Domestic Growth | Wandering China

June 20, 2013 • 10:07 am 0

China’s Xi harks back to Mao in party ‘cleanup’ [AP] #RisingChina #Corruption

The exemplary clean up is inevitable with every leadership change – how far down the root it goes is the question that remains unanswered – will there be no sacred cows this time?

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China’s Xi harks back to Mao in party ‘cleanup’
by GILLIAN WONG
Source: Associated Press Mobile, published June 20, 2013

In this June 18, 2013 photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, China’s President Xi Jinping addresses a conference on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) campaign aimed at boosting ties between CPC members and the public, in Beijing. China’s leadership wants to show a cynical public that it’s modernizing and serious about graft, but it appears to be favoring a top-down ideological campaign – with study sessions, self-criticism and propaganda – over imposing real checks on power. That worries many observers, not only because they doubt it will work, but because the tactic appears to be ripped out of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s playbook. Photo – AP Photo/Xinhua, Liu Jiansheng

BEIJING (AP) – China’s new leader Xi Jinping is commanding wayward Communist Party cadres to purify themselves of corruption, and he’s summed it up in a pithy slogan as Mao Zedong might have done: Look in the mirror, take a bath.

China’s leadership wants to show a cynical public that it’s modernizing and serious about graft, but it appears to be favoring a top-down ideological campaign – with study sessions, self-criticism and propaganda – over imposing real checks on power. That worries many observers, not only because they doubt it will work, but because the tactic appears to be ripped out of the playbook of Mao, the founder of Communist China.

“Winning or losing public support is an issue that concerns the Communist Party’s survival or extinction,” Xi said in a message via teleconference Tuesday to top party cadres gathered in groups in their provinces and cities nationwide.

Please click here to read the full article at AP Mobile.

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Filed under: 52 Unacceptable Practices, AP, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Corruption, Crime, Culture, Democracy, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Reform, Social, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity

June 18, 2013 • 11:11 pm 0

Here flies the dragon: Chinese airlines flex their muscles [the Age] #RisingChina #Aviation

Fruits on reform to enhance connectivity checklist. Planes, working on it. Trains, ticked. Automobiles, working on it.

There is still a long road ahead for rising China to sort it its mass transit issues because quite simplify, its volume for ‘mass’ is one for larger than most countries can only dream off.

The bonus with air travel is the extended amount of positive influence that can be massaged into a short or long haul flight…

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Here flies the dragon: Chinese airlines flex their muscles
Matt O’Sullivan and Peter Cai
Source – The Age, published June 17, 2013

Ready for takeoff: Passengers watch a China Southern Airlines plane take off at Shanghai’s Hongqiao International Airport last year. Photo: Reuters

Singapore Airline’s second-in-charge, Mak Swee Wah, summed up what looms on the horizon from China.

“Chinese airlines’ ambition is a reflection of the country’s ambition,” he said during a visit to Australia two weeks ago. “It is taken as a given that they will be growing aggressively.”

There is no doubt China’s airlines are beginning to flex their muscles.

In the case of China Southern, its tentative interest in a strategic stake in Qantas is reflective of a wider foray overseas by Chinese enterprises.

Please click here to read the full article at The Age.

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Filed under: The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Culture, International Relations, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Mapping Feelings, Australia, Strategy, BBC, The Age, Social, Communications, Automotive, Charm Offensive, Domestic Growth, Soft Power, Influence, Chinese Model, Public Diplomacy, Trade, Aviation, Government & Policy, Reform, Infrastructure, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Ideology

June 16, 2013 • 11:21 pm 0

A letter to China’s first space teacher from U.S. predecessor [Xinhua]

From space, we’re all just part of the same pale blue dot…

To better days ahead!

To Morgan, distance cannot separate Americans and Chinese, and teaching seems to have no boundary.

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A letter to China’s first space teacher from U.S. predecessor
by Xinhua writer Guo Shuang
Source – Xinhua, published June 16, 2013

A letter to China’s first space teacher from U.S. predecessor

Graphics shows a letter to Wang Yaping, astronaut on China’s Shenzhou-10 spacecraft, from the first astronaut teacher Barbara Morgan written in Los Angeles, the United States, on June 13, 2013. (Xinhua/Gao Wei,Guo Shuang)

LOS ANGELES, June 15 (Xinhua) — While China’s first space teacher Wang Yaping is orbiting the earth, Barbara Morgan, the world’s first astronaut who ever taught in space, was signing her name on a letter to greet the Chinese newcomer.

“I wish you could see smiles on my face, I am just really, really happy,” Morgan told Xinhua via telephone when she was asked to comment on the launch of China’s Shenzhou-10 spacecraft.

