Olympics to 'rebound from crisis'

Jacques Rogge told a meeting of national Olympic committees in Beijing that the Games would succeed.
But Mr Rogge urged China to respect its "moral engagement" to improve human rights ahead of the Games.
China said it hoped the IOC would steer clear of what it called "irrelevant political factors".
"I hope IOC officials can eliminate all kinds of disturbance and continue to adhere to principles of the Olympic charter," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

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There have been many protests going on in China and the government is classifying these anti-China protests as a 'crisis'. They are hoping that the games in Bejing will rebound.

China 'now top carbon polluter'

China has already overtaken the US as the world's "biggest polluter", a report to be published next month says.
The research suggests the country's greenhouse gas emissions have been underestimated, and probably passed those of the US in 2006-2007.
The University of California team will report their work in the Journal of Environment Economics and Management.
They warn that unchecked future growth will dwarf any emissions cuts made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol.
The team admit there is some uncertainty over the date when China may have become the biggest emitter of CO2, as their analysis is based on 2004 data.

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China has become the counrty that produces the most polution. Their industy is grwoing and they need to change their energy policies. The carbon emmision could cause many other problems in China other that pollution.

Town silent amid Chinese build-up

Soldiers clutching assault rifles stand guard on approach roads. Official checkpoints have sprung up all around. After several days of protests by Tibetans, the army has taken control of Hezuo.
Demonstrations in Hezuo and the surrounding towns and villages began last Saturday - part of wider protests that started in Lhasa, the Tibetan provincial capital.
Many Tibetans appear fed up with their lives under Chinese rule.
Protesters have been tearing down Chinese flags and replacing them with the flag of the Tibetan government in exile, based in Dharamsala, India.

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Tibetan citizens are not happy with their lives under Chinese rule. They are tearing down Chinese flags and starting many protests.

China raps Olympic torch protest

China has condemned a protest over Tibet at the Olympic torch lighting ceremony in Greece on Monday.
In the first reaction from Beijing, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said any attempt to disrupt the torch relay for the Olympic Games was shameful.
During the ceremony, campaigners broke through police lines and unfurled a Tibetan flag before being dragged away.
Meanwhile there are reports of more violence in and around Tibet, and the police are continuing to make arrests.

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A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said any attempt to disrupt the torch relay for the Olympic Games was shameful. During the ceremony campeigners got past security and unrolled a Tibetan flag before being taken out. There have been 13 arrests made in Lhasa for protests that took place before anti-chinese rioting began.

You have permission to think freely

IT MAY seem an odd time for China's risk-averse officials to be talking about political change. Yet at the opening of the country's annual session of parliament on March 5th the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, echoed recent calls in the state-owned media to “liberate our thinking”, even as he gave warning of a difficult year ahead, with threats from inflation and from America's subprime mortgage mess.
This year's session of the National People's Congress, as the legislature in known, comes at a critical time. It marks the start of a new five-year term of government (it will elect Mr Wen to serve until 2013). China is also hosting the Olympic games in August and celebrating 30 years of “reform and opening” in December.

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Chinese officials have influenced media to "liberate their thinking." This seems like an odd time for China to have political change, because of the growing threat of inflation. This meeting of the Nationals People Congress marks the begining of a new five-year term.

'Severe' jobless problem in China

China is facing a very severe unemployment problem, says Labour Minister Tian Chengping.
He said 20 million new workers entered the labour market each year, chasing only 12 million jobs.
He said employers were complaining about a lack of skilled workers and China had to provide more training.
Speaking on the sidelines of the annual National People's Congress in Beijing, Mr Tian said the aim was to keep urban unemployment at or below 4.5%.

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There is a major unemployment rate in China. 2 million new workers show up each year for jobs and only 12 million get them leaving 8 million jobless. This problem is trying to be fixed by creating 10 million new jobs this year.

China's dilemma over Darfur

China has worked hard over the past few months to show it is doing all it can to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's Darfur region.
It has appointed a special envoy, sent peacekeeping troops to the region and embarked on a publicity campaign to persuade others it is being responsible.
This was done in part to prevent anyone linking China's close relationship with Sudan to the Olympics Games.
But for Steven Spielberg it was still not enough.
His decision to withdraw as artistic adviser to the Games' opening and closing ceremonies will be seen as a huge blow.

