Mentality of a single after holidays

It's those time of the year again. Yes, the holidays, the lonely nights, and the wishful thinking of reunions and possible get together amongst colleagues and dearest friends. The article I wrote almost a year ago dictates the mentality of a single during holidays, and now here is the mentality of a single after holidays with the repercussion which it brings, especially after you clumsily crashed into a party which you hardly knew anyone except the one inviting you. The nerve racking experience you had to endure while talking with strangers whom you had no association with and no commonality to strike a meaningful conversation. So, it is all worth the painful, cumbersome and stuttering introduction? Is the party in which no discernible conversation took place all worth it? What it comes down to is just a personal preference. Some people can endure the loneliness, the "virtual" online relationship, and intangible routine more than others. While some other people must need the physical nurture, proximity, and the sense of belonging as a proof of existence. If you are the either type then a sudden switch to the other will always cause confusion, annoyance and quite problematic. It's better to stick with one and continue on until the very end of time, but then again we are all human beings prone to mistakes and temptations. Eventually, we will learn from our mistakes, adjust and adapt to the optimum situation befitting our comfort. Eventually, we will prevail and either way we will continue on as nothing has happened after the holidays. So, go ahead, and enjoy the wonderful holidays ahead of us.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010

May your wish and New Year Resolutions come true in 2010. May you live long and prosper. May your career, education, relation take on tremendous stride in 2010. Cheers, everyone!

And, may Canada wins more gold medals than any other countries in Vancouver 2010. Go Canada Go! :D

speed_demon

Miles Away - Madonna

Miles Away from Madonna, for those who are miles away from their home and their loved ones. Cheers, speed_demon.



"Miles Away"

I just woke up from a fuzzy dream
You never would believe the things that I have seen
I looked in the mirror and I saw your face
You looked right through me, you were miles away

All my dreams, they fade away
I'll never be the same
If you could see me the way you see yourself
I can't pretend to be someone else

Always love me more, miles away
I hear it in your voice, miles away
You're not afraid to tell me, miles away
I guess we're at our best, miles away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away

When noone is around then I have you here
I begin to see the picture, it becomes so clear
You always have the biggest heart
When we're 6.000 miles apart

Too much of no sound
Uncomfortable silence can be so loud
Those three words are never enough
When it's long distance love

Always love me more, miles away
I hear it in your voice, miles away
You're not afraid to tell me, miles away
I guess we're at our best, miles away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away

I'm alright
Don't be sorry, but it's true
When I'm gone, you realize
That I'm the best thing that happened to you

You always love me more, miles away
I hear it in your voice, miles away
You're not afraid to tell me, miles away
I guess we're at our best, miles away

You always love me more, miles away
I hear it in your voice, miles away
You're not afraid to tell me, miles away
I guess we're at our best, miles away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away

So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away
So far away, so far away, so far away, so far away

Bible Study and its Future Prospects

It's almost been two years since I'm involved in this bible study business every Friday night. Below I will disclose some of the feelings and observations which I have accumulated over the past two years. Bible study, or BS, as the name implied, is the gathering of people for the sole purpose to "study" the Holy Bible. Our intention here at the Victoria Chinese Christian Evangelical Fellowship, or the VCCEF, is to spread the word of God to every Chinese student and scholar, Chinese professionals and families living in the vicinity within the Greater Victoria district. The VCCEF is supported in part by the Emmanuel Baptist Church of Victoria, and in part by the enthusiastic although few volunteers, such as myself, to overlook the weekly human resource.

The most attractive feature of the BS, I can say, is the "free" weekly dinner. Although the dinner always revolves around serving either the plain pizza or spaghetti, the no-string-attached philosophy and the seemingly endless supply of the food are enticing features that drew both regulars and newcomers, especially the frugal Chinese student who would often go great length for a free meal. Apart from that, meeting people of same ethnicity is another great feature of the BS. For those foreign scholars and students, being in their own ethnicity group so to talk in the same language, and share the same culture often reduces the otherwise onset of loneliness and isolation which they often felt after moving to another country. The other attractive feature, my favorite at least, is the "afterward" hangout, which often involves going to the bar, Tim Horton's, or other places which the faithful Christian would often avoid. The "afterward" hangout enables people within the fellowship to weave, bind and grow further. It is a great way to meet other "would-be" Christians, including the potential opposite sex, and relax amongst the "supposed" friends. Finally, the least attractive but the ultimate "purpose" of the BS, is to spread and learn the word of God. Now, this is the hard part, given that most Mainland Chinese, especially students and scholars, are often atheists and evolutionists who take creationist approach to Earth's diversity as a joke, a maniacal and implausible explanation to everything complex.

However, after muddling in the pool for almost two years, I see the future prospects of the BS dwindling, shrinking and dying unless we can preserve the retention ratio and create a steady supply of regular attendees. A resuscitation is almost necessary to bring back its former glory. The method to enable so can't be realized by just volunteers but by energetic young individuals whose sole aim is for the growth of the church and who can connect easier, at the same level, with younger audiences. Who do not bicker over who does what and to ease and resolve the infighting within the fellowship. Despite its meager size, the fellowship must call for volunteers to amass the necessary manpower such that the word of God may be heard beyond the mere boundary of the Emmanuel Baptist.

This should be everyone's concern. Not just the concern of a few, out-of-touch, regulars!

speed_demon

The outcome of an Olympic hosting city

It is certainly not a good time to host the Winter Olympic, especially during the economy downturn. Not only will the weather most likely not cooperate, there's also the cost overrun, and now we are $2 Billion in red! Who's going to pay for all of it? Of course, the 12% HST... out of the pocket of you and me.

Hidden Agenda

Every news agency, irrespective of how neutral it is, will always have the tendency to shape the public opinion. Especially the mainstream media and its cohorts. With a bottom line to meet, their primary purpose is no longer to report news but to divert and guide the public opinion to attract readers and advertisers. Neutrality is no longer the norm but a pseudo-name to foreshadow how much each media outlet is involved in shaping the public opinion. Take the New York Times, for example, in its heavily skewed facts and report of China, its purpose is no longer to report the truth but to sale and indoctrinate misinformation to the worldwide audience, i.e., the American public, on the every mistake which the Chinese government, i.e., the C.P.C., has undertaken or is about to take, often with the violation of human rights as the pretext. Such that a laymen reader like me would be in aghast and detest on the every move which the C.P.C. would otherwise make, and perceive them as a threat and potential competitor against the U.S. government and American public in a world of limited resources. In its recent publication on China's dealing on Iraqi oil, the New York Times stated on how China's dealings would undermine the very national unity of Iraq, yet it has failed to address the intention of multinational oil conglomerates, usually of western origin, to exploit and rip-off Iraqi's most precious natural resource, as reported in my earlier posting (I no longer track this issue, but I believe the U.S. occupation of Iraq by the has probably allowed that to happen).

