China Challenges

The Opening of the Chinese Media

In the Washington Post, Peter M. Herford writes:

The Internet has opened the flow of information here. The same technology the government has promoted as a way to bring education and intellectual resources to an undereducated population has also been a vehicle for challenging censorship. Today, there are far fewer secrets than in the past. News appears on the Internet within minutes of breaking, and state media are often forced to follow.

Consider the 2005 case of a tainted water supply. The city of Harbin's 5 million inhabitants were told to drink only bottled water but were not told why. The news that a chemical factory had exploded upstream from the city was suppressed in the local media. Internet messages revealed the pollution in the region's main river, and, soon, municipal and provincially controlled media outlets had to tell the story.

These shifts have produced a tug of war in the propaganda ministry between traditionalists, who want to maintain control and suppress bad news, and reformers, who -- while not advocating unrestricted media -- see the need to accept the new realities of the Internet and the blogosphere. The government maintains as much control as it can by blocking the sites from which it fears direct attacks on the government and leadership.

To read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051603272.html?wpisrc=newsletter

The Decline of the Western Business School in China

Businessweek

Cass Business School in London was one of several dozen MBA programs tempted by a seemingly massive and untapped market for management education in China. It started a joint executive education program with the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2004 and has had about 80 students graduate from its two-year program. But the British administrators Cass sent to China grew weary of the lengthy government approval process required for each new class of students. And they were frustrated by the effort it took to bring home the money they were making. "I think we did anticipate some problems, but not as severe as the ones that emerged," says Steve Haberman, deputy dean of the school. He shut down operations in February.

To read more:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_21/b4085056706207.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_news+%2B+analysis

Earthquake is Cruel to One-Child Families

The NY Times reports:

The earthquake that struck Sichuan Province on Monday has so far claimed more than 19,000 lives across China, and thousands more people remain missing or trapped beneath rubble. But the awful scene at this local morgue is a sad reminder that too many of the dead are children in a country where most families are allowed to have only one.

These children symbolized the earthquake's seemingly indiscriminate cruelty. But the cruelty, in the eyes of their parents, was also man-made.

To read more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/world/asia/15morgue.html?no_interstitial

Earthquake Confusion Hits Beijing

ChannelNewsAsia reports:

China's seismology authority on Monday denied issuing a warning that a strong earthquake could strike Beijing in the evening, following a major quake in the country's southwest.

"We have issued no such warning," Li Qianghua, a top official at the China Earthquake Bureau, was quoted as saying by the government's main website.

The People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's main mouthpiece, had reported earlier on its website that a quake measuring between two and six on the Richter scale could hit Beijing late Monday.

That warning came shortly after a 7.8 magnitude quake far to the south in Sichuan province also was felt in Beijing.

To read more:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/347183/1/.html

Chinese Pandas Causes Controversy in Tokyo

ChannelNewsAsia reports:

Tokyo's zoo has been flooded with calls to refuse a pair of pandas offered by Chinese President Hu Jintao, fearing that the money from the lease would fund Beijing's clampdown in Tibet, officials said.
Hu, paying a rare fence-mending visit to Japan, offered to lease a male and a female panda to replace one of the best-loved animals at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo, Ling Ling, who died last week.

Although the fee is undecided, the going rate is one million dollars a year for a Japanese zoo to rent a panda, Tokyo metropolitan official Kazuomi Nishikiori told AFP.

Chinese and Japanese officials will hold talks next week about the proposed deal for Ueno Zoo, which is run by Tokyo's local government, he said.

To read more:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/346394/1/.html

Virus Fears Move to Beijing

The China Economic Review reports:

Two Beijing kindergartens were temporarily closed yesterday due to fears of the hand, foot and mouth disease that has already killed at least 26 children in China, Reuters reported. The number of infected children in the kindergartens has not been confirmed, and the sick are still being examined, the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention said. Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common illness in children and infants and outbreaks occur regularly in China. Recent outbreaks have been fatal, usually when linked to enterovirus 71 (EV71), which causes a more potent form of the disease. AP reported that the number of children infected with the disease is now 12,164 nationwide. Most of the deaths have occurred in Anhui and Guangdong provinces. Outbreaks have now been reported in Yunnan, Jilin and Hainan provinces. AFP reported that 10 doctors and officials have been punished for handling patients infected with the virus improperly. Two doctors at a hospital in Fuyang city, where 22 people died from EV71, were given demerits for merely giving a patient an intravenous drip without conducting a thorough examination.

Source:

http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/dailybriefing/2008_05_07/Virus_fears_spread_to_Beijing.html

China's New Labor Law Creates Growing Concern

At CSR China, Kevin Jones and Stan Abrams write:

We all saw this coming. Since last year, there have been countless articles and commentaries about China's new employment law, so by now employers should have already implemented new labor regimes without further incident and employees should be quite satisfied. Right?

Not quite. Implementation has been slow, litigation has picked up markedly this year, and China's new Employment Contract Law continues to pose huge problems for employers. The new law has the potential to become a compliance nightmare, with labor costs widely anticipated to increase by 20% for manufacturers, squeezing profit margins further at a time when costs for other economic inputs are rising and preferential tax treatment is being rolled back. According to a study recently released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and Booz Allen Hamilton, 20% is also the percentage of foreign invested companies that are planning to move at least some of their operations elsewhere.

To read more:

http://www.chinacsr.com/2008/05/05/2308-year-of-the-rat-brings-a-plague-upon-employers-in-china/

Deadly Virus Hits Anhui Province

The IHT reports:

A fast-spreading viral outbreak in eastern China has killed 21 children, sickened nearly 3,000 others and caused panic among parents in an impoverished corner of Anhui Province, state news media reported Friday.

The intestinal virus, commonly known as hand, foot and mouth disease, has been spreading in the city of Fuyang since early March, but local health officials only announced the outbreak last week, raising questions of whether they were trying to conceal word of the growing problem. In recent days the Chinese media have heavily criticized the government response, offering comparisons to the SARS epidemic of 2003, which drew widespread attention to China's shaky public health system and official attempts to cover up the outbreak.

On Thursday the World Health Organization warned that the disease, which thrives in warm weather, could spread in the coming months. It advised child-care centers and schools to stay closed until the spread of new infections was curtailed.

To read more:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/02/asia/china.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert

World Primary: Who Would China Vote For?

Tom Plate writes:

Okay, so he did lose the Pennsylvania primary -- but might Barack Obama be otherwise elected King of the World?

Let's imagine that there was one additional presidential primary added to the endless mix that helps determine who will next occupy the White House. It would be an imaginary primary for all those people in the world who cannot vote in American elections because, well -- right -- they are foreigners.

Let's call it the World Primary.

We're not just talking Canada and Mexico here. Sure, they have to live right next to us, so perhaps a few of them should be designated as honorary Super Delegates, in respect of their gallant, if sometimes pained, propinquity. But people from Pakistan to Venezuela to Iraq are immensely affected by the economic, as well as political, decisions of the President of the United States. Even -- indeed -- North Korea, which tends to pride itself on being isolated from the rest of the world, can hardly hope to escape the long reach of an American president's policies.

So what if a World Primary were held now? Who would be the world's choice?

To read more:

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/columns.asp?parentid=91264

AmCham: China Losing its Competitive Advantage

AFP reports:

China is loosing some of its attractiveness to foreign investors as rising costs are forcing some US manufacturing firms to leave the country, the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) said Monday.

More than two-thirds of AmCham's member companies surveyed in an annual white paper agreed that China was losing some of its competitive advantage in global markets due to rising costs.

Factors with the biggest financial impact last year included price pressures from competition and major customers, rising salaries and wages, changes in raw material prices, tax expenses and real estate cost inflation, the survey said.

To read more:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080428/pl_afp/chinausbusiness_080428140905

View of China Filled with Complexity

Howard French writes in the IHT:

A university student in a journalism class taught by an American in southern China wrote his professor with an urgent question the other day.

Given that Westerners have been inundated by biased news reports about China and Tibet in recent weeks, he wrote, "How can Chinese people and Chinese media make the foreign world understand the real China?"

For all the apparent simplicity and innocence of the question, behind it lies a world of complexity, along with the real potential for increasing conflict.

