as it does quickly. Drive across almost any African country today, and you'll find Chinese engineers by the side of the road, sleeves rolled up, overseeing work crews. IMF officials in suits crunching numbers inside air-conditioned compounds just don't have the same kind of dash. "What we do is always in the shade," complains an IMF staffer in Africa. "Macroeconomic stability — what is that? You can't show it on camera."


The Asian model of development is looking increasingly attractive in ways beyond aid. African governments look at Western economic instability over the past two years and find a better model in Asia's extraordinary growth. Special economic zones, one of the engines of China's growth for two decades, are popping up across the continent. But what really distinguishes Chinese businesspeople from their Western rivals in Africa is how risk-happy they seem. Barely a month goes by without the announcement of a new billion-dollar investment in one of the world's least stable countries. The latest? A stunning $23 billion deal in May to rebuild Nigeria's oil-refining capacity. For Chinese businesses, having the backing of a rich state that packages aid with commerce and has an extended time horizon cuts risk significantly. Wu Zexian, Chinese ambassador to Congo, elaborates on this new model of development assistance. "Before, African countries never profited from their resources. Now they help them build infrastructure. Other countries say, This country has a lot of problems. We say, This country has huge potential." The key is long-term vision. "Yes, there is a risk," says Wu. "But in 50 years, we will still be here. So will Congo and the mines. Short term: sure, problems. Long term: not much risk."
So how is Africa changing China? In 2005, 49 workers died in an accident at a Chinese mining-explosives factory in Chambishi, Zambia. Populist opposition leader Michael Sata accused the government of selling out the country to Beijing, a stance that earned him wide support in the 2006 and '08 elections. His views on China are colorful and expressed in terms that many Chinese would find deeply offensive. "In every part of Zambia, the Chinaman is there, packed eight to a room," he says at his office in Lusaka. "What the Chinaman is doing, nobody knows."


Zambia is just one country in Africa where China's presence has provoked criticism. In South Africa, China found itself rebutting warnings from former President Thabo Mbeki about a new "colonial relationship." In Ethiopia, China had to take sides in a separatist conflict in April 2007 when Ogaden National Liberation Front rebels killed 74 workers, nine of whom were Chinese, at a Chinese oil-field installation. The same year, a Chinese engineer was killed in an attack on a stone-material plant in Mombasa, Kenya, and Chinese oil workers have been kidnapped by rebels in Nigeria. Chinese migrants fought pitched battles with Algerians in their capital, Algiers, last year.
So China is trying to explain itself. Chinese bankers, academics and diplomats now take star turns at economic summits across the continent. "There is a mistrust of China," says Wu. "We have to speak to be understood." China has done more than just speak. It has also, in some cases, abandoned its long-standing policy of noninterference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. Liu Guijin, China's special representative to Africa and its top diplomat on the continent, calls himself a "political troubleshooter" and says he spends a lot of time in Sudan mediating the conflict in Darfur. That sounds like a definite departure. "Perhaps we are having a flexible interpretation of noninterference," Liu replies with a laugh. After an earlier reluctance, China is now the fourth largest contributor of troops to peacekeeping operations; its soldiers are on the ground in Liberia, Sudan and Congo as part of U.N. operations.


One man's flexibility can be another's willingness to do deals with anyone. But China is becoming more sensitive to that criticism too. In Zimbabwe, China is often accused of helping keep Robert Mugabe in power. Not so, contends a senior member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Party, who says China went to "huge lengths" to ensure that MDC Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, not Mugabe, got credit for a new $950 million loan in July 2009.
Mirroring the changes taking place in China itself, China's relationship with Africa is "changing and maturing month by month as both parties better understand each other," says Geoffrey White, CEO of the trans-African conglomerate Lonrho. It was that spirit that persuaded China to drop details in its Congo deal that the IMF found objectionable as well as cut the infrastructure part of the deal from $6 billion to $3 billion. Liu says that while China and the West have "different priorities, different approaches and different ways of doing things, we need China and [the West] to make efforts to align their interests and policies."
There are limits to how far China will go. It will continue to pursue warm relations with all African countries, whether they are democracies or dictatorships, partly because each African country represents a potential vote against Taiwan's efforts to gain diplomatic recognition. China's commitment to nonintervention also remains strong; it has, for example, not supported the International Criminal Court in its attempts to prosecute Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes.
For all the tangled tale of aid, investment and diplomacy, what China has really brought to Africa is a change in the way the rest of the world thinks of the continent. China has helped transform the idea of Africa from a destination for charity to a place for business. In 2006, for the first time, flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa were greater than the amount of aid — $48 billion of FDI, vs. $40 billion of aid, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And the numbers keep growing. In 2008, according to the U.N. trade body UNCTAD, FDI hit $88 billion. "Trade, not aid" is the new mantra of influential African leaders like Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
China's largesse, whatever the explanations for its arrival in Africa, has left a mark. As the representative of the Zambian Mineworkers Union at the Chambishi complex where the 49 workers died, Mwinbe Stanslas, 45, might be expected to sound a note of caution about China's expansion. He does not. "I've worked for the British, the Americans, a Jew and the Swiss," he says. "They all closed. The way the Chinese are investing, they're not leaving. My boy will get a job in this mine, and his boy after him. China is taking over. And I tell you, it's a blessing."


http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2000110_2000287_2000276-2,00.html#ixzz0sZrOgqM3

Great Wall Chinese Restaurant has reopened after undergoing renovations.

The main dining room looks austere by oriental standards, but the manager says they are still to put in the finishing touches and we can presumably expect the typical gaudy appearance soon.

Obviously more than a few regulars are still unaware that The Great Wall is back in business and it was half empty during this week’s Wednesday peak lunch period.

Upon entering, I was accosted by a very friendly waiter who saw me to the desired table in some dim corner, where I could observe without being the centre of attraction.

I think someone has given all waiters an instruction to "smile, smile and smile" or they just pick up the ones with ready smiles in the first place.

Being a cold day, I could not stomach the thought of a cold drink in my hand, and asked for some green tea, while I studied the menu and made my choice. It was just the perfect day for a soup. I did not need any heartwarming, but any addition to the body heat would certainly be welcome.

Thought of the watery and gingery Won Ton held no appeal.

Chicken noodles soup, I decided, would be just the thing. The soup was rather plain of sight and plain of taste.

I would hazard a guess that the recipe goes something like, "make a paste of cornflour and cold water, bring to the boil, add a few chunks of chicken breasts, toss in a bit of boiled noodles, no seasoning and serve hot".

I slurped away and discovered that the soup actually grows on you, and as you eat it becomes slightly more enjoyable with a hint of some barely there ingredients which are too nebulous to identify. But I personally will not be ordering it again any time soon, I really prefer a soup that is punchy.

After a lengthy discourse with the very patient waiter, I settled on duck chop suey with plain chow mein. I did not have long to wait before the loaded plates were presented. I wish someone would tell the Chinese Restaurants that it is conceivable for someone to have lunch alone and that it is not a social aberration to serve single portions!

And that it would be a nice thing if they did not assume that all the barbarians who come calling are unable to use chop sticks and must be presented with western cutlery.

Try eating pasta out of a cup using a fork and you will understand my frustration at having to request for chopsticks all the time. The duck chop suey was lovely with the cubed duck pieces cooked to a point where the thick skin was nice and tender. The vegetables were plentiful and still crisp. The noodles were fried rather than plain, and I ended up with more grease than I would have liked.

There was plenty of choice for dessert, with things like baked or fried bananas served with cream.

I virtuously sipped more cups of my green tea and resisted. The main course was really enough.

The Great Wall is still a great place for Chinese food and a good gossip with a friend, you need someone to share the food with.

Expect to spend

Soup

Chow mein

Duck chop suey

Pot of tea

Total $22

Ratings

Courtesy — excellent

Ambience — still shaping up

Service — very efficient

Food — good

Value for money — a bit high, especially for one

Overall rating 3

Ratings

5-Excellent

4-Outstanding

3-Good

2-Okay

1-If there is no choice

0-If there is a gun held to your head

http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=20797&cat=3

China's central bank set the yuan's reference central parity rate on Friday to its highest level against the dollar since 2005's revaluation, despite growing concerns about the economic slow-down in China and the rest of the world.

But analysts said the strong rise of the yuan could be temporary because it is a result of the recent weakening of the dollar and strengthening of the euro.

"Once the dollar weakening stops, the yuan could weaken again," said Liu Dongliang, chief currency analyst at China Merchants Bank.

The People's Bank of China set the yuan's reference rate at 6.772, up more than 0.8 percent compared to the 6.83 it was two weeks ago when the authorities announced the yuan would be made more flexible.

In market trading, the yuan rose as far as 6.7808 against the dollar on Thursday, a whisker from Wednesday's peak of 6.7801, the highest since its July 2005 revaluation.

Yuan forwards completed a fourth weekly gain as the euro rallied against the dollar following Spain's successful sale of bonds at auction on Thursday.

Twelve-month non-deliverable forwards jumped 0.2 percent to 6.6690 per dollar as of 5:37 pm in Hong Kong and strengthened 0.14 percent during the week. The performance reflects bets that the yuan will appreciate 1.5 percent in one year.

"The rise of the yuan against the dollar is not surprising," said Liu.

He explained that it was a "technical" appreciation because of the weakening dollar and rising euro.

"It's not strong enough to invite the central bank's intervention."

According to analysts, fluctuations in the yuan are closely related to major currencies, such as the dollar and euro, and China's currency can move because of the volatile international economy.

He Liping, dean of the financial department at Beijing Normal University, predicted the yuan will not rise significantly because economic conditions will become stable.

"There will not be drastic changes in the value of the yuan," he said, explaining that both the Chinese and global economy will stabilize in the second half of the year.

Overall, the global economic situation will not change much, with some countries recording more solid recoveries and others recovering slowly, he said.

The global stock markets have fared poorly during the past week, which reflected concern about the economic slow-down in China and the rest of the world, with China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropping to a 15-month intraday low in afternoon trading on Friday.

The index shed 6.7 percent during the week, its biggest weekly loss since March 2009.

"The stock markets sometimes simply over-react," said He.

Wang Tao, head of China Economic Research at UBS Securities, was confident the Chinese economy will not suffer a "hard-landing".

"The short answer is no," she said in a research note.

UBS Securities maintained its GDP growth forecast for China for 2010 and 2011 at 10 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-07/03/c_13381667.htm

Seumas Milne is quite correct (These strikes are good for China, 1 July) that China needs to boost consumption and that wage rises are one way of doing this. But the picture is considerably more complex and nuanced than he suggests. The strikes have been solely at companies owned by Japanese and Taiwanese – no mainland firms have been affected. They have been in a small area of Guangdong. Companies affected will react by increasing productivity through use of new machines that require fewer workers. They will move production from the coast to inland areas where wages are lower – Foxconn has already announced plans to expand its labour force inland to 300,000.

The wage rises announced on 1 July apply only to minimum wages and do not affect higher-paid workers. Up to 50% of the earnings of Chinese industrial workers comes from overtime, which is not affected either. Without effective health, education or pensions systems, precautionary savings will remain high and present a deterrent to consumption spending.

Finally, the past 30 years have shown no evidence that rising living standards on the mainland lead to "progressive democratic change".

It would be nice to think that we are witnessing a decisive shift in the Chinese model but, as with the currency, it would be wiser to be patient if recent history is any guide. Milne refers to Hu Jintao's "attempt to reduce inequality", but the share of wages in China's GDP has slumped from 53% of GDP to 40% in the last 10 years, while the Gini coefficient measuring wealth disparities has steadily widened.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/03/inequality-in-china-has-widened?

Striking employees at a Japanese-owned electronics factory in the Chinese city of Tianjin have stalled production for a third day and vowed to continue their fight until bosses stump up decent pay and benefits.

It is the latest in a spate of work stoppages to hit foreign transnationals operating in China, where workers are increasingly exercising their social rights at the same time as their government is implementing policies designed to boost domestic consumption.

In Tokyo, Mitsumi Electric Company spokesman Yoshitsugu Murakami said that production lines at its Tianjin factory have been stalled since Tuesday.

Workers at the factory produce electrical appliances parts ranging from audio tuners and antennas to power switches.

They have hung large banners outside the factory gate reading: "Human traffickers are not welcome," "We want a pay rise" and "We want fair treatment."

A worker who gave her surname as Wang said that employees at the Tianjin Mitsumi Electric plant, who are all unionised, were demanding decent pay and better working conditions.

"We're on strike because the factory has never increased our wages and they keep increasing our workload - it's too tiring," Wang explained.

Another worker who declined to be identified said that he received just 1,500 yuan (£145) a month after working on Saturdays and putting in two hours overtime every working day.

Strikes have recently disrupted production at Japanese corporations Toyota and Honda based in the Pearl River delta export hub.

Japanese firms are particularly vulnerable to strikes due to their tight supply chains.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/92267?

lol chinks think they have the right to strike

BEIJING -- China has installed about 40,000 high-definition surveillance cameras in the western region of Xinjiang days before the anniversary of the country's worst ethnic violence in decades.

The security cameras with "riot-proof" protective shells will be monitored by police at more than 4,000 public locations, including on city streets and buses and in schools and shopping malls, city government spokesman Ma Xinchun said Friday.

Long-simmering tensions between Xinjiang's minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese turned into open violence in the streets of Urumqi -- the capital of the traditionally Muslim region -- last July. The government says 197 people were killed. Beijing accused overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence, but exile groups denied that assertion.

China appeared caught by surprise a year ago when anger over a brawl between Uighurs and Han in another part of the country boiled over despite Xinjiang's typically high police presence and tight Internet monitoring. After the July 5 violence, the region's Internet, international telephone and text-messaging links to the outside world were not restored for more than half a year.

The installation of the cameras follows a crackdown on violent crime launched in Xinjiang last month, as well as the hiring of about 5,000 police officers there.

Beijing labels those opposing Chinese authority over Xinjiang as terrorists. Late last month it announced that it had uncovered a gang of "hard-core terrorists" who it said had plotted attacks in southern Xinjiang cities between July and October last year. Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping took no questions from reporters, and his assertions could not be independently verified.

The announcement came a day after Xinjiang officials launched a "Love the great motherland, build a beautiful homeland" patriotic education campaign aimed at establishing that "the ethnic minorities are inseparable from the Han."

The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project on Friday called for the Chinese government to support an independent, international investigation into last year's violence. The group also asked officials to release Uighurs it says have been detained without charge, end the use of crackdowns and address the issues behind the region's tensions.

Many Uighurs say they suffer discrimination in jobs and cannot get loans and passports, but Han Chinese in Xinjiang accuse them of being more concerned with religion than business.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/02/AR2010070204917.html?

DALIAN - Sun Rujie, a 25-year-old PhD candidate at the University of Utah in the United States, has decided to start his own business back in China in pursuit of more opportunities.

The favorable policies for returning scholars are very attractive. Besides, I prefer the Chinese cultural environment," he said.

Like Sun, more overseas Chinese scholars are returning home.

More than 1,600 Chinese scholars who are studying or working abroad attended CHINAOCS, which ended on Thursday in Dalian. They submitted nearly 1,000 projects, covering electronic information, biological medicine, advanced manufacturing, new materials, energy efficiency, environmental protection and agriculture technology.

The number of Chinese scholars who have returned home after studying abroad in the last 30 years is almost 497,400, said Wang Xiaochu, vice-minister of human resources and social security.
"In 2009, the number of returning scholars exceeded 100,000, up 56.2 percent year-on-year," Wang said.

