Heatwaves could turn parts of India and Pakistan uninhabitable by the end of the century
Catastrophic heatwaves triggered by climate change could render parts of south Asia uninhabitable by the end of the century, potentially upending the lives of millions of people across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.
Recent climate change simulations show that the wet-bulb temperature—a combined measure of humidity and temperature—in some parts of the region could exceed what humans can deal with. The human body cannot effectively cool itself beyond a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degree Celsius (°C), which is, therefore, considered the upper limit of survivability. But the research suggests that areas in the Chota Nagpur Plateau, northeastern India, and Bangladesh could breach that mark if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the century, endangering approximately 4% of south Asia’s population by 2100.
Even a more optimistic projection, of emissions peaking around 2040 and subsequently declining, would mean that vast tracts of south Asia, including India’s Gangetic plains and the Indus Valley in Pakistan, will still remain dangerous for human habitation. Although wet-bulb temperature won’t exceed 35°C anywhere under these circumstances, around 55% of the region’s population could have to deal with more than 31°C, considered harmful for the human body.
“The geographical locations of the most extreme projected heatwaves in the Indus and Ganges river valleys coincide largely with locations of highly vulnerable human populations in terms of population density, gross domestic product per capita, and agricultural intensity,” scientists Elfatih Eltahir, Eun Soon Im, and Jeremy Pal wrote in a recent Science Advances journal article.
Moreover, the simulations indicate that the current 25-year maximum wet-bulb temperature could repeat itself annually if greenhouse emissions continue unabated. And if these emissions max out by 2040 and then subside, the maximum temperature would repeat every two years. Already, heatwaves in India are proving deadly. In 2015, for instance, a severe heatwave killed at least 2,300 people across the country, with temperatures reaching 47.6°C.
“In the absence of serious mitigation, some of the most severe hazards associated with climate change will fall on some of the most vulnerable populations,” the article noted. “In poorer regions, such as south Asia, air conditioning is not currently available as a safe haven to most of the population, increasing the risk of illness and death related to extreme heat conditions.”
Last month, a study by University of California, Berkeley, researcher Tamma A Carleton estimated that 59,000 Indian farmers had committed suicide over the last three decades because rising temperatures had impacted crop yields. On days warmer than 20°C, even a 1°C increase in temperature could cause 67 additional suicides nationwide on an average, the study found.
“This analysis of India, where one fifth of the world’s suicides occur, demonstrates that the climate, particularly temperature, has strong influence over a growing suicide epidemic,” Carleton wrote in a paper (pdf) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Driven by strong economic and population growth, India’s greenhouse gas emissions have steadily risen in recent decades, although the per capita emissions remain low. But if Asia’s third-largest economy continues on the same trajectory in its effort to lift millions out of poverty, these vulnerable populations also risk facing the worst impact of climate change and rising temperatures.
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topsto ... ailsignout
ASIA
Seeking Greater Global Power, China Looks to Robots and Microchips
BEIJING — In Chinese schools, students learn that the United States became a great nation partly by stealing technology from Britain. In the halls of government, officials speak of the need to inspire innovation by protecting inventions. In boardrooms, executives strategize about using infringement laws to fell foreign rivals.
China is often portrayed as a land of fake gadgets and pirated software, where intellectual property like patents, trademarks and copyrights are routinely ignored. The reality is more complex.
China takes conflicting positions on intellectual property, ignoring it in some cases while upholding it in others. Underlying those contradictions is a long-held view of intellectual property not as a rigid legal principle but as a tool to meet the country’s goals.
Those goals are getting more ambitious. China is now gathering know-how in industries of the future like microchips and electric cars, often by pushing foreign companies attracted by the country’s vast market into sharing their technology. It is also toughening enforcement of patents and trademarks for a day when it can become a leader in those technologies — and use intellectual property protections to defend its position against rival economies.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/worl ... d=45305309
BEIJING — In Chinese schools, students learn that the United States became a great nation partly by stealing technology from Britain. In the halls of government, officials speak of the need to inspire innovation by protecting inventions. In boardrooms, executives strategize about using infringement laws to fell foreign rivals.
China is often portrayed as a land of fake gadgets and pirated software, where intellectual property like patents, trademarks and copyrights are routinely ignored. The reality is more complex.
China takes conflicting positions on intellectual property, ignoring it in some cases while upholding it in others. Underlying those contradictions is a long-held view of intellectual property not as a rigid legal principle but as a tool to meet the country’s goals.
Those goals are getting more ambitious. China is now gathering know-how in industries of the future like microchips and electric cars, often by pushing foreign companies attracted by the country’s vast market into sharing their technology. It is also toughening enforcement of patents and trademarks for a day when it can become a leader in those technologies — and use intellectual property protections to defend its position against rival economies.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/worl ... d=45305309
China announces plans for ‘flying train’ that can travel up to 2,500mph
The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) has claimed it plans to develop the next generation of trains, which can travel at speeds of up to 2,500mph.
Liu Shiquan, a deputy general manager at CASC, said their scientists would be looking to develop the super-fast trains of the future that could “fly on the ground”.
“The corporation has built rich experience and accumulated technological know-how through major projects, and it has the capabilities in simulation, modelling and experimentation for large-scale projects, as well as the world-class design capability for supersonic aircraft, all of which lay the important ground for the super-fast train project,” state-owned website The Paper wrote of CASC’s plans.
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http://www.msn.com/en-ca/travel/news/ch ... ailsignout
The state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) has claimed it plans to develop the next generation of trains, which can travel at speeds of up to 2,500mph.
Liu Shiquan, a deputy general manager at CASC, said their scientists would be looking to develop the super-fast trains of the future that could “fly on the ground”.
“The corporation has built rich experience and accumulated technological know-how through major projects, and it has the capabilities in simulation, modelling and experimentation for large-scale projects, as well as the world-class design capability for supersonic aircraft, all of which lay the important ground for the super-fast train project,” state-owned website The Paper wrote of CASC’s plans.
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http://www.msn.com/en-ca/travel/news/ch ... ailsignout
How China is battling ever more intensely in world markets
IF DONALD TRUMP had slapped punitive tariffs on all Chinese exports to America, as he promised, he would have started a trade war. Fortunately, the president hesitated, partly because he wants China’s help in thwarting North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. But that is not the end of the story. Tensions over China’s industrial might now threaten the architecture of the global economy. America’s trade representative this week called China an “unprecedented” threat that cannot be tamed by existing trade rules. The European Union, worried by a spate of Chinese acquisitions, is drafting stricter rules on foreign investment. And, all the while, China’s strategy for modernising its economy is adding further strain.
