"Sinocism is the Presidential Daily Brief for China hands"- Evan Osnos, New Yorker Correspondent and National Book Award Winner
- 九三学社副主席详解“遏制公款吃喝”提案–时事 –
- 贵州官方力挺茅台 称茅台兴衰会影响贵州经济_网易财经 – 在刚刚过去的全国两会上，全国政协委员、中国扶贫开发协会执行副会长林嘉騋提交了《关于禁止使用公款消费茅台酒的提案》。贵州官方认为茅台在整个贵州经济布局中战略意义重大，如果茅台集团的业绩发生动摇，那么整个贵州经济都会受到影响。
- Wen lays ground for Tiananmen healing to begin – FT.com – As Mr Wen prepares to step down at the end of this year as part of a once-in-a-decade political transition, he may be gambling that the time has come to right historical wrongs as a way of launching political reform.
The potential reputational damage to powerful interest groups, particularly within the military, could still easily block such a spectacularly bold manoeuvre.
But in purging Mr Bo the Chinese leadership has cleared away a major impediment and sent a signal to others that spring could be in the air again in Beijing. - Secrecy of mysterious Ferrari crash fuels speculation in Beijing – The Globe and Mail – Was it the son of someone in the Politburo who was killed? Guesses were posted too fast for the censors to delete them all, their efforts only fuelling more speculation. Despite the censorship, the tale of the twisted Ferrari became one the 10-most searched items on China’s answer to Google, the Baidu web portal.
“If it’s a common traffic accident, why be so nervous?” one commentator asked. But then even that casual question was deleted too.
- 青岛黑老大聂磊涉十宗罪一审被判死刑_新闻_腾讯网 –
- Goldman Sachs no model for Chinese institutions | Opinion | chinadaily.com.cn – Blind trust in international investment banks such as Goldman Sachs will place investors in danger.
China should also realize that cooperation with global financial giants is inevitable. On the one hand, China should beef up its own financial teams, and on the other hand, the nation should forsake the short-sighted worship of the international financial giants. - 悬崖_百度百科 – up to episode 28, gr8 4 generating conspiracy theories
- Secret Bases, ATVs, Awesome Beards: Inside a Special Forces Team in Afghanistan | Danger Room | Wired.com – The secret base-within-the-base was the first sign that I was about to see something special.
It was early February at a snow-encrusted NATO compound on the outskirts of Kabul. I’d come at the invitation of a U.S. Army sergeant assigned to Special Forces Task Force 10. After reading one of my recent dispatches from the front lines of the more than decade-old Afghanistan War, the sergeant had extended me a rare invitation to visit and report on one of Task Force 10′s “A Teams” working to train up Afghan security forces out in the provinces.
- Rui Chenggang: The Chinese president should ride a Chinese car: Shanghaiist – should jingoist Chinese tv hosts have foreign identities?
- Meet the 2020 Chinese consumer | McKinsey China –
- Use of ‘Conflict Minerals’ Gets More Scrutiny – NYTimes.com – An iPhone can do a lot of things. But can it arm Congolese rebels?..
Tacked onto the end of that encyclopedic digest of financial reform is an odd provision. It requires publicly traded companies whose products use certain minerals commonly mined in strife-torn areas of Central Africa to report to shareholders and the S.E.C. whether their mineral supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.The measure is aimed at cutting off the brutal militia groups that have often taken over the mining and sale of so-called conflict minerals to finance their military aims. Just about every company affected by the law says they support it, but many business groups have also been pushing aggressively to put wiggle room in the restrictions, calling for lengthy phase-in periods, exemptions for minimal use of the minerals and loose definitions of what types of uses are covered.
- Iran Drumbeat Watch: ‘March of Folly’ Redux? – James Fallows – International – The Atlantic – The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, in his Bloomberg View incarnation, reports just now from Israel that Prime Minister Netanyahu's administration is "growing confident" about the necessity, the desirability, and the feasibility of an aerial strike against Iran's potential nuclear installations. Please read the whole thing, but here are representative samples:
- U.S. Simulation Forecasts Perils of an Israeli Strike at Iran – NYTimes.com –
- How Chinese publications relate to power – China Media Project – As we’ve pointed out again and again at the China Media Project, one of the most interesting contrasts that can readily be seen in China’s media is between news treatment by Party-run newspapers and market-oriented newspapers.
In the vast majority of cases, these mass-circulation market-oriented city newspapers (都市类报纸) — let’s call them the C‘s — are spin-offs of Party newspapers (the P‘s) run by the top Party leadership at various levels of the bureaucracy. While the former rely entirely on advertising, the latter continue to receive Party support. Though financially self-reliant, however, these commercial papers are still tied in politically to the Party-run press bureaucracy — a legacy of the Mao Zedong-era principle of “politicians running the newspapers.”
