Signs Of Disharmony

One of the purposes of the Hu-Wen “harmonious society’ policy is to narrow the income gap between city and country. The gap is seen as a source of social instability and thus a potential challenge to the Party’s authority to rule.
Picking over the latest annual Social Blue Paper from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, [...]

Shanghai Automotive Embraces General Motors

What’s good for GM is good for…China. The old saw needs amending following not just November when GM sold more cars in China than it did in its alleged home market but also since GM is to hand over majority control of its thriving Chinese car business to its partner Shanghai Automotive (SAIC) as the [...]

A Distant Prince Comes Calling, Whatever

In times far gone, China was a suzerain, extracting tribute from less powerful people on its periphery, controlling their foreign affairs but allowing them some domestic autonomy. As Imperial China was the center of the civilized world by its own lights, the periphery was everywhere else. That made for a straightforward worldview, and one not [...]

Qian Xuesen, Rocket Scientist, Dies

But for a twist of history, Qian Xuesen, whose death at age 98 was announced Saturday, might be being remembered as another immigrant rocket scientist who had made a significant contribution to America’s space technology rather than as the father of China’s space program.
After graduating form Jiao Tong University in 1934, Qian studied on a [...]

Uighurs, Repression, Assimilation And The Han Islanders

You don’t think of the Han Chinese as a beleaguered island people, whose imperial diaspora takes them to distant overseas shores, but that is one lens through which to look at recent events in Urumqi.
Last year, I squirreled away a snapshot of the map below that appeared on a financial blog by John Mauldin. It [...]

Google and Baidu, Pornography and Protectionism

Is Beijing’s reining in of Google trade protectionism–or a shake down?
The FT reported that Google has ben ordered to stop users of its Chinese-language service accessing overseas web sites. The directive is to suspend foreign searches and a feature that automatically suggests multiple search results once typing commences in the search window, according to the [...]

Reports of Beijing Selling Off Its Treasuries Are Misplaced

Brad Setser’s Follow The Money blog on the Council On Foreign Relations site is always worth the read for anyone following  global capital flows, and especially his post questioning whether China sold down some of its Treasuries in April as U.S. Treasury’s monthly data on total foreign holdings of long- and short-term Treasuries suggests.
Setser says [...]

East Star Airlines Boss Reportedly Missing

Lan Shili, the chairman of East Star Airlines, grounded by authorities last weekend, has gone missing, the FT reports. Multimillionaire Lan was ranked as the 136th richest man in China by U.S. business magazine Forbes last year.
Discussions over state carrier Air China taking over East Star have collapsed. The airline now says it was no [...]

Season’s Greetings And A Short Break

This Bystander is taking a break and so CB will be updated only occasionally if at all  until the first week of January. Best wishes of the season to you.

Fake South China Tiger Photos Redux

Zhou Zhenglong, the Shaanxi farmer who last year faked pictures of a tiger thought to be extinct to claim a 20,000 yuan reward, is back in court appealing his conviction and prison sentence, Xinhua reports.
This case captures so may aspects of the country. First the faking, endemic but in this instance eventually called by some [...]