Four years after China's growth helped lead the global economy out of a recession and won the admiration of luminaries from billionaire George Soros to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the nation’s stock market has lost more money for investors than any other in the world.
The detention by Chinese authorities of a British corporate investigator and his American wife in the wake of a corruption probe into pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has had a chilling effect on other risk consultants working in China.
“Japan, of course, wants to have it both ways; it wants to share in the dividends from China’s economic growth, while maintaining a hardline stance in its relations with China,” Xing wrote. “It is therefore extremely unlikely that there will be any detente in bilateral relations during Abe’s term in office. Sino-Japanese relations face a grim test in the coming years.”
With some 6.99 million fresh graduates, 2013 is said to be the toughest year for China’s new graduates to land a job. But job hunting isn’t a concern for design-majored Chen and his girlfriend Du. The young couple, who just rented 1.5 acres of land and started their own organic farm.
Disgraced Chinese leader Bo Xilai has agreed to plead guilty at a trial likely to be held within weeks, three sources said, in an apparent bid to earn a more lenient sentence and allow authorities to close the door on the country's biggest political scandal in decades.
Wang Lin, an exponent of the ancient Chinese practice of qigong, claims he has used his powers to cure cancer and has performed other mysterious feats, like conjuring snakes out of thin air. But none of his abilities were enough to ward off the fury of the Communist Party, which has accused him of using superstition to draw in gullible citizens and officials.
The plant in question is Spartina alterniflora, or cordgrass. In 1979, the plant was introduced to China because its roots can trap sediment, making it ideal for erosion control and land reclamation. Since then, the weed has spread rapidly across China's coastal regions, covering some 400,000 hectares.
During the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Chinese men and women crossed the Pacific to work, trade, and settle in California. Drawn by the gold rush, they brought with them skills and goods and a view of the world that, though still Chinese, was transformed by their long journeys back and forth. They in turn transformed Hong Kong, their main point of embarkation, from a struggling, infant colony into a prosperous, international port and the cultural center of a far-ranging Chinese diaspora.
Making use of extensive research in archives around the world, Pacific Crossing charts the rise of Chinese Gold Mountain firms engaged in all kinds of trans-Pacific trade, especially the lucrative export of prepared opium and other luxury goods. Challenging the traditional view that this migration was primarily a “coolie trade,” Elizabeth Sinn uncovers leadership and agency among the many Chinese who made the crossing. In presenting Hong Kong as an “in-between place” of repeated journeys and continuous movement, Sinn also offers a fresh view of the British colony and a new paradigm for migration studies. —Hong Kong University Press
Jason Wordie, South China Morning Post (March 17, 2013)
Stephen Maire, Asian Review of Books (June 25, 2013)
The figure is based on the assumption that 25 million people a year settle in cities, with the government spending the money on making sure they enjoy the same benefits in healthcare, housing and schools that city residents have, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.
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