Website of the Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
By Minxin Pei, The Diplomat
There’s little doubt China has a real estate bubble. The only question now is when taxpayers will have to foot the bill for it.
Everyone knows that financial or housing bubbles are bad for any society’s economic health. Yet such bubbles brew all the time and spare no societies, regardless of whether they are poor or rich, authoritarian or democratic.
By David Bandurski | Posted on 2010-08-16
China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, a new book by Chinese dissident writer Yu Jie (余杰) that hits bookshelves in Hong Kong today but will not (for the obvious reasons) be available in mainland China, has drawn a great deal of interest from international media.
The book has raised speculation about whether Yu Jie, who has been under intense security surveillance in China for a few years, will be arrested for what some see as a daring and dangerous show of defiance.
We will not speculate here. But we can offer the following rapid translation of a piece by Yu Jie written for the U.S.-based Guancha Bimonthly last month, which relates Yu’s interesting exchanges with State Security as he was putting the finishing touches on his book.
What follows is just a small portion of the entire exchange as related by Yu Jie:
By ANDREW JACOBS, New York Times
BEIJING — These are heady days for China’s state-controlled banks. Last month, the Agricultural Bank of China made its stock market debut, bringing in $22 billion for the largest public offering ever. A sister government-run bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, now has the highest stock market value of any bank in the world.
But the windfalls have created an unusual problem for China: white-collar unrest. A few days after the Agricultural Bank went public, dozens of former bank employees stealthily gathered outside the headquarters of the country’s central bank. There, after distributing small Chinese flags, they quickly pulled on red and blue T-shirts that read, “Protect the Rights of Downsized Bank Workers.” By the time they had unfurled their protest banners, the game was over.
By Simon Roughneen, Asia Times Online
BANGKOK - China’s dam-building on the upper reaches of the Mekong River is raising hackles with countries downstream and providing the United States with another strategic theater to counterbalance China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia.
Growing controversy on the issue comes at a time when the US has launched a raft of new initiatives in the region, including leading a recent multilateral military training exercise in Cambodia, joint US-Vietnam naval training exercises, discussions with Hanoi on sharing nuclear fuel, and Washington’s
announcement that it will re-engage with Kopassus, Indonesia’s special forces unit.
guardian.co.uk
The US must not turn a blind eye to Chinese pressure on Nepal to close its borders to fleeing Tibetan dissidents
As the death toll from this weekend’s landslides in the Tibetan-majority region of Gansu province climbs above 1,100, the world is once again turning its attention to the plight of China’s most infamous minority.
By Mark MacKinnon, From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Sheep’s teeth may turn black and fall out, but residents accept official assurances of safety
The sheep that Su Duoguan tends in the rocky pastures outside this quiet town on the Tibetan plateau have a different sell-by date than most. He knows from long experience that he has one year to raise them before their teeth turn black and break, leaving his flock unable even to chew grass.
"All along this river, the sheep have the same problem," the 49-year-old shepherd says, pointing at a narrow creek feeding into a man-made reservoir on the edge of Xihai. "It’s been like this for a long time."