18th April 09

Asia Times Online

In China, white man loses mojo
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - As if formerly high-flying Western bankers and financiers haven't suffered enough, now there is an additional indignity: Chinese women have lost interest in them. According to two recent nationwide surveys by the matchmaking website hongniang.com, mainland women keen on finding a foreign partner plunged from 42% to 16% over the past year.

Cash-rich China courts the Caspian
By M K Bhadrakumar

The global downturn is spreading to Central Asia. It may lead to a marked shift of fortune in the Great Game for control of Caspian energy reserves. On the surface, the intensity of the rivalries may appear to have subsided, as the principal protagonists - Russia and the West - brood over the precarious state of their own finances and prioritize fixing their domestic economies. But the slowing down of the Great Game bears a deceptive appearance. China gains out of any changing equations.

BOOK REVIEW
Capitalism with Chinese characteristics
Made in China: Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs by Winter Nie and Katherine Xin with Lily Zhang
Reviewed by Muhammad Cohen

Like electricity and air travel, private businesses in China play key roles in our personal and global economic lives even though we barely understand the concept. Made in China begins to demystify the new breed of independent businesses that are coming to dominate the world's fastest-growing major economy.