China Admonishes Malcolm Turnbull on South China Sea Comments

Fergus Ryan
Guardian
China hoped Australia would ‘stay committed to not taking sides on issues concerning disputes over sovereignty’.

China Is Hoarding the World's Oil

Grant Smith
Bloomberg
Goldman Sachs says Chinese hoarding may avert $20 oil scenario.

Environment

09.17.15

Beijing Welcomes World’s First Smog-Eating Tower

from chinadialogue
Beijingers enjoyed a rare breath of fresh air this week. The city’s smog levels fell to their lowest levels in recent years, as authorities scrambled to shut down factories and curb car use so that China’s Second World War victory military parade...

Conversation

09.16.15

What Would New Breakthroughs on Climate Change Mean for the U.S.-China Relationship?

Junjie Zhang, Joanna Lewis & more
With just over a week to go before Chinese President Xi Jinping begins his first State Visit to the United States, there is much evidence to suggest that bilateral action to fight climate change is an area most ripe for meaningful Sino-U.S...

In Africa, Those Who Bet on China Face Fallout

Patrick McGroarty and Matina Stevis
Wall Street Journal
Economic slowdown in China exacerbates strain for trading partners in Africa.

Environment

09.03.15

The Yellow River: A History of China’s Water Crisis

from chinadialogue
During the hot, dry month of August 1992, the farmers of Baishan village in Hebei province and Panyang village in Henan came to blows. Residents from each village hurled insults and rudimentary explosives at the other across the Zhang River—the...

Environment

08.21.15

Beijing Tells Mayors of Chinese Cities to Clean Up Their Air

from chinadialogue
In China, “APEC blue” was the sarcastic term used to refer to the unusually clear skies Beijing enjoyed when an Asia-Pacific leaders summit was in progress late last year.A similar phenomenon is now being seen in smaller Chinese cities, as mayors...

Caixin Media

08.11.15

Auditors Probe Sinopec, Savvy Broker in Angola

Government auditors are taking a closer look at U.S.$10 billion worth of offshore oil investments by state-run China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) that owe their existence to a Hong Kong businessman with a flair for networking in the...

Environment

07.30.15

China’s Shift From Coal to Hydro Comes at a Heavy Price

from chinadialogue
As outlined in China’s national climate plan, submitted to the United Nations last month, the country’s aim to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 or sooner will rely heavily on a shift from coal to use of non-fossil fuels.To many, that would seem...

This Instagram Account Offers a New Perspective on China

Time
Some photographs show the surprisingly mundane moments in the life of regular Chinese, such as Albertazzi’s image of a group of men playing cards in their swim shorts on a hot summer afternoon in Beijing; others are images from long-term documentary...

Environment

07.15.15

Scientists Call for More Emission Cuts

from chinadialogue
It is still possible to limit average global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius (2˚C) and avoid catastrophic climate change, but the remaining global carbon budget—the amount of carbon that can be safely released into the atmosphere if this...

Oil Prices Rise on China Recovery and Iran Deadlock

Nicole Friedman and Matthew Cowley
Wall Street Journal
Oil prices climb as Chinese stocks rebounded, easing concerns about China’s economic growth, and expectations of higher Iranian crude-oil exports receded.

Conversation

07.08.15

Are China’s Limits on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Meaningful?

Barbara A. Finamore, Sam Geall & more
Last week, Premier Li Keqiang said China would cut its “carbon intensity”—the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP—to 60-65 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. Visiting Paris, the site in September of the United Nations Climate Change...

Iron Ore Plunges 10pc Amid Extended China Market Route

Jasmine Ng
Australian Financial Review
Iron ore retreated to the lowest level in at least six years as a rout in China's stock markets threatened to hurt demand just as the biggest producers plan to raise output.

China Offers Private Companies Rights to Explore Six Oil-and-Gas Blocks

BRIAN SPEGELE
Wall Street Journal
China’s government is making a small step toward opening the nation’s energy resources to private investment.

South China Sea Dispute Between China, Philippines Heads To Court

TOBY STERLING
Reuters
The Philippines argued at a closed hearing on Tuesday that an international court should intervene in its dispute with China over the right in the South China Sea. 

Environment

07.01.15

China Deepens Planned Cuts to Carbon Intensity

from chinadialogue
China has mapped out how it will try and peak greenhouse emissions by 2030 or before, details that could have a major bearing on U.N. climate talks aimed at delivering a deal in Paris later this year.The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases “...

