While China can’t yet project serious military power around the globe — or even to the farthest corners of the Pacific — it’s massive military buidup may have given the nation enough muscle to create the anti-access/area denial scenario in its own neighborhood that Pentagon planners have been worrying about for several years. As Erickson says, the “the future is now.”

It is pathetic that China’s censors would waste their time on a small blog like Sinocism. Their actions undermine the nauseating claims by shills like Martin Jacques and Niall Ferguson that China has developed a superior model that will soon overtake the West. It has not and never will so long as its leaders are so paranoid.

One World, Two Internets.

But this buy last spring was part of a weeks-long undercover sting, and the nondescript customer was a state game agent. Weeks later, officers were back to seize most of the seafood counter — including bullfrogs, crayfish, a swamp eel and more — and issue felony arrest warrants for two store managers.

U.S. government investigators, using a fictitious company, were able to easily find electronic parts for weapons from China on the Internet and every single item they bought was counterfeit, despite China's pledge to crack down on fake products.

The site belongs to a single Chinese company. It’s private, been in business less than a decade, has come from nowhere to become the world’s largest manufacturer of a critical component used in steel production, with likely revenues this year of over USD$1.5 billion (Rmb10 billion), profits of over USD$130 million , and assets of over USD$2.4 billion (Rmb 15 billion).  It’s 99% owned by its founder and chairman, with the other 1% held by his wife and daughter. By any measures, it is among the largest private industrial companies in the world, and certainly among the fastest ever to get to $1 billion in sales.

Not only have you never heard of it, neither has virtually everyone in China. It’s never listed among the biggest private companies in China. Its owner is never included among the ranks of the country’s private sector billionaires. Just how unknown is this remarkably successful entrepreneur? Here’s one measure. Believe me, I’m a big nobody in China. But, a Baidu search turns up more articles and references to me and my company than to this company boss and his.  In terms of orders of magnitude, his company employs about 2,000 times more people than mine, and occupies a premises that’s about, well, 190,000 times larger.

The Foreign Office has asked China to reopen an investigation into the death of a British businessman amid speculation of poisoning and murder which could link him to the biggest political scandal to hit the Communist regime in decades.

The move, designed to quell public anger at official excess, comes just a month after Beijing proposed banning the purchase of any car that is foreign, big or extravagant, for official vehicle fleets.

China Kweichow Moutai Distillery, the state-owned company whose fiery liquor is particularly popular among China’s elite, suffered a 6.5 per cent share price decline in Shanghai, its biggest drop since January.

Meanwhile, a number of Chinese experts have commented through various online channels in support of the methodology used by CER Research and the conclusions reached by experts quoted in the report. They include Wang Dingmian, with the Guangdong Milk Industry Association whose comment is included below. He states his basic support for the approach taken by CER Research, saying it is of benefit to Chinese consumers.

Mr. Weinmann, the chief executive of Mega Maldives Airlines, is going after a growing niche, linking increasingly affluent China with the Maldives, a tiny island nation. The American entrepreneur says he has the right ingredients to make it a success: lucrative landing rights in an expanding market, an international network of contacts and crucial government approvals.

“Over the next 10 years, the Maldives can become the playground in the backyard of India and China, similar to the way the Caribbean is to the U.S.A. and Canada,” Mr. Weinmann said.

The moves, which are under discussion but have drawn strong interest from both sides, would come on top of an agreement announced by President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard in November to deploy up to 2,500 U.S. Marines to Darwin, on Australia’s northern coast.

Neil Heywood was providing consultancy services to British-based Hakluyt & Co., around the time he was found dead in the city of Chongqing in November

Times Topic: Symantec Corporation
According to two people briefed on the deal, Symantec’s decision was a pre-emptive political maneuver timed to coincide with the United States government’s efforts to share more classified cyberthreat information with the private sector. People with knowledge of the venture, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, said Huawei had already laid off several workers in Huawei Symantec’s Silicon Valley offices this month and planned to move its entire operation out of the United States, largely because of increased American government oversight.

Worse still, it literally removes our highest political officials from the rule of law. The sole purpose of these vast claims of secrecy around the drone program — the absurd notion that they cannot even confirm or deny its existence without harming National Security — is to block courts from reviewing the legality of what they’re doing, which is another way of saying: they have removed themselves from the rule of law. Even Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith, a vociferous advocate of executive authority and secrecy powers, understands how abusive this is:

Local governments and SOEs are the main beneficiaries of China’s current investment and industry-driven growth model, and the main barriers to reform, Mr. Tao says, adding that breaking their monopoly control of key sectors of the economy should be the keystone of reforms.

China’s reform, said Mr. Tao, should start by breaking up the local governments’ monopoly of the land market and allowing farmers to develop land on their own. That would take local governments out of the real estate game and reduce their incentive to support the status quo.

Their objective: reining in the barrage of fees banks charge customers.

Customers of Chinese banks have long had to deal with fees that overseas bank users don’t. Customers at a bank in one city will often be charged a fee when using the ATMs of the same bank outside the city. But over the past year, fees have become the source of rising frustration, with customers complaining about being charged for everything from transferring funds to not using their bankcards to changing their Internet banking password. And in a country where customer service is seldom a priority, some people have had enough.

Regulators have come out with a number of regulations to pull the banks into line. Now, armed with China’s relatively new antimonopoly law, the National Development and Reform Commission is mobilizing around 10,000 officials from local offices across the country to make sure those rules get followed, according to MWE China Law Offices, the China partners of U.S. law firm McDermott Will & Emery.