363 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2020
  2. Jun 2020
    1. Li, Z., Chen, Q., Feng, L., Rodewald, L., Xia, Y., Yu, H., Zhang, R., An, Z., Yin, W., Chen, W., Qin, Y., Peng, Z., Zhang, T., Ni, D., Cui, J., Wang, Q., Yang, X., Zhang, M., Ren, X., … Li, S. (2020). Active case finding with case management: The key to tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31278-2

    1. Zoom, a Silicon Valley-based company, appears to own three companies in China through which at least 700 employees are paid to develop Zoom’s software. This arrangement is ostensibly an effort at labor arbitrage: Zoom can avoid paying US wages while selling to US customers, thus increasing their profit margin. However, this arrangement may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.
    1. Zoom didn't do this to comply with local law.

      They did this because they don't want to lose customers in China.

      This is just capitalistic greed.

      Shutting down activists over a dictatorship is wrong, and it is actually as simple as that.

  3. May 2020
    1. they remain beholden to and supported by the state.This makes them operate in fundamentally different ways than U.S. banks.

      How do Chinese banks operate differently compared to U.S. Banks? What relationship do they have with the government and how does it help Chinese banks run effectively?

    1. Lai, J., Ma, S., Wang, Y., Cai, Z., Hu, J., Wei, N., Wu, J., Du, H., Chen, T., Li, R., Tan, H., Kang, L., Yao, L., Huang, M., Wang, H., Wang, G., Liu, Z., & Hu, S. (2020). Factors Associated With Mental Health Outcomes Among Health Care Workers Exposed to Coronavirus Disease 2019. JAMA Network Open, 3(3), e203976–e203976. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3976

  4. Apr 2020
    1. In early 2009, on her first trip to Asia as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton thanked Chinese policymakers for their “confidence in United States Treasuries” amid the global financial meltdown, adding that human-rights disagreements shouldn’t “interfere” with crisis-fighting efforts.Then, suddenly, relations started going downhill. China grew more assertive as President Hu Jintao came to the end of his term, moving to assert claims to disputed territory in the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan over strenuous American objections. It was also becoming much more confident in the superiority of its economic model, which had come through the crisis relatively unscathed. When Biden visited Beijing in August 2011—shortly after S&P’s Global Ratings downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating—then-Premier Wen Jiabao gave him a mini-lecture on the importance of fiscal prudence, according to a person familiar with the exchange. Wen, the person said, also delivered a thinly veiled threat, saying he hoped China wouldn’t need to find an alternative to parking its wealth in U.S. bonds. Biden replied that Wen’s government was welcome to sell its holdings—plenty of global investors would be happy to buy them. No one, the person recalled Biden saying, had ever won by betting against the U.S. economy.

      WOW

    1. Verity, R., Okell, L. C., Dorigatti, I., Winskill, P., Whittaker, C., Imai, N., Cuomo-Dannenburg, G., Thompson, H., Walker, P. G. T., Fu, H., Dighe, A., Griffin, J. T., Baguelin, M., Bhatia, S., Boonyasiri, A., Cori, A., Cucunubá, Z., FitzJohn, R., Gaythorpe, K., … Ferguson, N. M. (2020). Estimates of the severity of coronavirus disease 2019: A model-based analysis. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, S1473309920302437. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30243-7

    1. In China, where the mortality rate for men was almost twice as high as that for women, nearly half of men over 15 smoke, compared with just 2 percent of women.

      Huge difference! Wow!

  5. Jan 2020
    1. Between 2011 and 2013, china used 50% more cement than the United States in the 20th century.Of the world’s 100 highest bridges, 81 are in China, including some unfinished ones.

      China's infrastructure is growing amazingly fast

  6. Nov 2019
    1. Early China’s cosmology (her theory of the universe as an orderedwhole) shows striking points of difference with Western thought. Forexample, the early Chinese had no creation myth and no creator-lawgiver out of this world, no first cause, not even a Big Bang. As JosephNeedham says, they assumed “a philosophy of organism, an orderedharmony of wills without an ordainer.” This view contrasts with the in-veterate tendency elsewhere in the world to assume a supernatural deity.Westerners looking at China have continually imposed their own pre-conceptions on the Chinese scene, not least because the Chinese, thoughthey generally regarded Heaven as the supreme cosmic power, saw it asimmanent in nature, not as transcendent. Without wading further intothis deep water, let us note simply that Han thought as recorded in classi-cal writings built upon the concept of mankind as part of nature andupon the special relationship between the ruler and his ancestors, con-cepts that were already important in Shang thought over a millenniumearlier.