At the heart of these tensions is one simple, overwhelming fact: firms around the world face ever more intense competition from their Chinese rivals. China is not the first country to industrialise, but none has ever made the leap so rapidly and on such a monumental scale. Little more than a decade ago Chinese boom towns churned out zips, socks and cigarette lighters. Today the country is at the global frontier of new technology in everything from mobile payments to driverless cars.
Even as China’s achievements inspire awe, there is growing concern that the world will be dominated by an economy that does not play fair. Businesses feel threatened. Governments that have seen Brexit and the election of Mr Trump, worry about the effects of job losses and shrinking technological leadership. Yet if the outcome is to be good, they must all think clearly about the real nature of China’s challenge.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/66094/n
IF DONALD TRUMP had slapped punitive tariffs on all Chinese exports to America, as he promised, he would have started a trade war. Fortunately, the president hesitated, partly because he wants China’s help in thwarting North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. But that is not the end of the story. Tensions over China’s industrial might now threaten the architecture of the global economy. America’s trade representative this week called China an “unprecedented” threat that cannot be tamed by existing trade rules. The European Union, worried by a spate of Chinese acquisitions, is drafting stricter rules on foreign investment. And, all the while, China’s strategy for modernising its economy is adding further strain.
At the heart of these tensions is one simple, overwhelming fact: firms around the world face ever more intense competition from their Chinese rivals. China is not the first country to industrialise, but none has ever made the leap so rapidly and on such a monumental scale. Little more than a decade ago Chinese boom towns churned out zips, socks and cigarette lighters. Today the country is at the global frontier of new technology in everything from mobile payments to driverless cars.
Even as China’s achievements inspire awe, there is growing concern that the world will be dominated by an economy that does not play fair. Businesses feel threatened. Governments that have seen Brexit and the election of Mr Trump, worry about the effects of job losses and shrinking technological leadership. Yet if the outcome is to be good, they must all think clearly about the real nature of China’s challenge.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/ ... na/66094/n
Why it is so hard to fix India’s sanitation?
One in ten deaths in the country is linked to poor hygiene standards
INDIA vies with China to be the world’s fastest-growing large economy, but its record on basic sanitation is dreadful. Around 450m people relieve themselves in playgrounds, behind trees, by roadsides, and on railway tracks and river banks. In cities 157m urban dwellers, more than the population of Russia, lack decent toilet facilities. Much of the solid waste is emptied into rivers, lakes and ponds untreated. The World Bank links one in ten deaths in India to poor sanitation. From contaminated groundwater children pick up chronic infections that impair their bodies’ ability to absorb nutrients. Almost 44m children under five, says the bank, have stunted growth, and every year over 300,000 die from diarrheal diseases. What can India do to change this grim reality?
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https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... lydispatch
One in ten deaths in the country is linked to poor hygiene standards
INDIA vies with China to be the world’s fastest-growing large economy, but its record on basic sanitation is dreadful. Around 450m people relieve themselves in playgrounds, behind trees, by roadsides, and on railway tracks and river banks. In cities 157m urban dwellers, more than the population of Russia, lack decent toilet facilities. Much of the solid waste is emptied into rivers, lakes and ponds untreated. The World Bank links one in ten deaths in India to poor sanitation. From contaminated groundwater children pick up chronic infections that impair their bodies’ ability to absorb nutrients. Almost 44m children under five, says the bank, have stunted growth, and every year over 300,000 die from diarrheal diseases. What can India do to change this grim reality?
More...
https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... lydispatch
Forget Trump and Discover the World
Excerpt:
To inoculate myself against Trump eating my brain, I occasionally get as far away as I can. This time it was to India, where I learned a ton that I didn’t know: I found India trying to leapfrog out of poverty and catch up to China by engaging in a rapid digitization of its entire economy and power grid.
Yes, while our president has been busy playing golf, tweeting about LaVar Ball and pushing an anything-that-will-pass tax plan, China has been busy creating a cashless society, where people can pay for so many things now with just a swipe of their cellphones — including donations to beggars — or even buy stuff at vending machines with just facial recognition, and India is trying to follow suit.
These are big trends, and in a world where data is the new oil, China and India are each creating giant pools of digitized data that their innovators are using to write all kinds of interoperable applications — for cheap new forms of education, medical insurance, entertainment, banking and finance.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opin ... d=45305309
Excerpt:
To inoculate myself against Trump eating my brain, I occasionally get as far away as I can. This time it was to India, where I learned a ton that I didn’t know: I found India trying to leapfrog out of poverty and catch up to China by engaging in a rapid digitization of its entire economy and power grid.
Yes, while our president has been busy playing golf, tweeting about LaVar Ball and pushing an anything-that-will-pass tax plan, China has been busy creating a cashless society, where people can pay for so many things now with just a swipe of their cellphones — including donations to beggars — or even buy stuff at vending machines with just facial recognition, and India is trying to follow suit.
These are big trends, and in a world where data is the new oil, China and India are each creating giant pools of digitized data that their innovators are using to write all kinds of interoperable applications — for cheap new forms of education, medical insurance, entertainment, banking and finance.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opin ... d=45305309
China’s Ambitious New ‘Port’: Landlocked Kazakhstan
KHORGOS, Kazakhstan — China’s largest shipping company has poured billions of dollars into buying seaports in Greece and other maritime nations around the world. But the location of its latest big foreign investment has given a curious twist to the expanding ambitions of the China Ocean Shipping Company: The nearest ocean is more than 1,600 miles away.
The state-owned Chinese shipping giant, known as COSCO, became the 49 percent owner this past summer of a patch of frost-covered asphalt bisected by railway tracks and lined with warehouses in landlocked Kazakhstan. The barren wilderness close to the border with China stands near the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility, meaning that nowhere on the landmass of Europe and Asia is more distant from the sea.
But it is here, where huge, Chinese-made cranes load containers onto trains instead of ships, that China and Kazakhstan are embracing what they see as the new frontier of global commerce.
Forbidding as it is, the place is a central link in what President Xi Jinping of China trumpets as the “project of the century” — a $1 trillion infrastructure program known as “One Belt, One Road,” which aims to revive the ancient Silk Road and build up other trading routes between Asia and Europe to pump Chinese products to foreign markets.
The gamble is not only reshuffling global transport routes, but also shaking up Kazakh and global politics as China inserts itself deeper into a region that Russia considers squarely within its area of influence. Not least, it is testing the economic logic of China’s ability to carry out its grandest of ambitions.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/worl ... d=45305309
KHORGOS, Kazakhstan — China’s largest shipping company has poured billions of dollars into buying seaports in Greece and other maritime nations around the world. But the location of its latest big foreign investment has given a curious twist to the expanding ambitions of the China Ocean Shipping Company: The nearest ocean is more than 1,600 miles away.
