From the Guardian (link): Every year, 8.5 million Chinese peasants move into cities. Most of their destinations are mere specks on western maps, if they appear at all. But their populations put them on a par with some of the world’s megalopolises. Britain has five urban centres of more than a million people; China has […]
Read MoreFrom the Washington Post (link) DONGGUAN, China On a muggy evening in July 2004, on a concrete lane reeking of raw sewage and chemicals from surrounding factories, a stranger leapt from a white van. He yanked 16-month-old Fei Mei from the arms of her 8-year-old cousin and sped away. All night, her parents searched this […]
Read MoreFrom the Financial Times (link) The US administration yesterday said it was heading for a confrontation with China over bilateral economic relations if Beijing did not move immediately to open its markets to US imports. In a harsh speech delivered just a month ahead of a visit to Washington by Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, […]
Read MoreFrom a Christian Science Monitor editorial (link): When Hu Jintao took China’s helm in 2003, his goal became social harmony. No wonder. Riots and protests, mostly by peasants, are up tenfold in 10 years. The Communist Party is now even citing Confucius to try to instill moral standards. Indeed, quotes from the ancient Chinese sage, […]
Read MoreFrom Randomwalks blog (link): China’s Public Ministry of Public Security launches an ID service where mobile phone users can send text messages (SMS) to a government ID database as a way to confirm a person’s identity. 1.) Send SMS with a person’s name and ID card number to ID database 2.) Sender receives an SMS […]
Read MoreFrom Xinhua, via China Economic Net (link): Thirty-seven miners were killed in three coal mine gas explosions in the past two days, Xinhua and the national safety watchdog said yesterday. Two blasts occurred yesterday, one in Rongsheng Coal Mine of North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the other in Taihe Mine in Qitaihe of […]
Read MoreFrom Interfax (link): Internet monitoring is an internationally common practice and China attaches a great deal of importance to attracting international experience in Internet monitoring, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said. In recent weeks, US IT giants Google, Cisco, Microsoft and Yahoo! were criticized by the US congress and human rights organizations for aiding the Chinese […]
Read MoreFrom Asahi.com (link): “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” said Juliet in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Even though Romeo was from the rival Montague family, his surname was of no importance to Juliet once she had fallen in love with him. Foreign […]
Read MoreFrom Asia Times (link): When the line “Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China” appeared in the Chinese government’s 11th Five-Year Plan document on March 6, some observers thought it was a mistake, while some believed Beijing was ready to harden its stance toward the island. Officials in Taiwan and some Beijing-based academics, […]
Read MoreFrom Asia Times (link): Two regions have emerged as the most likely sources of great-power conflict in the 21st century. The first is the Middle East, which is the focal point for the US-led “war on terror”. The region is important both as part of a global ideological struggle against Islamist extremism and in the […]
Read MoreFrom xinhuanet (link): China is revising rural election law to protect the democratic rights of its farmers and promote village democracy in the country’s vast countryside. “Democratic management” is listed as one of the requirements of building a new socialist countryside in the 11th Five-Year Program(2006-2010) of China. Premier Wen Jiabao said in his government […]
Read MoreFrom MSN Money (link) via AP European Union trade chief Peter Mandelson called on China to remove barriers on imports of European goods if it wants to be recognized as a market economy by the 25-nation bloc. The label helps countries trade more easily with the EU. Among other benefits, it allows a country to […]
Read MoreFrom the New York Times (link): AFTER Ang Lee accepted his Oscar as best director for “Brokeback Mountain,” he was hailed by fellow Chinese in Hong Kong and his native Taiwan. Here in mainland China, the government-controlled English-language daily newspaper went so far as to call him the “pride of Chinese people all over the […]
Read MoreFrom the Washington Post (link) Premier Wen Jiabao vowed Tuesday to crack down on seizures of farmland for redevelopment – a source of rising rural anger in China – but stopped short of saying whether the communist government might allow farmers to own land. Wen also promised that the world’s largest military would never pose […]
Read MoreFrom the New York Times (link): Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said Tuesday that China’s rapid economic rise is being accompanied by a “high concentration of all kinds of acute problems,” including official corruption by some officials who “have violated the rights of the people.” Mr. Wen also said the government had “no surprise” revaluations planned […]
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