Wang said over 800 high-level overseas scholars have signed up with the "Thousand Talents" program, which was launched by the central government in 2008 in a bid to attract 2,000 overseas experts and entrepreneurs within five to 10 years.

During CHINAOCS 2010, the website of the Thousand Talents program, www.1000plan.org, was officially launched. It aims to build a bridge between overseas talent and domestic government officials. Policies and job vacancies are listed online.

The three-day conference also attracted delegates from 25 provinces and cities, introducing their policies to lure overseas talents. More than 8,000 vacancies in government institutions, universities, laboratories, big companies and State-owned enterprises were on offer.

Of all the vacancies, 85 percent require candidates with master's degree or doctoral degrees. Most of them include labs and houses. Some universities offer annual salaries as high as 1 million yuan ($147,000) for academic leaders.

Launched in 2000, CHINAOCS has attracted more than 2,400 overseas scholars to return and they have set up more than 1,600 enterprises, said Dalian Party secretary Xia Deren.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/03/content_10054558.htm?

>>240667
Exactly why this idea doesn't work. No debates, just desperate article flooding by the samefag who made all the reports and sages because the discussions were above his head. Now /n/ is like any other board and has lost it's charm and anchor.

>>240668
Tough shit. The spammer caused this by flooding the board with nothing but China threads. I imagine once he learns his lesson and cuts his crap out we'll be able to have the occasional China thread mixed in with the rest of the news.

Don't like that? Then go elsewhere.

>>240668
/n/ was fine before the pages of spam of china bullshit, and it's fine now. If you don't want to actually discuss the articles being posted in this sticky, that's fine, but the stories are being posted at the same rate that the threads were appearing so it looks like it's all in your head.

>>240670
Back to back with no comments, ie a flood of shit? I don't think so, Tim, they were interspersed with other non-china articles as well.

>>240676
0/10. You don't know /n/+ then.

>>240680
I don't think you do. Besides, the articles were posted before mostly to incite debate which many did, not for generic news for the sake of it like this thread. You're just a butthurt weasel, but if these are the owner's rules now, /n/ will still be a better alternative to /new/

lmao

anti-Chi/n/ese owned.

cya, fags.

>>240689
ISN wins, Flawless victory.

>>240689
>anti-Chi/n/ese owned.

wut

  >>240689
You were too beautiful for /n/

>>240682
Sorry brah but I was on /n/+ before /n/ was shut down over on 4chon. The articles at first were done for debate, then it became nothing but trollish spamming to incite rage and bitching. Sorry, but /n/+ isn't a personal resort for two or three people to create a shitstorm on a constant basis. I don't mind, or even care, if they did it every once in a while. That keeps things fresh. However, turning /n/+ into a cesspool for the sake of their own amusement isn't going to stand any longer.

Get a grip, a clue, and better yourself. As it stands right now, you aren't worth any more of my time.

>>240716
As much as I may or may not agree with you, I should point out:
> but I was on /n/+ before /n/ was shut down over on 4chon.
+/n/ was made a few days after it shut down on 4chan; it was a direct response to that happening. So, no, you weren't.

Point is, China threads lately have been mostly just local/human interest/opinion/etc; posted en masse, with mostly shitstorming about the flooding of china threads going on in each and comparatively little actual debate. This sticky's turning out the exact same way unsurprisingly, but at least it's not taking up half the board, so I'm fine with it. Up to you all if you want to use this thread for its intended purpose instead of debating the merits of two dozen china threads a week.

>>240720
It was on whatever makeshift board we used for /n/ before the official /n/+ board was up. So yes, yes I was.

I consider the time we spent posting articles on /n/ (trans) to still be old /n/.

>>240721
That wasn't /n/+; that was on a different *chan.

>>240682
>I don't think you do. Besides, the articles were posted before mostly to incite debate which many did, not for generic news for the sake of it like this thread. You're just a butthurt weasel, but if these are the owner's rules now, /n/ will still be a better alternative to /new/

If it's the same debate over what people think of China then it seems appropriate to just keep it to one thread. It's not as though any of the China threads would keep to the topic involved with whatever story was posted as long as the penis obsessed guy kept popping up.

>>240723
Well whatever it was, I was over on /n/+ before it hit page 3. My terrible memory aside, my point still stands.

Fuck you, OP. How dare you open a thread against my arch-enemy China, only to post an OP that makes me want to fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap fap

Chinese military is 可愛~

>>240738
uguu~~

>>240758
new google news sucks

>>240758
That's freaking sweet.

>>240788

Agreed.

Oh, side note- that shit with the thread being deleted along with the same china video being posted over and over or whatever a while back?

The thread was deleted because the mod that took care of it nuked the user's posts rather than hunting them all down, and the person spamming the videos also created that thread. That won't be happening again in the future. Sorry.

>>240860
Sure is lazy moderating in here.

>>240860
Are you planning to shut down this /n/ anytime soon?

/new/ is staying put.

>>240883
Anonex said he'd can /n/ if /new/ stayed up and if posting here dropped off substantially.

>>240883
Butthurt /baw/er detected.

>>240887
I believe /baw/ler is the usual term, but no matter.

Anyway, isn't it odd the way so many /baw/lers appear to resent /n/? We generally mind our own business, and rarely, if ever, annoy them by posting troll threads over there or anything. I don't get it.

>>240888

As stated on ED's /n/ article, /baw/ is plus4chan's aptly named lair of faggotry.

>>240890
Wow, that article's grown since I last saw it.

>>240883
I have no plans to shut down /n/. It's staying as long as it stays active.

I MAY at some point restructure the site to make it more obvious that [+/n/] and [everything else] are essentially two different chans/userbases (no, this doesn't mean "hide /n/ or remove it from the menus"), but that's about it.

>>240890
>/n/ is a Russiophobic image board entirely devoted to discussion of Anti-Russian News.
wow this is out of date

>>240905
Ha ha wait what, that article says Athens and MagnumOpus are janitors? We don't have any janitors.

Pepe's the only mod now aside from me, since I fired the other one for bullshit. Actually, nevermind, just fired Pepe; he's only logged in to check reports a grand total of once in the past month or so.

I should probably hire someone new that's actually active.

>>240910
inb4 ISN

>Actually, nevermind, just fired Pepe; he's only logged in to check reports a grand total of once in the past month or so.

ICE is actually doing their job?

>>240910
My ancient offer to be a janitor still stands. I check /n/ at least once every day.

Why you fire me? I do good job, open main page every day, check that there's no spam nor CP and clean up the frivolous reports every now and then...

>>240968
because you dont have your work papers

>>240968
I've told you a few times that part of it is logging in to check and clear reports, not just skim the pages.

For several months, I've left frivolous reports up for weeks at a time to see if you'd log in and clear them, and you rarely log in, and don't usually clear them when you do. I've been basically taking care of reports on my own.

I've considered 'firing' in the past because of this, but instead before I've just asked you to check and clear reports regularly. I'll just skip that this time. Thank you for the work you've done, but I think I've got it under control.

>>240968
Also I keep getting emails in Spanish for one reason or another and you're apparently the source.

>>240689
>anti-Chi/n/ese owned.

How, exactly?

>>240664
lolling

> just fired Pepe; he's only logged in to check reports a grand total of once in the past month or so.

Pepe was useless. I think the only reason he got the gig was he was a tripfag. Who is logged on? Anoymous, Anoymous, Anoymous, and Pepe. Hey, I think I'll choose Pepe. But when we had cp scat posted or ISM porn it would stay up despite being reported.

As for Moot's /new/. Who gives a fuck? It's a far cry from the old /n. We are closer. We will triumph. Now I must fap to that kawaii Chinese soldier.

>kawaii Chinese soldier
Als ob.

just curious: how many people still check /n/?

>>240997
moot's /n/?
I for time to time, like, every three weeks or so, then I run away from the lack of real news and go back in another three weeks.

An American geologist held and tortured by China's state security agents was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday for gathering data on the Chinese oil industry in a case that highlights the government's use of vague secrets laws to restrict business information.

In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and collecting state secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court said his actions "endangered our country's national security."

Its verdict said Xue received documents on geological conditions of onshore oil wells and a data base that gave the coordinates of more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corporation and listed subsidiary PetroChina Ltd. That information, it said, was sold to IHS Energy, the U.S. consultancy Xue worked for and now known as IHS Inc.

The sentence of eight years is close to the recommended legal limit of 10 for all but extremely serious violations. Though Xue, now 45 and known as a meticulous, driven researcher, showed no emotion when the court announced the verdict, it stunned his lawyer and his sister, his only family member allowed in the courtroom.

"I can't describe how I feel. It's definitely unacceptable," Xue's wife, Nan Kang, said by telephone, sobbing, from their home in a Houston, Texas, suburb where she lives with their two children.

U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended the hearing to display Washington's interest in the case. He left without commenting and the U.S. Embassy issued a statement calling for Xue's immediate release and deportation to the United States.

Xue's sentence punctuates a case that has dragged on for more than two-and-a-half years and is likely to alarm foreign businesses unsure when normal business activities elsewhere might conflict with China's vague state security laws.

Chinese officials have wide authority to classify information as state secrets. Draft regulations released by the government in April said business secrets of major state companies qualify as state secrets.

"This is a very harsh sentence," said John Kamm, an American human rights campaigner whom the State Department turned to for help last year to lobby for Xue's release. "It's a huge disappointment and will send very real shivers up the spines of businesses that do business in China."

Agents from China's internal security agency detained Xue in November 2007 and tortured him, stubbing lit cigarettes into his arms in the early days of his detention. His case first became public when The Associated Press reported on it last November.

Like IHS, many multinationals have come to rely on people like Xue to run their China operations. Another China-born foreign national, Australian Stern Hu who worked for the global mining firm Rio Tinto, was sentenced in March to 10 years for bribery and infringing trade secrets that dealt with iron ore sales to Chinese companies.

Born in China, Xue earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago and became a U.S. citizen, returning to his native country to work. By all accounts, including witness statements cited in the court verdict, Xue poured his energies into his work for IHS, trying to gather information on China's oil industry, contacting former school mates from his university days in China.

Two of the three other defendants sentenced along with Xue on Monday were school mates. Chen Mengjin and Li Dongxu, who worked for research institutes affiliated with PetroChina were each given two-and-a-half-year sentences and fined 50,000 yuan ($7,500). The other defendant, Li Yongbo, a manager at Beijing Licheng Zhongyou Oil Technology Development Co., was sentenced to eight years and fined 200,000 yuan ($30,000). Xue was also fined 200,000 yuan.

Li and Xue arranged the sale of the database — which was originally prepared by a Chinese company for sale to PetroChina's parent company and contained details on the coordinates and volume of reserves for the 30,000 wells — to IHS for $228,500, the court's sentencing document said.

A spokesman for IHS, which is based in Englewood, Colorado, said the company is disappointed by the news yet declined to comment on China's broad interpretation of state secrets. In the past, the spokesman, Ed Mattix, has said that Chinese authorities never notified IHS that it was involved in any wrongdoing.

During Xue's closed-door trial, which ran over three dates last July and in December, the court document said he defended himself, arguing that the information he gathered "is data that the oil sector in countries around the world make public."

David Rowley, Xue's thesis adviser at University of Chicago and a geologist, said that the location and seismic and other data of oil wells is commonly available and could not compromise Chinese security since the government controls access.

"What frightens me most about this is that Xue Feng is, in my experience, a straight-up individual who worked hard, who didn't push limits, or try to pull a fast one by, but was simply honest and entirely well meaning," Rowley said in an e-mail. "That's IHS's business — acquiring and redistributing data (bases) so he was simply doing his job."

In rejecting Xue and his lawyer's arguments that no crime had been committed, the court cited the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets as saying that the information Xue received on China National Petroleum Corp. was classified as either secret or confidential.

The court document indirectly acknowledged the difficulties Xue and IHS would have collecting data in such a restrictive environment.

"IHS Co. has information exchange agreements with many oil companies, but exchanging information with Chinese oil companies is very difficult. Because China controls energy information relatively strictly, IHS Co.'s information and data on China are not very complete," the sentencing statement cited one witness as telling the court.
http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-as-china-detained-american,0,5086903.story

Residents crowd in a swimming pool to escape the summer heat during a hot weather spell in Daying county of Suining, Sichuan province July 4, 2010. China is experiencing temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Farhenheit) in at least 13 provinces and regions, according to the National Meteorological Center on Sunday.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100705/ids_photos_wl/r3718927372.jpg/?.src=news

/notes that chink trolls more often post outside of the China sticky than in it

CHINA WIRR GROW RARGER

>>240981

Didn't Pepe run some blog for a while?

He was such a lazy spic he didn't even muster up the energy to take offense to spic jokes.

>>241243
I still come here every day, I just don't have the energy to post anymore. And I still have a blog noticiasmerida.org about local news

>>241247
Good to see you around.

Do you still post on /r9k/?

>>241249
Not anymore, you? Shit's lamer than ever, man

http://www.china-sucks.on.nimp.org

>>241268
>click on link
>catch virus
fffffffffff-

>>241285
That is not a virus it is simply a browser hack also sage for dead thread.

100 years ago Britain was still the dominant world power. If you were to tell a Brit of that era America would come to be the dominant force I think they might react in much the same way Americans of today do when told China will rise to become the dominant force in the world.

The tone of U.S.-China relations, as evidenced by General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt's provocative 'colonization' blast, is deteriorating rapidly and signaling trouble ahead. Given the importance of this relationship it would be very helpful to understand what's at stake and how events will play out.

Chimerica: The World's Most Crucial Relationship

The most important bilateral economic and political relationship in the world today is arguably the one between the Chinese and the Americans. London School of Economics Professor Niall Ferguson coined the term "Chimerica" to characterize its interdependent nature.

The U.S. currently has the world's largest economy and most powerful military, and the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. China is the fastest growing large economy, and the holder of approximately $1 trillion -- or about 50% -- of all foreign held U.S. Treasury debt. Depending upon how you measure GDP, China's economy has already-- or should soon-- pass Japan's to become the world's second largest. The Chinese economy is projected to pass the U.S.'s to become #1 in the not too distant future.

A significant part of China's rapid growth has been driven by its ability to export its goods to countries such as the United States. In turn, the U.S.'s ability to continue to finance its massive $13 trillion federal deficit has been substantially underwritten by China's ongoing purchase of U.S. Treasury debt.

While each side has gained from this relationship it is charting an unsustainable trajectory that could lead to severe problems. This is particularly troubling because Chimerica tension is rising over China's currency policy just as many countries -- including the U.S. with its high unemployment and China with its property bubble and inflation concerns -- appear to be struggling to emerge from the 'Great Recession'.

The Who and Why Behind Deeming China's Currency Policy as 'Harmful'

China's currency is confusingly referred to both as the renminbi and the yuan. The Chinese government has historically fixed the renminbi's exchange rate to the U.S. dollar. The working economic assumption in the U.S. is that if the renminbi were allowed to fluctuate that it would appreciate vs. the U.S. dollar.

Many have been very critical of the Chinese policy of suppressing the value of the renminbi, perhaps none more loudly and persistently than Nobel Laureate, Princeton Economics Professor, and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman. He has stated again and again that China's currency policy provides an economic advantage that -- while good for China in the immediate term -- is harmful towards the goal of achieving a balanced global economy. The European Union has also been critical in the past of China's currency policy.

What is the effect of a low renminbi? There are several, but one is that a low renminbi makes Chinese goods relatively less expensive in America. Consumers bear witness by observing that a vast number of the manufactured products at Wal-Mart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), etc. are made in China. Obviously most consumers prefer to pay less, and if given the choice between nearly identical products the consumer will choose the less expensive of the two.

