The always surreal China Daily brings in noted economist, and Song Dynasty official, Su Dongpo to weigh in on the risks inherent in China’s current economic boom. “Indeed, who would not feel dizzy a little as both wings of the economy–the GDP and the stock market index are flying to ever higher altitudes” quoth the China Daily staff, paraphrasing one of Su’s more famous poems. (How I wanted to ride the wings of the wind/To the Jade Moon Palace if only I could bear/the unbearable cold in the high air.) This just in: China’s economy is growing too quickly with potentially unstable bubbles forming in the stock market and urban housing prices. Film at 11. Joseph Kahn has a good piece in today’s New York Times on the internal debate within the CCP over “democratization.” It’s not quite what you think. After all, as Kahn points out, CCP leaders, “claim that the one-party state has long practiced democracy, in the sense of governing on behalf of the people, and they show no signs of preparing to cede any political power.” But I think any kind of opening of the process to include more actual voices and meaningful votes–even if
Following up on a piece that I posted over at The Peking Duck, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), commissioned by Congress in 2000, concluded its first 2007 meeting this past week. According to a report in today’s Asia Times, the meetings covered a range of topics but focused primarily on three key issues: China’s January 11 ASAT (anti-satellite test), how to convince China to comply with WTO guidelines, and whether or not US policy should continue to rely on the assumption that economic incentives will lead to increasing democratization in China.
The tone of the Asia Times report was not optimistic. It described the ASAT test as an unannounced and frankly provocative gesture, calling the move “strategic escalation.” Meanwhile, at the same time testimony over China’s non-compliance with WTO was being given at the meeting, trade representatives from the United States, Europe, and Canada were busy bringing China before the WTO over unfair duties on auto parts. Finally, in a statement given before the panel, long time China watcher Jim Mann sounded pessimistic over the prospects of China changing course significantly even over the long term. (See “Jim Mann: ‘What if China Doesn’t Change?“)
The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday on the twin threats to Chinese antiquities posed by the country’s construction boom and the continued looting of archaeological sites. A great deal has been written about the measures being taken at sites for Olympic venues around the city of Beijing to try and preserve the enormous cache of artifacts uncovered by construction work. Sadly, this model has not been followed nearly as well in other parts of China.
“There are two enemies of antiquity protection,” said Xu Pingfang, president of the China Archaeological Society. “Construction is one. Thieves are the others. They know what they want, and they destroy the rest.”
The Olympics site seems to be an example of how China’s antiquities protection system should work. Construction supervisors and archaeologists have collaborated for four years, conducting excavations and restoring three Taoist temples, including one near the National Stadium, the main Olympic venue, which will undoubtedly become a familiar sight to television viewers during the Games.
But elsewhere in China, archaeologists are often in a losing race against bulldozers. In late January, a work crew in the ancient capital city of Nanjing unearthed and destroyed the burial sites of 10 noblemen
Diligence China has a quality post on the landmarks of emerging markets–certain things to look out for as China makes the transition from “from self-loathing acolyte to over-confident preacher.” Two of these landmarks I thought deserved further comment. A two stage process. Stage one – All of China’s historical problems were all either imported or the result of forgetting our own traditions. Stage two – Mining history for archetypes of new leaders. Look for Ghengis Kahn to be recast as the proto-Chinese leader. The Cultural Revolution was, somehow, a new management paradigm. Look for obscure writers to take on cult status — particularly when they demonstrate the superiority of Chinese organizational models.
We’ve seen some evidence of stage two recently, particularly the rehabilitation and subsequent Sinicization of Genghis . (Perhaps this is part of another of Diligence China’s landmarks: “claiming international brands as their own.”) The question of the source of China’s problems has a long and thorny past. There is the orthodox school in the PRC that claims that China possessed the ‘sprouts of capitalism’ only to have those sprouts choked to death by the weeds of feudalism and then eaten by the pestilence of imperialism. Now we see
I wrote about this two weeks ago, but I just read a moving piece in the New York Times (via CDT) by Robert Pittman, one of the scientists on the six-week expedition that combed the Yangzi for signs of the Chinese River Dolphin (baiji). Locally, the Yangtze River is in serious trouble; the canary in the coal mine is dead. In addition to baiji, the Yangtze paddlefish is (was) probably the largest freshwater fish in the world (at least 21 feet), and it hasn’t been seen since 2003; the huge Yangtze sturgeon breeds only in tanks now because it has no natural habitat (a very large dam stands between it and its breeding grounds). The whole river ecosystem is going down the tubes in the name of rampant economic development. There is a huge environmental debt accruing on the Yangtze, and baiji was perhaps just the first installment.
The counter argument one hears out of China is that millions of Chinese people still live in poverty. The economic demands of development trump the needs of fish and the sexy megafauna, like dolphins, to which Westerners seem so mawkishly attached. (Must be all those reruns of “Flipper” and class trips to
|
|