To Morgan, distance cannot separate Americans and Chinese, and teaching seems to have no boundary. “All over the world, we are really very exited,” Morgan said.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Domestic Growth, Education, Ideology, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Reform, Research, Science, Soft Power, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, U.S.

June 16, 2013 • 9:28 am 0

Whistleblower welcome in China [People's Daily] #RisingChina #

Interesting response from the People’s Daily suggesting the floodgates of intertextuality are wide open…

To further understand the likes of Snowden, let us end with a narrative by the character Red from the Shawshank Redemption as he rationalizes the escape of his friend Andy: “Some birds are not meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice.”

For more, see US suggests whistleblower ‘in league with the Chinese’ (The Age, June 15, 2013)

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Whistleblower welcome in China
By Xu Peixi (China.org.cn)
Source – People’s Daily, published June 14, 2013

By Gou Ben – China.org.cn

Last week, a bright idealistic young man named Edward Snowden almost single-handedly opened the lid on the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program, a program which marks the bleakest moment yet in the history of the Internet due to its scope, exact country of origin and implications.

In terms of scope, major transnational service providers ranging from Google to Apple are involved in allowing the NSA to access their customers’ data for the purposes of “surveillance.” Nearly all types of services ranging from email to VoIP have come within the program’s scope and it originates in a country which dominates the world’s Internet resources – a fact which is acknowledged in the information leaked by Snowden clearly states: “Much of the world’s communications flow through the U.S.” and the information is accessible. The case indicates that through outsourcing and contracting, Big Brother is breaching the fundamental rights of citizens by getting unfettered access to their most personal communications.

As the case unfolds, there are many things to worry about. How do we make sense of the fact that the market and the state colluded in the abuse of private information via what represents the backbone of many modern day infrastructures? How do we rationalize the character of Snowden and his fellow whistleblowers? How do we understand the one-sided cyber attack accusations the U.S. has poured upon China in the past few months? To what degree have foreign users of these Internet services fallen victim to this project? Among all these suspicions, let us clarify two types of American personality.

Please click here to read the full article at People’s Daily.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Cyberattack, Domestic Growth, Economics, Government & Policy, History, Ideology, Influence, Internet, Mapping Feelings, Media, military, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, People's Daily, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Technology, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, U.S.

June 15, 2013 • 9:09 am 0

Percussion shows me the world [People's Daily] #RisingChina #GlobalPulse #Percussion

Good stuff! No pulse = no life.

Better days ahead for the global pulse…

without the excess baggage of visual culture nor colour symbolism.

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Percussion shows me the world
Edited and translated by Huang Jin
Source – People’s Daily Online, published June 14, 2013

The performance “Mountain Drums” played by 39 visually impaired students from Guiyang Special School won gold prize at Disabled Arts Festival of Guizhou Province on June 7, 2013. The 39 students, from 9 to 21, are from a world without color.

Because of the visual impairment, the practice is very hard for them. However, the percussion brings them happiness and tears, and shows them the world…

Long Wei, a sophomore, practices drum. He never stops practicing, even in April when his mother died. Pnoto – Chinanews, by Zhang Yuan

An Xingxing, 9, the youngest player in the team, practices percussion. It was the third bamboo tube that she has broken. Photo – Chinanews by Zhang Yuan

A teacher holds the students’ hands and teaches them how to feel the rhythm. Source – Chinanews by Zhang Yuan)

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Disabilities, Domestic Growth, Education, Entertainment, Ideology, Influence, Mapping Feelings, Music, Peaceful Development, People, People's Daily, Population, Social, Soft Power, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity

June 14, 2013 • 8:49 am 0

No pulling punches over China’s ‘gaokao’ [Straits Times] #RisingChina #Gaokao

One chance against ten million in the cohort. That narrative, down to the wire, is the full-frontal reality of Chinese human capital to come.

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No pulling punches over China’s ‘gaokao’
Exam fever strikes as parents attack teachers for foiling kids’ cheating bids
By Ho Ai Li China Correspondent In Beijing
Source – Straits Times, published June 14, 2013

The ugly scenes involving mobs of parents and students at a school in Hubei province last weekend sparked concerns about the distortion of values over the gaokao or university entrance exams. — PHOTO: WEIBO

MOST parents would get upset if their children cheat during examinations. That was what a group of Chinese parents did – except that they directed their anger at the teachers, with some even resorting to violence.

A father punched a teacher in the face for foiling his son’s attempt to cheat during China’s national university entrance exam; separately, nearly a hundred parents and students laid siege to an exam centre, angry with invigilators for being too strict.

