Changing China
Giant on the move
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Can China help stabilise Pakistan?
When President Barack Obama suggested in Beijing last month that China and the United States could cooperate on bringing stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and indeed to "all of South Asia", much of the attention was diverted to India, where the media saw it as inviting unwarranted Chinese interference in the region.
But what about asking a different question? Can China help stabilise the region?
As I wrote in this analysis, China -- Islamabad's most loyal partner -- is an obvious country for the United States to turn to for help in working out how to deal with Pakistan.
It already has substantial economic stakes in the region, including in the Aynak copper mine in Afghanistan and Gwadar port in Pakistan. Its economy would be the first to gain from any peace settlement which opened up trade routes and improved its access to oil, gas and mineral resources in Central Asia and beyond. It also shares some of Washington's concerns about Islamist militancy, particularly if this were to spread unrest in its Muslim Xinjiang region.
North Korea, through a shopwindow darkly
When people want to know what’s happening in North Korea, their first stop is often the Chinese border city of Dandong. It’s one of the few places where North Koreans interact with the outside world. There are truck drivers and traders, and also spies, missionaries and refugees, not to mention reporters.
We went to Dandong this week to see if we could find out about the impact of North Korea’s currency change. The government has capped the amount of old currency that could be traded for new, effectively lopping off the savings of many small traders and a new merchant class.
from Global Investing:
What worries the BRICs
Some fascinating data about the growing power of emerging markets, particularly the BRICs, was on display at the OECD's annual investment conference in Paris this week. Not the least of it came from MIGA, the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, which tries to help protect foreign direct investors from various forms of political risk.
MIGA has mainly focused on encouraging investment into developing countries, but a lot of its latest work is about investment from emerging economies.
This has been exploding over the past decade. Net outward investment from developing countries reached $198 billion in 2008 from around $20 billion in 2000. The 2008 figure was only 10.8 percent of global FDI, but it was just 1.4 percent in 2000.
Not surprisingly, the lion's share comes from the BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- which together made up 73 percent of outflows last year. BRIC outward investment jumped to $144.3 billion in 2008 from $29.6 billion three years earlier.
Factories in front of me, factories behind me…(video).
Monk Qing Fuming is no stranger to hardship.
He and two other monks live high up in the mountains in Inner Mongolia in Lasengmiao’s Lama Temple.
Alongside an unforgiving climate and few amenities, Qing now lives in a growing cloud of smog as, down in the plains, factories wreathe his tiny monastery in clouds of choking smoke.
The Battle for Beijing’s Air (video)
On the first day of the Copenhagen climate change summit, Beijingers were experiencing what authorities called a ’slightly polluted’ day.
Air quality in the capital has improved, thanks in part to the movement of factories elsewhere and new traffic restrictions first experimented with ahead of last year’s Olympics.
Official weather monitors boasted over 80 percent ‘blue sky days’ in the first half of this year – the best air quality in over a decade (though the reliability of results is disputed – see the US embassy monitor’s take on Monday’s air quality here…)
With an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 new cars hitting the city’s roads every day, residents like Mr. He (see video) are still waiting for a breath of fresher air.
Seeing things in a new light (video)
The residents of a Chinese community see the benefits of an innovative solar power project every day – and night.
Along the rolling hills of China’s southwestern Chongqing Municipality, three hundred solar panels follow the sun’s daily voyage across the sky.
The region’s solar street lights are so bright that locals say it is like the sun is shining at night.
China: Green or Gray?
As Copenhagen’s climate talks draw near, more and more critics are turning to the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and asking how much damage has been done and what is being done about it?
The only vampire is the Western banking system that continues to feed off the govt. interest payments in the host countries of the West. The private central banks rule the docile corporate media controlled public. Fortunately for them though, there is China. Thanks to China the 15% or more unemployed people can buy low priced products rather than continue to feed the financial monster privatized banking system which has already looted their nations beyond belief. Pollution is the real smokescreen. Just an issue to distract you from major issues. There is no evidence that CO2 creates global warming. Man made global warming has already been refuted by thousands of prominent scientists. China tries to improve but will never be good enough for some.
When I retire – I want to be a ballerina
What does retirement mean to you?
For a group of grandmothers in Taiwan’s Pingtung County, it means fulfilling a childhood dream of becoming ballerinas.
And now the women, most in their 60s, tackle everything from a “battement fondu” to an “arabesque” stance.
from Global Investing:
Time to kick Russia out of the BRICs?
It may end up sounding like a famous ball-point pen maker, but an argument is being made that Goldman Sach's famous marketing device, the BRICs, should really be the BICs. Does Russia really deserve to be a BRIC, asks Anders Åslund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in an article for Foreign Policy.
Åslund, who is also co-author with Andrew Kuchins of "The Russian Balance Sheet", reckons the Russia of Putin and Medvedev is just not worthy of inclusion alongside Brazil, India and China in the list of blue-chip economic powerhouses. He writes:
The country's economic performance has plummeted to such a dismal level that one must ask whether it is entitled to have any say at all on the global economy, compared with the other, more functional members of its cohort.
I have just returned from Moscow, which is always dreary around this season. But this year, the mood among the capital's eloquent liberal economists has hit a new low. For the last seven years, Russia has undertaken no significant economic reforms. Instead, the state has been living off oil and gas, like a lucky but undeserving rentier."
AIDS – The battle for life
China is struggling to keep HIV-positive children alive. The problem is especially serious in its rural areas where a combination of stigma and a lack of proper care and medication leaves these children with an uphill battle against the deadly virus.
Bubbly, cheerful and playful. When I first met these five children at around 7.30am in the morning, they greeted me with their warm smiles and hearty giggles.
Since the drivers are not likely to forsake cars for bicycles, the only way Beijing can enjoy clean air is when all the cars do not emit pollutants.