Irrespective of its nationality, the reports of the mainstream media must be read with care. The reader must know the media is there to shape the public opinion, and often it goes great distance to realize that.

脫殼

碩士答辯以後就像金蟬脫殼一像. 但願未來的氣象會更好. 但願這條路走下是對, 的是好, 的是光明的.

China-Taiwan Relations

An excellent backgrounder from CFR on China-Taiwan relationship.

CFR.org - China-Taiwan Relations

It is still a very sensitive issue, especially to discuss openly in the Mainland on the sovereignty of Republic of China. Hopefully, things will open up in the near future so peaceful reunification is possible. In the end, we really are not so different across the strait.

It's finally over and a new path awaits

It's finally over! After one hour of grilling by the committee members, I have finally defended my thesis after all these years of excitement and turmoil.

Not bad, but I would have taken a different research role if I had gotten the chance to do so. What I really wanted to do was to conduct research under her main area of interest. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to do so, but I still persevered. Not bad, not bad.

Hopefully, the new path which awaits will be brighter and shinier than my M.A.Sc.

Almost there!

A few more days to go, a few more hours to endure, a few more sleepless nights. Then, I will be finally freed from the burden and strangulation I have endured since 2006. Liberation shall come swiftly and jubilant celebration will soon follow. Let me just sincerely hope the road down Ph.D. will be more rewarding and forthcoming.

Not bad, at least get a chance to visit Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Paris, San Francisco and Monterey. :D

The ultimate researcher

It took me a long time to realize, but after living with this post-doc for almost one and half year I can finally appreciate why there are so many Chinese professionals in the field of communications engineering research. They work hard. They are smart, and they are diligent. Take my roommate, that post-doc, for example. He is an extreme case, but it's easy to generalize to others. Here below are how he does research.

1. He skips meals to do research, and now average a-meal-a-day only. He would cook 3 meals per week, and starve himself until the 3 meals lasts the entire week. He wasn't like this last year, but I guess pressure from boss can easily destroy your lifestyle, especially you are getting paid $30k a year, a luxury sum for a post-doc.
2. He makes minimum contact and friends except colleagues in the lab. He makes no attempt to make new friends except colleagues. But I guess when you need full front concentration on research, this is the result you would have. I'm making minimum contacts as well, especially friends of opposite sex, which would mean a lot more time spent if you are in a relationship.
3. He spends frugally. Unless necessary, spending is restricted only to meals and weekly grocery bills. Again, I'm doing that since being a student, full concentration is necessary, and others are just luxury. I just hope I can be like that for another four years in the Ph.D. program.
   

After years of practice and refinement, you would finally be the ultimate researcher, but then that is an extreme case. :D

But, of course, some people is special and their lifestyle greatly differs.

Baffling questions for Christians

My late night drinking spree with fellowship goers brought forth my renewed interest in questioning Christian beliefs. For Christians who are reading my blog, I encourage you to answer the following questions. These are probably some of the most baffling questions yet to be answered or already have been answered.

1. Can I be a Christian while be a believer in the Darwinian Theory of Evolution?
2. Does I being Christian mean supporting Israel apartheid of West Bank and Gaza Strip?

That's all for now. Perhaps more to come later.

speed_demon

China's New Rebels

More from NY Times on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.

China’s New Rebels

Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen

I know, I know, I'm China-bashing, but only until there is true democracy can the both side of the Formosa Straight be united. Until then, there will always be China-bashing on my blog.

speed_demon

Tiananmen Square, 20 Years Later

Another series of excellent articles from NY Times, on the 20 anniversary of Tiananmen Massacre.

Cheers,

speed_demon

It's that time of the year again~

No, I'm not talking about the NBA Finals. I'm talking about the Tiananmen memorial for those brave and courageous Chinese student who voiced against a suppressive regime, as it still is today. Long live the brothers and sisters of the June 4, 1989, movement.

An interesting article from Globe & Mail.

The influence of consumer power in China

Who can blame Jackie Chan? He is a businessman and with 1.3 billion potential audience and royal fans to feed, of course, he has to sway toward the Chinese government consensus. He is not alone but a recent casualty of the global economy meltdown. Even before his daring speech, global conglomerates such as Cisco, Yahoo, and Google has all bowed and yield to the authoritarian regime. With the economic downturn in full assault and more Chinese middle-class willing to consume, who is to say that anyone endorsing his/hers products would not relent to the tangible pockets of that potential 1.3 billion customers. Especially with the bottom lines in peril, anything disregard of conscience or rational thought is possible.

April 24, 2009
Jackie Chan Strikes a Chinese Nerve
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — Jackie Chan, the Hong Kong martial arts star well known for showing his own failed stunts at the end of his films, may have another blooper to his credit.

When Mr. Chan told a high-level gathering of Chinese government officials and business leaders last weekend that Chinese people were ill equipped to handle liberty, he found himself on the receiving end of a verbal thrashing from across the Chinese-speaking world that is still reverberating.

“I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled,” Mr. Chan said during the Boao Forum, the annual economic conference held on Hainan Island with a keynote speech by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. “If we are not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

The response was strongest in Hong Kong and Taiwan, which Mr. Chan, one of Asia’s wealthiest and best-known entertainers, held out as particularly “chaotic.” But even some intellectuals in mainland China spoke out against stereotyping Chinese as people who crave authoritarian leadership.

Apple Daily, one of Hong Kong’s biggest newspapers, used its front page to anoint him “a knave.” Politicians in Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that China claims as sovereign territory, described him as “idiotic” and “ignorant.” Albert Ho, a Hong Kong legislator, called Mr. Chan a “racist,” adding: “People around the world are running their own countries. Why can’t Chinese do the same?”

Here on the mainland, a writer published online by The People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, gave him a thumbs down. “I guess Jackie Chan has never experienced the lack of freedom, and has not been cruelly controlled,” the commentator, Li Hongbing, wrote.

As the storm gathered, words turned to action: the mayor of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, dropped Mr. Chan as an ambassador for the 2009 Summer Deaflympics in Taiwan. The Hong Kong Tourism Board said it would reconsider his role as its most high-profile spokesman. On Facebook, more than 9,700 people threw their weight behind a tongue-in-cheek effort to dispatch Mr. Chan to hypercontrolled North Korea.

“I wouldn’t watch his movies again unless he apologizes,” said Shing Hiu-yi, vice president of the Students’ Union Council at Hong Kong University, one of many groups that have been issuing condemnations and calling for boycotts. “What he said was insulting to the Chinese people.”

On the other hand, few have publicly acknowledged that Mr. Chan’s sentiments, even if “taken out of context,” as his spokesman insisted, are quietly accepted or embraced by many Chinese. The Communist Party has long argued that the people of China are ill suited for Western-style democracy. Even many educated Chinese unabashedly insist that the bulk of their brethren are too unschooled or unsophisticated to participate in matters of politics and governing.

