China Readings for January 9th

"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner

  • 山西县委书记女儿五年“吃空饷”_王克勤_新浪博客 – wang keqin on a corrupt shanxi county-level party secretary
  • 崔斌与达芬奇签订的公关合同曝光_公司频道_财新网 – Caixin publishes the pr contract between davinci and the beijing subsidiary of China Vision Media Group. contract is to help davinci "fix" the cctv smear.
  • 评韩寒:素质在民主变革中的影响_伊璐卡卡
  • Bloopers in Space – IEEE Spectrum – A horrendous error appears to have been made by a well-respected British spaceflight society, which reportedly is about to publish an article claiming that the X-37B, the secret Pentagon space plane, is shadowing the recently launched Chinese prototype space station, Tiangong-1, to spy on it in flight.
    But that’s ridiculous. The American plane’s orbit is at a steep angle with respect to that of the Chinese space station. When the two vehicles pass, they do so at speeds of up to 8000 meters per second, making it practically impossible for one to gather intelligence on the other.
  • Have RIM, Nokia & Apple provided Indian Military with backdoor access to cellular comm? | ZDNet
  • How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body – NYTimes.com
  • Android商店:不能承受之乱 – IT观察 – 21世纪网 – why google working with china mobile 2 provide a new android app store
  • The Jamestown Foundation: New Departments and Research Centers Highlight Military’s Concerns for the Future
  • The Jamestown Foundation: How Pakistan’s Unstable Tribal Areas Threaten China’s Core Interests – With all eyes focused on the consequences for the United States and NATO of the accidental air strikes, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, little attention has been paid to another big player who will be greatly impacted by Pakistan’s refusal to go after militants that are using the country as a refuge: China. Pakistan-based militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are increasingly a threat to China’s core interests: national stability and territorial integrity. In July, Turkestani Islamic Party (TIP) militants trained in FATA launched yet another attack against China with bomb explosions in Kashgar, Xinjiang, ahead of China’s launch of “China-Eurasia Expo” in Urumqi under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). TIP wants Xinjiang to be an independent Islamic state and the China-Eurasia Expo is a centerpiece of China’s Eurasia strategy of developing its western provinces and rebuilding the Silk Road of trade and commerce across the Eurasia heartland (Beijing Review, September 15, 2011; China Daily, September 6, 2011; Xinhua, September 1, 2011). Outraged at Pakistan’s inability to clean up its own backyard, Chinese Communist Party-controlled press was immediate and harsh in decrying this incident (China Daily, August 12, 2011; Xinhua, August 1, 2011). This quickly prompted a scurrying of Pakistani leaders—military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and President Asif Ali Zardari—to Beijing to mend relations with its patron (Dawn, August 25, 2011; New York Times, August 1, 2011).
  • China loan, money supply growth pick up – Yahoo! News – BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese banks ratcheted up the pace of lending in the last month of 2011 to 640.5 billion yuan ($101.51 billion) from 562.2 billion yuan in November as the central bank eases policy to cushion the domestic impact of the global economic slowdown.
    Annual growth in China's broad M2 money supply accelerated to 13.6 percent in December from November's 12.7 percent, data from the People's Bank of China showed on Sunday.
  • 中共中央办公厅警卫局 – 维基百科,自由的百科全书
  • 中国土地销售放缓加剧 – FT中文网
  • Central Huijin buy boosts shares of lenders, lifts market | Markets | chinadaily.com.cn – SHANGHAI – Banking shares edged higher in Shanghai on Friday after reports showed that the State-owned Central Huijin Investment Ltd increased its holdings in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) and Bank of China Ltd (BOC).
    ICBC gained 0.71 percent to 4.28 yuan (67 US cents) amid a 0.7 percent gain for the major Shanghai Composite Index to 2163.39 points.
    Trading in BOC shares was suspended in Shanghai on Friday as the lender held a shareholder meeting.
  • DaVinci Scandal Grows as Newspaper Exec Sacked – Cui Bin, general manager of the Beijing Times newspaper, was sacked Friday on suspicion he dealt with DaVinci Furniture in a 3 million yuan (US$475,150) business to offer public relations services to help the company try to evade its scandals.

    Mediach.com, a website registered by Cui, was also shut down on Wednesday after it was exposed by media to have signed the contract with Shanghai-based DaVinci Furniture Ltd for PR services.

