Morning in Chimerica

Morning in Chimerica

It may be Obama. Lately we have been inundated with articles about the political entity called Chimerica, an entity likely to dominate the first half of the 21st century. The pundits disagree on how such a disparate union may hold. China is poor and capitalist, America is rich and socialist. China produces, America consumes. Both are instinctively protectionist and isolationists, but are the strongest forces of globalisation.

The secret may be that this union is changing, the Chimerica we see today will not be tomorrow's Chimerica. Will Chimerica's spirit of coopetition remain, or will China and America become rivals? Chimerica often consume more resources, and produce more pollution, than the rest of the world together. Together or separate, how will Chimerica affect our world?

A good start on the Chinese-American relationship could be <i>The Economist</i>'s <a href="http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14678579">special report</a>.

“OUR future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe,” said the American president as he contemplated the extraordinary commercial opportunities that were opening up in Asia. More than a hundred years after Theodore Roosevelt made this prediction, American leaders are again looking across the Pacific to determine their own country’s future, and that of the rest of the world. Rather later than Roosevelt expected, China has become an inescapable part of it.

Back in 1905, America was the rising power. Britain, then ruler of the waves, was worrying about losing its supremacy to the upstart. Now it is America that looks uneasily on the rise of a potential challenger. A shared cultural and political heritage helped America to eclipse British power without bloodshed, but the rise of Germany and Japan precipitated global wars. President Barack Obama faces a China that is growing richer and stronger while remaining tenaciously authoritarian. Its rise will be far more nettlesome than that of his own country a century ago.

This is too difficult a topic for me by many miles. A simplistic approach is to look at China's military presence in the world compared to that of the U.S. For starters, I'd point to American conservatives' ballyhooing about the threat of China, increased Chinese military spending, etc. If anybody can find a threat, these folks can. And if none exists, they'll manufacture one. If nay-sayers and threat mongers on both sides eventually have their way, then there could be problems down the road.

I know of no Chinese military presence around the world compared to that of the U.S., which has over 700 bases worldwide.

While a few other countries such as England, Russia, China, Italy and France have bases outside their territory, the United States is responsible for 95% of foreign bases. According to U.S. government figures, the U.S. military maintains some 737 bases in 130 countries, although many estimate the true number to be over 1,000.

While I'm sure many are tiny, the number is still staggering. Now, imagine what the reaction here would be if China announced plans to establish a similar presence around the world.

Are problems between the U.S. and China possible. Of course they are. Are they likely in the normal process of growth? I don't see it. Recently, the Obama administration placed limits on the importation of tires made in china.

The decision was in response to a complaint by the United Steelworkers union, which invoked a provision in China’s agreement to join the World Trade Organization that allows protection from surging imports from the country. The union documented a tripling of Chinese tire imports from 2004 to 2008 that it said threatened thousands of jobs at U.S. tire factories. No U.S. tiremakers backed the complaint. Most major U.S. tiremarkers manufacture tires in China.
..........
http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/2009/09/in_china_tires.html

China, of course, imposes its own bans, so it works both ways, but this isn't a slug-fest between the U.S. and China...it exists across the board, and China has complained about restrictions imposed by Argentina, a large trading partner. Countries have ways to work through these problems without going to war.

Time Magazine chimes in, <b><a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1938671-1,00.html">Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China</a></b>

There's no direct translation into Chinese of the phrase can-do spirit. But yong wang zhi qian probably suffices. Literally, it means "march forward courageously." China has — and has had for years now — a can-do spirit that's unmistakable. Americans know the phrase well. They invented it. It used to define them. [...]

But even though the U.S. is a mature, developed country, many economists believe it has shortchanged infrastructure investment for decades. It possibly did so again in this year's stimulus package. Just $144 billion of the $787 billion stimulus bill Congress passed earlier this year went to direct infrastructure spending. According to IHS Global Insight, an economic-consulting firm, U.S. spending on transportation infrastructure will actually decline overall in 2009 when state budgets are factored in — this at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers contends that the U.S. should invest $1.6 trillion to upgrade its aging infrastructure over the next five years.

When the economic crisis hit China late last year, by contrast, almost half of the emergency spending Beijing approved — $585 billion spread over two years — was directed at projects that accelerated China's massive infrastructure build-out. "That money went into the real economy very quickly," says economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [...]

