Agreement reached, fruit of victory for the US

After 19 months of talks and quarrels, the phase one of the agreement between China and the US is about be materialized. Judging from the text, both sides have made concessions. The US got its way regarding intellectual property rights and lowering trade deficit; China secured the cancellation of some of the tariffs imposed. From the perspective of the respective needs of both sides, Xi Jinping got a breather in alleviating domestic economic pressure; Trump got to free his hands to focus on the general election in 2020. Only two groups of people felt particularly dissatisfied with the deal. One group being the people do not want to see Trump reelected. Paul Krugman for one wrote a piece for the New York Times on December 17, insisting that Trump lost in this trade war. The other group being the opposition camp in China, a camp that wished Trump to directly bring about the collapse of the Communist party by means of the trade war. These two groups people had basically disregarded the fact that the fruit of victory for the US lay not in such trivial matters as tariffs but in forcing the Communist Party to revert from the aggressive mode back to the defensive mode.

Why has improvement in income distribution become the toughest task for China

He Qinglian on March 9, 2012
(translated by kRiZcPEc)

Just like the “Two Meetings” last year, issues on the people's livelihood remained what the delegates could discuss freely without worrying the potential consequences. Included in this year's list of livelihood issues were housing and commodity prices, social morality, food safety, and income distribution—a topic that has been discussed annually. In the Government Work Report Premier Wen tirelessly repeated his call for “deepening the reform of the income distribution system and wasting no time in formulating a comprehensive package of reform of the income distribution system.”

China Model in Overseas Setting (Two)—International Community Stops Believing the Dishonest China

By He Qinglian on February 6, 2012

(Translated by kRiZcPEc)

The obstacles that Chinese enterprises encounter when they invest overseas result from their rent-seeking approaches being rejected by the people under regimes similar to the Communist Party and distrust from the people in democratic countries because of the lack of integrity, an innate disease of Chinese enterprises and the products they made.

China Model in Overseas Setting (One)—Why the country's investments overseas attract frequent criticism?

By He Qinglian on February 2, 2012
(Translated by kRiZcPEc)

In recent years, China has been making rapid moves in overseas investments. According to the report published by Price Waterhouse Coopers in mid-January, the total worth of assets Chinese companies acquired in 2011 surge to 42.9 billion dollars, a twelve-percent growth from 2010; the number of total transactions rose to a record high of 207 instances, an increase of 10% from the previous year. Judging from the data alone, it seems that Chinese capitals are hugely popular worldwide.

How deep is China's quagmire of local debts?

How deep is China's quagmire of local debts?

Written by He Qinglian on June 17, 2011
(translated by krizcpec)

These days Beijing became really anxious, the heavy debts of local governments had worried them. After spending more than two years indulging itself in the imaginary title of the “Savior of the world's economy,” China has now to rescue its own banking system, which balance sheet revealed dire problems that had long been hidden. Just when the China Banking Regulatory Commission announced plans to strictly control the credit risk of local financing platform, people discovered that the debt-to-capital ratio of the Railways Ministry had reached the tolerance limits, posing huge potential risks.

Traps made by Chinese Media

Written in April 2007
(translated by krizcpec)

For those foreign media that aspire to enter China, it surely is good to know that their reports have been reproduced on Chinese media and attracted comments from readers. “Losers and Winners”, an article about a documentary of the same title, published on November 13, 2006 on Deustche Welle. That article was first reproduced on Global Times (Huanqiu Shibao/环球时报), a subsidiary of Xinhua News Agency and widely circulated in China after it appeared on Xinhua Net, attracting much discussion among netizens. However, Deutsche Wellewould definitely feel startled if it realize its article has been reproduced with the title altered, key content removed and became a report promoting the spirit of the Chinese workers – work hard in arduous conditions, triggering sentiment of national pride in some Chinese netizens. 

Please Keep Tibet

While attending the Sino-Tibetan Dialogue in D.C. on July 9 and 10, I saw an article by Tibetan female writer Tsering Woeser, “Please Stop the ‘Development’ of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar for Profit (请制止用神山圣湖牟利的“开发”)". The article stated that the Tibetan Tourism Company, a subsidiary of the Beijing-based Guofeng Company, have been “contracted” to take over the holy Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, and undertaken the “Tibetan Kailash Manasarovar Tourism Development Project”, exploiting the Holy Mountain and the Sacred Lake of Tibetans as a way to boost shares selling in the company’s public listing.

Woeser opposes commercialization of the sacred land, citing two reasons that the area is not suitable for development: first, Mount Kailash is the holy mountain for the Tibetans, it must not be desecrated; second, environment protection. I completely agreed with her on these two reasons for objection. Yet I am aware that, for the Chinese people who would pray to deities for blessing but have no religious tradition, the first reason would not stop the interested parties. Visiting Mount Kailash has great appeal to Chinese living in inland China. 

After spending a long time in jungles of cement and steel with no scents of flowers, no forests, but grey skies, people are fascinated by the idea of polar adventure. And I have serious doubt how big the binding force the reason of environment protection has on the Chinese people. Because the people growing up in the 1960s, and the two or three generations before them, could only watch the country trampled in the name of economic development by the rich and powerful and their stakeholders in the last thirty years: they witness one river after another ends up seriously polluted; one lake vanishes after another; and one plot of land after another being turned into apartments which lifespan is only thirty years. How would these people care and cherish the soil of others when they wouldn’t even protect the land on which they are born and bred, which has a tie of flesh and blood, and is called as the home of their spirit?