Amnesty Internation Annual Report—China 

on May 23, 2012

Amnesty International surveys the landscape of human rights in China during 2011 and finds that China’s economic strength during the global financial crisis increased the country’s leverage in the domain of global human rights—mostly for the worse. Fearful of a protest movement inspired by events in the Middle East and North Africa, in February the authorities unleashed one of the harshest crackdowns on political activists, human rights defenders, and online activists since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Harassment, intimidation, arbitrary and illegal detention, and enforced disappearances intensified against government critics. Ethnic minority regions were under heightened security as local residents protested against discrimination, repression, and other violations of their rights. The authorities increased ongoing efforts to bring all religious practice within the control of the state; this included harsh persecution of some religious practitioners.

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Amnesty International

Arthur Kroeber: Bear in a China Shop

By Arthur Kroeber on May 22, 2012

Time and again, China has defied the skeptics who claimed its unique mixed model -- an ever-more market-driven economy dominated by an authoritarian Communist Party and behemoth state-owned enterprises -- could not possibly endure. Today, those voices are louder than ever. Michael Pettis, a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management and one of the most persistent and well-regarded skeptics, predicted in March that China's economic growth rate "will average not much more than 3% annually over the rest of the decade." Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, warned last year that China is nearing a wall hit by many high-speed economies when growth slows or stops altogether -- the so-called "middle-income trap."

Economy

Every Nation for Itself

By Ian Bremmer on May 22, 2012

Forget the G-7 and the G-20; we are entering a leaderless "G- Zero" era—with profound implications for every country and corporation. The world power structure is facing a vacuum at the top. With the unifying urgency of the financial crisis behind us, the diverse political and economic values of the G-20 are curtailing the world's most powerful governments' ability to mediate growing global challenges. There is no viable alternative group to take its place. The United States lacks the resources and the political will to continue as the primary provider of global public goods. China has no interest in accepting the burdens of international leadership. Europe is occupied with saving the eurozone, and Japan is tied down with its own problems. Emerging powers such as Brazil, India, and Russia are too focused on domestic development to welcome new responsibilities abroad. The result is a G-Zero world in which no single country or bloc has the political or economic leverage-or the desire-to drive a truly international agenda. Ian Bremmer explains how this will lead to extended and intensified conflict over vitally important issues, such as international economic coordination, financial regulatory reform, trade policy, and climate change. We are facing a time of profound uncertainty. Bremmer shows who will benefit, who will suffer, and why this increased state of conflict is both inevitable and unsustainable. —Penguin Books Limited

Book Review: 

Evan Osnos, The New Yorker (May 17, 2012)
Alexander Heffner, USA Today (May 15, 2012)
G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs (May/June 2012)
Scott Horton, Harpers (May 5, 2012)

Why a Chinese Company Wants to Own Your Local Movie Theater

By Jordan Weissman on May 22, 2012

Assuming the deal gets a pass from government regulators, there's good chance that your local movie theater will soon be owned by a large, Chinese conglomerate. This weekend, Dalian Wanda Group announced that it would pay $2.6 billion to purchase AMC Entertainment, America's second largest cinema chain. It would be the most expensive foreign takeover yet by a private Chinese company, a summer blockbuster for the M&A world.

Netizens: 'Power of Weibo,' Not the Law, Saved Wu Ying's LIfe

By David Wertime on May 22, 2012

Ms. Wu, once among the richest women in China, was sentenced to death in January by a provincial court for illegally accumulating over RMB380 million, or about US$60 million, through a combination of loansharking and Ponzi schemes directed at (mostly wealthy) individuals and families. Wu then enjoyed a tidal wave of citizen and netizen discontent over her seemingly tainted sentence, as netizens surged forth to demand the ruling be struck down. At the time, they evinced a palpable sense that, somehow, their opinions could save her

Law, Politics, Society

Too Much "Negative" News, Or Too Little?

By David Bandurski on May 22, 2012

Late last week we wrote about the latest hardline editorial in the Beijing Daily, the official “mouthpiece” of the city-level Party leadership in Beijing, an ideological attack on the concept of “freedom of speech” that singled out “certain commercial newspapers and magazines” in China for exaggerating social and political problems in the country. Over the past few days, the Beijing Daily editorial has sparked a small-scale debate in China’s media about the role of the press. Here we include a translation of one of the more interesting responses, this one a letter written in to Southern Metropolis Daily — no doubt one of the papers Beijing Daily had in mind as a regular trouble-maker.

Society

China Top Source of Counterfeit U.S. Military Electronics

By Tony Capaccio on May 22, 2012

China’s government has failed to curb manufacturing of counterfeit military electronic parts by Chinese companies that are the “dominant source” of fakes in the U.S. defense supply chain, a Senate investigation found. The U.S. Air Force suspended in January a Shenzhen, China- based company from supplying parts to U.S. contractors after it sold about 84,000 suspect components, many of them installed on U.S. aircraft, according to an example cited in the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee report released yesterday.

Military

Businessweek

on May 22, 2012

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