Category: China
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Tuesday, October 16, 2012
China’s Pyramid of Power, The Communist Party Elite / Politics / China
China celebrated another achievement last week, as Mo Yan became the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize for literature. The selection of Mo was praised by a Chinese nationalist tabloid as a sign that mainstream China could "no longer be refused by the West for long."
Mo grew up in Shandong province in northeastern China, and during the Cultural Revolution, he left school to work in the fields, finishing his education in the army, according to The Guardian. The author draws upon his rural upbringing in his novels, mixing historical perspective with mythical elements. His real name is Guan Moye, but he chose "Mo Yan" as a pen name meaning "don't speak," to reflect the culture in which he grew up.
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Tuesday, September 11, 2012
China Number Two Man Xi Jinping Assassination Attempt? / Politics / China
It is hard to tell exactly what is happening in China from these reports of two top officials who were injured on the same night in two separate car accidents, one in which Xi was sandwiched between two military jeeps, and another where He Guoqiang was mysteriously hit from behind by a truck.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2012
China continues to buy strategic assets / Commodities / China
As you no doubt know, yesterday China National Offshore Oil Corporation made a $15 billion, 61% premium to market, bid for Nexen Inc. Nexen’s portfolio includes:
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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
The Paradox of China's Naval Strategy / Politics / China
Over the past decade, the South China Sea has become one of the most volatile flashpoints in East Asia. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan each assert sovereignty over part or all of the sea, and these overlapping claims have led to diplomatic and even military standoffs in recent years.
Because the sea hosts numerous island chains, is rich in mineral and energy resources and has nearly a third of the world's maritime shipping pass through its waters, its strategic value to these countries is obvious. For China, however, control over the South China Sea is more than just a practical matter and goes to the center of Beijing's foreign policy dilemma: how to assert its historic maritime claims while maintaining the non-confrontational foreign policy established by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980.
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Monday, May 14, 2012
Taiwan: The Democratic China / Politics / China
In the 60 years since Chinese Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, the tiny island country has transformed itself quite differently from the mainland China. Thanks to a series of financial and economic reform by the Nationalist Party (KMT), Taiwan got a head start on economic and democratic development, while Mao's Cultural Revolution had left the Mainland in an over-a-decade-long developmental vacuum.
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Saturday, May 05, 2012
China, or How To Live in Interesting Times / Politics / China
Over the past few weeks I've read an absolute avalanche of articles on China, but because of all the traveling we were doing never got around to turning the information into stories for TAE. By the way, we're on the Sunshine Coast, an hour north of Brisbane, for a week or two right now, staying with friends and trying to catch our breath. It's where the Australasia tour started 11 weeks ago, so it feels kind of fitting. We’ll move over to Europe on May 15, and we will be available for lectures over there. We’re also looking for a place to stay for a month or so by the way, to do some catching up.
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Growing India - China Rivalry / Politics / China
As the world moves into the second decade of the 21st century, a new power rivalry is taking shape between India and China, Asia's two behemoths in terms of territory, population and richness of civilization. India's recent successful launch of a long-range missile able to hit Beijing and Shanghai with nuclear weapons is the latest sign of this development.
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Sunday, April 01, 2012
Niall Ferguson China, Turmoil and Triumph, a Flawed Understanding of China? / Politics / China
Niall Ferguson's latest series on China to be broadcast in the UK ended in a highly convincing conclusion of what could come to pass, but I fear that Niall has let himself get too close to the subject at hand and miss the real big picture about why China is developing and where it is going, in a way he may again be repeating the mega mistake he made 12 years ago in 1999 with Gold when he stated :
"The twilight of gold appear[s] to have arrived. True, total blackout is still some way off...Gold has a future, of course.
"But mainly as jewelry." -Niall Ferguson
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Revolution, Its All About China, Weeks When Decades Can Happen / Politics / China
My friends at GaveKal are uniquely positioned to help us think about where we have been in the past decade and where we are going in the next one. Their perch in Hong Kong lets them keep their fingers on China’s pulse, but they also have profound roots in Europe – the Gave family is French – as well as a thorough grasp of the US economy and culture. (Louis Gave, the author of today’s Outside the Box, is a Duke grad.)
We can all second Louis when he notes “the discomfort and uncertainty we find in most meetings with clients” – we’re treading on uncertain turf here and moving into unexplored territory. We sense that the potential, in the next few years, for both creation and destruction (so yes, creative destruction) is greater than at any time in our lives – and greater perhaps than at any time in the history of the human race.