The state-owned Chinese shipping giant, known as COSCO, became the 49 percent owner this past summer of a patch of frost-covered asphalt bisected by railway tracks and lined with warehouses in landlocked Kazakhstan. The barren wilderness close to the border with China stands near the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility, meaning that nowhere on the landmass of Europe and Asia is more distant from the sea.
But it is here, where huge, Chinese-made cranes load containers onto trains instead of ships, that China and Kazakhstan are embracing what they see as the new frontier of global commerce.
Forbidding as it is, the place is a central link in what President Xi Jinping of China trumpets as the “project of the century” — a $1 trillion infrastructure program known as “One Belt, One Road,” which aims to revive the ancient Silk Road and build up other trading routes between Asia and Europe to pump Chinese products to foreign markets.
The gamble is not only reshuffling global transport routes, but also shaking up Kazakh and global politics as China inserts itself deeper into a region that Russia considers squarely within its area of influence. Not least, it is testing the economic logic of China’s ability to carry out its grandest of ambitions.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/worl ... d=45305309
China completes world’s longest sea bridge
China said it has completed the major work of the world’s longest sea bridge on schedule, after its lighting system was installed and tested.
It took six years preparation, and eight years to build the 55-kilometre-long bridge linking Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao.
Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/01/chi ... ea-bridge/
China said it has completed the major work of the world’s longest sea bridge on schedule, after its lighting system was installed and tested.
It took six years preparation, and eight years to build the 55-kilometre-long bridge linking Hong Kong, Zhuhai and Macao.
Read more at: https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/01/chi ... ea-bridge/
Hainan aims high
China’s ambitions in space are growing
America is keeping its distance
https://www.economist.com/news/china/21 ... na/92998/n
China’s ambitions in space are growing
America is keeping its distance
https://www.economist.com/news/china/21 ... na/92998/n
Why India’s Big Fix Is a Big Flub
NEW DELHI — Aadhaar, India’s grand program to provide a unique 12-digit identification number to each of its 1.3 billion residents, appears to be collapsing under its own ambitions.
When it was set up by the Congress Party-led government in 2009, it was touted as a voluntary biometric ID system that would ensure the smooth delivery of public services — notably welfare benefits and subsidized food for the poor — while limiting the risk of fraud.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, then the main opposition party, was among the project’s fiercest critics at first, calling it too costly and a “political gimmick.” But after it came to power, in May 2014, the B.J.P. went further than Congress had ever dreamed of: Since then, it has made Aadhaar mandatory for accessing numerous public services, as well as for some private transactions.
So far, Aadhaar — “the foundation” in Hindi — seems to have helped neither with welfare nor against corruption, all the while creating new problems, including by exposing people’s personal data to theft or predation by the private sector.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court began hearings in a long-running collective case challenging the program’s constitutionality. In their opening statement, the petitioners argued that Aadhaar, if fully implemented, would “reduce citizens to servitude,” since not having an Aadhaar number — that “electronic leash” — in effect meant “civil death.”
Continue reading the main story
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Continue reading the main story
On the one hand, having an Aadhaar number does not in itself guarantee access to India’s welfare benefits — among the least generous in the world. On the other, the need to have one and to link it to one’s various accounts and benefits has prevented some Indians from obtaining state assistance.
Several Indian states require people to enlist in Aadhaar before they can claim rice or wheat at subsidized prices under the Public Distribution System, an important source of food security in the country’s poorer areas. Among them is the eastern state of Jharkhand, where only about 7 percent of residents aged 6 to 23 get an adequate diet. In September, an 11-year-old girl there died of hunger after her family was struck off the beneficiaries registry because it had failed to link its ration card to an Aadhaar number. (The government has contested this account, claiming the girl died of malaria.) A half-dozen other Indians are reported to have died because of similar reasons.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opin ... d=45305309
NEW DELHI — Aadhaar, India’s grand program to provide a unique 12-digit identification number to each of its 1.3 billion residents, appears to be collapsing under its own ambitions.
When it was set up by the Congress Party-led government in 2009, it was touted as a voluntary biometric ID system that would ensure the smooth delivery of public services — notably welfare benefits and subsidized food for the poor — while limiting the risk of fraud.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, then the main opposition party, was among the project’s fiercest critics at first, calling it too costly and a “political gimmick.” But after it came to power, in May 2014, the B.J.P. went further than Congress had ever dreamed of: Since then, it has made Aadhaar mandatory for accessing numerous public services, as well as for some private transactions.
So far, Aadhaar — “the foundation” in Hindi — seems to have helped neither with welfare nor against corruption, all the while creating new problems, including by exposing people’s personal data to theft or predation by the private sector.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court began hearings in a long-running collective case challenging the program’s constitutionality. In their opening statement, the petitioners argued that Aadhaar, if fully implemented, would “reduce citizens to servitude,” since not having an Aadhaar number — that “electronic leash” — in effect meant “civil death.”
Continue reading the main story
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
On the one hand, having an Aadhaar number does not in itself guarantee access to India’s welfare benefits — among the least generous in the world. On the other, the need to have one and to link it to one’s various accounts and benefits has prevented some Indians from obtaining state assistance.
Several Indian states require people to enlist in Aadhaar before they can claim rice or wheat at subsidized prices under the Public Distribution System, an important source of food security in the country’s poorer areas. Among them is the eastern state of Jharkhand, where only about 7 percent of residents aged 6 to 23 get an adequate diet. In September, an 11-year-old girl there died of hunger after her family was struck off the beneficiaries registry because it had failed to link its ration card to an Aadhaar number. (The government has contested this account, claiming the girl died of malaria.) A half-dozen other Indians are reported to have died because of similar reasons.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opin ... d=45305309
India Wants to Give Half a Billion People Free Health Care
NEW DELHI — India announced on Thursday a sweeping plan to give half a billion poor Indians free access to health care, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to address rising demands for greater economic and social protections before national elections next year.
The move is sure to be popular in a country where most people have no health insurance and the per capita income is a few dollars a day. Although India’s overall economy is growing, Mr. Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party have been trying to find ways to court the population left behind.
“In poor people’s lives, one big worry is how to treat illness,” Mr. Modi tweeted in Hindi after the plan was announced. The new program, he said, “will free poor people from this big worry.”
The health care plan, part of the government’s 2018-19 budget presented on Thursday, would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India. Officials did not outline eligibility requirements, and many details of the program have yet to be finalized.
India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said in a speech to Parliament that the plan would cover more people than any other government-funded health care program in the world. In addition to the direct health benefits, he said, the program would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/busi ... d=45305309
NEW DELHI — India announced on Thursday a sweeping plan to give half a billion poor Indians free access to health care, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to address rising demands for greater economic and social protections before national elections next year.
