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• Hullabaloo-Colin Powell is still trying to cover up his crimes
  THE INTERNET SHOULD ALSO NOT FORGET THE MANY GREAT THINGS COLIN POWELL DID FOR HIS COUNTRY//
  He lied. There’s no doubt about it. And he’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to airbrush history. But it isn’t going to work. This wasn’t about a personal indiscretion or even a corrupt business deal. He knowingly lied that the country was in danger of being attacked by a foreign nation in order to justify an illegal invasion. That’s a serious as it gets and Colin Powell’s reputation won’t recover. The internet never forgets.
• Report: Groundwater falls short|Hot Issues|chinadaily.com.cn
  Groundwater in about 55 percent of the cities monitored across China is not safe to drink, according to a national annual report on the situation of the country’s land and resources in 2011.The outlook is not optimistic, according to the report, which was released by the Ministry of Land and Resources on Thursday. Monitoring conducted in 2011 found groundwater quality declined in parts of Gansu, Qinghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei and Yunnan provinces.

  About 200 key cities across the country were monitored in the report, which covered more than 4,700 testing sites.

• China Focus: Economist defends relationship between state, private enterprises – Xinhua | English.news.cn
  BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) — China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private businesses are not oppositional forces, but complementary ones, and allegations of a widening development gap between the two sectors is a totally “false proposition,” according to a renowned Chinese economist.Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University, refuted a popular description of the Chinese economy that says SOEs have gained rising dominance over the withering private sector, or that “the state advances and the private sector retreats.”

• Evernote入华背后： CBC的隐秘力量 – IT·科技 – 21世纪网
  looks at Edward Tian’s CBC, an Evernote investor and its main partner for Evernote China. CBC was also Rupert Murdoch’s partner for Myspace China
• The Jamestown Foundation: Exploring Constitutional Reform in the Wake of the Bo Xilai Affair
  Although some may question whether significant reforms are feasible when competing CCP factions are engaged in a political transition, China’s last transition highlights just such a possibility.  In 2002-03, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao took the reins of the party-state apparatus in the midst of a political debacle that damaged CCP legitimacy (the SARS crisis) and a human rights case that drew attention to local abuses (the death of Sun Zhigang in official custody). The Hu-Wen team responded to these challenges by emphasizing transparency, encouraging reform discourse, and opening the door to modest constitutional-legal reforms. They also leveraged these responses to strengthen their position in an uncertain transition. (China Leadership Monitor, Summer and Fall 2003). Similarly, a rising leadership team under Xi Jinping might consider one or more of the reforms discussed here as a tool to restore confidence in China’s legal construction project and bolster the legitimacy of both the Party and their own leadership.
• 国开行重庆图谱 “八大投”VS开行千亿平台贷 – 机构 – 21世纪网
  5月8日，67岁的国家开发银行（下称“国开行”）董事长陈元赶赴重庆，新上任的副行长袁力与他随行，俩人远道而来，给重庆市市长黄奇帆带来了一份沉甸甸的礼物——国开行与重庆市政府《继续推进重庆市深化改革开放合作备忘录》。就在几天前，路透社一则关于《重庆模式留下巨额债务，国开行以近千亿贷款涉入其中》的报道，还在推测国开行可能要“适当收手”，随后，国开行重庆分行行长接受新华社等媒体采访时便称，重庆分行不良贷款率连续7年低于1%，“分行融资平台贷款的还款来源可靠，风险可控”。

• 实现顶级旅游者的梦想‧鸿鹄逸游 Hhtravel
• Top online travel agency eyes high-end market|Companies|chinadaily.com.cn
  TM INVESTORS A WHO’S WHO OF CHINESE BILLIONAIRES. SEE NEXT ARTICLE (IN CHINESE) FOR MUCH MORE DETAIL//
  Ctrip.com, China’s largest online travel service provider which has 41.6 percent of market share in terms of sales revenue in 2011, is stretching its arms to high-end travel market by cooperating with Life TM Group, one of China’s top luxury service providers.
  As part of the deal, Ctrip will invest into the travel sector of TM Group to form a new company, hhtravel.com, with a focus on high-end travel package.
  “The high-end travel market is undoubtedly a gold mine in China with the enlarging group of rich people,” said Fan Min, CEO of Ctrip.
• 携程投资马云沈南鹏等创建的太美旅行 成第一大股东_最新速递_投资界
  携程和太美方面表示，目前携程在奢华高端领域还未覆盖，因而此番入股太美旅行并成为第一大股东后，携程的细分市场覆盖会更加完善。
• China acts to boost loans, bolster flagging economy – Yahoo! News
  SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s central bank cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves on Saturday, freeing an estimated 400 billion yuan ($63.5 billion) for lending to head-off the risk of a sudden slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.
  The People’s Bank of China delivered a 50 basis point cut in banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR), effective from May 18, the third cut in six months and one that investors had called for after data on Friday showed the economy weakening, not recovering, from its slowest quarter of growth in three years.
• In Chen’s frightened village, surveillance increases, thugs keep outsiders at bay – The Washington Post
  Residents said that since Chen fled to Beijing, the reign of fear has expanded beyond Dongshigu to at least three other close-knit villages in the city of Linyi, in the eastern province of Shandong.Chen’s nephew has been arrested and accused of intent to murder, and lawyers attempting to represent him have been threatened and harassed.

• Dalai Lama fears Chinese poison plot | World news | guardian.co.uk
  Buddhist leader believes Chinese agents may have trained fake female followers to kill him when seeking blessings
• Drone strikes in Yemen: US expert warns of anti-western sentiment | World news | guardian.co.uk
  The former head of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre has warned that the use of drone strikes in Yemen risks turning militants into “dedicated enemies of the west”.Robert Grenier, who was director of the intelligence agency’s counter-terrorism unit from 2004 to 2006, said the US risked turning Yemen into the “Arabian equivalent of Waziristan”, a reference to the strife-torn Pakistani region.

• To Patriots: Confession of a Patriot-used-to-be | Offbeat China
  What is the most popular viral picture on Sina Weibo for the past two days? Not photos of nude models or cute cats, it is a screenshot of a long blog entry by 姑娘忒高兴 (a seemingly post-80s generation nobody on Weibo before the post). The post is directed to “the patriots” and walks the readers through the journey of  how a patriot-used-to-be grows into a patriot-no-more. It has accumulated more than 40k reposts and more than 13k comments since its post date of May 10. Pretty amazing given that it’s neither a verified Weibo account nor a popular one in any sense before this. Comments to the article can be summarized into one ”bravo”: “It’s a great post!” So…without further adieu…
• Filipinos Rally Against China’s Claim to Shoal – NYTimes.com
  GOOD, NO BIG DEAL//
  MANILA — With the 1970s pop song “Kung Fu Fighting” playing in the background, several hundred people gathered in front of a Chinese consular office on Friday afternoon to protest an escalating territorial dispute.
• Amnesia as the West Judges China – NYTimes.com
  WHO IS ANAND GIRIDHARADAS?//
  Westerners tend to overlook that their own societies were substantially less free when they were doing what China is today: building new cities, moving millions from agriculture to industry, eliminating deep poverty. Much of America’s own nation-building was done with little regard for rights and without having to secure a majority’s consent.After all, nearly 150 years passed between the writing of “all men are created equal” and the extension of the vote to women and 40 further years before African-Americans gained suffrage in earnest.

  Could the West, with all its wonders, have been built by the universally voting, constantly tweeting societies of today

• Catering to Caviar Tastes From an Unexpected Place – NYTimes.com
  For the next 12 years, Mr. Han spent $1 million a year feeding and looking after a stock that grew to 50,000 sturgeons, all children of the original 200. But he got little in return until 2009, when the fish were old enough to yield caviar — one of the world’s most expensive delicacies, selling for as much as $400 per ounce, or $14 a gram.
• JPMorgan Chase Fought Rule on Risky Trading – NYTimes.com
  Soon after lawmakers finished work on the nation’s new financial regulatory law, a team of JPMorgan Chase lobbyists descended on Washington. Their goal was to obtain special breaks that would allow banks to make big bets in their portfolios, including some of the types of trading that led to the $2 billion loss now rocking the bank.
• Behind The Wall – Freedom from Chinese labor camp comes thanks to leader’s downfall
  BEIJING — Westerners spreading Christmas cheer with their holiday lights last year probably didn’t realize that some of the warm glow came courtesy of a prison labor camp in China, and partially thanks to a former inmate named Fang Hong.
  After serving a year making Christmas lights in grueling conditions, Fang Hong was released on April 24 from the Drug Rehabilitation and Re-Education-Through-Labor Center in China’s southwestern mega-city of Chongqing.
• 北京悠之季瑜伽健身有限公司-瑜伽，健身
  ANOTHER HIGH END BEIJING YOGA STUDIO
• For Volcker Rule, JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss Says It All – Bloomberg
  BLOOMBERG EDITORIAL. THEY KNOW THIS AREA BETTER THAN ANY OTHER MEDIA OUTLET//
  Banks say these rules will impair their ability to act as market makers in service to clients, harm liquidity in bond markets, and impose costs that will reduce lending and slow the economy. What banks don’t mention is that depositors’ money will be safer, taxpayers won’t have to bail out big banks that suffer large trading losses, and financial crises and recessions may occur less often. That’s a lot of upside.
• The U.S. government’s outdated view of China – The Washington Post
  LOTS OF STRAW MEN IN PERRY LINK’S ESSAY
• ABOUT US | Beijing OM YOGA 42° Hot Yoga Studio|北京静心堂42度热瑜伽(小索瑜伽)
  A LIKELY HOTHOUSE OF INFORMATION AND RUMORS FROM SOME VERY ELITE BEIJING PATRONS?
• Banyan: An absence of architecture | The Economist
  North-east Asia is home to the two great unresolved conflicts of the cold war, which left the Korean peninsula divided and Taiwan enjoying de facto independence, despite China’s continuing irredentist claim.

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