Give the people too long a leash, the thinking goes, and everyone will end up strangled.

Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst of Chinese politics, said that there was a prevailing sentiment in the Chinese-speaking world that too much freedom could only fuel disharmony and instability, viewed as archenemies of China’s drive to put economic development first.

“Jackie Chan said those things because he thinks they are true, and there are major sections of society who couldn’t agree with him more,” Mr. Moses said. “But such thinking is increasingly out of touch with this simmering debate about what the extent of state authority should be.”

Mr. Chan’s remarks provoked some navel-gazing, especially on the Internet. In a subtle subversion, Yan Lieshan, one of China’s best-known writers, suggested that no amount of government control could help a nation lacking manners and morals. Writing in Southern Weekend, a liberal-leaning newspaper in Guangzhou, Mr. Yan bemoaned the neighbors who dump trash on his sidewalk and the cars that speed down his narrow street. “How I wish the relevant authorities would come and enforce the rules, but there is no one to control them,” he wrote. “When you lodge a complaint, no one responds.”

Although he was reared in Hong Kong by parents who fled mainland China, Mr. Chan, 55, has been an unalloyed Chinese patriot. He sang during the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, and he angrily denounced protesters who sought to interrupt the torch relay. During an earlier swat at electoral politics, he called the 2004 presidential elections in Taiwan “the biggest joke in the world.”

Even if he believes that Chinese people need more control, many observers suggested that Mr. Chan was simply seeking to stroke the authoritarian government that recently banned his latest film, “Shinjuku Incident,” because of excessive violence.

Hu Xingdou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said he was so infuriated by what he described as Mr. Chan’s pandering that he was organizing a boycott of a May 1 concert Mr. Chan had scheduled at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing.

“It’s easy to sacrifice freedom when you’re treated like a V.I.P. or some high-level official every time you come to China,” said Mr. Hu, who is known for his tart criticisms. “I’m sure Jackie Chan has never thought about the suffering of the little people who have no power.”

Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma)

What can I say? This is definitely one of the most creative, contemporary, on-line, popular Chinese poetry I have ever encountered. Best to the authors and those who are forever looking for ways to break the system.

March 12, 2009
A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — Since its first unheralded appearance in January on a Chinese Web page, the grass-mud horse has become nothing less than a phenomenon.

A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more. Stores are selling grass-mud horse dolls. Chinese intellectuals are writing treatises on the grass-mud horse’s social importance. The story of the grass-mud horse’s struggle against the evil river crab has spread far and wide across the Chinese online community.

Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.

The grass-mud horse is an example of something that, in China’s authoritarian system, passes as subversive behavior. Conceived as an impish protest against censorship, the foul-named little horse has not merely made government censors look ridiculous, although it has surely done that.

It has also raised real questions about China’s ability to stanch the flow of information over the Internet — a project on which the Chinese government already has expended untold riches, and written countless software algorithms to weed deviant thought from the world’s largest cyber-community.

Government computers scan Chinese cyberspace constantly, hunting for words and phrases that censors have dubbed inflammatory or seditious. When they find one, the offending blog or chat can be blocked within minutes.

Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, who oversees a project that monitors Chinese Web sites, said in an e-mail message that the grass-mud horse “has become an icon of resistance to censorship.”

“The expression and cartoon videos may seem like a juvenile response to an unreasonable rule,” he wrote. “But the fact that the vast online population has joined the chorus, from serious scholars to usually politically apathetic urban white-collar workers, shows how strongly this expression resonates.”

Wang Xiaofeng, a journalist and blogger based in Beijing, said in an interview that the little animal neatly illustrates the futility of censorship. “When people have emotions or feelings they want to express, they need a space or channel,” he said. “It is like a water flow — if you block one direction, it flows to other directions, or overflows. There’s got to be an outlet.”

China’s online population has always endured censorship, but the oversight increased markedly in December, after a pro-democracy movement led by highly regarded intellectuals, Charter 08, released an online petition calling for an end to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.

Shortly afterward, government censors began a campaign, ostensibly against Internet pornography and other forms of deviance. By mid-February, the government effort had shut down more than 1,900 Web sites and 250 blogs — not only overtly pornographic sites, but also online discussion forums, instant-message groups and even cellphone text messages in which political and other sensitive issues were broached.

Among the most prominent Web sites that were closed down was bullog.com, a widely read forum whose liberal-minded bloggers had written in detail about Charter 08. China Digital Times, Mr. Xiao’s monitoring project at the University of California, called it “the most vicious crackdown in years.”

It was against this background that the grass-mud horse and several mythical companions appeared in early January on the Chinese Internet portal Baidu. The creatures’ names, as written in Chinese, were innocent enough. But much as “bear” and “bare” have different meanings in English, their spoken names were double entendres with inarguably dirty second meanings.

So while “grass-mud horse” sounds like a nasty curse in Chinese, its written Chinese characters are completely different, and its meaning —taken literally — is benign. Thus the beast not only has dodged censors’ computers, but has also eluded the government’s own ban on so-called offensive behavior.

As depicted online, the grass-mud horse seems innocent enough at the start.

An alpaca-like animal — in fact, the videos show alpacas — it lives in a desert whose name resembles yet another foul word. The horses are “courageous, tenacious and overcome the difficult environment,” a YouTube song about them says.

But they face a problem: invading “river crabs” that are devouring their grassland. In spoken Chinese, “river crab” sounds very much like “harmony,” which in China’s cyberspace has become a synonym for censorship. Censored bloggers often say their posts have been “harmonized” — a term directly derived from President Hu Jintao’s regular exhortations for Chinese citizens to create a harmonious society.

In the end, one song says, the horses are victorious: “They defeated the river crabs in order to protect their grassland; river crabs forever disappeared from the Ma Le Ge Bi,” the desert.

The online videos’ scenes of alpacas happily romping to the Disney-style sounds of a children’s chorus quickly turn shocking — then, to many Chinese, hilarious — as it becomes clear that the songs fairly burst with disgusting language.

To Chinese intellectuals, the songs’ message is clearly subversive, a lesson that citizens can flout authority even as they appear to follow the rules. “Its underlying tone is: I know you do not allow me to say certain things. See, I am completely cooperative, right?” the Beijing Film Academy professor and social critic Cui Weiping wrote in her own blog. “I am singing a cute children’s song — I am a grass-mud horse! Even though it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say I’ve broken the law.”

In an essay titled “I am a grass-mud horse,” Ms. Cui compared the anti-smut campaign to China’s 1983 “anti-spiritual pollution campaign,” another crusade against pornography whose broader aim was to crush Western-influenced critics of the ruling party.

Another noted blogger, the Tsinghua University sociologist Guo Yuhua, called the grass-mud horse allusions “weapons of the weak” — the title of a book by the Yale political scientist James Scott describing how powerless peasants resisted dictatorial regimes.

