By Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson
Counterpunch | Op-Ed Monday, 08 April 2013
We typically honor the convention to refrain from speaking ill of the recently departed. But Margaret Thatcher probably would not object to an epitaph focusing on how her political legacy was to achieve her professed aim of “irreversibly” dismantling Britain’s public sector. Attacking central planning by government, she shifted it into much more centralized financial hands – the City of London, unopposed by any economic back bench of financial regulation and “free” of meaningful anti-monopoly price regulation.
Mrs. Thatcher transformed the character of British politics by heading a democratically elected Parliamentary government that permitted financial planners to carve up the public domain with popular consent. Like her actor contemporary Ronald Reagan, she narrated an appealing cover story that promised to help the economy recover. The reality, of course, was to raise Britain’s cost of living and doing business. But this zero-sum game turned the economy’s loss into a vast windfall for the Conservative Party’s constituency in Britain’s banking sector.
By underpricing her privatization of British Telephone and subsequent vast monopolies, she made it appear that customers would be the big gainers, rather than large financial institutions. And by giving underwriters a windfall 3% commission (formerly based on floating the stock of much smaller start-up companies), Mrs. Thatcher oversaw the start of Britain’s Great Polarization between the creditor 1% and the increasingly indebted 99%.
To read more......
Sunday, April 28, 2013
China's Tech Giant Huawei Is Done With the U.S.
By Adam Pasick
The Atlantic - Apr 24 2013
Scrutinized heavily by Congress last year, the network equipment manufacturer is taking its services elsewhere.
There's only so much abuse that a giant network equipment manufacturer repeatedly accused of threatening U.S. national security can take.
"We are not interested in the U.S. market any more," Huawei executive vice president Eric Xu said at the company's annual analyst summit on Wednesday, as reported by the Financial Times.
"Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get into the U.S. market," Chief Technology Officer Li Sanqi added in an interview with IDG. "[But] we today face reality. We will focus on the rest of the world, which is reasonably big enough and is growing significantly."
Huawei has been a punching bag in Washington for years, with congressmen labeling the company a Trojan horse for cyber-warfare by China. It has come under additional scrutiny following the suspicious death in Singapore of an American engineer who was working on a cutting-edge military technology project that may have violated U.S. export rules. Computer files found in his apartment included a proposal for Huawei to collaborate on the project.
To read more.....
The Atlantic - Apr 24 2013
Scrutinized heavily by Congress last year, the network equipment manufacturer is taking its services elsewhere.
There's only so much abuse that a giant network equipment manufacturer repeatedly accused of threatening U.S. national security can take.
"We are not interested in the U.S. market any more," Huawei executive vice president Eric Xu said at the company's annual analyst summit on Wednesday, as reported by the Financial Times.
"Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get into the U.S. market," Chief Technology Officer Li Sanqi added in an interview with IDG. "[But] we today face reality. We will focus on the rest of the world, which is reasonably big enough and is growing significantly."
Huawei has been a punching bag in Washington for years, with congressmen labeling the company a Trojan horse for cyber-warfare by China. It has come under additional scrutiny following the suspicious death in Singapore of an American engineer who was working on a cutting-edge military technology project that may have violated U.S. export rules. Computer files found in his apartment included a proposal for Huawei to collaborate on the project.
To read more.....
New WikiLeaks cable reveals US embassy strategy to destabilize Chavez government
Russia Today - April 05, 2013
In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez' government.
Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield -- now an Assistant Secretary of State -- the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”
The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.
According to Brownfield, who prepared the cable specifically for US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the “majority” of both USAID and OTI activities in Venezuela were concerned with assisting the embassy in accomplishing its core objectives of infiltrating and subduing Chavez’ political party:
“This strategic objective represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela. Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control.”
In total, USAID spent some one million dollars in organizing 3,000 forums that sought to essentially reconcile Chavez supporters and the political opposition, in the hopes of slowly weaning them away from the Bolivarian side.
Brownfield at one point boasted of an OTI civic education program named “Democracy Among Us,” which sought to work through NGOs in low income regions, and had allegedly reached over 600,000 Venezuelans.
In total, between 2004 and 2006, USAID donated some 15 million dollars to over 300 organizations, and offered technical support via OTI in achieving US objectives which it categorized as seeking to reinforce democratic institutions.
Much of the memo details efforts to highlight instances of human rights violations, and sponsoring activists and members of the political opposition to attend meetings abroad and voice their concerns against the Chavez administration:
“So far, OTI has sent Venezuelan NGO leaders to Turkey, Scotland, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Uruguay, Washington and Argentina (twice) to talk about the law. Upcoming visits are planned to Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.”
In his closing comments, Brownfield remarked that, should President Chavez win re-election during the December 2006 elections, OTI expected the “atmosphere for our work in Venezuela” to become more complicated.
Ultimately, it seems that the former ambassador’s memo wisely predicted a change in conditions. Following his re-election, President Chavez threatened to eject the US ambassador from Venezuela in 2007, amid accusations of interfering in internal state affairs.
In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez' government.
Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield -- now an Assistant Secretary of State -- the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”
The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.
According to Brownfield, who prepared the cable specifically for US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the “majority” of both USAID and OTI activities in Venezuela were concerned with assisting the embassy in accomplishing its core objectives of infiltrating and subduing Chavez’ political party:
“This strategic objective represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela. Organized civil society is an increasingly important pillar of democracy, one where President Chavez has not yet been able to assert full control.”
In total, USAID spent some one million dollars in organizing 3,000 forums that sought to essentially reconcile Chavez supporters and the political opposition, in the hopes of slowly weaning them away from the Bolivarian side.
Brownfield at one point boasted of an OTI civic education program named “Democracy Among Us,” which sought to work through NGOs in low income regions, and had allegedly reached over 600,000 Venezuelans.
In total, between 2004 and 2006, USAID donated some 15 million dollars to over 300 organizations, and offered technical support via OTI in achieving US objectives which it categorized as seeking to reinforce democratic institutions.
Much of the memo details efforts to highlight instances of human rights violations, and sponsoring activists and members of the political opposition to attend meetings abroad and voice their concerns against the Chavez administration:
“So far, OTI has sent Venezuelan NGO leaders to Turkey, Scotland, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Chile, Uruguay, Washington and Argentina (twice) to talk about the law. Upcoming visits are planned to Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.”
In his closing comments, Brownfield remarked that, should President Chavez win re-election during the December 2006 elections, OTI expected the “atmosphere for our work in Venezuela” to become more complicated.
Ultimately, it seems that the former ambassador’s memo wisely predicted a change in conditions. Following his re-election, President Chavez threatened to eject the US ambassador from Venezuela in 2007, amid accusations of interfering in internal state affairs.
Paper Tiger: Why isn't the rest of Asia afraid of China?
BY DAVID KANG
Foreign Policy | APRIL 25, 2013
Are tensions high in Asia? It certainly appears so. Over the last few months, North Korea has tested missiles and threatened the United States with nuclear war. China spars regularly with Japan over ownership of a group of disputed islands, and with several Southeast Asian countries over other sparsely inhabited rocks in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the United States is in the midst of a well-publicized "pivot" to East Asia, and continues to beef up its military deployments to the region.
Yet as of 2012, military expenditures in East and Southeast Asia are at the lowest they've been in 25 years -- and very likely the lowest they've been in 50 years (although data before 1988 is questionable). While it's too early to factor in recent tensions, as China's rise has reshaped the region over the past two decades, East and Southeast Asian states don't seem to have reacted by building up their own militaries. If there's an arms race in the region, it's a contest with just one participant: China.
Military expenditures reflect states' threat perceptions, and reveal how they are planning for both immediate and long-term contingencies. In times of external threat, military priorities take precedence over domestic ones, like social and economic services; in times of relative peace, countries devote a greater share of their economy to domestic priorities. The best way to measure military expenditures is as a percentage of total GDP, because this reflects how much a country could potentially spend. In 1988, as the Cold War was winding down, the six major Southeast Asian states spent an average of almost 3.5 percent of GDP on military expenditures. (All data comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the most dependable source for worldwide military data, which began publishing its global military figures in 1988.)
To read more.....
Foreign Policy | APRIL 25, 2013
Are tensions high in Asia? It certainly appears so. Over the last few months, North Korea has tested missiles and threatened the United States with nuclear war. China spars regularly with Japan over ownership of a group of disputed islands, and with several Southeast Asian countries over other sparsely inhabited rocks in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the United States is in the midst of a well-publicized "pivot" to East Asia, and continues to beef up its military deployments to the region.
Yet as of 2012, military expenditures in East and Southeast Asia are at the lowest they've been in 25 years -- and very likely the lowest they've been in 50 years (although data before 1988 is questionable). While it's too early to factor in recent tensions, as China's rise has reshaped the region over the past two decades, East and Southeast Asian states don't seem to have reacted by building up their own militaries. If there's an arms race in the region, it's a contest with just one participant: China.
