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- Labor NGOs: Growing Pains
- China Bashing, Yet Another Reason the Republican Base Doesn’t Like Mitt Romney
- Photo: Kit Kat By Angie Pants
- “Golden Week” Still Golden For China’s Rich
- Living Conditions Become New Labor Flashpoint
- Politics Holding Back Economic Reforms
- Censorship Vault: Shanghai Metro Crash
- After Wang, Bo Xilai Awaits his Fate
- Official Expert Questions Heywood Cause of Death
Posted: 28 Sep 2012 01:04 AM PDT Labor NGOs in Guangdong seem to be struggling amid the inconsistent treatment from provincial government and the lower-level executives. Charlie Vest and Shawn Shieh at China Development Brief translate a detailed report from Southern Daily:
See more on NGOs in China via CDT. © Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
China Bashing, Yet Another Reason the Republican Base Doesn’t Like Mitt Romney Posted: 27 Sep 2012 10:54 PM PDT
For Obama, there's very little downside in defending his "tough on China" record or reminding everyone that Romney, when he was running Bain Capital, profited personally from U.S. companies that outsourced to China. The base of the Democratic party is firmly against the current free trade system, and many progressive voters blame China for U.S. job losses. With a populist message like this, Obama can both energize his base and appeal to independent voters in the Midwest. For Romney, the political calculation is more difficult. He began the China bashing during the primaries as a way to distinguish his candidacy from his Republican rivals. Whether that message helped him with the base of the Republican party in securing the nomination is unclear, particularly since GOP constituencies are split about China. You can slice and dice GOP voters in a number of ways and still not be sure which issues are truly motivating them — I tend to be skeptical about data like exit polling that oversimplify voting choices. One thing is clear, though, when it comes to Republicans: they have mixed feelings about doing business with China. One perspective comes from what I'll call the xenophobic wing of the GOP, the folks who firmly believe that sometime in the near future, troops from the United Nations will invade the U.S. and force Americans into internment camps. Alas, I am not making this up. These folks don't even trust multilateral institutions set up and dominated by the United States, much less what they would refer to as "Red China." Speaking of which, a GOP combination of old Cold Warriors and small government ideologues see Communist China as antithetical to free market capitalism. These Republicans are not as interested in what China actually does so much as what it represents. Any political rhetoric that adopts a contrary position to that of Beijing is a positive to these groups. A much narrower anti-China constituency in the Republican Party doesn't care about economic issues, preferring to focus on geopolitics, territorial disputes, and military expansionism. This group includes the defense contractors and their political lackeys who benefit from U.S. government spending on big-ticket items such as naval vessels, aircraft, and anti-missile technology. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who routinely advocates for a more aggressive military stance against China, is a good representative of this category. Unfortunately for Romney, the Republican Party also harbors constituencies that favor a closer relationship with China. These people are almost completely focused on trade and investment issues. The largest category, call them the John Huntsman or Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP, wants to maintain, and build on, the bilateral status quo. The needs and desires of America's largest corporations, and in particular industries such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, and high technology are represented by these folks. For this group, Romney's China bashing, in particularly his threat to impose tariffs on Chinese exports to the U.S., represents not only a problem for the bilateral relationship in general, but also to the profits of some of the largest suppliers of campaign donations to the GOP. Additionally, there are Republican idealists who genuinely believe in free trade and/or a laissez faire approach to all commercial matters, including cross-border transactions like trade and investment. This is a rather eclectic group of people, ranging from respected trade specialists to fringe libertarians. To them, Romney's talk of a more aggressive trade policy smacks of "Big Government" interference in the economy. Given these competing interests within the GOP, what's the political effect of Romney's China bashing? That's a very tough call, particularly when many people, including myself, have difficulty believing that Romney would actually follow through with any of his campaign promises with respect to China. On the other hand, as the rhetoric has been ratcheted up considerably in the days following the two parties' political conventions, Romney has staked out a position on China that would be difficult to retreat from should he be elected. But while party apparatchiks and big donors may not support Romney's China strategy, what about voters? One of the least persuasive Op/Eds I've read in some time, written by Charles Kadlec in Forbes entitled "Will China Bashing Cost Mitt Romney The Election?", attempts to answer this question. Kadlec, one of those fringe libertarians with a Ron Paulish fixation on the gold standard who overuses the word "liberty," firmly believes that Romney's current political freefall is somehow related to his anti-China talk:
Sure. Kadlec would have us believe that although Romney came off a poor showing at his party's political convention and then stepped in deep doo-doo by politicizing an attack on a U.S. consulate that left several foreign service officers, including the ambassador to Libya, dead, his precipitous drop in the polls is all about the China bashing. If only it were true! Kadlec's assumptions here are truly stunning:
Now we're into self-parody territory. But none of this is too surprising. Ideologues have a tendency to assume that their beliefs are universal. To folks like Kadlec, if only Romney was more of a libertarian, the population would rally around his message and vote him into the White House. This is absurd. Most Americans, including a good number of politicians who work on Capitol Hill, have no idea that tariffs on Chinese imports would lead to higher prices. I could trot out some survey data on how stupid the American electorate is these days, but you've heard all that before. As the late great George Carlin once put it, "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." China bashing may be hurting Mitt Romney with certain GOP constituencies, including Chamber of Commerce types and multinational corporations, which include quite a few prominent Republican donors, but when it comes to actual voters, it's difficult to see how anti-China rhetoric will result in any significant loss of support. © Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:22 PM PDT © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
“Golden Week” Still Golden For China’s Rich Posted: 27 Sep 2012 11:10 PM PDT The average wealth of China's super rich may be down this year, but that hasn't stopped them from going all out with their "Golden Week" travel plans. From Reuters:
The luxury travel industry may still be thriving, but other sectors have not fared as well. For The Financial Times, Chris Bryant and John Reed report that China's luxury car sector may finally be catching a cold, and the Wall Street Journal's Tom Orlik explores the sharp fall in retail sales of luxury jewelry:
See also previous CDT coverage of how the global economic downturn has impacted China's ultra rich. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
Living Conditions Become New Labor Flashpoint Posted: 27 Sep 2012 10:18 PM PDT Following the major brawl at a Foxconn factory campus in Taiyuan, individual workers are speaking out about living conditions there which may have contributed to the unrest. From Bloomberg:
Reuters also talks to workers at the Taiyuan plant:
Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin reports on online discussions between workers about the incident:
For more on the Foxconn incident, read "Foxconn Closes Plant After Worker Brawl" and "Foxconn Plant Open, But Broader Issues Persist" via CDT. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
Politics Holding Back Economic Reforms Posted: 27 Sep 2012 07:47 PM PDT Heading into the National Day holiday, and on the cusp of a yet-to-be-scheduled leadership transition, The New York Times' Andrew Jacobs reports that political distractions have prevented the Communist Party from making the tough decisions needed to address China's slumping economic growth:
China's economy is expected to grow 7.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2012, according to a Tsinghua University think tank, and Reuters reports that a vice governor of the People's Bank of China reiterated the desire of policymakers to steer growth lower. Still, the slowdown has impacted all levels of the economy — China's largest steelmaker announced Thursday that it had shut down a mill in Shanghai, and the China Daily reports that confidence among small and medium-sized enterprises has slid amid declining trade volumes. While the regime has relied on blistering economic growth to bring about social stability and preserve its own legitimacy, data collected by Richard A. Easterlin of the University of Southern California shows that growth may be outpacing happiness. Also from The New York Times:
© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
Censorship Vault: Shanghai Metro Crash Posted: 27 Sep 2012 04:06 PM PDT Editor's Note: From the Censorship Vault features previously untranslated censorship instructions from the archives of the CDT series Directives from the Ministry of Truth (真理部指令). These instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation. A victim of the Shanghai Metro crash is helped to safety. Two trains collided on Line 10 of the Shanghai Metro on this day last year, injuring almost 300 passengers. The accident was initially blamed on a signal failure but was later traced to human error. This accident followed the deadly high-speed train crash in Wenzhou just months before. Lax enforcement of safety protocol and shoddy construction both contributed to the accident.
Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. The original publication date is noted after the directives; the date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
After Wang, Bo Xilai Awaits his Fate Posted: 27 Sep 2012 02:57 AM PDT Wang Lijun's sentencing to 15 years in prison once again raises questions over the fate of his former boss, Bo Xilai, whose whereabouts remain unknown. Keith B. Richburg at The Washington Post tries to unscramble Bo's current plight:
Choi Chi-yuk at South China Morning Post gives a detailed account of how Wang and Bo's closely linked careers:
Although Wang's sentencing was relatively lenient, some observers feel that he has become Bo's human shield. From Shi Jingtao and Choi Chi-yuk at South China Morning Post:
Others link Bo's case to the behind-the-scenes political jockeying between the factions of Hu Jintao and former leader Jiang Zemin. From Mark Mackinnon at The Globe and Mail:
Yet amid the public debate over the leniency of Wang's sentencing, his family sees the conviction itself as showing a lack of justice in China. From Edward Wong at The New York Times:
See more about Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai via CDT, and a chronicle of censorship of the case at Fei Chang Dao. © Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
Official Expert Questions Heywood Cause of Death Posted: 27 Sep 2012 02:34 AM PDT One of China's most senior forensic scientists has challenged the official explanation for Neil Heywood's death in a now deleted blog post. Gu Kailai, wife of former Chongqing party chief Bo Xilai, confessed to poisoning the British businessman with cyanide, but Wang argues that her account and the evidence as a whole fail to support this. From John Kennedy at the South China Morning Post:
From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:
© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us |
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