China Readings for March 10th

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

  • Jeremy Lin’s Agent, Roger Montgomery, Is Riding High – NYTimes.com – Two months ago, the Texas-based Montgomery Sports Group had just a few clients. One of them had a steady N.B.A. gig. Two others were playing basketball in Europe. The fourth was Lin, who had played for three teams in December alone.
  • Obama and China’s Rise – Brookings Institution – Jeffrey Bader's new book
  • Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s View of America’s Asia Strategy – Brookings Institution – Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping recently completed his first official trip to the United States and his last before his expected elevation to General-Secretary of the Communist Party this fall. His visit comes three months after a high-profile trip by President Obama to Indonesia and Australia in which the administration’s heightened attention to the Asia Pacific region was in sharp focus. Brookings Senior Fellow Jeffrey Bader served as the senior director for East Asian affairs at the National Security Council from 2009 to 2011 and was at the center of the formulation of U.S. policy toward the region. He describes what he did, what he saw and what it meant in Obama and China’s Rise (Brookings Press, 2012).
  • Twitter’s Secret History As the World’s Worst Tech or Media Business – A source with close knowledge of Twitter's financials leaked us revenue, profit, and other figures from the company's recent past. They are not encouraging.
  • The Authoritarian Mind – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com – Davis Guggeinheim could consider doing work for China's leadership//

    Hollywood producer and director Davis Guggeinheim just produced a 17-minute “documentary” hailing the greatness of Barack Obama and his many historic and profound accomplishments, and it will be released this week by the Obama campaign. Please just watch this two-minute interview of Guggenheim by CNN’s Piers Morgan in which Guggenheim explains that nothing critical can or should be said of our President other than the fact that he is so Great that his Greatness cannot be sufficiently conveyed in a single film

  • Sealing Loose Lips: Charting Obama’s Crackdown on Leaks – ProPublica – While the Obama administration has promised to strengthen protections for whistleblowers, it has also launched an aggressive crackdown on government employees who have leaked national security information to the press.

    The administration has brought a total of six cases under the Espionage Act, which dates from World War I and criminalizes disclosing information “relating to the national defense.” (The Department of Justice has five criminal cases and the Army has one against alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning.) Prior to the current administration, there had been only three known casesresulting in indictments in which the Espionage Act was used to prosecute government officials for leaks.

  • Asia Unbound » Thoughts on the USCC’s New Report on Chinese Cyberattacks
  • Letter from China: China and the Unofficial Truth : The New Yorker
  • AP News: NYPD docs: ‘Focus’ scrutiny on Muslim Americans – will chinese americans be next? why not, a slippery slope//

    NEW YORK (AP) – The New York Police Department kept secret files on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, according to newly obtained documents

  • 悬崖(1-40)全集-电视剧-高清正版在线观看-爱奇艺
  • An Important Shift in China’s Inflation Numbers – China Real Time Report – WSJ – It’s a red letter day for China’s savers: For the first time since the beginning of 2010, real interest rates have edged into positive territory.

    The real interest rate is the return savers receive on their bank deposits, minus the change in inflation

  • The Dawn of a Rock Renaissance | By Olivia Wang – WSJ.com – cai xiaosong 蔡小松 is great. had dinner w him & family tuesday night
  • James Cameron to explore Earth’s deepest ocean trench – FRANCE 24 – wonder if anyone in china has hacked his blueprints? hope he has good IT security
  • 林春平回应“收购美国银行”:不是骗是为了提高地位 – 机构 – 21世纪网 – wenzhou businessman lin chunping makes up story about buying a us bank
  • 纽约亚洲艺术周凸现“中国文人”——邱家和
  • 网络实名制,多数国家这么做 – 京华时报·京华网
  • Real-name Weibo, for the good of all – China Media Project – This week Li Yizhong (李毅中), the former director of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), spoke with the Beijing Times newspaper and QQ.com about the development of new media in China and related issues, including real-name registration for social media. Li also had time for a quip about Google’s exit from China.

    Li, who is attending the “two meetings” in Beijing this week as a member of the Economics Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said that real-name registration on China’s social media platforms, a policy formally taking effect on March 16, was meant to ensure “the privacy and secrecy of individuals, corporations and the nation.”

  • New Layers of Intrigue in Chinese Political Scandal – NYTimes.com – events worthy of a spy novel — a fugitive Chongqing multimillionaire’s charges of torture, another tycoon’s sudden detention — have added new layers of intrigue to a sensational political scandal unfolding in a country that normally manages to keep rivalries under wraps.

    The drama deepened on Wednesday after Chongqing’s deputy police chief and three plainclothes officers, posing as maintenance workers, came to Beijing and seized a real estate mogul who had been waging a ferocious battle to recover his Chongqing business empire from a politically connected rival.

  • NSA whistle-blower: Obama "worse than Bush" – National Security Agency – Salon.com – Thomas Drake on life inside the National Security Agency and the price of truth telling…
    In the New Yorker article, Jane Mayer quotes you as saying, “I actually had hopes for Obama.” What’s your opinion on the Obama administration’s stated support for whistle-blowers and, more generally, his counterterrorism record?

    Worse than Bush. I have to say that. I actually voted for Obama. It’s all rhetoric for me now. As Americans we were hoodwinked. He’s expanding the secrecy regime far beyond what the Bush even intended, interestingly enough. I think Bush is probably like, “Whoa.”

  • 九三学社副主席:去年5千万股民人均亏损4万元_新闻_腾讯网
  • FBI Traces Trail of Spy Ring to China – WSJ.com – ORINDA, Calif.—Federal agents were searching Walter and Christina Liew's home here last July for evidence of corporate espionage when a safe deposit box key caught their attention. They asked Ms. Liew if she knew where the bank was located. Her husband told her in Chinese to say she didn't, according to an account later given by federal prosecutors.

