China Readings for October 23rd

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

  • Countering the Counterfeiters – WSJ.com – China is a land of opportunity for business, but it is also a land of counterfeiting and intellectual property theft
  • Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China – By Ezra F. Vogel – Book Review – NYTimes.com – Two mighty rhetorical questions conclude this enormous biography of Deng Xiaoping (1904-97): “Did any other leader in the 20th century do more to improve the lives of so many? Did any other 20th-century leader have such a large and lasting influence on world history?” The answers emerge from this comprehensive, minutely documented book, but not as predictably as Ezra F. Vogel, a Harvard University emeritus professor of social sciences, assumes.
  • China Denounces Demand for High Tariffs on Solar Panels – NYTimes.com – The Chinese government Friday condemned a demand by the American solar panel industry for steep tariffs on solar panels shipped to the United States from China.

    China accused the American industry of protectionism that could undermine the global economy and harm international efforts to combat global warming. It called for the United States government to reject the industry’s legal filing.

  • Where China Meets India — By Thant Myint-U — Book Review – NYTimes.com – reviewed by james fallows//
  • Techcrunch Disrupt Agenda « Beijing 2011 – I will be a judge for the weekend hackathon contest
  • Chinese Solar Trade Case Has Clear Targets, Not Obvious Goals – NYTimes.com – LIKE Detroit automakers taking on the Japanese a generation ago, the seven American solar panel makers that filed a trade case on Wednesday against China might find that a legal victory, if it comes, may not translate into business success.
  • China’s economy: Hitting the kerb | The Economist – A wave of distressed selling could turn a welcome easing of property prices into a rout. That would endanger formal loans to property developers, as well as loans to other kinds of companies, if they re-lent the money to property firms. It would also reduce proceeds from land sales, on which local governments rely for revenues.

    China is not there yet. Nor is Wenzhou. It has about 400,000 private enterprises. Only 90 bosses have run away, Mr Zhou points out, and several of those have now come back. But these disappearances were enough to attract streams of reporters and to draw the government’s attention. Earlier this month, Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, paid a visit, urging banks to go easy on small companies. The government has even persuaded Mr Hu of Zhejiang Centre Group to return. His factory was due to reopen on October 20th.

  • China’s economy: Afraid of a bump | The Economist – China’s chronic problems need not, then, develop into an acute crisis any time soon. For the moment, its government can keep a lid on the financial system, albeit by virtue of financial controls and skewed incentives that were partly to blame for a lot of bad investments in the first place. That sort of response—alleviating the symptoms without tackling the fundamental causes—can’t go on for ever without a painful reckoning eventually. But it can go on longer in China’s closed system than it would elsewhere.
  • xinhua-Senior official urges special police officers to better uphold social stability – A senior Chinese official has urged members of the country's nearly 50,000-strong special police force to play greater roles in safeguarding the nation and social stability.

    Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, urged that the special police force be built into a "heroic force."

  • Blizzard Entertainment reveals the next World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria | VentureBeat – wonder how hard it will be to get this approved in china//

    Long-rumored to be a playable race in World of Warcraft (and confirmed by Metzen as originally planned for the second expansion, The Burning Crusade), the pandaren now have an entire expansion set based around them.

    The pandaren will be unique to World of Warcraft’s roster of playable races in that they are faction neutral, at first. Players will eventually be able to decide if their pandaren character will join the Horde or Alliance. The Mists of Pandaria expansion takes place in the lost continent of Pandaria, the pandaren’s mystical homeland.

  • Commentary: Apple being dragged into US-China trade war – Speculation in the industry has linked the Catcher incident with the recent trade war between the US and China, rousing suspicions that the orders to disrupt Catcher's business came from the central government and were motived out of retaliation against the US government. Taiwan's ODMs are pawns caught in the cross-fire between the two economic giants.
  • Chinese Navy Hospital Ship Visits Cuba, Caribbean | Andrew S. Erickson
  • 广电总局原处长受贿4万获缓刑_互联网_科技时代_新浪网
  • How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley | Magazine
  • Police brutality charges sweep across the US | World news | The Observer
  • Goldman’s Jim O’Neil On The True State Of The Chinese And US Economies
  • Revisiting Deng Xiaoping: A Word With Ezra F. Vogel – NYTimes.com – Ezra F. Vogel, author of a new biography of Deng Xiaoping, retired from Harvard University in 2000, but still lives just a few hundred yards from the campus. In an interview at his home in Cambridge, Mass., he discussed his book, “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China”; the differing views of Deng during his rule and now; and the differences between Chinese and American politics during the opening of China to the West. Mr. Vogel talked to The Times’s David Barboza. These are edited excerpts from their conversation.
  • Heard on the Street: China’s Private Credit Market: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – WSJ.com – A crunch in China's gray market for credit has caught the attention of investors. But the impact on the formal banking system is likely to be small.

    Wenzhou, a city of private-sector movers and shakers in Zhejiang province, is at the center of the action. Tales of absconding borrowers have shined a light on the dark corners of one part of China's shadow banking system.

    The market isn't big. A paper by Wu Guolian, head of the local branch of the People's Bank of China, puts informal lending in Wenzhou at 110 billion yuan ($17.2 billion), equivalent to 20% of outstanding loans in the local banks. But Wenzhou is an outlier. Bernstein Research estimates the total nationally at closer to 5% of bank loans.

  • What a Collapse of the Chinese Real Estate Bubble Will Mean for the World – TIME – TIME LATE TO THE PARTY, WONDER IF THIS IS A SIGN FOR BRAVE CONTRARIANS TO GO LONG?//

    What's the most important economic question in the world today? One contender would certainly be whether the euro will collapse. Another might be whether the U.S. will plunge into a double-dip recession. But a third, and possibly the most important over the long term, is whether China can find its way out of the biggest housing bubble ever created.

    It may seem strange to Westerners, who hear so much about the rise of Asia and growing Chinese competitiveness. But like U.S. Republicans who try to "starve the beast" by cutting government spending, the Chinese Communist Party has been attempting to put a damper on the debt-fueled real estate boom that is at the heart of the nation's economic miracle. This is part of a deliberate attempt that is meant to rejigger the Chinese economy into one that relies more on a domestic service sector and less on manufacturing and exports. If, however, the party's efforts result in a precipitous drop in real estate values, multinational corporations whose revenue and earnings growth are tied to China could be hard hit. And the U.S. could be thrown back into recession.

  • Deloitte’s Quandary: Defy the S.E.C. or China – NYTimes.com – The global accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is facing unwanted scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission that has put its Chinese affiliate in the uncomfortable position of trying to avoid violating China’s laws on disclosing information by resisting a subpoena for its records.

    The S.E.C. is seeking a court order to enforce its subpoena against the Shanghai-based affiliate and compel it to turn over documents about a client audit. This month, it has sought to ratchet up the pressure on Deloitte.

    Meanwhile, Deloitte’s accounting regulator in the United States has just unsealed a portion of an annual review that is critical of the firm’s quality control over its foreign affiliates.