Military expenditures reflect states' threat perceptions, and reveal how they are planning for both immediate and long-term contingencies. In times of external threat, military priorities take precedence over domestic ones, like social and economic services; in times of relative peace, countries devote a greater share of their economy to domestic priorities. The best way to measure military expenditures is as a percentage of total GDP, because this reflects how much a country could potentially spend. In 1988, as the Cold War was winding down, the six major Southeast Asian states spent an average of almost 3.5 percent of GDP on military expenditures. (All data comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the most dependable source for worldwide military data, which began publishing its global military figures in 1988.)
To read more.....
China, EU hold first-ever dialogue on higher education
English.news.cn 2013-04-26
BRUSSELS, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of university presidents from China and Europe were brought together on Thursday to share their success stories and concerns in establishing cooperation projects, so as to provide policy suggestions and enhance compatibility between the two's higher education systems.
"China's higher education aims at achieving better quality, better structure, deeper reform and more fairness, and the European Union (EU) is successful in transforming its diversity into vitality and impetus for development," China's Vice Education Minister Du Yubo said in the opening speech.
The event was the first meeting of the EU-China higher education platform for cooperation and exchanges (HEPCE), a flagship event in the framework of the high-level people-to-people dialogue established last year as the third pillar of the EU-China relations complementing the strategic dialogue and the economic and trade dialogue.
"As an innovative project for the China-EU partnership, the people-to-people dialogue is both realistically and strategically important for consolidating public support," he added.
There are more than 35,000 students from EU member states studying in China. According to Du, the Chinese government is scheduled to offer 30,000 scholarships for European students and researchers in the next five years.
"We welcome new scholarship schemes from China, and the EU is ready to offer grants," said Jan Truszczynski, directorate-general for education and culture in the European Commission, adding that an EU-China language project was to be launched in June.
Presidents and representatives of Chinese and European universities had extensive exchanges over models for EU-China joint higher education institutions, joint degree programs and cooperation in the fields of European studies and Chinese studies.
"Europe is the origin of modern universities and the pioneer in mobility and exchanges. Collaborating with Europe is a strategic choice for us," said Huai Jinpeng, president of China's Beihang University.
Roger Woods, associate pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham in the UK, suggested more interaction with local universities while sharing the story of establishing a branch school of the University of Nottingham in the Chinese city of Ningbo in 2004.
"We are moving away from the notion that China poses competition. We need to move from collaboration to deep collaboration," he said.
2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. For the past decade, the two have witnessed increasingly close exchanges and substantial cooperation in such areas as trade and investment, foreign affairs and global issues, and culture and education.
BRUSSELS, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Dozens of university presidents from China and Europe were brought together on Thursday to share their success stories and concerns in establishing cooperation projects, so as to provide policy suggestions and enhance compatibility between the two's higher education systems.
"China's higher education aims at achieving better quality, better structure, deeper reform and more fairness, and the European Union (EU) is successful in transforming its diversity into vitality and impetus for development," China's Vice Education Minister Du Yubo said in the opening speech.
The event was the first meeting of the EU-China higher education platform for cooperation and exchanges (HEPCE), a flagship event in the framework of the high-level people-to-people dialogue established last year as the third pillar of the EU-China relations complementing the strategic dialogue and the economic and trade dialogue.
"As an innovative project for the China-EU partnership, the people-to-people dialogue is both realistically and strategically important for consolidating public support," he added.
There are more than 35,000 students from EU member states studying in China. According to Du, the Chinese government is scheduled to offer 30,000 scholarships for European students and researchers in the next five years.
"We welcome new scholarship schemes from China, and the EU is ready to offer grants," said Jan Truszczynski, directorate-general for education and culture in the European Commission, adding that an EU-China language project was to be launched in June.
Presidents and representatives of Chinese and European universities had extensive exchanges over models for EU-China joint higher education institutions, joint degree programs and cooperation in the fields of European studies and Chinese studies.
"Europe is the origin of modern universities and the pioneer in mobility and exchanges. Collaborating with Europe is a strategic choice for us," said Huai Jinpeng, president of China's Beihang University.
Roger Woods, associate pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham in the UK, suggested more interaction with local universities while sharing the story of establishing a branch school of the University of Nottingham in the Chinese city of Ningbo in 2004.
"We are moving away from the notion that China poses competition. We need to move from collaboration to deep collaboration," he said.
2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. For the past decade, the two have witnessed increasingly close exchanges and substantial cooperation in such areas as trade and investment, foreign affairs and global issues, and culture and education.
A conversation with Olivier Roy on the nature of the alleged Marathon terrorists
Boston: More Like Sandy Hook Than 9/11
BY JOHN B. JUDIS
New Republic - APRIL 22, 2013
Olivier Roy has a different view of radical Islam from many of the experts you find writing in the American press. Roy, now 63, first went to Central Asia as a 19-year-old high school dropout, but eventually become a leading expert on Islamic politics. He has been a consultant to the French Foreign Ministry and United Nations and is currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Several of his books are landmarks in the field, including The Failure of Political Islam and Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah.
Roy’s view is relevant in understanding the alleged Boston marathon bombers. A decade ago, Roy was pointing out that al Qaeda was drawing many of its recruits from Western Europe rather than from Saudi Arabia or Palestine or Pakistan. He saw al Qaeda as a product of the failure of Arab nationalism and Marxism-Leninism to establish viable popular societies. Its tactics and outlook derived from the Red Army Faction or Red Brigades or the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rather than from the Koran or from religious factions within Islam. Al Qaeda, Roy wrote in The Illusions of September 11, is “a junction of a radicalized Islam with a shrill anti-imperialism reshaped by globalization.”
Accordingly, Roy rejected the idea that al Qaeda’s adherents in Europe were simply products of Islam and that their motivation should be seen as religious. Instead, he believed, they sought what he called an “imaginary Ummah,” a radical community of belief that was not strictly speaking part of the ordinary world of Islamic belief. That’s where I thought Roy’s analysis might be relevant to understanding Boston and the Tsarnaev brothers.
To read more.....
BY JOHN B. JUDIS
New Republic - APRIL 22, 2013
Olivier Roy has a different view of radical Islam from many of the experts you find writing in the American press. Roy, now 63, first went to Central Asia as a 19-year-old high school dropout, but eventually become a leading expert on Islamic politics. He has been a consultant to the French Foreign Ministry and United Nations and is currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Several of his books are landmarks in the field, including The Failure of Political Islam and Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah.
Roy’s view is relevant in understanding the alleged Boston marathon bombers. A decade ago, Roy was pointing out that al Qaeda was drawing many of its recruits from Western Europe rather than from Saudi Arabia or Palestine or Pakistan. He saw al Qaeda as a product of the failure of Arab nationalism and Marxism-Leninism to establish viable popular societies. Its tactics and outlook derived from the Red Army Faction or Red Brigades or the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rather than from the Koran or from religious factions within Islam. Al Qaeda, Roy wrote in The Illusions of September 11, is “a junction of a radicalized Islam with a shrill anti-imperialism reshaped by globalization.”
Accordingly, Roy rejected the idea that al Qaeda’s adherents in Europe were simply products of Islam and that their motivation should be seen as religious. Instead, he believed, they sought what he called an “imaginary Ummah,” a radical community of belief that was not strictly speaking part of the ordinary world of Islamic belief. That’s where I thought Roy’s analysis might be relevant to understanding Boston and the Tsarnaev brothers.
To read more.....
There's no need for all this economic sadomasochism
By David Graeber
The Guardian, Sunday 21 April 2013
If Reinhart and Rogoff's 'error' has discredited the prevailing policy dogma, now is the time for an alternative that works.
The intellectual justification for austerity lies in ruins. It turns out that Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, who originally framed the argument that too high a "debt-to-GDP ratio" will always, necessarily, lead to economic contraction – and who had aggressively promoted it during Rogoff's tenure as chief economist for the IMF –, had based their entire argument on a spreadsheet error. The premise behind the cuts turns out to be faulty. There is now no definite proof that high levels of debt necessarily lead to recession.
Will we, then, see a reversal of policy? A sea of mea culpas from politicians who have spent the last few years telling disabled pensioners to give up their bus passes and poor students to forgo college, all on the basis of a mistake? It seems unlikely. After all, as I and many others have long argued, austerity was never really an economic policy: ultimately, it was always about morality. We are talking about a politics of crime and punishment, sin and atonement. True, it's never been particularly clear exactly what the original sin was: some combination, perhaps, of tax avoidance, laziness, benefit fraud and the election of irresponsible leaders. But in a larger sense, the message was that we were guilty of having dreamed of social security, humane working conditions, pensions, social and economic democracy.
The morality of debt has proved spectacularly good politics. It appears to work just as well whatever form it takes: fiscal sadism (Dutch and German voters really do believe that Greek, Spanish and Irish citizens are all, collectively, as they put it, "debt sinners", and vow support for politicians willing to punish them) or fiscal masochism (middle-class Britons really will dutifully vote for candidates who tell them that government has been on a binge, that they must tighten their belts, it'll be hard, but it's something we can all do for the sake of our grandchildren). Politicians locate economic theories that provide flashy equations to justify the politics; their authors, like Rogoff, are celebrated as oracles; no one bothers to check if the numbers actually add up.