On a recent Saturday afternoon, at a nice restaurant in central Shanghai, Liu Zhi-he sat fidgeting at the table, knowing that it was about time for him to leave. All around him sat relatives from an extended family that had gathered for a momentous occasion: the 90th birthday of Liu's great-grandmother Ling Shu Zhen, the still spry and elegant matriarch of a sprawling clan. But Liu had to leave because it was time for him to go to school. This Saturday, as he does every Saturday, Liu was attending two special classes. He takes a math tutorial, and he studies English. Liu is 7 years old. [...]

Yes, big corporate employers in China will tell you the best students coming out of U.S. universities are just as bright as and, generally speaking, far more creative than their counterparts from China's élite universities. But the big hump in the bell curve — the majority of the school-age population — matters a lot for the economic health of countries. Simply put, the more smart, well-educated people there are — of the sort that hard work creates — the more economies (and companies) benefit.

Originally posted by jax:

(from the quoted source) Just $144 billion of the $787 billion stimulus bill Congress passed earlier this year went to direct infrastructure spending. According to IHS Global Insight, an economic-consulting firm, U.S. spending on transportation infrastructure will actually decline overall in 2009 when state budgets are factored in — this at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers contends that the U.S. should invest $1.6 trillion to upgrade its aging infrastructure over the next five years.

If they'd spent any more, I'd have never made it back across the state on my recent trip. There is so much road and overpass construction that my mind was boggled more than usual! However, I agree with the ASCE. There is much to do. China would be more than happy to lend us the money. Or we could finance it by cutting back on military....never mind, that's unspeakable.

Originally posted by Time:

There's no direct translation into Chinese of the phrase can-do spirit

While not on the level of the French not having a word for entrepreneur, my beginner's book in Chinese lists American phrases of Chinese origin, including can do. Well, strictly speaking the phrase is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Pidgin_English#Influence_on_English">no can do</a>, so you could say that the Chinese embody a no-can-do spirit.

Originally posted by Jaybro:

If they'd spent any more, I'd have never made it back across the state on my recent trip. There is so much road and overpass construction that my mind was boggled more than usual! However, I agree with the ASCE. There is much to do.

There is a common construction blindness, many tend to believe that money invested in infrastructure is always well spent. That is far from always the case, and it isn't coincidental that construction is commonly associated with organised crime.

I have heard for years that much of US infrastructure has been underfunded, and sometimes it is even claimed to be crumbling. There will always be such claims, but taking them on face value there is an upper bound on how much can be efficiently spent on infrastructure at a given time. China is almost certainly over-investing, and some will get a good share of those funds without necessarily providing needed improvements of infrastructure. That said, some of those projects are pretty cool seen with engineering eyes.

US to streamline travel visas for Chinese, or as the Hong Kong TV channel put it, "Attention: They want your money!". Why should be easy enough to suss out, like Phoenix TV did.

Chinese break Christmas shopping record

Originally posted by China Daily:

LONDON - Despite the current global economic downturn, Chinese tourists spent a record-breaking amount on luxury products abroad during Christmas, according to data from Global Blue, one of the world's largest tax-refund and shopping services providers. Global Blue estimates Chinese shoppers' tax-free spending globally in December to be more than $170 million.

Chinese tourists' transactions made through Global Blue have recorded a 65 percent increase from December 2010, and account for 24 percent of the company's global tax-free transactions, compared with 18 percent in December 2010 and 12 percent in December 2008.

The figures show they are the largest demographic of tax-free shoppers, ahead of Russians, who consumed 16 percent of tax-free goods, and Indonesian and Japanese shoppers, who each accounted for 5 percent.

Richard Brown, vice-president of Global Blue UK, told China Daily that last month's figures highlight the wealth and spending power of tourists, especially Chinese shoppers, who spent an average of $1,142 for each transaction in the United Kingdom last month, a 19 percent year-on-year increase. This puts them just behind Middle Eastern tourists, who spent $1,179, the highest amount for each transaction.

Meanwhile, Britain witnessed another disappointing Christmas with retail sales value increasing by only 4.1 percent year-on-year, according to statistics from the British Retail Consortium. "With consumer confidence returning to levels last seen during the recession, 2012 is expected to be an equally challenging year," said Stephen Robertson, director-general of the British Retail Consortium.