  • Strategize, Adapt, Reform – Caixin Online – Amid global economic uncertainty, People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan is one of the world's most talked-about central bankers.
    Zhou attracts as much attention as U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi because the world's financial markets are vitally interested in China's interest rate trends, bank deposit reserve ratio adjustments, and yuan-dollar exchange rates.
    Zhou is a big-thinking strategist with firm ideas about financial reform. He's also a tactician who can find opportunities for promoting reform in any situation. His harmoniously pursues realism and idealism, seeking gradual progress while pushing for financial reform.
    The year 2011 was difficult and complex for China' economy. The year 2012 will be no different. What does Zhou see ahead, and what lessons can be learned from the past year?
    In an interview in December, shortly after the Chinese government set its 2012 policy goals at the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, Zhou sat down with Caixin to discuss his personal and the central bank's views toward inflation and monetary policy adjustments, interest rate control, exchange rate reform, capital account liberalization and the internationalization of the yuan. His comments follow:
  • City Subway Construction Decelerates in China – Caixin Online – A golden era for rapid transit expansion is ending abruptly in China's cities, leaving railway builders and suppliers in the lurch
  • Beijing sees decline in PM2.5 density in past decade – Xinhua | English.news.cn – thought they were not collecting this data
  • High society meets Shanghai society as China hosts the first Debutante’s Ball – Telegraph – The Chinese flag was flying proudly above the imposing neo-classical facade of the former Shanghai Club, but the party going on inside was a throwback to the glory days of upper-class English society, writes David Eimer…
    Plans to invite more Chinese girls fell through, after a failure to find suitable candidates. "We have a lot of girls now who are from very rich families, but have no manners and don't behave like ladies. I don't want girls who throw their money around or who are rude to waiters," said Vivian Chow Wong, the ball's organiser.
  • 新校车标准引发争议 多家车企反对照搬美国标准_新闻_腾讯网
  • What China Can Teach Europe – NYTimes.com – Daniel A. Bell is a professor at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University, and co-author of “The Spirit of Cities.”
  • China Communist Party bureaucrats’ deluxe cars spark anger – latimes.com – Chinese officials love their cars — big, fancy, expensive cars. A chocolate-colored Bentley worth $560,000 is cruising the streets of Beijing with license plates indicating it is registered to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. The armed police, who handle riots and crowd control, have the same model of Bentley in blue.

    And just in case it needs to go racing off to war, the Chinese army has a black Maserati that sells in China for $330,000.

    "Corruption on wheels is an accurate description of this problem," said Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, who has been advocating restrictions on officials' cars for years.

  • Mystery Chinese blogger scores a hit with Cultural Revolution novel | Books | The Observer – A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity.

    Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised.

  • Philippines accuses China of maritime intrusions – Yahoo! News
  • Bloopers in Space – IEEE Spectrum – A horrendous error appears to have been made by a well-respected British spaceflight society, which reportedly is about to publish an article claiming that the X-37B, the secret Pentagon space plane, is shadowing the recently launched Chinese prototype space station, Tiangong-1, to spy on it in flight.
    But that’s ridiculous. The American plane’s orbit is at a steep angle with respect to that of the Chinese space station. When the two vehicles pass, they do so at speeds of up to 8000 meters per second, making it practically impossible for one to gather intelligence on the other.
  • Have RIM, Nokia & Apple provided Indian Military with backdoor access to cellular comm? | ZDNet
  • How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body – NYTimes.com
  • Android商店:不能承受之乱 – IT观察 – 21世纪网 – why google working with china mobile 2 provide a new android app store
  • The Jamestown Foundation: New Departments and Research Centers Highlight Military’s Concerns for the Future
  • The Jamestown Foundation: How Pakistan’s Unstable Tribal Areas Threaten China’s Core Interests – With all eyes focused on the consequences for the United States and NATO of the accidental air strikes, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, little attention has been paid to another big player who will be greatly impacted by Pakistan’s refusal to go after militants that are using the country as a refuge: China. Pakistan-based militants in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are increasingly a threat to China’s core interests: national stability and territorial integrity. In July, Turkestani Islamic Party (TIP) militants trained in FATA launched yet another attack against China with bomb explosions in Kashgar, Xinjiang, ahead of China’s launch of “China-Eurasia Expo” in Urumqi under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). TIP wants Xinjiang to be an independent Islamic state and the China-Eurasia Expo is a centerpiece of China’s Eurasia strategy of developing its western provinces and rebuilding the Silk Road of trade and commerce across the Eurasia heartland (Beijing Review, September 15, 2011; China Daily, September 6, 2011; Xinhua, September 1, 2011). Outraged at Pakistan’s inability to clean up its own backyard, Chinese Communist Party-controlled press was immediate and harsh in decrying this incident (China Daily, August 12, 2011; Xinhua, August 1, 2011). This quickly prompted a scurrying of Pakistani leaders—military intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar and President Asif Ali Zardari—to Beijing to mend relations with its patron (Dawn, August 25, 2011; New York Times, August 1, 2011).
  • China loan, money supply growth pick up – Yahoo! News – BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese banks ratcheted up the pace of lending in the last month of 2011 to 640.5 billion yuan ($101.51 billion) from 562.2 billion yuan in November as the central bank eases policy to cushion the domestic impact of the global economic slowdown.
    Annual growth in China's broad M2 money supply accelerated to 13.6 percent in December from November's 12.7 percent, data from the People's Bank of China showed on Sunday.
  • 中共中央办公厅警卫局 – 维基百科,自由的百科全书
  • 中国土地销售放缓加剧 – FT中文网
  • Central Huijin buy boosts shares of lenders, lifts market | Markets | chinadaily.com.cn – SHANGHAI – Banking shares edged higher in Shanghai on Friday after reports showed that the State-owned Central Huijin Investment Ltd increased its holdings in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) and Bank of China Ltd (BOC).
    ICBC gained 0.71 percent to 4.28 yuan (67 US cents) amid a 0.7 percent gain for the major Shanghai Composite Index to 2163.39 points.
    Trading in BOC shares was suspended in Shanghai on Friday as the lender held a shareholder meeting.
  • DaVinci Scandal Grows as Newspaper Exec Sacked – Cui Bin, general manager of the Beijing Times newspaper, was sacked Friday on suspicion he dealt with DaVinci Furniture in a 3 million yuan (US$475,150) business to offer public relations services to help the company try to evade its scandals.