- [最新]王立軍事件初步處理的情況通報（第一部分） – YouTube –
- Leaked tape sheds light on botched U.S. asylum bid in China – latimes.com – REPORTING FROM BEIJING — A 25-minute tape recording posted on YouTube over the weekend sheds new light on mysterious and unprecedented incident last month at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.
Wang Lijun, a senior law enforcement official from Chongqing, sought refuge in the consulate for a full day, before surrendering to officials from Beijing. The incident led to the sacking of Chongqing’s popular Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai.
- 中共中央办公厅关于对王立军私自进入美国驻成都总领馆并滞留事件进行调查评估的通报 – 二，对王立军事件的初步调查结果：
通过深入细致的工作，现已基本查清了王立军事件的经过和原因。今年1月28日，王立军找薄熙来同志通报有关重要案件与薄的家人有关，由于办案人员为此感到了压力，已经接到辞职信，希望薄熙来同志予以重视，妥善处理。薄熙来同志对此十分不满，随后找市政府、市纪委、市委组织部主要负责同志商量，以多岗位全面锻炼为由，提出调整王立军工作。
2月1日下午，重庆市委召开常委会，决定免去王立军的市公安局党委书记、局长职务。事先未按规定征求公安部的意见。王在市政府不再分管公安司法工作，调整为分管教育、科技等工作。为此，王立军想不通。2月2日，市委有关负责同志到市公安局宣布王立军不再担任党委书记和局长职务后，在薄熙来同志家人和身边工作人员的压力下，有关方面以各种名义违规审查王立军身边工作人员及有关重要案件的办案人员。
王立军认为自己人身安全受到威胁，遂决定出走，并于6日下午在事先未按程序报¬批的情况下，独自进入美国驻成都总领事馆。王立军进入美国驻成都总领事馆后，先与美方人员谈了有关合作交流事项，随后提出避难的请求，并根据美方要求写了政治避难申请。7日晚，经中央派出同志当面做王的工作后，王立军同意自动离开美国驻成都总领事馆。
- Bo Ouster Means State Capitalism in China Will Fade, Zhang Says – Bloomberg – Bo Xilai’s ouster last week as head of Chongqing is a signal that China will increase the role of private businesses in the economy and scale back state capitalism, said Zhang Xin, Chief Executive Officer of Soho China Ltd. (410)
- 【一线】喜羊羊转手幕后 – – 中国企业家网 – for those who want to understand the business behind "pleasant goat" (happy lambs sounds better 2 me)
- Shandong police gun down wolf implicated in six attacks: Shanghaiist – Citizens of Tengzhou no longer have to fear the big bad wolf…we think. Shandong police have gunned down a wolf suspected of attacking seven people in Tengzhou in under a week. Authorities allegedly encountered the wolf in a wheat field and shot it in the leg, prompting it to flee 20 km, before they caught up with the animal and finished the job.
- Heart-Healthy Chocolate: Dark and Bitter Treat – WSJ.com –
- 赵本山否认被限制出境 今年重点是享天伦之乐 – 娱乐 – 长江商报 长江商报官方网站 – zhao benshan denies he is under investigation
- Google Says Motorola Buyout Boosts Choice as China Extends Probe – Bloomberg –
- China Discovered About 900,000 Active Tuberculosis Cases in 2011 – Bloomberg –
- Blood-Cleaning Burden Shows China’s Medical-Cost Struggle – Bloomberg – Infections may be catastrophic for Guo and her husband, who are already struggling with medical bills larger than their income. China, with four times as many chronic kidney disease sufferers as the U.S., spent twice as much on health care last year than in 2008 and health insurance coverage more than tripled to 96 percent of citizens last year compared with 2003. Still, surging rates of kidney disease, diabetes and other long- term ailments are ratcheting up costs for families like Guo’s.
- UPDATE: PBOC Zhou: Conditions Ripe For Interest Rate Liberalization – WSJ.com – The conditions are "basically ripe" for pushing forward with interest rate liberalization, the governor of China's central bank wrote in an article published Friday, raising hopes that the long-delayed reform could be moving to the forefront of Beijing's agenda.
China must also "accelerate" the establishment of a deposit insurance system, another key banking reform, People's Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan wrote in an issue of China Finance Magazine dated Friday that reached readers on Tuesday.
- Ferrari crash story off limits in China – China Media Project –
- Goldman Sachs is unveiled – View Point – News & Views – News – FinanceAsia.com – The network for financial decision makers – It shouldn’t be a surprise — and isn’t to the thousands of people employed in the financial industry — that Goldman simply wants to maximise profits, and its employees want to become rich. Seriously, has it ever been otherwise? And if the firm is competing in a game where the other players — which obviously should exclude retail clients — aspire to do the same then it is hard to understand what is wrong with its behaviour, as long as it is within the law. They are simply better at it.