To read more:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=10695

Lower Trading Tax Leads to Stock Rally

The China Economic Review:

China's stock market regulator has cut the tax on making trades on mainland stock exchanges from 0.3% to 0.1%, the Financial Times reported. The move, which reverses a tripling of the stamp duty in May 2007, is aimed at increasing investor confidence in the A-share market. The government has come under pressure to bolster the market from both retail investors, whose ranks have swelled in the past year, and large state-owned firms with large stock holdings. As of this week, the Shanghai Composite Index has fallen by 50% from an all-time high reached in October of last year, though it is still at three times late 2005 levels.

Source:

http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/dailybriefing/2008_04_24/Beijing_slashes_trading_tax_to_boost_stock_confidence.html

Anti-France Protests Move to Wuhan

Channelnewsasia reports:

Hundreds of Chinese citizens protested on Saturday in the central city of Wuhan and in Beijing against France's attitude towards Tibet and the Olympic Games, according to police and witnesses.

Many of the demonstrators congregated in front of Carrefour, the French supermarket accused by some Chinese of supporting Tibet.

"There were around 100 or 200 people outside the store holding up signs, asking people not to go inside to shop," one person living on a street near one of the Carrefour shops said.

There were 300 demonstrators to start off with, a separate source said quoting the local police.

The news came as two small protests erupted in China's capital Beijing around the French embassy and the French School, and also around four Beijing Carrefour stores.

To read more:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/342406/1/.html

Beijing seeks "rational" patriotism

Channelnewsasia reports:

China has urged its people to contain their patriotism, in the first sign Beijing may be growing uncomfortable with a nationalist outburst over the Tibet issue.

A dispatch issued late Thursday by state-controlled Xinhua news agency railed against "despicable" Western media coverage of the unrest in Tibet and said resulting Chinese indignation should be "cherished".

But it also said nationalist energies should be expressed in a "rational" way and focused on building the nation.

"Patriotic fervour should be channelled into a rational track and must be transformed into real action toward doing our work well," said the report, published only in Chinese, suggesting it was aimed at a domestic audience.

To read more:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/342211/1/.html

No Room for a Referee in Tibet Debate

The NY Times reports:

On the day the Olympic torch was carried through San Francisco last week, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman at Duke University, came out of her dining hall to find a handful of students gathered for a pro-Tibet vigil facing off with a much larger pro-China counterdemonstration.

Ms. Wang, who had friends on both sides, tried to get the two groups to talk, participants said. She began traversing what she called “the middle ground,” asking the groups’ leaders to meet and making bargains. She said she agreed to write “Free Tibet, Save Tibet” on one student's back only if he would speak with pro-Chinese demonstrators. She pleaded and lectured. In one photo, she is walking toward a phalanx of Chinese flags and banners, her arms overhead in a “timeout” T.

But the would-be referee went unheeded. With Chinese anger stoked by disruption of the Olympic torch relays and criticism of government policy toward Tibet, what was once a favorite campus cause — the Dalai Lama's people — had become a dangerous flash point, as Ms. Wang was soon to find out.

To read more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/17student.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all

Harris Poll: China the Biggest Threat to Global Stability

The FT reports:

China has overtaken the US as the biggest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans, according to a Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times.

The recent wave of protests and riots in Tibet and the ensuing Chinese crackdown, together with competition from cheap Chinese exports, appear to have dramatically hardened opinion, with the proportion of Europeans who saw China as the biggest threat almost doubling since last year.

The FT/Harris poll, carried out between March 27 and April 8, found an average of 35 per cent of respondents in five European countries saw China as a bigger threat to global stability than any other state. In the US, 31 per cent of respondents also named China, putting it way above Iran and North Korea, which were both perceived as greater threats last year.

The poll was carried out shortly after the unrest in Tibet and during the early stages of the controversial Olympic torch relay. But there were already rising tensions between the European Union and China over trade issues and exchange rates.

To read more:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89261466-0a79-11dd-b5b1-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

A Post-Olympics Currency Revaluation in China?

At Bloomberg, Andy Mukherjee writes:

Can China use a stronger currency to tame the intolerable 23 percent pace at which its food prices rose in February from a year earlier? It can, but only if the appreciation in the yuan takes the form of a large, one-off revaluation.

