From AP, via seattle pi.com (link): Communist leaders have launched China’s most ambitious initiative in decades, promising billions of dollars in social spending and farm aid to help the 800 million people in its neglected countryside catch up with its booming cities. The blueprint unveiled at this week’s parliament meeting echoes President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s […]
Read MoreFrom People’s Daily (link): China’s political consultative system can help the country avoid “color revolution” — a turmoil that troubled some central Asian nations launched by foreign hostile forces, a senior advisor said Friday. The deliberative democracy mechanism under the framework of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) serves as a major channel for […]
Read MoreFrom The Australian (link): On the eve of her visit to Australia, the US Secretary of State struck a surprisingly hawkish tone on China, saying the US, Japan and Australia had to watch the pace and reach of Beijing’s military build-up. “I think that is something that is concerning, particularly for those of us that […]
Read MoreFrom the Finantial Times (link) China’s inland provinces are suffering serious funding shortfalls because of administrative problems and big regional variations in public spending, according to a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Margit Molnar, the author of a 100-page OECD report on China’s public spending, said there was a worrying disparity […]
Read MoreFrom The Southern Weekend (in Chinese), via Press Interpreter, translated by Ramsi Woodcock: On New Year’s eve 2006, 23 year old Xu Ping, a female village school teacher, looked around the table full of family members. Xu Enhuai looked at the unusually mature face of his daughter and said something of deep significance to his […]
Read MoreFrom Asia Times (link): The largest tobacco producer in the world is the Chinese government, and despite loosening trade barriers, it appears it wants to stay that way by mastering the game of Monopoly at home and blowing more local smoke abroad. The tobacco trade in China has opened up to some extent since the […]
Read MoreFrom The Business Week (link): Standard Chartered Senior Economist Stephen Green explores how China should proceed to raise rural residents out of a cycle of poverty The rest of the world hasn’t really taken notice yet, but in recent months, there has been a marked shift in the domestic political priorities of official Beijing. During […]
Read MoreFrom the New York Times (link): AMERICAN technology firms are taking heat from the public and Congress for helping China’s government police the Internet. But this controversy extends well beyond China and the so-called Internet Gang of Four: Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft. Just how many American companies are complicit hit home for me last […]
Read More“Give me back my human rights”: A housing eviction protester in Shanghai, by monkeyking
Read MoreFrom the International Herald Tribune (link): Necessity as well as good sense lies behind China’s decision in its latest five year plan, revealed at the National People’s Congress, to play down numerical growth goals and target instead the wealth gap and social and environmental issues. But the new goals look likely to be out of […]
Read MoreFrom the Christian Science Monitor (link): As China becomes more wealthy and worldly, it’s also experiencing a growing interest in spirituality. Chinese are emerging with “more time and freedom to think,” says Yuan Ci, a monk who works with the Buddhist Association of China in Beijing. In doing so, they are helping to revive China’s […]
Read MoreFrom the Financial Times (link): China is revising a draft Property Law after delaying passage of the long-awaited legislation because of fierce ideological debate among officials and academics over its balancing of state and private rights. The dispute over the Property Law highlights political sensitivities that continue to surround Communist-ruled China’s embrace of the market […]
Read MoreFrom the Christian Science Monitor (link): Ni Youlian is the “Last Mohican” in a downtown neighborhood that used to have 4,000 families. He’s glad that President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have taken up the cause of ordinary people in their speeches this week at China’s annual National People’s Congress. But like so many […]
Read MoreFrom the New York Times (link) Like a giant company concerned with organizational disarray and a sinking public image, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to remake itself into an efficient, modern machine. But to do so, it has chosen one of its oldest political tools ” a Maoist-style ideological campaign, complete with required study […]
Read MoreA girl enjoying her fish BBQ in Changsha street, via www.fengniao.com
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