Category: China
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Data Dilemmas, or How Does One draw lines?
How does one draw lines? Categorizing budget items is extremely difficult. In the US, it is widely acknowledged that around US$17 billion substantial portion of the Dept of Energy’s annual budget is “Defense Activities,” mostly researching and testing nuclear weapons. That spending could easily be classified as “defense” or “military” spending. Closer to home are…
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Headlines
The front page of today’s paper has a large picture of a planet and moon. The caption claims that oceans have been discovered on the 6th moon of Saturn, which is apparently Titan, and points to such a story later on in the paper. A vice mayor from Zhengzhou suggests abolishing GDP-based performance measures. They…
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What to do while rubber stampering at the NPC
A great photo of delegates sleeping can be found here. Of course, I happen to think that the NPC is becoming more and more politically relevant and less of a pure rubber stamp; however, I decided to avoid that topic for my dissertation based on good advice from my adviser Prof. Jean Oi.
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The only thing that lasts
Two of the major themes at this year’s “Two Conferences” or Lianghui, a.k.a. the NPC and CPPCC, have been continuing to continue building the countryside and to legislate property rights. Those not paying attention might assume that this extension of property rights would be part of the effort to help those unfortunate enough to be…
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Chinese Labor Trends – Redux
The ever-helpful Chinadigitaltimes.net noted an article in the NYT on the problem of the aging Chinese labor force. The article was by Howard French, and the piece seemed very familiar to me. In fact, hadn’t French already written an article on this topic? And, hadn’t I already blogged about it? In point of fact, yes,…
Jeremy Wallace 