Of course, the government could decide to delete all Internet references to the phrase “grass-mud horse,” an easy task for its censorship software. But while China’s cybercitizens may be weak, they are also ingenious.

The Shanghai blogger Uln already has an idea. Blogging tongue in cheek — or perhaps not — he recently suggested that online democracy advocates stop referring to Charter 08 by its name, and instead choose a different moniker. “Wang,” perhaps. Wang is a ubiquitous surname, and weeding out the subversive Wangs from the harmless ones might melt circuits in even the censors’ most powerful computer.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

Bleeding Love

Bleeding Love from Leona Lewis, one of the Grammy Nominees this year. Quite a powerful song, yet I don't wholeheartedly agree with every word of it. Love doesn't have to bleed and love is compromising mutual respect. No need to get hurtful over love. I guess that's why I'm not yet in love. :D

Song: Bleeding Love
Singer: Leona Lewis
Album: Spirit

Closed off from love
I didn’t need the pain
Once or twice was enough
And it was all in vain
Time starts to pass
Before you know it you’re frozen

But something happened
For the very first time with you
My heart melts into the ground
Found something true
And everyone’s looking round
Thinking I’m going crazy
But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open

Trying hard not to hear
But they talk so loud
Their piercing sounds fill my ears
Try to fill me with doubt
Yet I know that the goal
Is to keep me from falling

But nothing’s greater
Than the rush that comes
with your embrace
And in this world of loneliness
I see your face
Yet everyone around me
Thinks that I’m going crazy,
maybe, maybe
But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open
And it’s draining all of me
Oh they find it hard to believe
I’ll be wearing these scars
For everyone to see
I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding-
Keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love

China Calls for Closer Ties With Taiwan

Hopefully China is sincere and down-to-earth about this; otherwise, we're going to have a lot of problems. But still, the definition of China is quite outstretched and their definition don't usually match with ours.

March 6, 2009
China Calls for Closer Ties With Taiwan
By KEITH BRADSHER

HONG KONG — Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China called Thursday for closer political and economic relations with Taiwan, but he offered few specifics and did not expand on a previous suggestion by President Hu Jintao for improving communication with Taiwan on military issues.

In his opening speech to the National People’s Congress, Mr. Wen clearly signaled the Chinese leadership’s support for a series of economic measures that negotiators from Beijing and Taiwan were already discussing. These include the gradual integration of banking and other financial services across the Taiwan Straits, and the drafting of a “comprehensive agreement on economic cooperation” that could eventually become the basis for a free-trade agreement.

Mr. Wen also called for “fair and reasonable arrangements” on Taiwanese participation in international organizations and a formal cessation of hostilities with Taiwan, without providing any details on how these thorny goals could be achieved. And he did not mention any specific measures of military cooperation, like a possible hot line between the People’s Liberation Army and Taiwan’s military that had been previously mentioned. President Hu of China and President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan had each expressed some interest in this in recent months.

Taiwanese officials said they were satisfied with focusing on economic issues for now. “On the political aspects, when the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland reaches a certain level of mutual trust, only then can discussions be move forward,” the island’s Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.

Mr. Wen’s address represented a modest olive branch to Taiwan and avoided the more hostile language the mainland had used in the past. The stock market in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, jumped 2.1 percent as investors responded to Mr. Wen’s suggestion for closer cross-strait economic ties.

Mr. Wen’s clear endorsement of such ties could help accelerate economic talks, which have been dragging along more slowly than expected. Critics in Taiwan have suggested that the mainland is reluctant to make any concessions, but Taiwanese officials have themselves been constrained by the skepticism of a large section of the island’s population about the need for closer cross-straits ties.

On military cooperation, Mr. Wen’s speech included an offer to hold talks, but did not provide any specifics that would advance the issue beyond previous comments by President Hu. In his annual policy address on Taiwan on Dec. 31, Mr. Hu had suggested that the two sides could engage in “contacts and communications on military issues when appropriate, and discussions on building a trust mechanism for military safety.”

Military analysts have suggested that the People’s Liberation Army has little interest this winter in improving relations with Taiwan, particularly because preparations for a possible conflict with Taiwan are central to the mainland military’s budget and training. When President Ma was asked in an interview last month if he was disappointed that the mainland military showed little enthusiasm for cooperation, he quickly replied that President Hu had specifically endorsed security cooperation and confidence-building measures in his Dec. 31 policy speech.

But Mr. Wen’s speech on Thursday included only a general statement on those matters: “We are also ready to hold talks on cross-straits political and military issues and create conditions for ending the state of hostility and concluding a peace agreement between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits.”

President Ma has ruled out any peace agreement for the foreseeable future, and no talks are planned on ending the formal state of hostilities that has endured ever since the Nationalists lost China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan.

Prime Minister Wen said that political talks would have to be based on the principle that there is only one China, but he did not suggest how this principle should be interpreted — a longtime stumbling block.

China Starts Investing Globally

Hawkish Chinese buying spree, watch out! I guess as long as you keep those middle-to-upper class in check, there is no worry of an all out revolution to topple this authoritarian government.

February 21, 2009
China Starts Investing Globally
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — China is taking advantage of the economic downturn to go on a major shopping spree, investing in energy and other natural resources that could give it an economic advantage it has never had before.

Some economic analysts say they believe that China’s investments pose a threat to competitors like the United States. In the last move, Beijing said on Friday that one of its big state-owned banks, the China Development Bank, would lend the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras $10 billion in exchange for a long-term commitment to send oil to China.

China signed similar deals this week with Russia and Venezuela, bringing Beijing’s total oil investments this month to $41 billion. They represent an important investment. Supplies of commodities like oil are likely to tighten again once global growth picks up, and China will have a toehold it lacked during the recent boom, when it grew phenomenally even with limited access to resources.

But some analysts say China’s recent investments are welcome because they will help finance much-needed development, increasing the global supply of oil and natural resources at a time when many of the world’s biggest banks are reluctant to lend.

“It’s a good thing because a lot of projects have been postponed,” said Prof. Philip Andrews-Speed, director of the energy policy center at the University of Dundee in Scotland. “Oil companies may now have the money to produce oil.”

It is not just oil. This month, China’s biggest aluminum producer also agreed to invest $19.5 billion in Rio Tinto, an Australian mining company that is one of the world’s biggest. On Monday, China Minmetals bid $1.7 billion to acquire OZ Minerals, also of Australia, a huge zinc mining company.

China is flush with cash — thanks to trillions of dollars from decades of selling goods to the West — at a time when credit markets are tight and collapsing commodity prices have left energy and natural resource companies desperate for cash. For many of these companies, China has gone from pariah to lender of first resort.

“This is heavy energy diplomacy,” Professor Andrews-Speed said. “If you need money, you go to where the money is, and today, China’s the place.”

