Wandering China

An East/West pulse of China's fourth rise from down under.

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

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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

20130612-220159.jpg

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

China’s former railways minister stands trial for corruption [Xinhua] #RisingChina #Corruption #Transport

Doing what has to be done to demonstrate that no ivory tower exists in the management of Rising China’s  arteries, at least for now at the ministerial level. Liu Zhijun 劉志軍, despite being head of China’s second most powerful ministry capable of some level of unilateral decision making (arguably, after the military )

Interesting his fact-file is still available on the Chinese government official portal.

For more, please see:

Former railways minister seeks leniency on corruption charges (South China Morning Post, June 10, 2013)

Chinese former minister Liu Zhijun’s trial on corruption charges begins (Guardian, June 10, 2013)

And a blast from the past – two years ago

China’s railway minister under investigation over “disciplinary violation” (Xinhua, Feb 12, 2011)

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China’s former railways minister stands trial for corruption
Source – Xinhua, published June 9, 2013

Video grab shows China’s former railways minister Liu Zhijun being brought into the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing, capital of China, June 9, 2013. Liu stood trial in the court on Sunday on charges of bribery and abuse o

Video grab shows China's former railways minister Liu Zhijun being brought into the Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court in Beijing, capital of China, June 9, 2013. Liu stood trial in the court on Sunday on charges of bribery and abuse of power. Source - Xinhua, by Gong Lei)

Video grab shows China’s former railways minister Liu Zhijun being brought into the Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing, capital of China, June 9, 2013. Liu stood trial in the court on Sunday on charges of bribery and abuse of power. Source – Xinhua, by Gong Lei)

BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) — China’s former railways minister Liu Zhijun stood trial in a court in Beijing on Sunday on charges of bribery and abuse of power.

According to the indictment by the Second Branch of the Beijing People’s Procuratorate, Liu took advantage of his position and helped 11 people win promotions and project contracts, and accepted 64.6 million yuan (10.53 million U.S. dollars) in bribes from them between 1986 to 2011.

During his tenure as the railways minister, Liu is suspected of helping Ding Yuxin and her relatives to win cargo transportation and railway construction contracts. He also helped them in the acquisition of shares in a bullet train wheel set company and with enterprise financing, by breaking regulations and applying favoritism, which allowed Ding and her family to reap huge profits, according to the indictment.

Please click here to read the full article at Xinhua. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: 52 Unacceptable Practices, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Corruption, Crime, Culture, Domestic Growth, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Greater China, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, New Leadership, Politics, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Resources, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Technology, The Chinese Identity, Transport, xinhua

Redefining relations [China Daily] #RisingChina #XiObamaSummit #TransPacificCooperation

The vast Pacific Ocean has enough space to accommodate the two big nations of China and the US,” Xi Jinping said before the meeting.

Trans-Pacific cooperation seems the end game for Xi in this informal game of leverage between two very important decision makers. Representing the hearts, hopes and aims of the China’s fourth rise, Xi the torchbearer can ill afford to come across as simply, amicable. That said…

Neither China nor the US wants confrontation… It’s especially notable that they pledged to improve military ties, the most sensitive issue that have occasionally strained relations” Ma Zhengang, deputy president of the China Public Diplomacy Association

However rhetoric remains verbal hot air till mutual understanding arrives…

“If we cannot understand each other, it can cause problems,” Yang Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies

Bridging a communicative gap involves more than semantic and consensus. Understanding – addresses only part of the equation – what of subtext, meta messages, and perceptual tendencies and noise, just to name a few.

For more, see

Shirtsleeves summit’ warms relations The Age, June 9, 2013

President Xi Jinping visits three Latin American nations, meets Obama in U.S. Xinhua Special Coverage website.

Also, check out the China Daily infographic below to get a sense of China’s transpacific posturing intent.

20130609-190505.jpg

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Redefining relations
By Zhe Zhe in Rancho Mirage, California, Chen Weihua in Washington, and Zhang Chunyan in London
Source – China Daily, published March 9, 2013

20130609-092548.jpg

President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama meet the media after their talk at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California, on Friday. Photo by Lan Hongguang / Xinhua

China and the United States will increase comprehensive exchanges, as the countries commit to building a new type of power relationship, the presidents of the world’s two largest economies said on Friday.

After the first meeting of their two-day summit, President Xi Jinping and US counterpart, Barack Obama, stressed the importance of the countries’ ties in a globalized economy.

“I am confident of building a new type of relationship, as long as we are committed to it,” Xi said at the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Estate at Sunnylands, California.