      Fascinating. Such a profound difference in thinking (and the Chinese is much more accurate in base intuiton, i think).

      Western thought got trapped in causation, in division, the law of the excluded middle, in agency.

      That quote: "a philosophy of organism, an ordered harmony of wills without an ordainer."

      No wonder Buddhism found such fertile soil in China.

    2. We must not over-look the ancient Chinese assumption of a symbiosis between culture(wenhua)and temporal power. Subservience to the dynastic state re-quired acceptance of its rituals and cosmology that gave it Heaven’smandate to rule over mankind. Nonacceptance of this politicized cultureleft one outside of Zhongguo. Yet if one’s language was Chinese, accep-tance was already partway assured by the very terms imbedded in theclassics and in the spoken tongue itself. An identifiably similar way of lifewas widespread throughout late Neolithic China. The task of state-building during the Three Dynasties of the Bronze Age was to gain everwider submission to or acceptance of the central dynastic ruling house. Itfunctioned as the capstone of the social structure, the high priesthood ofthe ancestor cult, the arbiter of punishments, and the leader in publicworks, war, and literature. Among these omnicompetent functions K. C.Chang stresses the ruler’s “exclusive access to heaven and heavenly spir-its.” The result was that the ruler engineered a unity of culture that wasthe basis for political unity in a single universal state.

      A homogenized culture and (centralized) political power are directly and intimately interwoven from very early in Chinese history.

    3. Finally, the ruler’s primacy rested on his monopoly of leadership notonly in ritual and warfare but also in oracle-bone writing and the histor-ical learning it recorded.

      Early evidence of connection of learning and writing with status and politico-religious power.

    4. Here lies one source of China’s “culturalism”—that is, the devotionof the Chinese people to their way of life, an across-the-board sentimentas strong as the political nationalism of recent centuries in Europe.Where European nationalism arose through the example of and contactwith other nation-states, Chinese culturalism arose from the differencein culture between China and the Inner Asian “barbarians.” Because theInner Asian invaders became more powerful as warriors, the Chinesefound their refuge in social institutions and feelings of cultural and aes-thetic superiority—something that alien conquest could not take away.

      Another aspect of Chinese culture is its culturalism: its totemization of "culture" (in the specific self-conscious sense).

    5. The traditional family system was highly successful at preparing theChinese to accept similar patterns of status in other institutions, includ-ing the official hierarchy of the government. The German sociologistMax Weber characterized China as a “familistic state.” One advantageof a system of status is that a man knows automatically where he standsin his family or society. He can have security in the knowledge that if hedoes his prescribed part, he may expect reciprocal action from others inthe system.Within the extended family, every child from birth was involved in ahighly ordered system of kinship relations with elder brothers, sisters,maternal elder brothers’ wives, and other kinds of aunts, uncles, cousins,grandparents, and in-laws too numerous for a Westerner to keep trackof. These relationships were not only more clearly named and differenti-ated than in the West but also carried with them more compelling rightsand duties dependent upon status. Family members expected to be calledby the correct term indicating their relationship to the person addressingthem.In South China the pioneer anthropologist Maurice Freedman(1971) found family lineages to be the major social institutions—eachone a community of families claiming descent from a founding ancestor,holding ancestral estates, and joining in periodic rituals at graves and inancestral halls. Buttressed by genealogies, lineage members might sharecommon interests both economic and political in the local society. InNorth China, however, anthropologists have found lineages organizedon different bases. Chinese kinship organization varies by region. Familypractices of property-holding, marriage dowries, burial or cremation,and the like also have had a complex history that is just beginning to bemapped out.

      cf Schwartz values systems. This is the epitome of a hierarchic culture (with some degree of embededness e.g. "One advantage of a system of status is that a man knows automatically where he stands in his family or society."