China's ability to export comparatively less expensive products, which is aided by the renminbi's managed exchange rate, is a key element in China's economic growth story.

China is Playing Games

Headlines were made following the recent move by the Chinese to de-peg their currency to the U.S. Dollar. The move, however, was greeted by China critics as lacking in substantive change.

Professor Krugman was among the many who characterized the Chinese move as "playing games" to prolong their current policy. In the time since the Chinese allowed the renminbi to float it has moved both up and down vs. the U.S. Dollar within a very narrow range of approximately 0.5%.

An Imminent Showdown

There are a number of simultaneous forces coming to a head that indicate some type of Chimerica fracture may be on the not too distant horizon.

Politicians throughout history have consistently created scapegoats when problems arise. The U.S. is in the throes of a very serious economic challenge. Professor Krugman is not alone in thinking that the U.S. is in the early stages of what he's calling "The Third Depression". As depressions are relatively infrequent economic phenomena, we don't have a substantial body of history from which to base predictions. However, the increased political pressure that has occurred during history's depressions has led to radical and destructive policies.

The Chinese will make a convenient scapegoat during an election season characterized by high unemployment and deteriorating confidence. This is already happening, but expect even more China bashing (ala 1980s Japan bashing) from U.S. politicians, labor groups, etc. through this November's mid-term elections and the next U.S. Presidential election in 2012.

Unemployment has and will continue to be blamed on unfair Chinese competition due to the renminbi's low exchange rate. Look for more fear mongering over China's massive U.S. treasury holdings. And expect trade sanctions and barriers against Chinese goods. Simply discussing trade barriers or currency values publicly can be seismic in their impact to China's attitude towards the U.S. In addition, other efforts are underway that will further compound the schism.

Crossing the Debt Rubicon

The U.S. Federal debt level is around $13 trillion, which equates to approximately 90% of annual U.S. GDP. That's in line with Greece's Debt-to-GDP level. While the U.S. is not in the same economic boat as Greece, the 90% debt-to-GDP threshold is the level that research conducted by Reinhart and Rogoff has shown to be problematic. Have the Chinese and other holders of U.S. debt fallen victim to history's reoccurring "This Time is Different" thinking with respect to U.S. government debt?

Throughout history sovereigns have 'debased' their currencies for a variety of reasons. One common reason is to retire debt to foreign creditors. I've written previously about why the Federal Reserve will engage in another round of massive money printing to try and combat deflation and kickstart an economic rebound. Monetizing debt is another powerful incentive that could drive such a move.

The Option to Go Bankrupt Can Be a Very Valuable Option

Thinking about the future of Chinese-U.S. relations I'm reminded of a comment my uncle made to me when I was a kid about the sometimes conflicted relationship between a farmer and his bank:

"The Bank has a lot power over most Farmers. If the Farmer runs into financial trouble then the Bank can seize the Farmer's land, putting the Farmer out of business. This power dynamic is reversed, however, when it comes to the case of The Really Big Farmer. If The Really Big Farmer has financial trouble he can put the Bank out of business."

While its tempting to reduce the complex U.S.-China relationship to that of The Really Big Farmer and the Bank, respectively, I don't believe it's that simple. Having said that, the U.S.'s option to effectively go bankrupt by monetizing its debt is a very powerful card that can be played.

It is entirely possible that the U.S. has in effect already crossed its debt 'Rubicon'. At this point the U.S. may either be unable, or unwilling, to pay back its debt without printing substantial quantities of money to do so. If this is in fact the case, then the U.S. government may have an incentive to just keep on borrowing for as long as creditors will lend it money.

Massive money printing could reduce the U.S.'s debt burden. But it would damage, if not destroy, the value of the U.S. dollar and topple it from its reserve currency status. However, it's unclear who would lose more -- The Big Farmer or The Bank -- were such a event to occur. As an example, Iceland -- which experienced one of the greatest financial disasters ever -- when compared to countries such as Ireland, Estonia and Latvia is doing better on a GDP and Employment basis. Professor Krugman's takeaway: "if you’re going to have a crisis, it’s better to have a really, really bad one."

Just How Likely is Openly Waged U.S.-China Economic War?

There is a huge incentive for both the U.S. and China to avoid a path as destructive as the one described here. The economic disruption and cost would be widespread, devastating and perhaps permanent. However, we know that it is human nature to underestimate the probability of severe events like a U.S.-China economic war. I believe this is a mistake.

What would be the trigger? A U.S. Treasury auction, a WTO complaint, U.S. Congressional action, or perhaps even a geopolitical event are all possible candidates. For example, the U.S.'s failure to enact fiscal austerity in a timely enough fashion for the Chinese, or concerns about massive money printing, could lead the Chinese to reduce their U.S. debt purchases. If the Chinese fail to show up for a U.S. debt auction, then the U.S. will have a much lower incentive to hold back on efforts to combat Chinese currency and trade manipulation.

If the U.S. responds with trade and monetary policies of sufficient scale, China would likely consider these moves to be openly hostile and retaliate.

Two keys to determining China's likely response: a) the speed at which events unfold and b) the size of U.S. actions (e.g, how much money will the Fed print). If political and economic pressures do not overwhelm U.S. policymakers and force them to move too quickly, then the U.S. may be able to phase implement its policies so that they do not provoke a rapid, complete breakdown in relations. However, recent history is not encouraging as policymakers have struggled to accurately diagnose and get out in front of big problems (e.g., inaccurate calls that the subprime problem was "contained" prior to the near collapse of the global financial system).

Closing Thoughts

The Chinese have been driving a very hard bargain with the rest of the world with their managed currency policy. China has benefitted tremendously from joining the open world economy. However, free trade is not an inalienable sovereign right.

China's growing economic power comes with the role of being a responsible global actor by playing by the same rules as its trading partners. The U.S. has grown weary of waiting for the Chinese government to come around at a time when it is also economically weakened. In short, the time has come for the renminbi to be revalued upward or U.S. action will occur.

What is China's realpolitik calculation?

China's leadership, emboldened for example by the failure of the U.S. to navigate the world away from a near financial collapse and Google's recent blink, is growing more confident. It is reasonable to assume that China will increasingly flex its economic muscles and may reject the U.S.'s request for a change in its currency policy.

The Chinese government stubbornly detests public pressure from foreign government officials. Yet the Chinese leadership appears to only move when they are forced to do so. And often when they do finally make a change, as with the most recent renminbi move, they barely budge.

At the same time, it is highly unlikely the U.S. will quietly surrender its role as the world's dominant superpower. And the pressure is growing to take swift, assertive action on the renminbi as calls to "do something" grow louder in the face of a deteriorating domestic economy.

China -- similar to Japan in the 1980s -- is directly in the U.S.'s economic crosshairs. The inescapable conclusion is that an escalating U.S.-China economic war is not only underestimated in terms of its likelihood, but probable.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/213101-is-a-u-s-china-economic-war-on-its-way?source=email

THIS week's plain-speaking prize goes to Jeff Immelt, the boss of General Electric.

He argued that China is increasingly hostile to foreign multinationals; he also gave warning that his company, the world's biggest manufacturer, is actively looking for better prospects in other emerging markets. "They don't all want to be colonised by the Chinese", he said, going rather further than was prudent. "They want to develop themselves".

Mr Immelt's broadside was undoubtedly significant. It reflects a growing mood of disillusionment with China among big Western companies. It came from the mouth of one of China's biggest boosters, a man who praised the Chinese leadership, only last December, for doing exactly what they say they will.

Is Mr Immelt right about the changing mood in China? The Chinese are certainly unusually self-confident at the moment, thanks to the financial meltdown. They have flexed their muscles against a succession of companies, including Rio Tinto and Google.

But the Chinese have always driven a hard bargain, and they have always made it clear that they will give only to get. The American Chamber of Commerce reported in 2008 that three-quarters of the foreign companies that they surveyed were finally making money in China, a big increase on the historical average. Many Western companies, notably Yum! Brands, have finally cracked the China code, and are becoming ubiquitous across the country.

It will be interesting to see how Immelt's comments play out in China, a country which puts a great store on "face", and which does not take kindly to even gentle criticism, let alone talk of "colonisation".

Google seems to be retreating, with its long tail between its legs, from its bold challenge to Chinese authoritarianism. It will therefore also be interesting to see if, sometime in the near future, Mr Immelt finds himself delivering a speech with a rather different message.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2010/07/general_electric_and_china?source=hptextfeature

>>241328
US was already a greater economic power by 1900.

>>241386

Debatable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_GDP_%28PPP%29#1913

Regardless, the US wasn't really regarded as a superpower until the second world war.

>>241395
What's interesting in that article is the 1913 and 1950 statistics for China. In 1913, the new Chinese Republic was among the foremost economic powers of the world.

By 1950, the new (People's) Republic was an economic basket-case.

This suggests that the Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War were responsible for sending China to hell, and not Western imperialism, as irate Chinese nationalists are wont to claim.

>>241263
Rarely, and then only to troll. 4chan in general is garbage.

>>241414
/ck/ is a good board.

>>241417
This is true.

Also, this thread is now about what the best kind of pizza is. Personally, I think four cheese pizzas are god tier.

>I think four cheese pizzas are god tier.

Agreed. Also, NY pizza > Chicago pizza

>>241427
White Pizza is better than regular pizza. Refer to the post I made here:
http://boards.4chan.org/ck/res/2024568

Uighur rights groups and activists rallied here in Washington on Monday to mark the one year anniversary of China's worst ethnic violence in decades, which occurred in the remote western region of Xinjiang, and to protest what they say is China's repression of Uighurs, the regions largest ethnic minority group. VOA's William Ide in Washington has more.

Dozens of Uighurs and activists rallied outside the Chinese embassy to pay their respects to those who lost their lives in last year's violence.

Arafat Dilshat, a Uighur supporter, was among those who participated in the rally.

"Over 1,600 people died," said Arafat Dilshat. "They were known as Uighurs, so we're holding this protest today to remember all of those - our people, our brothers, sisters, family members - who died that day."

The Chinese government accuses overseas Uighur groups of plotting the violence last July. It says about 200 people died in the unrest and that about 1,700 were injured. Tensions between Xinjiang's minority Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants spiraled out of control last year on streets of the capital, Urumqi.

Louisa Greve of the National Endowment for Democracy attended the rally and says the Chinese government is covering up the truth about the unrest.

"Today marks a really solemn and horrible anniversary of the day when Uighurs in Urumqi went on the streets to have a peaceful protest and, unfortunately, were met with deadly live fire, which has been documented now in some new reports that are making clear the Chinese government is covering up what had happened and what it did to its citizens," said Louisa Greve.

Chinese authorities blame separtists who want to create an independent nation in the region for last year's violence.

Uighur rights groups around the world have called on Beijing to allow an independent investigation into the incident.

Last week, the Washington-based Uighur Human Rights Project, released a new report on the unrest. In it, the group details what it calls a violent effort by Chinese authorities to suppress peaceful protests.

The Chinese government suspended international telephone calls from the region and Xinjiang's Internet service for more than six months following the clashes. The government has arrested and tried hundreds of demonstrators, sentencing dozens of them to death.

Because of its rich oil and gas deposits, Xinjiang is a strategically important region for China.

Beijing officials have repeatedly stressed that all ethnic groups in China are treated equally. But human rights groups say discriminatory economic and cultural policies against the Uighurs raised ethnic tensions to a boiling point in Xinjiang, culminating in last July's protests.

In the Uighur Human Rights Project's newly released report "Can Anyone Hear Us?" the group says that the Uighur language has been virtually eliminated from school instruction in Xinjiang. It also says that hundreds of books on Uighur history and culture have been banned and burned.

Ilham Tohti is an ethnic Uighur and an economist at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing. He says Uighurs are becoming increasingly pessimistic about their situation.

Tohti says that Uighurs do not trust the government, the military, the police and Han Chinese. He says many do not even trust members of their own community because they feel that those around them could be spying on them for the government.

China's state media have marked the anniversary of the incident by broadcasting numerous television reports about how life has improved in Xinjiang. Those reports, however, avoided mentioning last year's violence and did not include discussion of the causes of the unrest.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Uighurs-Mark-Anniversary-of-Deadly-Ethnic-Protests-in-China-97823839.html

A Chinese man who saved a one-armed, one-legged monkey says the primate has paid him back - by killing all of his chickens.

Li Chun, from Menghai village, Yunnan province, says the monkey has become a member of his family since he nursed it back to health.

It has become to devoted to the family and performs many chores around the home - but it also copies everything Li does.

When it saw him crack some eggs to make a meal it went into the hen coop and smashed all of the eggs it could find.

And when Li slaughtered a chicken, the monkey copied him and has since killed about 80 chickens, reports the Chuncheng Evening Post.

"From then on, whenever it's not occupied, it jumps into the chicken pen, and kills the chickens, no matter how big or small, and tries to pluck them," said Li.

"His record is nine chickens in one day. The lesson I have learned is to never slaughter a chicken in front of a monkey."

Li found the seriously injured monkey in a forest more than a year ago when it jumped into a basket on his back.

He found the monkey's right arm and left leg were rotten and took it home where he cut off the decayed limbs and gave it anti-inflammatory medication.

He nursed the monkey back to health and it made an astonishing recovery, putting on weight and soon started to help around the home.

It helps look after Li's dog's puppies and even wiped away Li's tears when he was grieving the death of his father.

Li said: "It sat besides me quietly and extended his only arm to wipe the tears on my face. He would softly pat my face and head, and look at me with great sympathy."

http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Never_slaughter_a_chicken_in_front_of_a_monkey

>>241610

He'll learn next time not to save dying white people.

>> 241610

I'm impressed a one-armed, one-legged monkey is doing anything except falling over, to be honest, let alone chasing down chickens, but I hope Li never lets the monkey see him having marital relations.

China this week again used the East China Sea as a setting for military maneuvers and exercises that it knew would rattle the United States and its allies. After recently calming Japanese concerns about rising tensions in this area, China shut down all vessel traffic in a large zone off the coast of Zhejiang as the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) conducted a series of live fire drills.

The PLAN engages in such drills each year, and does so in waters considered part of China's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). All ships, including US military surveillance ships, are given fair warning to stay clear.

At the same time, because US Navy carriers do not frequent the Yellow Sea for a variety of reasons, China was sending messages in advance that "national interests could be damaged" if the US proceeds to deploy a US carrier during a joint exercise with the South Korean navy later this summer.

"Under current situations, relevant parties should exercise restraint and refrain from doing things that may escalate tensions and harm the interests of the countries in the region," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

Having this floating symbol of US military might deployed so close to China is perceived by Beijing as more than a very unfriendly gesture on the part of the US. Another US aircraft carrier has just passed through the Panama Canal and will soon transit the Pacific Ocean - something else that Beijing must keep in mind.

Simply put, seldom have so many warships been exercising all at once in the Pacific. A large fleet of US and allied warships are engaged in the RIMPAC exercise off Hawaii, and the Russians are conducting a very large exercise in the western Pacific region.
Speculation swirled in the US and elsewhere about the possibility that the PLAN would launch Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) - known as "carrier killers" - during its East China Sea exercises just north of Taiwan.

Although photographs of the PLAN exercises have appeared, including numerous so-called Type 022 Houbei fast attack craft (FAC) and some of FACs firing YJ-83 missiles, there has been no independent verification of an actual ASBM launch by the PLAN in 2010. [1]

China vigorously denies any connection between its coastal defense exercise and the US carrier. However, the Chinese have engaged in their own spirited discussion about what is unfolding off their coastline, and many Chinese see a distinct connection.

