Post #3 China Fears Rise in Inflation

I think the article below is interesting. It discusses how China is taking measures to control inflation as there is clear indication it will rise. It is important to control the inflation rate in China because China is the world’s factory and the global inflation rate is directly coupled with the Chinese inflation rate. By cutting back on lending, China hopes to sustain their economic growth. By doing so it will ultimately benefit the world in the long term.

China Tries to Cool Economy by Ordering Banks to Boost Reserves

February 12, 2010, 04:06 PM EST

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- China’s central bank ordered lenders to set aside larger reserves for the second time in a month to avert asset bubbles and restrain inflation in the fastest-growing economy.

The reserve requirement will rise 50 basis points, or 0.5 percentage point, effective Feb. 25, the People’s Bank of China said on its Web site yesterday. The existing level is 16 percent for the biggest banks and 14 percent for smaller ones.

Policy makers are reining in credit growth after banks extended 19 percent of this year’s 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) lending target in January and property prices climbed the most in 21 months. Oil, copper and European stocks fell after the announcement on concern that tighter lending in China will damp the global recovery.

“Policy makers are becoming more concerned about containing inflationary expectations and managing the risk of asset price bubbles,” said Jing Ulrich, chairwoman of China equities and commodities at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong. “2010 is likely to be characterized by further policy tightening.”

The central bank moved after Chinese markets closed and on the eve of a weeklong Lunar New Year holiday when the nation enters the Year of the Tiger from the Year of the Ox. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index fell.

The move doesn’t alter the central bank’s “moderately loose” monetary policy, the official Xinhua News Agency cited an unnamed official from the bank as saying yesterday evening.

Asia’s Global Role

Record lending last year and a 4 trillion yuan stimulus package have helped China to lead the recovery from the first global recession since World War II. Greece’s budget crisis and a report yesterday showing a weaker expansion in Europe highlight Asia’s importance in sustaining global growth.

“With China’s increasing economic significance in the world economy, major policy moves will always touch a nerve with global markets,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. “Still, timely tightening in China will help sustain growth and avoid overheating, benefiting the world in the long term.”

Investors’ concern about investment bubbles in China, and what action the government may take to prevent or deflate them, has mounted this year.

“There’s a monumental property bubble and fixed-asset investment bubble that China has underway right now,” hedge fund manager James Chanos, founder of New York-based Kynikos Associates Ltd., said in a Jan. 25 Bloomberg Television interview. “Deflating that gently will be difficult at best.”

Exiting ‘Crisis’ Mode

The central bank said Feb. 11 that it planned to gradually normalize monetary conditions from a “crisis mode” after gross domestic product grew 10.7 percent in the fourth quarter, the fastest pace in two years.

Chinese policy makers have left benchmark interest rates unchanged since cuts in 2008. They are also yet to drop the yuan’s effective peg to the U.S. dollar, which was adopted in July 2008 to aid the nation’s exporters, stoking friction with the U.S. and Europe.

Credit Suisse Group AG estimated that yesterday’s move will remove about 300 billion yuan from a financial system also facing inflows of cash from investors betting on the nation’s recovery and likely gains by the yuan. China’s foreign-exchange reserves swelled to a record $2.4 trillion in December, partly on inflows of “hot money,” or speculative capital.

More Tightening

“The central bank will keep raising the ratio frequently until the middle of the year,” said Lu Zhengwei, a Shanghai- based economist at Industrial Bank Co., who predicted yesterday’s increase. “The central bank wants to stay ahead of the curve by tightening before inflation starts to gain pace.”

Lu forecast an increase in the benchmark lending rate from 5.31 percent as early as April. In contrast, Citigroup Inc. said the central bank may not raise rates until the third quarter as inflation stays “mild.”

“Raising the reserve ratio on the eve of the Chinese New Year holiday really makes a lot of sense as it will give markets time to react,” said Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London.

Property Price Surge

Economic data this week showed property prices across 70 cities surged 9.5 percent in January from a year earlier, exports climbed and producer-price inflation accelerated. Bank lending of 1.39 trillion yuan topped the total for the previous three months combined.

The central bank on Jan. 12 increased banks’ reserve requirements for the first time since June 2008. The latest move will soak up liquidity from maturing central-bank bills and also money injected into the financial system for the holiday that begins today, China International Capital Corp. said.

At Morgan Stanley, Hong Kong-based economist Wang Qing said that yesterday’s increase would counter foreign-exchange inflows which “must have been persistently strong since January” and also withdraw money added for the holiday.

Reserve-requirement increases will continue through 2010, Wang said. “The market should get used to it.”