The current regime of fairly rapid appreciation is counterproductive because it ``will only encourage hot money flows,'' Michael Pettis, a Peking University professor of finance, says on his Web log.

A revaluation in the Chinese currency could -- apart from helping China to rein in prices -- also provide an opportunity for other countries in the region to tame inflation.

With export competitiveness as less of a constraint, Asian nations would rather let their currencies appreciate than raise interest rates in an environment of slowing global growth.

Of course, anything like, say, a 20 percent revaluation in the yuan could badly spook already jittery financial markets.

So perhaps the best time to announce it would be just after the Olympics -- as a kind of return gift to the participating nations. By then, of course, there's a chance that it may not even be needed.

To read more:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mukherjee&sid=aVeDbD9cKYxQ

China At the Focus of E-spinonage Worries

Businessweek reports:

The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane—a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4 billion consulting firm's computer network.

The Pentagon hadn't sent the e-mail at all. Its origin is unknown, but the message traveled through Korea on its way to Booz Allen. Its authors knew enough about the "sender" and "recipient" to craft a message unlikely to arouse suspicion. Had the Booz Allen executive clicked on the attachment, his every keystroke would have been reported back to a mysterious master at the Internet address cybersyndrome.3322.org, which is registered through an obscure company headquartered on the banks of China's Yangtze River.

To read more:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_16/b4080032218430.htm?chan=globalbiz_asia+index+page_top+stories

Games are Not Changing China's Tune

William Pfaff writes in the Australian:

THE International Olympic Committee's decision to grant China the right to organise the 2008 Summer Games was another unfortunate case of unwarranted faith in the power of good intentions: that treating China as a normal 21st-century political society would speed its becoming one.

The vote rested on the assumption that giving China the Games would strengthen what the democratic countries want to see as progressive forces in China, remaking that country on the Western liberal model.

This model, composed of respect for human rights, good governance and a prosperous economy, is widely (if erroneously) believed to be what all modern societies are on their way to becoming. Unfortunately - and to China's present discomfiture - this is not true.

That it is not true is being demonstrated by the Chinese reaction to large and violent demonstrations by Tibetans and by foreign sympathisers against China's occupation of Tibet since 1959, its annexation of it in 1965 and China's repression of Tibetan culture and accompanying transfer of huge numbers of Han Chinese to submerge and suppress Tibetan society and identity. China's authorities - and more importantly, its people - expected nothing like this.

The former are humiliated, their legitimacy undermined. They have hugely miscalculated China's international political reputation. The people are enraged, their assumptions about the West overturned. The world tour of the Olympic flame may be cut short. The effect on the Games is unforeseeable. The eventual effect on the Chinese Government may be considerable.

To red more:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23513667-7583,00.html

End of the Cheap Chinese Import

Alexandra Harney writes at Slate:

For years, American importers and Chinese factory managers have been having the same conversation. The importers would demand lower prices for products destined for American shelves. Factory managers would counter with a long list of reasons why they needed to charge more. Most of the time, the American importers would prevail, and Wal-Mart shoppers would rejoice.

Not anymore. The era of cheap Chinese consumer goods may finally be ending, thanks to irrepressible inflation. Now when the Chinese present their lists, some American importers are conceding higher prices, meaning that American shoppers, for the first time in years, are starting to pick up the tab for rising costs in China. Some Chinese factories are now asking their American customers for price increases of as much as 20 percent to 30 percent.

A store manager at a young women's clothing store in Boston tells me the prices of some camisoles are rising. An executive in the athletic shoe industry says that Chinese factories and buyers are now negotiating about spring 2009 shoe lines, and that is where consumers will really start to see the impact of Chinese inflation. A manager of several discount stores confides his company has started raising prices of certain goods while putting others on sale. This is only the beginning: We'll be paying higher prices for Chinese goods for years to come.

To read more:

http://www.slate.com/id/2188409/?wpisrc=newsletter

Chinese "Thugs" in London

The Daily Mail says:

Lord Coe last night condemned the army of Chinese "thugs" who accompanied the Olympic torch relay through London.

