China Readings for November 6th

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

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  • 郭美美“大战”中红博爱CEO 揭其坐牢包二奶_多维新闻网
  • 学者称“维稳”同“文革”一样成为时代符号_多维新闻网
  • “团派”接管广东 朱小丹背景似汪洋_多维新闻网
  • 温州官方:群体性的企业关停倒闭现象已遏制_资讯频道_凤凰网– 中新社温州11月5日电 (赵小燕)温州市政府副秘书长陈俊5日表示,“群体性的企业关停倒闭现象已得到有效遏制,温州金融秩序基本稳定。”在温家宝总理赴温州调研一个月后,当地5日召开经济金融秩序稳定工作情况新闻发布会。陈俊说,温州近期未出现较有影响力的企业主出走等极端事件,并有15位前期出走的企业主回温或恢复联系。
  • 成都军区密集调整将领 贵州四川西藏军队高层变动_资讯频道_凤凰网 – 11月2日,成都军区宣布贵州省军区领导班子调整命令大会在贵阳召开。会上,成都军区副司令员舒玉泰宣读了中央军委关于贵州省军区司令员凌峰调任四川省军区司令员,四川省军区副司令员李亚洲任贵州省军区司令员;贵州省军区政治部主任谢武忠调任四川省军区政治部主任,西藏军区政治部副主任肖茂光任贵州省军区政治部主任的命令。 据贵州日报
  • “Villages in Cities” Torn Down for Affordable Units_英文频道 Caixin Online – Earlier this year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development announced plans to build 10 million units of affordable housing in 2011, as part of a larger commitment to construct 36 million low-cost homes in the next five years. By the year’s end, reconstruction of sub-standard housing in cities (also known as “villages within cities”) as well as properties in state-owned industrial, mining, forestry and reclamation areas will yield four million new units. The slum reconstruction project commands a 500 billion yuan pricetag, 40 billion of which will come from the central government. The effort has come under scrutiny, however, because some local governments have also turned to tearing down and reconstructing regular housing in high-value locations, for the sake of raising funds. Some residents in Harbin’s 18-year-old Youlian community, for example, have questioned why the government is tearing down their reliable homes, in the name of upgrading slums.
  • Wu Jinglian: Markets Rife with Speculation_英文频道 Caixin Online – Economist at the State Council Wu Jinglian said among issues resulting from excess liquidity, China’s biggest challenge is the government’s dominance in economic activity
  • Why Investors Love and Hate Real Estate Trusts_英文频道 Caixin Online – Trusts offering high yields on property-related products have scared off some investors and made others rich
    Institutional and retail investors perked up recently when Sichuan Trust Co. Ltd. started offering a two-year, real estate-linked trust product boasting annual yields of up to 13.5 percent. By October 13, they’d answered the call by investing around 800 million yuan.
  • Judge in S China falls to death, reason unknown |Society|chinadaily.com.cn– bet he was “depressed”, as so many of the officials who commit suicide have been//A judge in South China’s Guangdong province fell to death on Saturday, court sources said.
    Li Bu’an, a judge with the Intermediate People’s Court of Jiangmen city, died Saturday morning after falling from the roof of the building where he lived.
    It is not immediately known whether he committed suicide or was murdered. Further details are under investigation.
  • Xinhua-China striving to build bustling border towns in Xinjiang by 2020– – China has worked out policies to transform two western border towns into key financial and manufacturing hubs connecting the country’s inland areas with neighboring central and south Asian countries, particularly Kazakhstan and Pakistan, officials and experts say.The State Council, China’s Cabinet, announced in October a plan to set up two economic zones in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The move is expected to bring prosperity to the relatively poor Xinjiang and shift the country’s opening-up strategy from focusing on eastern coastal regions to a more balanced approach that also emphasizes the land-locked west.Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road town that borders Pakistan through the plateau of Pamirs, will become a regional logistics center, a financial and trading hub, and a key processing center for internationally traded goods, says He Yiming, head of Xinjiang regional government’s commerce bureau. Horgos, a China-Kazakhstan border town, will focus on chemicals, farm products, machinery, pharmaceuticals, and renewable energy.
  • Xinhua-New lubricant allows Chinese fighter planes to perform in extremely low temperatures– JY Jelly? Arctic dreams?//China has developed a new lubricant that will ensure its third-generation fighter planes can start their engines instantly and take off in extremely low temperatures, the country’s armed forces announced Friday.
