The Agonist - China

China's yuan can be alternative reserve currency in 15 years

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:31:32 -0800

Singapore | November 12

World Bank - World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said in 15 years the Chinese yuan can become an alternative to US dollar as a global reserve currency, with China's fast economic growth and efforts to internationalise the currency.

Montreal to see terracotta warriors

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:54 -0800

Montréal, Québec | November 19

CBC - China's terracotta warriors are coming to Montreal in 2011.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal will receive rare visit of 14 of the warriors — life-sized replicas of soldiers of the Qin dynasty — it announced on Thursday.

The 14 are among the more than 8,000 life-sized terracotta figures discovered since 1974 near Xi'an, China, and believed to date from the 3rd century B.C.

An exhibit of 20 of the warriors at the British Museum in 2008 was a huge hit.

Obama At The Wall

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:46:39 -0800

President Obama visited the Great Wall of China yesterday. Having seen the Wall in many different places in China, from the Badaling, where Obama visited, to the perilous angles and heights of Simitai and then all the way out in the West at the Jade Gate where the Han and T'ang walls peter out into the sand I can attest to its hold on the imagination. I've seen some amazing places in my travels but my first experience with the Wall stands head and shoulders above any other experience in China. The Great Wall is one of those places that is both cliche and profoundly impressing. It lives up to the hype.

If you are inclined to learn more about the Great Wall, its provenance and history I highly recommend this book by Julia Lowell. It is an insightful narrative history of the 'Long Wall,' its place in the Chinese psyche and that of the West. From the first tentative tamped earth ramparts built to keep out the marauding Rong and Di tribes to the massive Qing Walls that President Obama visited yesterday it is a wonderful, easy to read romp through Chinese history.

Bamboo

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:41:05 -0800

ChinaDaily - Growing up as a farmer's son, Lin Zuojun used to play hide-and-seek with his friends in the bamboo forest of Fujian province. Little did he know back then that he would one day make millions of yuan by selling those most common plants of the region.

Harvesting more than 1.6 million bamboo trees and 25,000 tons of bamboo shoots every year, his company, Asian Bamboo, is China's biggest bamboo producer today.

It is also one of the only three Chinese companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in Germany - the third-largest stock exchange in the world.

"We just had a very successful capital increase where we sold all of our 1.275 million new shares to institutional investors in a very short period of time," Lin said in an interview with China Business Weekly. The proceeds of the new issue totaled 25.5 million euros.

This successful outcome is a reflection of the company's strong performance in the first six months of 2009. Revenues increased by 42 percent to 25.8 million euros. After taxes the profit was 13 million euros, an increase of 64 percent compared with the same period last year.

For the whole year, Lin expects the returns to reach 55 million euros and earnings 25 million euros.
cont @ link

China and US spar over currencies ahead of Obama visit

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:51:17 -0800

Nov 15

Reuters - The United States and China sparred over exchange rates at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders today, pointing to tricky talks ahead for President Barack Obama when he flies to China to address economic tensions.

The discord surfaced at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore when a reference to "market-oriented exchange rates" was cut from a communique issued at the end of two days of talks. An APEC delegation official said Washington and Beijing could not agree on the wording.

That underscored strains likely to feature when Obama flies to Shanghai later on Sunday following moves by Washington to slap duties on various Chinese-made products and a growing drumbeat of pressure on Beijing to let its yuan currency strengthen.

Chinese officials have grown testy about the pressure over the yuan. Chinese banking regulator Liu Mingkang told a forum in Beijing on Sunday that ultra-low interest rates in the United States were fuelling speculation in overseas asset markets and threatened the global economic recovery.

Obama pledged on Saturday to deepen dialogue with China rather than seek to contain the rising power, which is set to overtake Japan next year as the world's second largest economy.

But issues ranging from the yuan and trade tensions to human rights could complicate what many regard as the most important relationship of the 21st century.

A nuclear power's act of proliferation

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:20:07 -0800

R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick | Urumqi, China | November 13

WaPo - In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, according to accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and provided to The Washington Post.

The uranium transfer in five stainless-steel boxes was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved years earlier by Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that culminated in an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power, according to the accounts by Khan, who is under house arrest in Pakistan.

U.S. officials say they have known about the transfer for decades and once privately confronted the Chinese -- who denied it -- but have never raised the issue in public or sought to impose direct sanctions on China for it. President Obama, who said in April that "the world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons," plans to discuss nuclear proliferation issues while visiting Beijing on Tuesday.

According to Khan, the uranium cargo came with a blueprint for a simple weapon that China had already tested, supplying a virtual do-it-yourself kit that significantly speeded Pakistan's bomb effort. The transfer also started a chain of proliferation: U.S. officials worry that Khan later shared related Chinese design information with Iran; in 2003, Libya confirmed obtaining it from Khan's clandestine network.

Dalai Lama's visit angers China

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:55:18 -0800

Arunachal Pradesh, India | November 8

Al Jazeera - The Dalai Lama has angered the Chinese government with a visit to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery town in the remote northeast Indian region of Arunachal Pradesh.

The Tibetan spiritual leader said his visit on Sunday was only a lecture tour, but China, which claims the region as its own, has described the event as a provocation aimed at harming China-India ties.

"It is quite usual for China to step up campaigning against me wherever I go," the Dalai Lama said after opening a museum at the Tawang monastery.

"It is totally baseless on the part of the Chinese communist government to say that I am encouraging a separatist movement.

"My visit to Tawang is non-political and aimed at promoting universal brotherhood and nothing else."

China condemns US trade action

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:51:55 -0800

Beijing | November 6

Al Jazeera - China has described as protectionist new US anti-dumping duties on steel pipes and demanded Washington's recognition that it is a market economy.

The reaction came a day after the US imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging up to 99 per cent on $2.63bn in Chinese-made pipes used in the oil and gas industry.

The Chinese commerce department issued its preliminary decision on Friday, a week before Barack Obama, the US president, heads to Asia on a trip that includes stops in Shanghai and Beijing.

"China resolutely opposes the abuse of protectionist measures, and will take measures to protect the interests of our domestic industry," the ministry said on its website.

China plans for humanoid Olympics

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:28:31 -0800

Nov 6

BBC -
China is planning to hold a robot Olympics in 2010.

The international event will be held in the city of Harbin and will see robots take part in 16 different events.

Robots will be able to compete in familiar Olympic sports such as athletics as well as those more suited to machines such as cleaning.

Entry to the competition will be restricted to robots resembling humans. They must possess two arms and legs. Wheels are banned.

The organisers of the games expect from more than 100 universities from around the world to send competitors to the event.

China's military growth the 'minimum requirement', says general

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:36:51 -0700

Washington | Oct 27

AFP - A top Chinese general on Monday defended Beijing's rapid military modernisation, including the development of advanced weapons that threaten US forces in the Pacific, as aimed at meeting its minimum defence requirements.

General Xu Caihou, vice chairman of China's military commission, sought to allay US suspicions over the growing might of the Asian superpower by insisting that Beijing harboured no expansionist ambitions and wanted collaborative international relations.

"We will never seek hegemony, military expansion or an arms race," he told an audience of foreign policy experts at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

But when asked about its development of missiles designed to target US warships in the Pacific, Xu said Western suspicions about China's aims were unfounded.

"It is a limited capability, and limited weapons and equipment for the minimum requirement of its national security," he said, speaking through an interpreter.

Xu, whose position is the rough equivalent to a defence minister, also defended China's double-digit annual increases in defence spending as "quite low" both in real terms and as a percentage of its gross domestic product.

Whereas US defence spending amounts to 4.8 percent of GDP, China's was only 1.4 percent, he said.

The United States has repeatedly urged China to be more transparent about its military spending, warning of a shifting balance of power in the region that could arouse misunderstanding and miscalculation.

China opens a new front in Kashmir

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:22:07 -0700

Oct 20

Asia Times - China, by issuing residents from Indian-administered Kashmir visas different from those given to Indians from other parts of the country, is treating the disputed area as a sovereign entity. This is a surprising departure from Beijing's traditional policy of leaving the Kashmir issue to India and Pakistan to resolve. Delhi suspects a hidden agenda.

Showcase: Infernal Landscapes

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:28:38 -0700

New York Times, By David W. Dunlap & James Estrin, October 14

Any effort to describe the photography of Lu Guang by reference to the work of other artists would almost certainly invoke the name of W. Eugene Smith. (It is, for instance, just about impossible to look at Slide 4 without thinking of “Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath.”)

So it seems especially fitting that Mr. Lu, a Chinese freelancer, is the recipient of this year’s $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project, “Pollution in China.” The announcement was made Wednesday evening in New York by the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund on the occasion of its 30th anniversary.

It is not just Mr. Smith’s work that comes to mind when looking at Mr. Lu’s depiction of the dark social and environmental consequences of China’s modern industrial revolution. There is a bit of Charles Sheeler and Edward Burtynsky. And Hieronymus Bosch.

“Because China’s economy is moving so fast, the pollution is incredibly severe,” he told us Wednesday through a translation by Orville Schell at the Asia Society. “As I became aware of the pollution as China opened up the western area, I felt that people needed to know about this.”

Terrible Scenes of China's Industrial Great Leap Forward.

Adrift On A Russian Island, Part 1

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:22:19 -0700

Oct 15

Asia Times -

ADRIFT ON A RUSSIAN ISLAND, Part 1
Koreans left high and dry

When Sakhalin Island, off Russia's east coast, became a Japanese colony in 1905, thousands of Koreans were brought in to work in the fishery and timber industries. When the Soviet Union regained the island 45 years later, the Koreans became virtual prisoners, and a stormy coexistence began that lasts to this day.

This is the first article in a two-part report.

Quite the history lesson~ tina

map: http://www.treehugger.com/2009/01/25-week/

Money and Mandarin lessons fuel China's African invasion

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:00:11 -0700

Daniel Howden | Oct 15

The Independent - From Liberia to Ethiopia, Beijing is constructing a 21st century empire thousands of miles from home

This afternoon more than a dozen Liberians are expected at the Samuel Doe sports stadium in the capital, Monrovia. In a makeshift classroom with some plastic chairs and a whiteboard their teacher, Li Peng, is waiting to finish the group's second week of instruction in Mandarin Chinese. Early attendances at the free daily lessons provided by the Chinese embassy have been poor, but officials are blaming heavy rain rather than light interest. The class is still struggling with the basics and few Chinese listeners apart from their teacher would recognise the strange "hellos" and "goodbyes" being called out.

"Learning Chinese may prove difficult," Mr Li admitted. "But if they work hard they will make it."

The West African country set up to settle freed American slaves in 1843 is English-speaking and the going is hard.

"Traditionally, we Liberians are closer to the Americans than we are to the Chinese," he says. "But the irony is that the Chinese are more open to us than the Americans are."

Liberia's government has no Mandarin speakers, and China's ambassador, Zhou Yuxiao, admits that he's uncomfortable that multibillion-dollar accords between the two countries are signed with one side unable to read the documents.

"We feel a little bit guilty at not being able to help Liberians to speak our language," he told the Associated Press.

On the same day last week that the Mandarin lessons were getting under way at the stadium in Monrovia, a much larger crowd was gathering about 300 miles to the northwest at another sports stadium, this time in Conakry, the capital of Guinea. The people had gathered to protest against the military junta and a young army officer, Moussa Dadis Camara, who with wearying predictability has been considering going back on earlier promises to hold free elections.

While Liberian students were grappling with Mandarin vowels more than 150 Guineans were being murdered. Scores of women were then raped. The massacre prompted international outrage, and the African Union meets next week to discuss possible sanctions. But it was revealed this week that China was preparing to throw the regime a lifeline in the form of nearly £4.3bn in oil and minerals deals.

It has left many wondering which is the real face of China in Africa: is it the quest for understanding being led by Mr Li in Monrovia? Or the naked pursuit of raw materials whose sale props up abusive governments like the one in Conakry?

China's engagement in Africa was supposed to have changed, experts say. Beijing's doctrine of "non-interference" in the domestic affairs of other countries was put to one side last year as it helped to nudge Sudan, one of its major oil suppliers, into allowing a beefed-up UN peacekeeping operation in Darfur. Then on a visit earlier this year China's president, Hu Jintao, signalled Beijing's intent to double aid to Africa.

According to Ian Taylor, a senior lecturer in international affairs at the University of St Andrews, the apparent contradiction is the product of a "clueless" approach to Beijing – "a tendency to treat China as if it's 'China Inc'."

Speaking from Beijing, he said: "There is no one Chinese policy towards Africa – it is a mixture of often-competing actors and influences that may or may not gel with official policy."

China reportedly detects deadly nerve gas at border with NKorea

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:48:12 -0700

Tokyo | Oct 9

AFP - China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday.

The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.

Sarin gas, which was developed in Germany before World War I, was used in the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by a doomsday cult.

The Chinese special operations forces found 0.015-0.03 microgrammes of the gas per cubic metre when they were conducting regular surveys while there were winds from the direction of North Korea, the report said.

China suspects that there were some experiments or accidents in its neighbouring country, it said.