Gas Leak Raises Fears Over China Network

Lucy Hornby
Financial Times
A brand new natural gas pipeline operated by CNPC in Yunnan sprung a leak, raising worries about the safety of China's network of oil and gas pipes.

The Truth About China’s South China Sea Land Reclamation Announcement

Prashanth Parameswaran
Diplomat
China's building of artificial islands is illegal and detrimental to peace and stability in the South China Sea.

Books

06.16.15

The Yellow River

David A. Pietz
Flowing through the heart of the North China Plain―home to 200 million people―the Yellow River sustains one of China’s core regions. Yet this vital water supply has become highly vulnerable in recent decades, with potentially serious repercussions for China’s economic, social, and political stability. The Yellow River is an investigative expedition to the source of China’s contemporary water crisis, mapping the confluence of forces that have shaped the predicament that the world’s most populous nation now faces in managing its water reserves.Chinese governments have long struggled to maintain ecological stability along the Yellow River, undertaking ambitious programs of canal and dike construction to mitigate the effects of recurrent droughts and floods. But particularly during the Maoist years the North China Plain was radically re-engineered to utilize every drop of water for irrigation and hydroelectric generation. As David A. Pietz shows, Maoist water management from 1949 to 1976 cast a long shadow over the reform period, beginning in 1978. Rapid urban growth, industrial expansion, and agricultural intensification over the past three decades of China’s economic boom have been realized on a water resource base that was acutely compromised, with effects that have been more difficult and costly to overcome with each passing decade. Chronicling this complex legacy, The Yellow River provides important insight into how water challenges will affect China’s course as a twenty-first-century global power.―Harvard University Press{chop}

Environment

06.15.15

China’s Greehouse Gas Emissions Likely to Peak by 2025

from chinadialogue
China’s output of greenhouse gases could peak in 2025, five years earlier than it has promised, meaning that the world’s largest emitter may be able to quicken the pace of cuts in coming decades, according to a new paper published June 8 by the...

Reports

06.08.15

China’s “New Normal”: Structural Change, Better Growth, and Peak Emissions

Fergus Green and Nicholas Stern
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
China has grown rapidly—often at double-digit rates—for more than three decades by following a strategy of high investment, strong export orientation, and energy-intensive manufacturing. While this growth lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty,...

Conversation

05.29.15

Did the Game Just Change in the South China Sea? (And What Should the U.S. Do About It?)

Yanmei Xie , Andrew S. Erickson & more
As the 14th annual Asia Security Summit—or the Shangri-La Dialogue, as it has come to be known—gets underway in Singapore, we asked contributors to comment on what appears to be a recent escalation in tensions between the U.S. and China over the two...

Paris Can’t Be Another Copenhagen

New York Times
The U.S. and China must rapidly increase collaboration on climate change both within and beyond the framework of the conference.

China Warned Over ‘Insane’ Plans for New Nuclear Power Plants

Emma Graham-Harrison
Guardian
He Zuoxiu, a leading scientist, says China is not investing enough in safety controls after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Environment

05.20.15

Can China Really Meet Its Clean Energy Goals? And How?

Jill Baker
China is the world’s largest energy consumer, and its energy use is dirty and inefficient. But it is working hard to change that. Currently, coal accounts for nearly 70 percent of China’s total energy consumption, and this, coupled with an aging...

Books

05.19.15

No Ordinary Disruption

Richard Dobbs, James Manyika, Jonathan Woetzel
Our intuition on how the world works could well be wrong. We are surprised when new competitors burst on the scene, or businesses protected by large and deep moats find their defenses easily breached, or vast new markets are conjured from nothing. Trend lines resemble saw-tooth mountain ridges.The world not only feels different. The data tell us it is different. Based on years of research by the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Forces Breaking All the Trends is a timely and important analysis of how we need to reset our intuition as a result of four forces colliding and transforming the global economy: the rise of emerging markets; the accelerating impact of technology on the natural forces of market competition; an aging world population; and accelerating flows of trade, capital, and people.Our intuitions formed during a uniquely benign period for the world economy—often termed the Great Moderation. Asset prices were rising, cost of capital was falling, labor and resources were abundant, and generation after generation was growing up more prosperous than their parents.But the Great Moderation has gone. The cost of capital may rise. The price of everything from grain to steel may become more volatile. The world’s labor force could shrink. Individuals, particularly those with low job skills, are at risk of growing up poorer than their parents.What sets No Ordinary Disruption apart is depth of analysis combined with lively writing informed by surprising, memorable insights that enable us to quickly grasp the disruptive forces at work. For evidence of the shift to emerging markets, consider the startling fact that, by 2025, a single regional city in China—Tianjin—will have a GDP equal to that of the Sweden, or that, in the decades ahead, half of the world’s economic growth will come from 440 cities including Kumasi in Ghana or Santa Carina in Brazil that most executives today would be hard-pressed to locate on a map.What we are now seeing is no ordinary disruption but the new facts of business life—facts that require executives and leaders at all levels to reset their operating assumptions and management intuition.—PublicAffairs{chop}