    6. To Americans and Europeans with their higher material standard ofliving, the amazing thing about the Chinese farming people has beentheir ability to maintain a highly civilized life under these poor condi-tions. The answer lies in their social institutions, which have carried theindividuals of each family through the phases and vicissitudes of humanexistence according to deeply ingrained patterns of behavior. These insti-tutions and behavior patterns are among the oldest and most persistentsocial phenomena in the world. China has been a stronghold of the fam-ily system and has derived both strength and inertia from it.Until very recently the Chinese family has been a microcosm, thestate in miniature. The family, not the individual, was the social unit andthe responsible element in the political life of its locality. The filial pietyand obedience inculcated in family life were the training ground for loy-alty to the ruler and obedience to the constituted authority in the state.This function of the family to raise filial sons who would becomeloyal subjects can be seen by a glance at the pattern of authority withinthe traditional family group. The father was a supreme autocrat, withcontrol over the use of all family property and income and a decisivevoice in arranging the marriages of the children. The mixed love, fear,and awe of children for their father was strengthened by the great respectpaid to age. An old man’s loss of vigor was more than offset by hisgrowth in wisdom. As long as he lived in possession of his faculties, thepatriarch had every sanction to enable him to dominate the family scene.According to the law, he could sell his children into slavery or even exe-cute them for improper conduct. In fact, Chinese parents were by customas well as by nature particularly loving toward small children, and theywere also bound by a reciprocal code of responsibility for their childrenas family members. But law and custom provided little check on paternaltyranny if a father chose to exercise it.The domination of age over youth within the old-style family wasmatched by the domination of male over female. Even today, Chinesebaby girls seem more likely than baby boys to suffer infanticide.

      Highly hierarchical nature of Chinese culture / society.

    7. This different relation of human beings to nature in the West andEast has been one of the salient contrasts between the two civilizations.Man has been at the center of the Western stage. The rest of nature hasserved as either neutral background or as an adversary. Thus Western re-ligion is anthropomorphic, and early Western painting anthropocentric.To see how great this gulf is, we have only to compare Christianity withthe relative impersonality of Buddhism, or compare a Song landscape, itstiny human figures dwarfed by crags and rivers, with an Italian primi-tive, in which nature is an afterthought.Living so closely involved with family members and neighbors hasaccustomed the Chinese people to a collective life in which the groupnormally dominates the individual. In this respect the Chinese experi-ence until recently hardly differed from that of other farming peopleslong settled on the land. It is the modern individualist, be he seafarer, pi-oneer, or city entrepreneur, who is the exception. A room of one’s own,more readily available in the New World than in the crowded East, hassymbolized a higher standard of living. Thus, one generalization in thelore about China is the absorption of the individual not only in the worldof nature but also in the social collectivity.

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    Annotators

    1. 中国社会には事業の管理運営を任せて簡潔明快なベンチマークでパフォーマンスを監督する「請負(承包)」という永年の慣行がある。「地方分権型権威主義」は、地方行政を党書記や首長など党政幹部に任せる際に、税収やGDP成長率をベンチマークにして幹部同士を競わせる競争メカニズムを本質とするものだ。この仕組みは税収やGDP成長率さえ上げれば良かった2000年代前半に威力を発揮し、中国地方経済の成長を牽引した。  しかし、2016年ノーベル経済学賞を受賞したホルムストロームらが明らかにしたように、地方幹部(エージェント)が相互に背反する複数のベンチマーク(マルチ・タスク)を課されると、パフォーマンスが計りやすい仕事にばかり傾注するといったバイアスが発生してしまう。税収に加えて、環境も保全し、労働権も保護し、社会の安定を確保し・・・と、多数の任務を同時に課す今の中国地方分権主義は、まさにこの問題に直面しており、「情報の非対称」問題が避けられない単線型の「一党支配」では解けそうもない。

      中国の地方分権型権威主義 regionally decentralized authoritarian (RDA) regime

  7. Oct 2019
    1. there's still the issue of user IP addresses, which Tencent would see for those using devices with mainland China settings. That's a privacy concern, but its one among many given that other Chinese internet companies – ISPs, app providers, cloud service providers, and the like – can be assumed to collect that information and provide it to the Chinese surveillance state on demand.
    1. This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data. Any and all data will be available and open to the Chinese government. Since the Chinese government is the shareholder in all SOEs and is now exercising de facto control over China’s major private companies as well, all of this information will then be available to those SOEs and Chinese companies. See e.g. China to place government officials inside 100 private companies, including Alibaba. All this information will be available to the Chinese military and military research institutes. The Chinese are being very clear that this is their plan.