But many luxury retailers have brushed aside the pessimism and are working to attract Chinese shoppers with new initiatives during this month's Spring Festival. The luxury department store Harrods in London released a collection of investment-grade gold bars, each inscribed with an image of a dragon. "Gold is a very special purchase in the Year of the Dragon, so we are very proud to offer our Chinese customers the very best ingots," said Chris Hall, head of Harrods Gold Bullion. Selfridges, also a luxury department store in central London, erected a large dragon in its main hall to greet shoppers.[/url]

While surely an improvement, perhaps the US should reflect a bit longer about it and consider how its ludicrous visa and customs shenanigans make everybody want to visit less, not just the Chinese.

Global Blue estimates Chinese shoppers' tax-free spending globally in December to be more than $170 million.

Chump change.

A U.S. M1A2 Abrams tank costs $6.21 million.

What in the world is wrong with us!? Dog must love idiots.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/can_smarter_growth_guide_chinas_urban_building_boom/2494/

Eerie has a new model.

There's A Much Bigger Underground Banking Crisis Brewing In Ordos
Gus Lubin | Oct. 27, 2011, 6:37 AM |
..........
 Lastly, Ordos lacks water, which means that large-scale industrial development will inevitably run into a bottleneck. The population is relatively small; the city has less than 100 million inhabitants. Other than the energy industry, Ordos should focus on developing non-labor intensive industries, and the financial sector fits this requirement.
Developments around Ordos are already known as ghost cities, where entire skyscrapers are uninhabited.
http://www.businessinsider.com/underground-banking-wenzhou-ordos-2011-10

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

The population is relatively small; the city has less than 100 million inhabitants.

That better be a typo, last time I checked there was no city on this planet with more than 100 million inhabitants
According to Wikipedia Ordos has about 1.5 million people.

You have touched on something that came up in the press the other day regarding China. Apparently one chaiin store has increased business during the present climate by advetising backing British buisness. Others have followed to - not in any majority way as if yet but some pundits are suggesting that prices are going up in China due to local circumstances over there. The future may be more interesting than just a China wins all?

We return to New South China Mall and Ordos (specifically Kangbashi). For New South China Mall I don't know what the Hong Kongnese and mainlander investors were thinking. I have been to Dongguan, the city in Guangdong where the mall is located, several times. Dongguan is the Silicon Valley of manufacturing rather than the city it officially is. Each town inside has its own specialty, and getting from one to the other is a project. So even inside Donguan to go to the mall, look around, and come back would a full day excursion, something I and evidently everyone else have been loath to do. The infrastructure of "Pearl River City" is rapidly developing and enveloping Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou (all three NYC sized), Donguan, Macao, Foshan, Jiangmen and more. The population of this "City", everyone including farmers and migrants counted, would indeed be more than 100 million.

"Pearl River City" would be served by three huge international airports, connected with high-speed rail, low-speed rail and a web of metro links (including a projected one direct from Hong Kong airport to Shenzhen airport, avoiding the practical issue of the borders between Hong Kong, Macao, and the mainland). Even if all this had been in place a decade ago, the New South China Mail would be a silly project at a very inconvenient location. Add to that that these are factory towns. When in Foshan that among other things manufactures steel products, I was told by a local that when they wanted some steel product, a cooking pot say, they first went to market to buy a lump of high-quality steel and then took it to a factory to get it shaped into whatever product they wanted.

New South China Mall is a bit of a one-off, but the over-establishment of shopping malls is not. This is a textbook example of the socialist criticism of capitalist misuse of resources. There are now more shopping malls in Beijing than the customer base warrants, and still more and bigger ones are being built. Why? Because while most shopping malls are going to lose money, some are going to profit. The gamble is that the newest shopping malls are the ones that will profit. That may well be so, but in a few years there will be even newer shopping malls. The logic behind New South China Mall was that the biggest malls are the ones that will survive, killing off the smaller developments. That was the ruling thought in the US at the time, as in the rest of the world. Dubai is another example of this line of thought. But the flip side is that when they lose they lose big. The first couple years a mall loses until it has established a customer base, and after a decade it is obsolete.

Changes in China happens a lot faster than elsewhere, and that includes mall fads and failures. When today's shopping malls (not to speak of yesterday's graveyards) were planned, internet shopping was a marginal phenomena. No longer today. Taobao alone has, according to memory, 3 million stores, and growing fast. Chew on that once more, 3 million traders (the process for registering on Taobao is more demanding than e.g. Ebay, so the ones setting up shop on Taobao do so for the purpose of wholly or partially making a living, and for the lucky few, making a killing, not for the purpose of clearing out the garage).