Please click here to read the full article at China Daily.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Daily, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Economics, Finance, Government & Policy, Greater China, Hard Power, History, Ideology, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Media, military, Modernisation, Nationalism, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Territorial Disputes, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.S., Xi Jinping

Censoring Remembrance: China’s Twenty-Fourth Unrealized Commemoration [Three Torches] #RisingChina #TianAnMen

How China sees itself: An encouraging college student post on Tiananmen and the agenda setting chasm of the Great Firewall – between true events and their representations.

Official recognition for this wrong is a long way off, and moving forward, online activity will continue to be a forum where people can lament and lash out, but much of it will remain in electronic form — digital dust in the large scheme of things. Dissent will become more creative, but so will the censorship regime, and at year number twenty-four, Tiananmen is still just one more irreconcilable trauma. Soon it might even cease to exist online, and with that little else can serve as an effective platform for remembrance and discussion in China. Three Torches Blog, June 5, 2013

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CENSORING REMEMBRANCE: CHINA’S TWENTY-FOURTH UNREALIZED COMMEMORATION
by Jonathan Lin, Three Torches Blog
Source – Three Torches Blog, published June 5, 2013

Much has been said — and much more has gone unaddressed — about China’s June 4th 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Yesterday marked the 24th anniversary with still no sense of closure, justice, or answers. One can get a small glimpse of the events of that chaotic and tragic day from Pulitzer-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof, and his New York Times article from more than two decades earlier. But as the years pass, and less of the younger generations realize the significance of the famous ‘Tank Man‘ image or ‘Statue of Democracy‘, anniversary commemorations remain an important annual reminder for something yet to be be laid to rest. The city of Hong Kong, a special administrative region located to the south of mainland China, has been the site of Tiananmen anniversary commemorations for a few years now, though this year local journalists have come away with photographs that show important variations in this year’s peaceful vigils, including shots of a demonstrator carrying placards saying “Thank you, Hong Kong”

As reporting of the events that commemorate the 24th anniversary still unfold, I would like to draw attention more to the state of Chinese censorship and the online crackdown of anything remotely related to the events back in 1989. According to The Guardian, China’s biggest blogging platform Sino Weibo — the homegrown Chinese variant of Twitter — kicked its censorship platform into overdrive, banning search terms such as ‘today’ ‘tomorrow’ and date references, where numerous combinations of digits and figures bring netizens to dead links and webpages. Such combinations include ’25′ (89 subtract 64), ’10′ (6 + 4), ’17′ (8+9) or ’24′ (twenty-fourth anniversary) — all have become taboo in recent days because of the political sensitivity of the anniversary. Though Hong Kong journalists and netizens are savvy and adopt a range of parody, panache, and perseverance to reference the anniversary, China’s authoritarian Internet censorship regime remains in place and will prevent the government’s power from eroding. Indeed voices of resistance, grief, and frustration on the mainland are largely stifled by what the authorities have put in place online.

Please click here to read the full article at Three Torches.

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Censorship, Charm Offensive, Chinese Model, Communications, Culture, Democracy, Disaster, Domestic Growth, Government & Policy, Great Firewall, History, Human Rights, Ideology, Influence, Mapping Feelings, Media, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, People, Politics, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, Tiananmen 20th anniversary, Tiananmen security, U.S.

China’s New Backyard [Foreign Policy] #RisingChina #SinoUS #InternationalRelations

The overt American pivot meets Chinese sleight of encirclement…

Tit for that no matter the perception filter. Is this setting indicative for the early half of the twenty first century? Two camps incapable of consensus in action, attitudes, or rhetoric making us the rest of pawns in their proxy backyard wars, invites lament.

For more, see

Paranoid Republic: No summit can bridge the political gap between Washington and Beijing by Minxin Pei in Foreign Policy, June 6, 2013

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China’s New Backyard
Does Washington realize how deeply Beijing has planted a flag in Latin America?
By R. Evan Ellis
Source – Foreign Policy, published June 6, 2013

20130607-110709.jpg

For the past decade, Washington has looked with discomfort at China’s growing interest in Latin America. But while Beijing’s diplomats bulked up on their Spanish and Portuguese, most U.S. policymakers slept soundly, confident that the United States still held a dominant position in the minds of its southern neighbors. In April 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing on China’s influence in the hemisphere and concluded that the U.S. position in the Western Hemisphere was much stronger than China’s and, moreover, that Beijing’s economic engagement in the region did not present a security threat. But that was 2005.