      At least the current Chinese government are clear about how all-intrusive they will be, so that people can avoid them. IF people can avoid them.

  8. Sep 2019
    1. One widely circulated report this summer—which appears to have caught Mr. Trump’s attention—estimates that China shed five million industrial jobs, 1.9 million of them directly because of U.S. tariffs, between the beginning of the trade conflict and the end of May this year.
    2. That isn’t insubstantial. But it is still small compared with China’s urban labor force of 570 million. It also represents a slower pace than the 23 million manufacturing jobs shed in China between 2015 and 2017, according to the report, published by China International Capital Corp., an investment bank with Chinese state ownership.
  9. Aug 2019
    1. I read this as a medical student. I found this difficult to read because of the long list of characters and character names. However I was impressed when I realised that one of the women had te symptoms of Pernicious anemia (B12 deficiency) and the treatment was raw liver which is rich in B12. However if you cook the liver the vitamin is destroyed. This was not disovered by Europeans until centuries later.
    2. It isn’t a good idea to tip them into the water … The water you see here is clean, but farther on beyond the weir, where it flows on beyond people’s houses, there are all sorts of muck and impurity, and in the end they get spoiled just the same. In that corner over there I’ve got a grave for the flowers, and what I am doing now is sweeping them up and putting them in this silk bag to bury them there, so that they can gradually turn back into earth.
  10. Apr 2019
    1. China’s tech sector is notorious for treating workers like machines, with extremely long working hours being the norm. The phrase 996 refers to 9am - 9pm, 6 days per week, and is an unspoken rule in a lot of Chinese tech companies. The CEO of Youzan, a large Chinese e-commerce company, seemingly didn’t get the memo about keeping 996 as an “unspoken” rule, and surprised his employees at their 2019 yearly company party by telling them Youzan is officially switching to 996.
    1. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has turned NIMBY and will announce a nationwide ban on all skyscrapers taller than 500

      What difference will this make to the over-active Chinese real estate property bubble?

  11. Mar 2019
    1. As one of 13 million officially designated “discredited individuals,” or laolai in Chinese, 47-year-old Kong is banned from spending on “luxuries,” whose definition includes air travel and fast trains.
    2. Discredited individuals have been barred from taking a total of 17.5 million flights and 5.5 million high-speed train trips as of the end of 2018, according to the latest annual report by the National Public Credit Information Center.The list of “discredited individuals” was introduced in 2013, months before the State Council unveiled a plan in 2014 to build a social credit system by 2020.

      This is what surveillance capitalism brings. This is due to what is called China's "Golden Shield", a credit-statement system that, for example, brings your credit level down if you search for terms such as "Tianmen Square Protest" or post "challenging" pictures on Facebook.

      This is surveillance capitalism at its worst, creating a new lower class for the likes of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and insurance companies. Keep the rabble away, as it were.

    1. The European Unionhad filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) about China’s practices of forcing technology transfer as a condition of market access. Under WTO rules, countries may impose tariffs on subsidized goods from overseas that harm domestic industries

      Italy joined Belt and Road Initiative in March 2019.

    1. Deforestation to blame for Beijing's pollutionXun Zhou says the smog and dust that now plague Beijing can be traced back to the massive deforestation during the Great Leap Forward that left China scarred by environmental disaster
  12. Oct 2018
  13. allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu allred720fa18.commons.gc.cuny.edu
    1. Canton

      Voyage of the Empress of China, 1784. See this site for a detailed history of early US-China trade.

      A passage in Chapter 1 of Moby Dick describes a vigorous trade with the far East: “Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries … some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China.”

      However, trade between China and the U.S. commenced in 1784, just after the Treaty of Paris was ratified; by 1799, when Benito Cereno is set, it would still have been a relatively young trading relationship, especially considering the lengthy sea voyages required.

      Principal commodities exchanged included the items mentioned by Capt. Delano (silks, sealskins, coin (specie), as well as ginseng tea, porcelain "China ware," lead, and cotton goods.<br> A.D. Edwards, Empress of China at Mart's Jetty, Port Pirie, 1876

      -- Robert Bennet Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade. Samuel N. Dickinson, printer, 1844.