The upshot is that Beijing malls, where I spend much of my time, are mostly calm oases with little traffic relatively speaking (they are about as busy as US malls, far less busy than the European equivalents, and far far less busy than other parts of Beijing).

Originally posted by Macallan:

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

The population is relatively small; the city has less than 100 million inhabitants.

That better be a typo, last time I checked there was no city on this planet with more than 100 million inhabitants
According to Wikipedia Ordos has about 1.5 million people.

Well, 1.5 million is less than 100 million, so it isn't wrong.

A true Chimerican story. The presidental hopeful tours Iowa in preparation for this autumn's election.

For the Vice President of China, Tea Time in Iowa

Originally posted by New York Times:

Twenty-seven years ago, a young man named Xi Jinping, on an agricultural research trip from his home in China, came to rural eastern Iowa and slept in Eleanor and Thomas Dvorchak’s sons’ room. The boys had just gone off to college — their room still stuffed with the things of childhood — and Ms. Dvorchak said she felt bad. She had grown up reading Pearl S. Buck novels about the travails in rural China, and now here was a visitor, perhaps from that same hard place, and they had put him in there with the Star Trek action figures.[/url]

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

Originally posted by Macallan:

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

The population is relatively small; the city has less than 100 million inhabitants.

That better be a typo, last time I checked there was no city on this planet with more than 100 million inhabitants
According to Wikipedia Ordos has about 1.5 million people.

Well, 1.5 million is less than 100 million, so it isn't wrong.

I didn't say it's wrong, just pointless. I live in a relatively small town, it has less than a billion people. A property it shares with every other town and almost all countries on this planet.

Originally posted by Macallan:

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

Originally posted by Macallan:

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

The population is relatively small; the city has less than 100 million inhabitants.

That better be a typo, last time I checked there was no city on this planet with more than 100 million inhabitants
According to Wikipedia Ordos has about 1.5 million people.

Well, 1.5 million is less than 100 million, so it isn't wrong.

I didn't say it's wrong, just pointless. I live in a relatively small town, it has less than a billion people. A property it shares with every other town and almost all countries on this planet.

Which hotel are they staying in? This being about China, it's not as far-fetched a question as might otherwise be thought.

I seem to remember a joke way back when Chairman Mao was still active, a Western diplomat had just told him that his hometown had several million people and Mao asked what hotel they were staying at. This is a land where we read of a ferry capsizing, loss of several hundred lives, and you look at the ferry and realize it wouldn't transport fifty people safely. So, it could happen.

A pro-Tibet group had come down from Minneapolis and chanted slogans against Chinese policies in Tibet.

Damned Tibetans, can't live with'em, can't live without'em!

Not as bad as those Hari Krishna people who used to wander about the streets tinkling, drumming and chanting. Hhm. And what if they Tibetans come a-chanting in your quiet neighbourhood will your tolerance be at home?

An acquaintance of mine went to a housing fair in Shanghai where US houses were marketed and sold. By current Chinese standards they are very affordable for somebody like her, a lawyer (which puts her as upper middle class, but not rich). Meanwhile the Chinese building boom, while it lasts, brings great opportunity for Americans.

Building the American Dream in China

Originally posted by New York Times:

Over the past three years, foreign architects and designers have poured into China, fleeing economic crises at home and pinning their hopes on this country’s explosive growth. It is, after all, a place that McKinsey & Company predicts will build 50,000 skyscrapers in the next two decades, the equivalent of 10 New Yorks. MAD’s staff consisted almost entirely of mainland Chinese when Gillen arrived in mid-2009; today, nearly half of his 50 colleagues are foreigners, with designers from Holland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Colombia, Japan and Thailand. “The economic crisis,” Gillen says, “is a heavy factor in everybody’s thought process.”

This is the expected global economic formula flipped on its head: instead of American workers losing out to the Chinese, China is providing jobs for foreign architects. Even more surprising is the degree of imaginative license that China offers, even demands of, its foreign building designers. With new cities materializing seemingly overnight, international architects are free to think big, to experiment with cutting-edge designs, to introduce green technologies. All at a frantic pace. In a top-down system that favors political will and connections over regulatory oversight and public debate, large-scale projects in China can be designed, built and put to use in the space of just a few years.[/url]

Originally posted by jax:

Building the American Dream in China

I wonder what Frank Lloyd Wright will had to say about these gigantic, inhumane, nightmarish megalopolis....

