"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
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- 骆家辉独家回应：没听说要对绿卡持有人海外财产征税 – 宏观 – 21世纪网 – how many Chinese holding American green cards are accurately reporting their global income to the IRS?
- 效仿亚马逊 阿里巴巴“云”计划 – 产经 – 21世纪网 –
- 攀钢在美被控商业间谍罪 攀钢钒钛称正在核实 – 上市公司调查 – 21世纪网 – 攀钢集团在美国一宗有关窃取杜邦(DuPont)行业机密的刑事诉讼被指控犯有商业间谍罪。
- China opens door to Syrian opposition – FT.com –
- Managing Insecurities Across the Pacific-Nina Hachigian – As the United States Refocuses on Asia, it Must Address China’s Increasing Suspicions and Its Own Economic Insecurity
- Expats Say China’s Mortgage Rules Too Restrictive – Businessweek – foreign journalist cant get a mortgage. is that a story?
get the mortgage in hk, appear in china as all cash buyer
- Asia Sentinel – China’s Search for Soft Power – except the Internet//
From Confucius to cable TV, China mobilizes all resources to win hearts and minds
- The logic of a Thomson Reuters takeover of the Financial Times | Michael Wolff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk – It makes sense: the two titans of business information, Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg, competing for a great news brand
- Religion and the Communist Party: Render unto Caesar | The Economist – THERE was a time when Devon Chang had difficulty reconciling his two chosen faiths: Christianity, which he embraced in 2005 at the age of 19, and the Communist Party of China, which had embraced him a year earlier. Did his submission to an almighty God not mean he must renounce the godless club of Marx and Mao?
Not necessarily. A fellow convert’s university lecturer suggested that if all Communist Party members found Jesus, then Christianity could rule China. “So it’s a good thing for me to become a Christian,” Mr Chang reasoned.
The party does not quite see it that way. Although people join the party more for career reasons these days than for ideological ones, it still officially forbids religious belief among its members. In practice, this has for some years been a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But signs are now growing that the party is about to become tougher on believers within its ranks. And behind it might be Mr Chang’s notion of Christianity as a Trojan horse.
- Exclusive: U.S. squeezes French-led satellite maker over China – Yahoo! News – The United States has threatened action that could disrupt a French-led satellite maker's supply chain, spurred by suspicion that it illegally used U.S. know-how or parts in spacecraft launched by Chinese rockets.
The State Department last month quietly warned the company, Thales Alenia Space, that export licenses needed by its U.S. suppliers might be denied, absent greater cooperation in an
investigation of the matter, a department email obtained by Reuters showed. - Reporting Chinese politics: Hidden news | The Economist – What really happened at the American consulate in Chengdu? And what has become of Mr Wang? In the absence of a detailed official statement, many will be keeping an eye on another China-watching website, Duowei News based in America. It was founded by Mr Ho but is now under new management. In July Duowei was first to debunk a report that Jiang Zemin, a former Chinese president, had died. China’s official news service, Xinhua, quashed the rumour the following day.
Gathering news about Chinese leaders remains a risky business, especially if the news is accurate, when it is open to the catch-all charge of “revealing state secrets”. No surprise perhaps that the office inside a vast office complex on the outskirts of Beijing that apparently houses Duowei’s China bureau has no brass plate in the lobby; the man inside refused to greet The Economist. The Hong Kong media mogul who owns the website, Yu Pun-hoi, also declined to be interviewed, saying that Duowei is “a very small business”. Its business—the news of Chinese politics—is, however, only going to get bigger.
- 薄熙来云南考察：加强滇渝合作 推进共同发展-《财经网》 – 重庆市把经济发展与改善民生有机结合，出台“民生十条”、“共富十二条”等新举措，走以民生为导向的发展之路，缩小差距，促进共富
- Amazon.com: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War : Stephen R. Platt – Book Description
Publication Date: February 7, 2012
A gripping account of China’s nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China.
The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China’s future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China’s modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure.