Environment

05.14.15

Nepal Earthquake Highlights Dangers of Dam-Building in Tibet

from chinadialogue
Although the precise picture is still unclear, it’s likely that Nepal’s huge earthquake in April 2015 wreaked major damage on more than a dozen hydroelectric projects in Nepal.This should sound a shrill warning for projects across the border in...

How the South China Sea Could help Beijing Level the Nuclear Playing Field

Will Englund
Washington Post
China bases its nuclear submarines, including the four equipped to launch ballistic missiles, on Hainan Island.

Two Way Street

05.12.15

We Need to Stay Coolheaded

Zhu Feng from Two Way Street
In recent years, a noticeable change has occurred in China-U.S. relations. The “problem areas” where the two countries tend to clash are increasing in both number and scope, and there has been a greater degree of hostility in judgments about the...

Pentagon Report: China Deploys MIRV Missile

Hans M. Kristensen
Federation of American Scientists
For China to join the MIRV club strains China’s claim of having a minimum nuclear deterrent.

Obama’s Quiet Nuclear Deal with China Raises Proliferation Concerns

Steven Mufson
Washington Post
Beijing could buy more U.S.-designed reactors and pursue a facility or the technology to reprocess plutonium. 

China Tilts Towards Liberal Latin American Economies

Lucy Hornby and Andres Schipani
Financial Times
China is promoting a Chinese-built, cross-Andes rail link that would allow Brazilian ore and soya to be shipped from Pacific ports in Peru to Asia.

China, Russia Prepare $2 Billion Agricultural Investment Fund

Chuin-Wei Yap
Wall Street Journal
The fund will develop agricultural projects in the two countries and set up a free-trade zone between their key farming belts.

As Russia Remembers War in Europe, Guest of Honor Is From China

Jane Perlez
New York Times
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is an imperfect symbol of the wartime past and an uncertain one for Russia’s future.

China Issues Guideline for Eco-Friendly Development

Xinhua
Safeguarding the environment lags China’s economic status—limited resources and severe pollution preventing sustainable growth.

China, Pursuing Strategic Interests, Builds Presence in Antarctica - NYTimes.com

Jane Perlez
New York Times
China, Pursuing Strategic Interests, Builds Presence in Antarctica http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/world/asia/china-pursuing-strategic-interests-builds-presence-in-antarctica.html?hpw&rref=world&action=click&pgtype=Homepage...

Ask The Vietnamese About War, And They Think China, Not The U.S.

Michael Sullivan
NPR
Vietnam's brief but bloody border war with China in 1979 left more than 50,000 dead.

Books

04.30.15

Fantasy Islands

Julie Sze
The rise of China and its status as a leading global factory are altering the way people live and consume. At the same time, the world appears wary of the real costs involved. Fantasy Islands probes Chinese, European, and American eco-desire and eco-technological dreams, and examines the solutions they offer to environmental degradation in this age of global economic change.Uncovering the stories of sites in China, including the plan for a new eco-city called Dongtan on the island of Chongming, mega-suburbs, and the Shanghai World Expo, Julie Sze explores the flows, fears, and fantasies of Pacific Rim politics that shaped them. She charts how climate change discussions align with U.S. fears of China’s ascendancy and the related demise of the American Century, and she considers the motives of financial and political capital for eco-city and ecological development supported by elite power structures in the U.K. and China. Fantasy Islands shows how ineffectual these efforts are while challenging us to see what a true eco-city would be. —University of California Press{chop}

Environment

04.24.15

Fracking May be Needed in China to Wean it Off Coal

from chinadialogue
Fracking of China’s huge shale gas reserves will only have a modest impact on the environment if anti-pollution controls—many of them new—are enforced rigorously, says a new report from the U.K.-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI).The ODI...