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Not as bad as those Hari Krishna people who used to wander about the streets tinkling, drumming and chanting. Hhm. And what if they Tibetans come a-chanting in your quiet neighbourhood will your tolerance be at home?

We welcome all chanting Tibetans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVdBe5b7k-w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

That would be a Didgeri Wu

JayBro as a young man with his own didgeri-whatever.

Rolf Harris was the guru of that instrument.. Give me a flute and drum band and I will march for miles.

Originally posted by jbrothernew37:

Developments around Ordos are already known as ghost cities, where entire skyscrapers are uninhabited. http://www.businessinsider.com/underground-banking-wenzhou-ordos-2011-10

The same argument goes for cities as for shopping malls,

Originally posted by jax:

This is a textbook example of the socialist criticism of capitalist misuse of resources. There are now more shopping malls in Beijing than the customer base warrants, and still more and bigger ones are being built. Why? Because while most shopping malls are going to lose money, some are going to profit. The gamble is that the newest shopping malls are the ones that will profit. That may well be so, but in a few years there will be even newer shopping malls.

only on a much greater scale. Talking about "entire skyscrapers" is greatly understating the issue.

China used to be predominantly agrarian. At the time of the communist revolution only about 10% of the population lived in cities. Now half the Chinese population does. This means that twice the current population of the USA has moved into cities, and while the era of massive and rapid construction may be peaking soon, the project is still staggering and unprecedented.

There is one full US population that hasn't moved yet (and about one remaining rural). One full US population complete with housing, jobs, roads, sewage, airports, hospitals, parks, internet, restaurants, bridges, karaoke bars, subways, schools, port facilities, artificial lakes, power generation, trees, and accessory stores. All to be completed within a couple decades.

Every year cities to house the entire population of Texas is built. McKinsey (a company with a habit of erring on the side of optimism) estimates that 50,000 skyscrapers may have been built in China by 2025. Anyway, if something is built anywhere, chances are it is built somewhere in China.

This doesn't mean that this is an orderly project directed and managed by central authorities in loving detail, and carefully overseen by attentive local bureaucrats. It couldn't be. Instead it is a free-for-all. Relatively little of the construction is from national budgets, the rest is a profitable collaboration between different levels of local government and developers, with Beijing merely coming down on some of the excesses.

Just like with shopping malls the cities have an incentive for over-development. A population the size of USA may be on the move, but nobody can tell where they will be moving. Some cities will excel, others will be the New South China Malls or Detroits of China. The Central government might want to develop the poor Wild West of China the way it has developed the South, but who is to tell if people will want to go there? If the population keeps going East, where will it go?

Projections say that big cities will have better municipal economy than the smaller ones, and who wants to be poor? Example: Shanghai has eclipsed Hong Kong as the biggest economy in China, and is on course to be the biggest financial center as well, but with a much larger population so HK is still comparably richer. When Shanghai reaches the financial pinnacle it cannot rest for the city and port of Tianjin has Shanghai in its sight. Whatever the field there might be a half-dozen or more contenders for top dog role.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

I wonder what Frank Lloyd Wright will had to say about these gigantic, inhumane, nightmarish megalopolis..

They are kind of cool, actually. While not everything is that well thought out, the "Welcome to Futureland" approach don't make them as boring as cities elsewhere. They are also getting very green, which generally is an improvement.

Here is one promotion video for Tongzhou New City, a suburb of Beijing. The promoters claim that a cool trillion yuan (160 million USD) will be sunk into the project by private and public investors by 2020. Basically the project is to make a small city of 1.1 million people to begin with, if it succeeds more might follow.

Originally posted by jax:

They are kind of cool, actually.

One of the things that I appreciate in Lloyd Wright is that once some pathetic journalist was saying to him - so, you are very good because you make houses to the dimension of Man (a common sense thingy that the journalist thought it was very much "advanced") - and he immediately answered - no, I don't makes houses to Man's dimension but rather to his Soul dimension...

I think that that architecture is made maybe for ants soul's dimension, never for Man.
Staying in China is doing no good thing to you Jax.

Originally posted by jax:

They are also getting very green, which generally is an improvement.

Rather daylight than green, if a choice has to be made. That looks like daylight is only available for several ten thousands or so at most.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

I think that that architecture is made maybe for ants soul's dimension, never for Man.