  14. Sep 2018
    1. Despite their challenges, China and India are winning more important roles on the global stage. However, according to management professors Nandani Lynton of CEIBS in Shanghai and Jitendra V. Singh of the Wharton School, India is outperforming China in the number of senior executives at leading multinational corporations. In this opinion piece, they identify five possible explanations for this disparity. China is already addressing some of them, such as gaps in the use of English. Others, like China’s inability to work with outsiders, are less susceptible to change. Depending on which factors prove most important, India may have the advantage for some time to come, but it may not take long for China to catch up.
  15. Aug 2018
    1. Beginning with the famous third plenum of the Tenth Central Committee in 1978, the Chinese Communist party set about decollectivizing agriculture for the 800 million Chinese who still lived in the countryside. The role of the state in agriculture was reduced to that of a tax collector, while production of consumer goods was sharply increased in order to give peasants a taste of the universal homogenous state and thereby an incentive to work. The reform doubled Chinese grain output in only five years, and in the process created for Deng Xiaoping a solid political base from which he was able to extend the reform to other parts of the economy. Economic Statistics do not begin to describe the dynamism, initiative, and openness evident in China since the reform began.
    1. "Basically that's a great opportunity for Chinese companies, for at least three main reasons. When you invest in Bulgaria you can access the whole of Europe. Bulgaria is the closest country in the European Union to China and part of the Belt and Road Initiative," Yanev said.
  16. Jul 2018
    1. Leading thinkers in China argue that putting government in charge of technology has one big advantage: the state can distribute the fruits of AI, which would otherwise go to the owners of algorithms.
  17. Jun 2018
    1. “Beijing typically finds a local partner, makes that local partner accept investment plans that are detrimental to their country in the long term, and then uses the debts to either acquire the project altogether or to acquire political leverage in that country.”
  18. Apr 2018
    1. Fashion can change overnight. It takes a decade or two to change architecture, because it takes so long to become an architect. You have to go through a rigorous training program. The Cultural Revolution arrested the development of architecture in China.  It has taken this long for it to start coming back. The architecture schools are starting to become confident enough that they are starting to encourage students to draw their inspiration from their own environment and culture.   Until now, they have pretty much been borrowing from the West.  Finally, the professors that weren’t happy about the Cultural Revolution are dying or retiring, and younger, less cynical professors are coming forward and saying, “Being a Chinese architect is good. “ Wang Shu won the Prizker Prize not because he was the world’s great architect, but because he was one of the first in his generation of Chinese architects to be original and be Chinese at the same time, and not borrow from the West.  That will happen more and more.
    1. The alternative, of a regulatory patchwork, would make it harder for the West to amass a shared stock of AI training data to rival China’s.

      Fascinating geopolitical suggestion here: Trans-Atlantic GDPR-like rules as the NATO of data privacy to effectively allow "the West" to compete against the People's Republic of China in the development of artificial intelligence.

  19. Feb 2018
  20. Jan 2018
    1. In that sense, he observed, the biggest surprise in the relationship between China and the United States is their similarity. In both countries, people who are infuriated by profound gaps in wealth and opportunity have pinned their hopes on nationalist, nostalgic leaders, who encourage them to visualize threats from the outside world. “China, Russia, and the U.S. are moving in the same direction,” he said. “They’re all trying to be great again.” 

      This is what we have to contend with.

  21. Nov 2017
    1. China is expected to become a bigger export market for Cambodian rice, with reports suggesting China will import 200,000 tonnes of rice per year from Cambodia, according to a May 15 report from the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

