I haven't posted in a while because I've been on spring break for the past week. Just getting back in gear, today I went to a well-attended lecture on Bruce Lee and masculinity by Berkeley film prof Chris Berry, actively participated in the CCS 502 seminar discussion on rubbings as art across time, space and technology, and hopefully will get to bed early after a quick trip to Krogers. Can't get by for long without a bag of tortilla chips.
Seeing as how one of the things I did over vacation was to install Chinese input capability on my Linux box, I feel it would be advantageous to read this guide to 五笔字型 (Wubizixing) for Speakers of English. Wubizixing is an input method that uses stroke order to input characters, as opposed to spelling out the sounds in pinyin as I do now. It promises to be faster, at the expense of a high learning curve.
Just a few days ago Prime Minister Wen Jiabao warned the country of the risks of the economy overheating. According to Luo Bingsheng there is truth to such a warning. In terms of logistical capacity and Chinese mining activity, the country might not be able hold its own, that is, regarding satisfying its own internal steel demands.
“Despite having set our production capacity at 52 million tons this year, we are expecting to be able to find additional new raw materials capable of producing only 38 million tons.”
Strong demand from China has particularly put pressure on prices of steel products, which have surged by between 33 percent and 40 percent from a year ago, according to statistics from the Taiwan Steel and Iron Industries Association (台灣區鋼鐵公會).
Industries that use steel, such as the construction, ship building and auto sectors, said they could not afford the higher prices, causing many projects to be halted. A coalition of steel-using industries plans to hold a protest next Monday calling on the government to suspend steel exports like the South Korea government does.
The important thing is to notice the two markets that are operating in this article: the market for scrap steel, and the one for finished steel. Steel producers need scrap steel to make sheet steel; in turn, other industries use finished steel to make automobiles, ships, and buildings. In this case, China's finished steel producers are sucking up the world's stock of scrap steel, hogging the input product from other countries' steel producers. American and Korean steel producers are not happy about this. Steel production is a powerful lobby because it is both capital and labor intensive. Faced with pressure from its steel industry, the South Korean government put export limits on scrap iron and steel bars being sent to Chinese steel producers, and the United State's Emergency Steel Scrap Coalition (love the name) is calling for the US government to do the same.
The winners in this trend are domestic steel producers in Korea and the US and their employees, who can purchase scrap steel in sheltered domestic markets at lower prices, and thus continue to operate at normal capacity. The losers are Chinese steel-dependent industries, which will continue to pay high prices for steel and be plagued by steel shortages at all stages of the production process; and also American and Korean scrap steel exporters, who lose access to the lucrative Chinese market and must then sell their scrap steel at lower prices in domestic markets. Chinese steel producers, who may have favor with the government and thus be subject to few trade limits, will continue to pay high prices for scrap steel from non-Korean and non-American exporters. However they can, and insist that they will, continue to sell the finished steel in lucrative foreign markets.
I think the question that needs to be answered is, why is the following true:
"We understand the difficulties for certain industries, but to halt the exports may generate trade disputes with other countries," said Chen Yu-sung (陳玉松), assistant vice president of the commercial division of China Steel.
These trade disputes sound fishy to me. Why are Chinese steel producers like China Steel more willing to export their product than to satisfy the demand at home? Why is the Chinese domestic market unattractive?
Their mother's love topped at 25.7 percent, followed by the parents'taking them out to have fun at 16.2 percent, a warm home at 14.2 percent, and freedom of fear from starvation and other deprivations at 9.7 percent.
The goal is clear. The goal is a truly human—or at least a more human, more humane—world: a world in which the number of people who live lives that are far too close to those of all of our pre-industrial ancestors is numbered at a hundred million rather than in the billions. In the case of India, we can already see a good way forward along its best development path. And its best development path leads through terrain where computers and telecommunications, fiber-optic cables and microprocessor switches, satellites and packet-switched networks, all make international trade in much of white-collar services (whether reading X-rays, supporting customers, reconciling bills) as cheap and as possible as the iron-hulled ocean-going steamship made trade in staple agricultural and industrial commodities in the late nineteenth century.
Brad DeLong is my current economist of choice, probably because he keeps a very good weblog. Well, second to H4x0r Economist Alan Greenspan, of course.
"Novice drivers are the worst," said Tian Zhisheng, 60, as he walked his bicycle against a current of cars in northern Beijing. " They'll drive right up onto the sidewalk and run you over." He added, "I should put a sign on the back of my bike, `I'm Old, Don't Hit Me." '
ziboy's photographic work is coming to New York for an exhibit! ziboy will be part of the Chinese contemporary photography exhibit "One on One-Their Vision" that's going to be held at the New York Chambers Fine Art Gallery, from April 16 to May 29, 2004. This exhibit will feature the works of 8 Chinese photographers including ziboy.
Nobody said leading a discussion group at the 10th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference would beanyfun. At least somepeople, though, seemed to enjoy it.
Three large Chinese language weblog sites hosting thousands of users have shut down in the past week, citing illegal content posted by users; the Chinese and English blogworld is abuzz. In the comments on CNBlog, a user suggests that it has something to do with "3.15"; this may be because this year's session of the National People's Congress is set to end on the 14th of March.
The Real Deal
Beijing Fashion, Mao And Then — Style-conscious entrepreneurs in post-WTO China bring hip U.S. brands to the masses:
He grabbed the shoe box and found the factory that was producing the shoes in southern China. After contacting the local management, Li contracted to buy the factory's irregular and extra shoes and began marketing them to Chinese boutique owners and wholesalers for a fraction of what they would be worth in the United States.