The head of London's 2012 Games described as "horrible" the burly henchmen who barged their way through the capital, shoving the public and even police out of the way.

His trenchant remarks followed those of former Blue Peter presenter and torchbearer Konnie Huq, who revealed the Chinese minders barked orders at her and pushed her arm up to hold the flame higher.

Sunday's scenes, which were repeated in France yesterday, brought accusations that Britain had imported Chinese police state tactics to control the supposedly showcase relay.

To read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=557941&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

Yasukuni Debate Heats up Again

The new movie "Yasukuni" by Chinese director Li Ying is making headlines. The Japan Times reports:

More than 10 theaters nationwide will screen "Yasukuni," a controversial documentary film on Tokyo's war-linked shrine, in May or later as originally planned, following Thursday's decision by an Osaka cinema to screen it, industry sources said Friday.

Despite possible intimidation by rightwingers, Cinema Taurus in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, Kyoto Cinema in Kyoto, Cinewind in Niigata, Salon Cinema in Hiroshima and Cinema Select in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, will screen the documentary as planned, the sources said.

To read more:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20080405a1.html

Chinese Youth Still Spending Freely

Shaun Rein writes in Businessweek:

In 2007 China posted 17% growth in retail spending. Electronics retailers Guomei and Suning posted record numbers, and both paint positive pictures for the future as Chinese consumers continue to buy LCD TVs from LG Electronics and mobile phones from Nokia (NOK).

Much of this continued growth is fueled by Chinese under the age of 32. My firm, the China Market Research Group (CMR), conducted in-depth interviews with 500 Chinese between the ages of 22 and 32 in 10 cities to gauge whether fears of a global slowdown would influence their shopping habits. The answer was a resounding no. A full 90% of interviewees said they expected to "spend considerably more" in 2008 than they did in 2007, and the vast majority was "very optimistic" about salary potential in the next two years, with the majority expecting salary increases of 10% to 25% in next year.

To read more:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2008/gb2008042_054897.htm

China's Short March

In Time, Bill Powell writes:

A wave of those who are newly affluent and firm in the belief that their best days, economically speaking, are ahead of them, is headed for the suburbs. In Shanghai alone, urban planners believe some 5 million people will move to what are called "satellite cities" in the next 10 years. To varying degrees, the same thing is happening all across China. This process — China's own suburban flight — is at the core of the next phase of this country's development, and will be for years to come.

The consequences of this suburbanization are enormous. Think of how the U.S. was transformed, economically and socially, in the years after World War II, when GIs returned home and formed families that then fanned out to the suburbs. The comparison is not exact, of course, but it's compelling enough. The effects of China's suburbanization are just beginning to ripple across Chinese society and the global economy. It's easy to understand the persistent strength in commodity prices — steel, copper, lumber, oil — when you realize that in Emerald Riverside construction crews used more than three tons of steel in the houses and nearly a quarter of a ton of copper wiring. There are 35 housing developments either just finished or still under construction in New Songjiang alone, a town in which 500,000 people will eventually live. And as Lu Hongjiang, a vice president of the New Songjiang Development & Construction company puts it, "we're only at the very beginning of this in China."

To read more:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1713336-1,00.html

Delay in China's First Passenger Jet

Bloomberg reports:

China may postpone the maiden flight of its first passenger jet by at least four months because of supplier delays, said two people familiar with the situation.

The flight, scheduled for this month, is likely to take place from July, said the people, who declined to be named because they aren't authorized to publicly discuss the program. The jet uses parts from Rockwell Collins Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Parker Hannifin Corp., United Technologies Corp. and General Electric Co. 

The ARJ21, or Advanced Regional Jet for the 21st Century, is the first step in China's ambition to become a global aircraft maker and capitalize on a domestic market forecast to need as many as 3,400 new planes in the next 20 years. Delays in getting the ARJ21 to market could set back a government plan to build a larger plane by 2020 to challenge Boeing Co. and Airbus SAS.

