Last November, Michelle Makori, a business reporter formerly of Bloomberg News, joined a small group of seasoned Western television journalists for a whirlwind tour of China. The trip, arranged by China Central Television (CCTV), the world’s largest broadcaster, culminated in a visit to the network’s two headquarters: on the quiet, far west side of Beijing, […]
The recent NIMBY movement against a PX chemical plant in the Chinese city of Ningbo ultimately followed the same trajectory as did protests in Shifang and Qidong in July, 2012. After a tense confrontation between citizens and the government and violent but ineffective intervention by SWAT agents, the government backed down on October 28 by […]
China’s military shipyards now are surpassing Western European, Japanese, and Korean military shipbuilders in terms of both the types and numbers of ships they can build. If Beijing prioritizes progress, China’s military shipbuilding technical capabilities can likely become as good as Russia’s are now by 2020 and will near current U.S. shipbuilding technical proficiency levels […]
Two historically momentous events will unfold in the next few days. The Americans will decide who will run their country for the next four years, and the Chinese Communist Party will bring in a new leadership that would be responsible for shaping the world’s second-largest economy for the next decade. While there is little similarity […]
It’s a state of lockdown so extreme that it feels like war. With China’s change in leadership at the 18th National Party Congress just nine days away, “stability and security” has become the number-one issue for all levels of Chinese government. Although “stability preservation” (“维稳”) is always a high priority in China, it has now […]
“We want to survive,” read signs carried by the hundreds of protestors who thronged the streets of Ningbo, a southeastern Chinese coastal city, from Friday through Sunday. Their demand: that the local government scrap plans for an $8.9 billion expansion of a petrochemical plant to be operated by a subsidiary of state-run oil giant Sinopec. By Sunday […]
The rest of the world may have forgotten the anniversary, but a neglected border war that took place 50 years ago is now more pertinent than ever. Before dawn on the morning of Oct. 20, 1962, the People’s Liberation Army launched a surprise attack, driving with overwhelming force through the eastern and western sections of […]
Like many of you I am eagerly awaiting the new James Bond film Skyfall, especially Javier Bardem’s star turn as Raoul Silva, the classic Bond villain with his outlandish plot to pay 60% over market price for a Canadian oil company. No, wait, that’s from the business pages, isn’t it? You’ll forgive me: the stories sound […]
Two years after China limited its exports of “rare earth minerals,” unnerving developed countries that depended on them for industrial uses, production is expanding at sites outside China. And as new sources of rare earth minerals have appeared, that has meant new jobs — including in the tiny town of China Grove, N.C., where Japan’s […]
On Thursday Oct 26 The New York Times published a 4,700 word article on corruption among the members of Wen Jiabao’s family, alleging that they amassed a fortune of $2.7 billion through shadowy business dealings. Appearing on the front page of both New York Times’ English and Chinese websites, both sites were completely blocked in China within hours. Prior to the article’s […]
