What is happening in China, the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and with Chinese overseas?

There never was such unwritten rule. Mao re-arranged his close circle every once in a while, like Stalin. After Mao's death, his ambitious last wife was brought down from power. Etc. The question is not (only) that of corruption, but whether the top notch in the party has the balls to be dictatorial or is he more collegial.

Not in the Party. Mao lost his power base in the Party after the Great Leap Forward, but fought back using the Cultural Revolution to destroy the Party. The Politburo, the top leadership of the Party, dwindled to insignificance under Mao. If you want to see what China had been like under Mao, look to North Korea, where family dynasty beats Party. Or, if you prefer historical parallels, the Roman Emperors and the Senate.

By Deng the Party was back in power. He institutionalised the current rules, with two term limits and division to prevent another emperor Mao. The Party is a self-recruiting elitist organisation, and there are power factions at the top. Exactly which factions there are and their relative power is a matter of conjecture.

...which makes it even more irrational for the Chinese to regard Genghis Khan as some kind of hero of their own.

They do? I haven't seen any Chinese (except possibly by a Mongolian by kinship) claim of ownership of Genghis Khan. The Möngke and Kublai Khans seem to have had more of the Chinese attention.

Not much of a difference really - Genghis Khan and his sons, same irrational idolisation of the dynasty not of Chinese descent.

China and the US have a similar background. Both had a frontier culture with a Wild West sparsely populated by commonly hostile tribes, and a "civilized" East with a much higher population and generally higher technology (though the technology gap was much smaller than in North America).

I would not call this similar background. The "frontier culture" is the single accidentally common feature. Everything else is different. The Chinese actually have their heartland in the territory of China and kept encroaching to other lands around it, and never had true faraway colonies, never were a global power until now when the usual suspects feel threatened by it. China has common background with Russia, not with United States.

China has common background with Russia, not with United States.

If you had any idea of how many Chinese restaurants there in the US, you wouldn't say that.
There are 78 in Grand Rapids alone.

China has common background with Russia, not with United States.

If you had any idea of how many Chinese restaurants there in the US, you wouldn't say that.
There are 78 in Grand Rapids alone.

That's not background. That's front or surface.

These historical concessions are relevant when considering what the Estonia-China border would look like after Russia's collapse.

You made me go look for what "concessions" are we talking about. I thought it was the British domination of Opium trading, something of that sort, but wikipedia has "enlightened" me.

The sovereignty of the last two European territories in China, Hong Kong and Macau, although not concessions but rather colonies,

That's a falsity.
Macau, unlike Hong Kong, was given perpetually to us. It's not a colony but an integral part of our territory.
Sold by traitors that will be punished by History and Men and Chinese illegal occupation terminated.

No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.

No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.

Are you sure enough that Wikipedia is controlled by Saxons?
If so it should be renamed to Widukind in no time

No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.

Are you sure enough that Wikipedia is controlled by Saxons?
If so it should be renamed to Widukind in no time

Yes, you are correct Krake, I apologize - Not strictly Saxons but Anglo-Saxons, sort of cousins of yours.

I picked up a Chinese news tit-bit. There was a riot in Taipeh and people stromed a government building over recent meetings about business between the Republic of China and the mainland government.

and people stromed a government building

Strömed a building?
In Russian , we have a word "стрёмный" - meaning "scary":)

What's wrong with this picture?

A Russian teaching a Scot how to speak English!

That did make me laugh so thanks. Mainly due to it coming from a land that has big problem still with that. You failed so retirement a joy.

Shanghai Shenhua Football Club renamed Shanghai Greenland Football Club after being bought by the Greenland group (China Greenland to Invest $2 Billion in London Developments).

Fan club didn't like that.

A banner quoting Chinese president Xi Jingping on the importance of tradition and culture, brandished by Shanghai Shenhua fans protesting their club's name change, was confiscated by police amid angry scenes at Hongkou Stadium on Saturday night.

At the end of Saturday's Yangtze Delta Derby against Hangzhou, which resulted in a miserable 3-1 defeat for Shenhua, members of the club's biggest fan's group, the Blue Devils, raised a large banner which quoted a line from Xi Jinping' speech made at a Politburo collective study meeting last month, and widely reported in the Chinese media.

The banner read 抛弃传统等于割断精神命脉 (paoqi chuantong dengyu geduan jingshen mingmai) which translates roughly as "abandoning tradition is tantamount to severing your spiritual lifeline." The link to Shanghai Shenhua's current predicament  - the protest against new owners Greenland removing "Shenhua" from the club's name - was clear for all to see , including Hongkou's police who stormed into the north terrace to confiscate the banner.

Inside the stadium, Greenland bussed in 3,000 of their own employees, kitted out North Korean style in identical Greenland FC shirts. A swathe of security personnel segregated these fans from the Blue Boys fans group on the south terrace - a larger swathe in fact, than the size of the detachment used to separate the Hangzhou fans from the rest of the home support.

With ten minutes of the match remaining, the Greenland fans' section was almost empty - pictures appeared on Weibo mocking their lack of commitment "Does your boss now you are knocking off work early?" joked one Shenhua poster. By contrast, both the north and south terraces, home to Shenhua's two main fan groups, were jam packed even after the final whistle.

Does anyone remember those alleged state sponsored Chinese hackers Mr.Obama used to bristle with anger?

The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies.

source

That's some significant allegations of industrial espionage.

But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei. With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco. The company produces smartphones and tablets, but also mobile phone infrastructure, WLAN routers and fiber optic cable -- the kind of technology that is decisive in the NSA's battle for data supremacy.
A special unit with the US intelligence agency succeeded in infiltrating Huwaei's network and copied a list of 1,400 customers as well as internal documents providing training to engineers on the use of Huwaei products, among other things.