The video was made with bird's eye perspective, and while some of the habitation is more fit for birds than apes, what the Chinese call bird cages, small, usually tall, uniform housing units, they are the minority. Though because they can house such a large amount of people a substantial number lives in bird cages, and more are built in areas that could become the banlieues of the future.

While there are many tall buildings in Beijing, they are less typical than in Shanghai or especially Hong Kong. Beijing is not constrained by the sea and only partially by mountains separating the city from Mongolia, and is more characterised by sprawl and the two traditional Beijingese building forms, the hutong and the siheyuan (a walled courtyard with a small building in each corner). A siheyuan is extremely expensive, you would have to fork up several million dollars for a central one, but the gated community is universal and atomic in Beijing, from the poorest (with no access control) to the richest. You have a hierarchy from your home, to your gated community, to your neighbourhood to your district. For me the neighbourhood may the most important unit. China is much less communal and collectivistic than Europe, and the neighbourhood is where people of all classes interact (or most classes, the richest live in a bubble). The Galaxy Soho, under construction, is inspired by the siheyuan. That should be anthilly enough for you?

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Rather daylight than green, if a choice has to be made. That looks like daylight is only available for several ten thousands or so at most.

Indeed. I had to do some quick trigonometry in Tongzhou, wouldn't want to buy something in the shadow of a skyscraper. Beijing is as mentioned not a tall city, but a broad one, you have three clusters, one around the universites in the North-West, one in the "international zone" in the North-East, and one around the CBD (see-bee-dee, central business district, one of the English loanwords into Chinese, and of course Latin letters are using the freakish English pronunciation, but I am digressing). Tongzhou wants to become the Eastern CBD of Beijing, which makes historical sense. Tongzhou, at the Beijing end of the Grand Canal, is the Ostia of Chinese civilisation. They have scrapped the restriction of building tall, and there are more proposals for 350m+ skyscrapers in Tongzhou than in the rest of Beijing together.

Needle-shaped skyscrapers are not a big problem, but the lower and broader ones can be. Beijing at 40° North (same latitude as Philadelphia or Lisbon) is not as bad as Oslo at 60° North, but a tall broad building can easily steal all light. Though to reduce cooling costs these buildings are usually very reflective, so they are not as much stealing the light as redistributing it, illuminating the north side of buildings to their south. Maybe these buildings should be mirror-coated on the south end (for the hot summers) and black in the north end (for the cold winters)? Having looked through the plans most, but not all, tall buildings are sensibly constructed and zoned (offices are less needy than homes).

You might find this video more enjoyable.

Originally posted by jax:

You might find this video more enjoyable.

It was a bit long. Aside from not even being fully buffered after leaving it in the background for about an hour it quickly became tedious. But yes, that certainly seems like a better place to live.

China 'arrests high-level US spy' in Hong Kong - reports

Originally posted by BBC:

A Chinese security ministry official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US and passing on state secrets, Hong Kong media reports say. The man, who was private secretary to a vice-minister in the security ministry, was arrested earlier this year, various press reports say.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to comment on the reports. If confirmed, it would be the third major incident to hit China-US relations in the past few months. It would also be the highest-level spy case involving China and the US to become public since 1985, when intelligence official Yu Qiangsheng defected to the US. The official had been recruited by the CIA, local press and Reuters report.


Hong Kong-based Oriental Daily quotes the monthly New Way as saying on 25 May that the official "fell into a pretty woman trap" set up by the CIA. After the two were photographed in secret liaisons, he was blackmailed and agreed to supply secret information to the US, the reports say. "The destruction has been massive," a source told Reuters.

The official was arrested between January and March on allegations that he had passed information to the US for several years on China's overseas espionage activities, Hong Kong press and Reuters report.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

It was a bit long. Aside from not even being fully buffered after leaving it in the background for about an hour it quickly became tedious. But yes, that certainly seems like a better place to live.

That state agency's servers don't seem to have the most powerful servers, particularly noticeable over VPN. Still less painful than many other sites around, like Huffington Post.

The city of Tianjin has grand expansion plans, as mentioned above. SOM's concept for the third CBD is far more extreme approach to the vertical city than Tongzhou. Next door in the same district, but about five years later, is the Tianjin Eco-City which has taken its cues more from the linear city (start with transportation, layer on utilities and commercial, with residential topmost/outermost, closest to nature).