In late May of this year, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden went to Latin America for a three-day, three-country tour, Beijing was hot on his heels. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Trinidad and Tobago just days after Biden left: Whereas Trinidad and Tobago’s prime minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, characterized her discussions with Biden as “at times brutal,” Xi’s stop in Trinidad and Tobago included the unveiling of a children’s hospital funded with $150 million from the Chinese government, discussion of energy projects, and meetings with seven Caribbean heads of state. Xi’s itinerary took him to Costa Rica and Mexico on June 4 to 6, but his shadow followed Biden all the way to Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, Biden referred to a new “strategic partnership” between the United States and Brazil, yet his words’ impact was undercut by the strategic partnership that Brazil has had with China since 1993 and the much-publicized fact that China overtook the United States as Brazil’s largest trading partner in 2009 (trade between China and Brazil exceeded $75 billion in 2012). It’s not an accident that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff made a state visit to China in April 2011, prior to paying one to the United States.

Make no mistake: China is now a presence in the region. Xi’s trip to Trinidad and Tobago is only the second visit by a Chinese president to the Caribbean — his predecessor, Hu Jintao, visited communist Cuba in November 2008 — but China and the Caribbean’s economic and political ties have been growing rapidly. On this trip, Xi promised more than $3 billion in loans to 10 Caribbean countries and Costa Rica. Xi’s choice of three destinations near the United States, followed by a “shirt-sleeves” summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on June 7 and 8 at the Sunnylands resort in California, sends a subtle message that the new Chinese leadership seeks to engage the United States globally as an equal — without the deference shown in the past to the United States in countries close to its borders.

Please click here to read the full article a Foreign Policy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Communications, Economics, Environment, Finance, Government & Policy, Hard Power, Ideology, Influence, International Relations, Mapping Feelings, Nationalism, New Leadership, Peaceful Development, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Resources, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Territorial Disputes, The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Trade, U.S.

Summit to avoid ‘inevitable’ US-China tensions [The Age] #RisingChina #SinoUS

Torn in a great and powerful friends dilemma, Australia’s strategy to finely leverage both its American and Chinese friendships is a challenging one.

The article below was fed across Aussie broadsheets as it comes from one of two transnational media corporations operating in Australia.

However, great power relations and perceptual tendencies (whether institutionalized, enculturated or indoctrinated) needs a twenty first century update. Using a polarizing and primal set of us and them software to decode meaning in the networked global village – raises the question, what is preventing the update – why are tensions inevitable? By design, consequence or care-lessness?

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Summit to avoid ‘inevitable’ US-China tensions
By Nick O’Malley, US correspondent for Fairfax Media
Source – The Age, published June 6, 2013

The so-called “shirt-sleeves” summit to begin between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a glamorous estate in California on Friday will be the first of its kind in half a century, a chance for the two great powers to stave off what some fear to be inevitable tensions.

“It harkens back to Nixon and Kissinger and Mao Zedong and Zou Enlai sitting on overstuffed couches late into the night in Beijing discussing the state of the world,” says the US State Department’s former top Asia official, Kurt Campbell.

Those meetings in 1972 began the Chinese-American diplomatic relationship, a relationship that since then has been marked by mutual mistrust, not aided by the rigid formality of meetings between the two leaders.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Culture, International Relations, Media, Politics, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Mapping Feelings, Australia, Strategy, Economics, Resources, The Age, U.S., Human Rights, Social, Finance, Communications, Charm Offensive, Nationalism, Soft Power, Influence, Chinese Model, Public Diplomacy, Beijing Consensus, Trade, Territorial Disputes, Government & Policy, New Leadership, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, East China Sea, Ideology, China Dream

China solar panel duties imposed by EU [BBC] #RisingChina #Solar #TradeWar

A free market on whose terms – is this really a fruitful solution or does it simply carve out more finely the edges to the us and them narrative.

This kills off a Chinese pet project in one flex of foreign and economic policy, one the Chinese state has been happy to fund and use as the spear tip in their economic incursions abroad.

They thought wrong about what the world wanted.

In their minds, value and efficiency were probably paramount, thinning margins no barrier to demands from markets in the West. Famously, only one dollar goes out if every Levi’s jeans made goes to the worker, and little more to the factory.

The authors of the free market are not prepared to truly shake its center and make it competitive globally. it seems demarcation by regionalism is the new cool in the semantic range of what free means. Of course it pleases business as it restores margins designed to feed an expected and established standard of living.

The Chinese now know there is divergence in consensus across the notion of global village, despite economic interdependence as a big player in global production networks – - – what free market means to them is little more than subtext to hypocrisy now. Despite bailing out Europe more than once and financing growth by sheer Chinese demand in so many areas, this is their reply.

In one act of posturing, the West gains an upper hand as it nips away at the supply carts of the Chinese green technology vanguard.

One thing is for sure as to what the Chinese will not do. Especially in this day and age.

They will react.