    An agent who understood Chinese picked up on the exchange and followed Ms. Liew as she left the house, drove to an Oakland bank and tried to empty a safe deposit box the key fit. The box, according to prosecutors, contained documents outlining a more than decadelong plot to steal DuPont Co. corporate secrets and sell them to a Chinese government-owned company.

    The Liews now are at the center of a case that the Justice Department says marks the first time U.S. officials have filed criminal espionage charges against a state-owned foreign company. The company, Pangang Group, is fighting the charges

  • Shark Cartilage May Contain Toxin – NYTimes.com – Shark cartilage, which has been hyped as a cancer preventive and joint-health supplement, may contain a neurotoxin that has been linked with Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

    Scientists at the University of Miami analyzed cartilage samples collected from seven species of sharks off the coast of Florida. The specimens all contained high levels of a compound called beta-methylamino-L-alanine, or BMAA, which has been linked to the development of neurodegenerative diseases. Sharks accumulate the compound because of their status at the top of the oceanic food chain, consuming fish and other sea creatures that feed on BMAA-containing algae. The small tissue samples were obtained from sharks that were caught, tagged and released for tracking research, and no sharks were harmed for the study.

  • China February Consumer Prices Rise 3.2% – Bloomberg
  • China Should Maintain Housing Curbs to Prevent Chaos, Vincent Lo Says – Bloomberg
  • China’s Gini Coefficient Exceeds Trigger for Unrest, Chongqing’s Bo Says – Bloomberg – China’s Gini coefficient, an index of the rich-poor gap, has exceeded 0.46, Chongqing Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai said in Beijing today.
  • China Hard Landing Concerns Vastly Overblown, Yale’s Roach Says – Bloomberg – Concerns that China will enter a so- called hard landing are “vastly overblown” even as economic growth becomes more unbalanced, according to Yale University Professor Stephen Roach.
    China’s government has done a terrific job in controlling inflation, Roach, former non-executive chairman for Morgan Stanley in Asia and chief economist, said at a conference in Shanghai yesterday. The greatest risk to economic growth is the increasing reliance on fixed-asset investment and the declining contribution of private consumption, he said.
  • Chatting with China’s security apparatus | Al Jazeera Blogs
  • EADS Accuses EU of Sparking Fight With China Over Aircraft Emissions – WSJ.com – The chief executive of Airbus parent EADS accused European Union officials of sparking a fight with China over aircraft emissions that threatens to cost the plane maker $12 billion in jetliner orders.

    Louis Gallois said that European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. is a "hostage" to the dispute between Beijing and Brussels, which has put the fate of 45 unbuilt large planes in question.

    "China is putting on hold orders already agreed with airlines but not approved" by industry overseers in Beijing, Mr. Gallois told reporters at a press briefing.

  • China Elects to Regulate the Administration of Commercial Prepaid Card – pdf
  • White House tries cyber scare tactic to spur Senate – Jennifer Martinez – POLITICO.com – The White House orchestrated a simulated cyberattack on New York City’s power supply during a summer heat wave late Wednesday to illustrate not only potential human and economic casualties, but to tee up support for Senate passage of a sweeping cybersecurity bill.

    During a classified briefing in the Office of Senate Security, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan used images projected on screens to walk lawmakers through how a hacker could breach control systems of the city’s electric system and trigger a ripple effect throughout the population and private sector, according to a source familiar with the scenario.

  • 美国FATCA监管风暴袭来 “绿卡”公民逃税路生变 – 金融 – 21世纪网 – 核心提示:外国金融机构向美国国税局提供美国客户账户信息,让美国公民利用海外账户转移资产逃避税收行为“无所遁形”。
  • Debunking the China, India metals myth – MarketWatch – One of my bedrock principles is to leave my opinions at the door and let the data speak for itself. There is widespread belief among American investors and a large number of proclamations that the Chinese and Indians are not selling gold and silver into the swoon.

    Hard data from Shanghai, China, shows that the foregoing belief of the gold bugs does not hold water.

  • 北京别墅刮起折扣风潮 2月成交总量仅为53套_中国经济网――国家经济门户
  • Liu Dan and Zeng Xiaojun at Guimet Asian Art Museum, Paris | RedBox Review
  • Video: Hillary Clinton at U.S. Institute of Peace China Conference « Still4Hill
  • SpyTalk: Whats the CIA Up to in Syria?
  • Duqu Trojan used ‘unknown’ programming language: Kaspersky – Computer Business Review – Duqu first emerged in September 2011 and is thought to have been written by the same people behind the infamous Stuxnet worm, which targeted Iran's nuclear facilities and attempted to steal highly sensitive information. Duqu worked along the same lines; acting as a backdoor into a system to steal data.

    Kaspersky says that most of the recorded incident of the Duqu Trojan were located in Iran and targeted a number of industrial control systems used in a number of industries.

    The company has called on the programming industry to help them identify the framework, toolkit or the programming language.

  • China, U.S. Chase Air-to-Air Cyberweapon | AVIATION WEEK – The U.S. Air Force is developing network weapons to attack aircraft.

    Electronic warfare specialists know the technology is already a double-edged sword, however. The Chinese, a senior service official says, are already working hard on, and in some cases fielding, similar systems to attack high-value aircraft used for early warning, electronic surveillance, command & control, and intelligence.

    The Air Force is pursuing “cyber-methods to defeat aircraft,” Gen. Norton Schwartz, the service’s chief of staff, told attendees at the 2012 Credit Suisse and McAleese Associates Defense Programs conference in Washington March 8. But Lt. Gen. Herbert Carlisle, the deputy chief of staff for operations, says the same threat to U.S. aircraft already is “out there.”