The move is sure to be popular in a country where most people have no health insurance and the per capita income is a few dollars a day. Although India’s overall economy is growing, Mr. Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party have been trying to find ways to court the population left behind.
“In poor people’s lives, one big worry is how to treat illness,” Mr. Modi tweeted in Hindi after the plan was announced. The new program, he said, “will free poor people from this big worry.”
The health care plan, part of the government’s 2018-19 budget presented on Thursday, would offer 100 million families up to 500,000 rupees, or about $7,860, of coverage each year. That sum, while small by Western standards, would be enough to cover the equivalent of five heart surgeries in India. Officials did not outline eligibility requirements, and many details of the program have yet to be finalized.
India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said in a speech to Parliament that the plan would cover more people than any other government-funded health care program in the world. In addition to the direct health benefits, he said, the program would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/busi ... d=45305309
The Orphans of China’s Economic Miracle
Excerpt:
In the last three decades, 280 million Chinese people have left their villages for the booming cities in search of work, making up the greatest wave of migration in human history. But while seeking a better long-term future for their families through more lucrative employment, millions of these migrants left their children behind in the villages — sometimes to live with family members, sometimes to fend for themselves.
Reliable data are always hard to come by in China. According to a 2013 report from the All-China Women’s Federation, 30 million children — more than 10 percent all children in China — were living in the countryside without their parents, often in the care of relatives. A 2016 government report said that at least 360,000 of the children were left totally alone, with no family members to take care of them.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opin ... dline&te=1
Excerpt:
In the last three decades, 280 million Chinese people have left their villages for the booming cities in search of work, making up the greatest wave of migration in human history. But while seeking a better long-term future for their families through more lucrative employment, millions of these migrants left their children behind in the villages — sometimes to live with family members, sometimes to fend for themselves.
Reliable data are always hard to come by in China. According to a 2013 report from the All-China Women’s Federation, 30 million children — more than 10 percent all children in China — were living in the countryside without their parents, often in the care of relatives. A 2016 government report said that at least 360,000 of the children were left totally alone, with no family members to take care of them.
More..
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opin ... dline&te=1
The bitter generation
In China’s cities, young people with rural ties are angry
They are one of the biggest threats to the country’s social stability
Excerpts:
After 1978, when Deng Xiaoping started to open up the economy, huge numbers of farmers began flocking to fill new labour-intensive jobs, first in towns and later in cities. Their cumulative numbers reached 280m in 2017 (the rate of growth is now tailing off). In 2010 party documents began referring to a “new generation of migrants”: those born since 1980. Some are offspring of earlier migrants and have lived in cities all their lives. Others have left the countryside in the past decade. This group has more than 90m members.
The two generations are very different. Many of the early migrants were born at a time of mass starvation and were raised during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Their determination to make good in the cities was intensified by childhood memories of poverty and suffering. And if they did not succeed, at least they still had land in the countryside and experience of farming so they could return to scratch a living in the fields.
Aiming high
Members of the younger generation are children of Deng’s reforms. They have never worked the land. A study published in 2009 in the Beijing-based Economic Research Journal said the younger migrants wanted “personal development”, unlike their parents who were focused on more basic needs. The new generation, it concluded rather snobbishly, “is no longer willing to stay in the dirtiest jobs, is not frugal enough to save money to send home and not able to earn enough to build a married life.” Its members are less stoical and unwilling to suffer in silence.
Young migrants share four characteristics that worry the party. Like their parents, they are not well educated. The men face more of a “marriage squeeze” than their fathers did, ie, a shortage of women of marriageable age from similar backgrounds. They similarly earn low wages and face official discrimination as a result of the hukou system that shuts many of them out of subsidised urban services such as education and health care. But they are more dissatisfied and pessimistic than their parents were. Their hopes of carving out a future in big cities are being wrecked by high living costs, demographic change and the hostility of local governments
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/china/21 ... rm=2018053
In China’s cities, young people with rural ties are angry
They are one of the biggest threats to the country’s social stability
Excerpts:
After 1978, when Deng Xiaoping started to open up the economy, huge numbers of farmers began flocking to fill new labour-intensive jobs, first in towns and later in cities. Their cumulative numbers reached 280m in 2017 (the rate of growth is now tailing off). In 2010 party documents began referring to a “new generation of migrants”: those born since 1980. Some are offspring of earlier migrants and have lived in cities all their lives. Others have left the countryside in the past decade. This group has more than 90m members.
The two generations are very different. Many of the early migrants were born at a time of mass starvation and were raised during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Their determination to make good in the cities was intensified by childhood memories of poverty and suffering. And if they did not succeed, at least they still had land in the countryside and experience of farming so they could return to scratch a living in the fields.
Aiming high
Members of the younger generation are children of Deng’s reforms. They have never worked the land. A study published in 2009 in the Beijing-based Economic Research Journal said the younger migrants wanted “personal development”, unlike their parents who were focused on more basic needs. The new generation, it concluded rather snobbishly, “is no longer willing to stay in the dirtiest jobs, is not frugal enough to save money to send home and not able to earn enough to build a married life.” Its members are less stoical and unwilling to suffer in silence.
Young migrants share four characteristics that worry the party. Like their parents, they are not well educated. The men face more of a “marriage squeeze” than their fathers did, ie, a shortage of women of marriageable age from similar backgrounds. They similarly earn low wages and face official discrimination as a result of the hukou system that shuts many of them out of subsidised urban services such as education and health care. But they are more dissatisfied and pessimistic than their parents were. Their hopes of carving out a future in big cities are being wrecked by high living costs, demographic change and the hostility of local governments
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/china/21 ... rm=2018053
Is China a Colonial Power?
In a lesser-known novel, “Claudius Bombarnac,” Jules Verne describes the adventures of the titular foreign correspondent as he rides the “Grand Transasiatic Railway” from the “European frontier” to “the capital of the Celestial Empire.” A cast of international characters, by turns comical, curious and shady, accompanies the French reporter by train from the Caspian Sea to Peking, narrowly escaping bandits and delivering a mysterious cargo.
When first published in 1893, the book was futuristic fiction. There was no continuous rail link across Eurasia. There still isn’t, but 125 years later China now envisions financing and building multiple such overland routes (with much faster trains). That’s for the “belt” portion of what it calls the “One Belt, One Road” initiative: It is also developing a string of new ports, from the South China Sea through the Indian Ocean to Africa and the Mediterranean.
The number and scale of the projects proposed are breathtaking, far surpassing even the imagination of a sci-fi writer. They have stimulated awe and, more often, dark suspicions among many foreign observers.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opin ... 3053090505
In a lesser-known novel, “Claudius Bombarnac,” Jules Verne describes the adventures of the titular foreign correspondent as he rides the “Grand Transasiatic Railway” from the “European frontier” to “the capital of the Celestial Empire.” A cast of international characters, by turns comical, curious and shady, accompanies the French reporter by train from the Caspian Sea to Peking, narrowly escaping bandits and delivering a mysterious cargo.