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China is trying to show the world that they are working hard to eliminate humiliation in Sudan. They have been doing this for the past few months and since China imports two thirds of Sudans oil, they are a said to be Sudan's biggest arns supplier.

Losing patients

STARTLING economic growth in China has not been matched by similar improvements in health care. The cost of treatment is becoming ever more prohibitive for the poor. Government spending is meagre. But nearly three years after declaring the system a failure, officials are at last getting ready to unveil a plan to fix it.

Some Chinese press reports say the long-awaited and much-debated reform plan is likely to be revealed at the annual session of China's parliament, which opens on March 5th. The outline is already clear: a stronger role for government, including more money from the central budget, and a drive towards universal health insurance. Changes are already in train.
The reforms reverse the market-driven policies of much of the past two decades. The outbreak in 2003 of SARS, an often fatal respiratory disease, made the government realise what a mess the health-care system had become. Government hospitals and clinics, starved of funding, had turned to raising money (and boosting ill-paid doctors' salaries) by prescribing ever more expensive treatment and diagnostic procedures. With the collapse and privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the vast majority of citizens had been left with no insurance. Many began avoiding even desperately needed treatment.

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The price for health care is becoming harder to afford, especially for the poor. Officials have been working on a plan for the past three years to fix this problem

In a fix

ACROSS Asia inflation is rising, largely because of higher food and energy prices. China's inflation rate surged to an 11-year high of 7.1% in January and looks set to climb further this month, after some severe snow storms. India, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore all have inflation rates above 4%.
Central banks are reluctant to raise interest rates by much at the same time as America's Federal Reserve is slashing its rates, for fear this would attract foreign capital and push their currencies sharply higher. Stronger currencies would in fact help to reduce the price of imported food and energy. But instead, many governments are resorting to price controls and government subsides to curb inflation. India has long imposed price ceilings on a wide range of goods. Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines are considering new price controls or subsidies. In January the Chinese government froze the prices of energy, transport and water, and announced that producers of essential food items, such as meat, grain, eggs and cooking oil must seek approval before raising prices.

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Inflation has become a huge problem forcing the chinese government to "monitor" food because most of inflation is being drivin by food and not by aggregate demand. The inflation rate is supposed to keep climbing with all the bad weather expected in the future.

China warns against share issues

The announcement was carried on the front page of many newspapers and came a day after share prices dropped to a seven-month low.
Regulators fear the market may fall further, as a potential slew of new shares could overwhelm investor demand.
Following the warning, insurer Ping An said it might scale back or postpone a massive $17bn share issue.

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China's stockmarket warns companies about making a big deal about making big issues about new shares to faise funds. Authorities have approved at least five new mutual funds to boost demands for shares.

China inflation hits 11-year high

Soaring food prices were largely blamed for pushing consumer inflation up to 7.1% last month, from 6.5% in December.
Inflation in China continues to rise despite higher interest rates and other measures by Beijing to keep the economy from overheating.
The worst winter for decades hit food supplies, sending food costs up 18%.
Massive snowfalls wrecked crops and killed millions of livestock.
But analysts cautioned that the severe weather was not the only factor behind rising food costs, and warned that prices could still increase further.

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Chinese inflation hit and 11 year high in January of 2008. Alot of this was caused by the major cold weather problems that they have been experiencing. The last all time high was in 1996 at 7.1%. The inflation rate is now 7.4%.