To read more......
The Guardian, Sunday 21 April 2013
If Reinhart and Rogoff's 'error' has discredited the prevailing policy dogma, now is the time for an alternative that works.
The intellectual justification for austerity lies in ruins. It turns out that Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, who originally framed the argument that too high a "debt-to-GDP ratio" will always, necessarily, lead to economic contraction – and who had aggressively promoted it during Rogoff's tenure as chief economist for the IMF –, had based their entire argument on a spreadsheet error. The premise behind the cuts turns out to be faulty. There is now no definite proof that high levels of debt necessarily lead to recession.
Will we, then, see a reversal of policy? A sea of mea culpas from politicians who have spent the last few years telling disabled pensioners to give up their bus passes and poor students to forgo college, all on the basis of a mistake? It seems unlikely. After all, as I and many others have long argued, austerity was never really an economic policy: ultimately, it was always about morality. We are talking about a politics of crime and punishment, sin and atonement. True, it's never been particularly clear exactly what the original sin was: some combination, perhaps, of tax avoidance, laziness, benefit fraud and the election of irresponsible leaders. But in a larger sense, the message was that we were guilty of having dreamed of social security, humane working conditions, pensions, social and economic democracy.
The morality of debt has proved spectacularly good politics. It appears to work just as well whatever form it takes: fiscal sadism (Dutch and German voters really do believe that Greek, Spanish and Irish citizens are all, collectively, as they put it, "debt sinners", and vow support for politicians willing to punish them) or fiscal masochism (middle-class Britons really will dutifully vote for candidates who tell them that government has been on a binge, that they must tighten their belts, it'll be hard, but it's something we can all do for the sake of our grandchildren). Politicians locate economic theories that provide flashy equations to justify the politics; their authors, like Rogoff, are celebrated as oracles; no one bothers to check if the numbers actually add up.
To read more......
The neoliberal assault on academia
By Tarak Barkawi
Al-Jazeera - 25 Apr 2013
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition hikes and budget cuts, notes Barkawi.
The New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent of the academic workforce are now tenured or tenure-track.
Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival.
The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order.
Lost amid the fetishisation of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that.
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts.
Thatcherite budget-cutting exercise
The professions are in part defined by the fact that they are self-governing and self-regulating. For many years now, the professoriate has not only been ceding power to a neoliberal managerial class, but has in many cases been actively collaborating with it.
To read more......
Al-Jazeera - 25 Apr 2013
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition hikes and budget cuts, notes Barkawi.
The New York Times, Slate and Al Jazeera have recently drawn attention to the adjunctification of the professoriate in the US. Only 24 per cent of the academic workforce are now tenured or tenure-track.
Much of the coverage has focused on the sub-poverty wages of adjunct faculty, their lack of job security and the growing legions of unemployed and under-employed PhDs. Elsewhere, the focus has been on web-based learning and the massive open online courses (MOOCs), with some commentators celebrating and others lamenting their arrival.
The two developments are not unrelated. Harvard recently asked its alumni to volunteer their time as "online mentors" and "discussion group managers" for an online course. Fewer professors and fewer qualified - or even paid - teaching assistants will be required in higher education's New Order.
Lost amid the fetishisation of information technology and the pathos of the struggle over proper working conditions for adjunct faculty is the deeper crisis of the academic profession occasioned by neoliberalism. This crisis is connected to the economics of higher education but it is not primarily about that.
The neoliberal sacking of the universities runs much deeper than tuition fee hikes and budget cuts.
Thatcherite budget-cutting exercise
The professions are in part defined by the fact that they are self-governing and self-regulating. For many years now, the professoriate has not only been ceding power to a neoliberal managerial class, but has in many cases been actively collaborating with it.
To read more......
Monday, April 22, 2013
Columbia opens Confucius Institute
By Caroline Berg in New York
China Daily 2013-04-10
More than a century of relations between Columbia University and China were highlighted in a ceremony inaugurating the opening of the Confucius Institute at the New York school.
Columbia's ties with China began in the 1870s, and some of the first Chinese students to study in the US were at the Ivy League school, Lee Bollinger, president of the university, said yesterday in remarks at the ceremony.
"The Confucius Institute will help further expand Columbia's scholarly engagement with China," Bollinger said at the event in the Faculty Room at Columbia's Low Memorial Library, which has a gallery of ancient Chinese artifacts spanning six dynasties.
Beijing-based Renmin University of China will collaborate with Columbia on the institute's programs. The two universities first formed an academic partnership in 2008.
"It will be a research-oriented partnership, which aims to advance our understanding concerning teaching Chinese as a second language and also Chinese culture in modern China," Bollinger said.
The ceremony included remarks by Xu Lin, director-general of Hanban and chief executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters; Chen Yulu, president of Renmin University; Dong Xiaojun, acting consul general of China in New York; and Robert Hymes, chair of Columbia's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
To read more......
China Daily 2013-04-10
More than a century of relations between Columbia University and China were highlighted in a ceremony inaugurating the opening of the Confucius Institute at the New York school.
Columbia's ties with China began in the 1870s, and some of the first Chinese students to study in the US were at the Ivy League school, Lee Bollinger, president of the university, said yesterday in remarks at the ceremony.
"The Confucius Institute will help further expand Columbia's scholarly engagement with China," Bollinger said at the event in the Faculty Room at Columbia's Low Memorial Library, which has a gallery of ancient Chinese artifacts spanning six dynasties.
Beijing-based Renmin University of China will collaborate with Columbia on the institute's programs. The two universities first formed an academic partnership in 2008.
"It will be a research-oriented partnership, which aims to advance our understanding concerning teaching Chinese as a second language and also Chinese culture in modern China," Bollinger said.
The ceremony included remarks by Xu Lin, director-general of Hanban and chief executive of the Confucius Institute Headquarters; Chen Yulu, president of Renmin University; Dong Xiaojun, acting consul general of China in New York; and Robert Hymes, chair of Columbia's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
To read more......
Jeffrey Sachs Calls Out Wall Street Criminality and Pathological Greed
Naked Capitalism - April 19, 2013
One of the things that Matt Stoller has stressed that the possibility of reform is remote until breaks within the elites take place.
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of “shock therapy” in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.
To read more....
One of the things that Matt Stoller has stressed that the possibility of reform is remote until breaks within the elites take place.
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia professor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, is a controversial figure for his neoliberal stance on macroeconomics and his role in promoting the use of “shock therapy” in emerging economies. But it is also important to recognize that criticism from a connected, respected insider has more significance than that of someone like Bill Black, who has made a career of taking on bank fraud but has never reached a top policy-making level.
To read more....
Saturday, April 20, 2013
India’s economy: The capitalist manifesto
How to get India moving again
The Economist - Apr 20th 2013
INDIA needs more market liberalisation to promote economic growth. A few years ago, with its economy expanding at an annual rate of nearly 10%, there was talk of India one day rivalling China, or even overtaking it. But policymakers have grown complacent. They assumed rapid growth would continue, but did nothing to foster it. The result is that India now putters on at less than half what it could achieve. Investors are anxious and the politicians are bickering.
In their new book Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, both economics professors at Columbia University, outline a series of measures to boost growth. “Why Growth Matters” is a blunt book; almost a manifesto for policymakers and analysts. It explains how rapid expansion has brought India immense gains, and why more change is needed—and needed soon. Both men are champions of globalisation and they hope their ideas will stiffen the resolve of India’s leaders.
What they have to say is convincing. Increasing growth rates over the past couple of decades lifted some 200m Indians out of poverty. That is an immense gain. In 1978, say the authors, more than half of all Indians were below the poverty line; today it is roughly a fifth. Gradually even those politicians who put their trust mostly in redistribution and the early roll-out of welfare grasp that a bigger economy means more resources to share around.
To read more.......
The Economist - Apr 20th 2013
INDIA needs more market liberalisation to promote economic growth. A few years ago, with its economy expanding at an annual rate of nearly 10%, there was talk of India one day rivalling China, or even overtaking it. But policymakers have grown complacent. They assumed rapid growth would continue, but did nothing to foster it. The result is that India now putters on at less than half what it could achieve. Investors are anxious and the politicians are bickering.
In their new book Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, both economics professors at Columbia University, outline a series of measures to boost growth. “Why Growth Matters” is a blunt book; almost a manifesto for policymakers and analysts. It explains how rapid expansion has brought India immense gains, and why more change is needed—and needed soon. Both men are champions of globalisation and they hope their ideas will stiffen the resolve of India’s leaders.
What they have to say is convincing. Increasing growth rates over the past couple of decades lifted some 200m Indians out of poverty. That is an immense gain. In 1978, say the authors, more than half of all Indians were below the poverty line; today it is roughly a fifth. Gradually even those politicians who put their trust mostly in redistribution and the early roll-out of welfare grasp that a bigger economy means more resources to share around.