  • Beijing’s Cabs and the Struggle to Control Inflation – Global Spin – TIME.com – cabs too cheap, public transport overcrowded, wage inflation means many more can afford cabs, parking very expensive, car buying limited. government needs to raise cab prices and put many more on the streets//
  • 从出租车价格看政府定价 – FT中文网
  • Alms From China – NYTimes Editorial– China’s predatory trade policies — subsidizing exports through an artificially cheap currency and credit; appropriating foreign intellectual property; placing illegal export bans on raw materials to give domestic companies unfair advantage — are all of the world’s economic problems. Europe and the United States should be pressing Beijing to change its ways, not giving it more power to resist.It is true that rescuing Europe will be costly, weighing on European budgets and diverting resources from other priorities. But allowing China to pay for Europe’s bailout would prove even costlier.
  • Official Probe — Shanghai Daily – TIAN Xueren, former executive vice governor of Jilin Province and former member of the Jilin Provincial Committee of Communist Party of China, is under investigation for alleged violations
  • [toread] Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn Has Become the Go-To Guy of Tech – NYTimes.com– Airbnb China plans?//On this particular day in July, a rising entrepreneur named Brian Chesky has come calling. Mr. Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb, an online service that matches people looking for vacation rentals with those with rooms to rent, wants some pointers about expanding into China.Mr. Hoffman, 44, leans back in his chair. Then he lets fly: Airbnb will need a team in China, a robust Chinese-language platform, Web filters to keep Beijing happy, he says. It might also need a joint venture partner. He rattles off a few names.
  • Oakland Cops Hospitalize Another Iraq War Vet with Lacerated Spleen
  • 云南铬渣污染肇事工厂复工 环保局称有利清污_新闻_腾讯网
  • Yangon’s Many Faces of Change – WSJ.com – Once Banned, Now-Ubiquitous Image of Suu Kyi Brings Whiff of ‘Real’ Reform to Myanmar
  • China Summons Internet Executives for Training – WSJ.com– Executives from China’s top Internet companies have been summoned for an unusual policy-training session by the Communist Party’s propaganda department, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest move in the government’s campaign to increase oversight of the nation’s fast-growing Internet sector.The executives are participating in a multiple-day policy-training event held on the outskirts of Beijing this week, similar to training sessions often held for government officials to review new regulations, the people said. Among those in attendance are representatives from Baidu Inc., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and several other social media and online video companies, the people said. It’s unclear when the event ends.The meeting comes as social media websites, particularly popular Twitter-like microblogging services run by Sina Corp. and Tencent, have become platforms for freewheeling, real-time discussion, including on controversial topics ranging from a train accident in Wenzhou that Internet users accused the government of mishandling to the recent news that a toddler killed in a double hit-and-run accident had been ignored by more than a dozen passersby.
  • Equestria Daily– The Ponies confront knotty challenges—such as an invasion of adorable but hungry insects called Parasprites—and report to a ruler named Princess Celestia about the life lessons they learn.This is the sort of thing discussed at Equestria Daily, a brony website with links to such enthusiast-pleasers as free Pony coloring books. Shaun Scotellaro, its 23-year-old founder, says he cut back on his community-college classes to run the site out of his parents’ house in Glendale, Ariz., and has since become a cult hero.
  • Hey, Bro, That’s My Little Pony! – WSJ.com – my daughters’ favorite show/toy series. I am not a bronie though I know the ponies’ names through my twins
  • 铁道部被曝向国家求援8000亿 工程资金需上万亿_新闻_腾讯网
  • 华国锋骨灰归葬山西交城 今日向公众开放(图)_新闻_腾讯网 – Hua Guofeng’s ashes returned today to his hometown in Shanxi
  • Are Jon Huntsman’s Daughters Helping his 2012 Campaign? : The New Yorker – Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and Ambassador to China, has struggled to win over Republican voters, but three of his daughters, the eldest of Huntsman’s seven children, have become minor celebrities on Twitter and YouTube. Under the handle @Jon2012girls, Liddy, Abby, and Mary Anne Huntsman tweet campaign updates (“Great showing at Dad’s townhall this morning in Laconia, NH”); acid put-downs (“How does Romney know anything about China? He’s only been there once and that was for the Olympics. Panda Express doesn’t count”); and goofy humor (a pre-Halloween picture of Abby’s body next to Liddy’s head with the caption “We’ll officially ‘beheading’ to the Granite state this weekend!”).