But, it is easy to hide intent behind words. Some taunting outside the walls of the foe’s gates will probably suffice now.

For more, see…

The US and the EU are clearly redefining their economic strategy, trying to defend their energy companies from Chinese competition. But some European partners seem uncertain what to do.

Germany won’t accept losing significant trade with China, and even Washington’s closest European ally, Britain, is worried about the consequences of these possible measures against China.

The EU Commission doesn’t seem to be really interested in the first two aims of renewable sources, environmental protection and energy diversification, but just willing to boycott Chinese production through an alliance with US. All these point to an old question: Is the “free market” really free?

Sino-EU solar trade war is lose-lose choice By Andrea Fais
Global Times OP-ED , June 4, 2013

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China solar panel duties imposed by EU
Andrew Walker
Source – BBC, published 4 June 2013

Analysis

BBC World Service Economics correspondent
How likely is a trade war? China is certainly angry about the tariffs and there is a lot of trade at stake – 21bn euros worth in 2011, according to the European Commission. But anti-dumping actions are an everyday feature of the global trade landscape. There has been an average of more than 200 a year. They are perfectly legal under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, provided they follow the WTO’s procedures. Indeed China is a fairly big user of anti-dumping actions itself. The European Commission’s plan to start the anti-dumping duty tariff relatively low, and then increase it later, looks like a negotiating tactic. If the Chinese firms were prepared to undertake to charge a sufficiently higher price, the Commission could accept that. The duties are provisional at this stage and they could be removed if the EU countries decide to do so in December. That is a possibility. So the heat is on now, but there are still opportunities to extinguish the trade fires.

Andrew Walker

20130605-043350.jpg
The anti-dumping case is the biggest undertaken by the European Commission

The European Commission has announced it is imposing temporary anti-dumping levies on Chinese solar panel imports.

It comes despite opposition from Germany and other European Union members, and amid fears it could spark a trade war.

Please click here to read the full article at the BBC website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: The Chinese Identity, The construction of Chinese and Non-Chinese identities, Culture, International Relations, Environment, Politics, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), Mapping Feelings, Strategy, Economics, Foreign aid, BBC, Education, Resources, U.S., Finance, Charm Offensive, Domestic Growth, Climate Change, Nationalism, Soft Power, Influence, Chinese Model, Public Diplomacy, Beijing Consensus, Trade, European Union, Green China, Government & Policy, Reform, Democracy, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Europe, Law, Solar, Ideology

Why China’s Current Anti-Corruption Campaign is Different [Wall Street Journal] #RisingChina #Corruption #NewLeadership

By hook or by crook, this systemic dent has always impeded China’s full potential.

It has been one of its major Achilles heels since antiquity. That said and I argue again, it is not corruption that troubles, but the means of facilitating one’s ascent in contemporary Chinese society. One need to be a an increasingly big spender to afford an entourage. The entourage too has mouths to feed and the mouths are real. Desires are at a all fine high with advertising texts robbing Chinese skylines of their natural harmony with the environment – today feeding consumerism is the name of the game.

The one seeking ascendancy is no longer feeding an entourage of farmers from the village. The downstream effect that you have to be generous too their family to gain utmost trust is an expensive one in today’s terms.

A study of the major Chinese narratives and works of literature, right down to contemporary state sponsored Chinese-made TV today reveals much. It is an inherently deep Chinese lament. In the past when the Chinese echelons got corrupt and softened, foreign powers sat on their throne as recent as living memory.

Wang Qishan – man for the job to prevent this negative slide?

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Why China’s Current Anti-Corruption Campaign is Different
By Russell Leigh Moses
Dean of Academics and Faculty at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies
Source – Wall Street Journal China Realtime Report, published May 30, 2013

After witnessing previous campaigns against corruption fizzle out, or turn into an excuse for political backstabbing, the Chinese public might well be skeptical about President Xi Jinping’s latest attempt to rectify the Communist Party.

This present campaign, however, is beginning to look very different from the usual side-stepping that is done largely to impress the public.

And if reform-minded party cadres throw their support Mr. Xi’s way, it could turn into a broader effort to make the party more accountable.

Please click here to read the full article at the Wall Street Journal.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: 52 Unacceptable Practices, Beijing Consensus, Charm Offensive, China Dream, Chinese Model, Collectivism, Communications, Corruption, Domestic Growth, Education, Finance, Fu Er Dai 富二代, Government & Policy, Human Rights, Ideology, Influence, Infrastructure, Mapping Feelings, Modernisation, Peaceful Development, Politics, Population, Public Diplomacy, Reform, Social, Soft Power, Strategy, Tao Guang Yang Hui (韬光养晦), The Chinese Identity, Wall Street Journal

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