Category: Uncategorized
-
Chengdu
The capital of Sichuan province (which is home to as many people as Germany), Chengdu, is a wonderful city known for delicious food and fantastic scenery. The food is indeed tasty for those who appreciate some spice in their life. The city is located in a bowl-shaped valley, and the surrounding mountains are breath-taking, especially…
-
Moving on up to the East side
of Shandong…. Zouping was fine, but Qingdao is highly recommended. A gorgeous city with verdant hills, a European flavor, beaches (but these are filled with far too many people), and modern conveniences. Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, tomorrow. Beijing on the 21st.
-
Batman and Non-Democracy
Batman does good, so his unchecked power is somehow alright. If China develops despite a lack of democratic practices, is it necessarily a bad thing? I’m not that happy with the conclusion to the post below, so let me just say this for now: I have a normative preference for democracy.
-
Number 1
Backgrounders: http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5578 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_12/005351.php http://crookedtimber.org/2005/01/06/sen-on-famines-and-democracy/ A question from my favorite social studies teacher in high school: How does it feel to be in the country that is now vying for the Number 1 position, and seemingly doing a good job of it? I wrote back: —————– It feels very interesting. There is absolutely massive growth, which…
-
Explosions in London
A terrible event. Far too close to home as Jessica’s parents were flying out of Heathrow today and taking the tube/a bus to the airport. We must do everything that we can to fight terrorism, both particular attacks and at the source.
-
Political Science Geekdom
When there is voting, there I will follow: http://www.cnn.com/2005/SPORT/07/06/olympics.vote/index.html The voting for the host site of the 2012 Olympics is described in the above article. Round 1Moscow 15New York 19Madrid 20Paris 21London 22 Round 2New York 16Madrid 32Paris 25London 27 Round 3Madrid 31Paris 33London 39 Round 4Paris 50London 54 Rationality? Anyone? Transitivity? Bueller? Who votes…
-
Weiqiao
Background http://www.thestandard.com.hk/stdn/std/Business/GF16Ae05.html http://www.globalmanufacture.net/home/communities/production/capacity.cfm Our meeting with Weiqiao has been pushed back to 4pm local time. I hope that this does not mean another freakin’ banquet and alcohol. The following Forbes article has a couple of interesting political points related to Weiqiao. The article is a profile of Hongdou, a private textile manufacturer outside of Shanghai.…
-
Nonrandomly Sampled Thoughts
Some quick notes before heading off to Zouping’s largest firm (Weiqiao): 1. Always drink beer in China if must needs drink. It is very low in alcohol content and (usually) the flavor is fine. 2. After seeing how terribly Chinese politicians here treat themselves, I wonder how Mao and Deng and the others held on…
-
Progress: Research on Poverty & Inequality in China
Backgrounders: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/07/poverty_reducti.html http://simonworld.mu.nu/archives/099995.php http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=625285 Ravallion and Chen 2005 have worked with the National Bureau of Statistics in the PRC and carefully compiled a dataset to examine “China’s (Uneven) Progress Against Poverty.” The dataset covers 1980 to 2001. First, I find their data and comfort with the details of the data exciting. Second, I find…
-
On war
Brad DeLong has a rather interesting post on rational explanations for war! While at some level he is right – in rich democracies people are not willing to kill others nor be killed over “the language of administration in Strassburg,” the fact that there are massive numbers of intrastate wars belies the fact that there…
Jeremy Wallace 