To read more.......
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Fast-Food Feminism of the Topless Femen
From Le Monde Diplomatique
http://internationalboulevard.com/europe/115-france/194-the-fast-food-feminism-of-the-topless-femen
Blond young women stripping off their shirts to protest for...women's rights. Le Monde Diplomatique's Mona Chollet reviews the purportedly feminist protest group called the Femen, finding little evidence of feminism and a budding affinity with France's anti-Muslim right. Amina Tyler, Alia el Mahdi and other young Femen of the Arab Spring would do well to have a second look at their Ukrainian mentors, she suggests.
"Covering women's bodies seems to give Muslims a sense of virility, while Westerners derive their own from uncovering them", writes Moroccan essayist Fatema Mernissi in Scheherazade Goes West. The French media's excitement over figures like the Ukranian 'Femen' or Alia el Mahdi, the Egyptian student who in 2011 posted naked pictures of herself on her blog, once again underlines the truth of Mernissi's observation. To commemorate International Women's Day, France 2 aired a documentary on March 5 about the Ukrainian women's group, which has been based in France for more than a year now.
So much for the thousands of women who have the poor taste to fight for their rights while fully clothed, or to put on a show that does not conform with the dominant standards of youth, slimness, beauty and bodily firmness. "Feminism is women on the march in the streets of Cairo, not the Femen," raged France Inter's Egypt correspondent Vanessa Descouraux on Twitter, on February 6. "But we never see documentaries about those women on television!" Feminist organizations in France these days are more likely to be asked their opinion of the Ukrainian women's group than about their own undertakings.
To read more.....
http://internationalboulevard.com/europe/115-france/194-the-fast-food-feminism-of-the-topless-femen
Blond young women stripping off their shirts to protest for...women's rights. Le Monde Diplomatique's Mona Chollet reviews the purportedly feminist protest group called the Femen, finding little evidence of feminism and a budding affinity with France's anti-Muslim right. Amina Tyler, Alia el Mahdi and other young Femen of the Arab Spring would do well to have a second look at their Ukrainian mentors, she suggests.
"Covering women's bodies seems to give Muslims a sense of virility, while Westerners derive their own from uncovering them", writes Moroccan essayist Fatema Mernissi in Scheherazade Goes West. The French media's excitement over figures like the Ukranian 'Femen' or Alia el Mahdi, the Egyptian student who in 2011 posted naked pictures of herself on her blog, once again underlines the truth of Mernissi's observation. To commemorate International Women's Day, France 2 aired a documentary on March 5 about the Ukrainian women's group, which has been based in France for more than a year now.
So much for the thousands of women who have the poor taste to fight for their rights while fully clothed, or to put on a show that does not conform with the dominant standards of youth, slimness, beauty and bodily firmness. "Feminism is women on the march in the streets of Cairo, not the Femen," raged France Inter's Egypt correspondent Vanessa Descouraux on Twitter, on February 6. "But we never see documentaries about those women on television!" Feminist organizations in France these days are more likely to be asked their opinion of the Ukrainian women's group than about their own undertakings.
To read more.....
The Ever-Shrinking Role of Tenured College Professors
For almost 40 years, we've been witnessing the rise of the adjuncts.
Jordan Weissmann
The Atlantic - Apr 10 2013
Once, being a college professor was a career. Today, it's a gig.
That, broadly speaking, is the transformation captured in the graph below from a new report by the American Association of University Professors. Since 1975, tenure and tenure-track professors have gone from roughly 45 percent of all teaching staff to less than a quarter. Meanwhile, part-time faculty are now more than 40 percent of college instructors, as shown by the line soaring towards the top of the graph.
This doesn't actually mean that there are fewer full-time professors today than four-decades ago. College faculties have grown considerably over the years, and as the AAUP notes, the ranks of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate are up 26 percent since 1975. Part-time appointments, however, have exploded by 300 percent. The proportions vary depending on the kind of school you're talking about. At public four-year colleges, about 64 percent of teaching staff were full-time as of 2009. At private four-year schools, about 49 percent were, and at community colleges, only about 30 percent were. But the big story across academia is broadly the same: if it were a move, it'd be called "Rise of the Adjuncts."
To read more....
Jordan Weissmann
The Atlantic - Apr 10 2013
Once, being a college professor was a career. Today, it's a gig.
That, broadly speaking, is the transformation captured in the graph below from a new report by the American Association of University Professors. Since 1975, tenure and tenure-track professors have gone from roughly 45 percent of all teaching staff to less than a quarter. Meanwhile, part-time faculty are now more than 40 percent of college instructors, as shown by the line soaring towards the top of the graph.
This doesn't actually mean that there are fewer full-time professors today than four-decades ago. College faculties have grown considerably over the years, and as the AAUP notes, the ranks of the tenured and tenure-track professoriate are up 26 percent since 1975. Part-time appointments, however, have exploded by 300 percent. The proportions vary depending on the kind of school you're talking about. At public four-year colleges, about 64 percent of teaching staff were full-time as of 2009. At private four-year schools, about 49 percent were, and at community colleges, only about 30 percent were. But the big story across academia is broadly the same: if it were a move, it'd be called "Rise of the Adjuncts."
To read more....
Can Capitalism Tolerate a Democratic Internet?
An Interview With Media Expert Robert McChesney
Truthout | Interview Wednesday, 03 April 2013
By Anne Elizabeth Moore
The thing you forget about the man with 23 books to his name, books that have been translated into 30 languages, the man who cofounded the Free Press - one of the most important media reform organizations in the country - is that he has kind of crazy hair. Despite that, he's also one of the most respected scholars of the history and political economy of communication in the United States. Robert W. McChesney got started in the same way I did in media - in the punk-rock trenches of independent print publishing. As founding publisher of The Rocket, the underground cultural rag in Seattle that fostered an enduring music scene that still helps define American culture, McChesney has thoroughly tested the enduring impact of independent media.
Yet the Internet has scant room for non-corporate voices, a concern that drives McChesney's latest New Press title, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. It's an important extension of his to-date oeuvre, tracking the privatization of communication in the digital age, as well as a vital stand-alone resource. (Full disclosure: McChesney and the Free Press have been very supportive of my work in the past, but I'm sure you'll agree I haven't let that keep me from a close interrogation of his ideas in the interest of expanding his audience.)
I am grateful to have spent an hour with McChesney discussing his latest for Truthout - a site he had plenty of great things to say about.
To read more......
Truthout | Interview Wednesday, 03 April 2013
By Anne Elizabeth Moore
The thing you forget about the man with 23 books to his name, books that have been translated into 30 languages, the man who cofounded the Free Press - one of the most important media reform organizations in the country - is that he has kind of crazy hair. Despite that, he's also one of the most respected scholars of the history and political economy of communication in the United States. Robert W. McChesney got started in the same way I did in media - in the punk-rock trenches of independent print publishing. As founding publisher of The Rocket, the underground cultural rag in Seattle that fostered an enduring music scene that still helps define American culture, McChesney has thoroughly tested the enduring impact of independent media.
Yet the Internet has scant room for non-corporate voices, a concern that drives McChesney's latest New Press title, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. It's an important extension of his to-date oeuvre, tracking the privatization of communication in the digital age, as well as a vital stand-alone resource. (Full disclosure: McChesney and the Free Press have been very supportive of my work in the past, but I'm sure you'll agree I haven't let that keep me from a close interrogation of his ideas in the interest of expanding his audience.)
I am grateful to have spent an hour with McChesney discussing his latest for Truthout - a site he had plenty of great things to say about.
To read more......
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
In History Departments, It’s Up With Capitalism
By
JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
A specter is haunting university history departments: the specter of capitalism.
After decades of “history from below,” focusing on women, minorities and
other marginalized people seizing their destiny, a new generation of
scholars is increasingly turning to what, strangely, risked becoming the
most marginalized group of all: the bosses, bankers and brokers who run
the economy.
Even before the financial crisis, courses in “the history of capitalism”
— as the new discipline bills itself — began proliferating on campuses,
along with dissertations on once deeply unsexy topics like insurance,
banking and regulation. The events of 2008 and their long aftermath have
given urgency to the scholarly realization that it really is the
economy, stupid.
The financial meltdown also created a serious market opportunity. Columbia University Press recently introduced a new “Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism”
book series (“This is not your father’s business history,” the proposal
promised), and other top university presses have been snapping up
dissertations on 19th-century insurance and early-20th-century stock speculation, with trade publishers and op-ed editors following close behind.
China Stuck With Sub-8% Growth as G-20 Confronts Slowdown
By Bloomberg News - Apr 16, 2013
China’s longest streak of expansion below 8 percent in at least 20 years is sending a message to suppliers and investors around the world to get used to slower growth in the second-biggest economy.
The 7.7 percent increase in first-quarter gross domestic product from a year earlier marked the first time in data going back two decades that four periods in a row have seen growth of less than 8 percent. The figure released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing was also the worst miss of analyst estimates since the third quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To read more.......
