China Readings for September 13th (2)

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

Still working out some of the bugs with the new link creation system.
    father of other kid in fight arrested, have been rumors that he is illegitimate son of taiyuan police chief su hao. the arrested man is also surnamed su, but one way to get around having kids out of wedlock is to find someone you trust with       same surname to use on the birth certificate. for someone as powerful as su, lots of people might be willing to do this favor
    if the arrested man is not actually the father then there is also the issue of falsifying all sorts of records. but that would be just the tip of a very dirty and deep iceberg
  • China Expands Lead in Afghan Commodities – Bloomberg – The deal, to be completed in a month, will boost China’s position as its neighbor’s biggest foreign investor after a state company won the right in 2007 to mine the biggest copper deposit in Afghanistan by pledging to build a coal mine, power plant, smelter and railroad. In Africa, producer of 12 percent of the world’s crude, Chinese companies promised billions of dollars in aid, investment and loans for energy supplies.
    “China is certainly seeking resource security, but its motives are broader,” Deborah Brautigam, a Washington-based scholar and author on Chinese-African relations, said in a Sept. 9 telephone interview. China’s state-owned companies are likely pursuing Afghan deals “for commercial, strategic, political and resource-security reasons all combined.”
  • Frank Talk – China Fears Much Ado About Nothing – US Global Investors think China bears overstating their case, say Pudong was once a ghost city
  • Residency reforms favour China’s wealthiest – FT.com – Now regulations introduced in Shenzhen and Guangzhou – the province’s two most populous cities – to broaden eligibility for hukou are being criticised for doing just the opposite, because they favour people with college degrees and wealth.
    Guangzhou has allotted 20 points, for instance, to those who have invested as much as Rmb5m ($784,000) in local companies and 20 points to those who own property in the city. Applicants for hukou in Shenzhen since July this year can receive extra points for patents for inventions. Those aged between 18 and 35 also get additional points, offering an advantage to factory workers within that age bracket. Similarly, those who are studying towards a college degree or are residents of rural Guangdong can also receive more points.
  • China’s Tibetan Theme Park by Richard Bernstein | The New York Review of Books – In recent years, the tourist authorities have used Chengde to create a sort of national monument to Kangxi, and, through him, to advance China’s contemporary position on Tibet. The site doesn’t seem to attract many foreign visitors, but it teems with Chinese, who arrive in convoys of cars and buses from all over the country, fill up the city’s hotels, and stream through the entry turnstiles at the major sites.
  • A Phuket Villa on the Sea – Scene Asia – WSJ – 7.25m, they should market it in china
  • Italy turns to China for help in debt crisis – FT.com – Italy’s centre-right government is turning to cash-rich China in the hope that Beijing will help rescue it from financial crisis by making “significant” purchases of Italian bonds and investments in strategic companies.
    According to Italian officials, Lou Jiwei, chairman of China Investment Corp, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, led a delegation to Rome last week for talks with Giulio Tremonti, finance minister, and Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, a state-controlled entity that has established an Italian Strategic Fund open to foreign investors.