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Sunday, July 03, 2011
90 Years of Communist China / Politics / China
The CPC (Communist Party of China) was founded on July 1, 1921 in Shanghai with a large working class support base. After the death of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (孫中山)--China's Founding Father (recognized by both Beijing and Taipei)--in 1925, a lengthy civil war soon ensued between the CPC and the ruling political party at the time--the Kuomintang (KMT or 國民黨).
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Tuesday, January 18, 2011
China's Military Comes Into Its Own / Politics / China
Chinese President Hu Jintao is visiting the United States, perhaps his last state visit as president before China begins its generational leadership transition in 2012. Hu’s visit is being shaped by the ongoing China-U.S. economic dialogue, by concerns surrounding stability on the Korean Peninsula and by rising attention to Chinese defense activity in recent months. For example, China carried out the first reported test flight of its fifth-generation combat fighter prototype, dubbed the J-20, during U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to China the previous week.
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Wednesday, December 29, 2010
We Can’t Let China Sway Our Energy Decisions / Politics / China
First U.S. Treasury bonds, now dysprosium.
China owns nearly $1 trillion of U.S. debt (approximately 7 percent of the nearly $14 trillion total). China also retains roughly $2.5 trillion in foreign-currency reserves, nearly all in U.S. dollars. They lend money to us so we can purchase their exports, which are more competitively priced than ours.
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Thursday, December 09, 2010
China and its Double-edged Cyber War and Espionage Sword / Politics / China
A recent batch of WikiLeaks cables led Der Spiegel and The New York Times to print front-page stories on China’s cyber-espionage capabilities Dec. 4 and 5. While China’s offensive capabilities on the Internet are widely recognized, the country is discovering the other edge of the sword.
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Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Nobel Prize for Capitalism Awarded to Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo / Politics / China
Stephen Gowans writes: Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has been hailed as a champion of human rights and democracy. His jailing by Chinese authorities for inciting subversion of the state is widely regarded as an unjust stifling of advocacy rights by a Chinese state intolerant of dissent and hostile to ”universal values”. But what Western accounts have failed to mention is that Charter 08, the manifesto Liu had a hand in writing and whose signing led to his arrest, is more than a demand for political and civil liberties. It is a blueprint for making over China into a replica of US society and eliminating the last vestiges of the country’s socialism.
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Saturday, October 09, 2010
China Furious at The Nobel Peace Prize Award / Politics / China
Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights". China is totally livid and called the award "an obscenity" as reported by Reuters.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
China's Next Generation of Leaders, Looking to 2012 / Politics / China
In 2012, the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) leaders will retire and a new generation — the so-called fifth generation — will take the helm. The transition will affect the CPC’s most powerful decision-making organs, determining the makeup of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee, and most important, the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee that is the core of political power in China.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
U.S. Strategy to Control The World By Controlling The Internet / Politics / China
Chen Baoguo writes: US controls threaten Internet freedom
In May 2009, Microsoft announced on its website that they would turn off the Windows Live Messenger service for Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea, in accordance with US legislation.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
The Chinese Navy Faces a Critical Watershed as the East Asian Strategic Balance Changes / Politics / China
New strategic brinkmanship by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK); a now-clear determination by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to “more aggressively assert its territorial claims in regional waters”; the near-collapse of Japanese strategic cohesion during 2010; and the increasing signs of US political caution in North-East Asia, all point to a period of strategic concern for the Republic of China, particularly in its maritime responsibilities.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
China Inherently Unstable Economic System Crunch Time / Politics / China
The global system is undergoing profound change. Three powers — Germany, China and Iran — face challenges forcing them to refashion the way they interact with their regions and the world. We are exploring each of these three states in detail in three geopolitical weeklies, highlighting how STRATFOR’s assessments of these states are evolving. First we examined Germany. We now examine China.
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Saturday, February 20, 2010
Chanos Could Lose Big On China Real Estate Bubble Bets / Housing-Market / China
Amid growing fears of a real estate bubble, Chinese officials moved to restrain bank lending and rein in inflation by raising its bank reserve requirements twice in one month. Global financial markets reacted with risk aversion driving up both the U.S. dollar and Treasuries because of concerns that the leading recovery growth engine of the world could be slowing.
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