When first published in 1893, the book was futuristic fiction. There was no continuous rail link across Eurasia. There still isn’t, but 125 years later China now envisions financing and building multiple such overland routes (with much faster trains). That’s for the “belt” portion of what it calls the “One Belt, One Road” initiative: It is also developing a string of new ports, from the South China Sea through the Indian Ocean to Africa and the Mediterranean.
The number and scale of the projects proposed are breathtaking, far surpassing even the imagination of a sci-fi writer. They have stimulated awe and, more often, dark suspicions among many foreign observers.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opin ... 3053090505
I rode China's superfast bullet train that could go from New York to Chicago in 4.5 hours — and it shows how far behind the US really is
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/i ... ut#image=1
- China has the largest high-speed railway in the world, with 15,500 miles of track and most major cities covered by the network.
- I recently took China's fastest "G" train from Beijing to the northwestern city of Xi'an, which cuts an 11-hour journey - roughly the distance between New York and Chicago - to 4.5 hours.
- I found the experience delightful, with relatively cheap tickets, painless security, comfortable seats, air-conditioned cabins, and plenty of legroom.
- It left me thinking about how far behind US infrastructure has become, when most comparable journeys still require expensive and tiring air travel.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/photos/i ... ut#image=1
- China has the largest high-speed railway in the world, with 15,500 miles of track and most major cities covered by the network.
- I recently took China's fastest "G" train from Beijing to the northwestern city of Xi'an, which cuts an 11-hour journey - roughly the distance between New York and Chicago - to 4.5 hours.
- I found the experience delightful, with relatively cheap tickets, painless security, comfortable seats, air-conditioned cabins, and plenty of legroom.
- It left me thinking about how far behind US infrastructure has become, when most comparable journeys still require expensive and tiring air travel.
China’s belt-and-road plans are to be welcomed—and worried about
The “project of the century” may help some economies, but at a political cost
SHUNNING all false modesty, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the “project of the century”. The country’s fawning media hail it as a gift of “Chinese wisdom” to the world’s development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—debate rages.
The term itself is confusing. The “road” refers mostly to a sea route; the “belt” is on land. Countries eager for China’s financing welcome it as a source of investment in infrastructure between China and Europe via the Middle East and Africa. Those who fear China see it instead as a sinister project to create a new world order in which China is the pre-eminent power.
MORE...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/ ... a/138639/n
The “project of the century” may help some economies, but at a political cost
SHUNNING all false modesty, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, calls his idea the “project of the century”. The country’s fawning media hail it as a gift of “Chinese wisdom” to the world’s development. As for the real meaning of the clumsy metaphor to describe it—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—debate rages.
The term itself is confusing. The “road” refers mostly to a sea route; the “belt” is on land. Countries eager for China’s financing welcome it as a source of investment in infrastructure between China and Europe via the Middle East and Africa. Those who fear China see it instead as a sinister project to create a new world order in which China is the pre-eminent power.
MORE...
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/ ... a/138639/n
From a Space Station in Argentina, China Expands Its Reach in Latin America
Our correspondent went to the deserts of Patagonia to examine how China secured its new base, a symbol of its growing clout in the region.
QUINTUCO, Argentina — The giant antenna rises from the desert floor like an apparition, a gleaming metal tower jutting 16 stories above an endless wind-whipped stretch of Patagonia.
The 450-ton device, with its hulking dish embracing the open skies, is the centerpiece of a $50 million satellite and space mission control station built by the Chinese military.
The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come — often in ways that directly undermine the United States’ political, economic and strategic power in the region.
The station began operating in March, playing a pivotal role in China’s audacious expedition to the far side of the moon — an endeavor that Argentine officials say they are elated to support.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/worl ... 3053090729
Our correspondent went to the deserts of Patagonia to examine how China secured its new base, a symbol of its growing clout in the region.
QUINTUCO, Argentina — The giant antenna rises from the desert floor like an apparition, a gleaming metal tower jutting 16 stories above an endless wind-whipped stretch of Patagonia.
The 450-ton device, with its hulking dish embracing the open skies, is the centerpiece of a $50 million satellite and space mission control station built by the Chinese military.
The isolated base is one of the most striking symbols of Beijing’s long push to transform Latin America and shape its future for generations to come — often in ways that directly undermine the United States’ political, economic and strategic power in the region.
The station began operating in March, playing a pivotal role in China’s audacious expedition to the far side of the moon — an endeavor that Argentine officials say they are elated to support.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/worl ... 3053090729
What you need to know about China’s $60 billion offer to Africa
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping offered another $60 billion in financing for Africa on Monday and said Chinese companies will be encouraged to invest no less than $10 billion over the next three years, but he also warned against “vanity projects”.
Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders, Xi promised development that people on the continent could see and touch, but that would also be green and sustainable.
China has denied engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy, and Xi’s offer of more money comes after a pledge of another $60 billion at the previous summit in South Africa three years ago.
More...
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/politic ... 0-billion/
******
Related video:
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/videos/2018/ ... th-africa/
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping offered another $60 billion in financing for Africa on Monday and said Chinese companies will be encouraged to invest no less than $10 billion over the next three years, but he also warned against “vanity projects”.
Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders, Xi promised development that people on the continent could see and touch, but that would also be green and sustainable.
China has denied engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy, and Xi’s offer of more money comes after a pledge of another $60 billion at the previous summit in South Africa three years ago.
More...
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/politic ... 0-billion/
******
Related video:
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/videos/2018/ ... th-africa/
Trump to China: ‘I Own You.’ Guess Again.
The Chinese are catching up to the U.S. in many ways, and the president grasps only part of the reason.
Early in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” a Chinese-Singaporean father admonishes his young kids to finish their dinner, saying, “Think of all the starving children in America.” I’m sure that everyone of my generation in the theater laughed at that joke. After all, we’d all been raised on the line: “Finish your dinner. Think of all the starving children in China.”
That little line contained within it many messages: The first, which any regular traveler to China’s biggest urban areas can tell you, is that rich China today — its luxury homes, cars, restaurants and hotels — is really rich, rich like most Americans can’t imagine.
The second is that this moment was destined to be a test of who will set the key rules of the global order in the 21st century: the world’s long-dominant economic and military superpower, America, or its rising rival, China. And this test is playing out with a blossoming full-scale trade war.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/opin ... dline&te=1
The Chinese are catching up to the U.S. in many ways, and the president grasps only part of the reason.