Source Code Breached

According to a top secret NSA presentation, NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies. Because Huawei directed all mail traffic from its employees through a central office in Shenzhen, where the NSA had infiltrated the network, the Americans were able to read a large share of the email sent by company workers beginning in January 2009, including messages from company CEO Ren Zhengfei and Chairwoman Sun Yafang.

"We currently have good access and so much data that we don't know what to do with it," states one internal document. As justification for targeting the company, an NSA document claims that "many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products." The agency also states concern that "Huawei's widespread infrastructure will provide the PRC (People's Republic of China) with SIGINT capabilities." SIGINT is agency jargon for signals intelligence. The documents do not state whether the agency found information indicating that to be the case.

The operation was conducted with the involvement of the White House intelligence coordinator and the FBI. One document states that the threat posed by Huawei is "unique".

One of the concerns launched against Huawei products was that they could have spying backdoors. They didn't mention that the spies would be American.

When I wrote to President Chian Kai Shek years ago, I am sure he was much comforted by my letter. Ah the thinks we do to help.

That's some significant allegations of industrial espionage.

Shouldn't surprise anyone who's been reading the news. Here's one from 1996.

When I wrote to President Chian Kai Shek years ago, I am sure he was much comforted by my letter. Ah the thinks we do to help.

I things that's true.

Year of the horse



China's struggle for a new economy

Outside China, pessimism has been growing about the ability of the colossus to sustain its rapid growth. Worriers are paying particular attention to excessive capacity, investment and debt. I share the view that making the transition to slower and more balanced growth is an extraordinarily hard challenge even by the standards of those China has already met. Yet betting against the success of Chinese policy makers has been a foolish wager. When a superb horse meets a new obstacle, the odds must be on the horse. But even the best horse may fall.

Yang Weimin, a vice-minister in the government, laid out the country's new "guidelines for comprehensively deepening reform" in an invaluable background paper. This notes several new conditions.

First, China is an upper-middle-income country, with gross domestic product per head of $6,700. It is now tackling the rarely achieved task of becoming an advanced economy.

Second, the international environment is less favourable than it used to be, partly because the high-income economies are so structurally weak and partly because the Chinese economy has become so much larger relative to all others.

Third, the economy has itself changed. The potential growth rate has fallen to 7-8 per cent, partly because of a shrinking labour force; excess capacity has become massive even by Chinese standards; financial risks have risen, driven by excessive local authority borrowing, housing bubbles and growth of shadow banking; the country is now more than 50 per cent urbanised but its cities suffer a range of ills, including pollution. Finally, the resource-intensive growth pattern is hitting limits, notably of water, which is not a directly tradeable commodity.

The "Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms" agreed last November is the response. It is the blueprint for the next round of reforms. It proposes, notably, substantial institutional and political reform, including a transformation of "imperative and administrative governance" to "governance by law". The market is to play a "decisive" role in resource allocation. The government is, in turn, to be responsible for "macroeconomic regulation, market regulation, public service, social administration and environmental protection". Westerners would recognise all that.

I don't know about China, but I have it on good authority that over in Algeria an awful lot of water used to be lost due to old and low quality (i.e. leaky) pipes.

  This is a tiny part of what's going on in China...the genius and joy of Chinese cooking.

I don't know about China, but I have it on good authority that over in Algeria an awful lot of water used to be lost due to old and low quality (i.e. leaky) pipes.

China is projected to invest a truly staggering amount in water, and that is not a country that is a stranger to huge projects. The world will need to do the same thing, according to McKinsey water investments in the scale of 10 trillion USD will be needed by 2030.

China is projected to invest a truly staggering amount in water, and that is not a country that is a stranger to huge projects.

But it's not huge projects that were the issue there. The huge project was to build a dam in a wadi and to filter it, etc. Improving the end-user infrastructure is a huge project in the form of a great many tiny projects. Basically it's the difference between just pumping in more and more water and greatly increasing the efficiency of what you've got.

But it's not huge projects that were the issue there. The huge project was to build a dam in a wadi and to filter it, etc. Improving the end-user infrastructure is a huge project in the form of a great many tiny projects. Basically it's the difference between just pumping in more and more water and greatly increasing the efficiency of what you've got.

Some huge projects, huge number of smaller projects.



The above map is a projection for 2025, physical scarcity means an actual shortage of water, economic scarcity implies no shortage of water, but of water infrastructure.

Northern China is one of the thirstiest regions in the world, and a fast growing one. There is a massive water diversion project in China, leading water to the north. Even on that grand scale, it will not be enough.

Netizens in China speculate on Merkel's map gift to Xi

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, presented the visiting Chinese president, Xi Jinping, with a map of China from the 18th century on Xi's third stop on his European tour on March 28. China's internet has since been abuzz concerning the meaning of the gift.

Merkel presented the map as she received Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan at her private residence in Berlin. Upon handing over the gift, Merkel said the map was the first precise map of China drawn in Germany in 1735.

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Others said the gift is "very meaningful" in the light of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and that the map is a move by Germany to remind China of its past wounds following its period of expansion

http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=11&id=20140401000058

Domes give kids chance to exercise in clean air

With Beijing education authorities urging schools to cancel outdoor activities when pollution level alerts hit orange, some international schools in the capital are building facilities to ensure children can exercise in cleaner air.
The color-coded alert system, in order of increasing severity, is blue, yellow, orange and red.
In order to ensure children do not have to cut down their outdoor activities due to air quality, international schools in Beijing are spending tens of millions of yuan building air domes - large enclosed areas with filtered air.
The Western Academy of Beijing, an international school in Chaoyang district, constructed a campus dome in January that covers 1,000 square meters.