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

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Happy Fourth of July to my American readers. Condolences to my British ones…

• Preparing for Financial Turbulence – Caixin Online
  why would China let the market handle the recovery when the allegedly capitalist US and Europe are not letting the market handle the recovery? //
  To address problems facing the economy, the government must resist its instinct to interfere and let the market handle the recovery
• 地产十年熊_杂志频道_财新网
  MOF researcher: 10 years of a housing bear market possible, bubble may really burst 2014-18…//
  中国此轮房地产调整的下行周期大致划分为三个阶段，可能会长达10年至15年。房地产泡沫的破裂极有可能出现在房地产调整的第二阶段，即2014年至2018年
• China Needs to Ease One-Child Policy, State Researchers Say – Bloomberg
  Chinese government researchers called on the nation to ease its one-child policy as soon as possible to cope with an aging population and labor shortage.
  One option is allowing all people to have a second child, three researchers including Yu Dong from the State Council’s Development Research Center wrote in an article in yesterday’s China Economic Times, a newspaper affiliated with the center. “The longer time we take to adjust the policy, the more vulnerable we become,” the piece said.
• 多家房企超额完成上半年销售目标 万科恒大率先抄底拿地势头加速_中国经济网――国家经济门户
  major developers exceeded 1H sales targets, still not convinced June strong sales sign market has recovered, focused on selling off existing inventory
• Nine ‘right number for top leadership’ | SCMP.com
  Politburo Standing Committee as constituted reflects nation’s eight state organs and should be preserved, influential economist argues in the party mouthpiece
• Netizens bite back over China’s shark fin soup ban
  “Given the way Chinese civil servants eat, in three years you won’t need to enforce this ban; the shark fin will be all gone.”
• For migrant children, Beijing is a city of broken dreams | Asia | DW.DE | 04.07.2012
• Beating of Boy Sparks Three Days of Unrest – Caixin Online
  Rioting in Guangdong Province over three days that resulted in injuries to over 300 people was sparked by the beating of a migrant worker’s son by local men.
  Migrant workers gathered in front of the Longshan village committee office, in Shaxi township, Zhongshan city, on the afternoon of June 25 after authorities detained a man.
• Developers Entering Commercial Sector Fight Talent War – Caixin Online
  Developers who moved into the commercial property market after the government implemented housing curbs in 2010 are increasingly battling each other for people with experience in the field
• Customs Agents Clamp Down on Artful Dodgers – Caixin Online
  A museum curator, an investment advisor and an influential auctioneer are among players in China’s art-and-collectibles world nabbed as part of a government crackdown on tax-evading importers…
  The law took effect in December and serious enforcement by the General Administration of Customs began in April, when police detained He Juxing, curator of the Minsheng Art Museum in Shanghai and the Yanhuang Art Museum in Beijing, and Huang Yujie, chairman of the Beijing Bangwen Modern Art Investment Co., on tax evasion charges.
  An industry insider told Caixin the detentions stemmed from an investigation into imports handled by a customs station in Shanghai.
• 高铁国产化幻觉_专题频道_财新网
  caixin cover story on tech transfer in high speed rail
• The key to China – Julia Lovell reviews Pathlight and Chutzpah
  Pathlight improves when it ceases to read like the print equivalent of a stuffy official banquet and moves on to half a dozen short stories by younger authors. Among these, the shorter ones are the best. The two strongest are “A Rare Steed for the Martial Emperor” and “Raising Whales,” by Xiang Zuotie (born 1974), each only two A4 pages long and both translated with assurance by Brendan O’Kane. The first is a hallucination by a foot soldier of the Han dynasty (circa 200 BC) that coheres through its use of colour and its evocation of the hothouse world of imperial whim. The second is an absurdist take on China’s get-rich-quick fever, as a landlocked village slowly runs out of containers to house its growing whale farm.
  […]
  China today is not the kind of place that encourages the professional dedication to literary craft essential to successful long fiction. Writers rarely revise; editors barely edit; they are too busy blogging, filmmaking, or chasing after the next big literary trend. The short story is the ideal literary form for a country suffering so acutely from attention deficit disorder: long enough to capture a meaningful fragment of this confounding country; (usually) brief enough to prevent authors reaching for melodramatic plot hinges or slack description. To understand how China’s literary minds are making sense of their country, then, read their short stories, not their novels. Chutzpah and Pathlight’s selections are a good place to start.