- An Astounding Article in ‘Global Times’ – James Fallows – International – The Atlantic – Here's the reason this matters: it concerns a spectacularly horrible fatal car crash over the weekend in Beijing. At around 4 in the morning, a Ferrari driven at high speed along the Fourth Ring Road crashed and burned, killing its driver and seriously injuring two women in the car. The Chinese social-media-sphere has been full of speculation about who was in the car, how "connected" they might be, what kind of people (top officials' children?) end up with Ferraris, whether the story will be hushed up, and so on. In short, every exposed raw nerve created by the gaping inequalities of today's China was touched by this episode.
- Charlie Rose – Richard McGregor & Damien Ma on Bo Xilai –
- Ferrari crash information hushed up-Global Times – Almost all online information about a car crash on Sunday, in which a man driving a Ferrari was killed and his two female passengers injured, has been deleted overnight, triggering suspicions as to the identity of the deceased driver.
The crash, near Baofu Temple, Haidian district, in the early hours of Sunday killed the driver, reported the Beijing Evening News on Sunday. The two women were hospitalized.
- 解放军报：警惕敌对势力总兴风作浪_多维新闻网 – 《解放军报》3月19日发表题为《始终把思想政治建设摆在各项建设首位》的评论文章。文章指出，历史经验表明，每逢党和国家面临大事，国内外敌对势力总会借机兴风作浪，社会上噪音杂音也会明显增多，人们的思想往往更加活跃。
- A political crisis will not stop China – FT.com – So who is right? The people who think China is a rising superpower, or those who insist that it is a deeply unstable country? Oddly enough, they are both correct. It is clearly true that China has enormous political and economic challenges ahead. Yet future instability is highly unlikely to derail the rise of China. Whatever the wishful thinking of some in the west, we are not suddenly going to wake up and discover that the Chinese miracle was, in fact, a mirage…
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My own scepticism about China is tempered by the knowledge that analysts in the west have been predicting the end of the Chinese boom almost since it began. In the mid-1990s, as the Asia editor of The Economist, I was perpetually running stories about the inherent instability of China – whether it was dire predictions about the fragility of the banking system, or reports of savage infighting at the top of the Communist party. In 2003, I purchased a much-acclaimed book, Gordon Chang’s, The Coming Collapse of China – which predicted that the Chinese miracle had five years to run, at most. So now, when I read that China’s banks are near collapse, that the countryside is in a ferment of unrest, that the cities are on the brink of environmental disaster and that the middle-classes are in revolt, I am tempted to yawn and turn the page. I really have heard it all before.
Yet, it is equally hard to believe that either the Chinese economic or political systems can continue along the same lines indefinitely. - Hu to attend nuke summit in Seoul|Politics|chinadaily.com.cn –
- Cyber threat from abroad on the rise|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – Massive increase in attempts to breach online security, report says
Cyber attacks on China launched from bases overseas surged in 2011, rising to 8.9 million computers affected from 5 million the previous year, according to a network security report.
Japan was the source of most attacks (22.8 percent), followed closely by the United States (20.4 percent) and the Republic of Korea (7.1 percent). - Firm admits it sold dead ducks|Economy|chinadaily.com.cn –
- 人民日报-习近平会见美国艾奥瓦州副州长雷诺兹 –
- Xi calls for closer Sino-US co-op at local level|Politics|chinadaily.com.cn – Vice President Xi Jinping on Monday called for closer cooperation between China and the United States at local levels so to bolster bilateral relations.
Xi recalled his last visit to the United States, including Iowa, in February, during a meeting with Lieutenant Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds.
"You have told me that a world of friendship is a world of peace, which is very impressive," Xi said, noting that he concluded from the trip that there is a good foundation for Sino-US friendship. - 93号汽油价今晨“破8” 零售价达每升8.33元 –
- China Increases Fuel Prices Second Time in Two Months – Bloomberg – Retail gasoline prices will increase as much as 6.6 percent and diesel will be as much as 7.2 percent more expensive, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
- 停产规模过百亿：中企备战对美光伏“双反” – 产经 – 21世纪网 – 2011年，中国总计进口多晶硅64613.86吨，同比增长36.00%；此中，从韩国进口21361吨，同比增长89.47%，自美国进口仅次于韩国，达到17476.32吨。
- 谁在圈钱：那些以申纪兰为名的生意 – 宏观 – 21世纪网 – 很多人发现，这位淳朴的农村妇女代表，居然拥有纪兰地产开发公司、申纪兰贸易公司两家企业。
- Bronte Capital: Phil Falcone tries to rip off taxpayers – If the government wants to give away that much spectrum they should auction it and the money should be used for the benefit of all taxpayers (say by paying off debt).
Make no mistake about it. If you are an American taxpayer Phil Falcone is trying to loot assets that rightly belong to you.
You should not let him. And you should despair if he gets away with it.