"Though the Chinese government did not say anything about the drill, anybody with common sense on military strategy will bet that they are related," said Shi Yinhong, a senior expert on US studies at Beijing-based Renmin University of China, according to a China Daily report.

Chen Hu, editor-in-chief of Xinhua's World Military magazine, attempted to prod the PLAN into accepting the presence of a US aircraft carrier so close to China as an unusual opportunity to conduct further drills using the US ship as a hypothetical target. [2]

"Chinese naval activities and maritime claims in the Western Pacific have become more assertive," said Tetsuo Kotani, a research fellow at the Tokyo-based Ocean Policy Research Foundation. "The PLA naval exercise was an attempt to check the expected US-ROK exercise in the Yellow Sea, especially the participation of the USS George Washington. In other words, that shows how much China is concerned about the US carrier based in Japan."

Kotani sees no reason why the US should refrain from sending its carrier to the exercise.

"It is totally legitimate under international law. Otherwise, the freedom of action and strategic mobility of the US military would be severely undermined,' said Kotani. "The US should be more assertive, hopefully with the Self-Defense Force. The US and Japan should consider trilateral exercise with ROK, too."

As much as the increasing size and power of the PLAN is a concern for the US-Japan alliance, the PLA's asymmetric warfare capabilities - such as anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-satellite attack capabilities, quieter submarines, sophisticated mines, cyber and info attack capabilities - constitute a much more serious concern.

"The introduction of those asymmetric warfare capabilities can destabilize the balance of power in the region. So Japan needs to join the development of the 'AirSea Battle' concept to further support US forward presence," said Kotani.

The Japanese media's analysis of the situation, at the same time, is reflecting the unease and growing anxiety of the Japanese people over China's "saber-rattling" and attempts to fend off the US. The Chinese government seems to take these attitudes in stride.

"Naval tensions in the region have been high since the March 26 sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan , which has been blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack," the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun declared this month. "China has long considered the Yellow Sea to be its 'backyard' and the dispatch of the aircraft carrier is being characterized as an 'attempt to invade the Yellow Sea using the sinking as a pretext'," according to the Chinese global affairs journal Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times). [3]

According to Yukie Yoshikawa, senior research fellow at the Edwin O Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies in Washington, DC, the fact that the Japanese government is remaining rather quiet about the PLAN exercise in the East China Sea is a bit deceiving because both the Japanese government and Japanese people are quite concerned about it.

"The Japanese view it in extension of a series of incidents involving Chinese ships which invaded the Japanese EEZ in April and May," said Yoshikawa. "Since then, the Japanese understand that China is willing to expand its control so as to be able to access the Pacific. Japan happens to be in between which will be a growing concern."

By the way, when Qin made his remarks about the need for restraint, he said nothing about the fact that two PLAN warships from the North China Sea Fleet had once again passed close to Okinawa on their way to the Pacific in early July.

While the PLAN drill is a regularly scheduled event, this year it has happened at the exact time when the US and Japan may be close to resolving the bitter and lengthy argument over the future of the Futenma military base on Okinawa. China may be exploiting the instability of US-Japan relations, and even experimenting to see how far it can go before US and Japan will respond.

"The US and Japan should show China that it has gone far enough and needs to back off. In that sense, terminating the current stalemate was one good sign, and announcing a joint exercise with Korea, though postponed, was another," said Yoshikawa. "But the US should do more, and anything that demonstrates that the US is still committed to the security of Northeast Asia is necessary, including proceeding with the deployment of a US carrier in the joint exercise with Korea."

Yoshikawa also recommends that military-to-military exchanges between the US and China "should be resumed, more seriously, in order to not escalate the situation any further".

In terms of the US military posture in the western Pacific, Yoshikawa supports the status quo.

"The US should be in the picture, since all the neighboring countries have designed and planned their defense structures under the assumption that the US would be stationed in Japan, the ROK," said Yoshikawa. "In order for the US military presence to fade, Japan needs to enhance its military capabilities that are now designed to rely on the US, while discussing arms reduction with China, the ROK, and ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations], and making collective agreements on sea-lane defense between Japan and the Middle East. As far as none of this is happening, the US needs to stay."

At the same time, mounting concerns in Japan over China's activities and recent behavior should not be misunderstood as somehow transforming China into some sort of a direct threat to Japan in the eyes of the Japanese.

"The reality is that while Japan cannot overtly say China is a threat because Japan already depends heavily on China economically, Japan has not given enough serious thought to China, nor its future and its military ambitions," said Yoshikawa. "This concern will be expressed more indirectly as 'the US military role is and continues to be important to Japan', rather than saying 'China is a threat, so we need to team with the US to contain China'. This is a lesson from former Japanese prime minister Junichiri Koizumi's time in office."

Russia's presence cannot go unmentioned. Despite the intense focus on the PLAN and the whereabouts of a US aircraft carrier, Russia quietly assembled several warships in the Sea of Japan from its North, Black Sea and Pacific fleets in order to conduct its largest naval exercise in many years. With Russian President Dmitry Medvedev looking on, Russian battle cruisers and destroyers that had arrived in the region weeks earlier fired anti-ship missiles over long distances, and performed other anti-carrier maneuvers in the Sea of Okhotsk earlier this month.

In doing so, Russia is sending a strong signal to both China and Japan.

"It is hardly surprising that such exercises are conducted on the Pacific theater of war, as this region is and will remain one of the most conflict-prone areas for Russia in the next 20-30 years," said RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik. "Russian-Japanese disagreements over the disputed South Kuril archipelago, called the 'Northern Territories' by Tokyo, and Russia's proximity to a powerful China prompt Moscow to find new ways to defend its Far East possessions in the event of a hypothetical conflict." [4]

Amid all the talk about exercises and China's rapidly improving naval capabilities, the US Navy is raising questions about its own state of readiness. Navy Times obtained a copy of the long-awaited report prepared by a US Navy panel headed by retired Vice Admiral Phillip Balisle about the questionable condition of some of the US Navy's Aegis-equipped warships.

The findings of the Balisle panel are considered a wakeup call in terms of the US Navy's important and expanding anti-missile mission. In a nutshell, the report identified numerous serious problems including a lack of adequately trained and experienced personnel, degraded radar operations on numerous ships, the presence of a failure to understand the importance of strong, reliable and consistent system performance. [5]

This report will be required reading to many, given the fact that AEGIS-equipped warships are vital components in the ballistic missile defense networks now in place in the US, Japan and soon Europe. In light of the looming ASBM threat in particular, the dependence of US aircraft carriers upon the anti-missile screen provided by these ultra-high-tech warships is only going to increase.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LG09Ad03.html

>>241803
China only has ONE naval muscle?

How weak!

>>241913
This never existed, by the way - except in a race-hustling Bruce Lee movie.

Doesn't stop the lying Chinese government from pretending that the Shanghai Municipal Council put up such a sign in a park in the city, though.

Ironically, this urban legend has taken wing to the extent that visitors to a tiny Indonesian village found the local native insisting that the Dutch colonial adminstrators in Batavia had erected signs barring native Indonesians from public facilities in the city.

Presumably Indonesians had heard the story in its original form from a Chinese, and through a process of Chinese whispers (if you'll forgive the pun), it was attributed to the local Dutch colonial authorities and became accepted as a fact.

People believe what they want to believe, especially if it seems plausible.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-08/singapore-may-overtake-china-as-asia-s-fastest-growing-economy.html

>>242009
Guess we better change this thread to Singapore General

breaking: baidu buys google

>>242054
wtf is baidu?

>>242067
Chinese search engine.

>>242054
>implying this will ever happen

can't ... stop ... fapping to OP! Oh god here I go again!!!!

China has today renewed Google's Internet Content Provider (ICP) licence after initially threatening to revoke it if the search giant did not cooperate with its censorship efforts.

Google made the announcement on its blog, where it said: “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.”

In January of this year Google withdrew its cooperation with China on censoring its search results after a series of hacking attempts targeted at its proprietary code and the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

It since employed a system of automatically redirecting visitors from the Google.cn website to the Hong Kong variant, where results are not censored. This angered the Beijing government, which threatened to pull the plug on Google's Chinese operations if it did not stop the redirect.

Google decided to meet half way and stop automatic redirects, but offer a link on Google.cn to the uncensored site, allowing users to make the choice on what kind of results they wanted to see. Google believed that this would work under Chinese law, while not betraying its anti-censorship principles.

Google initially said it was “hopeful” for a licence renewal, which was up for review on June 30. However, a partial block of between 10 and 66 percent of its Chinese search engine on the renewal day dampened that optimism, leading many to speculate that China might take a hardline approach with the company.

However, earlier today Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, revealed much more confidence on the issue. He said: “We would expect we would get the necessary license. We now expect to get a renewal.”

It is probably likely that Schmidt was already aware of the licence approval earlier today when he made his comments. He is undoubtedly happy that his company gets to continue its operations in China, offering it millions in revenue on an annual basis, which is set to grow as it expands its business there.
http://www.techeye.net/internet/china-renews-googles-licence

>>242079
it will happen
not only that chinese conglomerates will buy up all their american counterparts

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2002378,00.html?iid=tsmodule

>154 Tomahawks per sub

>>240989

so China = Rosanne Barr, Korea is boring, and Japan is cute?

Google Inc said on Friday that the Chinese authorities had renewed its license to operate a website, averting a potential shutdown of its flagship search page in the world's biggest Internet market.
The renewal has been in doubt due to the tense relations between Google and Chinese authorities over censorship of Google search results.
Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne said Friday she could give no further details. "In the coming days, we will clarify what products we'll offer locally through google.cn," she said.
A small concession
Entering search requests at Google.cn from within mainland China now requires an extra click, a change made last week to appease communist regulators. Users who click anywhere on the page are then taken to a site based in Hong Kong, which isn't subject to Beijing's censorship rules.

Since March, Google had been automatically rerouting search requests from the mainland to the Hong Kong service.

The small concession was enough to persuade China's regulators to renew Google's Internet license for at least another year, the company said. There was no immediate statement on the website of China's Internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
It's the latest twist in a diplomatic dance that's been unfolding since Google vowed in January to end its four-year practice of omitting search results that the Chinese government considers subversive or pornographic. Google reversed course after blaming Chinese computer hackers for an attack aimed at stealing the company's technology and e-mail information from human rights activists.

As soon as Google published a Jan. 12 blog post publicly challenging China's censorship polices, "it became clear that Google.cn could never operate the same way again," Internet analyst Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor's said.

Even if Web surfers in mainland China click on Google.cn to get to the Hong Kong search engine, China's government can still block results by using technology controls commonly known as its "Great Firewall."
Losing the Chinese license would have been a significant setback for Google, even though China will only account for a fraction of the company's projected $28 billion in revenue this year. China already has emerged as the Internet's most populous market with nearly 400 million Web surfers, and usage is expected to rise for years to come.
The downside of compromise
The latest compromise threatens to curtail Google's growth in China simply because it requires hundreds of millions of users to take an extra step to get to Google's search engine. The single additional click could diminish traffic and send Web surfers to more convenient options, such as the homegrown Baidu.com.

If that happens, Google will have fewer opportunities to show the ads that bring in virtually all its revenue.

Still, investors were relieved that Google get did not get kicked out of China's rapidly growing Internet market. Google shares edged up on the news, gaining $10.93, or 2.4 percent, to close Friday at $467.49. The stock remains down by about 25 percent so far this year, partly because of fallout from the company's stand against China's stringent censorship rules.

Google already has been losing ground in China. The company's search market share in China now stands at about 30 percent, down from roughly 35 percent at the end of last year, according to the research firm Analysys International. Baidu's share has risen slightly to about 60 percent.

China is not yet a big moneymaker for Google, accounting for an estimated $250 million to $600 million of Google's projected $28 billion in revenue this year.

But China is expected to become far more lucrative as its economy matures and even more of its population comes online. Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk believes Google could be pulling in $5 billion to $6 billion annually from China's online advertising market just four years from now if it can manage to keep its market share in the 30 percent range.

The makeover of Google.cn is bound to hurt the company, but "it's a sacrifice well worth making if it means they can stay in China," Kessler said.

It must be renewed annually
The license renewal means that Google will have a chance to see if it can build other lines of existing business in China: advertising, mapping and the Android operating system for mobiles.
Although Google's China license runs until 2012, it must be renewed annually. The company applied for renewal before the June 30 filing deadline.
In a letter requesting Google's license renewal, the company's local partner, Guxiang Information Technology Co. Ltd., pledged to "abide by the Chinese law" and "provide no lawbreaking contents," the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
Xinhua had reported Google was "very late" in submitting the application. Phone calls to the regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, before Friday's news were not answered, and a foreign ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, said simply, "Internet operating companies, while doing business in China, should abide by Chinese laws and regulations."
For China, the renewal takes a high-profile dispute out of the headlines at a time when American and European businesses are changing their once bullish attitudes about the China market and complaining about unfair regulations and other obstacles.
"Basically, this was a smart move on the part of the Chinese government to kind of defuse the situation so that the Google search engine will still be available in China," said Paul Denlinger, an Internet consultant for startups. He said that the friction between Google and China won't disappear but will temporarily dissipate.
Among the things to look out for in coming months, Denlinger says, is whether Google services will continue to be featured on new mobile phones. Motorola, he said, had in recent months been replacing Google functions with those of its Chinese rival, Baidu.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38163331/ns/technology_and_science/

> The renewal has been in doubt due to the tense relations between Google and Chinese authorities over censorship of Google search results.
Google runs the ire of countries opposed to free speech, such as China and Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/google-baulks-at-conroys-call-to-censor-youtube-20100211-ntm0.html

>154 Tomahawks per sub
But how will America's clean cut soldiers fight back when their hand is covered in sticky gism from too much fapping at kawaii OP?

>>242397
simple, they wear rubber gloves while fapping to op.

> simple, they wear rubber gloves while fapping to op.

My patriotic penis is satisfied!

SHANGHAI, China - Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world's factory floor.

Strikes over the last two months have been a rude wake-up call for the many foreign companies that depend on China's low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to makers of gadgets such as the iPad.

Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers now demand a bigger share of the profit. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to invest in high tech and other areas it believes will create greater wealth for China.

Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper locations farther inland or to other developing countries. A few are even resuming production in the West.

"China is going to go through a very dramatic period. The big companies are starting to exit," said Rick Goodwin, a China trade veteran of 22 years, whose company links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers.

Goodwin says dissatisfied workers and hard-to-predict exchange rates are his top worries.

Beijing's decision to stop tethering the Chinese currency to the U.S. dollar, allowing it to appreciate and thus boosting costs in yuan, has multiplied the uncertainty for companies already struggling with meager profit margins.

Wham-O Inc., which created the Hula Hoop and Slip 'N Slide, decided to bring half of its Frisbee production and some production of other items back to the United States.

At the other end of the scale, some in research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceutical, biotech, and other life-sciences companies are also reconsidering China for reasons including costs and incentives offered in other countries.

"Life-sciences companies have shifted some production back to the U.S. from China. In some cases, the U.S. was becoming cheaper," said Sean Correll, director of consulting services for Emptoris, based in Burlington, Mass.

Even with recent increases, wages for Chinese workers are still a fraction of those for Americans. But studies do show China's overall cost advantage is shrinking.

Labor costs have been climbing about 15 percent a year since a 2008 labor-contract law that made workers more aware of their rights. Tax preferences for foreign companies ended in 2007. Land, water, energy, and shipping costs are rising.

In its most recent survey, issued in February, restructuring firm Alix Partners found that, overall, China was more expensive than Mexico, India , Vietnam, Russia, and Romania.

Mexico, in particular, has gained an edge, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement and to fast, inexpensive trucking, says Mike Romeri, an executive with Emptoris, the consulting firm.

Makers of toys and trinkets, Christmas trees, and cheap shoes already have folded by the thousands or moved away, some to Vietnam, Indonesia , or Cambodia. But those countries lack the huge workforce, infrastructure, and markets China can offer, and most face the same labor issues as China.

So far, the biggest impact appears to be around Shenzhen, a former fishing village in Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, that is home to thousands of export manufacturers.

That includes Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology, a supplier of iPhones and iPads to Apple Inc . Foxconn responded to suicides at its Shenzhen complex with pay increases that more than doubled basic monthly worker salaries to $290. Strike-stricken suppliers to Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., among many others, also have raised wages.

Foxconn refused repeated requests for comment on plans to move much of its manufacturing capacity to central China's impoverished Henan province, where a local government website has advertised for tens of thousands of workers on its behalf.

But among other projects farther inland, Foxconn is teaming up with some of the biggest global computer-makers to build what may be the world's largest laptop-production hub in Chongqing, a western China city of 32 million, where labor costs are estimated to be 20 percent to 40 percent lower than in coastal cities.
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20100710_Cheap-labor_era_in_China_is_disappearing.html

>>242436
All workers all over the world should do the same, force the big capital to pay you a fair wage. Workers of the world unite!

>srs chinese military

>kawaii OP?

People actually think she's cute? She looks like a slant-eyed Kermit the Frog.

>>242983
You truly sicken me, she is gorgeous.

The china sticky isn't working.

The china spam is still flowing, abit thinly disguised as other countries news now.

/r/ moderation, china IP bans, and IP bans for china spammer.

>>243048
Nobody is spamming anything, these threads are days old, I see no more then 2-3 at most were people are discussing china through derailed threads. Yet people also derailed other threads more often with other topics.

Get the fuck over your self and get the fuck out, threads get derailed all the time. It's no where near as bad as it was before, just leave, all you do is sage random threads and add no discussion to anything on this board, you are of zero value to this board and are better suited on /baw/, I suggest you go back there.

>>243061
U MAD chink?

Why dont you BAWWW a little harder or post some more china spam if you have the balls to do it?

>>243067
Not a chink you shit poster, I'm just tired of your weasel ways, request ban on this shit poster.

>>243072
>MAD MAD MAD

>>243098
You are the one who appears to be mad, as you are bumping many of my old threads.

>>243048
Request permanent ban this poster, for bumping all threads from page 6 then when new threads reach page 6 he bumps those too. Then he continuously bumps other old threads with one word or sentence responses to cover threads he does not like while in the process pruning half of /n/.

The overall prevalence of erectile dysfunction among Chinese men is more than 26 percent, according to a study by researchers with the Chinese Medical Association.

Among men over 40, at least 40 percent experience male impotence, a sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance, said Wang Xiaofeng, director of the urology surgery department with Peking University People's Hospital.

He made the remarks while making a report during the Fifth China Andrology Forum in Beijing over the weekend, according to a report from the China News Service.

In comparison, United States' researchers in 2007 reported that the overall prevalence of erectile dysfunction among US men was 18.4 percent, according to US media HealthDay news.

Wang said that about 83 percent of the sufferers in China "never sought medical treatment for the disease."

Poor public awareness and the underlying social stigma related to the disease are mainly to be blamed for that, he said.

The released figures are based on surveys on erectile dysfunction carried out in 11 cities.

Men who reported being sometimes able or never able to get and keep an erection in the past three months were defined as suffering erectile dysfunction, Wang said.

For the majority of sufferers the cause was psychological, only 7.2 percent was caused by physical conditions. Some 30 percent suffered from both mental and physical causes, he said.

Many men with erectile dysfunction had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, such as diabetes, hypertension, poor cholesterol levels or a habitual smoker. Most sufferers also didn't partake in any vigorous physical exercise, Wang said.

The findings showed that lifestyle changes like more exercises and measures to prevent cardiovascular disease and diabetes, would help prevent erectile function. Wang urged people experiencing the problem to seek medical help as soon as possible.

A high-quality sex life is an indispensable part of a happy life and an increasing number of Chinese are starting to recognize that, he said.

In December, a Chinese man suffering from erectile dysfunction for a long time killed his wife after she had teased him for being unable to make love to her, reported Yangcheng Evening News of southern Guangzhou city.

In a 2009 survey on people's sex life satisfaction, China ranked the 11th among 13 Asian countries.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/12/content_10092392.htm

>>243222
in before ISN butthurt.

>>243222

White men more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction than Black or Asian men - study
http://pr.cannazine.co.uk: Black and Asian men are less likely to suffer with moderate to severe erectile dysfunction (impotence) than white men. This is the astonishing findings from a study carried out by the Department of Urology at University of California, San Francisco, US.

The burden of erectile dysfunction (ED) among different racial and ethnic groups is unclear, in part, because prior studies have not included all four major racial and ethnic groups in the same population-based sample.

To determine the prevalence and odds of ED among all four major racial and ethnic groups after adjustment for demographic,
medical, socio-economic, and lifestyle characteristics
This cross-sectional study was conducted using data from men, aged 45-69 years, without a diagnosis of prostate cancer (N = 78,445), who completed questionnaires as part of the California Men's Health Study, a large multi-ethnic cohort study with detailed demographic, medical and, socio-economic data.

Erectile dysfunction measured by a previously validated four-level response question.

The overall prevalence of ED by age category was 13%, 24%, and 44% for men aged 45-49 years, 50 and 59 years, and 60-69 years, respectively. In a multivariable model,

relative to white men, Hispanic (OR 1.05, 95% CI 0.99, 1.12), Asian (OR 1.1, 95% CI 1.02, 1.19), and other men (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.06, 1.1.21) had increased odds of moderate-severe ED, while black men were less likely to report moderate to severe ED (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.81, 0.92). Black (OR 0.54, 95% CI 0.48, 0.61) and Asian men (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.80, 1.04) were less likely to have severe ED after adjustment for age, socio-economic status, medical co-morbidities, and lifestyle characteristics.

These data demonstrate that the prevalence of ED among different racial and ethnic groups is likely the result of complex phenomena and depends upon the interplay of socio-economic, demographic, medical, cultural, and lifestyle characteristics.

After accounting for these factors, these data suggest that Asian and black men are less likely to have severe ED relative to white men.

>>243256
>White men more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction than Black or Asian men - study

Now you're just being retarded. I can fap 10 or more times a day if I want to.

>>243265

deny more facts, and it doesn't count if you're giving your little brothers handjobs.

>>243274
>facts
The "study" you link to doesn't even go to a webpage for the content you just posted, and why should any study be taken seriously when your other chink pal denies any penis size "study" that discounts asians from having the tiny rice grains they call testicles?

And keep your deviant sexually repressed humor to yourself, you goldfish.

http://komica55.dreamhosters.com/25/index.htm

I found the Chinese /n/!

>>243285
If you want to chat on an East Asian board, come to 2ch's English section:

http://academy6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/english/1277366583/

I used to post in the Chat in English threads. We've lost a lot of the older and better posters, like bored housewife, Japanese white nationalist and the onanism enthusiast but there are still some funny discussions.

>>243292
613 ：名無しさん＠そうだ選挙に行こう：2010/07/10(土) 23:56:33
I'm Japanese but won't go to vote tomorrow for the election.
I am hikikomori so what's the point in bothering to go to vote?
I don't care what party will win. I spend less than average consumers in Japan
so raising consumption tax isn't that big problem to me.

I wish the planet earth explode tomorrow.
My wish is trigger-happy party becomes a leading party of Japan and wage war against
insane countries like North Korea. The Kim jon Il, the leader of NK launch
Nuclear weapons and BANG! Smash! WHATEVER! The world is over and that's what I want.
_______________________________________________________________


Japanese existentialism at its finest.

>>243280

ever hear of something called a "search engine"? it's common knowledge that whites have tiny dicks they can't get up. subhuman.

>>243302
We've been over this, retard newfag. Your sources are shit.

>>243292
Cool. And apparently a lot of the old ones are archived.

http://www.unkar.org/read/academy6.2ch.net/english/1271770232/

>>243304

Yeah because yours are great

Oh whoops they're shit and mine are awesome

>>243309
Ask your friend ISN what the SOLE study is that he uses, and then see the date on it..enough said. Parasite.

>>243310

Dumbass, they're from like 10-15 years ago. Your IQs haven't gone up and you haven't been getting any taller- the same isn't true for Japanese.

You're so fucking butthurt over having a small dick and being unattractive to East Asian women who want East Asian men. Hahaha butthurt.

>>243313
>Dumbass, they're from like 10-15 years ago.

Dumbass, that would be a superb point if the paper was taken seriously and/or was credible.

>>243280
http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/200910311224/green/eco-news/white-men-more-likely-to-suffer-erectile-dysfunction-than-black-or-asian-men-study.html
Here's the link, gweilo.

Fact is, the majority of mainland erectile dysfunction happens due to psychological problems, i.e. stress. Living in mainland China right now is relatively stressful compared with the West. This study shows that in a less stressful environment Asians 'perform' better.

>discounts asians from having the tiny rice grains they call testicles?
I would like to see your source for this, gweilo.

>>243341
Ahh, so now it's all starting to make sense why the Chinese come in here to attempt to antagonize or "correct" gweilos....Give it up noodledick, you're not going to kill my cool.

Texting and typing are replacing the elaborate strokes that make up written Chinese. And when it comes time to jot down a few words, more Chinese are realizing they can't remember exactly how.

For Ma Silang, the long descent into forgetfulness began after he graduated from high school, went off to London for three years to study photography and bought his first computer.

Now the 30-year-old fashion photographer, a native Beijinger, has such difficulty writing in his mother tongue that the other day when he was scribbling a shopping list for himself he suddenly realized that he had forgotten one of two characters that make up the Chinese word for "shampoo."

"It is inevitable that we forget our Chinese characters unless we make a special effort to practice writing a few hours each week, and who has time for that?" said Ma, looking up from an iPhone on which he was tapping a message while waiting for his MacBook to be repaired at Beijing's Apple store.

This is a strange new form of illiteracy — or, more exactly, dysgraphia, the inability to write — that is peculiar to China. The epicenter of the contagion is in places like the Apple store, a multilevel, glass-facaded emporium for China's tech-savvy.

The typical victim is someone like Ma — dressed in a pinstriped, button-down shirt, Bermuda shorts and loafers, he looks as if he stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad — who is young, well-educated and affluent.

The more gadgets people own — cellphones, smart phones, computers — the less often they go through the elaborate sequence of strokes that make up Chinese characters. Whether on their computers or texting on phones, most Chinese use a system where they type out the sound of the word in Pinyin, the most commonly used Romanization system — and presto, they are given a choice of characters to use.

No muss, no fuss, no pens, no pencils — not to speak of inkwells and calligraphy brushes.

"People don't write anything by hand anymore except for name and address," admitted Ma.

Almost any Chinese person you meet will confess to a lapse of memory, almost like a senior moment. The hand clutching the pen or pencil is poised above a sheet of paper about to write a character learned in childhood and memorized in countless repetitions when — suddenly — an embarrassing pause.

In an April poll commissioned by the China Youth Daily, 83% of the 2,072 respondents acknowledged problems with writing characters. The phenomenon is so common that there is even a name for it, tibiwangzi, which translates to "take pen, forget character."

"The other day I was writing a note by hand and when I came to the word zaijian [goodbye], I did sort of a double-take because I wasn't sure I'd written the zai correctly," said 18-year-old Cheng Jing, a college freshman.

To some extent, similar problems arise anywhere that people rely on technology rather than memory — outsourcing of the brain, as they call it in the many treatises that address the question of whether computers and the Internet are stifling our intelligence.

In China, the situation rises to the level of a cultural crisis since the characters, more than any other facet of life, epitomize thousands of years of tradition.

Chinese is the oldest continuously used writing system in the world; the characters used today can be traced to pictographs found on bones and turtle shells dating to 1200 BC.

Even though in the 1950s Mao Tse-tung ordered the simplification of many characters to promote wider literacy, much of childhood in China is still spent memorizing and copying. By the time students are 15, they will have spent about four to five hours per day over nine years learning to write a minimum of 3,000 characters.

Writing, moreover, is not merely about communication — in Chinese culture, it is an art form and spiritual exercise, believed by some to improve concentration, longevity and even martial arts skills.

"These characters are in the soul of every Chinese person," said Wang Jianxue, a 38-year-old calligraphy teacher from Harbin who was lovingly leafing through the stacks at a bookstore in Liulichang, a street of quiet shops that sell brushes, ink stones, rubbings, scrolls and curios. "The nation has to maintain its personality through its characters. They are our cultural heritage. The computer is just a tool."

Outside the shop, a man in white silk pajamas traced characters in water on the pavement with a device that looked more like a sponge mop than a brush. "This is my hobby," 41-year-old Wang Jiazhong said as he wrote out the characters meaning "beautiful spring day" and then watched them disappear as the water evaporated in the beating sun.

"Chinese people these days care only about material life. Even in Japan and Korea more people practice calligraphy than here. How could such a thing happen when the characters began here?" he complained. "The government has to do something. Without government intervention, people won't pay attention."

In fact, the Chinese government is beginning to take notice. In 2008, the Education Ministry surveyed 3,000 teachers around the country and found 60% complaining about declining writing ability. As a result, the ministry last year launched a writing competition with 10 million participants and has begun pilot programs to make students do more handwriting.

"It is not about producing beautiful calligraphy," said Yu Hong, who runs the ministry's program on writing language. "We want to help students to come back to writing again."

The decline of handwriting probably has less to do with the computer than the cellphone. The Chinese do more text messaging than anybody else in the world, perhaps because it is an inexpensive way to communicate and because the Chinese language can squeeze a lot of information into a small space. (One example is a single character, pronounced "zha," which means the red dots that appear on your nose when you are drunk.)

With cellphones that have a stylus and touch screen, you can draw the character you want to text, and many older Chinese prefer that method. But younger Chinese, who are more comfortable with the alphabet, will write out the Romanized version of the word — or an abbreviation, such as "bei" for Beijing.

Last year, educators held the first nationwide conference on the issue. Among the remedial measures discussed is requiring college students to write out papers by hand, which would have the added benefit of making it harder for them to plagiarize by cutting and pasting text from the Internet.

"I tell my students I find reading their handwriting to be a pleasure, but most of my colleagues frankly don't want to bother," said Lu Lingxiao, a professor at Guangxi University, who was a participant at the conference in the southern city of Nanning. "If my colleagues and the government don't start taking it seriously, I worry that our level of literacy will suffer."

Many young Chinese are sufficiently concerned that they have taken it upon themselves to study calligraphy.

"It will take a lot of effort to preserve our Chinese characters. It is the same way they try to preserve these old hutongs," said Zhu Linfei, 24, a Beijing graduate student, referring to the traditional Beijing alleys, now rapidly succumbing to the wrecking ball.

Zhu, who was touring the old bookstores of Liulichang with her classmates to buy calligraphy books, estimated that she had already forgotten about 20% of the characters she knew in high school.

"But it's not such a big problem," she said. "If I don't know a character, I take out my cellphone to check."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-characters-20100712,0,1979965,full.story

The Chinese "alphabet" is archaic and obsolete. They should be happy that it's being phased out.

Chinese characters look a lot nicer when it comes to literature and poetry though. Who wants to see the same twenty-something letters over and over?

>>243407
> Who wants to see the same twenty-something letters over and over?