--Li Yanping, Kevin Hamlin. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Brendan Murray

Bukky Post 13 China report finds extensive water pollution

Bukky Post 13

Just a reminder to be extremely careful when coming into contact with non bottled water and fresh foods like salads.

China report finds extensive water pollution
Farm wastes, included for first time, contribute to severity of problem


By JONATHAN ANSFIELD and KEITH BRADSHER

BEIJING - China’s government on Tuesday unveiled its most detailed survey ever of the pollution plaguing the country, revealing that water pollution in 2007 was more than twice as severe as official figures that had long omitted agricultural waste.
The first-ever national pollution census, environmentalists said, represented a small step forward for China in terms of transparency. But the results also raised serious questions about the shortcomings of China’s previous pollution data and suggested that even with limited progress in some areas, the country still had a long way to go to clean its waterways and air.
The pollution census, scheduled to be repeated in 2020, took more than two years to complete. It involved 570,000 people, and included 1.1 billion pieces of data from nearly 6 million sources of pollution, including factories, farms, homes and pollution-treatment facilities, the government announced at a news conference.
But the comprehensiveness of the survey also resulted in stark discrepancies between some of the calculations and annual figures that the government has published in the past.
By far the biggest of these involved China’s total discharge of chemical oxygen demand — the main gauge of water pollution. These discharges totaled 30.3 million tons in 2007, the census showed.
In recent years the Ministry of Environmental Protection has done a much narrower calculation of these discharges, excluding agricultural effluents like fertilizers and pesticides as well as fluids leaking from landfills. By that narrower measure, discharges came to only 13.8 million tons in 2007, which officials described at the time as a decline of more than 3 percent from 2006 and a “turning point.”
Agricultural waste Zhang Lijun, the vice minister of environmental protection, sought to play down the differences with previous data. He noted that the census counted 13.2 million tons of agricultural effluents for the first time, and another 324,600 tons of discharges from landfills.
The census keepers had also employed updated methodologies and reached many more parts of the countryside and industrial sites than had official statistics, which helped account for the much larger figure in the census, Mr. Zhang said. Were it not for the vastly expanded scope of the survey, the chemical oxygen demand level in 2007 would stand at only 5.3 percent higher than previously calculated, he said.
Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a nonprofit research group in Beijing, said that government planners estimated that the country’s rivers and lakes could handle only 7.4 million tons a year of chemical oxygen demand. The scale and significance of agricultural effluent was seldom recognized in previous government planning, which focused on bringing down mainly industrial emissions to around 7 million tons a year from 13.8 million tons, said Mr. Ma, a leading expert on water pollution in China.
The new total of more than 30 million tons suggests a much bigger problem. “We believed we needed to cut our emissions in half, but today’s data means a lot more work needs to be done,” Mr. Ma said.
The extent of agricultural waste could prove a more intractable problem than the many factories dumping effluent into China’s rivers and lakes.
“When it’s millions of farmers, it’s more difficult to bring it under control,” Mr. Ma said.
'No major surprises'Steven Ma, of the Beijing office of Greenpeace, said that the government’s decision to calculate and release figures for agriculture would start to have an effect on the policy debate over water pollution in China. “Everybody knew there was a problem with agricultural pollution in China, but now there are numbers,” he said.
Mr. Zhang said that the findings of the census were roughly in line with official expectations. “There were no major surprises,” he said.
Based on the narrower approach, officials say China is on track to meet or exceed the nation’s pollution goals: to trim levels of chemical oxygen demand as well as sulfur dioxide, a major air pollutant, by 10 percent between 2005 and 2010. For now, the census would not change how those targets are evaluated, Mr. Zhang said.
“Current results of the census will not be linked to environmental performance,” he added.
In terms of sulfur dioxide emissions in 2007, in fact, the census totaled only 23.2 million tons, compared with 24.7 million tons in the official data released in 2008. But census figures for other important metrics, such as soot and ammonia nitrogen, another indicator of water quality, were higher than the previous data by double-digit percentages.
The census also broke down China’s pollution toll into a considerably greater number of categories and sectors than the government does regularly. Some Chinese environmentalists and media outlets took particular note of the amount of poisonous discharge of heavy metals like arsenic, mercury and lead, a frequent source of protests in towns and villages over mass contamination from nearby factories.
The census would help the government take a more “targeted and focused” approach to combating pollution in coming years, Mr. Zhang said. The government has indicated it will add emissions of ammonia nitrogen and nitrogen oxides, which are discharged from vehicles and power plants, to a list of reduction targets from 2011 to 2015.
Jonathan Ansfield reported from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Zhang Jing contributed research.
This article, "China Report Shows More Pollution in Waterways," first appeared in The New York Times.