"Most factories make about 2,000 extras, just in case there are some irregulars, or mistakes in design, and they don't just want to throw them away, so I get those," he says.
Semiconductors are the second largest US export to China, and US chips are used in a wide variety of Chinese electronics goods shipped around the world.
But foreign companies also invested $3.6bn in Chinese semiconductor production between 2000 and 2002, with investment expected to reach $12bn next year and $25bn by 2013.
This is separate from the Section 301 complaint that the AFL-CIO filed against China today over labor abuses.
At bottom, the differences reflect each country's diverging worldview. In contrast to the inner-looking island nation of Japan, China has traditionally viewed itself as the Middle Kingdom of its name, the center of the world. If it is natural for Japan to identify things or people as foreign, viewing them with some degree of caution, it may be equally natural for China to take "Coca-Cola" or "George Bush," and find the most suitable Chinese characters to express them.
In Japan, the rigid division between the inside and outside in the language underscores this country's enduring ambivalence toward the non-Japanese. The contrast with China is stark, and speaks also to the future prospects of Asia's two economic giants as they compete for influence in a world of increasingly fluid borders.
Ahh, if only it were so simple. This article is so full of "issues" that I won't even bother to start. Once again, the New York Times drops the ball on East Asian writing systems.
Tianjin local Brainysmurf has posted the latest China Briefing at Winds of Change. Also, Marmot, who was a good source on the Korean impeachment, recently put up a Winds of Change Korea Briefing. Reading the Regional Briefings is a good way to keep up with the themes running through weblogs focused on certain regions of the world.
After a few weeks of absence, Walter Hutchens releases a string of great China posts, starting with one on the IPO of China Construction Bank, and later some comments on the new constitutional amendments.
This unrelated to China, but it was the MOTD today on the server that hosts this site:
— Free Pizza (Shaun Philip Lee) today at 03:52 PM —
Stuck coding or working on a CS set while a pizza place is still open? You can once again order pizzas, paid for by Google. You might even get a Google T-shirt. Finger pizza@ugcs for more information.
But the story doesn't stop there. My friend Adam in Beijing—still harboring a grudge against me for getting everyone at the college we taught at last year to change his name from "Mu Aide" to the more convenient and slightly more humorous "Mumu"—took to my new name very quickly. He had been kind enough to mail me some things I left at his place during a short trip in February but wrote my name as "Jimu" or chicken mother in Chinese characters on the package.
> It took me several hours to find a place to BUY blank CD's in Kunming, > and it took me almost a whole month of travelling to acquire a > permanent marker to lable my CD's. Try to pantomime "permanent > marker" someday — it's difficult.
Could not compare to trying to mime "bubblewrap" - used newspaper instead - or mailing tube - found a storage tube for shuttlecocks in a sports shop.
"The local foreign economic and trade bureau purchased zanba processed by my family at a price of 3.6 yuan (43 US cents) a kilogram. Then if each mu produces 300 kilograms of qingke barley, I can earn 150 yuan (US$18.1) more than before by selling zanba for export," said Zhandui.
We are aware, that despite one side vehemently objecting to the results of the election in the territory of Taiwan, the electoral agency has officially released the results. We are also aware that the objecting side has refused to accept the results, and continues to contest the election. We are closely following the development of the situation. The Taiwanese compatriots are our blood brothers. If the situation in Taiwan gets out of hand, leads to social unrest, and endangers the safety of our Taiwanese compatriots' life and property, upsetting order in any part of Taiwan, we will not stand idly by.
As always, the standard disclaimer on the (extremely rough) translation.
China must declare, loudly and clearly, that greater democracy, not mutant Leninism, is its ultimate political goal, and that as this evolutionary process takes place and the political climate becomes more congenial, they look forward to discussing how to better weave a political, as well as an economic, fabric with Taiwan. Such a declaration alone would give Taiwanese the ability to imagine that they may one day find it in their interest to be part of China.
A little late, since the PRC government has released a statement on the situation, but the Arab Times out of Kuwait has a quote from Ken Lieberthal (can I call him Ken?), in China silent on Taiwan election:
"The people running Taiwan policy in China have got to be shocked, uncertain in what will unfold and, frankly, hopeful that the final result will produce a pan-Blue victory," said Kenneth Lieberthal, professor of political science at the University of Michigan, who was visiting Beijing.
This is the first time I myself have heard somebody say explicitly that China would prefer a pan-Blue victory (pan-Blue is the party descended from the original Nationalist Party, and favors closer ties with the mainland; the Greens, party of incumbent president Chen Shuibian, have a more independent bent).
The article is only for subscribers only, the but headlines is good enough. From the Chinadaily Biz section:
Jollibee makes initial payment of US$11.5m for Yonghe King
Jollibee a the Filipino fast food chain with several locations in Southern California. Yonghe Wang is the Chinese fast food chain specializing in warm soy milk, and with a Kentuky Fried Chicken Colonel look-alike mascot, mascot whose picture can be seen at the Virtual Tourist website. Really, I only point out the article for the picture.
Micah Sittig's Chinese improves and worsens with the phases of the moon. He enjoys non-fiction books, bicycling, foreign languages and ethnic restaurants. He is an inveterate globetrotter, but can always be found at micah@earthling.net
Jollibee a the Filipino fast food chain with several locations in Southern California. Yonghe Wang is the Chinese fast food chain specializing in warm soy milk, and with a Kentuky Fried Chicken Colonel look-alike mascot, mascot whose picture can be seen at the 