Early in the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” a Chinese-Singaporean father admonishes his young kids to finish their dinner, saying, “Think of all the starving children in America.” I’m sure that everyone of my generation in the theater laughed at that joke. After all, we’d all been raised on the line: “Finish your dinner. Think of all the starving children in China.”
That little line contained within it many messages: The first, which any regular traveler to China’s biggest urban areas can tell you, is that rich China today — its luxury homes, cars, restaurants and hotels — is really rich, rich like most Americans can’t imagine.
The second is that this moment was destined to be a test of who will set the key rules of the global order in the 21st century: the world’s long-dominant economic and military superpower, America, or its rising rival, China. And this test is playing out with a blossoming full-scale trade war.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/opin ... dline&te=1
The Indian Government’s Astonishing Hunger for Citizen Data
The country’s highest court has curtailed the uses of the national identification program, but fears about the misuse of information collected from a billion people remain.
MUMBAI, India — India’s Supreme Court has placed strict limits on Aadhaar, the government’s sweeping biometrics-based national identity program, but questions about the imposition of technological solutions and privacy remain.
In a major ruling on Sept. 26, a bench of five Supreme Court justices — three of whom wrote the majority judgment — upheld the constitutional legitimacy of the Aadhaar program and ruled that the government could use it to deliver welfare to beneficiaries and collect income tax. But the court struck down provisions that allowed corporations to demand citizen identification numbers for a range of services.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/opin ... dline&te=1
The country’s highest court has curtailed the uses of the national identification program, but fears about the misuse of information collected from a billion people remain.
MUMBAI, India — India’s Supreme Court has placed strict limits on Aadhaar, the government’s sweeping biometrics-based national identity program, but questions about the imposition of technological solutions and privacy remain.
In a major ruling on Sept. 26, a bench of five Supreme Court justices — three of whom wrote the majority judgment — upheld the constitutional legitimacy of the Aadhaar program and ruled that the government could use it to deliver welfare to beneficiaries and collect income tax. But the court struck down provisions that allowed corporations to demand citizen identification numbers for a range of services.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/opin ... dline&te=1
China’s Small Farms Are Fading. The World May Benefit.
Traditional plots of land are slowly becoming parts of bigger operations, eroding a way of life but enriching local residents and helping more Chinese people move into the modern world.
Excerpt:
Other wealthy countries, like the United States, saw farms grow as the rural population shrank. Only relatively recently has that begun to happen in China. In the 1980s, the government broke up the giant communes favored by Mao Zedong and redistributed the rights to farm individual plots to households. Further changes in government policy in the mid-1990s made those land rights secure enough for farmers and others to have the confidence to rent land on a wide scale. China’s agriculture sector is far from being dominated by big commercial farms, as it is in the United States, but the process has begun.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/busi ... 3053091006
Traditional plots of land are slowly becoming parts of bigger operations, eroding a way of life but enriching local residents and helping more Chinese people move into the modern world.
Excerpt:
Other wealthy countries, like the United States, saw farms grow as the rural population shrank. Only relatively recently has that begun to happen in China. In the 1980s, the government broke up the giant communes favored by Mao Zedong and redistributed the rights to farm individual plots to households. Further changes in government policy in the mid-1990s made those land rights secure enough for farmers and others to have the confidence to rent land on a wide scale. China’s agriculture sector is far from being dominated by big commercial farms, as it is in the United States, but the process has begun.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/busi ... 3053091006
China Aims to Convert Syria into a Strategic Territory
The potential end of the war in Syria has already started to attract investors for the country’s reconstruction and its millions of peoples’ rehabilitation and employment. While no one country can single-handedly put Syria back on track, not every country’s economic investment in Syria would have as significant strategic implications as China, for China would not just be playing a role in reconstruction, but it will also be turning Syrian into a strategic territory by connecting it with its Belt & Road Initiative. Already China has expressed deep interest in building a sea port in Tartus, which will serve China’s strategic interests, serving to directly establish a sea line of communication through Gawadar in Pakistan and Tartus in Syria. China is, therefore, is fully attentive to what it can do in Syria in the post-war scenario and how it can translate Syria’s infrastructure needs into a strategic opportunity for itself.
More...
https://journal-neo.org/2018/10/10/chin ... territory/
The potential end of the war in Syria has already started to attract investors for the country’s reconstruction and its millions of peoples’ rehabilitation and employment. While no one country can single-handedly put Syria back on track, not every country’s economic investment in Syria would have as significant strategic implications as China, for China would not just be playing a role in reconstruction, but it will also be turning Syrian into a strategic territory by connecting it with its Belt & Road Initiative. Already China has expressed deep interest in building a sea port in Tartus, which will serve China’s strategic interests, serving to directly establish a sea line of communication through Gawadar in Pakistan and Tartus in Syria. China is, therefore, is fully attentive to what it can do in Syria in the post-war scenario and how it can translate Syria’s infrastructure needs into a strategic opportunity for itself.
More...
https://journal-neo.org/2018/10/10/chin ... territory/
Kenyans Say Chinese Investment Brings Racism and Discrimination
Excerpt:
After his cellphone video circulated widely last month, the Kenyan authorities swiftly deported the boss back to China. Instead of a tidy resolution, however, the episode has resonated with a growing anxiety in Kenya and set off a broader debate.
As the country embraces China’s expanding presence in the region, many Kenyans wonder whether the nation has unwittingly welcomed an influx of powerful foreigners who are shaping the country’s future — while also bringing racist attitudes with them.
It is a wrenching question for the nation, and one that many Kenyans, especially younger ones, did not expect to be confronting in the 21st century.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/worl ... 3053091016
Excerpt:
After his cellphone video circulated widely last month, the Kenyan authorities swiftly deported the boss back to China. Instead of a tidy resolution, however, the episode has resonated with a growing anxiety in Kenya and set off a broader debate.
As the country embraces China’s expanding presence in the region, many Kenyans wonder whether the nation has unwittingly welcomed an influx of powerful foreigners who are shaping the country’s future — while also bringing racist attitudes with them.
It is a wrenching question for the nation, and one that many Kenyans, especially younger ones, did not expect to be confronting in the 21st century.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/worl ... 3053091016
Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, world's longest sea-crossing, finally opens
A $20-billion bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau to the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai is set to finally open this week, marking the completion of the longest sea-crossing bridge ever built, nine years after construction began.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend a ceremony in Zhuhai on Tuesday, along with top officials from Hong Kong and Macau, with the bridge opening to public traffic Wednesday.
More and slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ho ... li=AAggNb9
A $20-billion bridge connecting Hong Kong and Macau to the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai is set to finally open this week, marking the completion of the longest sea-crossing bridge ever built, nine years after construction began.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend a ceremony in Zhuhai on Tuesday, along with top officials from Hong Kong and Macau, with the bridge opening to public traffic Wednesday.
