If you’ve been watching the news today, you’ve probably gotten a good dose of a masterful propaganda campaign, as Google spins its recent retreat from the Chinese market. Other foreign companies get “cheated” and “close up shop” in China because of poor numbers, but Google “threatens to exit” after an “attack”, issuing a “challenge” to [...]
A topic that goes surprisingly undiscussed is the quiet rise of the sovereign wealth fund (SWF).
Maybe it’s because the U.S. has stayed relatively disentangled from this controversial subject. Or, even more likely, it’s because few people understand what SWFs actually are. Given that China possesses the world’s fourth largest SWF, it’s something worth discussing.
In short, [...]
The China Daily, for those unfamiliar with it, is a slim English-language daily that produces interesting, sometimes humorous (both intentionally and unintentionally) bits of news about China. It’s also owned and published by China’s Communist Party, though that shouldn’t lead people to jump to the conclusion that it’s a propaganda paper. The China Daily–partly because [...]
News today is that Apple’s itunes, a site which sells music and other media, is being blocked in China, ostensibly for recently making “Songs for Tibet” available on the store. “Songs for Tibet”, for those unfamiliar with it before now, is another one of those pat-yourself-on-the-back charity compilation albums put together by an assortment of [...]
An update on the Olympic protest parks, as covered in an earlier post. Here are excerpts from the Guardian UK:
…as the end of the Games approaches, not a single permit has been issued and park managers have not even made plans for handling demonstrators, because they do not expect any.
Apparently, of 77 protest applications lodged, [...]
MarketWatch reports that China’s industrial growth in July hit its weakest point in the past 18 months, falling to 14.7%, compared to 16% in June. The obvious reason for the slowdown is the Olympics, which has–in an effort to beautify Beijing and divert resources to the games–put large curbs on factory output in the Beijing [...]
The big news lately has around the “misrepresentations” apparently undertaken by the organizers to make the lavish Olympic opening ceremony as perfect as possible. The iconic scene where a young girl sang “Ode to the Motherland” (歌唱祖国) was, apparently, dubbed with the voice of another, less attractive girl. A fireworks show of footprints leading up [...]
With the Olympics in full gear things are happening at rapid fire speed in China. Rather than track new things occurring, then, Dongcha thought it might be appropriate to give updates on a few topics from the last few weeks.
First, the Uyghurs. Homemade explosives killed 11 in hotels, supermarkets and government offices in the town [...]
Bush, trying to appease stateside critics of his decision to attend the 2008 Olympics despite China’s still-poor human rights record, gave a speech in Bangkok today criticizing China:
Change in China will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions. Yet change will arrive. And it will be [...]
The big pre-Olympics news today is a last-minute visa cancellation for 2006 Olympic gold-medalist Joey Cheek. Cheek is the co-founder of Team Darfur, which is self-described on it’s website as a “campaign leading up to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing… to put international pressure not only on Sudan, but also on those countries [...]