      China is the big market for Cambodia exports rice

    1. At present, international online sales account for only a small percentage of total online sales. This is because international shipping costs for goods purchased by Chinese consumers on American websites remain high compared to average purchase prices for online retail goods, restricting U.S.-China online retail sales to relatively low levels. Most non-bulk, lighter manufactured products covering such a distance move via air transportation. Still, online stores with branches in China, such as Amazon, are able to get around the firewall and to ship retail products domestically by maintaining a local presence. For truly international sales from the U.S. to China, shipping costs may decline in the future, and American firms do not want to reduce sales and marketing opportunities even before they open up.
    2. The USTR report states, “over the past decade, China’s filtering of cross-border Internet traffic has posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both Internet sites themselves, and users who often depend on them for their businesses. Outright blocking of websites appears to have worsened over the past year, with 8 of the top 25 most trafficked global sites now blocked in China.” According to the U.S. Census, total unadjusted e-commerce sales in the U.S. stood at $341.73 billion in 2015, while in China, Internet sales for 2015 weighed in at $589.61 billion, representing a higher percentage of retail sales than in the U.S.
    3. The Cyberspace Administration of China has rebutted this claim by asserting that the firewall was in place for security purposes and is not a violation of World Trade Organization stipulations.
    4. Recently, the 2016 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, produced by Ambassador Michael Froman in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, stated, controversially, that China’s Great Firewall presents a trade barrier to American suppliers.
    1. "China also reportedly conditions foreign investment approvals on technology transfer to Chinese entities, mandates adverse licensing terms on foreign IP licensors, uses anti-monopoly laws to extract technology on unreasonable terms and subsidizes acquisition of foreign high technology firms to bring technology to the Chinese parent companies."
    2. Sec. Ross: We will work hard to reduce our trade deficits    9:25 AM ET Fri, 31 March 2017 | 02:17 Just Watched... Judges change in DOJ vs. AT&T lawsuit Share this video https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/11/21/judges-change-in-doj-vs-att-lawsuit.html Watch Next... Cancel Justice Department thinks it has a good case against AT&T: Law professor The Trump administration on Friday slammed China on a range of trade issues from its chronic industrial overcapacity to forced technology transfers and long-standing bans on U.S. beef and electronic payment services. The annual trade barriers list from the U.S. Trade Representative's office sets up more areas of potential irritation for the first face-to-face meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in Florida. USTR, controlled by the White House, said that Chinese government industrial policies and financial support for industries such as steel and aluminum have resulted in over-production and a flood of exports that have distorted global markets and undermined competitive companies. "While China has begun to take steps to address steel excess capacity, these steps have been inadequate to date and even fewer efforts have been taken by China in aluminum and other sectors," USTR said in the report. The USTR released the list of trade irritants in 63 countries just after senior Trump trade officials announced an executive order to study the causes of U.S. trade deficits. The report said China also is using a series of cybersecurity restrictions as part of an apparent long-term goal to replace foreign information and communications technology products and services with locally produced versions. USTR also accused China of using a range of measures to engineer the transfer of foreign technology to local firms. It said these include denying financial or regulatory approvals to companies using foreign-owned intellectual property or that do not conduct research or manufacture products in China.
    3. The report said China also is using a series of cybersecurity restrictions as part of an apparent long-term goal to replace foreign information and communications technology products and services with locally produced versions.
    4. The Trump administration on Friday slammed China on a range of trade issues from its chronic industrial overcapacity to forced technology transfers and long-standing bans on U.S. beef and electronic payment services.
    5. The annual trade barriers list from the U.S. Trade Representative's office sets up more areas of potential irritation for the first face-to-face meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in Florida.

      China Us Barrie

    1. Compared to 2005, in 2012, the PR principle failed to track sectoral CO2 flow, and embodied CO2 in import and interprovincial export increased, with manufacturing contributing the most; manufacturing should take more carbon responsibilities in the internal linkage, and tertiary sectors in the net forward and backward linkage, with sectors enjoying low carbonization in the mixed linkage; inward net CO2 flows of manufacturing and service sectors were more complicated than their outward ones in terms of involved sectors and economic drivers; and residential effects on CO2 emissions of traditional sectors increased, urban effects remained larger than rural ones and manufacturing and tertiary sectors received the largest residential effects.

      This is interesting!

    1. Now, on to my third problem: I think Angus Maddison may be doing things wrong. I realize this is a rather presumptuous thing to say, but I think it's true. Specifically, the assumption that GDP before 1700 was proportional to agricultural productivity seems to me not to be a good one. The reason is that even in a non-industrial society, there is a potentially huge source of GDP increases: trade. Remember, in a world where output is mostly in the form of commodities (i.e. no increasing returns to scale), the old Ricardian theory of trade makes a lot of sense. Stable ancient empires that could act as free trade zones were probably capable of dramatically increasing their per capita GDP beyond the base provided by the productivity of their land. This is the finding of Ian Morris in Why the West Rules For Now. He constructs a "social development index" that includes things like urbanization and military capabilities, and probably correlates with an ancient region's per capita GDP (it is hard to build cities and make war without producing stuff). He finds dramatic changes in this social development index over the course of the Roman Empire; at its height, Rome seems to have been extremely rich, but a couple centuries earlier or later it was desperately poor. Morris corroborates this index with data on shipwrecks, lead poisoning, and other things that would tend to correlate with output. Basically, Rome saw huge fluctuations in per capita GDP. But it is unlikely that Rome's agricultural productivity changed much over this time. Instead, what probably happened was the rise and fall of cross-Mediterranean trade. If trade could make Rome dramatically richer, and its absence could make Rome dramatically poorer, then Maddison's data set is wrong. Just because most people in 100 AD were farmers does not mean that most people were subsistence farmers. And frankly, I'm not sure how people use Maddison's data set without noticing this fact.