More and slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ho ... li=AAggNb9
As World’s Air Gets Worse, India Struggles to Breathe
NEW DELHI — A toxic fog is creeping over New Delhi. Children trudge to school with plastic masks strapped to their faces. Sports events are canceled. Eyes burn. Throats itch. Chests heave.
It’s the dreaded pollution season in India, when the amount of vehicle fumes, dust and smoke from agricultural fires spikes to levels so high that experts say children breathing this air could cause permanent brain damage.
Agra. Lucknow. Varanasi. New Delhi. India’s most fabled cities are now among the world’s most polluted. According to some recent rankings, India holds nine of the top 10 spots. In a sign of how many people — especially the elite — are distressed about this, shops in Delhi now sell “pollution guard” sunscreen and shampoo.
Toxic air has become a global menace that kills seven million people each year, the United Nations Environment Program said in a bleak report released Tuesday. The bulk of these deaths are in the Asia Pacific region, it said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/worl ... 3053091031[/b]
*******
Why Delhi is so polluted
Geography and poverty combine to make the Indian capital one of the dirtiest cities in the world
More...
https://www.economist.com/the-economist ... m=20181115
NEW DELHI — A toxic fog is creeping over New Delhi. Children trudge to school with plastic masks strapped to their faces. Sports events are canceled. Eyes burn. Throats itch. Chests heave.
It’s the dreaded pollution season in India, when the amount of vehicle fumes, dust and smoke from agricultural fires spikes to levels so high that experts say children breathing this air could cause permanent brain damage.
Agra. Lucknow. Varanasi. New Delhi. India’s most fabled cities are now among the world’s most polluted. According to some recent rankings, India holds nine of the top 10 spots. In a sign of how many people — especially the elite — are distressed about this, shops in Delhi now sell “pollution guard” sunscreen and shampoo.
Toxic air has become a global menace that kills seven million people each year, the United Nations Environment Program said in a bleak report released Tuesday. The bulk of these deaths are in the Asia Pacific region, it said.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/worl ... 3053091031[/b]
*******
Why Delhi is so polluted
Geography and poverty combine to make the Indian capital one of the dirtiest cities in the world
More...
https://www.economist.com/the-economist ... m=20181115
Last edited by kmaherali on Fri Nov 16, 2018 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The Chinese century is well under way
Many trends that appear global are in fact mostly Chinese
When scholars of international relations predict that the 2000s will be a “Chinese century”, they are not being premature. Although America remains the lone superpower, China has already replaced it as the driver of global change.
There is one economic metric on which China already ranks first. Measured at market exchange rates, China’s gdp is still 40% smaller than America’s. However, on a purchasing-power-parity (ppp) basis, which adjusts currencies so that a basket of goods and services is worth the same amount in different countries, the Chinese economy became the world’s largest in 2013. Although China is often grouped with other “emerging markets”, its performance is unique: its gdp per person at ppp has risen tenfold since 1990. In general, poorer economies grow faster than rich ones, because it is easier to “catch up” when starting from a low base. Yet in other countries that were as poor as China was in 1990, purchasing power has merely doubled.
China’s record has exerted a “gravitational pull” on the world’s economic output. The Economist has calculated a geographic centre of the global economy by taking an average of each country’s latitude and longitude, weighted by their gdp. At the height of America’s dominance, this point sat in the north Atlantic. But China has tugged it so far east that the global centre of economic gravity is now in Siberia.
Because China is so populous and is developing so quickly, it is responsible for a remarkable share of global change. Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, for example, China has accounted for 45% of the gain in world gdp. In 1990 some 750m Chinese people lived in extreme poverty; today fewer than 10m do. That represents two-thirds of the world’s decline in poverty during that time. China is also responsible for half of the total increase in patent applications over the same period.
More...
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... m=20181025
Many trends that appear global are in fact mostly Chinese
When scholars of international relations predict that the 2000s will be a “Chinese century”, they are not being premature. Although America remains the lone superpower, China has already replaced it as the driver of global change.
There is one economic metric on which China already ranks first. Measured at market exchange rates, China’s gdp is still 40% smaller than America’s. However, on a purchasing-power-parity (ppp) basis, which adjusts currencies so that a basket of goods and services is worth the same amount in different countries, the Chinese economy became the world’s largest in 2013. Although China is often grouped with other “emerging markets”, its performance is unique: its gdp per person at ppp has risen tenfold since 1990. In general, poorer economies grow faster than rich ones, because it is easier to “catch up” when starting from a low base. Yet in other countries that were as poor as China was in 1990, purchasing power has merely doubled.
China’s record has exerted a “gravitational pull” on the world’s economic output. The Economist has calculated a geographic centre of the global economy by taking an average of each country’s latitude and longitude, weighted by their gdp. At the height of America’s dominance, this point sat in the north Atlantic. But China has tugged it so far east that the global centre of economic gravity is now in Siberia.
Because China is so populous and is developing so quickly, it is responsible for a remarkable share of global change. Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, for example, China has accounted for 45% of the gain in world gdp. In 1990 some 750m Chinese people lived in extreme poverty; today fewer than 10m do. That represents two-thirds of the world’s decline in poverty during that time. China is also responsible for half of the total increase in patent applications over the same period.
More...
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detai ... m=20181025
Dear Reader,
I’m writing to let you know about something special that you will soon be reading in The New York Times — an in-depth look at what historians may one day conclude was the most important story of our time, the rise of China as a global power.
The United States has been the world’s leading economy for more than a century, but China is set to surpass it in a matter of years. By some measures, it already has. And yet many Americans have barely begun to think about what this means. That’s not entirely a surprise. There’s a lot going on out there, especially since the election of President Trump. Sometimes, though, the biggest stories are the ones that sneak up on us when we’re distracted. So we asked a team of journalists on six continents to pay attention and take a closer look at how China is changing the world.
We began laying out their findings earlier this year, with investigative reports from Sri Lanka, Argentina, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. We continue this week with a visual presentation exploring the gains that China has made in field after field, from manufacturing to social mobility to infrastructure. We are also publishing a set of essays that try to explain how we got here — how China defied the odds and transformed itself into the most significant rival to the United States since the Soviet Union. There will be more articles in the months ahead.
This kind of reporting isn’t easy. It requires putting people on the ground with the smarts and experience to ask the right questions and the tenacity to keep asking until they get to the truth. That can be especially tough in a place like China, where the government is both secretive and thin-skinned. Yet we now have more correspondents in China than any other country outside the United States. We have fought to keep them there despite Beijing’s occasional efforts to punish us for our coverage. Your subscription makes it possible to stand up to such pressure.
