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"Five thousand years ago, use of the wheel began to spread from Mesopotamia across Eurasia, revolutionizing transport and enabling chariot warfare. A millennium ago, the stirrup enabled Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes to conquer most of Eurasia (coming from the other direction) at unfathomable speed. Paul Kennedy's seminal Rise and Fall of the Great Powers captures the way technological and economic advances have converted into strategic advantage, and how failure to "lock in" that edge accelerates imperial decline. Over the past three centuries, the spread of industrial technologies gradually weakened Britain while stimulating the United States. The West defeated the Soviet Union not through warfare but by maintaining a superior economic system with higher technological standards. China's late-20th-century rise is very much the unfinished business of the Industrial Revolution. The early 21st century looks to be a time when such geotechnology matters more than ever — outweighing traditional power determinants like geopolitics and geoeconomics. Indeed, China is a superpower today not because it has twice as many nuclear weapons as it had two decades ago, but rather because it has come to dominate manufacturing through manpower, ingenuity and espionage, has generated massive surpluses from it, and now invests those profits in military hardware and other advanced technologies. A decade from now we may look back at China's 12th Five-Year Plan as the seminal document of the early 21st century. It pledges $1.5 trillion in government support for seven "strategic emerging industries," including alternative energy, biotechnology, next-gen IT, high-end manufacturing equipment, and advanced materials. China invented none of these fields, but outstrips all competitors in attempting to improve and deploy them at scale."
"Faced with a sharply slowing economy, weak exports and faltering investment, China’s central bank unexpectedly announced late Thursday that it would cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
The action by the People’s Bank of China represents the strongest measure taken this year by the Chinese government to counteract an economic malaise that has infected Europe and the United States and now seems to be affecting China faster and more extensively than most policy makers or private economists had anticipated.
The interest rate cut is the first by the central bank since December 2008, the last time policy makers in China were deeply worried that they might be behind in responding to an economy slipping downhill faster than they expected. Many economists believe that China’s leaders are behind the curve again this year, after two months of near-paralysis on economic policy this spring as the Communist Party wrangled over the fate of one of its own, Bo Xilai.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to release a long list of economic indicators for May on Saturday morning in Beijing, including industrial production and the consumer price index. Yu Song, an economist in the Beijing office of Goldman Sachs, said that government policy makers are certain to have those figures already."
"The governments of China and Guyana have signed an $8 million agreement that will mean the supply of 30,000 laptops to Guyana’s One Laptop Per Family initiative.
David Huang, project manager for the China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation and Omar Shariff, permanent secretary in the Office of the President, signed the deal Wednesday.
'This collaboration through this gift between Guyana and China will significantly improve the relations on the bilateral levels the two countries share,' Huang said.
The programme has already seen the distribution of 10,000 laptops to low-income persons and single-parent families."
"The older brother of Chen Guangcheng, the persecuted rights advocate who left China for the United States this month, is back in the family’s home village after evading guards there to travel to Beijing to meet with a lawyer, an American legal scholar who is advising Mr. Chen said Sunday. The scholar, Jerome A. Cohen, a law professor at New York University, wrote in an e-mail that the brother, Chen Guangfu, was back at home as of Saturday night and “unguarded but under great pressure.” Like his younger brother, Mr. Chen is from the village of Dongshigu, in Shandong Province, a place infamous for the guards who were assigned by local officials to keep Chen Guangcheng and his family under severe house arrest and to bar any outsiders from seeing them. After Mr. Chen made a daring nighttime escape last month, police officers detained his older brother and his nephew, Chen Kegui, who was charged with intent to commit homicide when he slashed local officials with a kitchen knife, seriously injuring at least one, after the officials broke into the home of his father following his uncle’s escape."
This is a Google Translate translation of a human rights report the Chinese Government released on the United States. I'm not sure how accurate it is in the details, but the broad picture of how the United States Human Rights Record is presented is interesting for the insight it offers into the Chinese government.
"THE news out of China this year has been relentlessly bad. The political system was embarrassed in front of its own people by the Bo Xilai scandal and in front of the world by the Chen Guangcheng incident. The Chinese economy has slowed and its stock indexes have been rocked, while its neighbors have been strengthening their ties with the United States. All this has occurred at the worst possible time for the Communist leadership, as it prepares for what was supposed to be a seamlessly orchestrated transfer of power to a new president, premier and ruling cadre later this year. Instead, the events of 2012 have made accounts of an all-capable and problem-free China, which were so common just before and after the triumphant 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, seem quaintly credulous. While each of these problems is likely to prove surmountable, together they are clues to a question that will take much longer to answer: Can China make it as a fully modern economy and society?"
"Chinese state news media said gunmen seized three boats with 29 sailors aboard and were demanding ransom."
"The episode threatened to aggravate relations between North Korea and China, a critical source of aid for the impoverished North and one of its few remaining allies. The alliance has been strained by the bellicosity of the North and its threat to test a third nuclear device despite international condemnation and United Nations sanctions.
The timing was also inopportune for China, which faces a nettlesome array of maritime challenges, including a recent flare-up of territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. In recent months, there have also been violent clashes between Chinese fishermen and the South Korean Coast Guard."
"BEIJING (AP) - The leaders of China, South Korea and Japan said Sunday that they will work together to try to calm tensions on the Korean peninsula. The three largest East Asian economies also took steps toward deepening their economic ties by laying the groundwork for a regional free trade area.
The nations - which together account for 90 percent of the East Asian economy - were holding their fifth annual trilateral summit, with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao hosting, and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda attending.
Lee said the three countries all agreed that any further provocations from North Korea would be unacceptable."
"A decision to let Chinese banks acquire U.S. lenders marks the first time that regulators have allowed a Chinese bank to buy a majority stake in a U.S. depository institution, and at least one senator is concerned."
"A Federal Reserve decision to let Chinese banks acquire U.S. lenders is being challenged by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who said it could open the way for Chinese government-run institutions to undercut U.S. banks.
'I worry that these banks and their U.S. subsidiaries will use their state support as a way to underprice U.S. banks,' Casey, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, said in a letter Thursday to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) won approval from the Fed on Wednesday to buy a U.S. lender in the biggest opening of the American banking market to Chinese companies. The Fed allowed ICBC to operate as a bank holding company, buying a controlling stake in Bank of East Asia's U.S. unit. The Fed also let Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China open U.S. branches.
The decision marks the first time that regulators have allowed a Chinese bank to buy a majority stake in a U.S. depository institution. ICBC Chairman Jiang Jianqing has spent more than $6 billion on acquisitions in regions spanning Asia to South Africa and the Americas over the past three years, seeking to triple the share of profit coming from abroad to 10 percent."
"An Al-Jazeera reporter has been expelled from China, the first foreign journalist in 14 years to be deported, as Beijing deals with the fallout of a series of embarrassing scandals.
In a sign of China’s determination to stifle the flood of stories criticising the ruling communist party, Beijing has expelled the correspondent for the Al-Jazeera TV channel’s English language bureau.
Melissa Chan, an American citizen, became the first foreign journalist in 14 years to be deported from China after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs refused to renew her visa. Al-Jazeera's English language bureau in Beijing has closed as a result.
Chinese officials were reportedly angered by a documentary detailing China’s system of prison labour camps that was broadcast on Al-Jazeera last November, even though Ms Chan did not contribute to that particular programme. With the Chinese also refusing to issue a visa for a replacement correspondent, Al-Jazeera said it had no choice but to close its Beijing bureau temporarily."
"The Chinese government is hoping to close the country’s digital divide further by bringing a whopping 800 million of its citizens online by 2015, according to its latest pronouncement.
The ‘internet development plan’ for 2011-2015 was unveiled on Friday by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Xinhua reported.
While the prediction sounds pretty impressive, 800 million would only account for around 57 per cent of the country’s vast population, of which 200 million are set to come from rural areas, the report claimed.
Government officials have complained in the past that efforts to increase the nation’s online population and improve broadband speeds have been hampered by the sheer size of the country and the high cost of fibre optic cables.
Complaints have also flooded in that the near monopoly of state-run service providers China Telecom and China Unicom is affecting the quality of services."
"Asserting that cyberattacks against the U.S. don’t come only from China, the U.S. and Chinese defense ministers said they agreed Monday to work together on cyber issues to avoid miscalculations that could lead to future crises.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that since China and the United States have advanced cyber capabilities, it is important to develop better cooperation.