President Hu Jintao of China traveled this week on his “Friendship and Cooperation Tour” in Africa, where China has huge interests in resources and mining. The vice president, Xi Jinping, visited South America, met with the leaders of Brazil and Venezuela and signed cooperation agreements on oil and minerals.

Venezuela borrowed $6 billion from China and agreed to increase its oil exports to China, bringing China’s total investment in the country to $12 billion. In Brazil, China signed a $10 billion “loan-for-oil” deal that guarantees the country up to 160,000 barrels a day at market prices.

And in Beijing this week, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao met his Russian counterpart after China agreed to lend Russia’s struggling oil giant Rosneft and Russia’s oil pipeline company, Transneft, $25 billion in exchange for 15 million tons of crude oil a year for 20 years.

The investments are China’s biggest moves since 2005, when a Chinese state-owned oil company made an unsuccessful bid for Unocal, the American oil company, prompting worries about whether fast-growing China was seeking to tie up global resources.

But the world has changed drastically since then. Commodity prices have fallen sharply in recent months, after a long bull market that was partly fueled by China’s voracious demand for energy and resources. And China has built up nearly $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, giving the country easy access to capital.

“What’s changed for China is that their key competitive strength has increased, and that’s capital,” said Andrew Driscoll, a resources analyst at CLSA, an investment bank. “A lot of companies are begging for capital.”

China wants reliable supplies of crude oil to fuel its growing transport sector; it needs iron ore for steel production, and copper and aluminum to build homes and consumer goods.

Analysts say there are still worries about whether China will compete with other nations, like the United States and India, for oil and other natural resources.

Analysts say China could continue to make deals this year for small oil and gas companies, mineral producers and mining firms.

This week, for instance, shares of the Fortescue Metals Group, an Australian mining company, rose after reports the company was in talks with China over a big investment to help the company expand operations.

In many cases, China has struck deals in countries that have access to large supplies of oil and minerals but where American and European countries are not well positioned, like parts of Africa and the Middle East. In one of the deals struck this week, China made an alliance with the government of Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, who has denounced American leadership. While the oil deals announced this week vary in terms, analysts say they ensure China a steady supply of oil for decades to come, sometimes at favorable prices.

Jobless, restless China: 20 million and growing

From G&M, thanks to North Americans shutting off their wallets. I guess the Chinese government has never thought of how to deal with this kind of contingency, but with their trillions spending on military might, it may be time to divert some to job creation and sustainable development, not always relying on export and a pegging of currency. If the CCP doesn't learn to adopt maybe it'll be too late before a rude awakening. But, then again, dealing with civil unrest has always been its the forte, is it?

Jobless, restless China: 20 million and growing

MARK MACKINNON

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

February 20, 2009 at 11:46 PM EST

YUANSHAN, China — If future historians try to identify the day the global economic crisis reached the tipping point, they might want to consider Nov. 15 of last year.

That was the day, after years of slowly battling their way out of poverty as China's economy rapidly expanded, that 39 villagers decided there was no more money to be made in the once-booming factory cities on the Pacific Coast. So they packed themselves into 16 rickety three-wheeled tuk-tuks and began a slow, two-week journey home from booming Guangdong province to this speck of a place in the country's southwest.

Call it the Long Ride, a modernized and peaceful version of the Long March retreat staged by Mao Zedong's Communist army 75 years ago. Only the current retreat is being staged by China's army of suddenly jobless migrant workers — an estimated 20 million of them and counting, a number larger than the combined populations of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. For years they were the fuel that fed China's booming economy, but this restless mass now poses a huge challenge for Beijing, which is openly fretting about the possibility of wide-scale unrest.

Pu Qingsheng and his neighbours were in the vanguard of the movement. Driving 17 hours a day for two weeks, in an open vehicle that couldn't exceed 20 kilometres an hour, Mr. Pu drove his motorized rickshaw in convoy with his neighbours from the port city of Shantou back to this mountain village in Sichuan province.
Laid-off factory worker Wang Gang hoists a poster advertising his skills as a CHECK amid a crowd of other recently unemployed men at a jobs market in the city of Chongqing.

Laid-off factory worker Wang Gang hoists a poster advertising his skills amid a crowd of other recently unemployed men at a jobs market in the city of Chongqing. His wife and two teenage children spent the arduous journey packed in the back along with their meagre belongings. They endured the exhaust-choked highways and potholed back roads while crammed three across onto a metal bench that looks designed for two. They paused once a day for a meal of instant noodles mixed with borrowed tap water.

The Pu family felt they had no choice but to return to Yuanshan. As the garment and toy factories that are the economic heart of Shantou shut down last fall, largely because of slumping demand from North America, fewer people were willing to pay even the small fee for a ride in Mr. Pu's tuk-tuk. His wife and children, who all had low-paying jobs collecting plastics for recycling plants, were told in October their services were no longer needed.

"When the bosses started closing down the factories, our earnings couldn't cover our expenses any more," Mr. Pu explained grimly. "Before the crisis, a normal day's business would bring in between 50 and 60 yuan [$9 to $11] a day. In October, it suddenly dropped to 30 or 40 yuan [$5 to $7] a day. Sometimes, it was only 10 or 20 [$1 to $3]. Nobody wanted to take a cab if they could walk instead and save the money."

The math was the same for everyone from Yuanshan. The 39 villagers had come to Guangdong together at a time when it looked like China's economic miracle would go on forever. Now, back home together in this village that has neither paved roads nor a sewage system, they're trying to understand what to do next.

In addition to the estimated 20 million, another 5 or 6 million migrant workers could lose their jobs in the month to come. Some argue that even those numbers underestimate the scope of what is happening.

As the months go by and the number of jobless mounts, there are rising concerns that desperation could turn into anger. Scarcely a day has gone by recently without a new warning from the government in Beijing about the possibility of growing social unrest.

In the short term, organized action seems unlikely, largely because independent trade unions are banned in China, leaving workers with nothing to rally around in these hard times. While workers are involved every year in tens of thousands of "mass incidents" (the official terminology for strikes and protests; there were 87,000 in 2005, the last year they were reported), nearly all have been isolated incidents that were quickly brought under control by authorities.

For now, many migrants, such as Mr. Pu and his family, have returned to their homes in the countryside, hoping to scrape by farming their tiny state-assigned plots of land, just as they did before the boom times. But with the Chinese New Year festival over, many more have returned to the cities impatiently waiting for new jobs to materialize to replace the ones they lost.

With the economic situation in freefall, many are predicting a jump in crime. A top police official in Guangdong province told reporters this week that he expected the public-security situation in the factory cities would be "grim" as a result of the lost jobs.

"There will be more thieves, more crime. Everyone needs to eat and live," said Zhou Litai, a lawyer famous in China for representing migrant workers in disputes with their factory bosses over pay and working conditions. Mr. Zhou has seen his own caseload drop to just 10 a month from nearly 200, as his client base was sent home without severance pay or, he says, even their final paycheques.