This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world. - Going dark | China Accounting Blog | Paul Gillis – There are three notable trends right now in China concept stocks. First, the IPO market has been dead in the water for six months, since Tudou listed last August. There are many companies in the pipeline, but the market appears to be shut down tight. The other trends, privatizing and going dark, relate to companies exiting the U.S. markets after facing regulatory hostility and disappointing valuations. Over twenty companies have announced plans to privatize and delist. Most long term shareholders of these companies will incur a significant loss on these transactions, but they will likely fare far better than shareholders of companies that go dark.
- China skirting African corruption in direct aid – Yahoo! News – KAMPALA, Uganda – China last month sent a senior official to symbolically hand over the keys to a nine-story twin tower to house Uganda's president and prime minister, a gift from Beijing.
The white structures with a sloping roof cost China $27 million to build. But — in a strategy that China is increasingly employing around Africa — Beijing didn't just deliver the money and let Ugandan officials see the project through. It was built by Chinese workers in what aid watchdogs applaud as a model to help defeat the inefficiencies and cash-pocketing corruption associated with other systems of foreign aid delivery. - Rmb: changing China, not the world | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com – A study of the renminbi published by the Brookings Institution this week outlines how the Chinese currency’s international status still pales in comparison to the dollar’s. It also offers something of a blueprint for how Beijing can change that.
There is, of course, much excitement – and concern – globally about the renminbi’s ascendancy. But the study shows that internationalisation of the currency will do far more to change China before it has a chance to change the world.
- www.muddywatersresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/MW_FMCN_Cardboard LCD.pdf – Muddy Waters latest on Focus media: $FMCN Lied re LCD Network; "Verification" Counted 30,500 Cardboard Posters
- Sina wrestles with microblog revenue plan – FT.com – When the chief executive of Sina Corp presents 2011 earnings this month, investors will be eager to hear when the Chinese internet company will finally start generating revenues from Sina Weibo, its wildly popular microblog.
But they are likely to be disappointed by Charles Chao’s presentation.。。High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a45ff3f8-5216-11e1-a155-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1lspMD9xu
Sina staff say the government’s requirement that all Weibo users must register with their real identities will probably delay the company’s revenue-generating plan to the second half of this year.
“That will create a lot of negative sentiment with investors,” says Alicia Yap, an analyst at Barclays Capital. “The post-New Year rally will not be sustainable.” - 中国卫生部赞同推行艾滋病检测实名制_多维新闻网 –
- US Embassy to improve processing visas to Chinese – Yahoo! News – The U.S. Embassy in China is promising to streamline visa requests and hire more people to process applicants as part of President Barack Obama's push to boost tourism to the United States.
- 多维四大猜测王立军“休假”真相_多维新闻网 –
- Video: Video of ‘Eagle Dad’ forcing tearful Chinese boy to run in snow sparks uproar – Telegraph – A home video showing a four-year-old Chinese boy being forced by his parents to run almost naked through the snow in bitterly cold New York has sparked an online uproar
- The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement « naked capitalism – As we’ve said before, this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn’t you and me. It’s bad enough to see these negotiations come to their predictable, sorry outcome. It adds insult to injury to see some try to depict it as a win for long suffering, still abused homeowners.
- India: LinkedIn goes local | beyondbrics | News and views on emerging markets from the Financial Times – FT.com – Most brands catch on quickly that Indians can be picky, whether it’s with signature saris or spiced-up fast foods. Now, social networking sites like LinkedIn are also going native to tap into a growing market of over 100m internet users and an even larger population of young job-seekers.
Analysts told beyondbrics the professional networking site’s strategy to localize its services was natural, if not inevitable, in India, which can otherwise be an unforgiving market – as evidenced by KFC’s faltering launch here in the mid-1990s.
- Ge Xun: 21 hours in Beijing – Part 2 | Seeing Red in China – Interrogator: “Since you said you found them on Twitter, tell us your Twitter account and password.”
“No,” I said. “That’s my private information, I can’t tell you.”
“You must tell us.”