'It’s true, as the general pointed out, that obviously there are other countries, actors, others involved in some of the attacks that both of our countries receive,” Panetta told reporters after an afternoon meeting in the Pentagon marking the first visit by a Chinese defense minister to the U.S. since 2003. 'But because the United States and China have developed technological capabilities in this arena it’s extremely important that we work together to develop ways to avoid any miscalculation or misperception that could lead to crisis in this area.'
Gen. Liang Guanglie, China’s minister of national defense, offered a vigorous defense of his country, saying through an interpreter that, 'I can hardly agree with the proposition that the cyberattacks directed to the United States are directly coming from China. ... We cannot attribute all of the cyberattacks (against the) United States to China.'"
"In the first public acknowledgment by the United States of his whereabouts, an American official said Chen Guangcheng left the American embassy accompanied by the U.S. Ambassador to China."
"But the crisis surrounding Mr. Chen seemed far from abating as China accused the United States of interfering in its affairs and demanded an apology from Washington for taking a Chinese citizen into the embassy 'via abnormal means.'
'The Chinese side is strongly dissatisfied with the move,' the official Xinhua news agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, as saying.
'What the U.S. side has done has interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it,' the spokesman was quoted as saying.
'The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has the obligation to observe relevant international laws and Chinese laws, and it should not do anything irrelevant to its function,' he added."
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"Suddenly the guard posts came down and the hired toughs who manned them melted away, restoring an air of freedom this week to a village that authorities turned into a prison to keep blind activist Chen Guangcheng under house arrest for nearly two years.
The checkpoints, surveillance cameras and other measures had remained in place even though Chen fled Dongshigu village six weeks ago for sanctuary at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and ultimately went to New York to study. While directed at Chen, the security restrictions made life uncomfortable for his fellow villagers, who felt liberated with their removal."
.....
"So thorough was the cleanup this past weekend that locals said the surveillance cameras trained on Chen home had been removed and the high voltage street lamps dimmed. Two adjoining huts built at the village's entrance to house the guards — and where outsiders trying to visit Chen had been beaten — had been torn down. Even the trash they piled up had been taken away."
"Google has begun notifying Chinese users when they are using search terms that can trigger China's Internet blocks, in its boldest challenge in two years to Beijing's efforts to restrict online content.
The search giant unveiled on its Chinese site this week a new mechanism that identifies political and other sensitive terms that are censored by Chinese authorities.
For example, when users search for keywords like 'carrot' -- which contains the character for Chinese president Hu Jintao's surname -- a yellow dropdown message says:
'We've observed that searching for 'hu' in mainland China may temporarily break your connection to Google. This interruption is outside Google's control.'"
"A Chinese security ministry official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, Hong Kong media reports say."
"Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily quotes the monthly New Way as saying on 25 May that the official "fell into a pretty woman trap" set up by the CIA.
After the two were photographed in secret liaisons, he was blackmailed and agreed to supply secret information to the US, the reports say.
'The destruction has been massive,' a source told Reuters.
The official was arrested between January and March on allegations that he had passed information to the US for several years on China's overseas espionage activities, Hong Kong press and Reuters report."
"When Chen Guangcheng landed in New York—still on crutches from a daring nighttime escape from house arrest—he found himself giving a press conference in which his abundant thanks extended to Chinese officials for “dealing with the situation with restraint and calm.” It might not have been the first thanks on everyone’s lips. One could read that as a diplomatic comment, intended to protect those still in China, including his mother (whose house is reportedly being fenced off by local officials) and the fellow dissidents who helped him escape."
"Earlier this month in Beijing, China and America held the latest instalment of their Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), a regular—and by most accounts productive—series of high-level bilateral meetings."
"But even as the delicate and dramatic saga of Chen Guangcheng played out, there was at least one other elephant in the room. And far from dogging anyone, it was an elephant that, so to speak, didn’t even bark. That elephant is the shift in America’s credibility as a paragon and a preacher on the sort of human-rights issues that are at the heart of Mr Chen’s ordeal.