China is a great place for architectural fashion. If somebody can think it, here is where it is going to be built. It has gone through all phases, including derivative styles like mock greco-tudor rococo, at immense speed, and it is turning green with a vengeance. Heavy industry was first being kicked out of the city limit of lead cities like Shanghai and Beijing, and now the process is repeated in secondary and tertiary cities. Water was rediscovered less than a decade ago, now most projects come with water in the form of an artificial lake, canals and islets, for the upscale developments, down to a concrete brook or a muddy puddle for the less affluent residents. All very nice, cool and soothing in the summer heat, though Beijing in particular has water supply problems that could easily rival Las Vegas.

Greenery has gone from the immaculate English gardens and the ubiquitous golf courses maintained by cheap migrant labour, kind of pretty to look at, but utterly useless, through tree-clad avenues which I wholly support. Trees have their issues, but in a hot, dry, and above all polluted city like Beijing those disadvantages are overshaded by their advantages. In some of the later projects the trees have turned into forests, cars delegated to underground parking, mixing the concrete forest with the old-style forest. Corbusier might have liked it. Some projects may go even further, incorporating wild-life. That is certainly a step too far, part of the reason to have a city is to get away from nature, not to have it as agents in our midst (ironically, while writing this two birds tried to turn my room into a love nest, or maybe just a space to crash, fortunately the window screen stopped them).

Originally posted by jax:

That is certainly a step too far, part of the reason to have a city is to get away from nature, not to have it as agents in our midst

It is? i thought it was just about efficiency. Of course with the possible exception of wolves migrating westwards (having gone extinct centuries ago because they bothered us) there isn't any kind of scary wildlife around here, which may be different in some places.

Wolves we can handle, I was more thinking fauna akin to cockroaches, rats, pigeons and the like, as well as unintended side-effects of all this greenery. On the whole the benefits outweigh the disadvantages though.

All of those seem to be doing perfectly fine without any greenery whatsoever. Nice dog.

Heavens. Jaybro caught spying?

China + America = Chimerica

Hey you have a point as China is owed so much of the US's debt!

Hey, I'm just kidding

Yes but in your case unintentionally factual! That's serious.

Originally posted by rjhowie:

Hey you have a point as China is owed so much of the US's debt!

See here...

China is our Daddy Warbucks.

And I bet the late Senator McCarthy is revolving at great speed right now?

Hey I remember this thread. Sad to say, Scotland is looking more promising than America, sad huh?

A lot places are looking better than America. Not a good place to be if you suddenly get poor. You need to start again and keep the money men and such under better watch!

Originally posted by rjhowie:

A lot places are looking better than America. Not a good place to be if you suddenly get poor. You need to start again and keep the money men and such under better watch!

poor isn't the reason why. It's the standard that Obama is passing for today, it's the way things are stacking for the fall coming very soon. Sadly I will not par-take.

But this started under your previous President Virusboy. The present blether in the White House inherited a mess although in some areas stil wasting money like GW Bush. Your politics are in a shambling mess and infighting on the Hill. Lobbies control the damn place not the electorate and it's all about money. You also need to reign in the military even if it means challenging the big military industry dollars. In turn reduce the millions trong army etc you don't need them. Live with a military budget you can meet instead of adding to the trillions of debt. A far smaller uniform situation could help bring down that debt or help the country at home because it sure as heck needs it. So stop having wars on pretexts and get the nation back to what it can afford. You are not to be envied because the choice of President is enough to caus a deep sigh if you live there and have a brain. Obama is a chatterbox and the other one is goofy and living in cuckoo land. All things to all men but little in the way of grey cells.

For the young they are at last seeing that there is something very fundamentally wrong in the whole system. It needs a new direction and vast overhaul but the 1% who actuallt run the nation won't let go easily and they are the ones who pull the strings and pay the big money to what you think are public representatives. To be fair there will be genuines but there are too many in the pockets of the corporates. You country has a lot of decent people but their land has been hijacked.

The American part of Chimerica is doing good. That is why I think my lawyer acquaintance and Chinese like her may have made a sound investment. Like the Japanese overlords before them, the Chinese may be tempted to invest American based on status rather than sound expectations of return on investment, but at least the Chinese buy when America is relatively cheap.

The Chinese in my opinion don't always make the most informed choices, but I can't fault the ones I've talked to for thinking that the US is a good place for doing business while Europe is a good place to retire.

Whether the US government/administration made the right policies during the economic crisis remains to be determined, but their industrial policy seems sound.