“No way. These days even parents won’t read their children’s journal. I am a grown man,” I said. I wasn’t worrying about the tweets—they are public anyway. What I worried most was that they would use my account to send phishing links. Then there were the Direct Messages.
“You give us whatever we ask. We get what we must get,” said the interrogator, motioning me. “Stand up, move to that side, and think about it.”
I didn’t stand up. Nor did I answer.
“Do we have to solve this by force?” said they.
- 独家：美国艾奥瓦州居民期待习近平到访 称视其为家人 _资讯频道_凤凰网 –
- 西藏多名官员因维稳脱岗玩忽职守被处理-《财经网》 –
- Village hotel profits $82,543 a day|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – China's richest village is making news again after a recent report by China Central Television (CCTV), says the local luxury 5-star hotel make a daily profit of 520,000 yuan ($82,543).
The 328-meter-tall Long Wish Hotel International in Huaxi in East China's Jiangsu province cost 3 billion yuan ($470 million) to build collected from more than 200 families in the village and local committee.
It boasts more than 800 guest rooms and has a huge banquet hall which can hold over 2,000 people. It has become one of the biggest independent hotels in China since it started operation in Oct 2011.
The hotel's Chief Financial Officer Li Shengnan displayed a balance sheet to a reporter, showing the turnover for Dec 9 as 1,490,000 yuan which contains guest room income of 99,700 yuan, food and beverage revenue of 280,000 yuan, and tourism receipts 210,000 yuan. - Chinese Official Met With U.S. Diplomats at Consulate Before Taking Leave – Bloomberg – Wang, 52, headed Chongqing’s police force from 2009 until last week, overseeing a crackdown on gangs that raised the profile of his patron Bo Xilai, Chongqing’s Communist Party secretary. Wang’s loss of his police portfolio and subsequent leave indicates that China’s leaders have spurned Bo and his development model, which focused on increased state-led social spending, political analyst Li Cheng said in an e-mail.
“The Chongqing model is over,” Li, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said in reference to Bo’s strategy, which also included a resurgence of songs and sayings lionizing socialism and Chairman Mao Zedong. “It means a landscape change in Chinese elite politics.” - 温州市委书记：温州民间金融不应被妖魔化 老板自杀是企业家精神体现-《财经网》 – 不应该妖魔化温州民间金融，温州不少企业家跳楼、自杀相当一部分是由于市场改革不彻底导致。市场经济是信用经济，人无信不立，温州企业家用鲜血和生命这种最惨烈的方式捍卫了信用，恰恰是中国企业家的精神，是开拓市场的精神
- 王立军给全世界的公开信 矛头指向薄熙来 – Boxun published "open letter to the world" allegedly written by Wang Lijun
- Findings from Landesa’s Survey of Rural China Published – When has a Chinese government ever treated the peasants well?//
FEBRUARY 6, 2012 — The results from Landesa’s latest 17-province survey of China’s farmers, published in this week’s issue of the influential Chinese magazine Caixin (New Century Weekly), indicate that urgent reforms are needed for the country to continue economic growth, improve the welfare of its 700 million rural and mostly poor farmers, and bolster social stability. The survey released today, offers an up-to-date snapshot of farmers’ land rights across China and indicates that despite recent efforts by China’s central government to protect farmers’ land rights, a substantial number of surveyed farmers report further deterioration in their control over their land.
- U.S. likely to scale down plans for bases in Japan and Guam – The Washington Post – The U.S. military will probably scale back plans to build key bases in Japan and Guam because of political obstacles and budget pressures, according to U.S. and Japanese officials, complicating the Obama administration’s efforts to strengthen its troop presence in Asia.
- JFK mistress Mimi Alford: Secret trips, Ted Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis — and why she did it – The Reliable Source – The Washington Post – Another shocking story from former White House intern Mimi Alford’s memoir about her affair with President Kennedy: He once asked her to do, well, something naughty with his brother Ted.
“Mimi, why don’t you take care of my baby brother,” she recalls him asking when she met the men in a Boston hotel suite in October 1963. “He could stand a little relaxation.”
