Category: China
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Illiteracy
Education is fundamentally a choice. Students choose to do their homework or not, to attend class or not, to take challenging or easy classes, etc. China released statistics today that show that more people are choosing to not go to school. Illiteracy rates in China before the PRC were always high. The character based language…
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Education, Chinese Style
The NYT Sunday magazine has an interesting article by Ann Hulbert, Re-Education, on the Chinese education system. Two great graphics accompany the article. The lettering is by Leanne Sharpton. For my money, the key paragraph is this: Chinese routinely say they wish the exam weren’t such a monolithic force, and various provinces have lately been…
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Environmental Social Science
If you look at the cross-national statistics for income and inequality, you will find that there is an inverted-U pattern. That is, poor countries have little inequality (i.e. everyone is poor). Rich countries tend to have relatively little inequality (i.e. everyone is rich). It is in middle income countries where you have the most inequality.…
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Rusty Nails?
The “Nail House” story from Chongqing that I have mentioned previously is still in the news. Simon Elegant of Time and Time‘s China Blog talks about a “nail house” story in Shanghai that echoes some of the concerns that I have about overly lauding holdouts. A similar case in Shanghai (see picture below) ended a…
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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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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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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…
Jeremy Wallace 