Posts tagged China
China: the making of an economic superpower
May 23rd
Source: blog.oup.com – Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Telegraph Hay Festival is taking place from 23 May to 2 June 2013 on the edge of the beautiful Brecon Beacons National Park. We’re delighted to have many Oxford University Press authors participating in the Festival this year. OUPblog will be bringing you a selection of blog posts from these authors so that even if you can’t join us in Hay-on-Wye, you won’t miss out. Don’t forget you can also follow @hayfestival and view the event programme here . Linda Yueh will be appearing at The Telegraph Hay Festival on Sunday 26 May 2013 at 5.30 p.m. to examine China’s growth and the making of an economic superpower. More information and tickets. By Linda Yueh China has successfully utilised inward foreign direct investment (FDI) to “catch up” in growth by using foreign investment to help develop manufacturing and export capacity. The next phase requires technological progress and thus will involve outward FDI, including its firms’ “going global.” The “going out, bringing in” policy means that its “open door” policy has been supplemented by the “going out” of its firms as well as “pulling in” FDI. This is a key part of China’s future growth; that is dependent on the ability to produce globally competitive corporations that will help China move up the value chain and sustain its development and overcome the “middle income country trap”. This refers to how countries slow down after reaching about $ 14,000 per capita – the level that China
China: the making of an economic superpower
As China Prepares to Lead on Climate Crisis, Will US Follow?
May 23rd
Source: www.commondreams.org – Wednesday, May 22, 2013
A woman wearing a mask rides past smoking chimneys and cooling towers of a steel plant in Beijing. (Reuters / Suzie Wong) The global politics that have hampered efforts to create a binding international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions may have taken a positive turn as reports suggest the Chinese government is preparing to place a firm cap on the amount of carbon pollution it generates each year. read more
As China Prepares to Lead on Climate Crisis, Will US Follow?
China Is Opening Around 100 Museums Every Year
May 22nd
Source: blogs.smithsonianmag.com – Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Image: Kwong Yee Cheng There’s the China Art Palace, the size of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. Just down the river there’s the Power Station of Art that, according to NPR, resembles the Tate Modern. There’s the China Fire Museum, and the Shanghai Museum of Glass. Since 2008, the Chinese have allocated something like $ 800 million to building new museums, and for the past few years, the country has opened about 100 each year, NPR says. In 2011 alone, 400 were built. China now has over 3,000 museums. But while China might be booming in museums, the museums are not necessarily booming in visitors. Over half of the museums in China are free to visit. The others are relatively inexpensive. But when a big Andy Warhol exhibit opened up at the Power Station of Art, just 6,000 people came. The city boasts 23 million residents. NPR reports that this statistic has a few explanations . First, The Power Station isn’t in an obvious place, sitting in an abandoned part of the old Shanghai Expo. Second, most people in China don’t know who Andy Warhol is. “When it comes to contemporary art, [Li Xu, deputy director of planning at the museum] says, most Chinese don’t know where to begin because cultural education has lagged far behind China’s economic boom,” NPR writes . Xu says that “one-third to one-half of artworks are hard for average visitors to understand if they didn’t receive sufficient art education. Chinese graduate students’ unders
Poll: Indians Love America, View China as Major Threat
May 21st
Source: blogs.the-american-interest.com – Monday, May 20, 2013
In a recent poll of Indian citizens by the Lowy Institute in Australia, 83 percent of respondents said they view China as a major national security threat. Just slightly more (87 percent) said the same of Pakistan. Despite China being India’s number one trading partner, fewer than a third of poll respondents said China’s rise has been good for India. Contrast these results with Indians’ impressions of the United States: 83 percent said India-US relations are strong, and 75 percent want those relations to improve over the next decade. China’s Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, is in India on his first trip abroad since taking office, and you would think he’d be trying hard to improve the relationship with Delhi. Just a few weeks ago this trip was nearly canceled because of the Great Himalayan Standoff of 2013, when Chinese troops set up camp several miles inside India and refused to withdraw. Relations between the two countries soured over the intrusion. Yet, strangely, Li’s to-do list while in India is full of non-prickly items: buffalo meat, book translation, sister cities, pilgrims, sewage. Neither country, it seems, wants to deal with the serious issues: border disputes , huge dams that China is constructing that will deprive millions of farmers and fishermen in India (and elsewhere) of their most important resource, the Dalai Lama, and much else. Instead, officials from both countries sought to put a shiny gloss on Li’s trip and avo
CENSORS KEEP FIRM GRIP ON PORNOGRAPHY IN CHINA!
May 18th
Source: iowntheworld.com – Friday, May 17, 2013
AWD NO MORE YANK-EE MY WANKEE! AWD will be the first to admit that I know nada about Chinese people except I’d rather they stay in China and stop swerving in my lane in Dallas. I knew there was a reason those people were forced to ride bicycles for millions of years. I’ve never understood what it is Chinese people find so attractive about wearing white socks with black shoes….at the swimming pool. Or munching on sweet and sour cat. Or why they have 15 minute Kung Fu fights and never seem to hit their opponent. Or why they seem to love running their mini-vans into other cars every day on the @#&* Dallas Central Expressway! One thing is for sure is the leaders in their communist, overpowering government like to impose their communist will on the people while leaving the proletariat poor and overworked. Hey, this could be a post on Obama! It can’t be too much fun being Chinese when a billion or so of your fellow Wangs look exactly like you. Eating with chopsticks, wearing those funky bath robes for clothes with white socks and speaking that infernal yang language, it’s easier to be a pillow biter in Iran than a Chinese person in China! There is no porn allowed in China. It’s against the law. But apparently porn is sold everywhere. Hotels, street corners, police stations. So the Chinese police confiscate it and turn it over to government porn censors…when they are finished with it. In Hunan, there is a special group of censors whose
4.6 Million Fake Condoms Confiscated In China
May 16th
Source: www.businessinsider.com – Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Thirty seven people have been arrested in a crackdown on fake condoms , China Daily reports. According to the state-run newspaper, more than 4.6 million fake contraceptives, worth around 47.7 million yuan ($ 7.8 million), were seized in raids across Central China. More than 2 million fake condoms were reportedly confiscated during one raid alone on a workshop. The gang, operating out of Jinjiang, Fujian province, were caught after police noticed condoms online at taobao.com, an online store compared to Amazon , selling for 1 yuan (16 cents) — an unusually low cheap price for brand name contraceptives. When police raided the facility, ABC News reports, they found condoms piled high on the floor and workers lubricating the condoms by hand. The counterfeit condoms reportedly cost less than 0.2 cents to make, and the small factory could produce 20,000 a day. Assuming other overheads were low, the Jinjiang gang were sitting on $ 260,000 in profits from their current inventory. The raids took place in March but police only announced the details of the investigation today. While it isn't clear if the counterfeit condoms were faulty, cheap Chinese-made condoms have been found to be worryingly low quality before. Nearly 1 million cheaper, off-brand Chinese condoms were seized in Ghana earlier this year. Thomas Amedzro, head of drug enforcement at the FDA, told the Guardian that the condoms were found to be "poor quality, can burst in the co
Yum! Brands Sales Hit by Avian Flu in China
May 13th
Source: www.valuewalk.com – Sunday, May 12, 2013
After the close, Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) reported that China same store sales for April declined 29%, close to guidance for a 30% decline. KFC China same store sales in April were down 36% while Pizza Hut China same store sales were up 5%. Pizza Hut results have been positive the past two months after a 2% decline in 1Q comps. Yum! Brands hurt by Avian Flu KFC results have been significantly impacted by unfavorable publicity around avian flu that began in early April. The company expects the avian flu sales impact to be short-lived and news about avian flu diagnoses and deaths has slowed. KFC is reminding consumers that it is safe to eat cooked chicken. Triple whammy for Yum’s China sales Worries about avian flu have prolonged and exacerbated Yum’s China sales problems. Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM) is facing a triple header of sales issues in China – company specific pricing/value decisions that surfaced in late 2012 when same store sales initially turned negative, worries that surfaced in late December about antibiotic use in chicken that led to a 20% decline 1Q China comps, and avian flu concerns that started in April driving same store sales even lower. It bottomed in 2H of November and improved starting December. Lingering effects lasted till March when the co mentioned sales were back to levels prior to Avian flu and red dye scare in 2Q06. The latter two issues are not company-specific issues but have impacted KFC China
Pentagon Report on China Reveals Comprehensive Military Buildup, Extensive Espionage
May 10th
Source: blog.heritage.org – Thursday, May 09, 2013
Newscom The Department of Defense (DOD), per the requirements of the fiscal year 2000 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), this week issued the 2013 annual report to Congress on the Chinese military. This year’s report is a substantial expansion upon the 2012 report, nearly double in length, and with an extensive discussion of a number of areas. In addition to reading the valuable information in its pages, Washington should be reminded just how absolutely necessary this report is. The most obvious takeaway is that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is engaged in a massive, extensive modernization program, drawing upon the resources of a constantly expanding economy (now the world’s second largest) to support improvements in not only the ground forces, but the PLA Navy (PLAN), the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), the Second Artillery (China’s rocket forces), as well as space and cyber capabilities . The report provides details of various new ship classes, new fighters, new missiles, and improvements in Chinese space assets. Far from having to choose between guns or butter, the PLA is, in the words of my economics counterpart Derek Scissors, “buying guns soaked in butter.” Even more important, this year’s report specifically charges the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PLA with engaging in cyber actions directed against the United States. “China is using its computer network exploitation (CNE) capability to support intelligence
Pentagon Report on China Reveals Comprehensive Military Buildup, Extensive Espionage