• Chinese Developers Face Pinch – WSJ.com
  healthy for the market, too many sketchy developers, government will only allow small ones to fail, others will be put into arranged mergers with healthier firms or just bailed out//
  Trust-company managers, fund executives and analysts say China’s four asset-management corporations have emerged as by far the biggest players in the distressed property market, and without their involvement trusts would be short the cash they need to repay investors by a lot. China’s trust companies are mainly controlled by banks, other major state-owned firms or local governments, although some foreign financial institutions hold minority stakes. At the end of March they had 5.3 trillion yuan of assets under management, more than double the amount two years ago.
• Shifang fiasco is a lesson for all local governments – Globaltimes.cn
  Only erroneous site selections, unqualified environmental protection indexes, and insufficient communication between officials and the public can set these projects in confrontation with public interests. This is exactly why we say what happened in Shifang should never be repeated…This indeed tests local governments’ governance ability. China is changing, and the Internet is scrutinizing every single corner of society. Local officials should not overestimate their power and resist public supervision. The only thing they can rely on is law-based governance.
• Shifang protest needs law-based conclusion – Globaltimes.cn
  The Shifang government now has to face inquiries by local residents, and the dissatisfaction of netizens. ..The conclusion of this incident has to be authoritative and the issue must be dealt with in an open and transparent manner. Otherwise, it would be a blow to the dignity of the law. ..If the local government is unable to proceed with the investigation due to its damaged credibility, higher administrative and judiciary departments should become involved. ..Public figures can also be invited to find a better mechanism to respond to mass protests
• China paper accuses Manila over South China Sea plot | Reuters
  China’s top newspaper accused the Philippines of orchestrating a plot to deliberately stir up tensions over the disputed South China Sea, and warned that Beijing’s patience should not be mistaken for weakness.
• Exclusive: Freight dispute risks delay in Iran oil to China – sources | Reuters
  with allies like these//
  The delivery of millions of barrels of Iranian crude to its top buyer, China, is at risk of delay due to a dispute between refining giant Sinopec and shipper National Iranian Tanker Co (NITC) over freight terms, Beijing-based sources said on Tuesday.
• 菲律宾总统府发言人中文警告中国“小心一点”_新闻_腾讯网
  philippine spokesman use chinese to warn china “to be careful”..this will go over well
• 北大校长拥有多达11名助理 远超各部部长_资讯频道_凤凰网
  peking university president has 11 assistants
• The Curse of Culture | PandoDaily
  The problem wasn’t that Kim didn’t possess the talents or the imagination required to start his own company. It was that he didn’t even realize he had the option. Korean culture, built on hundreds of years of Confucian ideology, doesn’t place much emphasis on the central tenets of entrepreneurship. However uncomfortable it may be to admit, it is difficult to deny that Confucianism and startup culture are almost incompatible. While Confucian concepts of filial piety and rigid hierarchy can be valuable in the family context, they are in direct conflict with startup leadership, which requires a healthy disrespect for authority, a willingness to disrupt the status quo, and a compulsion to take risks.
• Police Detained Six in Shifang Protest -Caijing
  Local police in Shifang, Sichuan detained six after hundreds protest against a planned copper project in the southwestern city
• We must repel Western ‘attacks’, Zhou says | SCMP.com
  The top security official on the mainland, Zhou Yongkang, has urged the ruling Communist Party to resist Western “attacks” on the country’s political and legal systems, in comments timed ahead of a 10-yearly leadership change.
  Zhou, one of the top nine rulers and reputedly one of the most hardline, said the Communist Party must repel the “mistaken views” of Western political theorists.
  .“We will never change in our endeavour to defend the party’s leading role and socialism with Chinese characteristics,” he wrote in the latest edition of a Communist Party publication, Qiushi.
• U.S. urges China to respect Internet freedom after Bloomberg Web site is censored – The Washington Post
  American officials urged China on Friday not to censor its Internet after the government blocked access to the Bloomberg News Web site. The Chinese government had denied Web access to the financial news agency after an investigative article on massive wealth amassed by relatives of Xi Jinping, the man expected to become China’s president.
• FT Alphaville » The curious story of Sany and China’s booming inner provinces
  Sany is China’s biggest machinery company, and it’s confirmed today that it will be cutting jobs from its local workforce. We’re not sure exactly how many, yet — but even a small figure would seem a bit of a blow to one of the key bullish narratives out of China this year.