Lost jobs, lost confidence

A six-hour drive southeast of Yuanshan, in a makeshift job centre deep in a warren of backstreets in the chaotic Yangtze River port of Chongqing, several thousand jobless migrants gather each day hoping to hear that the economic crisis is over and the factories are hiring again.

The sight of a foreigner entering the room sends a jolt of desperate hope through the crowd, most of them young men in dirty and tattered clothing, who rush forward.

"What do you need, laoban?" a man in a threadbare grey sweater asked, addressing me with the Mandarin word for "boss." His unwashed hair was stuck to his forehead and he was clutching a hand-made sign advertising his credentials as a cook. Another sweaty man in a red jacket pushed through the crowd to take the would-be chef's place in front of me; he said he could work as a driver.

Others shoved him aside, offering their services as waiters, security guards, whatever was needed. Until the middle of last year, most of the men worked in the east coast factory cities.

Even when I explained that I was a journalist rather than a tycoon looking to open a factory, some wouldn't give up on the idea that I was there to help them.

"We could go to Canada with you," one persisted, drawing laughter from the others. "You could be our laoban."

These workers fit the profile of China's migrant population. According to a soon-to-be-published study by the University of Chongqing, 60 per cent of migrant workers are male and 80 per cent are between the ages of 20 and 45.

They went east for purely financial reasons. Despite often appalling working conditions and lack of legal status in the cities where they worked, migrants could often make 10 or 20 times more money in the factories than in the villages. The money made everything else tolerable.

That trade-off is gone now, but for many migrants, going home, like Mr. Pu did, isn't an option. Some have been away so long that they gave their farm plots away to their neighbours. Others say they don't even remember where their land is, or how to farm it if they did.

Many of the men in the Chongqing job market have visited the centre every day for months, surviving on one meal a day and spending nights sleeping in nearby hostels that offer beds at less than a dollar a night. Though local restaurateurs came by from time to time looking for help, none of the migrants reported landing a job that lasted more than a few weeks.

"Originally, I thought of going back to the coastal areas, but I saw on TV [that the factories are not reopening] and they warned us not to just go back there blindly," said Huo Liu, a neatly dressed 28-year-old father of one who worked in a textile factory in the trading port of Ningbo until last September. Since then, he's been trying to take advantage of Chongqing's reputation as a centre for spicy Sichuan cuisine and reinvent himself as a cook. But despite coming to the job centre every day for the past five months, he has yet to find work.

"I really don't know what I'll do now. I have no confidence in the future at all. I'll just come here every day and keep looking."

While Mr. Huo seemed resigned to the winds of fate, others in his situation are starting to find focus for their mounting ire. One popular target is the urban Chinese, whom they see as looking down on poorly educated migrants from the provinces. And there's also growing discontent with the authoritarian government in Beijing.

"They put up signs saying there are jobs, but this is a show for the foreigners — there are no jobs," one worker shouted, perhaps referring to a red banner slung from the ceiling that teasingly welcomed migrant workers from the coastal cities back to Chongqing. "We welcome the migrant workers who return to their home town to work here and start a business."

"We demand that Premier Wen Jiabao give us some money!" another worker shouted, to hoots of derision. But no one wanted to put their name to that statement.

Watching and waiting

What Beijing apparently fears is that the anger will manifest somehow into a political force. Sun Chunlan, vice-chairman of the government-backed All-China Federation of Trade Unions, claimed this week that police task forces had been "rushed" to China's regions to ensure stability. "Hostile forces within and outside China [are] using the difficulties of some enterprises to infiltrate and bring trouble to rural migrant workers," he charged.

In a bid to reverse the country's economic slowdown — and head off labour trouble — the government in November announced a $585-billion (U.S.) economic stimulus package and recently instructed firms to do whatever necessary, including slashing salaries, to avoid further layoffs. The state-sponsored trade union plans to offer vocational training and small loans to jobless migrant workers, and the government has been furiously working to restore a national social-insurance program that has been gutted since China's still nominally Communist government began moving toward a free-market economy in the 1980s.

While the overall numbers don't look bad when stacked up against the gloom in Western economies — the Chinese economy is expected to grow between 6 and 8 per cent this year — they still represent a significant slowdown for a country used to double-digit growth.

Worse news may be yet to come: Exports, the country's economic lifeblood, plunged 17.5 per cent in January. The crisis puts in peril the government's efforts to lift hundreds of millions of peasants out of poverty and to close the staggering gap between the country's urban rich and rural poor.

What makes the layoffs so difficult to accept for China's migrant labourers is that they have almost nothing to fall back on. Few Chinese have unemployment insurance, health insurance or a pension of any kind. For migrant workers, their social safety net was supposed to be their farmland, though many are finding it hard to readjust to their old life.

"It does create some problems, some conflicts when they come back to their villages from the urban areas. Because of the financial crisis, they cannot foresee when they will go back to their original jobs and the people who are using their houses and farmlands will not quickly move out," said Zhang Zongyi, vice-president of Chongqing University and one of the authors of the migrant labour study.

Ironically, one reason why the predicted unrest hasn't materialized so far is the same Chinese trait often cursed in the West as a key factor in the recent global collapse — this country's propensity to save the money they earn rather than spend it. China's savings rate last year was a whopping 50 per cent, compared with about 3 per cent in the United States.

Whatever damage it did or didn't do to the global economy, the fact that most Chinese have a store of saving for precisely such a moment means that the situation, however grim, can be tolerated for a short while longer.

"Right now, migrant workers are still watching and waiting. They still have savings to last for February and March," said Mr. Zhou, the labour lawyer. That gives the government programs less than two months to kick in and get the economy turned around, he said.

However, Mr. Zhou isn't confident that a rebound will happen in time.

"In 2009, the unemployment crisis will definitely affect public security," he predicted.

Taiwan's Low Profile May Aid Its Goals

Let's hope the low profile is not too low so such that it may jeopardize Taiwan's voice in the international area.

February 13, 2009
Taiwan’s Low Profile May Aid Its Goals
By KEITH BRADSHER

TAIPEI, Taiwan — America’s new secretary of state is preparing to visit Beijing with an agenda that barely mentions Taiwan — and that is fine with the president of Taiwan.

President Ma Ying-jeou said here on Thursday that he was glad to have reduced tensions with mainland China and that he was not concerned that Taiwan was low on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s list of priorities.

The lessening of tensions with the mainland “is good news for everyone, we are not dissatisfied with the fact they did not mention Taiwan,” President Ma said in an hourlong interview at the presidential palace.

Asked what Mrs. Clinton could do on relations between mainland China and Taiwan, long a top priority for Beijing, Mr. Ma asked for little help. “America can play a constructive role in encouraging the status quo,” he said.