From Mao to the mall

Amid all the global gloom, the good news is that China is turning into a nation of spenders, as well as sellers
THE past year has seen a lively debate among economists about China's rapid economic growth. Some, such as Brad Setser from the Council on Foreign Relations, believe that exports have been the main generator; others, like UBS's Jonathan Anderson and The Economist, think that domestic demand—spending on roads and railways, cars and clothes, and the like—has been the driving force. Just now, a lot turns on this argument: both how badly China's economy could be hurt by an American recession and also the extent to which Chinese spending could help to prop up the rest of the world economy. Some new figures suggest Chinese demand is rising strongly enough to help offset the increasing weakness in China's export markets. That could be good news for the world at large.
It is certainly true that China's current-account surplus rose to a record 10% of its GDP last year, which means that it produced a lot more than it consumed and so relied on foreigners to buy the excess. But it is the change in a country's trade surplus, not its absolute size, which matters for GDP growth. The increase in net exports (exports minus imports) has never been the main source of China's growth. It contributed two to three percentage points to annual GDP growth between 2005 and 2007, whereas domestic demand (consumption and investment) added eight to nine percentage points. But the latest figures show that exports have become even less important as a driver of growth. The World Bank's latest China Quarterly Update suggests that net exports contributed only 0.4 percentage points to GDP growth in the year to the fourth quarter of 2007 (see left-hand chart). Overall GDP growth slowed only modestly (to 11.2%) because of faster growth in domestic demand, which contributed an impressive 10.8 percentage points.

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China's economic growth is increasing rapidly. It is believed to be caused by the money being spent on roads, railways, cars and clothes. It is also believed that this could hurt the Chinese economy, or that this change could be good and help to prop up the rest of the world's economy.

China steps up efforts to fight pollution

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will aim this year to reduce its emissions of sulphur dioxide by 6 percent from their 2005 levels as it steps up efforts to fight pollution, its top environmental official said in remarks published on Tuesday.
The official Xinhua news agency cited Zhou Shengxian, head of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), as saying that the government would close many small coal-fired power plants, as well as steel mills and cement plants, to cut emissions of the acid rain-causing pollutant.
Zhou also said the government aimed to reduce COD, or chemical oxygen demand, a measure of water pollution, by 5 percent from its 2005 level this year.

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China prepares to fix the pollution problem that has been an issue since 2005. SEPA is closing many coal fired plants along with other businesses that produce lots of pollution. These actions are expected to lower the pollution rate.

The ecumenism of commerce

Their sense of solidarity is deepened by the loneliness of being in a foreign country. Some of them have been based here as long as eight years. But most of Yiwu's Middle Easterners have only a rudimentary grasp of Mandarin. “It's hard learning a new language at my age,” sighs one Iraqi. Commerce forms their chief bond with Yiwu, China's largest small-commodities market. The Middle Easterners come on long-term business visas; after buying cheap clothes and hardware in bulk, most jet to Dubai, Baghdad or Tehran before returning for another six months of trade. Some work as consultants or visa agents. For the entrepreneurially inclined, Yiwu offers a wealth of opportunity.

The Middle Eastern presence has served as a magnet for Chinese Muslims. Although Arab merchants called here in centuries past, Yiwu had virtually no Muslims till about 2000, when Middle Eastern traders were drawn to its burgeoning market. Hui (members of China's indigenous Muslim minority) from as far as Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai in the west followed. Yiwu is cosmopolitan and friendlier to Islam than parts of China's west. Many of the Hui who come speak Arabic, allowing them to find lucrative jobs with Middle Eastern businessmen. At its peak, says a local imam, the city's Muslim population (foreign and Chinese) now reaches 20,000.

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Men eating at a resteraunt in Yiwu, China, discussed publicly their opinions on China's "athiest" religion. These Iraquis were muslim and felt that their beliefs would benifit China's economy.

Our friends in the north

MOST locals, who are lucky if they enjoy two hours of electricity an evening, are unaware of their region's bounty: South-East Asia's biggest proven gas reserve lies in the Shwe field, just off the coast of Ramree Island. This year work will begin on a pipeline to carry these riches to China. From perhaps as early as late 2009, a parallel pipe will carry Middle Eastern and African oil from a new deep-water harbour at Kyaukphyu, bypassing the Strait of Malacca and fuelling the economy of China's south-west.
The site of the harbour, like the former fishing grounds where the gas lies, is now strictly out of bounds to locals. Despite a small poster campaign by underground activists, few people here know much about it. Those who do are worried. According to one, farmers fear losing their land. They have good reason for concern, judging from the mass dispossessions and human-rights abuses that surrounded the construction of earlier pipelines from the south to Thailand. Residents of nearby Baday Island have already been told that they must leave.

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Pipelines are being put in to transport oil to China. Citizens living near these areas of instilation feel that their rights are being violated. Families living near Baday Island have already been asked to leave.