• China: coal stocks rise 50 per cent, worrying inventory managers | beyondbrics
  More evidence of China’s slowdown: coal stocks are rising, pushing down prices and prompting worried inventory managers to sell whatever they can.
  The country’s coal stockpile is at its highest level since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 and nearly 50 per cent up on a year ago. Domestic prices have fallen by more than 20 per cent. With more coal pouring into the country under import contracts, terminals are approaching capacity. Nobody wants more coal on their hands.
• China’s controversial Three Gorges dam completed | World news | The Guardian
  Final turbine of £38bn mega-dam, whose construction displaced at least 1.3 million people, is connected to power grid
• TED Blog | China’s censorship battle between the cats and the mice: Michael Anti at TEDGlobal 2012
  Something important is happening in the cat and mouse game, says Anti. There is the big cat — the central government — but also local cats, the local government. The central government tries very hard to control the local governments, which have no access to the data. Again, the servers are all in Beijing….The most interesting question about the train crash is not why there were 10 million critical posts, but why in the first five days the central government allowed a window of free speech. Simple, says Anti, it was “because even the top leaders were fed up with this guy. They wanted an excuse to punish him. This kind of freedom is targeted.”…Social media has become a political tool of the governing party. This is new technology, but is culturally an update of the cultural revolution, which destroyed every local government.
• 独家发布：什邡事件武警暴力殴打和平平民 – YouTube
  14 minute video of shifang protests. violent, chaos, rainy, steamy sichuan
• » Global Times Weighs In On Shifang, And Weibo Censors Stir Beijing Cream
• Faceoff in Shifang – photos of China’s largest and bloodiest NIMBY protest in recent history | Ministry of Tofu 豆腐部
• 许家印的敌人：中概股老杀手“香橼”起底|许家印|敌人|杀手_21世纪网
  21st century business herald looks at citron’s andrew left, 3 references to fact that left is jewish. not sure why chinese journalists think that is relevant
• International – J.J. Gould – Chinese Democracy: Will It Ever Be More Than a Guns n’ Roses Album? – The Atlantic
  Minxin Pei, Eric Li, and James Fallows debate the legitimacy and resilience of the People’s Repbublic
• Vietnam sends fighter jets to patrol Spratly – In-depth coverage, special reports from Vietnam – TuoiTreNews
• South Korean Tunnel Hunters Search to Prove Threat – NYTimes.com
• Commentary: Is China’s Space Push Worth It? – China Real Time Report – WSJ
• China Says No More Shark Fin Soup at State Banquets – NYTimes.com
  potentially good news, though expect to start hearing about “sea noodles” or some other euphemism for shark fin soup
• 6 Reasons Samsung, HTC, and Motorola Should Fear the New Wave of Chinese SmartphonesTech in Asia
• All the Rage: China-Japan Diaoyu Dispute, Now an iPad Game – Japan Real Time – WSJ
  regulatory vacuum around itunes games in china. this kind of game unlikely to be approved by ministry of culture or gapp for “traditional” online pc games. i don’t imagine the chinese regulatory vacuum around apple’s distribution platform will last much longer given apple’s china growth. how apple deals with the chinese government now that is so clearly a growing content power in china is a big story
• 郭金龙当选北京市委书记（图/简历）–独家稿件-人民网
  official bio of new beijing party secretary guo jinlong
• Pool Incident in China Marks Latest Blow to Foreigner Image – China Real Time Report – WSJ
  don’t want to imagine how i would react if someone tossed one of my daughters into the pool. china should jail this guy for something and then deport him
• Shifang protests: “permission denied” – China Media Project
  Videos taken with mobile phones and posted to Chinese social media sites showed tight lines of police in riot gear attempting to break up crowds with organized charges and volleys of tear gas [More from the FT]…Chatter about the unrest in Sichuan was shared rapidly across Chinese social networking sites on Monday and Tuesday, despite constant blocks and deletions…The following are several posts made to Sina Weibo that were captured by the deleted posts archive at the Journalism & Media Studies Centre.
• 工程机械遭遇寒冬 三一重工被传裁员30%突围 – 爱问
  Sany cutting up to 30% of staff?
• China’s water quality standards postponed for 3 more years｜Society｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com
• Consumption in China: following the golden rule? | East Asia Forum
  the anti-Pettis argument
• 张艺谋执导《中国铁路》天价宣传片_新浪视频
  the ad for high speed rail zhang yimou denies working on

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