9th February 2010

Kaixin - The ironic part is that the money to buy into these companies mostly came from America in the first place. America (now) bleats about the exchange rate but did not bleat about taking advantage of cheap labour in China when purchasing all those goods from K-Mart. America sat on its backside for 20 years and did bugger all while China became the worlds factory. Now those twenty years of sloth are catching up. The world has never changed, you get out what you put in.

Will Americans Really Learn Chinese?

The Times recently reported on the rise of Chinese-language instruction in American schools, a push supported by aid from the Chinese government. While language fads come and go — there was Russian during the cold war, then Japanese in the 1980’s, then Arabic after 9/11 — thousands of public schools have stopped teaching foreign languages in the last decade. Is the boom in Chinese language education going to last?

There’s a long tradition of bemoaning Americans’ inadequacy in foreign languages. But what specifically should the nation do to improve its citizens’ knowledge of other languages? What are the impediments?
· Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason”
· Ingrid Pufahl, Center for Applied Linguistics
· Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco, N.Y.U.’s immigration studies program
· Norman Matloff, University of California, Davis
· Hongyin Tao, professor of Chinese language and linguistics
· Bruce Fuller, U.C. Berkeley professor of education and public policy

The World's Watchmaker

The quality here is not Swiss, but it’s high — “we are at 85 to 90 percent of the quality of Swiss made,” said Matthew She, the general manager. As a longtime U.S. resident of southern China put it: “Does America have a choice of a cheaper place for a quality product?”

Short answer: nope. China has the United States about where it wants it. You can make your own calculation of President Obama’s leverage over Beijing — and it’s heading south.

China Announces Arrests in Hacking Crackdown

HONG KONG — Police in central China have arrested three people and seized money and equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a crackdown on the country’s biggest commercial operation to train computer hackers, state media reported over the past two days.

The Australian

Uighur film 'shelved' in ABC China push

In response to questions from Greens senator Bob Brown, Mr Scott said Chinese officials had approached the ABC about the Kadeer documentary when he visited China last September.

"The discussion about the film was discussion about the film in general rather than the ABC showing it or any plans of the ABC to show it," he said.

ABC corporate communications director Mick Millett last night confirmed the ABC did purchase the documentary but denied that it was "locked into the TV schedule".

"ABC TV intend to air it at some later stage this year," Mr Millett said, adding that the issue had nothing to do with soft diplomacy.

Kaixin – The headline belies the substance.

China's war of words a smokescreen

EUROPEANS bemoaning the loss of their prominent world-governing role in the almost defunct G7 of industrial powers often worry that in future the world will not be steered by the broad and representative G20, but by a "G2" consisting of the US and China. If so, the current war of words between those two giants should make the Europeans (and Japanese) feel lucky to be out of it. Harder to work out, though, is quite what this word-war means.

This is a more comfortable explanation for the recent word-war than simple Chinese assertiveness. A change of Chinese economic policy would be highly welcome, given the need to get the world into a much better balance between surplus countries like China and deficit ones such as the US and Britain. It would also please other developing countries, which suffer badly from China's artificially cheap exchange rate.

West struggles to adjust to China’s rapid growth

This should be good news for Australia, hitched as we are to supplying raw materials to China’s industrialisation.

But it comes with a lengthening list of irritants in the relationship between authoritarian China and the democratic West: Google’s complaints of sophisticated cyber attacks on its human rights activist users in China; Beijing’s annoyance over Chinalco’s collapsed deal with Rio Tinto; the arrest and detention of Rio Tinto iron ore negotiator, Australian Stern Hu; Beijing’s threats over US arms sales to Taiwan; Beijing’s annoyance over Barack Obama’s plan to meet the Dalai Lama; Washington’s complaints that Beijing is hurting the US economy by manipulating an artificially low exchange rate.

That is, the world’s most spectacular and most rapid-fire industrialisation is running ahead of everyone’s ability to turn the page.

Asia Times Online

Okinawa call to shape new US-Japan era

All is well that ends well then? Perhaps not quite, since Washington remains worried that Japan's attempts to renegotiate the base relocation agreement could be the beginning of the end of the asymmetric US-Japan alliance.

Hainan fears real-estate bubbles - again
By Stephen Wong

SHANGHAI - Money has flooded into the tropical Chinese island province of Hainan for property speculation in the few weeks since the central government unveiled a plan to turn it into an international tourist resort.

More than 100 developers, including publicly listed China Vanke, Agile Property and Poly, are believed to be investing in properties along Hainan's coasts, stretching 595 kilometers between Haikou in the north and Sanya in the south.

Beijing beefs up cyber-warfare capacity
By Willy Lam

While the furor over cyber-attacks against Google has lapsed somewhat, the Sino-American confrontation over the larger issue of Internet security and global digital warfare is expected to intensify in the near future.

This is particularly in light of the deterioration of bilateral ties due to issues ranging from the value of the renminbi to US arms sales to Taiwan. Even more significant is the fact that despite Washington's criticism of Beijing's censorship of the Internet - as well as China-originated sorties against the networks of American government agencies and multinationals - the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is devoting unprecedented resources to strengthening its already formidable cyber-warfare prowess.