But having largely removed relations between Taiwan and the mainland as a potential flash point since he took office last May, Mr. Ma mapped out changes that he wanted from Washington. A free-trade agreement between Taiwan and the United States topped the list, followed by visa-free access for Taiwanese travelers to the United States and a bilateral extradition treaty.

Beijing officials have viewed Taiwan as a renegade province ever since the Nationalists retreated to the island upon losing China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949. The reunification of mainland China and Taiwan has long been the mainland’s top goal in relations with the United States, Taiwan’s closest ally.

But senior administration officials have signaled that Mrs. Clinton’s priorities for the Beijing leg of her Asia trip next week involve climate change, energy, North Korea, Tibet, Iran and economic issues.

Mr. Ma also said he planned to push further this year for close economic relations with mainland China, even while acknowledging disappointment with the number of mainland tourists who have been allowed by Beijing to visit Taiwan. The Taiwanese government has set a limit of 3,000 a day, but actual arrivals have been closer to 500 or 600 a day.

Recent moves to let mainland tourists stay up to 15 days instead of 10, and come in groups of as few as 5 people instead of 10, could help increase their numbers, Mr. Ma said. His administration has also opened up charter flights, shipping and investment, and he said Thursday that he wanted regularly scheduled flights to the mainland by the middle of this year as well.

He won elections last March by promising that closer relations with the mainland would secure Taiwan’s economic future. But the global economic downturn has led to a plunge in the island’s exports; many investment bank economists now predict that Taiwan’s economy will shrink this year, although the Taiwanese government still forecasts very slow growth.

Mr. Ma said the economy would grow if Taiwan’s main export markets recovered. In the meantime, the government has already distributed shopping vouchers worth $110 to each citizen and is rapidly stepping up spending on roads, bridges and schools and other infrastructure projects that Mr. Ma promised to build during his election campaign a year ago.

“This is high time to go fiscal — let’s get fiscal,” he said.

All three of Mr. Ma’s goals in relations with the United States face uncertain futures.

American and Taiwanese officials held detailed discussions last year on a possible trade and investment framework agreement, which would be considerably narrower than a free trade agreement.

Stephen M. Young, the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, which unofficially represents the United States government here in the absence of full diplomatic relations between the governments in Taipei and Washington, said in public remarks in November and December that policy makers were focusing on a trade and investment framework agreement, and there has been no sign of any change by the Obama administration.

Mr. Ma’s top aide for relations with mainland China, Lai Shin-yuan, who played a central role in talks in 2000 and 2001 that brought Taiwan and the mainland into the World Trade Organization, said there had been little detailed discussion on the Taiwanese side of a free trade agreement.

Ms. Lai added that in her opinion, there was little enthusiasm in Taiwan for the broad dismantling of Taiwanese restrictions on imports of American food that the United States would be likely to demand as part of any free trade agreement.

Mr. Ma also asked that the United States allow Taiwanese citizens to visit without obtaining visas first. Britain agreed this week to allow Taiwanese citizens to visit and stay for up to six months without a visa.

Mr. Young has said publicly that the United States has concerns about this because Taiwan has too few controls in place to prevent the issuance of genuine passports to people who are not citizens of the island.

Mr. Ma and Ms. Lai also said that they wanted an extradition treaty with the United States that would allow Taiwan’s authorities to pursue fugitives accused of financial crimes who have fled across the Pacific. The Bush administration did not take a position on this question, and neither has the Obama administration.

China's Unemployment Swells as Exports Falter

Another tantalizing article from NY Times.

February 6, 2009
China’s Unemployment Swells as Exports Falter
By KEITH BRADSHER

GUANGZHOU, China — Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are returning here earlier than usual from their home villages after the Chinese New Year holiday. Lugging their belongings in plastic sacks and cardboard boxes, they are hoping to find increasingly scarce jobs. Many will fail.

Liu Yijiang, a 21-year-old worker from Guangxi Province, stopped his bicycle in front of a factory’s gate and explained that he had been unable to find work since he was laid off late last year by a ceiling lamp factory and went home to his village.

“I came back early to see if I can find a job,” he said. “A lot of my friends are out of work.”

A spokeswoman for the Guangdong Provincial Labor and Social Security Bureau said Thursday that 3 million of an expected 9.7 million migrant workers had returned to the province by Wednesday evening. Many have jobs waiting for them, but two million have no employment lined up and must look for work, she said.

Beijing authorities disclosed Monday that based on an agriculture ministry survey of villages just before the Chinese New Year holiday last week, about 20 million of the nation’s 130 million migrant workers are unemployed.

In the factory city of Dongguan, adjacent to Guangzhou, many plants have deferred reopening for up to three weeks for lack of orders from the United States and Europe, said Eddie Leung, the chairman of the Dongguan Association of Foreign Invested Enterprises.

At Fortunique, a manufacturer of hospital gowns and other protective wear on the southern outskirts of Guangzhou, about 50 men and women showed up early Thursday morning looking in vain for jobs. More came to the gate through the day.

“I haven’t seen that since the early 1990s,” when China’s economic boom was still in its early stages, said Charles Hubbs, the company’s owner.

Security forces are taking precautions to prevent social unrest. Police officers were positioned every few feet along the walls and fences outside the main railway station here on Thursday. Endless throngs of arrivals poured out of the massive building, their faces haggard after journeys that can be 30 hours or more in rail cars that often offer standing room only.

At the nearby intercity bus station, loudspeakers tied with police tape to streetlamps told arrivals over and over again, “Do not loiter or stand at the station. Move on quickly. Do not sit or squat.”

One big question is where penniless migrant workers will sleep until they find jobs or return home. Factories here in the Pearl River delta region of Southeastern China, which accounts for nearly a third of China’s exports, typically provide dormitories for a majority of their workers.

The rest, particularly married workers, live in crowded nearby apartments.

But factories that have shut down have closed their dormitories. Unemployed workers seem to be staying with friends in local apartments for now, manufacturing and human resources managers said. The provincial labor bureau announced Tuesday that it was setting up free job fairs in the cities. But the bureau also said it would offer numerous subsidies for workers willing to leave the cities and go to rural areas — including free vocational classes, subsidized school fees for children and a waiver of government fees for the registration of new small businesses.

Guangdong Province accounts for nearly a third of China’s exports, making it especially vulnerable as Western retailers sharply reduce orders to focus on selling the inventory they already have.

Electric utility use was down nearly 8 percent in December from a year ago in Guangdong and across China. Electricity is an excellent barometer of the Chinese economy because most usage is industrial, said Jing Ulrich, the chairwoman of China equities at JPMorgan Chase.

But Guangdong’s actual decline in electricity use is much greater. At least one-fifth of all electricity generated in the province until the last few months was produced by tens of thousands of diesel generators in the backyards of factories, because the provincial grid, unable to keep pace with growth, imposed severe rationing.