Apparently the richest culture of literature in global history.

can ALL china troll posts be banned?

Also, if this thread and the other sticky can get merged together into a locked sticky, that would be even better.

>>243420
It's like you live and breathe shitty ideas.

>>243369

Give it up microdick

it's funny how he always shows Japan instead of China

>>243455

it's funny how you're a subhuman chimp

that and China is larger than Japan, period... just showing how the largest whites are smaller than the smallest East Asians

>>243460
> the largest whites are smaller than the smallest East Asians

lol @ chimp fantasies

>>243467

lol subhuman chimp calling humans chimps

>>243476
OO OO AH AH AH

>>243485
Ah, the Chinese mating call.

A number of recent events suggest a pattern of increased tensions possibly leading to a large-scale war. The latest was the appearance of a "UFO" over a large Chinese city. Prisonplanet commented:

"If this was a secret Chinese military aircraft, as authorities claim, why would they fly it over a populated area unless they wanted to send a message to the United States that it by no means has a monopoly on sophisticated black budget technology?"

UFO Is Secret Chinese Military Aircraft

http://www.prisonplanet.com/ufo-is-secret-chinese-military-aircraft.html

Could this really be a card played by the Asians to counter the US military build-up in the region, which brought there up to 450 Tomahawk-cruise missiles in late June in US subs, among other things?

http://www.infowars.com/u-s-missiles-deployed-near-china/

Jim Tucker, the researcher on the Bilderberg group reported that the Illuminati is going to push for bombing of Iran. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/bilderberg_meets_in_spain_225.html

We have also seen pressure put on Iran's allies China and Russia with the sinking of the South Korean vessel Cheonan back in March.

The investigation of Cheonan set up by South Korea and it's western allies has been quite hazy. The evidence found by the international "team of experts", used to condemn North Korea hasn't convinced everybody, even in South Korea. At least one South Korean assistant investigator for the team voiced his concern that the evidence had been tampered with.

The evidence South Korea and the US presented to the UN Security Council was so weak that even though the UN council condemned the sinking of Cheonan, they couldn't pin the guilt on the North.

After a recent UN statement didn't specifically condemn North Korea, the North is now even willing to start new nuclear disarmament negotiations. This move by the North must annoy the Illuminati, but there are always those Iranian nuclear sites to bomb.

Here is a good blog on the Cheonan investigation. The incident smells like another 'false flag' by the war industrial complex. http://en.wordpress.com/tag/sinking-of-the-cheonan/

In the past week, there has been other new "tensions" between Russia and the US, the "odd" Russian spy episode, the signing of the missile shield deal in Poland, and Hillary Clinton's statements that Russia has no right to it's self proclaimed "spheres of influence" in the Caucuses region.

The situation in Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia in general will also assist in building tension between the Super States, and give opportunities for troop manoeuvring.

Turkey is about to break it's diplomatic ties with Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident. Israel is again eyeing an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon ( because of the gas field in Lebanon?! http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=131989&sectionid=351020203 )

...and there's tons more of the same kind of activity around the world.

The Illuminati seems to be building up the sides for World War III, which could see a start if Israel and the US go ahead and bomb the Iranian nuclear sites.

They don't have any concrete evidence that Iran would be building a nuclear weapon, but that didn't stop them from invading Iraq either in 2003.

They forged the "yellow cake uranium" documents back then, and they are forging the evidence on Iran also.

The "alleged studies" found in a lap top (or was it put there afterwards??) and the document evidence of a Iranian 'nuclear trigger' seems to come from Mossad.

Here are few articles by IPS on these Iranian document forgeries:

Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41416

New Revelations Tear Holes in Nuclear Trigger Story

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49889




Postscript on Tesla Technology & UFO's

The so called UFO-technology is man made, not ET-technology. This anti-gravity electro propulsion-system was invented by Nikola Tesla in the late 19th century. It is based on earlier findings by Lord Kelvin, H. A. Rowland, Edwin Hall etc. and the scientific findings involved in this anti-gravity technology can be sourced back to these scientists. So regardless of what the sci-fi sites on the Internet say, there was no extraterrestrials involved in the discovery of this amazing anti-gravity propulsion-technology.

So could it be that the Asians are countering the Western Illuminati's plans for WW III to be fought against the Muslim world (as allegedly visioned in correspondence of Albert Pike with Guiseppe Mazzini in 1871) ..and apparently also in East Asia, maybe also with Russia (or will the "white Russia" choose to be on the side of westerns??)

..by threatening the Illuminati with disclosure of this concealed Tesla-technology? ..or was the statement given to China Daily about this "UFO tying to the Chinese military" just a slip of the tongue?

..Didn't Benjamin Fulford report earlier that the Asians were going to counter the western Illuminati with a move like this, by releasing some of the concealed technology invented by Nikola Tesla?

http://benjaminfulford.net/

However it is, at least we the "sheeple" should raise noise about this "Chinese military explanation" to the Hangzhou UFO, so that this Nikola Tesla's wonderful invention could see the light of day, and find it's way to where Nikola Tesla always intended it to be; in the hands of the people of the world.

Here are few links where you can find more information on this Tesla's "flying saucer" and on the principles this technology operates:

Tesla's (real) Flying Machine ..quotes made by Tesla on his "flying machine" invention:

http://pritchardschool.com/Teslas_Flying_Machine.pdf

Tesla's Dynamic Theory of Gravity

http://peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Tesla's_Dynamic_Theory_of_Gravity

Good books on the Tesla "flying machine" and other human built saucers are..

Occult Ether Physics - Tesla's Hidden Space Propulsion System and The Conspiracy To Conceal It:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/occultether/occultether.htm

..and Pentagon Aliens by William R. Lyne

Hitler's Flying Saucers - A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War by Henry Stevens

http://www.thewebfairy.com/911/missilegate/rfz/index2.htm

People interested in the matter of the Hangzhou UFO and it's possible "military connection", should keep watching China Daily (use the search engine).

Flights diverted, delayed as UFO detected hovering over province

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-07/09/content_10084749.htm

UFO remains a mystery

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/10/content_10089831.htm

>>243487

Actually, the white mating call

Aside from "NO DADDY"

  white chimp stupidity kills innocent east asians

>>243369
>to attempt to antagonize or "correct" gweilos
I live in Hong Kong, gweilo. Besides, I hardly need to strain myself to correct your gweilo fantasies, and incorrect they are.

It's funny that you think in your butthurt that I'm trying to give you erectile dysfunction, though.

>>243379
Another example of the CCP taking notice of a growing problem and nipping it in the bud. Watch as this goes unresolved in countries like India.

>>243395
lol @ gweilo thinking Chinese characters are anything like an 'alphabet'. Each character is a combination of a root (meaning) and a semantic determinative (context).

The character 采 (to pluck) is formed from the components 爫 (a hand) and 木 (a tree).

>>243411
>Apparently the richest culture of literature in global history.
lol @ gweilo eurocentrism.

>>243506
goddamn communist filth. people like you are what ruined hong kong. get the fuck out of my city.

>>243506
>lol @ gweilo eurocentrism.

That's not eurocentrism gweilofag, it's fact. No literature trumps Western literature, especially the great Russian novelists/playwrites/poets such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Goncharov, Gogol etc.

To deny this is just being willfully ignorant. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of literature acknowledges it, and this is coming from someone who has read Xueqin.

>>243507
>goddamn communist filth.
You are an idiot if you think that China is communist, or that you have to be communist to support the CCP. That, or you're a running dog of the West to parrot their propaganda.

>people like you are what ruined hong kong.
No, people who are 'ruining' Hong Kong are the impressionable retards like you who likes to complain about anything and everything the government does, and sit in the streets disrupting traffic because they don't get their way. Why don't you go fellatio Long Hair more, faggot.

I have a sneaking suspicion that you're a gweilo.

>>243511
>No literature trumps Western literature, especially the great Russian novelists/playwrites/poets such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Goncharov, Gogol etc.
Tell me, gweilo. How do you rank classics to determine what is the 'greatest' or 'richest'? And are Russians really part of the West?

By far the average Chinese read more written masterpieces and classics than the average gweilo, and our literature culture goes back thousands of years, with poems, proverbs and novels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_literature

Xueqin was one author, although one of the greatest. Even then, his magnum opus remained unfinished.

>>243517
>How do you rank classics to determine what is the 'greatest' or 'richest'?

Lots of factors: Quality of prose, depth of characters, themes explored, extent to which said themes are explored, interplay between characters and themes and so on. Now, as it stands, no novelist before or since has managed to challenge the likes of Dostoevsky on these counts, Brothers Karamazov is labyrinthine in its depth, and although I like Dream of the Red Chamber, its characters aren't as deep in terms of motivation (introspection of the protagonists plays a big part here) and their relationships with other characters as they are in say.... Crime and Punishment.

>And are Russians really part of the West?

Yes. Of course. Not really politically, in fact politically they're just pragmatists, like China. But culturally and racially speaking, they are.

>Even then, his magnum opus remained unfinished.

Same with Virgil.

>>243518
>Quality of prose, depth of characters, themes explored, extent to which said themes are explored, interplay between characters and themes and so on.
And this exists in spades in Chinese literature. Are you reading them in their original form or a translation?

>Dream of the Red Chamber
Is but one of the classics. Three Kingdoms? Water Margin? What about poetry? Our 4-character proverbs?

China is the largest publisher of books, magazines, and newspapers in the world. Great writers cannot be solely responsible for the richness of a literate culture, they are nothing without a public that enjoys reading.

>>243511
>Russians
>Western

>>243522
>And this exists in spades in Chinese literature.

To a degree, yes. This is undeniable. But compare the interplay of Baoyu in Red Chamber with the supporting cast of characters to say, the way the Karamazov brothers interact with one another.

I liked Baoyu, but he just wasn't as deep in his motives and there wasn't as much philosophical exposition (although the Taoist elements were a nice touch). Russian novels are like Russian dolls, they're multi-layered, no one character is how he ostensibly appears, even the supporting characters. I haven't found anything comparable to this depth in Chinese Literature.

>Are you reading them in their original form or a translation?

Translation.

>Is but one of the classics. Three Kingdoms? Water Margin? What about poetry? Our 4-character proverbs?

I'm not going to turn this into one-upmanship, but Europe simply has more great classics.

>China is the largest publisher of books, magazines, and newspapers in the world. Great writers cannot be solely responsible for the richness of a literate culture, they are nothing without a public that enjoys reading.

Not true, proles contribute nothing to culture in whatever country they come from.

Prole culture is generally shit.

>>243518
Athens you should read House Of The Dead by Dostoyevsky, I rank it just as highly as his most well known 4 masterpieces especially for character psychology. Also do you read the Constance Garnett translations in glorious Victorian language or modern translations? I prefer the Garnett even though they may over-flourish at times. Reading your interaction with gweilofag, I don't think you need to even go as far as the listing anything past some of Dostoyevsky's short stories like The Eternal Husband and The Gambler to overshadow most of Chinese literature..

Also...I noticed in your reply to the chimp, that you left out Gorky and Leonov. They should always be listed along with the other greats imo, definitely read Gorky's City Of The Yellow Devil or Foma Gordeyev...and Skutarevsky by Leonov. Then again you probably might not like Gorky because of your politics.

>>243528
Haven't read any Gorky or Leonov unfortunately. My favorite Dostoevsky short story is White Nights if I'm being honest, because the protagonist reminds me of /a/, heh. I like Tolstoy's The Two Hussars as well among his short stories.

>Gorky's City Of The Yellow Devil or Foma Gordeyev...and Skutarevsky by Leonov.

I'll pick these up, regardless of Gorky's politics. Got a huge backlog of stuff to read at the moment though.

>>243528
> Also do you read the Constance Garnett translations in glorious Victorian language or modern translations?

Forgot to answer this. Yes I do, I prefer older translations. I don't like newer translations of most things, they seem to be less.... poetic and more like a machine translation.

>>243530
And to follow up, this goes for English prose in general. People say Gibbon's Decline and Fall is hard to read for example, when I find the exact opposite: It's wonderful to read, but modern historical authors are generally pretty shitty and boring, with the exception of people like the late Ronald Syme. J.J. Norwich is pretty good too.

>>243531
Yes. You may not know this but Gorky also wrote quite a number of plays, I have a collection of them but have not read them yet to compare with Chekhov....

Without fail get the Garnett for House Of The Dead...look around ebay for a softcover, a series called The Laurel Dostoyevsky from Dell publishing in the 60s and 70s usually are available..I got lucky once and also bought a big hardcover limited edition from Macmillian with beautiful wood engravings. Anyway, good taste in Russian lit, and glad to see Gogol in there, Taras Bulba is incredible.

>>243527
>I haven't found anything comparable to this depth in Chinese Literature.
That's because you've read one book, and a translated one at that. A lot of the gleam of Chinese classics is in word-play and double meanings hidden by text.

Maybe you should pick up Water Margin and Three Kingdoms as well, and of course Journey to the West so you can say you've read the four classics.

>I'm not going to turn this into one-upmanship, but Europe simply has more great classics.
>I'm not going to turn this into one-upmanship, but 'one-upmanish opinion'.
Right. It's funny because the gweilo who originally made the claim you are now defending is talking about ENGLISH literature.

>Not true, proles contribute nothing to culture in whatever country they come from.
The more readers of classics, the less proles. Please don't compare your gweilo 'fuck books' culture with ours.

>>243528
>to overshadow most of Chinese literature..
>Implying you could make an unbiased judgement, or you've read any Chinese literature.

>>243540
What Chinese novel -would- you say rivals Brothers Karamazov then and for what reasons? Namely, does it explore philosophical themes in the same way, does it have similar psychological depth etc.

>It's funny because the gweilo who originally made the claim you are now defending is talking about ENGLISH literature.

And?

That's an unfair comparison as you well know for obvious reasons.

A better comparison is European vs. Chinese literature. Or European vs. Northeast Asian literature.

>The more readers of classics, the less proles.

I'm talking about the culture proles produce. Not whether or not them reading classical literature is going to make them less prole like.

> Please don't compare your gweilo 'fuck books' culture with ours.

Bullshit. That's just a media meme, most people middle class and above read books, all of my friends did at school, or at least, nearly all of them.

Are you suggesting Chinese pop culture trash smells any better than Western pop culture trash? Now who is play at oneupmanship? Go and look at all those awful novels by female Shanghainese if you want a good idea of the universally bad nature of pop culture.

>>243562
>What Chinese novel -would- you say rivals Brothers Karamazov then and for what reasons?
If you wishes to look for modern existentialism and atheism vs theism, you won't find it in the classics. We don't really have that struggle or angst worth writing about back then.

For modern novels, look out for The Family (by Ba Jin), Call to Arms (a series of short stories by Lu Xun), Rickshaw Boy (Lao She), Border Town (Shen Congwen).

There's plenty of character interaction and philosophy to be found in Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, but I suggest you read those more like a psuedo-historic novels than how you read the Brothers.

>That's an unfair comparison as you well know for obvious reasons.
Er, why? It was not me who makes such a retarded comparison. Perhaps you should read carefully the opinion of the idiots you wish to defend before you charge in.

>Not whether or not them reading classical literature is going to make them less prole like.
This must be a gweilo thing, because I don't have a clue what you are saying.

>most people middle class and above read books
Yes, but 'middle class and above' are a minority.

>all of my friends did at school, or at least, nearly all of them.
You are required to read to learn at school. I'm talking about people who read because they want to broaden their horizons, or because they enjoy to.

And it is fact that Chinese on average read more than the average gweilo.

>Are you suggesting Chinese pop culture trash smells any better than Western pop culture trash?
No, and I agree with you here. However, I was explicitly talking of the 'culture' of Chinese more in favour of reading than the West.