    Mediach.com, a website registered by Cui, was also shut down on Wednesday after it was exposed by media to have signed the contract with Shanghai-based DaVinci Furniture Ltd for PR services.

  • Strategize, Adapt, Reform – Caixin Online – Amid global economic uncertainty, People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan is one of the world's most talked-about central bankers.
    Zhou attracts as much attention as U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi because the world's financial markets are vitally interested in China's interest rate trends, bank deposit reserve ratio adjustments, and yuan-dollar exchange rates.
    Zhou is a big-thinking strategist with firm ideas about financial reform. He's also a tactician who can find opportunities for promoting reform in any situation. His harmoniously pursues realism and idealism, seeking gradual progress while pushing for financial reform.
    The year 2011 was difficult and complex for China' economy. The year 2012 will be no different. What does Zhou see ahead, and what lessons can be learned from the past year?
    In an interview in December, shortly after the Chinese government set its 2012 policy goals at the annual Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing, Zhou sat down with Caixin to discuss his personal and the central bank's views toward inflation and monetary policy adjustments, interest rate control, exchange rate reform, capital account liberalization and the internationalization of the yuan. His comments follow:
  • City Subway Construction Decelerates in China – Caixin Online – A golden era for rapid transit expansion is ending abruptly in China's cities, leaving railway builders and suppliers in the lurch
  • Beijing sees decline in PM2.5 density in past decade – Xinhua | English.news.cn – thought they were not collecting this data
  • High society meets Shanghai society as China hosts the first Debutante’s Ball – Telegraph – The Chinese flag was flying proudly above the imposing neo-classical facade of the former Shanghai Club, but the party going on inside was a throwback to the glory days of upper-class English society, writes David Eimer…
    Plans to invite more Chinese girls fell through, after a failure to find suitable candidates. "We have a lot of girls now who are from very rich families, but have no manners and don't behave like ladies. I don't want girls who throw their money around or who are rude to waiters," said Vivian Chow Wong, the ball's organiser.
  • 新校车标准引发争议 多家车企反对照搬美国标准_新闻_腾讯网
  • What China Can Teach Europe – NYTimes.com – Daniel A. Bell is a professor at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University, and co-author of “The Spirit of Cities.”
  • China Communist Party bureaucrats’ deluxe cars spark anger – latimes.com – Chinese officials love their cars — big, fancy, expensive cars. A chocolate-colored Bentley worth $560,000 is cruising the streets of Beijing with license plates indicating it is registered to Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. The armed police, who handle riots and crowd control, have the same model of Bentley in blue.

    And just in case it needs to go racing off to war, the Chinese army has a black Maserati that sells in China for $330,000.

    "Corruption on wheels is an accurate description of this problem," said Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing, who has been advocating restrictions on officials' cars for years.

  • Mystery Chinese blogger scores a hit with Cultural Revolution novel | Books | The Observer – A novel by an anonymous Chinese author living in America, which started life as a blog, has become a worldwide publishing sensation. It has been snapped up by publishers in 15 countries who have been impressed by the fact that it has sold more than a million copies in China and inspired a film by an Oscar-winning Chinese director. Some publishers even bought it before reading a translation. Yet none of the publishers, translators or editors knows the author's identity.

    Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong's last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a "politically questionable family" who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised.