Author: Jeremy Wallace
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Harmonious Society Troops
From Boxun and ESWN, irony caught with a digital camera: The sign that the police/troops are holding says “Building a Harmonious Society.” The image was taken in Guangdong, which is home to more than its share of land grabs and associated protests. Well, at least to the land grabs and protests that end up in…
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Regressive Foreign Aid
Tina Rosenberg’s NYT Magazine piece from March 25 offers the following channels of poor-to -rich reverse foreign aid: growth of reserves in poor countries intellectual property agreements in WTO and other frameworks tax holidays for foreign investment brain drain She laments rich country agricultural subsidies. Finally, she notes that while global warming is indeed global,…
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Best sentence I have read today
因为，写作的最高境界是询问自己的心灵，面对无言的自然。 Original source, here. Although to be honest, I like the translation (where I actually first saw the sentence) better: For the highest plane of writing is consulting one’s own soul and facing the silence of nature. Translation from Danwei.org. The author of the quote, Yu Qiuwu, is arguing against institution of a Chinese National…
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Nail House Still in the News
CDT has translated a post claiming that the State Council Information Office has issued a directive to stop publishing news about Chongqing’s Nail House story. This does not yet seem to be the case as my morning paper had a story on the topic today.
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The Yuan, or China and India
Recently issues of Chinese monetary/economic/banking policy, including some comparisons with India, have been much discussed in the blogosphere. I post links here without further comment. Brad Setser – Chindia (or maybe not) Martin Wolf – In This Brave World, Chindia’s Uneven Progress Continues, and associated Comments Brad DeLong – China’s Foreign Asset Position and Its…
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Pop Quiz for Property Rights Law
A property developer in Chongqing has excavated all of the land surrounding this home and is proceeding on a construction project, clearly attempting to force the resident to give up and allow her home to be demolished. One must have sympathy for the people living in this “nail house” (so-called as they are unwilling to…
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Blogspot blocked in China
Luckily, the government cares more about preventing the common people from reading blogs than stopping people from writing them. I have no problem logging in to blogger.com to write this post, but I cannot then go to my blog’s page to make sure that it turned out ok. So, if the blog starts looking ugly…
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The Fall of Manchu
There is something sad about the death of a language. Many people are interested in preserving the ‘ethnosphere.’ The NYT has a story about the decline of Manchu, the language of the Qing Dynasty. The article fits into the general narrative of such stories. It focuses on the last few speakers of the small language…
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Property – Now with (perhaps more) Rights!
Chinadigitaltimes.net (CDT) has a post on a Radio Free Asia (RFA) piece by Bao Tong about the recent property rights law that was passed by the NPC. He, not surprisingly, downplays the significance of the law’s passage, as is not surprising for a former high official under house arrest. n.b. In China, without use of…
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Property Rights Law
The property rights law has passed. ChinaDaily.com has a helpful graphic to show how overwhelming support was: Of course, the NPC has never failed to pass legislation that has come up for a vote. The most famous expression of disapproval in recent memory is the 1992 vote on the Three Gorges Dam where 1767 approved,…
Jeremy Wallace 