America has long felt free to lecture China—and many other countries too—on its shortcomings and failures in the human-rights department. America having never been entirely free of shortcomings itself, there was ever some degree of hypocrisy in this approach. It has long been the common view in China, among officials and common folk alike, that American criticism depends on keeping “double standards” and that America ought to have questions of its own to answer, about things like discrimination against minorities, the long-ago subjugation of indigenous peoples and economic inequality at home, to say nothing of hegemonic behaviour abroad. China's tit-fot-tat annual report on the state of human rights in America, 中国国务院新闻办公室发表, the most recent of which was released on May 25th (the text is carried in full here and in English at China Daily) is only more of the same."
"The nephew of blind activist Chen Guangcheng has been denied his family's choice of lawyers to defend a charge of "intentional homicide" in what one said was an attempt to manipulate a case that has focused world attention on China's human rights.
The decision by police in Yinan in northeastern Shandong province is the latest in a series of moves to deny Chen Kegui legal representation and underscores the hardline stance taken against the family of Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest last month and subsequent refuge in the U.S. embassy caused huge embarrassment for China and led to a diplomatic crisis in Sino-U.S. relations.
The ruling Communist Party has always been wary of lawyers, who officials suspect could challenge its power through their advocacy of the rule of law. Authorities have frequently sought to prevent lawyers from taking up politically sensitive cases by suspending their licenses or threatening them."
Chinese companies are extending their reach around the globe but why have they not been able to build their own brands?
China denies reports its military forces are preparing for war amid tensions over a disputed territory in the South China Sea.
"The plight of Chen Guangcheng has raised the profile of Chinese dissidents in recent weeks. But activism comes in many guises, as the Smithsonian shows in two new exhibitions of the work of internationally acclaimed Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.
Standing inside Ai Weiwei's monumental Fragments, it is hard at first to see why this work could be regarded as political.
Made from scraps of antique Chinese ironwood, its symmetry and sense of space is exquisite. So is the traditional craftsmanship that enabled its assembly without nails, using joints and old fashioned carpentry instead.
But once you realize the wood was salvaged from dismantled temples, you might begin to ponder why old things sometimes need to be destroyed to create something new - a dangerous notion for the Chinese Communist Party."
"Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist whose escape last month from house arrest and subsequent flight to the American Embassy here set off a diplomatic crisis, said on Tuesday that the Chinese authorities had begun to assist him in applying for permission to travel to the United States.
In a telephone interview from the Beijing hospital room where he is being confined, Mr. Chen said he prepared a visa application on Sunday and 'entrusted people from the central government to help me with it.'
'They informed me that someone would handle it,' he said, adding that he believed it was unlikely that the government would block his efforts to move with his family to the United States to study law.
Asked whether Chinese officials would allow him to return after an overseas stay — a prospect that some who are negotiating on his behalf call questionable — he replied: 'I am not worried. I think China will fulfill its agreement and promise.'"
"Everyone remembers Tiananmen Square, the massacre in Beijing that began on the night of June 4, 1989, when units of China’s People’s Liberation Army attacked peaceful demonstrators. More than 1,000 civilians and soldiers were killed and thousands more wounded over the next several days.
But how many Americans know that on the day after the initial attack, a leading Chinese dissident, Fang Lizhi, and his wife had taken refuge in the U.S. Embassy? Chinese authorities had issued arrest warrants for the two, accusing them of 'crimes of counter-propaganda and instigation before and during the recent turmoil.'
Turbulent history: The United States and China have had a tangled relationship, full of highs and lows.
Gallery
Chen Guangcheng leaves U.S. Embassy, may be allowed to study abroad: The blind activist, who fled de facto house arrest last month and sought refuge for six days at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, left the diplomatic compound on Wednesday to seek medical treatment after American officials said they received assurances from China’s government that he would be treated humanely.
The U.S. Embassy was accused of harboring the 'criminal who created this violence' and was warned of 'the potentially harmful consequences for U.S.-China relations,' according to a June 11, 1989, cable from the embassy to the State Department."
"Global businesses have placed bets on China as a stable source of growth for the foreseeable future. Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng serve as unwelcome reminders: Don't assume anything."
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — perhaps before she had gotten the hang of being a diplomat — once said the United States had 'bigger fish to fry' with the People’s Republic of China than human rights. On Friday, one of the bigger recurring fish fries between the two countries — the bi-annual 'strategic and economic dialogue’' (SED) — ended in China’s capital, though one of the most tumultuous episodes in modern US-China relations was still unfolding."
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