Charlie Rose interviews George Will, columnist and author of the recent book"One Man's America:" (China specific comments begin at 4 minutes 35 seconds)
"We have made that wager and should double down. We should assume that the more China becomes integrated into the world, like Guilliver among the Lilliputian's, bound down by all kinds of agreements with the external world, like the World Trade Organization, that, over time, it will have a meliorative effect on Chinese tyranny. But, it is still a wager. That's what we have to bear in mind. It's not a certainty. It's a bet."
Western China is still digging out from the 7.9
earthquake that hit on 5/12. Time is running out for anyone still alive
under rubble. I can think of no greater horror that could come into my
life than to stand-by, watching, as worker dig through the rubble of a
collapsed school building for survivors, perhaps including my only
child. Two videos are below. The first
shows university students in their dorm room at Sichuan University as
the earthquake hit. The second is an Australian TV update (as of 5/15).
Locally Mercy Corps is collecting donations to help the survivors, see here.
The Sichuan University Students during the earthquake:
Australian TV Update:
Additionally, NPR radio had a team in Chengdu when the earthquake struck. They have the sound of the earthquake hitting here.
From the National Public Radio interview (4/14/08) “Oil and ‘the
New International Energy Order’”with Michael Klare, author of "Rising Power,
Shrinking Planet." Regarding China, Michael Klare says:
This is the great challenge for the entire planet. China does have
one source of energy in abundance, and that is coal. China is the world’s leading user
of coal. And it intends to use much more coal in the future. By the year 2030,
it is expected that China will use half of the world’s coal. And unfortunately China intends to use a kind of
primitive, by modern standards, coal burning facilities to generate
electricity. And, if this continues to be the case, we are all hostage on the
planet to China's
coal use, because this will be the leading source of green house gas, carbon
dioxide producing emissions. And there will be no hope of averting the worse
global climate change disasters. So, we have all got to work with China. This is
really a catastrophic phenomenon. We have got to work with China to either
abandon its reliance on coal or to adopt more modern, less carbon dioxide
emitting coal facilities….
We use to think of national security as meaning building up
nuclear weapons for a possible war with China. We have to think of our
national security as working with China not to burn coal at the rate
they are doing because our survival on the planet is at risk from this. If we
grasp reality, we will understand the necessity of cooperating with China in
developing energy alternatives. It is a matter of survival.
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has, as part of his online photo collection, photos of China and of the Three Gorges. Photos can be seen here. From the text accompanying the "Manufacturing" photo of the "China" album:
Pick up almost any commonly used product and you
won’t be surprised to find that it was made in China. It is here that
90 per cent of your Christmas decorations are made, 29 per cent of
color television sets, 75 per cent of the world’s toys, 70 per cent of
all cigarette lighters and probably every T-shirt in your closet. The
hard drive for your iPod mini was made in the city of Guiyang. Located
in China’s poorest province, Guiyang is more noted for its poverty than
for making state-of-the-art one-inch hard drives. Working the assembly
lines, China’s youthful peasant population is quickly abandoning
traditional extended-family village life, leaving the monotony of
agricultural work and subsistence income behind for a chance at
independence.
From Time's Bill Powell's article "The Short March" on buying and moving to a Shanghai suburb:
"There is only one Shanghai in China," he said. "People want to come
here from all over the country. People need good quality housing at a
decent price, and that will continue to be true for a long, long time.
Sure, there might be periods where the market slows down a bit; but the
underlying things that are driving it, no, they won't slow down." There
are about 20 million people in Shanghai now, Guo noted. In 20 years, he
said, that number could easily double.
And that's where the simple comparison to the U.S. after 1945 breaks
down. Journalist turned businessman Jim McGregor, one of the most
astute observers of modern China, says that the country is cramming
three different eras of U.S. history into one. In U.S. terms, the
postwar prosperity that fueled the flight to the suburbs is happening
at the same time as the 19th century Industrial Revolution that lured
people from the farm to the cities, and also as Progressive Era efforts
to rein in the worst abuses of capitalism take shape. I asked Guo if he
agreed. He nodded, but added a caveat: "What's different about China is
the sheer scale of things. The simple fact is there are still 800-900
million people living in poor, agricultural provinces. That's about
three times the population of the United States."