China’s longest streak of expansion below 8 percent in at least 20 years is sending a message to suppliers and investors around the world to get used to slower growth in the second-biggest economy.
The 7.7 percent increase in first-quarter gross domestic product from a year earlier marked the first time in data going back two decades that four periods in a row have seen growth of less than 8 percent. The figure released yesterday by the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing was also the worst miss of analyst estimates since the third quarter of 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To read more.......
World military spending dips in 2012, first fall since 1998
Big powers the United States and its European allies face tight budgets in an economic downturn and have scaled back involvement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world's second biggest economy China, however, is ramping up spending and registered 7.8 percent growth in 2012 from the year before, up 175 percent from 2003.
Military expenditure as a whole fell 0.5 percent to $1.75 trillion last year in the first decline in real terms since 1998, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which carries out research on international security, armaments and disarmament, said in a statement.
"We are seeing what may be the beginning of a shift in the balance of world military spending from the rich Western countries to emerging regions," said Sam Perlo-Freeman, director of SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.
Military expenditure in the United States, the world's biggest spender by far with a budget about five times that of China, fell 6 percent and stood below 40 percent of the global total for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago, SIPRI said.
The United States pulled its troops out of Iraq more than a year ago and is winding down its war in Afghanistan under a plan for a pull-out by the end of 2014.
The Pentagon is seeking to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in costs and this month, new Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel warned the U.S. military to brace for a new round of belt-tightening.
In Europe, austerity measures prompted by the financial crisis that started in 2008 have forced NATO members to cut back spending by 10 percent in real terms.
"All the indications are that world military spending is likely to keep falling for the next two to three years — at least until NATO completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan at the end of 2014," Perlo-Freeman said.
"However, spending in emerging regions will probably go on rising, so the world total will probably bottom out after that."
RISE OF CHINA
Global military spending fell significantly after the Cold War ended, reaching a nadir in the mid-1990s, but picked up pace sharply after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The global total remains above the Cold War peak.
While the United States and its allies still account for most of the expenditure - NATO members spent more than a trillion dollars last year - regions such as Asia and eastern Europe ramped up outlays, SIPRI said.
In the works for China's military are new submarines, ships, missiles, a stealth fighter and aircraft carrier combat groups.
China has repeatedly said the world has nothing to fear from its military spending, but governments from Tokyo to Mumbai are worried about the capabilities and what appears to be the greater belligerence of China's military.
Over the past six months, China's stand-off with Japan over a series of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea has become more acrimonious, and has already led to calls in Tokyo for Japan to alter its pacifist constitution.
At the same time, Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations have challenged Beijing over claims to swathes of the South China Sea that could be rich in oil and gas.
China is now the world's fifth-largest arms exporter, replacing Britain in the list of the top five arms dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, SIPRI said in a March report. Pakistan was the main recipient of its goods, the report said.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama says it is shifting its security focus to the Asia-Pacific region.
Military spending is up around 8 percent in the Middle East and North Africa. In a region transformed by popular uprisings and reeling from a bloody civil war in Syria, Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Oman have accounted for much of the increase in their efforts to counter the strategic challenge posed by Iran.
In North Africa, countries such as Algeria have bolstered spending in the face of rebel threats, SIPRI said.
Russia's military spending rose 16 percent in 2012, which analysts said reflected President Vladimir Putin's efforts since he returned to power last May to bolster the armed forces and improve weaponry.
(Reporting by Niklas Pollard; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Sonya Hepinstall)
Salafism in Tunisia: An Interview with a Member of Ansar al-Sharia
by Fabio Merone
Jadaliyya - April 11, 2013
The emergence of Salafi movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia surprised both the international community and many in Tunisia itself. The astonishment was such that when the first Salafi demonstrations took place in downtown Tunis, journalists and observers were talking quite confusingly about the phenomenon. Some accused men of the former regime of having organized the demonstrations by these bearded men, others claimed they were members of the Tahrir Party (a pan-Islamist movement), and others still labeled them with the generic formula of “Islamists.”
What many did not fully realize is that a new rebellious generation had matured during the 2000s, keeping their views hidden. When democracy gave the chance for everybody to “perform” freely, they showed off and did all through their most meaningful symbols. Dressed in the Afghan kamis and sporting long beards, they slowly occupied public spaces, particularly in working class neighborhoods.
As the phenomenon grew, hysteria began to spread in society, especially among Tunisian seculars and liberals. In the context of the Ennahda electoral victory in the 2011 elections of the constituent assembly, and with the emergence of a larger Islamic public, Tunisia seemed to have radically changed its face. In fact, the time had finally come to reveal the “lie” of a secular country that appeared more similar to France than to any other Arab country. Post-revolutionary Tunisia was showing off a new Islamic identity.
To read more.....
Jadaliyya - April 11, 2013
The emergence of Salafi movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia surprised both the international community and many in Tunisia itself. The astonishment was such that when the first Salafi demonstrations took place in downtown Tunis, journalists and observers were talking quite confusingly about the phenomenon. Some accused men of the former regime of having organized the demonstrations by these bearded men, others claimed they were members of the Tahrir Party (a pan-Islamist movement), and others still labeled them with the generic formula of “Islamists.”
What many did not fully realize is that a new rebellious generation had matured during the 2000s, keeping their views hidden. When democracy gave the chance for everybody to “perform” freely, they showed off and did all through their most meaningful symbols. Dressed in the Afghan kamis and sporting long beards, they slowly occupied public spaces, particularly in working class neighborhoods.
As the phenomenon grew, hysteria began to spread in society, especially among Tunisian seculars and liberals. In the context of the Ennahda electoral victory in the 2011 elections of the constituent assembly, and with the emergence of a larger Islamic public, Tunisia seemed to have radically changed its face. In fact, the time had finally come to reveal the “lie” of a secular country that appeared more similar to France than to any other Arab country. Post-revolutionary Tunisia was showing off a new Islamic identity.
To read more.....
The World's Fastest-Growing Megacities
by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox
Washington | 4/08/2013
The modern megacity may have been largely an invention of the West, but it’s increasingly to be found largely in the East. The seven largest megacities (defined as areas of continuous urban development of over 10 million people) are located in Asia, based on a roundup of the latest population data released last month by Wendell Cox’s Demographia. The largest megacity remains the Tokyo-Yokohama area, home to 37 million, followed by the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Seoul-Incheon, Delhi, Shanghai and Manila.
With roughly 20 million inhabitants, the New York metro area, the world’s largest urban agglomeration from early in the 20th century till Tokyo surpassed it in the 1950s, ranks eighth. The only other western urban areas among the 28 biggest megacities now are Moscow (15th), Los Angeles (17th), and Paris (28th). London, which was the first modern city of a million people, is not on the list at all, with expansion long ago stopped by its green belt. In 1990, New York ranked second and Los Angeles ranked eighth.
To read more.....
Washington | 4/08/2013
The modern megacity may have been largely an invention of the West, but it’s increasingly to be found largely in the East. The seven largest megacities (defined as areas of continuous urban development of over 10 million people) are located in Asia, based on a roundup of the latest population data released last month by Wendell Cox’s Demographia. The largest megacity remains the Tokyo-Yokohama area, home to 37 million, followed by the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Seoul-Incheon, Delhi, Shanghai and Manila.
With roughly 20 million inhabitants, the New York metro area, the world’s largest urban agglomeration from early in the 20th century till Tokyo surpassed it in the 1950s, ranks eighth. The only other western urban areas among the 28 biggest megacities now are Moscow (15th), Los Angeles (17th), and Paris (28th). London, which was the first modern city of a million people, is not on the list at all, with expansion long ago stopped by its green belt. In 1990, New York ranked second and Los Angeles ranked eighth.
To read more.....
Qatar Has ‘No Global Mission To Conquer The World’
Experts say the country's sovereign wealth fund is only focussed on investments with high returns.
By Reuters - April 13, 2013
Bankers and politicians touting their countries’ wares have to work hard to get the attention of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, such is the range of its interests, from banks to cars to soccer clubs, and its exacting requirement for returns.
With estimated assets of about $200 billion, and more than a dozen potential deals on its radar every week, the state-run firm has no time for less than compelling investment opportunities and hopes to make more than 17 per cent on its book this year, according to one banker close to the fund.
In a series of interviews with top bankers and officials who deal with the fund, most of whom wished to remain anonymous due to their business relationships, Reuters probed the thinking behind the gas-rich Gulf state’s investments and the future destination of its capital.
“There’s clearly an open-door policy. Qatar has no mystery and no global mission to conquer the world. All it is is buying strategic shares in big companies at an advantage,” says a senior banker at a global bank who has worked on several deals for the fund.
Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the wealth fund, has been actively deploying the nation’s riches from plentiful natural gas in recent years in a string of high-profile assets ranging from French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain to stakes in German sports-car maker Porsche, British bank Barclays and Swiss lender Credit Suisse.
To read more....
By Reuters - April 13, 2013
Bankers and politicians touting their countries’ wares have to work hard to get the attention of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, such is the range of its interests, from banks to cars to soccer clubs, and its exacting requirement for returns.
With estimated assets of about $200 billion, and more than a dozen potential deals on its radar every week, the state-run firm has no time for less than compelling investment opportunities and hopes to make more than 17 per cent on its book this year, according to one banker close to the fund.
In a series of interviews with top bankers and officials who deal with the fund, most of whom wished to remain anonymous due to their business relationships, Reuters probed the thinking behind the gas-rich Gulf state’s investments and the future destination of its capital.
“There’s clearly an open-door policy. Qatar has no mystery and no global mission to conquer the world. All it is is buying strategic shares in big companies at an advantage,” says a senior banker at a global bank who has worked on several deals for the fund.
Qatar Holding, the investment arm of the wealth fund, has been actively deploying the nation’s riches from plentiful natural gas in recent years in a string of high-profile assets ranging from French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain to stakes in German sports-car maker Porsche, British bank Barclays and Swiss lender Credit Suisse.
To read more....
Sunday, April 14, 2013
How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States
By MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times, April 9, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html
The burly American was escorted by Pakistani policemen into a crowded interrogation room. Amid a clatter of ringing mobile phones and cross talk among the cops speaking a mishmash of Urdu, Punjabi and English, the investigator tried to decipher the facts of the case.
“America, you from America?”
“Yes.”
“You’re from America, and you belong to the American Embassy?”
“Yes,” the American voice said loudly above the chatter. “My passport — at the site I showed the police officer. . . . It’s somewhere. It’s lost.”
On the jumpy video footage of the interrogation, he reached beneath his checkered flannel shirt and produced a jumble of identification badges hanging around his neck. “This is an old badge. This is Islamabad.” He showed the badge to the man across the desk and then flipped to a more recent one proving his employment in the American Consulate in Lahore.
“You are working at the consulate general in Lahore?” the policeman asked.
“Yes.”
“As a . . . ?”
“I, I just work as a consultant there.”
“Consultant?” The man behind the desk paused for a moment and then shot a question in Urdu to another policeman. “And what’s the name?”
“Raymond Davis,” the officer responded.
“Raymond Davis,” the American confirmed. “Can I sit down?”
“Please do. Give you water?” the officer asked.
“Do you have a bottle? A bottle of water?” Davis asked.
Another officer in the room laughed. “You want water?” he asked. “No money, no water.”
Another policeman walked into the room and asked for an update. “Is he understanding everything? And he just killed two men?”
To read more.....
The New York Times, April 9, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/raymond-davis-pakistan.html
The burly American was escorted by Pakistani policemen into a crowded interrogation room. Amid a clatter of ringing mobile phones and cross talk among the cops speaking a mishmash of Urdu, Punjabi and English, the investigator tried to decipher the facts of the case.
“America, you from America?”
“Yes.”
“You’re from America, and you belong to the American Embassy?”
“Yes,” the American voice said loudly above the chatter. “My passport — at the site I showed the police officer. . . . It’s somewhere. It’s lost.”
On the jumpy video footage of the interrogation, he reached beneath his checkered flannel shirt and produced a jumble of identification badges hanging around his neck. “This is an old badge. This is Islamabad.” He showed the badge to the man across the desk and then flipped to a more recent one proving his employment in the American Consulate in Lahore.
“You are working at the consulate general in Lahore?” the policeman asked.
“Yes.”
“As a . . . ?”
“I, I just work as a consultant there.”
“Consultant?” The man behind the desk paused for a moment and then shot a question in Urdu to another policeman. “And what’s the name?”
“Raymond Davis,” the officer responded.
“Raymond Davis,” the American confirmed. “Can I sit down?”
“Please do. Give you water?” the officer asked.
“Do you have a bottle? A bottle of water?” Davis asked.
Another officer in the room laughed. “You want water?” he asked. “No money, no water.”
Another policeman walked into the room and asked for an update. “Is he understanding everything? And he just killed two men?”
To read more.....
A Book Review: Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber
A Man of His Time
By JONATHAN FREEDLAND
The New York Times - March 29, 2013
The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.
Still, it comes as a shock to realize that the ultimate leftist, the father of Communism itself, fits a recognizable pattern. It’s like discovering that Jesus Christ regularly organized bake sales at his local church. So inflated and elevated is the global image of Marx, whether revered as a revolutionary icon or reviled as the wellspring of Soviet totalitarianism, that it’s unsettling to encounter a genuine human being, a character one might come across today. If the Marx described by Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri specializing in European history, were around in 2013, he would be a compulsive blogger, and picking Twitter fights with Andrew Sullivan and Naomi Klein.
But that’s cheating. The express purpose of “Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life” is to dispel the dominant notion of a timeless Marx — less man, more ideological canon — and relocate him where he lived and belonged, in his own time, not ours. Standing firm against the avalanche of studies claiming Marx as forever “our contemporary,” Sperber sets out to depict instead “a figure of the past,” not “a prophet of the present.”
And he succeeds in the primary task of all biography, recreating a man who leaps off the page. We travel with Marx from his hometown, Trier, via student carousing in Bonn and Berlin, to his debut in political journalism in Cologne and on to exile and revolutionary activity in Paris, Brussels and London. We see his thought develop, but glimpse also the begging letters to his mother, requesting an advance on his inheritance, along with the enduring anxiety over whether he can provide for the wife he has loved since he was a teenager. We hear of the sleepless nights that follow the start of the American Civil War: Marx is troubled not by the fate of the Union, but by the loss of freelance income from The New York Tribune, which, consumed by matters closer to home, no longer requires his services as a European correspondent. We see the trips to the pawnbrokers, the pressure to maintain bourgeois living standards, “the show of respectability,” as Marx put it to his closest friend and co-conspirator, Friedrich Engels.
To read more...
By JONATHAN FREEDLAND
The New York Times - March 29, 2013The Karl Marx depicted in Jonathan Sperber’s absorbing, meticulously researched biography will be unnervingly familiar to anyone who has had even the most fleeting acquaintance with radical politics. Here is a man never more passionate than when attacking his own side, saddled with perennial money problems and still reliant on his parents for cash, constantly plotting new, world-changing ventures yet having trouble with both deadlines and personal hygiene, living in rooms that some might call bohemian, others plain “slummy,” and who can be maddeningly inconsistent when not lapsing into elaborate flights of theory and unintelligible abstraction.
Still, it comes as a shock to realize that the ultimate leftist, the father of Communism itself, fits a recognizable pattern. It’s like discovering that Jesus Christ regularly organized bake sales at his local church. So inflated and elevated is the global image of Marx, whether revered as a revolutionary icon or reviled as the wellspring of Soviet totalitarianism, that it’s unsettling to encounter a genuine human being, a character one might come across today. If the Marx described by Sperber, a professor at the University of Missouri specializing in European history, were around in 2013, he would be a compulsive blogger, and picking Twitter fights with Andrew Sullivan and Naomi Klein.
But that’s cheating. The express purpose of “Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life” is to dispel the dominant notion of a timeless Marx — less man, more ideological canon — and relocate him where he lived and belonged, in his own time, not ours. Standing firm against the avalanche of studies claiming Marx as forever “our contemporary,” Sperber sets out to depict instead “a figure of the past,” not “a prophet of the present.”
And he succeeds in the primary task of all biography, recreating a man who leaps off the page. We travel with Marx from his hometown, Trier, via student carousing in Bonn and Berlin, to his debut in political journalism in Cologne and on to exile and revolutionary activity in Paris, Brussels and London. We see his thought develop, but glimpse also the begging letters to his mother, requesting an advance on his inheritance, along with the enduring anxiety over whether he can provide for the wife he has loved since he was a teenager. We hear of the sleepless nights that follow the start of the American Civil War: Marx is troubled not by the fate of the Union, but by the loss of freelance income from The New York Tribune, which, consumed by matters closer to home, no longer requires his services as a European correspondent. We see the trips to the pawnbrokers, the pressure to maintain bourgeois living standards, “the show of respectability,” as Marx put it to his closest friend and co-conspirator, Friedrich Engels.
To read more...
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Brazil, China, and India Are Fat, And Getting Fatter
In addition to infrastructure, the BRICS need to focus on healthcare spending. They fail to address their obesity rates that their peril.
Eduardo J. Gómez
The Atlantic - Apr 8 2013
In China, the growth rate of new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants is 13 percent a year, compared with 2.9 percent in the U.S. And as the chain has expanded, so have Chinese citizens' waistlines. Recently, the aspiring BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) met in sunny Durban, South Africa, for their fifth summit to discuss their plans for creating their proposed BRICS Development Bank (BDB). Despite ongoing doubts that these nations will be able to quickly come to an agreement over where and how the bank will function, there is hope that these differences can be overcome.
But there is one issue that the BRICS leaders seemed to have overlooked. That is, how will the BRICS bank address these nations' ongoing struggle to contain the spread of disease? Diseases commonly attributed to economic wealth and prosperity, such as obesity and diabetes, are on the rise and will inevitably threaten their bristling economies should the BDB fail to adequately invest in healthcare infrastructure.