This winter, all rationing has been lifted and factories have unlimited access to inexpensive electricity from the grid, so the backyard generators have been shut down.

Wage demands, another barometer of economic health, have plunged. Skilled workers who used to demand up to $430 a month are eagerly accepting jobs that pay half as much, managers here said.

“They just want a job — no demands on salary,” Mr. Hubbs, the Fortunique owner, said.

One big mystery is how many factories have closed permanently and how many are simply giving long holiday furloughs to their workers. Provincial and national statistics on businesses and factories are often contradictory. And government statistics on unemployment over all are not considered reliable.

Another big mystery is what effect unemployment will have on the number of strikes and other protests that occur here regularly. Some experts are worried.

“It’s more possible to cause social unrest if the workers cannot find jobs,” said Liu Kaiming, the executive director of the Institute for Contemporary Observation, an advocacy group for labor rights in Shenzhen, a factory city that abuts Dongguan and Hong Kong.

In the last two years, there was — on average — one strike a day involving 1,000 or more workers in the Pearl River delta, and many more strikes by smaller groups of workers, said Han Dongfang, the director of the China Labor Bulletin, an advocacy group in Hong Kong that wants to see independent labor unions and collective bargaining in mainland China.

He cautioned that the frequency of strikes in the region made it hard to tell whether a recent spate of strikes reported in the Hong Kong news media was the result of greater social friction, or simply more reporting in response to the global economic downturn.

Beijing authorities plan rapid increases in economic stimulus spending in Guangdong to offset the downturn in exports here. The focus will be on building more roads, bridges and rail lines in a region that already has some of China’s best infrastructure.

But even as government investment starts to accelerate, private investment is declining, which may endanger more jobs.

Preliminary results from a study just completed by the American Chamber of Commerce of South China, which looked at 551 mostly foreign companies, found that they planned to invest $6.5 billion this year. A similar study a year ago found plans to invest $11 billion in the next year.

“We’re seeing people investing more methodically and more cautiously,” said Harley Seyedin, the chamber’s president.

Separately, a national survey of Chinese purchasing managers, released Wednesday, showed that most expected the economy to continue to worsen, although the expected steepness of the decline had moderated somewhat.

Stanley Lau, the deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, which represents the owners of the 60,000 factories in the region controlled by Hong Kong business officials, estimated that 10 percent of these factories had already closed in the last year because of more stringent government policies on labor, taxes and the environment.

Another 5 to 10 percent could close soon because of weaker export orders. “I’m sure there will be more to come,” he said.

Hilda Wang contributed reporting.

China Sees Separatist Threats

This article has just been published in the NY Times. My stance is that Taiwan will never be a part of the P.R.C. currently ruled by the C.C.P., but rather an integral part of the R.O.C. currently ruled by the K.M.T., and whether you call that a separatist movement is up to your interpretation. On the other hand, all of my colleagues (most of whom are from China) have the strong yet peculiar argument that Taiwan is a part of China, yet it has been ruled and experienced in two different regime and culture ever since 1949.

January 21, 2009
China Sees Separatist Threats
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — China said Tuesday that it faces important threats from independence movements related to Taiwan, Tibet and the western desert region of Xinjiang, and that American arms sales to Taiwan jeopardize stability in Asia.

The announcement came in a white paper on national defense released by the State Council, China’s cabinet. The paper said that “China’s security situation has improved steadily,” but that “being in a stage of economic and social transition, China is encountering many new circumstances and new issues in maintaining social stability.”

The 105-page paper sought to portray China as a power that would use military force only defensively and sees territorial integrity as the top defense priority.

According to goals implied in the paper, China also seeks to counterbalance the American military presence in Asia. In several instances, the authors pointed out what they called worrisome aspects of American intervention.

“The U.S. has increased its strategic attention to and input in the Asia-Pacific region, further consolidating its military alliances, adjusting its military deployment and enhancing its military capabilities,” the paper said.

Certain destabilizing factors outside China are growing, the paper added, singling out American arms sales to Taiwan, which it said could lead to “serious harm to Sino-U.S. relations as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.” China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.

Last October, the Pentagon announced it was selling $6.5 billion of weaponry to Taiwan despite protests from Beijing. The package included 30 Apache attack helicopters, 330 Patriot missiles and 32 Harpoon missiles that can be launched from submarines. The Taiwan Relations Act, passed in 1979 when the United States normalized relations with China, says the United States must provide arms of a defensive nature to Taiwan and act to protect Taiwan from any hostilities.

In presenting the white paper on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense said he hoped the incoming Obama administration would build stronger military relations between the United States and China.

“At present, when China-U.S. military-to-military relations are faced with difficulties, we call on the U.S. Department of Defense to remove obstacles,” the spokesman, Sr. Col. Hu Changming, said at a news conference.

Although Taiwan enjoys de facto independence and is a thriving democracy, the Chinese government has long maintained that it will reunite Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary. Under Taiwan’s previous president, Chen Shui-bian, relations with the mainland grew extremely tense because Mr. Chen’s policies moved Taiwan closer to formal independence, prompting bellicose reactions from Beijing.

But following the election in Taiwan last year of Ma Ying-jeou, a member of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, which fled the Communist takeover of China in 1949, the Taiwanese government has taken a more conciliatory approach toward the mainland.

The white paper grouped separatist forces in Taiwan — meaning supporters of Mr. Chen and his policies — with groups that China says are seeking independence for Tibet and Xinjiang. “Separatist forces working for ‘Taiwan independence,’ ‘East Turkestan independence’ and ‘Tibet independence’ pose threats to China’s unity and security,” the paper said.

Last year, violence erupted in Tibet and Xinjiang that challenged the country’s security forces.

Since 2001, when the Bush administration announced its “war on terror,” the Chinese government has said it faces an organized terrorist independence movement in Xinjiang, an oil-rich area that is home to the Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking ethnic group. Many Uighurs are resentful of rule by the ethnic Han Chinese, and some openly advocate an independent country called East Turkestan.

Last March, riots and protests erupted across Tibetan areas of China, prompting a harsh crackdown. The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans, of organizing the uprising, which the Dalai Lama has denied. The Chinese government is watching closely for disruptions that might unfold this March, which will be the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet to India, where he lives in exile.

The white paper did specify how much will be spent on the 2009 defense budget. The government had said it expected to spend $61 billion on the military in 2008, a nearly 18 percent increase over the 2007 total. Some foreign analysts say the actual figure is much higher.

The white paper also made no mention of construction of an aircraft carrier, which Chinese military officials have said is a project under consideration. It did say that “efforts are being made to build new types of submarines, destroyers, frigates and aircraft.”

A gasping break from blogging

Hi folks,

I'm going to take a break from blogging to concentrate on school and research. I'll blog occasionally, but not often. In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Cheers,

speed_demon