>Now who is play at oneupmanship?
I am not the one saying our culture produces more and greater literature. In disputing your point I am stating that we are at least equals, not better.

>What Chinese novel -would- you say rivals Brothers Karamazov then and for what reasons?

The Joy Luck Club

SHANGHAI — A week after the Agricultural Bank of China raised nearly $20 billion from global investors in one of the biggest stock offerings in history, analysts are warning about growing risks to China’s banking system.

A report released on Wednesday by Fitch, the credit ratings agency, said Chinese banks were increasingly engaging in complex transactions that hid the size and nature of their lending, obscuring hundreds of billions of dollars in loans and possibly even masking a coming wave of bad real estate and infrastructure loans.

The report also said that Chinese regulators significantly understated loan growth in the first half of the year, by 28 percent, or about $190 billion, and that many banks continued to secretly shift loans off the books, resulting in a “pervasive understatement of credit growth and credit exposure.”

“The growing amount of credit moving out of the banking system through these channels is one of the most disconcerting trends we’ve seen in China in recent years,” Charlene Chu, a Beijing-based banking analyst at Fitch, said of the practice of repackaging loans and moving them off bank balance sheets.

While China’s economy remains robust, the report is troubling because the country’s recovery has been fueled by aggressive lending and soaring property prices. Lending by state-run banks was one of China’s most aggressive forms of economic stimulus last year, but analysts constantly warned that banks could face the risk from overbuilding and nonperforming loans.

Beijing is trying to tame housing prices, rein in overly aggressive lending and stop banks from shifting loans off their books.

China’s biggest banks, like Bank of China and China Construction Bank, are relatively healthy, analysts say. But many banks could face sizable risks if borrowers failed to repay the loans.

The Fitch report does not name any banks specifically, but it raises concerns about the health of China’s banks as many begin to raise capital through initial public offerings. The Agricultural Bank begins trading on Thursday in Shanghai, while three other big state banks, including the Bank of China, have each raised billions of dollars in public listings in the last five years.

Analysts say that trying to rein in growth is a delicate and precarious balancing act and that even regulators are struggling to keep up with the rapid innovation in the banking system.

Chinese banks reported a sharp drop in lending in the first half of the year after record amounts in 2009, suggesting that the economy was growing at a strong clip with more normalized lending.

But Fitch said on Wednesday that lending had continued to be aggressive — powering the economy, but raising the risk of nonperforming loans.

Much of the lending through off-balance-sheet channels is fueled by privately owned trust companies that are partnering with banks and engaging in complex deals that involve repackaging loans into investment products — akin to an informal type of securitization.

The deals are essentially disguised loans, analysts say. Beijing has tried repeatedly to stop the practice, but analysts say that banks and trust companies have come up with innovative ways around the rules.

Last week, the China Banking Regulatory Commission ordered banks to stop working with trust companies to securitize or repackage loans, according to industry analysts. But the regulator made no official announcement.

A spokesman in Beijing for the commission declined to comment on Wednesday, insisting that senior officials needed to be alerted to the request for an interview.

Analysts are examining what appears to be a widespread practice of funneling billions of dollars into real estate and government infrastructure projects through off-balance-sheet deals with trust companies.

Stephen Green, a Shanghai-based analyst at Standard Chartered Bank, said trust companies in China were acting as intermediaries and partnering with banks to raise and then lend money to a variety of projects.

According to his estimate, trust companies raised hundreds of billions of dollars in 2009 and the first five months of 2010, partly because depositors were frustrated by low interest rates at banks, and trust companies were willing to offer double that amount with principal guaranteed.

Mr. Green called the practice troublesome.

“There’s limited transparency, so obviously that’s a red flag,” he said in a telephone interview.

Worries about a potential wave of bad loans have led regulators to pressure Chinese banks to raise more capital and strengthen their balance sheets.

Banks have also been pressed to lower their exposure to local government debt — money often raised for huge infrastructure projects.

But analysts now say they believe that banks are lowering their exposure to local debt and hiding the size of their lending by working even more aggressively with trust companies.

Analysts say that last year the process worked something like this: a bank would hand over a big loan, say $50 million, to a private trust company in exchange for $50 million in cash. Then the trust company would create a wealth management product out of the loan and give it to the bank to sell to investors and depositors. The money raised would be given back to the trust company.

Investors would receive as much as double the regular saving rate and their principal when the loan was repaid.

That $50 million would then be given to the trust company as if it were an investment; in fact, it was a short-term, high-interest loan to finance a real estate project.

Now, analysts say, to get around new regulations, the transactions are much more complex, but have the same aim — to pretend that a loan is an investment.

If the developer or trust company fails and cannot repay the loan, analysts say the banks could face huge, unrecognized risks. But curtailing the practice will not be easy, Ms. Chu at Fitch Ratings said.

“Before, banks were trying to create these things with trust companies to get them out,” she said. “But now, with inflation and interest rates so low, and property prices low, bank customers are going into banks and demanding this option.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/business/global/15yuan.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY is planning to use the Internet as a weapon to keep it in power.

An internal memo that accidentally ended up on the party's website detailed a plan to use the Internet in order to "create an international public opinion environment that is objective, beneficial and friendly to us."

Wang Chen - a man with more Chinese government credits to his name than Lord Mandy - continued by claiming that the effort to engineer the Internet would help in "assisting in our diplomatic battles and safeguarding our national interests."

Although much of that might seem like the crazy ramblings of a tin-pot dictator, Chen's speech takes a sinister turn when he says the Internet has "increased the government's capabilities in social management." According to Chen, Chinese government agencies at all levels "have gradually built mechanisms to guide public opinion through integrating the functions of propaganda departments," with the Internet being just another tool for the rulers to use towards that goal.

Wang also references the need for filtering content by claiming that access to foreign websites can result in "all sorts of harmful foreign information to appear on our domestic internet". All of this points to the Chinese government creating their own intranet in order to push its ideals into the minds of its populace.

Whether or not any part of China's proposed intranet will have access to the global Internet should greatly influence the usefulness of it as a communications medium. Currently China has a firewall and censors to filter out content. By creating its own network it can easily limit and control the content available online to its huge population, without having to worry about proxies or other network access obsfucation techniques.

The leaked China government memo had no information on when the Chinese version of the Internet and walled garden internet will be rolled out, but we suspect that's because it's already here and tightening.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1722650/chinese-government-internet

>>243681
YES!

BEIJING – The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.

So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.

"In some ways, this is like the conflict between Americans and illegal immigrants in the States. The local residents feel threatened by the influx of migrants," Huang Youqin, an associate professor of geography at the University at Albany in New York who has studied gating and political control in China, said in an e-mail. "The risk is that the government can control people's private life if it wants to."

The gated villages are the latest indignity for China's migrant workers, who already face limited access to schooling and government services and are routinely blamed by city folk for rising crime. Used to the hardship of the farm and the lack of privilege, migrants seem to be taking the new controls in their stride.

Jia Yangui said he accepts the new system as a trade-off for escaping farm work in the northern province of Shanxi. He arrived in Beijing less than two months ago and lives with a relative in one of the gated villages, Dashengzhuang. He sells oily pancakes just inside one of the gates.

"Anyway, it's not as strict as before, when we migrants would be detained on the way to the toilet," said Jia's relative, a middle-aged woman who gave her family name as Zheng.

"Sealed management" looks like this: Gates are placed at the street and alley entrances to the villages, which are collections of walled compounds sprinkled with shops and outdoor vendors. The gates are locked between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., except for one main entrance manned by security guards or police, there to check identification papers. Security guards roam the villages by day.

"Closing up the village benefits everyone," read one banner which was put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.

But some Chinese question whether problems arising from growing gap between the country's rich and poor can be fixed with locks and surveillance cameras.

"It's a ridiculous idea!" said Li Wenhua, who does private welfare work with migrant workers in Beijing. "This is definitely not a good long-term strategy. The government should dig up the in-depth causes of crime and improve basic public services such as education and health care to these people."

Crime has been rising steadily over the past two decades, as China moved from state planning to free markets and Chinese once locked into set jobs began moving around the country for work. Violent crime in China jumped 10 percent last year, with 5.3 million reported cases of homicide, robbery, and rape, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reported in February.

"Sealed management" was born in the village of Laosanyu during the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the government was eager to control its migrant population. The village used it again during the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist China last year. Officials then reported the idea to township officials, who decided to make the practice permanent this year.

"Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice," said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu's village committee. He didn't say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.

"Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety," he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said.

Gating has been an easy and effective way to control population throughout Chinese history, said Huang, the geography professor. In past centuries, some walled cities would impose curfews and close their gates overnight. In the first decades of communist rule, the desire for top-down organization and control showed in work-unit compounds, usually guarded and enclosed.

As the economy has grown, privately run gated communities with their own security have emerged in the biggest cities, catering to well-to-do Chinese and expatriates, offering upscale houses and facilities like pools and gyms.

The new gated villages in Beijing are very different.

"To put it crudely, gated communities in the city are a way for the upper middle-class and urban rich to keep out trespassers, whereas gated villages represent a way for the state to 'keep in' or contain the problem of 'migrant workers' who live in these villages," Pow Choon-Pieu, an assistant professor of geography at the National University of Singapore who has studied the issue, said in an e-mail.

Jiang Zhengqing, a supermarket owner in the gated compound of Laosanyu, told the China Daily newspaper in May that he doesn't even know if he'll be in business next year because of the drop in customers.

"Before, the streets were crowded with people in the afternoon but now the village is deserted," he said. "I can't understand why the government has invested such a large amount of money into putting up these useless fences, rather than repair our dirty public restrooms and bumpy roads."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100714/ap_on_re_as/as_china_fenced_in;_ylt=AlrEEJZnSOM.E.t_FHVDoHVzfNdF

>>243714
stay classy ISN

The pace of growth in the world's third-largest economy slowed in the second quarter, official figures show.

China's economy grew by 10.3% in the April to June quarter, above the government's growth target, but well below the 11.9% growth rate during the first quarter of the year.

The slowdown came as the impact of a government stimulus package faded.

The government also clamped down on a credit boom. China's economic boom is key to growth in other countries.

A slowdown could hurt China's trading partners and might hold back global recovery if the country starts to import less.

China recovered quickly from the global economic downturn, but was then faced with a boom that included a surge in house prices and fears that a speculative asset bubble was forming.

The authorities imposed limits on lending and investment.

Despite the slower pace of growth, it remains well above the official target of 8% for the year.

The latest figures leave growth for the first half at 11.1%.

The International Monetary Fund earlier this year said China's economy would expand by 10.5% this year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10643858

>>243579
>If you wishes to look for modern existentialism and atheism vs theism, you won't find it in the classics.

That's not really what Dostoevsky was about. He predates existentialism, though he has existential themes, they're not as ham fisted as later existential authors because they're woven into the narrative.

>For modern novels, look out for The Family (by Ba Jin), Call to Arms (a series of short stories by Lu Xun), Rickshaw Boy (Lao She), Border Town (Shen Congwen).

I'll have a look. I just finished Shen Fu and Pu Songling anyway. Thanks for the recommendations.

>Er, why?

Because China, present day and historically, dwarfs anglos in terms of population.

>Yes, but 'middle class and above' are a minority.

This is debateable.

> I'm talking about people who read because they want to broaden their horizons, or because they enjoy to.

Recreational reading is what I'm talking about too. All of my friends read regularly.

>I am not the one saying our culture produces more and greater literature. In disputing your point I am stating that we are at least equals, not better.

Fair enough.

  ...

  ?

>>244078
I guarantee a decent minded girl like in OP's pic would never act as retarded as the specimen you posted.

> I guarantee a decent minded girl like in OP's pic would never act as retarded as the specimen you posted.

She is cute, and it's worth remembering that most people on the planet are decent people trying to live decent lives. It's politicians, governments and big business (Murdoch, British Aerospace, KBR) who whip up hatred and play us off against each other.

>>244142
This is what liberals etc

> This is what liberals etc

Gee what a great comeback. I guess when you're too stupid to argue intelligently you hurr hurr and type a generic response like that. You must be a real dumb cunt IRL. Enjoy your failure.

>>244142
>most people on the planet are decent people trying to live decent lives
[citation needed]

>>244146
If most people on the planet were so thoroughly decent and altruistic, why don't they practice your commie wealth looting socialism spontaneously, why does it require coercive force (i.e. the barrel of a gun)?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzfbKLu5Isk

Savages

> If most people on the planet were so thoroughly decent and altruistic,

Yes, I see the mistake of using this line of reasoning with an American: This isn't true of the most selfish self-absorbed people on Earth. Enjoy your world dominance.

>>244251
1. You're purposefully obfuscating the point and strawmanning, I'm not American by the way.

2. If people are so innately altruistic, why do you need to steal their money, why don't they practice your version of altruism spontaneously?

Strawmanning. That would be you. Who said anything about Altruism? I said:
> it's worth remembering that most people on the planet are decent people trying to live decent lives.

Mankind and society have evolved to hold compassion for others.

State welfare is an extension of that.

>>244428
Actually, state welfare is needed because of that societal evolution. Primitive tribes don't have perpetual underclasses, hence they have no such concept of state welfare.

>>244428
>State welfare is an extension of that.

Why does it require coercive force?

Why isn't it practiced spontanaeously?

>>244438
State welfare is not needed in the slightest, it is paying people not to work, plain and simple. If they couldn't find a job they'd either be dependent on their families or the church, that's the real reason libtards pushed it in the early 20th century, because it destroyed traditional social institutions.

In society wealth congregates for many different reasons, and once you've got wealth you can't help but grow richer. That breeds resentment. Resentment breeds revolution, gets government overthrown and sees rich people raped and strung up by their balls. State welfare staved that off, but it's gone too far. Rich assholes like Rupert Murdoch pay fuck all tax. Poor people pay fuck all tax. The bigger a company the bigger their tax breaks. It's the middle class and small business who get screwed, but not owning the media there is fuck all they can do about it.

>>244615
>and once you've got wealth you can't help but grow richer.
heh, this is what libs actually believe.
hint that "growth" is just inflation

China has passed the U.S. to become the world's biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency, a milestone that reflects both China's decades-long burst of economic growth and its rapidly expanding clout as an industrial giant.

China's ascent marks "a new age in the history of energy," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said in an interview. The country's surging appetite has transformed global energy markets and propped up prices of oil and coal in recent years, and its continued growth stands to have long-term implications for U.S. energy security.

The Paris-based IEA, energy adviser to most of the world's biggest economies, said China consumed 2.252 billion tons of oil equivalent last year, about 4% more than the U.S., which burned through 2.170 billion tons of oil equivalent. The oil-equivalent metric represents all forms of energy consumed, including crude oil, nuclear power, coal, natural gas and renewable sources such as hydropower.

China, meanwhile, disputed the IEA figures, but didn't offer alternative data, according to Zhou Xian, spokesperson for China's top energy agency.

The U.S. had been the globe's biggest overall energy user since the early 1900s, Mr. Birol said.

China overtook it at breakneck pace. China's total energy consumption was just half that of the U.S. 10 years ago, but in many of the years since, China saw annual double-digit growth rates. It had been expected to pass the U.S. about five years from now, but took the top position earlier because the global recession hit the U.S. more severely, slowing American industrial activity and energy use.

China's economic rise has required enormous amounts of energy—especially since much of the past decade's growth was fueled not by consumer demand, as in the U.S., but from energy-intense heavy industry and infrastructure building.

China's growing energy demands will present new challenges to U.S. foreign policy, as well as to international efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases linked to climate change. China National Petroleum Co., the country's biggest oil company, is pushing forward with oil and gas projects in Iran, despite U.S. efforts to enforce sanctions against the Tehran government.

Beijing has refused to agree to cap its overall growth in its consumption of fossil fuels, or reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That frustrated President Barack Obama's efforts to forge an international climate agreement at a United Nations summit in Copenhagen last December.

China instead set a target to reduce emissions intensity—the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of gross domestic product—by 40% to 45% from 2005 levels by 2020. That meant China was agreeing to make its economy more energy efficient—boosting its competitiveness—but not to consume less energy overall.

China's growth has transformed global energy markets and sustained higher prices for everything from oil to uranium and other natural resources that the country has been consuming. Once, China was a major exporter of both oil and coal. Its increasing reliance on imports has sustained higher energy prices worldwide and underpinned a natural-resource boom in Africa, the Middle East and Australia.

"There is little doubt that China's growing consumption changes what ability we have to control our own destiny within global energy markets," said David Pumphrey, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "China can now demand a large space inside any energy-policy tent."

China's rapidly expanding need for energy promises to have major geopolitical implications as it hunts for ways to satisfy its needs. Already, China's rising imports have changed global geopolitics. Chinese oil and coal companies have been looking overseas in their quest to secure energy supplies, pitching the Chinese flag in places like Sudan, which Western companies had largely abandoned under international pressure.

The most ambitious effort to secure overseas energy supplies was the failed 2005 attempt Cnooc Ltd. to take over California-based Unocal in an $18 billion bid, which was trumped by politics and rival Chevron. Despite a short pullback in the aftermath of that failed deal, Chinese companies have expanded overseas, buying assets in Central Asia, Africa, South America, Canada and even small stakes in the Gulf of Mexico. While their overall overseas footprint is still small compared with that of big international oil companies, these companies are expanding with access to cheap credit through China's state-owned banks.

Voracious energy demand also helps explain why China—which gets most of its electricity from coal, the most polluting of fossil fuels—passed the U.S. in 2007 as the world's largest emitter of carbon-dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases.

In the past, being the world's biggest consumer of fossil fuels went hand in hand with being its dominant economy. The question now is whether this will hold true in the future, as nations compete to develop new ways to produce more wealth with less energy. While China is No. 1 in consumption, the U.S. remains the world's biggest economy.

The U.S. is also by far the biggest per-capita energy consumer, with the average American burning five times as much energy annually as the average Chinese citizen, said Mr. Birol.

The U.S. also remains the biggest oil consumer by a wide margin, going through roughly 19 million barrels a day on average. China, at about 9.2 million barrels a day, runs a distant second. But many oil analysts believe U.S. crude demand has peaked or is unlikely to grow very much in coming years, because of improved energy efficiency and more stringent vehicle fuel-efficiency regulations.

China's rise is also helping shift the focus for oil producers in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Key OPEC states like Saudi Arabia long looked to U.S. oil consumption for guidance in adding new pumping capacity. But in recent years, OPEC states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have built or started building refineries and storage facilities in Asia. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter, now ships more to China than to the U.S.

Prior to the global economic crisis, China had been expected to become the biggest energy consumer in about five years. Economic malaise and energy-efficiency programs in the U.S. brought forward the date, Mr. Birol said.

The decreased "energy intensity" of the U.S. economy is a key reason energy investors, such as General Electric, have increasingly looked to China as a driver of growth. Mr. Birol said China requires total energy investments of some $4 trillion over the next 20 years to keep feeding its economy and avoid power blackouts and fuel shortages.

Mr. Birol, formerly an economist at OPEC, said China is expected to build some 1,000 gigawatts of new power-generation capacity over the next 15 years. That is about equal to the current total electricity-generation capacity in the U.S.—a level achieved over several decades of construction.

China's energy intensity actually fell during the first phase of its economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s, which was driven by light manufacturing. But in the early 1990s, China became a net oil importer for the first time as its demand finally outpaced domestic supplies. China's energy demand surged again after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Before China joined the WTO, most international prognosticators, including the IEA, predicted energy demand would increase at an annual rate of 3% to 4% from 2000 to 2010. Demand wound up growing four times faster than they predicted.

There is a chance the growth in China's energy appetite could slow, as the pace of industrial expansion slows and energy-efficiency policies backed by the government—such as tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars—take hold.

In a few years, there won't be much infrastructure left to build. Urbanization will continue, but at a slower pace. And the heavy factory jobs that consume huge amounts of energy may start to shift away to other countries partly as China's workers demand better conditions and higher salaries.

But the same force that could be moving factory jobs away—rising incomes—could also underpin even greater energy needs as richer Chinese start consuming more. The question is whether China will adopt a low-energy pathway pioneered by places like Japan and Europe or follow a high-energy life-style of big houses and big cars pioneered by the U.S.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720504575376712353150310.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews

>>243820
>That's not really what Dostoevsky was about.
I see. Nevertheless, the pre-existentialism themes you find in the Brothers won't be in the Classics I've recommended you.

>Because China, present day and historically, dwarfs anglos in terms of population.
As I've repeatedly said, I was not the one who made the comparison. It was the retard gweilo you were defending when you brought up Dostoevsky et al.

>(Middle-class and above being a minority) This is debateable.
Really? I thought you consider mainstream culture to be the work of proles / the lower class.

>>244156
>Gweilos baw about Chinese anti-nip protest.
>Gweilos baw when the CCP comes and suppresses protests.
lol @ hypocrites.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is getting the U.S. involved in a complex, international dispute over a chain of islands in the South China Sea. China and nearby Asian states have long made competing claims as to who controls the strategically located islands. Speaking at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation in Hanoi, Vietnam, Clinton said that the U.S. has a "national interest" in resolving the issue peacefully. Here's what's going on, why it matters, and what could happen next, according to key journalists and experts.


China's Aggressive Agenda "For decades, China has sparred with Southeast Asian nations over control of 200 tiny islands, rocks and spits of sand that dot these waters," The New York Times' Mark Landler explains. "China's maritime ambitions have expanded along with its military and economic muscle. It has long laid claim to islands in the South China Sea because they are rich in oil and natural gas deposits. And it has put American officials on notice that it will not brook foreign interference in the waters off its southeastern coast, which it views as a 'core interest' of sovereignty."

Clinton Not Taking Sides on Territorial Disputes, But China Still Mad "Clinton stressed," writes The Associated Press's Cara Anna, "that the U.S. doesn't support any country's claim over the islands but her comments are expected to anger China, which maintains it has sovereignty in the South China Sea, and insists on dealing with the dispute directly with other claimants away from the international arena.

Building Regional Cooperation in Pacific The Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon explains the U.S. agenda. "The Obama administration is working to establish an international mechanism to resolve disputes between Asian nations over claims in the South China Sea," he writes. "The U.S., as a Pacific Ocean nation and trading power, has grown increasingly concerned about the competing claims for territory in the South China Sea. ... The dispute has raised concerns that an increasingly powerful Chinese military could seek to dominate Asian waters."

China's Long-Term Naval Expansion Robert Kaplan writes in Foreign Affairs about China's generational, 21st-century goal of using naval power and influence to expand its sphere of influence well beyond East Asia. "China will project hard power abroad primarily through its navy. ... China, owing to a 9,000-mile temperate coastline with many good natural harbors, is both a land power and a sea power.... China's virtual reach extends from Central Asia, with all its mineral and hydrocarbon wealth, to the main shipping lanes of the Pacific Ocean."

U.S.-Vietnam Relations Warming AOL News' Jonathan Adams reports the upshot of Clinton's move. "Relations between one-time bitter enemies are warming. The two countries are forging better ties, pushed in part by mutual concerns over China's expansionism in the South China Sea, as well as a desire to expand trade and investment. But Clinton also raised concerns about human rights in Vietnam, highlighting the sharp differences that remain between Washington and Hanoi's autocratic,communist-party-controlled state, which sharply limits dissent."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/whyclintoncaressomuchaboutanasianislandchain4433

ADVOCATING democracy in a single-party, authoritarian state would seem to be a fool’s errand.

Wei Jingsheng, one of China’s most ardent pro-democracy dissidents, spent over a decade in jail for demanding multiparty elections. Last year, the writer Liu Xiaobo was given an 11-year sentence after he wrote a manifesto calling for an end to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power.

Then there is Yu Keping, a mild-mannered policy wonk who has been singing the praises of democracy for years. In his most famous essay, “Democracy Is a Good Thing,” he made an impassioned argument for the inevitability of direct elections in China, describing democracy as “the best political system for humankind.”

In April, he published another treatise calling on the Communist Party to abide by the Constitution, not a small matter in a country where government leaders often argue that the law should be subservient to the party.

A cynical troublemaker playing with fire? Hardly.

Mr. Yu’s writings are sold in state-owned bookstores, and he is a ranking Communist Party official in charge of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, an obscure agency dedicated to translating works by Chinese leaders and Marxist tracts from around the world. He also runs a policy research organization, China Center for Comparative Politics and Economics, that provides advice to China’s leadership.

Even China experts have a hard time determining whether Mr. Yu is a brave voice for change or simply a well-placed shill.

Mr. Yu, 51, a deceptively soft-spoken man who is fond of guns and off-road driving, does little to clarify his role. “I am only a scholar interested in academic research,” he said with a grin, surrounded by hundreds of books in his Beijing office.

A closer look at Mr. Yu provides a small window into the role of those few public intellectuals who have learned to navigate what would appear to be treacherous terrain. They tackle seemingly provocative subjects and can even function as a force for change, but in the end their writings rarely challenge the underpinnings of China’s single-party, authoritarian rule.

Even Mr. Yu’s use of the word “democracy” is not what it seems. China’s leaders frequently talk about it as a worthy goal, but in practice they have virtually no intention of ceding the Communist Party’s monopoly. In fact, Mr. Yu never advocates Western-style multiparty democracy.

“What he writes might sound good, but he is misleading the Chinese people into thinking the government is moving toward democracy,” said Guo Tianguo, a former rights lawyer from Shanghai who was forced into exile five years ago and now lives in Canada. “He owes his job to President Hu Jintao, and if he ever pushed too hard he would lose everything. He’s a coward.”

YET to some who have followed his career, Mr. Yu’s role is far more nuanced. They say that he is a true believer in democracy, but that he walks a tightrope, trying to nudge China’s political elite toward reform without upsetting the apple cart.

Minxin Pei, a specialist in Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College, said that Mr. Yu is a uniquely Chinese public figure who tries to influence the system through carefully choreographed words and well-placed obfuscation. “He’s flexible in the sense that if the atmosphere were more tolerant, he’d go further,” he said. “But he knows that going too far won’t do any good for him or the larger cause he’s promoting.”

During a series of recent interviews, Mr. Yu was relaxed and loquacious, but his responses hewed closely to his writings, which call for the incremental introduction of democracy “when conditions are right.” But he also stepped beyond the vague pronouncements on democracy that have been uttered by Mr. Hu, who has suggested that China already enjoys widespread political liberties.

Asked whether he thought the Chinese political system could be described as democratic, Mr. Yu offered up a few examples of reforms that have been tried in rural townships or small provincial cities but then added, “We have a long way to go.”

Like many of his peers, Mr. Yu grew up in the tumult of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the decade between 1966 and 1976 when concepts like universal rights and free speech were viewed as bourgeois contaminants from the West. Class struggle was the watchword of the day, and Mr. Yu, the son of rice farmers from coastal Zhejiang Province, was anointed the leader of his school’s Red Guard battalion. He was not quite 10 years old.

He recalled terrorizing landlords and merchants during so-called struggle sessions, a wooden revolver tucked into his pants. “I was so small I had to stand on a chair,” he said.

In 1978, two years after the death of Mao, during the gradual return to normalcy and the reopening of schools, he was one of the first of his generation to go to college. “I literally crawled out of the paddies to take the entrance exam,” he said, smiling and shaking his head at the memory.

Mr. Yu was a teacher at Peking University during the spring of 1989, and he said he went to Tiananmen Square several times to look after his students, who were part of the throngs protesting corruption and inflation and demanding democratic reforms. “I was so worried about them,” he said, recalling the denouement — a bloody military crackdown in which hundreds died — as “a regrettable tragedy.”

But he said those events taught him that China must have legal avenues for its citizens to express their disdain for injustice, or their desire for change. “In any nation, when people are demanding reform, this is a sign of prosperity,” he said. “To ignore these demands is to invite instability.”

Mr. Yu said he was impressed by the United States, where he was a visiting scholar at Duke University. He relishes memories of the intellectual give-and-take in the classroom and the unencumbered vigor of the news media. “I really loved the American can-do spirit, the values of equality and justice, and the way people cared about the environment,” he said. For all the open-mindedness of Americans, he still winces when he recalls the barbed reactions of people when they learned he was a member of the Communist Party.

HIS most indelible experiences came after he left Duke to travel across 30 states on a Greyhound bus. He said he saw the chasm between the grotesquely rich and the abjectly poor, the lack of respect for the elderly, and the apathy on Election Day, especially among the “common people” who would seem to be the most invested in political change.

Mr. Yu also had a personal brush with a downside of abundant liberty. He said he was mugged twice, once by a man who put a knife to his back in a public restroom in Indianapolis. “I pretended I didn’t speak English; someone else came into the bathroom and the man ran away,” he said with a laugh.

That experience set off his interest in guns, and Mr. Yu sometimes lets off steam at a shooting range in Beijing. His other distraction from the esoteric is off-road driving. “She’s terrified of my driving,” he said of his wife, Xu Xiuli, a professor of Chinese economic history.

Before ending the interview, he had one parting thought. The story about his childhood, he said, contained a lesson, and it came back to his passion. “When I think about those days of the Cultural Revolution it reminds me of one truth,” he said. “It is only democracy and the rule of law that can save China from ever again falling into that kind of fate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/world/asia/24beijing.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

>>245359
>Mr. Yu, 51, a deceptively soft-spoken man who is fond of guns and off-road driving

Truly an American born in the wrong place.

  Workplace accidents in China left 33,876 people dead in the first half of the year, the country's work safety watchdog said yesterday, as the nation vowed to improve its industrial safety record.

The number of fatal workplace accidents was 4,174 fewer than in 2009, an 11-percent year-on-year drop, officials from the State Administration of Work Safety said in Beijing.

Looked at differently, there were about 187 deaths every day in the first half of 2010.

The State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a circular yesterday urging local governments and ministries to strengthen work safety through improved safety supervision.

"Although the number of workplace accidents is decreasing year on year, the situation remains very grave," said the circular, which was posted on the central government's official website.

The State Council vowed to improve workplace safety, particularly in mines, transportation and construction industries.

Further, state-owned mine officials and private mine owners must work underground with miners, and those who do not will be fined, the circular said.

Mine concerns

Also, all mines must utilize appropriate safety equipment, including position locating systems for miners working underground and emergency telecommunication devices, the circular said.

Additionally, the Chinese government is to create national rescue teams in coal-producing regions with the support of the central budget, said the circular.

China will also raise the level of compensation for victims of workplace accidents, said the circular. According to a new plan, a family of a worker who dies in a workplace accident can get 20 times the urban per capita disposable income of the previous year in one-off compensation.

Previously, except for an allowance package, each family only received 48 to 60 times the local average monthly wage of the previous year, which was 150,000 yuan (US$22,100), at most.

According to China's income level last year, the new scheme would bring the one-off compensation level up to at least 343,500 yuan, and combined with the allowance package, a family could receive at least 618,000 yuan in compensation.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2010/201007/20100724/article_444161.htm