To read more:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601089&sid=aNxpIdu4FEHE&refer=china

McKinsey: Migrant Workers Will Transform Urban China

The China Economic Review reports:

More than 40% of China's urban population will consist of migrant workers by 2025 , the Financial Times reported, citing a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. Chinese cities will add 243 million migrant workers by 2025, on top of the 103 million migrant workers currently in urban areas. This will bring China's total urban population up to around 1 billion. In medium and large cities, almost half the population will be migrants, nearly three times the current level. The influx of urban migrants will present Beijing with challenges in providing social welfare programs to these migrants, many of which are currently denied to them.

Source:

http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/dailybriefing/2008_03_24/McKinsey:_Urban_migrant_population_to_boom.html

The Two Sides of Modern China

Robert Kagan in the Washington Post says:

China can go for great stretches these days looking like the model of a postmodern, 21st-century power. Visitors to Shanghai see soaring skyscrapers and a booming economy. Conference-goers at Davos and other international confabs see sophisticated Chinese diplomats talking about "win-win" instead of "zero-sum." Western leaders meet their Chinese counterparts and see earnest technocrats trying to avoid the many pitfalls on the path to economic modernization.

But occasionally the mask slips, and the other side of China is revealed. For China is also a 19th-century power, filled with nationalist pride, ambitions and resentments; consumed with questions of territorial sovereignty; hanging on repressively to old conquered lands in its interior; and threatening war against a small island country off its coast.

To read more:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102552.html

KMT's Ma Wins in Taiwan

ChannelNewsAsia reports:

Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou surged to victory over Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rival, Frank Hsieh in a presidential vote dominated by concern over the economy and hopes for better relations with China.

With all the votes counted official results gave Ma 58 percent of the vote, compared to 42 percent for opponent Frank Hsieh, of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

In proclaiming victory in Saturday's presidential election, Ma told jubilant crowds that the win is a win for hope and a desire for change.

While president-elect Ma spoke to jubilant crowds, over at the DPP headquarters, Frank Hsieh admitted defeat to an emotional gathering of supporters who called on Hsieh not to quit.

"The Taiwanese people have cast their vote and made their decision," Hsieh told despondent supporters of his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), after Ma beat him by around 17 percentage points.

To read more:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/336605/1/.html

The Decoupled Chinese Economy?

Businessweek reports:

The Year of the Rat has certainly gotten off to a less than auspicious start for China. The country got buffeted by the worst winter storms in half a decade, causing food prices to soar and pushing inflation to an alarming 8.7% in February (BusinessWeek, 3/11/08). The Shanghai Composite Index is off 30% since the beginning of 2008, and property prices have started falling in several major cities. China's heavy economic involvement with the internationally unpopular regime in Sudan (BusinessWeek, 2/13/08), and most recently the bloodshed in Tibet (BusinessWeek, 3/17/08) threaten to spoil the country's Olympic parade.

Now comes the U.S. bear market and housing collapse. If you heap this looming U.S. recession onto the litany of China's other woes does it spell a recipe for a total China meltdown? Don't bet on it. In fact, analysts say that the question of decoupling—the notion that China is contagion free from a global slowdown—is actually a misnomer, since "historically, the Chinese economy has never been coupled," says Jonathan Anderson, Asian chief economist at UBS.

To read more:

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080318_747713.htm?chan=globalbiz_asia+index+page_asia+investing

The New Chinese Colonialists

The Economist reports:

From Canada to Indonesia to Kazakhstan, Chinese firms are gobbling up oil, gas, coal and metals, or paying for the right to explore for them, or buying up firms that produce them. Ships are queuing off Australia's biggest coal port, Newcastle, to load cargoes destined for China (pictured above); at one point last June the line was 79 ships long. African and Latin American economies are growing at their fastest pace in decades, thanks in large part to heavy Chinese demand for their resources.

China's burgeoning consumption has helped push the price of all manner of fuels, metals and grains to new peaks over the past year. Even the price of shipping raw materials recently reached a record. Analysts see little prospect of an end to the boom; the prices of a few commodities have fallen on the back of America's worsening economic outlook, but others, including oil, wheat and iron ore, continue to set new records. China, with about a fifth of the world's population, now consumes half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminium. Its imports of many natural resources are growing even faster than its bounding economy. Shipments of iron ore, for example, have risen by an average of 27% a year for the past four years. Western mining firms are enjoying a sustained boom.

To read more:

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10795714