  • Muammar Qaddafi’s Death and Legacy : The New Yorker – The last days of Muammar Qaddafi.
  • Hegemony and counter-hegemony in accounting markets | China Accounting Blog | Paul Gillis– Paul Gillis just got his PhD and has put his thesis online:This study is a historical critical analysis of the role of the transnational professional services firms known as the Big Four in the development of the accounting profession in China. China emerged in the early 1980s after decades of seclusion and began an economic transformation that would make it the world’s second largest economy by 2010. China did not have an accounting profession after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until the accounting profession restarted in 1980 as the country opened up to foreign investment. The Big Four, as members of the globalizing transnational capital class came to dominate the accounting profession in China with the support of other members of the transnational capital class including investment bankers, international lawyers, and transnational institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Grounded in Marxist theories of class struggle, particularly in Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this study explores how ideology, expressed as normative roles for independent accountants, enabled the Big Four to dominate the market. Using mixed research methods with archival and interview data, this study finds that the Big Four achieved its dominant position through three hegemonic projects: foreign direct investment, the reform of State-owned enterprises through international capital markets, and the enabling of private enterprise to access international capital markets. This study also explains how indigenous accounting firms followed Dutschke’s counter-hegemonic strategy of a “long march through the institutions” that reformed the domestic accounting profession and gave it access to the coercive power of the state to challenge the hegemony of the Big Four. This study finds that the globalization of accounting markets leads to regulatory holes, gaps in the transnational regulation of accounting firms. This study provides recommendations to the Big Four, indigenous firms, and local and transnational regulators.
  • China’s elite have new international outlook – FT.com – The response from more hard-line Communist party leaders has been to expand and mobilise the formidable domestic security apparatus and emphasise “stability maintenance” above all else.
    In private conversations, many of the people who supposedly make up the ruling elite of China express serious misgivings about the direction and future stability of the country, while admitting that they feel largely powerless to affect meaningful change.
    “There is a sense that we are approaching an inevitable breaking point, when the pressures in society will boil over and consume the rulers,” says one Chinese banker with close ties to a number of powerful political families.
    “Almost all of the elements are in place for an uprising like we saw in 1989 – corruption is worse today than it was then, people feel they can’t get ahead without political connections, the wealth gap is much bigger and growing and there has been virtually no political reform at all. The only missing ingredient now is a domestic economic crisis.”
  • 李大光:为和平解决南海争端支四招_评论_环球网 – 随着南海争端热度持续上升,一些非南海周边国也掺和进来,形成对中国的围攻之势。这些国家热炒南海问题,目的不外乎是想在南海谋求各自的利益。
  • The Ally From Hell – Magazine – The Atlantic – According to American sources, China has, in secret talks with the U.S., reached an understanding that, should America decide to send forces into Pakistan to secure its nuclear weapons, China would raise no objections. (An Obama-administration spokesperson had no comment.)
  • Rethinking “China’s Peaceful Rise” | Sinologistical Violoncellist– Although I occasionally mourn my inability to be in two places at once — as Sichuan and Tibet come immediately to mind — the benefits of being in the Puget Sound region in the autumn, I now recall, are multiple, as these perks include the ability to spend time talking with, and hearing from, Sidney Rittenberg.A new film project, “The Revolutionary” — a preliminary screening of which I was able to attend in Tacoma — calls Rittenberg “the most important foreigner in China since Marco Polo.”
  • Foreign Policy’s limited view of Chinese media– In a morning about three months ago, an US delegation consisted of young scholars and reporters visited Global Times. I remembered that a young lady with a backpack came late. The event lasted about half an hour and she asked one question during it.When the visit came to end, this American lady introduced herself to the editor in chief Hu Xijin and other colleagues in private. We later knew that she was Christina Larson from the famous American magazine Foreign Policy, who just wrote the widely read article “The People’s Republic of Rumors” about China.On Monday, Foreign Policy website published a 2,500 word article by Larson named “Global Times: China’s Fox News,” which is the longest article about the Global Times in the foreign media yet. The article has an accompanying collection of “The Top 10 Screeds in China’s Global Times.” It may show that China is attracting more and more attention from the US media.But we feel the quality of the article didn’t live up to what we expect from the Western media. The article even does not describe the location of the Global Times clearly. Larson claimed in her article that Global Times is subject to government review before publication, which is totally contrary to the fact.