Conversation

04.23.15

A New Era for China and Pakistan?

Andrew Small, Paul J. Smith & more
This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad and showered Pakistan with attention and promises of $46 billion in development support. What does this intensified Sino-Pakistani engagement mean for Asia and the rest of the world? —The...

Cities in China’s North Resist Tapping Water Piped From South

Te-ping Chen
Wall Street Journal
Huge project transferring water from Yangtze River to drier regions runs into budgetary constraints.

China’s Big Plunge in Pakistan

The Editorial Board
New York Times
 If China can advance a stable Pakistan through development programs, the whole region would benefit.

China Warns North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal is Expanding

Agence France Presse
Agence France-Presse
China's communist ally may already have 20 warheads and the enrichment capacity to double that number in a year.

China’s Investing $46 B to Carve Route Through one of World’s Most Dangerous Regions

Lily Kuo
Quartz
Xi visiing Pakistan to sign energy and infrastructure deals for a corridor stretching to Xinjiang.

Reports

04.15.15

Towards A Water & Energy Secure China

Debra Tan, Feng Hu, Hubert Thieriot, Dawn McGregor
China Water Risk
China’s waterscape is changing. Water risks in China, be they physical, economic or regulatory, have great social-economic impacts and are well recognized, especially those in China’s water-energy nexus. Today, 93 percent of power generation in...

Can the US and China Save the World?

Shannon Tiezzi
Diplomat
The Department of Commerce emphasized Obama's commitment to fighting climate change through clean energy development.

Petrobras Deepens China Tie With $3.5 Billion Loan Deal

Juan Pablo Spinetto
Bloomberg
The world’s most indebted oil producer bolsters ties to China as corruption scandal shuts it out of international bond markets.

Reports

04.01.15

Can Fracking Green China’s Growth?

Ilmi Granoff, Sam Pickard, Julian Doczi, Roger Calow, Zhenbo Hou, & Vanessa D’Alançon
Overseas Development Institute
This paper analyses the best available technical, scientific, and engineering literature on the risks and opportunities posed by shale gas, and also what policy environment could maximise the opportunity and minimise the risk. It also analyses China...

Car-Hire Services Compete for the Ride Stuff

Qin Min and Wang XInci
Uber's deal with a car broker is a sign of growing competition among firms relying on car-hire and taxi-hailing apps.

Seeing Through the Smog

Wenjuan Zhang
China Open Research Network
Potential impacts of the documentary Under the Domes on China’s Civic Participation.

Coal Boomtowns Fade as China Declares War on Pollution

Science
China is headed towards peak coal which means cities reliant on coal mining struggle.

Environment

03.19.15

World Coal Investments Increasingly Risky, Especially China’s

from chinadialogue
The investment case for coal-fired power is looking increasingly unconvincing, but more plants will need to be cancelled if the world is to avoid runaway climate change, a report published on Monday said.The report which was co-authored by green...

Party Investigates CNPC Executive Once Seen as Company’s Next Leader

Liao Yongyuan, who oversaw gas pipeline project crossing country, becomes target of inquiry by party graft-buster.

India Should Play Bigger Role in South China Sea, Says Singapore

Sharon Chen
Bloomberg
India’s involvement in the region could give Southeast Asian nations a further buffer against China.

China Carbon Emissions Decline as 2014 Global CO2 Stays Flat

Reed Landberg
Bloomberg
New data from the International Energy Agency a sign that efforts to control pollution are gaining traction.

The Spy Cables: Chinese Espionage in Africa

Eric Olander & Cobus van Staden
Buried in the trove of secret intelligence documents known as “The Spy Cables” obtained by Al Jazeera and The Guardian is a passing reference to allegations Chinese spies broke into a South African nuclear facility in 2007. Interestingly, this was...

Environment

03.04.15

Clearing Skies

Adam Minter from Sierra Club
After dark is when the pollution arrives on the outskirts of Shanghai. On a bright night, when moonlight refracts through the smog, you can see black clouds of soot pouring out of small workshop smokestacks silhouetted against the sky. In case you...

Reports

03.04.15

A Vital Partnership

Asia Society
As the two largest global emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States share the challenge of transforming each of their current fossil fuel–based energy systems into clean twenty-first-century energy systems that remain cornerstones of...