Posts tagged China
Progressology
A nexus of technology, permaculture, and everyday life
Inside a Chinese Communist Party school via leftliberty
China’s ruling Communist Party’s 80 million members attend special schools to learn party ideology at facilities that serve as a training ground for the next generation of Chinese leaders.
And defying stereotypes, it appears that one of the freest places in China is at the heart of the Communist Party.
The schools offer a safe space for officials to throw out ideas, talk about sensitive issues, and try to come up with solutions to some of the country’s problems.
Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports from Beijing.
(Source: aljazeera.com)
China to cap energy use in national low-carbon plan Limit is expected to form cornerstone of five-year plan to curb surging greenhouse gas emissions
(Source: climateadaptation)
An infographic depicting the percentage breakdowns in trade between the People’s Republic of China and the African continent. Data from Renaissance Capital.
via logimar:afrographique
“After all the wind and storm, what’s going on with the high-speed train?” read the prophetic message posted last Saturday evening on the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo. “It’s crawling slower than a snail. I hope nothing happens to it.”
They were a few short sentences, typed by a young girl with the online handle Smm Miao. But five days later, the torrent that followed them was still flooding this nation’s Internet, and lapping at the feet of government bureaucrats, censors and the state-controlled press.
The train the girl saw, on a track outside Wenzhou in coastal Zhejiang Province, was rammed from behind minutes later, killing 39 people and injuring 192. Since then, China’s two major Twitter-like microblogs — called weibos here — have posted an astounding 26 million messages on the tragedy, including some that have forced embarrassed officials to reverse themselves. The messages are a potent amalgam of contempt for railway authorities, suspicion of government explanations and shoe-leather journalism by citizens and professionals alike.
The swift and comprehensive blogs on the train accident stood this week in stark contrast to the stonewalling of the Railways Ministry, already stained by a bribery scandal. And they are a humbling example for the Communist Party news outlets and state television, whose blinkered coverage of rescued babies only belatedly gave way to careful reports on the public’s discontent.
While the blogs have outed wrongdoers and broken news before, this week’s performance may signal the arrival of weibos as a social force to be reckoned with, even in the face of government efforts to rein in the Internet’s influence.
Chinese Rail Line Crash
Many people — myself included — say that this horrible crash says a lot about the standard of Chinese engineering and the dominant role of the party in pushing things forward and brushing other things under the rug. I wonder if Germany might not be a more attractive country for the US to work with as it builds high-speed rail projects.
I don’t want to sound like a sinophobe — I admire China and wish them the best. But image presented by the party has been blindly accepted by most Western journalists — who have in turn translated the rise of China as a loss for America and Europe. Economics isn’t a zero sum game. The rise of China and India are a net positive for our global economy — as long as you have the skills needed to contribute. Social safety nets are pretty crucial in situations like that IMHO — another front where Europe has come examples of best/worst practices over several decades.
China cultivates a taste for fine wines
Was Strauss-Kahn set up by vengeful Americans?
But there have also been speculations about conspiracy from economists who admired Strauss-Kahn’s attempts to shake up the IMF. They quote his words in an address at George Washington University last week: “Globalisation has delivered a lot… but it also has a dark side, a large and growing chasm between the rich and the poor. Clearly we need a new form of globalisation to prevent the ‘invisible hand’ of loosely regulated markets from becoming ‘an invisible fist’.”
The dean of progressive US economists, Joseph Stiglitz, recently remarked: “It appears that a new IMF has gradually, and cautiously, emerged under the leadership of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.” (This view of Strauss-Kahn as the tribune of the oppressed is not shared by Greece which has been groaning under typical IMF conditions attached to bailout money. Greek newspapers have offered unsparing assessments. One newspaper carried the headline “The maid resisted IMF’s… rapist,” its description for what the IMF chief has inflicted on Greece.)
Such cavils notwithstanding, Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the US Treasury in Reagan’s time, stated flatly in a syndicated column earlier this week that “Strauss-Kahn is being framed up because the IMF recently announced that ‘the age of America is over’, that China will be the number one economy within five years. This was a massive blow to Washington, and they are taking their revenge.”
(Source: azspot)
Watermelons explode in China’s patches! via greengossip
Oil and trouble
Apr 11th 2011, 14:07 by R.A. | WASHINGTON
THE IMF is rolling out its World Economic Outlook today, and it has already made public two analytical chapters of the report: “The persistent increase in oil prices over the past decade suggests that global oil markets have entered a period of increased scarcity. Given the expected rapid growth in oil demand in emerging market economies and a downshift in the trend growth of oil supply, a return to abundance is unlikely in the near term.”
Full Story: The Economist via @futuramb, emergentfutures
Chinese students head to the US
Young migrants changing the face of China's cities
For China, the shift presents a challenge: how to integrate the new arrivals into already overburdened cities. An agrarian society for thousands of years, China is on the cusp of having more urban than rural dwellers for the first time.
Full Story: Seattle Times
What’s Happening With China’s Jasmine Revolution?
notadinnerparty: This is INCREDIBLY informative, which I was (perhaps) inexplicably surprised by. I guess you don’t see a lot of analysis of China in the liberal-oriented press (Mother Jones, The Nation, Utne Reader, et al); I, and others (like this guy, in this book), would hypothesize that this is because it’s hard to know what to do with China, or fit it into our progressive framework: traditionally, conservatives have been hawkish toward China, and liberals have (rightfully) opposed any hint of Cold War rhetoric or action, but the current positioning of China is concerning, in terms of no-rules capitalism, the growth of nationalism and militarism, and human rights abuses, as well as the CCP having jettisoned all seeming interest in working for a more egalitarian and just society, except when these disparities challenge their own hold on power. Plus, liberal mags tend to focus more on domestic issues, I think. So, anyway, all surprise on my part aside, this is extremely helpful, and you should read it.
(via azspot)
China's modest "Jasmine" protests fail to take off.
- 100+ Chinese protesters have been arrested by the government in the wake of an anonymous call for protests
- 13 number of cities where the protests were expected; police have been out in full force in each of them
- no China won’t let people talk about “Jasmine” online, and protest…
via shortformblog
China to Convert Phone Booths to Wifi Hotspots
“With mobile phones nearing 100% market penetration, the Chinese government appears determined to transform the country’s widespread telephone booths into wifi hotspots.”
Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’
In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax.” According to Chomsky, this massive public relations campaign has succeeded in leading a good portion of the population into doubting the human causes of global warming.
Known for his criticism of the media, Chomsky doesn’t hold back in this clip, laying blame on mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, which will run frontpage articles on what meteorologists think about global warming. “Meteorologists are pretty faces reading scripts telling you whether it’s going to rain tomorrow,” Chomsky says. “What do they have to say any more than your barber?” All this is part of the media’s pursuit of “fabled objectivity.”
Of particular concern for Chomsky is the atmosphere of anger, fear and hostility that currently reigns in America. The public’s hatred of Democrats, Republicans, big business and banks and the public’s distrust of scientists all lead to general disregard for the findings of “pointy-headed elitists.” The 2010 elections could be interpreted as a “death knell for the species” because most of the new Republicans in Congress are global warming deniers. “If this was happening in some small country,” Chomsky concludes, “it wouldn’t matter much. But when it’s happening in the richest, most powerful country in the world, it’s a danger to the survival of the species.”
Go here to learn more about “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” and to see the other videos in the series.
(via newanddifferentsun)