Alford writes that she flashed back to an earlier episode when JFK urged her to perform a sex act on one of his top aides — but this time, she refused.
- Beijing’s micro blog policy unclear for overseas users|Nation|chinadaily.com.cn –
- ‘They want to get rid of us’ | SCMP.com – The founding publisher of the mainland's most outspoken political magazine yesterday accused authorities of trying to use a cultural-sector reform initiative to weaken the editorial independence of his publication.
At a new year celebration with more than 150 of Yanhuang Chunqiu magazine's writers and supporters in Beijing, 88-year-old Du Daozheng delivered an emotional speech spelling out his worries over the fate of the publication he founded 21 years ago.
- Inside the Ring – Washington Times – RUMSFELD’S TAIWAN VISIT
China tried convince former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he should not visit Beijing’s rival Taiwan last year.
According to sources close to the former Pentagon chief, a Chinese Embassy political officer called Mr. Rumsfeld’s office before the October visit to urge him not to go.
Mr. Rumsfeld ignored the request. During his visit, he said Taiwan needed more U.S. arms in response to China’s continued large-scale military buildup.
- Breaking Views-Multinationals tell real China growth story –
- Couple Is Charged With Selling DuPont Secrets to Chinese Firms – WSJ.com – A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted a San Francisco Bay area couple on charges of conspiring to steal trade secrets from DuPont Co. and sell them to Chinese state-owned companies.
The indictment said Walter Liew, 54 years old, and his wife, Christina Liew, 49, conspired to take confidential DuPont documents and used them to obtain more than $20 million in contracts from companies in China.。。
Prosecutors also built their case using business associates of the Liews, the people familiar with the matter said. These included two executives from Pangang Group Co., a state-owned Chinese enterprise that is a defendant in the case, who federal agents detained last year and prevented from leaving the U.S. to obtain testimony about the Liews, the people said. The executives, the people said, recently were allowed to return to China.
- Taking Mines Seriously: Mine Warfare in China’s Near Seas | Andrew S. Erickson –
- The Outsiders–SCMP.com – Eric Li says those who defend Hong Kong's rights and freedoms against encroachment by Beijing should examine their own attitude towards foreign maids and pregnant mainlanders, and see how well their ideology serves them
- China’s Inflation Rises Faster Than Expected – WSJ.com – food always gets more expensive before chinese new year
- China News Headlines | Hong Kong’s premier newspaper online | SCMP.com – Zhang Ming , from Renmin University in Beijing, said he believed the rumours were largely true. "Although no one expected the day to come so quickly, it will virtually mean the end of Bo's political future and the bankruptcy of the so-called Chongqing model," he said.
Bo has earned notoriety for his crusade against organised crime, a controversial campaign to resurrect Maoist revolutionary culture and his over-the-top showmanship.
Zhang said Bo's potential involvement in Wang's case would have greater impact than the fall of Chen, as China was facing a full-fledged leftist backlash featuring Bo's ultra-conservative ideas.
Zhang and other analysts also said that despite Bo's high-profile manoeuvring over the past few years, the gang-busting Chongqing party boss had failed to get endorsement from top leaders, including Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao .
- Garnaut The Age-China power play: anti-corruption officials vanish – If Wang did "behind a treasure trove of incriminating documents against Mr Bo", was it to try to destroy Bo's prospects for promotion, as now the US could blackmail Bo when he has more power, or expose him and embarrass China?//
Mr Bo’s relationship with Mr Wang collapsed last month under the pressure of an investigation team from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, according to a Chongqing source who has had recent dealings with both Mr Wang and the commission.
Several of Mr Wang’s close associates from his home base of Dalian have also been taken into custody, according to Chongqing sources.
Speculation was swirling last night that Mr Bo himself was a target of the central investigation, after he had unsettled senior figures in the Party, and that Mr Wang sought refuge in the US consulate after turning witness against him.
Neither US nor Chinese officials would comment on internet reports that Mr Wang had spent Wednesday night inside the US consulate and had left only after leaving behind a treasure trove of incriminating documents against Mr Bo.