China
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The key to China | Prospect Magazine
To grasp the new spirit of this country, read this fresh, contrarian short fiction “Hiding in the City No. 83” (2009) by artist Liu Bolin. He uses surrealism to reflect and criticise modern China, in a manner similar to the new generation of fiction writers. In these photos, Bolin “camouflages” himself, with the help of an assistant who paints him into the backdrop Say what you like about Mao, he did make it remarkably easy to keep up with developments in Chinese fiction. Thanks to his proscriptions on creative freedom, fictional output fell precipitously during his reign.China - foreign policy...
I am saddened to report that Michael Pettis' site China Financial Markets has been blocked. The link redirects to a site with a one line message "This Account Has Been Suspended". When I have more details, I will post them.
Michael Pettis - China Financial Markets; When Will China Emerge From the Global Crisis?
Posted by Zarathustra in China Economy on Oct 13th, 2011 | 14 comments The General Administration of Custom of China published the latest set of trade figures. Trade surplus for September decreased 18% from US$17.76 billion in August to US$14.51 billion vs. consensus of US$16.9 billion. On an year-on-year basis, the surplus decreased by 13.2%.
China’s imports and exports fall - macrobusiness.com.au | macrobusiness.com.au
The End of the Chinese Dream - By Christina Larson | Foreign Policy
BEIJING – In June, a Chinese friend of mine who grew up in the northern industrial city of Shenyang and recently graduated from university moved to Beijing to follow his dream -- working for a media company. He has a full-time job, but the entry-level pay isn't great and it's tough to make ends meet. When we had lunch recently, he brought up his housing situation, which he described as "not ideal." He was living in a three-bedroom apartment split by seven people, near the Fourth Ring Road -- the outer orbit of the city. Five of his roommates were young women who went to work each night at 11 p.m. and returned around 4 a.m.This post, for example, made after Ma Ying-jeou’s victory Saturday by Hong Kong journalist Luqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇), was still being shared and discussed today: Just to give readers a sense of the microblog-based reach someone like Luqiu Luwei can have, she has a reported following on Sina Weibo of close to 1.3 million. And while followers for VIP account holders can be inflated by microblog service providers in China, there is no doubt Luqiu’s following is substantial.
Questions for China’s democracy opponents - China Media Project
UnderstandingSociety: Recent historiography of China
The field of China history evolved rapidly after the McCarthy attacks on the field in the 1950s. The most significant developments, in my view, are these. First, there developed in the 1960s and 1970s what Paul Cohen refers to as a “China-centered” approach to the study of the history of China ( Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past ; 1984). The central notion here is the idea that historians of China need to analyze China’s history making use of concepts and hypotheses specific to its own experience.
China - reading...
Liu Xia The Nobel Prize–winning writer Liu Xiaobo before his arrest, photographed by his wife, Liu Xia; from the exhibition ‘The Silent Strength of Liu Xia,’ which opened last fall at the Boulogne Museum outside Paris and will be on view at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University February 9–March 1. Liu Xia’s photographs, which were smuggled out of China, show what she calls her ‘ugly babies’: mute dolls that, according to the curator Guy Sorman, represent ‘the Chinese people, and sometimes Liu Xia and her husband.’ The economic rise of China now dominates the entire landscape of international affairs. In the eyes of political analysts and statesmen, China is seen as potentially “the world’s largest economic power by 2019.” Experts from financial institutions suggest an even earlier date for such a prognosis: “China,” one has said, “will become the largest economy in the world by 2016.”
He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books
Chinese Law and Politics Blog: Party Policies on Culture Continue to Play Out
None of the recent developments such as the restrictions on TV programming, the real-name registration efforts for microblogs , the crackdown on illegal publications and pornography, or Hu Jintao’s article in Seeking Truth , came out of the blue. Rather, these are simply part of a comprehensive program set out in the Party plenum statement issued in October at the conclusion of the 6 th plenum of the 17 th Central Committee (which itself simply pulls together yet earlier policy strands). The plenum statement sets up a comprehensive plan with regard to culture that is being pushed through the system. (Note that culture doesn’t just mean food festivals – we’re talking history textbooks, Internet content, TV programs, etc). The plenum statement has been partially analyzed by others (see here and here ).