These ugly scenes, which took place outside a school in central Hubei province last weekend, have sparked concerns about the kind of values parents are teaching their children and the excessive pressure from the high-stakes exam, known as gaokao in Chinese.

Please click here to read the full article in the Straits Times.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Democracy, Domestic Growth, Education, Finance, Government & Policy, Ideology, Influence, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Population, Reform, Resources, Social, Soft Power, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity

June 14, 2013 • 8:40 am 0

China Reveals First Space-Based Quantum Communications Experiment [Technology Review] #RisingChina #Quantum

Another reason why China’s own rise of science, one revered in recent Chinese headspace with propulsion, as vanguard. This shows China is no longer just the world’s factory as it seeks to further tear down the tyranny of distance.

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China Reveals First Space-Based Quantum Communications Experiment

Source – Technolgy Review, published June 11, 2013

The ability to send perfectly secure messages from one location on the planet to another has obvious and immediate appeal to governments, the military and various commercial organisations such as banks. This capability is already possible over short distances thanks to the magic of quantum cryptography, which guarantees the security of messages, at least in theory.

For the moment, however, quantum cryptography works only over distances of 100 km or so. That’s how far it is possible to send the single photons that carry quantum messages through an optical fibre or through the atmosphere.

Last year, we watched as European and Chinese physicists battled to claim the distance record for this technology with the Europeans finally triumphing by setting up a quantum channel over 143 kilometres through the atmosphere.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Democracy, Domestic Growth, Education, Government & Policy, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Nationalism, Peaceful Development, Public Diplomacy, Research, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity

June 12, 2013 • 11:55 am 0

Greater US-China ties can cut both ways [Straits Times]

A greater engagement between the two countries is helpful, but it is a double-edged sword. Certainly, better understanding between leaders reduces the risk of greater distrust. But it could also expect China to deliver more than it is ready to do. And, not least, as the engagement is strengthened, expectations of each other will increase. Historian Wang Gungwu for the Straits Times.

Interesting times indeed. The Xi-Obama summit sees engagement thrown into the US-China mix while both sides build up respective pivots to contain each other – strategic proxy pieces unveiling in this year alone.

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Greater US-China ties can cut both ways
By Wang Gungwu For The Straits Times
Source – Straits Times, published June 10, 2013

There is rising alarm at the new capacity of the Chinese to buy their way to influence and potential dominance. That was the way many saw the US not long ago. China is now likely to be seen in the same light. — PHOTO: AP

LAST week’s meeting in California between the presidents of China and the United States won the world’s attention. It was convenient for Mr Xi Jinping to stop by after Mexico and it was significant that the meeting was held on American soil. The chance for the two men to get to know each other better is clearly significant for the two countries’ future relationship. The fact that the two have different interests, however, cannot be wished away.

It has been easy for the popular media in each country to portray the other by highlighting what its peoples expect to hear. For example, many Chinese see America as weakening: its liberal capitalist economy is failing, President Barack Obama and his political opponents are fatally divided, and the military planners are determined to contain China in order for America to remain forever dominant in Asia.

At its core, US national interest leads its leaders to think in Cold War terms. Hence the system of alliances from that period is being kept to ensure that ultimately the communist system in China will collapse as it did in the Soviet Union two decades earlier. Most Chinese believe that this factor explains much of what the US is doing in Asia today.

Please click here to read the full article at the Straits Times.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Education, Finance, Foreign aid, Government & Policy, History, Ideology, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Straits Times, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Technology, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Tourism, Trade, U.S.

June 12, 2013 • 9:40 am 0

China’s Expanding Life Spans—and Waistlines [Bloomberg] #RisingChina #Health #Urbanisation

Checking the rear view mirror of China’s rise: Urbanisation and public health concerns over the creeping obsolescence of physical activity in China’s time-compressed concrete jungles.

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China’s Expanding Life Spans—and Waistlines
By Christina Larson
Source – Bloomberg, published June 11, 2013

Photograph by Wang Zhide. ChinaFotoPress / Getty Images

Overweight students exercise in a gym during a weight-loss summer camp in Weifang of Shandong Province. Photograph by Wang Zhide. ChinaFotoPress / Getty Images

Over the past two decades, China’s population has grown richer, older, more urban—and fatter. From 1990 to 2010, public health authorities in China made significant progress in stemming several of the medical challenges common in poor countries, including reducing childhood mortality and rates of infectious diseases. However, China’s population now faces additional health pitfalls exacerbated by urban smog, more sedentary lifestyles, and the rise of KFC (YUM) and cheap fast food.

