Inflation More Than Washington Behind Yuan’s Rise Against Dollar

When U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson arrives in Beijing on Wednesday, the Chinese currency might coincidental break through the symbolic seven to the dollar level. As Richard McGregor writes in the FT “the currency has become a litmus test of Chinese responsiveness to U.S. complaints on trade.”
Yet what really is driving the recent strengthening of [...]

Olympic Flame Comes With Tibetan Protests

Despite unprecedented attempts to ensure a protest-free hand over of the Olympic flame to the organizers of the Beijing Olympics, Greek police scuffled with pro-Tibet demonstrators gathered outside the Athens stadium where the ceremonial transfer was due to take place.
On Tuesday the flame formally sets off from Beijing for the Kazakhstan capital, Almaty, the [...]

Li Ka-shing, Facebook and QQ

East Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, has pumped another $60 million into the social networking site Facebook run by Mark Zuckerberg, a fellow billionaire if one less than a third Li’s age.
Li said during a Hutchison Whampoa earnings conference call on Thursday that he was upping his previous $60 million investment, made last November and [...]

Tearing Up The Script In Tibet

The best laid plans…
The tightly scripted official tour of Tibet for a group of foreign journalists ran amok for 5 mins in Jokhang, Tibet’s holiest temple. Thirty young monks surrounded the tour party and shouted that there was no religious freedom in the region, that the government was lying about who was responsible for the [...]

Foreign Press Taken To Tibet

A group of Beijing-based foreign correspondents has been being escorted to Lhasa to report on the situation there, Xinhua reports. This 26-strong “international media delegation” includes representatives of the AP, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Russian, Japanese and Taiwanese news agencies, al-Jazeera and the South China Morning Post. TV media such as [...]

Fact Checking Two Views Of Tibet

Xinhua annotates screen shots from Western TV and websites to show up reporting errors in their coverage of Tibet.
This follows Sunday’s apology by German TV station RTL for using a picture of Tibetan protestors in Katmandu in a report on the recent disturbances in Lhasa.

More Xinhua excoriation of the CNN, BBC and the Berliner [...]

Bank Profits Trimmed By Subprime Losses

China’s banks are taking their lumps from losses on trading mortgage-related securities, even while the strong domestic economy is boosting profits.
Bank of China reports a larger than expected $1.3 billion of subprime writedowns while Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest bank by market capitalization, reported $400 million-worth. Bank of China says it [...]

Ma Wins Taiwan Presidency

Given the party leadership’s preoccupation with the pro-independence disturbances in the west, the election results to the east will be a relief of sorts.
Taiwan’s voters elected the Harvard-educated Ma Ying-jeou, the opposition Kuomintang party candidate who favors closer commercial and political ties with China, as president to succeed the strongly pro-independence Chen Shui-ban. Two referendums [...]

China Cracks Down On Web Video Sites

The investigation started a long time before the recent troubles in Tibet, but the lesson will not be lost on web sites in China offering video that may not be to the authorities’ liking.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has banned 25 sites, taken over five and warned a further 32 for [...]

Two Views Of Tibet

This Bystander noted earlier how Beijing’s clampdown on media coverage was polarizing views inside and outside of China about what is happening in Tibet. The FT’s Richard McGregor and Jamil Anderlini have done the reporting to back up my assertion. This paragraph is telling:
One intellectual from Beijing, usually vehemently opposed to the party, said [...]