  • Why is the NY Observer launching a new print publication for upscale Chinese tourists? | Poynter.– New York Observer President Christopher Barnes says “entrepreneurial” niche publications are a key part of his company’s business strategy. His latest start-up vividly demonstrates that point.The Observer Media Group this month will debut a publication called YUE, which it describes as a bilingual Chinese/English “luxury magazine centered on New York’s chic lifestyle.” Targeted at upscale Chinese tourists and business travelers, the magazine is named after a character in the Chinese alphabet. (It’s pronounced sort of like “YOU-ay” … or if you’re Canadian, you might write it as “YOU-eh?”)
  • 北京尚有百余城中村 2015年前拟全部取消_新闻_腾讯网 – 昨日,市发改委网站公布的《北京市“十二五”时期城乡市容环境建设规划》中透露,北京计划于2015年前基本消灭“城中村”。
    2005年,北京市市政管理委员会相关负责人做客“首都之窗”时透露,北京当时共有346个“城中村”,当年重点整治了69个。《规划》透露,2006年至2010年这5年间,对171个“城中村”进行了综合整治。市市政市容委相关负责人昨日表示,当前“城中村”的具体数据还需各区县摸底。根据推算,截至今年北京还有100余个城中村。
  • 北京将实施居住证制度 非京籍购房政策将完善_新闻_腾讯网– beijing for beijingers. just not enough resources to support so many people here//昨天,市发改委发布《“十二五”时期体制改革规划》,从价格改革、民生保障,到社会运行、市场体系,牵动社会上下的改革将遵循“继续推进、试点先行、研究谋划”三个层次稳步务实推进。
    规划提出,为遏制人口无序过快增长,各区县政府将落实人口服务管理的目标责任制,实行户籍指标调控。同时,本市正式提出实施“居住证制度”,探索建立流动人口动态信息与管理服务的联动机制。
  • China has satellite tracking station in Australia | SCMP.com – Beijing gives its space programme a fresh boost with rocket monitoring base close to Nasa and European Space Agency facilities in territory of key US ally
  • The Privileges of China’s Elite Include Purified Air – NYTimes.com – Membership in the upper ranks of the Chinese Communist Party has always had a few undeniable advantages. There are the state-supplied luxury sedans, special schools for the young ones and even organic produce grown on well-guarded, government-run farms. When they fall ill, senior leaders can check into 301 Military Hospital, long considered the capital’s premier medical institution.
  • Has China found the future of publishing? | Books | guardian.co.uk – Self-publishing websites, where readers pay small premiums for popular authors’ latest instalments, has been a spectacular success in China. Could it work here?
  • The Hilarious Reason a Chinatown Butcher Admitted to Selling Dog Meat –
  • CIA Drones Kill Large Groups Without Knowing Who They Are | Danger Room | Wired.com –
  • Digital Dao: A Review of the NCIX Report on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage – Although this is the 14th report on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage, it’s the first to be written by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX); a post created in 2009 under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It’s also the first to include cyber espionage in its coverage which was a bit surprising to me considering how long cyber espionage has been around. Other firsts in this report are that the ONCIX expanded its traditional sources within the government to include the private sector as well as academic research in an effort to gain the broadest possible coverage of the problem. The report also mentioned but didn’t specify “new sources of government information”.
  • The Hawks’ New Flight Pattern – By James Traub | Foreign Policy– Who lost Iraq? Why, Barack Obama, of course. Obama’s critics have seized on his announcement that all American troops would be leaving Iraq by the end of this year to blame him for losing the war, and squandering eight years’ worth of blood and treasure. “Iran has just defeated the United States in Iraq,” Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan wrote in the Los Angeles Times. The decision was “a tragedy, not a triumph,” lamented the Wall Street Journal’s Max Boot. “The Iranians are already hailing it as a great victory and, for once, they’re right,” harrumphed Sen. John McCain.This is preposterous. First, and most obviously, it was George W. Bush who made a mess of Iraq, and then dumped the mess on his successor. And the Obama administration’s failure to persuade the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to permit a residual U.S. force to remain beyond 2011 may be a misfortune, but it’s hardly a calamity. If 700,000 Iraqi soldiers and police officers can’t defend Iraq from Iranian ambitions and from the country’s own internal divisions, than neither can a few thousand, or even 10,000, American troops. The United States never had as much leverage in Iraq as it thought it did; the Iraqis want to make their own choices, and their own mistakes, and the Americans now have no alternative but to let them do so.