On a Saturday afternoon at The Bund, Xiao Ming (or “Little Ming”) clings tightly onto the hands of his paternal grandparents. His maternal grandparents walk slightly ahead, clearing a path for him in the midst of all the buzz and traffic. Retracing the imprints of their imaginary footsteps, Xiao Ming takes his first tentative steps as a three year old in town for the first time.
Six Adults and One Child in China | Newgeography.com
China - Curators
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Wake Up and Smell the Jasmine - by Nicholas Bequelin | Foreign Policy
Ever since the Chinese Communist Party's near-death experience in 1989 -- the last time it faced anything close to the mass popular protests witnessed in recent weeks in the Middle East -- the rulers in Beijing have taken no chances when it comes to social movements. So when an online appeal calling for Chinese citizens to emulate the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt actually translated into gatherings of half-curious, half-prudent onlookers in Beijing and a handful of other cities two weeks ago, the authorities reacted swiftly. Several Internet users who had relayed the appeal on microblogs, such as Twitter, were arrested for "inciting subversion," a state security crime. Police rounded up, detained, or placed under house arrest more than 100 people nationwide. Three prominent lawyers who had been taken away by the police in Beijing on Feb. 16 and 19 have yet to reappear.
WUKAN, China – Peasants do not have a good record facing off with the Communist Party. Rural standoffs usually end with the arrest of the ringleaders and an increased security presence for the remaining residents. Yet on Thursday afternoon, Dec. 22, residents of the embattled village of Wukan scored a major achievement in their 11-day stand-off with local government, securing the release of one of the village's three detained leaders; the other two were released today. On Wednesday, a deputy party secretary of Guangdong Province arrived to negotiate with village leaders, promising to grant all of their initial demands: release of three elected representatives of Wukan who were detained two weeks ago; return of the body of Xue Jinbo, a village leader who died in police custody; and direct negotiations with the temporary committee, a interim governing body chosen by villagers, whose members were earlier denounced by the government as criminals.
The Spirit of Wukan - By Rachel Beitarie | Foreign Policy
While China is far from being a free-market economy, it encourages an experimental approach to economic reform W hat is the secret of China’s success? While the US, Europe and Japan have been struggling, China’s economy has doubled in size in real terms every seven to eight years for the past three decades. Part of the answer is simply that if a poor country gets its act together, it has the potential to grow much faster than a rich one.
How China boomed by trial and error
In late December, a foreign correspondent in Beijing emailed me to say that a four-page article on China I’d written for a special New Year’s edition of Newsweek had been carefully torn from each of the 731 copies of the magazine on sale in China. Now, friends and colleagues are telling me what an honor it is to have one’s writing banned in the People’s Republic. In over forty years of writing about China, I have been subjected to many forms of pressure. But this has never happened to me. What had I said this time that attracted the attention of the official shredder?
Banned in China by Jonathan Mirsky | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
The Outlook for China's Currency
Laura D’Andrea Tyson is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley , and served as chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. The United States and China will hold their annual strategic and economic dialogue discussions next week in Washington, and the exchange rate between the dollar and the renminbi , China’s currency, is again likely to top the agenda. As they have for years, many members of Congress are urging tough measures that would condemn and penalize China for what they deem to be unfair currency manipulation. Added to the mix this year is some offensive, sophomoric and embarrassing name-calling of the Chinese by Donald Trump .China hard landing...2012/2013?
Yikes! Xi Jinping arrives tomorrow. The Economist last month added a regular standing section on China to the front of the magazine, along with the US, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Europe and Britain. They’ve generally been on top of things since 1845, when they added railroads to the list of things they covered. To put it mildly, though, I am not prepared for the visit of the man who is expected to become, next fall, the new leader of a nation that probably will become the world’s largest economy sometime in the next ten years.