In short, China’s public-health challenges now look more like America’s, for better and worse. That was a main finding of researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Peking Union Medical College, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, which published a collaborative paper on public health in China in the June 8 issue of the British medical journal the Lancet. Their findings draw upon data in the World Health Organization’s 2010 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study.

From 1970 to 2010, the average life span for men in China climbed 12.5 years (to age 72.9). The average lifespan for women climbed 15.5 years (to age 79). A major factor behind these gains has been a steep drop in childhood mortality, due in part to improved neonatal and maternal care. In 1970, 100.6 children out of a thousand died in China before they reached age 5; by 2010, that number had dropped to 12.9 deaths per thousand. (Meanwhile, even as people are living longer, fewer are being born: The average number of children born to each woman in China dropped from 4.77 to 1.64 over those 40 years.) The result is a quickly graying country.

Please click here to read the full article at Bloomberg.

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Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Bloomberg, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Education, Finance, Food, Government & Policy, Health, Ideology, Infrastructure, Lifestyle, Mapping Feelings, Peaceful Development, Population, Poverty, Reform, Resources, Social, The Chinese Identity, Trade

June 11, 2013 • 7:46 am 0

Chinese telco Huawei tries to shake off spy image after NBN ban [ABC News Australia] #RisingChina #Huawei #Telecommunicatioms

So it seems to wearing made in China is fine, or eating out of plates made there does not require too much afterthought. However, using their information infrastructure and equipment to send messages from A to B – requires an ideological leap of faith for some.

Well, it’s not quite time to chuck away the image of China simply being the world’s factory of cheap and good, where excellent margins to those willing to leverage the Chinese model are the key draw. Today, they’re moving up the food chain and it will be a mistake not to take notice.

The land down under is seeing an increasing number of rising China’s foreign vanguard of products tested with the Aussie market prior to going global. This even includes the Great Wall make of SUV and Utility Vehicles.

Rewind – a year back Huawei was barred from tendering for Australia’s National Broadband Network based on intelligence and cyber espionage concerns. See China hits back at NBN bid rejection (The Age, March 29, 2012)

Fast forward a year and check out how Huawei has responds in the 7.5min video accompanying the article – with ABC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonell.

- Over in the UK – Huawei has become embedded into UK telecoms infrastructure [Financial Times] - June 6, 2013

- Can it look any more ominous than this (see photo below)? Inside The Chinese Company America Can’t Trust [Time Magazine] – April 15, 2013

Source – DOMINIC NAHR / MAGNUM FOR TIME
myth of photographic truth exploited to paint a sinister Huawei

That said, it is probably useful to get a clearer picture of what Huawei does:

To read a perspective of Huawei Its annual revenue is more than $35 billion. It is the world’s largest telecom equipment maker. Huawei components feature in networks serving one-third of the world’s population… Huawei is not really a manufacturing company. It makes some of its most sensitive equipment, but it contracts out most routine manufacturing. Just under half – 70,000 – of its staff are directly involved in research and development. It has sought 55,000 patents and been granted 30,000 of them. Thirty thousand of its employees worldwide are non-Chinese. It is really a giant R&D, design, marketing and brand company. A questionable risk to security – Huawei an extraordinary creation (The Australian, May 18, 2013)

See also from WC //

Huawei a victim of its success [China Daily] – May 26, 2013

Huawei calls US Congress report ‘China bashing’ [AFP/Sydney Morning Herald] – October 8, 2012

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Chinese telco Huawei tries to shake off spy image after NBN ban
By China correspondent Stephen McDonell
Source – ABC News Australia, published June 10, 2013

The Chinese company blocked from working on Australia’s National Broadband Network has set its sights on shaking off its image as a stalking horse for Chinese spies.

Telecommunications giant Huawei was banned from tendering for the network as Australia followed the lead of a similar government ban in the United States due to espionage fears.

The company, based in southern China’s Shenzhen province, has refuted claims by the US House Intelligence Committee that the company could potentially build so-called “backdoors” into the likes of the NBN to allow for Chinese eavesdropping.

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Filed under: ABC News, Advertising, Australia, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Cyberattack, Democracy, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Great Firewall, Greater China, History, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Intellectual Property, International Relations, Internet, Mapping Feelings, Media, military, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Politics, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Resources, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Technology, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.K., U.S.

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Wandering China

A letter to China’s first space teacher from U.S. predecessor [Xinhua]

Whistleblower welcome in China [People's Daily] #RisingChina #

China Reveals First Space-Based Quantum Communications Experiment [Technology Review] #RisingChina #Quantum

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