So thank you. I hope you’ll read these articles and discuss them with friends. A conversation about what China’s rise means for the United States, and the rest of the world, is long overdue.
Sincerely,
Philip P. Pan
Asia Editor
READ NOW...
PART 1
The Land That Failed to Fail
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... XIu-27A91n
I’m writing to let you know about something special that you will soon be reading in The New York Times — an in-depth look at what historians may one day conclude was the most important story of our time, the rise of China as a global power.
The United States has been the world’s leading economy for more than a century, but China is set to surpass it in a matter of years. By some measures, it already has. And yet many Americans have barely begun to think about what this means. That’s not entirely a surprise. There’s a lot going on out there, especially since the election of President Trump. Sometimes, though, the biggest stories are the ones that sneak up on us when we’re distracted. So we asked a team of journalists on six continents to pay attention and take a closer look at how China is changing the world.
We began laying out their findings earlier this year, with investigative reports from Sri Lanka, Argentina, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. We continue this week with a visual presentation exploring the gains that China has made in field after field, from manufacturing to social mobility to infrastructure. We are also publishing a set of essays that try to explain how we got here — how China defied the odds and transformed itself into the most significant rival to the United States since the Soviet Union. There will be more articles in the months ahead.
This kind of reporting isn’t easy. It requires putting people on the ground with the smarts and experience to ask the right questions and the tenacity to keep asking until they get to the truth. That can be especially tough in a place like China, where the government is both secretive and thin-skinned. Yet we now have more correspondents in China than any other country outside the United States. We have fought to keep them there despite Beijing’s occasional efforts to punish us for our coverage. Your subscription makes it possible to stand up to such pressure.
So thank you. I hope you’ll read these articles and discuss them with friends. A conversation about what China’s rise means for the United States, and the rest of the world, is long overdue.
Sincerely,
Philip P. Pan
Asia Editor
READ NOW...
PART 1
The Land That Failed to Fail
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... XIu-27A91n
How China Walled Off the Internet
Today, China has the world’s only internet companies that can match America’s in ambition and reach.
It is years ahead of the United States in replacing paper money with smartphone payments, turning tech giants into vital gatekeepers of the consumer economy.
And it is host to a supernova of creative expression — in short videos, podcasts, blogs and streaming TV — that ought to dispel any notions of Chinese culture as drearily conformist.
All this, on a patch of cyberspace that is walled off from Facebook and Google, policed by tens of thousands of censors and subject to strict controls on how data is collected, stored and shared.
China’s leaders like the internet they have created. And now, they want to direct the nation’s talent and tech acumen toward an even loftier end: building an innovation-driven economy, one that produces world-leading companies.
Not long ago, Chinese tech firms were best known for copying Silicon Valley.
But the flow of inspiration now runs both ways. American social media executives look to Tencent and ByteDance for the latest tricks for keeping users glued to their phones.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... 3053091120
Today, China has the world’s only internet companies that can match America’s in ambition and reach.
It is years ahead of the United States in replacing paper money with smartphone payments, turning tech giants into vital gatekeepers of the consumer economy.
And it is host to a supernova of creative expression — in short videos, podcasts, blogs and streaming TV — that ought to dispel any notions of Chinese culture as drearily conformist.
All this, on a patch of cyberspace that is walled off from Facebook and Google, policed by tens of thousands of censors and subject to strict controls on how data is collected, stored and shared.
China’s leaders like the internet they have created. And now, they want to direct the nation’s talent and tech acumen toward an even loftier end: building an innovation-driven economy, one that produces world-leading companies.
Not long ago, Chinese tech firms were best known for copying Silicon Valley.
But the flow of inspiration now runs both ways. American social media executives look to Tencent and ByteDance for the latest tricks for keeping users glued to their phones.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... 3053091120
China’s universities
Looking to beat the world
In recent years China has tweaked university funding to prioritise the production of top-class research. The results have been startling. In science, technology, engineering and mathematics, China’s share of papers listed in the biggest catalogue of abstracts and citations rose from 4% in 2000 to 19% in 2016. But success in the social sciences is proving more elusive. One problem is language. Another is the constraints on free speech
More...
https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11 ... m=20181119
Looking to beat the world
In recent years China has tweaked university funding to prioritise the production of top-class research. The results have been startling. In science, technology, engineering and mathematics, China’s share of papers listed in the biggest catalogue of abstracts and citations rose from 4% in 2000 to 19% in 2016. But success in the social sciences is proving more elusive. One problem is language. Another is the constraints on free speech
More...
https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11 ... m=20181119
How Cheap Labor Drives China’s A.I. Ambitions
Some of the most critical work in advancing China’s technology goals takes place in a former cement factory in the middle of the country’s heartland, far from the aspiring Silicon Valleys of Beijing and Shenzhen. An idled concrete mixer still stands in the middle of the courtyard. Boxes of melamine dinnerware are stacked in a warehouse next door.
Inside, Hou Xiameng runs a company that helps artificial intelligence make sense of the world. Two dozen young people go through photos and videos, labeling just about everything they see. That’s a car. That’s a traffic light. That’s bread, that’s milk, that’s chocolate. That’s what it looks like when a person walks.
“I used to think the machines are geniuses,” Ms. Hou, 24, said. “Now I know we’re the reason for their genius.”
In China, long the world’s factory floor, a new generation of low-wage workers is assembling the foundations of the future. Start-ups in smaller, cheaper cities have sprung up to apply labels to China’s huge trove of images and surveillance footage. If China is the Saudi Arabia of data, as one expert says, these businesses are the refineries, turning raw data into the fuel that can power China’s A.I. ambitions.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/busi ... 3053091126
Some of the most critical work in advancing China’s technology goals takes place in a former cement factory in the middle of the country’s heartland, far from the aspiring Silicon Valleys of Beijing and Shenzhen. An idled concrete mixer still stands in the middle of the courtyard. Boxes of melamine dinnerware are stacked in a warehouse next door.
Inside, Hou Xiameng runs a company that helps artificial intelligence make sense of the world. Two dozen young people go through photos and videos, labeling just about everything they see. That’s a car. That’s a traffic light. That’s bread, that’s milk, that’s chocolate. That’s what it looks like when a person walks.
“I used to think the machines are geniuses,” Ms. Hou, 24, said. “Now I know we’re the reason for their genius.”
In China, long the world’s factory floor, a new generation of low-wage workers is assembling the foundations of the future. Start-ups in smaller, cheaper cities have sprung up to apply labels to China’s huge trove of images and surveillance footage. If China is the Saudi Arabia of data, as one expert says, these businesses are the refineries, turning raw data into the fuel that can power China’s A.I. ambitions.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/busi ... 3053091126