Guo, suffice to say, doesn't believe you can keep them down on the
farm, and neither does anyone else. So people will continue to pour
into Shanghai — and other major cities — and a good portion of the
middle class will escape to the suburbs as the cities grow ever more
crowded. So no, Guo added, he doesn't lose sleep over the prospect of
real estate booms and busts here. "And neither," he added, smiling
broadly, "should you."
Atlantic Monthly National Correspondent James Fallows discusses
China's growing impact on the global environment, in a conversation
with author and China expert Orville Schell. 7 minute youtube.
Part of "A Year in Shanghai" with James Fallows and Orville Schell in discussion at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.
“The global centre of economic gravity is already shifting to China,
India and other large emerging economies and our analysis suggests that
this process has a lot further to run.
“Our latest projections suggest that China could overtake the US in
around 2025 to become the world’s largest economy and will continue to
grow to around 130% of the size of the US by 2050. India could grow to
almost 90% of the size of the US by 2050. Brazil seems likely to
overtake Japan by 2050 to move into fourth place, while Russia, Mexico
and Indonesia all have the potential to have economies larger than
those of Germany or the UK by the middle of this century.
“But the fastest mover could be Vietnam, with a potential growth rate
of almost 10% per annum in real dollar terms that could push it up to
around 70% of the size of the UK economy by 2050.”
With the execution of
a top Chinese drug official, Global Pulse explores the worldwide
product recalls, and presents the Chinese perspective. We also explore
how in the US, the FDA has approved drugs with unknown and unexplored
side effects. For more episodes and other Links programs: http://www.linktv.org/originalseries.
Scott Kennedy,
Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana
University, speaks to the Warwick Commission about the emergence of
China in the global political economy. More on the Warwick Commission can be found here.
The Olympics are always a blend of sports, politics, and marketing. The 2008 Olympics in China will be no exception. Liu Xiang is China’s track superstar, known everywhere in China. He won the 110m hurdles in the 2004 Olympics, becoming the first Chinese track-and-field athlete to win a gold medal. He is also a Nike athlete. He has been at the heart of Nike’s successful marketing in China. You can watch an 8 minute video youtube of his 2004 Olympic win and/or a 60 second Nike ad.
The 2004 110m hurdles win:
The Nike Ad:
Recall from my earlier diary post that Nike has 3,000 “retail destinations” in more than 300 Chinese cities, with business approaching $1 billion per year. Nike will be sponsoring many Chinese athletes in the 2008 Olympics.
Reporting on the 2004 Olympics in October of 2004, Time online reported:
Nike swung into action even before most Chinese knew they had a new hero. The moment hurdler Liu Xiang became the country's first Olympic medalist in a short-distance speed event — he claimed the gold with a new Olympic record in the 110-m hurdles on Aug. 28--Nike launched a television advertisement in China showing Liu destroying the field and superimposed a series of questions designed to set nationalistic teeth on edge. "Asians lack muscle?" asked one. "Asians lack the will to win?" Then came the kicker, as Liu raised his arms above the trademark Swoosh on his shoulder: "Stereotypes are made to be broken." It was an instant success. "Nike understands why Chinese are proud," says Li Yao, a weekend player at Swoosh-bedecked basketball courts near Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
Such clever marketing tactics have helped make Nike the icon for the new China. According to a recent Hill & Knowlton survey, Chinese consider Nike the Middle Kingdom's "coolest brand." Just as a new Flying Pigeon bicycle defined success when reforms began in the 1980s and a washing machine that could also scrub potatoes became the status symbol a decade later, so the Air Jordan — or any number of Nike products turned out in factories across Asia — has become the symbol of success for China's new middle class. Sales rose 66% last year, to an estimated $300 million, and Nike is opening an average of 1.5 new stores a day in China. Yes, a day. The goal is to migrate inland from China's richer east-coast towns in time for the outpouring of interest in sports that will accompany the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. How did Nike build such a booming business? For starters, the company promoted the right sports and launched a series of inspired ad campaigns. But the story of how Nike cracked the China code has as much to do with the rise of China's new middle class, which is hungry for Western gear and individualism, and Nike's ability to tap into that hunger."(more from the article “How Nike Figured Out China" here).
Liu Xiang has appeared in Oregon on several occasions. The following youtube shows Liu Xiang running in the June 5, 2005, Prefontaine Classic in Eugene: