China’s Hou Yifan, age 19, is currently playing against Ukraine’s Anna Ushenina, 28, for the title of world female chess champion. Each player earns one point for a victory and a half-point for a draw, and, after four games, Ms. Hou leads 3 to 1, in a match to 5 1/2 points.
This plan represents the most concrete response yet by the Communist Party and the government to growing criticism over allowing the country’s air, soil and water to degrade to abysmal levels because of corruption and unchecked economic growth.
A run-down of some of Sina Weibo’s most followed figures, complete with background information, a sampling of posts, and the type of content you ought to expect from them, from irreverant property developers to optimistic high-tech investors.
While Western media loves to trumpet its successes in China, with the strong showing of Hollywood blockbusters, it’s clear that China audiences aren’t just sitting and waiting for the next Hollywood blockbuster.
To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals in China’s factory farms get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people.
Stanley Rosen:
Wang Jianlin, who personally doesn’t know much about film, made a splash when he purchased America’s No. 2 movie theater chain AMC at a price many thought far too high for what he was getting. A number of knowledgeable people felt that the money could have been put to better use by investing in the fast-growing China market rather than the flat North American market.
Recent findings by China Society of Economic Reform (CSER) have offered a rare glimpse into growing income inequality in the country.
The study shows that in 2011 unidentified “gray income,” or the difference between CSER-surveyed income and that of the official household survey, totaled 6.2 trillion yuan, or 12 percent of GDP. The richest 10 percent of families had an annual income that was twenty-one times the lowest 10 percent, much higher than the official estimate of 8.6 percent.
Over the last decade, predicting the future of global energy markets has centered more or less on what people thought China was going to do. Analysts and researchers have since assumed that Chinese coal demand is insatiable and will continue along this trend. This viewpoint has, consequently, underpinned the future pricing assumptions of the market and justified capital expenditure on bringing more production on-stream.
Joining Kaiser and Jeremy this week are David Wertime and Rachel Lu from Tea Leaf Nation, along with Paul Mozur from The Wall Street Journal. And our topic? None other than the firestorm that has engulfed Sina Weibo following China’s effective criminalization of anti-government tweeting on September 9, and then the political crackdown that followed this week targeting the more rabble-rousing of celebrity microbloggers on China’s most popular public messaging service.
Apple stands to gain sales in China more than any other market from the cheaper offering thanks to the country’s huge number of low- and middle-income smartphone users. But in China the new iPhone quite frankly won’t be all that cheap.