The proposed BDB bank is mainly focused on providing loans and grants - approximately $4.5 trillion in total - to finance infrastructural development projects in the BRICS and other developing nations. This funding will be used to construct railroads, bridges, highways, and ports. Created as an alternative " Bretton Woods for the developing nations," loans will be provided at favorable lending terms. The bank will also provide a currency reserve of $100 billion dollars to be used in times of economic crisis. Another implicit goal through this banking endeavor is to decrease the BRICS and other developing nations' ongoing reliance on the World Bank and IMF for financial assistance while creating a lending facility that better understands developing nations' context and needs.
To read more.....
Eduardo J. Gómez
The Atlantic - Apr 8 2013
In China, the growth rate of new Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants is 13 percent a year, compared with 2.9 percent in the U.S. And as the chain has expanded, so have Chinese citizens' waistlines. Recently, the aspiring BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) met in sunny Durban, South Africa, for their fifth summit to discuss their plans for creating their proposed BRICS Development Bank (BDB). Despite ongoing doubts that these nations will be able to quickly come to an agreement over where and how the bank will function, there is hope that these differences can be overcome.
But there is one issue that the BRICS leaders seemed to have overlooked. That is, how will the BRICS bank address these nations' ongoing struggle to contain the spread of disease? Diseases commonly attributed to economic wealth and prosperity, such as obesity and diabetes, are on the rise and will inevitably threaten their bristling economies should the BDB fail to adequately invest in healthcare infrastructure.
The proposed BDB bank is mainly focused on providing loans and grants - approximately $4.5 trillion in total - to finance infrastructural development projects in the BRICS and other developing nations. This funding will be used to construct railroads, bridges, highways, and ports. Created as an alternative " Bretton Woods for the developing nations," loans will be provided at favorable lending terms. The bank will also provide a currency reserve of $100 billion dollars to be used in times of economic crisis. Another implicit goal through this banking endeavor is to decrease the BRICS and other developing nations' ongoing reliance on the World Bank and IMF for financial assistance while creating a lending facility that better understands developing nations' context and needs.
To read more.....
The economic legacy of Mrs. Thatcher is a mixed bag
by John Van Reenen
British Politics and Policy at LSE - April 10, 2013
Much virtual ink has been spilled this week on the legacy of Mrs. Thatcher, so it is with trepidation that I make yet another contribution. And as with all social science it is notoriously hard to know what the world would have looked like “but for” the election victories of Mrs T. But we must try.
As a student I was not a fan of her government, but in retrospect I believe it is clear that the important changes in economic policies that began at the end of the 1970s contributed to the reversal of a century of UK relative economic decline. Her macro-economic policies have a mixed record, but the micro-economic policies have had a more enduring success. In particular, the supply side policies she launched to make labour and product markets more competitive and flexible have been broadly continued under subsequent Conservative (under John Major) and Labour (under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) administrations.
The Economic Record
Although the UK has enjoyed significant improvements in material wellbeing for well over two centuries, UK GDP per capita was in relative decline compared with other leading countries, such as France, Germany and the US, from at least 1870 onwards (see Figure 1). The UK’s relative decline reflected an almost inevitable catch-up of other countries whose institutions created the right kind of investment climate. But by the late 1970s the UK had been comprehensively overtaken: US GDP per capita was 40% higher than the UK’s and the major continental European countries were 10-15% ahead. The subsequent three decades, in contrast, saw the UK’s relative performance improve substantially so that by 2007, on the eve of the crisis, UK GDP per capita had overtaken both France and Germany and reduced significantly the gap with the US.
To read more.....
British Politics and Policy at LSE - April 10, 2013
Much virtual ink has been spilled this week on the legacy of Mrs. Thatcher, so it is with trepidation that I make yet another contribution. And as with all social science it is notoriously hard to know what the world would have looked like “but for” the election victories of Mrs T. But we must try.
As a student I was not a fan of her government, but in retrospect I believe it is clear that the important changes in economic policies that began at the end of the 1970s contributed to the reversal of a century of UK relative economic decline. Her macro-economic policies have a mixed record, but the micro-economic policies have had a more enduring success. In particular, the supply side policies she launched to make labour and product markets more competitive and flexible have been broadly continued under subsequent Conservative (under John Major) and Labour (under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) administrations.
The Economic Record
Although the UK has enjoyed significant improvements in material wellbeing for well over two centuries, UK GDP per capita was in relative decline compared with other leading countries, such as France, Germany and the US, from at least 1870 onwards (see Figure 1). The UK’s relative decline reflected an almost inevitable catch-up of other countries whose institutions created the right kind of investment climate. But by the late 1970s the UK had been comprehensively overtaken: US GDP per capita was 40% higher than the UK’s and the major continental European countries were 10-15% ahead. The subsequent three decades, in contrast, saw the UK’s relative performance improve substantially so that by 2007, on the eve of the crisis, UK GDP per capita had overtaken both France and Germany and reduced significantly the gap with the US.
To read more.....
Neruda, Pinochet, and the Iron Lady
Neruda, Pinochet, and the Iron Lady
by Jon Lee Anderson
The New Yorker - April 10, 2013
It’s curious, historically speaking, that Margaret Thatcher died on the same day that forensic specialists, in Chile, exhumed the remains of the late, great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The author of the epic “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” and the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, Neruda died at the age of sixty-nine, supposedly of prostate cancer, just twelve days after the violent September 11, 1973, military coup launched by army chief Augusto Pinochet against the country’s elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende. Warplanes had strafed the Presidential palace, and Allende had bravely held out, but committed suicide with a rifle given to him by Cuba’s President Fidel Castro as Pinochet’s goons stormed into the Presidential palace. Neruda was a close friend and supporter of Allende’s; he was ill, but in the midst of planning to leave the country for Mexico, where he had been invited to go into exile. When he was on his deathbed in a clinic, his home had been broken into by soldiers and trashed.
At his funeral, a large crowd of mourners marched through the streets of Santiago—a grim city that was otherwise empty except for military vehicles. At his gravesite, in one of the only known acts of public defiance in the wake of the coup, the mourners sang the “Internationale” and saluted Neruda and also Allende. As they did, the regime’s men were going around the city, burning the books of authors it didn’t like, while hunting down those it could find to torture or kill.
A couple of years ago, Neruda’s former driver came forth to express his suspicion that Neruda had been poisoned, saying that he’d heard from the poet that doctors gave him an injection and that, immediately afterward, Neruda’s condition had worsened drastically. There are other tidbits of evidence that bolster his theory, but nothing conclusive. Forensic science, in the end, may provide the answer to a nagging historic question.
Why bring Maggie Thatcher into it? In a tribute Monday, President Barack Obama said she had been “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty.” Actually, she hadn’t. Thatcher was a fierce Cold Warrior, and when it came to Chile never mustered quite the appropriate amount of compassion for the people Pinochet killed in the name of anti-Communism. She preferred talking about his much-vaunted “Chilean economic miracle.”
To read more.....
by Jon Lee Anderson
The New Yorker - April 10, 2013
It’s curious, historically speaking, that Margaret Thatcher died on the same day that forensic specialists, in Chile, exhumed the remains of the late, great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The author of the epic “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” and the winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, Neruda died at the age of sixty-nine, supposedly of prostate cancer, just twelve days after the violent September 11, 1973, military coup launched by army chief Augusto Pinochet against the country’s elected Socialist President, Salvador Allende. Warplanes had strafed the Presidential palace, and Allende had bravely held out, but committed suicide with a rifle given to him by Cuba’s President Fidel Castro as Pinochet’s goons stormed into the Presidential palace. Neruda was a close friend and supporter of Allende’s; he was ill, but in the midst of planning to leave the country for Mexico, where he had been invited to go into exile. When he was on his deathbed in a clinic, his home had been broken into by soldiers and trashed.
At his funeral, a large crowd of mourners marched through the streets of Santiago—a grim city that was otherwise empty except for military vehicles. At his gravesite, in one of the only known acts of public defiance in the wake of the coup, the mourners sang the “Internationale” and saluted Neruda and also Allende. As they did, the regime’s men were going around the city, burning the books of authors it didn’t like, while hunting down those it could find to torture or kill.
A couple of years ago, Neruda’s former driver came forth to express his suspicion that Neruda had been poisoned, saying that he’d heard from the poet that doctors gave him an injection and that, immediately afterward, Neruda’s condition had worsened drastically. There are other tidbits of evidence that bolster his theory, but nothing conclusive. Forensic science, in the end, may provide the answer to a nagging historic question.
Why bring Maggie Thatcher into it? In a tribute Monday, President Barack Obama said she had been “one of the great champions of freedom and liberty.” Actually, she hadn’t. Thatcher was a fierce Cold Warrior, and when it came to Chile never mustered quite the appropriate amount of compassion for the people Pinochet killed in the name of anti-Communism. She preferred talking about his much-vaunted “Chilean economic miracle.”
To read more.....
