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whatever7 posted:That's not a fair statement. First and 2nd tier cities residents faces much higher real estate pressure. Who do you think owns the real estate in the cities? Here's a source showing home ownership rates in China from 2005. http://www.gallup.com/poll/15082/homeownership-soars-china.aspx By comparison the figure for the US is about 65%. EDIT: oops, confused myself. Throatwarbler fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Apr 17, 2012 |
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Apr 17, 2012 11:46
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Ronald Spiers posted:Wow, what an amazingly short-sighted thing to do. There is no way to paint him as a heroic dissident or political victim. Everyone knows he is a playboy who relied on his parents black and soiled money. If anything, he would be a potential threat to the US if he is of anything like his vindictive parents, especially if he is like his Maoist father. None of his classmates mention he had pro-reform and pro-democracy dispositions, in fact his classmates describe him at best a Chinese patriot, at worst a nationalist. It is a known fact before the whole scandal broke-out, he wanted to eventually go back to China and follow in his father's footsteps or make a billion dollars and be an influential player in Chinese governance. Dude, we're talking about a mass media that painted the Lord's Resistance Army as a heroic movement for religious tolerance, because Obama was opposed to them. The vast majority of americans haven't heard of Bo Xilai, let alone the bit players. Guagua just needs to make a couple of speeches about a sudden and newfound love of freedom and democracy, and it'll look - or can be made - very politically inconvenient to send him back in an election year where opposition to China is a vote winning issue.
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Apr 17, 2012 12:51
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Just got back from vacation in Chengdu. The first thing anyone says when asked about the whole affair is "His son is named 'Gua Gua'? That's his actual full name? You must be mistaken, surely that's just some nickname that his parents call him in private, right?  ".
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Apr 17, 2012 12:58
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Fangz posted:Dude, we're talking about a mass media that painted the Lord's Resistance Army as a heroic movement for religious tolerance, What the gently caress are you talking about.
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Apr 17, 2012 21:07
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Fiendish_Ghoul posted:What the gently caress are you talking about. Fox News, which is a pretty broad brush to be painting the entire American media with.
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Apr 17, 2012 21:16
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Fiendish_Ghoul posted:What the gently caress are you talking about. Rush Limbaugh made some ignorant comments about it on the radio, but as Kony doesn't even play well with evangelicals he got called out on it by his audience relatively quickly. Edit: One of my favorite paintings is by Yue Minjun, but I can't believe he hasn't been put under house arrest by the government for it -  Does cynical realism have a future in China? Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Apr 17, 2012 |
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Apr 17, 2012 21:51
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I think this is the best place for me to ask this, as it's been on my mind for a while: What's the deal with Falun Gong? China seems to be convinced that it's a dangerous conspiracy or cult or something, but from what little I know from my passing experience here in the USA, it seems to be just some kind of meditation group or spiritual movement. What's the truth here? Why does the Chinese government seem so hell-bent on suppressing it?
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Apr 18, 2012 05:09
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DrSunshine posted:I think this is the best place for me to ask this, as it's been on my mind for a while: What's the deal with Falun Gong? China seems to be convinced that it's a dangerous conspiracy or cult or something, but from what little I know from my passing experience here in the USA, it seems to be just some kind of meditation group or spiritual movement. What's the truth here? Why does the Chinese government seem so hell-bent on suppressing it? Falun Gong is a religious cult by most definitions of the word. It draws from Buddhism and Daoism, and for the most part is a spiritual philosophy combined with some meditative practices. Its founder has some real goofy ideas about modern medicine/science, and he's pretty homophobic. They scared the hell out of the PRC though when they were able to summon a pretty large silent protest in front of the Zhongnanhai back in the late ninties, in response to criticism and the breakup of a previous protest. It was a large social movement (70 million Chinese at its height) with a clear ideology that was not under the control of the Communist party, and the Communists sort of hate religious movements (being that it's officially atheist, and enforces this for its members), so it was declared evil and persecuted. China has a history of millennial/apocalyptic groups showing up and causing problems for their central government (be it imperial or PRC), so you could argue that the Politburo sees Falun Gong as just another iteration of that. Yellow Turbans, Taiping Rebellion, you can go on and on. Now Falun Gong outside the US seems to spend most of its time discussing human rights abuses directed towards its followers in China. Some have accused them of exaggeration (there's quite a bit about forced organ donations), but given the record of the PRC it's actually somewhat believable. They also spend a lot of time trying to put on giant dance shows around the country, and handing me brochures on the bus when I'm just trying to go to work. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 05:19
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Pfirti86 posted:Falun Gong is a religious cult by most definitions of the word. It draws from Buddhism and Daoism, and for the most part is a spiritual philosophy combined with some meditative practices. Its founder has some real goofy ideas about modern medicine/science, and he's pretty homophobic. There's a whole lot more behind it than that. It goes back to the idea that it's a substitute for actual medicine and that Li Hongzhi was some sort of mystic god who would use his spirit to kill you if you stopped. No, that's not you getting deathly sick and having kidney failure... that's the sickness leaving your body, be sure to force it on the kids too or else my magical voodoo will kill you all, ditto if you try and use medicine instead. They got really violent and creepy when media started to call it hokum and that was basically the end of that. It wasn't a social movement it was a damned cult full of crazy bullshit dreamed up by a fraud. Once they ran away overseas they started trying to sell it as a religion or whatever in the hopes of gaining support. It's like trying to claim that all Scientology does is try to lower your stress levels. There's a whole lotta batshit insanity beneath the surface. In more recent years, it's basically become a "get out of China free" card to play in some countries. Get visa, buy plane ticket, claim you are FLG, get asylumin Canada/Aussie. edit: this is seriously one of those things that you can't rely on wikipedia for any real information at all. Fighting with the 轮子 is futile as there is literally an entire swarm of them out there determined to force their bullshit. Basically every single thing they reference is a FLG website. You can fight, sure, but they have a few admins in their pocket and you'll just get yourself banned... then they'll dig into all your other articles and screw with them. It would be funny if it wasn't so loving creepy. Pro-PRC Laowai fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 05:34
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:There's a whole lot more behind it than that. It goes back to the idea that it's a substitute for actual medicine and that Li Hongzhi was some sort of mystic god who would use his spirit to kill you if you stopped. No, that's not you getting deathly sick and having kidney failure... that's the sickness leaving your body, be sure to force it on the kids too or else my magical voodoo will kill you all, ditto if you try and use medicine instead. I didn't want to make such a provocative comparison initially, but yeah, Falun Gong is basically the Scientology or Christian Science of China. I'm no fan of any group that encourages people to avoid modern medicine and Li Hongzhi's personality cult is decidedly weird. I remember the first time I bumped into a Falun Gong art gallery at the University of Cincinnati with all sorts of paintings depicting people getting beaten, where I got cornered by two or three Chinese girls explaining to me in graphic detail all sorts of nasty things that were going on in China with regards to torture and organ harvesting. It was obvious even then that this wasn't exactly an objective organization. I still believe that Jiang Zemin put the clamps down more due to the freakishly well organized protests that started popping up and recalling earlier threats to power, rather than for any concerns regarding science and modern medicine. It's sort of like, yeah, I don't agree with Falun Gong or its tenets, but I don't think its followers should be arrested, tortured, and proscribed. And it's sort of hard to deny that that isn't happening, though I acknowledge that it's likely exaggerated by Falun Gong followers in the US (they have their own TV station for Christ's sake). Of course, I'm hardly a political scientist or expert on Falun Gong - though that dance show sure does look fancy. Foyes36 fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Apr 18, 2012 |
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Apr 18, 2012 06:12
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Pfirti86 posted:I didn't want to make such a provocative comparison initially, but yeah, Falun Gong is basically the Scientology or Christian Science of China. I'm no fan of any group that encourages people to avoid modern medicine and Li Hongzhi's personality cult is decidedly weird. I remember the first time I bumped into a Falun Gong art gallery at the University of Cincinnati with all sorts of paintings depicting people getting beaten, where I got cornered by two or three Chinese girls explaining to me in graphic detail all sorts of nasty things that were going on in China with regards to torture and organ harvesting. It was obvious even then that this wasn't exactly an objective organization. Many years back, several dead hard drives and trashed laptops ago I bothered to hunt down the original sources of those pictures they march around with. Then I confronted them as they were doing their little thing of harassing and bitching at everyone going to the consulate in Japan. End result: I got rocks thrown at me, they got arrested by Japanese cops. Anyways, in summary, those pictures? Yea, all bullshit. The organ harvesting thing never happened. If you bother to dig into their "evidence" it just gets more and more absurd, especially when you understand the way things work here. (Doctors at big hospitals don't use prepaid phones, and when pressed over and over again by batshit insane people in the days before number blacklisting, you'll generally say anything to make them shut up and stop calling)