      Trading is very important. The West advantage over China in the past.

    1. Cambodia’s security cooperation with China continues to expand
    2. What Is the PLA’s Role in Promoting China-Cambodia Relations?

      china

    3. What Is the PLA’s Role in Promoting China-Cambodia Relations?

      China

  22. Oct 2017
    1. During the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao between April 7-April 8, 2006 both nations signed several bilateral agreements

      CHINA

    1. Americans have been left to ask: What did we do wrong? What has caused the leaders of Southeast Asia to turn away from Washington and toward Beijing? It is tempting to look for the answer to these questions in the policies of the Obama or Xi administrations, or blame it on shifting fortunes in the balance of power. But focusing on the spectacle of Sino-American rivalry masks the dozens of smaller dramas and power plays that usually escape the attention of Western observers. Often it is these smaller conflicts of interest that drive lesser powers into the arms of the great ones.
  23. Sep 2017
    1. Those distinctions belonged to Suzhou and Hangzhou, and Shanghai was sometimes called “Little Su” or “Little Hang” to flag its lowlier status

      Actually Shanghai was the least evolved cities compared to Suzhou and Hangzhou

    2. political relationship to encouraging outsiders to move to or invest in the place

      Visual myths were a method to lure attentions

    1. ‘Celestial Empire’.

      Wikipedia contributors, "Celestial Empire," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Celestial_Empire&oldid=775632771 (accessed September 7, 2017).

  24. Jul 2017
    1. Plucker recently toured a number of such schools in Shanghai and Beijing. He was amazed by a boy who, for a class science project, rigged a tracking device for his moped with parts from a cell phone. When faculty of a major Chinese university asked Plucker to identify trends in American education, he described our focus on standardized curriculum, rote memorization, and nationalized testing. “After my answer was translated, they just started laughing out loud,” Plucker says. “They said, ‘You’re racing toward our old model. But we’re racing toward your model, as fast as we can.’ ”
  25. Jun 2017
    1. we welcome your emphasis on the importance of inclusion and civil society participation in efforts to inform your work and implement your recommendations on the ground.
    1. A rare pod of derelict midcentury Futuro and Venturo houses lines a semi-abandoned beachfront resort outside Taipei. 

      Would be cool to go visit this!

    1. he Chinese Government had asked for several amendments to the report. That request had not been taken into account. In his conclusions, the Special Rapporteur had criticized several detention cases of criminals which amounted to overcoming its mandate and breaking the principle of sovereignty. China would not tolerate that the human rights banner could be used to cover activities that would go against public order.
    2. appreciation for China’s comment that parts of the report were fair, but rejected the concept of “judicial sovereignty” which would lead a Special Rapporteur not to reflect on human rights violations. He reiterated his concern for the treatment of Jiang Tianyong. Regarding Mauritania, he noted that his visits had covered most of the population of a vast country. The Government had suggested he had not met with a wide range of non-governmental organizations; in fact he had met with over 50 of them. The main challenge in Mauritania was to recognize the distinctions which took place on the basis of ethnicity. The Government would be better served if it disaggregated data based on ethnicity. He called for the Government to release the two “IRA” representatives who were still imprisoned.
    3. China said it was undergoing a judicial reform to improve judicial independence.  China was committed to eliminating violence against women and had in place a system for the legal protection of women based on the Constitution and about 100 implementation laws. 
    4. China, speaking in a right of reply, said some non-governmental organizations had made accusations against China which were rejected strenuously.  China had made efforts to improve welfare in Xinjiang, and the GDP of the province had increased to over $ 900 billion.  China’s constitution provided that Chinese citizens had the freedom of religious belief, and normal activities were protected.  The Government sent students and teachers of religious institutions to Egypt and other countries, and in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, the Government understood the religious sentiments of the people and their needs for non-interference during periods such as Ramadan.
    5. China noted that discussions under item 4 should be held in line with the principles of objectivity, constructive dialogue and cooperation.  Unfortunately, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany attacked other countries, staining the Council’s work.  Their own human rights records did not look good, with xenophobia and violence against refugees and migrants increasing.  They turned a blind eye to their own problems while criticizing others. 
    6. hina would not allow for any possibility to challenge the basic political system of the State.  China reiterated its call to stop the politicization of human rights issues by some Member States of the Council.
  26. May 2017
  27. Apr 2017
    1. Once upon a time, the seas teemed with mackerel, squid and sardines, and life was good. But now, on opposite sides of the globe, sun-creased fishermen lament as they reel in their nearly empty nets.

      This should be sounding loud warning bells!

    1. Taiwanese identity grew more distinct from Mainland China

      Taiwan and its attempts to legitimise itself as a sovereign state seperate from china -

      "Trump infuriated China’s leadership when he spoke to Tsai on the phone and later made separate comments questioning the longstanding “one China” policy, under which the US notionally accepts Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of China. The US does not officially host Taiwanese leaders. Taiwan has been self-governing and de facto independent since the end of China’s civil war. Beijing regards it as a renegade province".

    2. female president

      Tsai Ing-wen

  28. Mar 2017
    1. 텐센트를 모바일 왕좌에 앉힌 주역 '쟝샤오룽' : 텐센트에서 위챗을 만든 쟝샤오룽에 대한 글이다. 이전에 폭스메일을 만들어서 매각하고 텐센트에서 QQ 메일을 만들면서 위챗을 만들어서 성공하기까지의 과정이 나와 있다. 중국 서비스의 흐름은 잘 모르는 터라 재미있게 읽었다.(한국어)
  29. Jan 2017
    1. Obama to Urge Protection for Chip Industry

      Finally, the free traders are beginning to understand how China has been using a pretense of "free trade" in its effort to dominate the world. It is almost certain that China will become more powerful than America. The only questions is whether America and western democracies can remain relatively strong enough to resist Communist China's domination. And to do this we have to prevent China from dominating electronics, computing, cyber, and artificial intelligence.

  30. Nov 2016
    1. En el plano internacional, la incertidumbre sería absoluta, lo único que se podría esperar sería que los asesores presidenciales le disuadiesen de tomar decisiones impulsivas, como iniciar una guerra comercial con China o cambiar alianzas estratégicas que desembocasen en un acercamiento a la Rusia de Putin y un alejamiento de sus aliados tradicionales y las políticas de la OTAN.
  31. Oct 2016
  32. Jun 2016
    1. The respondents also de- scribed a creative person as one who has a collectivistic orientation, such as one who "inspires people," "has contribution to the progress of society" and "is appreciated by others." These descriptions, found in this sample of Chinese people, did not occur in U.S. investigations (Rudowicz et al., 1995

      Chinese conceptions of creativity include collectivistic aspects of inspiration.

      Authors indicate these did not come up in U.S. studies, but these could be artefacts of design method.

  33. Apr 2016
    1. In my fifth-grade language instruction class in 2002, we would read aloud, in unison, phrases such as "Comrade, stone them!"

      Mo discusses this in her spot on This American Life: "The Poetry of Propaganda: Party On!"

    1. “dead malls,” and you’ll find photo after photo of tiled walkways littered with debris, untended planters near the darkened rest areas for bored dads, and empty indoor storefronts—the discolored shadows of their missing lighted signs lingering like ghosts.

      Here is an interesting mega-mall i have found in china that is now deserted because of online shopping. The plans have even started taking back its land.

  34. Dec 2015
    1. gives Chinese exporters a huge advantage

      Contrasting:

      "Some economists, such as Paul Krugman, argue that Chinese currency devaluation helps China by boosting its exports, and hurts the United States by widening its trade deficit. ... Krugman has suggested that the United States should impose tariffs on Chinese goods"

      vs.

      "Greg Mankiw, on the other hand, asserts that U.S. protectionism via tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy far more than Chinese devaluation. Similarly, others have stated that the undervalued yuan has actually hurt China more in the long run insofar that the undervalued yuan doesn’t subsidize the Chinese exporter, but subsidizes the American importer."

      [Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_intervention#Chinese_Yuan Retrieved December 9, 2015]