Welcome to the Islamic State of Syria
Welcome to the Islamic State of Syria Al Qaeda makes it official: The terror group is trying to extend its medieval rule from Baghdad to Damascus.
BY BRIAN FISHMAN
Foreign Policy | APRIL 10, 2013
As soon as peaceful protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned violent in summer 2011, it was clear that al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq -- known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) -- would play a terrible role shaping Syria's future. That reality was reemphasized on April 9, when ISI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi publicly acknowledged that his organization had founded the preeminent Syrian jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra. Baghdadi then renamed their collective enterprise the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIGS).
Kudos to Baghdadi for confirming what has long been known. The United States had already listed Jabhat al-Nusra as an alias for al Qaeda in Iraq in December 2012, and the basic relationship between the Iraqi and Syrian branches of al Qaeda was easy to surmise when Jabhat al-Nusra officially declared its existence in January 2012. It's no surprise ISI was quickly able to establish a foothold in Syria: The group had built extensive networks in the country since early in the Iraq war, and was reasserting itself in eastern Iraq, which shares a 376 mile-long border with Syria, in the years before the uprising against Assad began.
The relevant issue, then, is not whether Baghdadi's statement is true. Rather, the important questions to ask are who made the branding decision, why the ISI acknowledged this relationship now, and whether the announcement will lead to changes in behavior by the jihadist group. In Syria, the looming question is how Jabhat al-Nusra's open affiliation with al Qaeda will affect its relationships with other rebel groups fighting against Assad.
Perhaps the most interesting conclusion to be drawn from the creation of the ISIGS is that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's titular head, still seems to be engaged in the operations of the terror group's regional affiliates. The co-branding of the ISI and Jabhat al-Nusra was preceded on April 7 by an audio statement from Zawahiri urging Jabhat al-Nusra to establish an Islamic state and emphasizing the importance of the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda to that effort. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's subsequent declaration of unity -- only a day or so later -- suggests either a high-degree of coordination with Zawahiri's PR team, or that he jumps quickly when the head man gives an order.
Zawahiri's apparent ability to affect al Qaeda's strategy in the Levant is somewhat surprising. In the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, he is the world's most wanted man, and a series of U.S. strikes on al Qaeda's communication network after the bin Laden raid must have forced him deeper underground. Nonetheless, it is very hard to believe that the timing of the Zawahiri and Baghdadi statements are a coincidence. It seems that Zawahiri -- like bin Laden before him -- remains relevant to the operations of the network he heads.
To read more.....
BY BRIAN FISHMAN
Foreign Policy | APRIL 10, 2013
As soon as peaceful protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned violent in summer 2011, it was clear that al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq -- known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) -- would play a terrible role shaping Syria's future. That reality was reemphasized on April 9, when ISI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi publicly acknowledged that his organization had founded the preeminent Syrian jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra. Baghdadi then renamed their collective enterprise the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIGS).
Kudos to Baghdadi for confirming what has long been known. The United States had already listed Jabhat al-Nusra as an alias for al Qaeda in Iraq in December 2012, and the basic relationship between the Iraqi and Syrian branches of al Qaeda was easy to surmise when Jabhat al-Nusra officially declared its existence in January 2012. It's no surprise ISI was quickly able to establish a foothold in Syria: The group had built extensive networks in the country since early in the Iraq war, and was reasserting itself in eastern Iraq, which shares a 376 mile-long border with Syria, in the years before the uprising against Assad began.
The relevant issue, then, is not whether Baghdadi's statement is true. Rather, the important questions to ask are who made the branding decision, why the ISI acknowledged this relationship now, and whether the announcement will lead to changes in behavior by the jihadist group. In Syria, the looming question is how Jabhat al-Nusra's open affiliation with al Qaeda will affect its relationships with other rebel groups fighting against Assad.
Perhaps the most interesting conclusion to be drawn from the creation of the ISIGS is that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's titular head, still seems to be engaged in the operations of the terror group's regional affiliates. The co-branding of the ISI and Jabhat al-Nusra was preceded on April 7 by an audio statement from Zawahiri urging Jabhat al-Nusra to establish an Islamic state and emphasizing the importance of the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda to that effort. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's subsequent declaration of unity -- only a day or so later -- suggests either a high-degree of coordination with Zawahiri's PR team, or that he jumps quickly when the head man gives an order.
Zawahiri's apparent ability to affect al Qaeda's strategy in the Levant is somewhat surprising. In the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, he is the world's most wanted man, and a series of U.S. strikes on al Qaeda's communication network after the bin Laden raid must have forced him deeper underground. Nonetheless, it is very hard to believe that the timing of the Zawahiri and Baghdadi statements are a coincidence. It seems that Zawahiri -- like bin Laden before him -- remains relevant to the operations of the network he heads.
To read more.....
Why Chinese Migrant Workers Are Abandoning the Country's Top Cities
Why Chinese Migrant Workers Are Abandoning the Country's Top Cities
Every year, workers living in Beijing or Shanghai visit their homes for Chinese New Year. More and more are deciding not to come back.
Shi Yunhan
The Atlantic April 10 2013
In Beijing, budget rental housing -- especially bunk beds, small apartments and single rooms in the more dilapidated hutong areas -- are easy to find after Chinese New Year. This is because many migrant workers who leave the capital for their home regions for the new year choose not to return. Although there are no national statistics on this still under-researched phenomenon known as the "tide of return" (huixiangchao), the numbers of workers who leave China's overcrowded coastal metropolises to pursue their dreams in humbler settings has been steadily growing in past years.
Between December 31, 2012 and February 22, 2013, the large coastal city of Xiamen "lost" 36,200 registered migrant workers, and hourly salaries for cooks and cleaners are on a steady rise. On Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging platform, user @猫爷困了commented: "The pressure is really huge. I should pack up my mattress and get going too."
To read more.....
Every year, workers living in Beijing or Shanghai visit their homes for Chinese New Year. More and more are deciding not to come back.
Shi Yunhan
The Atlantic April 10 2013
In Beijing, budget rental housing -- especially bunk beds, small apartments and single rooms in the more dilapidated hutong areas -- are easy to find after Chinese New Year. This is because many migrant workers who leave the capital for their home regions for the new year choose not to return. Although there are no national statistics on this still under-researched phenomenon known as the "tide of return" (huixiangchao), the numbers of workers who leave China's overcrowded coastal metropolises to pursue their dreams in humbler settings has been steadily growing in past years.
Between December 31, 2012 and February 22, 2013, the large coastal city of Xiamen "lost" 36,200 registered migrant workers, and hourly salaries for cooks and cleaners are on a steady rise. On Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging platform, user @猫爷困了commented: "The pressure is really huge. I should pack up my mattress and get going too."
To read more.....
Why You Haven't Heard of Any Chinese Brands ...
Why You Haven't Heard of Any Chinese Brands ...
... and why that may be about to change
Matt Schiavenza
The Atlantic Apr 8 2013
Here's a little thought exercise: Think of a Chinese brand. Any Chinese brand. Go on, I'll wait. Give up? Don't feel too bad: According to a recent poll conducted by HD Trade Services, 94 percent of Americans cannot think of a single brand from the world's second-largest economy.
... and why that may be about to change
Matt Schiavenza
The Atlantic Apr 8 2013
Here's a little thought exercise: Think of a Chinese brand. Any Chinese brand. Go on, I'll wait. Give up? Don't feel too bad: According to a recent poll conducted by HD Trade Services, 94 percent of Americans cannot think of a single brand from the world's second-largest economy.
Strange,
isn't it? Japan and South Korea, countries China zoomed past in the
GDP-rankings, boast globally-respected brands across a variety of
industries. Even Sweden and Finland -- mere minnows in comparison to
China -- offer IKEA and Nokia, respectively. Given China's incredible
transformation into an economic powerhouse over the past three decades,
why doesn't the country have more recognizable brands?
Before
we tackle that question, it's worth exploring why having globally
recognized brands even matter for a country. As David Wolf, managing
director of the Global China Practice at Allison + Partners, a PR
consultancy, says, "there are two ways to add value to goods and
services in a competitive industry. The first is through innovation, and
the second is through branding. When you create a brand, you're
creating a distinction that people are willing to pay more for than just
by its own virtue. That's added value -- and added revenue -- without
much additional cost per unit."
Brands, then,
benefit a country's economy with no downside. So why is China struggling
in this area? The answer lies at the nexus of history, economics, and
culture -- with a bit of geography thrown in.
Let's
start with geography first. China, as you've no doubt heard, is very,
very big. It's the fourth largest country by land mass in the world and
has more people than anyone else. As a result, Chinese companies have a
large domestic market to play with, and don't always need to attract
overseas markets in order to be profitable. In addition to its size,
China's economy -- for one that is still somewhat centrally planned --
is actually highly fragmented, with local provinces and municipalities
acting almost as independent economic units. Accordingly, across a broad
swathe of industries and markets, there are a lot of small-time players
in China, making it difficult for one company to amass the scale
necessary to invest in global marketing campaigns.
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