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Apr 18, 2012 06:41
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Fangz posted:Dude, we're talking about a mass media that painted the Lord's Resistance Army as a heroic movement for religious tolerance, because Obama was opposed to them. The vast majority of americans haven't heard of Bo Xilai, let alone the bit players. Guagua just needs to make a couple of speeches about a sudden and newfound love of freedom and democracy, and it'll look - or can be made - very politically inconvenient to send him back in an election year where opposition to China is a vote winning issue. Well according to the NY Times some Republicans are demanding answers for why the US didn't protect Wang Lijun. I guess I thought Americans can go beyond petty politics and think in terms of rational world politics (then again international relations is also a pretty petty business). Republicans wanted to protect a communist thug, a communist princeling joined the Oxford University Conservative Association. White is black. Freedom is slavery. I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to spin Guagua into human rights icon. Good night folks.
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Apr 18, 2012 10:11
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Ronald Spiers posted:Well according to the NY Times some Republicans are demanding answers for why the US didn't protect Wang Lijun. I guess I thought Americans can go beyond petty politics and think in terms of rational world politics (then again international relations is also a pretty petty business). Republicans wanted to protect a communist thug, a communist princeling joined the Oxford University Conservative Association. White is black. Freedom is slavery. I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to spin Guagua into human rights icon. I always imagined that the US realized there was no way to actually get LiJun out of the consulate, and even so, they would have to give sanctuary to someone who was pretty corrupt on his own merits.
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Apr 18, 2012 13:17
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Ronald Spiers posted:Well according to the NY Times some Republicans are demanding answers for why the US didn't protect Wang Lijun. I guess I thought Americans can go beyond petty politics and think in terms of rational world politics (then again international relations is also a pretty petty business). Republicans wanted to protect a communist thug, a communist princeling joined the Oxford University Conservative Association. White is black. Freedom is slavery. I guess it wouldn't be a stretch to spin Guagua into human rights icon. The suzhi of the average American. 
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Apr 18, 2012 13:31
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New Sinica is out. This one's about the environmental movement and environmental journalism in China. Did you guys know that 10% of rice tested in China contains cadmium? Because that's, uh, that's pretty bad. In fact it actually makes me think staying here and living for a few more years might not be the greatest idea. I mean, the food has cadmium in it. At the very least, if you are in China I guess this means you should keep your iron and other mineral intake up. Apparently low levels of iron makes the body absorb more cadmium from food. So... that's something to tell women? Gently? Man I don't even know. I had (Chinese) students in the U.S. who if I asked about issues that interested them in China they would just go off on an hour-long rant about food safety, but I never really understood the impact of the problem until I was here eating the same food they were talking about on the news.
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Apr 21, 2012 10:28
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Arglebargle III posted:New Sinica is out. This one's about the environmental movement and environmental journalism in China. That was old news to be honest. Just keep in mind where they tested positive and buy your rice from places that are not those on the list. The place we get our rice from doesn't even carry brands from those areas anymore.
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Apr 21, 2012 12:19
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Arglebargle III posted:New Sinica is out. This one's about the environmental movement and environmental journalism in China. Can you buy Thai rice where you live?
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Apr 21, 2012 15:06
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Where's the list?
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Apr 21, 2012 15:06
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Yeah, is there a list of safe Chinese food companies? Man, I can't believe I'll be in living in China for 2 years.
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Apr 21, 2012 21:58
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Ronald Spiers posted:Yeah, is there a list of safe Chinese food companies? Baijiu is usually safe to drink
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Apr 21, 2012 22:15
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Does a safe list even matter? People will intentionally fake labels and restaurants will probably buy the cheapest Cadmium rice on sale.
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Apr 21, 2012 22:41
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I just can't believe Chinese people risk execution just to make an extra buck.
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Apr 22, 2012 05:23
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Sinica has talked about this before (you can go back and listen to their archives from a year ago) and said that the real problem is that there are a zillion food manufacturers in China that simply can't be inspected with the current legal regime. The market is virtually unregulated, even though it's supposed to be, because of the physical difficulty of checking and the lack of government resources to do it. Critically, in most developed countries the burden is on the food producers to prove their food is safe to the government before they can take their food to market, while in China the burden is on government inspectors to go out to millions of individual small producers and prove their food is unsafe. Not only is it not much of a risk for the individual producer, but many of these producers are really small time operations run by people who will lose everything if they admit their food is tainted. It doesn't help that because of cutthroat competition and pressure to keep food prices down, the pressure is on these small-time operations to cut cost in any way they can because you can bet the guy down the street will if they don't.
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Apr 22, 2012 06:49
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Ronald Spiers posted:I just can't believe Chinese people risk execution just to make an extra buck. And yet Chinese people swear up and down that they need the death penalty as a deterrent.
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Apr 22, 2012 08:43
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Fiendish_Ghoul posted:And yet Chinese people swear up and down that they need the death penalty as a deterrent. 2+2= China is a developing country with a large population, it has a long history and great culture with many famous figures such as...
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Apr 22, 2012 15:33
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What ever happened to those QS stickers that said 质量安全? I thought that was proof of a positive inspections scheme, though they can be faked pretty easily.
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Apr 22, 2012 18:19
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:There's a whole lot more behind it than that. It goes back to the idea that it's a substitute for actual medicine and that Li Hongzhi was some sort of mystic god who would use his spirit to kill you if you stopped. No, that's not you getting deathly sick and having kidney failure... that's the sickness leaving your body, be sure to force it on the kids too or else my magical voodoo will kill you all, ditto if you try and use medicine instead.
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Apr 23, 2012 14:37
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I'm reading the book "When China rules the world" and it places India at the top 5 in 2025 and in the top three in 2050 GDP-wise. How on earth do you come to that conclusion? I love it but India is a mess and there are no signs of it becoming an economic powerhouse that would be passing by, say, all of Europe within the next twelve years, are there? Sorry if this is a bit off-topic but the book was recommended in this thread, so I thought I'd mention it here. \/ Thanks for the responses! lllllllllllllllllll fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Apr 24, 2012 |
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Apr 24, 2012 16:00
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:I'm reading the book "When China rules the world" and it places India at the top 5 in 2025 and in the top three in 2050 GDP-wise. How on earth do you come to that conclusion? I love it but India is a mess and there are no signs of it becoming an economic powerhouse that would be passing by, say, all of Europe within the next twelve years, are there? Sorry if this is a bit off-topic but the book was recommended in this thread, so I thought I'd mention it here. Nothing like that is going to happen and even if India and China ever straighten out their corruption and government issues (not likely within the next century) there are immense hurdles to overcome in resource allocation and decreased global demand.
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Apr 24, 2012 17:38
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:I'm reading the book "When China rules the world" and it places India at the top 5 in 2025 and in the top three in 2050 GDP-wise. How on earth do you come to that conclusion? I love it but India is a mess and there are no signs of it becoming an economic powerhouse that would be passing by, say, all of Europe within the next twelve years, are there? Sorry if this is a bit off-topic but the book was recommended in this thread, so I thought I'd mention it here. India is projected to hit 1.5 billion people by 2030 while the largest West European country will be Germany (shrinking to) 75 million. So even if India never gets more than 1/10 gdp/capita of Germany they will still surpass them in total GDP. Considering the median age of Germany will be 50 while India will be around 30 at the time I don't think it's unrealistic at all. Incidentally China is already pretty close to the US in PPP terms so it also depends a lot on what metrics you use.
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Apr 24, 2012 22:02
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Will Germany do anything to encourage German birth rate, or just fill in the gap with immigrants? Or will they just be happy to be a small, "old" country with a good standard of living? It seems Russia is having a hard time bringing the population up even with intense government efforts.
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Apr 24, 2012 23:18
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zero alpha posted:Will Germany do anything to encourage German birth rate, or just fill in the gap with immigrants? Or will they just be happy to be a small, "old" country with a good standard of living? It seems Russia is having a hard time bringing the population up even with intense government efforts. They can't be an old country with a good standard of living because there won't be enough active workers in the economy to pay for all of the needs of the retired. Germany will fill in the gaps with immigrants. Japan looks just xenophobic to be seriously screwed though.
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Apr 24, 2012 23:31
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Vladimir Putin posted:They can't be an old country with a good standard of living because there won't be enough active workers in the economy to pay for all of the needs of the retired. Germany will fill in the gaps with immigrants. Japan looks just xenophobic to be seriously screwed though. Well they have been making those creepy androids lately so maybe they will fill the gap.
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Apr 24, 2012 23:53
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zero alpha posted:Will Germany do anything to encourage German birth rate...? Bring back the prolific German Mother's Medal! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honor_of_the_German_Mother
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Apr 25, 2012 00:34
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More on the Bo Xilai case; apparently he wiretapped Hu Jintao. In other news, China sounds like a surveillance hell hole. And being a Chinese politician sounds like the most stressful job. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/world/asia/bo-xilai-said-to-have-spied-on-top-china-officials.html?hp
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Apr 26, 2012 01:41
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Guagua Bo put out a statement through the Harvard Crimson (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/24/bo-guagua-statement-to-the-crimson/):Letter to Harvard community posted:To Whom It May Concern: Denying the Ferrari claim hands down. In some ways I sort of feel bad for the guy.
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Apr 26, 2012 04:43
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Pfirti86 posted:Guagua Bo put out a statement through the Harvard Crimson (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/24/bo-guagua-statement-to-the-crimson/): Oh no, the son of some murderous corrupt oligarch might only have hundreds of millions instead of billions!  Speaking of Ferraris, the latest Sinica just plopped and it's about the car industry, which is good because a) I just got back from the Beijing Auto show, b) It's sort of a hobby of mine, and C) the episode is great, much more informative than most "car" sites/podcasts. I've been kind of toying with doing an effort post about the Chinese car industry, but I haven't because I'm really just a layman and don't work in the car industry in any way, so a lot of it is just conjecture and analysis of publicly availible info. Maybe I'll do it after I post the pics.
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Apr 27, 2012 11:53
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Pfirti86 posted:Guagua Bo put out a statement through the Harvard Crimson (http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/4/24/bo-guagua-statement-to-the-crimson/): Doesn't mention at least one obvious boo boo - he was rusticated from Oxford for being academically poo poo. That kind of things doesn't happen too often in a University which practices a tutorial system which normally observes a 1:3 staff to student ratio. Also, the description of his grade, "second class, first honours", is loving odd. It's an upper second (the top grade is a "first" or "first class honours", the next is "second class honours" with either a "first division" or "second division" and below that we have a third and then an ordinary). This kind of stuff is not something which one gets unintentionally wrong - would you ever try to hint that you were magna cum laude if you were cum laude? No, because people would call you on it. It sounds like he is trying to pad his credentials to make it seem more likely that he got a scholarship. There is no loving way he got a scholarship of any kind whilst also being rusticated. All of the University fees came from his mother.
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Apr 27, 2012 12:39
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GuestBob posted:It sounds like he is trying to pad his credentials to make it seem more likely that he got a scholarship. There is no loving way he got a scholarship of any kind whilst also being rusticated. All of the University fees came from his mother. Personally, I'm warm hearted towards the guy, if only because he evoked the only good thing I've ever heard associated with Andrew Graham: quote:Dr Andrew Graham, the master of Balliol College, received a visit from three diplomats as tutors made Bo Guagua, 24, who was studying PPE, sit additional “penal” exams after failing to work. Cefte fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Apr 27, 2012 |
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Apr 27, 2012 12:48
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GuestBob posted:
Yeah, I was confused by that too. I thought maybe it meant he was a 2:1 in one subject and a first in the other. Most Americans don't know poo poo about the British academic honors system. I had no idea he was suspended. Aren't honors awarded based on how well you do on a series of final exams? Like, couldn't he be academic poo poo the whole time, then study really hard, then pass with a decent enough degree (a 2:1 isn't terrible right?)? Also, what's a shisha party? That sounds fun.
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Apr 27, 2012 13:02
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