Langston Movie Review

The film I chose to watch was Lust Caution a film from acclaimed Academy Award winning director Ang Lee of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The movie is set against the back drop of a country in transition. China is under control of the Japanese, and a group of college students decide to join the resistance and assassinate a ruthless intelligence agent. A young lady goes undercover as a seductive socialite in an effort to gain his trust. She finds herself entangled and a web of sex, deceit, and betrayal, loosing her self along the way.
I thought the movie was extremely well acted the costumes were believable for the time period the movie was portraying, and the plot was amazing.The film explored love, cultural identity, loyalty, and politics, and it focused on conflict between the Japaneses and Chinese that I was not fully aware of. What was fascinating were some of the extracurricular activities the Chinese part take in such as a game they play which is similar to American Domino's, and their music is beautiful. I recommend that everyone rent this film it is easy to keep up with and keeps you guessing, if you do not like violence or sexual content it may not be for you otherwise a must see.

Langston Roberson

George Post 13 - Famine to Obesity

As China becomes more Westernize they are beginning to show some of the unhealthy characteristics that plague the U.S. I was very surprised that this change is occurring so rapidly. I think it will be up to Western Companies - Like McDonald's - to assist the government broadcast the need for healthy lifestyles. McDonald's is just a small part of the issue, a more seditary lifestyle is mostly to blame - Computer games versus outside play, car rides versus bike rides, watching TV versus working in the field.

Read and let me know what you think.


Obesity of China's kids stuns officialsUpdated 1/9/2007 9:15 AM ET
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING — China is super-sizing its children as fast as its economy, prompting fears of an American-style obesity crisis here.
New figures from the Health Ministry show that urban Chinese boys age 6 are 2.5 inches taller and 6.6 pounds heavier on average than Chinese city boys 30 years ago.
China "has entered the era of obesity," says Ji Chengye, a leading child-health researcher. "The speed of growth is shocking."
A generation of economic expansion has produced higher living standards and allowed Chinese families to put more food on the table; once-scarce meat, dairy products and vegetables now are widely available. Growing prosperity also has led to more sedentary lifestyles: less physical labor, fewer trips on foot and by bicycle, more travel by car, more Internet usage.
The average 6-year-old in Beijing or Shanghai weighs nearly 47 pounds and is 3 feet, 10.5 inches tall, ministry figures show. The average American of the same age weighs just over 50 pounds and also is 3 feet 10.5 inches tall, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Only 45 years ago, China was still in the grip of a massive famine. Disastrous government policies under Mao Zedong led to the starvation deaths of 30 million people. Malnutrition has been stamped out in cities, but UNICEF says it remains a problem among millions of rural poor, especially in western China.
Most of the growth spurt among Chinese children has taken place over the past decade. "The speed of the increase greatly exceeds the growth trends found in Western developed countries," said Yang Qing, director of the Health Ministry department that oversees child health issues.
Today, 8% of 10- to 12-year-olds in China's cities are considered obese and an additional 15% are overweight, according to Education Ministry data. The closest comparison, in a 2006 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that 18.8% of Americans between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight. There was no separate breakout for obesity among American children.
Bigger children are a source of pride and proof of prosperity for many Chinese. "The old saying, 'A fat child is a healthy child,' is still too prevalent," Ji says.
The government is fighting juvenile flab, in part, by building more playgrounds and requiring students to exercise or play sports for an hour a day at school.
Chen Chunming, a nutritional expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, warned parents, "Don't take children to eat fast food like McDonald's and KFC." McDonald's and KFC have hundreds of outlets in China, as do other American fast-food companies.
McDonald's wants to promote "balanced, active lifestyles" and has sent corporate icon Ronald McDonald to schools throughout China to "get kids up and active," said Gary Rosen, chief marketing officer for McDonald's China.
Last week at a McDonald's in Beijing, salesman Liu Guojian beamed while his daughter Xinyi, 7, ate a hamburger.
"Our daughter will definitely be taller than us. She has eaten better than my wife and I," Liu said. "When I grew up, in winter all we had to eat was cabbage."

George Post 12 - Knockoff's - A New Level

Ok - knocking off a watch - a purse - a coat. I get that - but a Mall and the Typical Brands. Read this!

China mall opens fake Starbucks, McDonald's and Pizza Hut
by Jeremy Kressmann (RSS feed) on Jan 7th 2009 at 4:00PM
In addition to being a complex, beautiful and rapidly changing country, we've all heard that China is a copyright lawyer's worst nightmare. A place rife with pirated DVD's, software and all manner of luxury clothing and handbag knockoffs. It seems that pirated goods have become such a lucrative industry that the country is now dedicating an entire mall to the concept. According to recent news reports, a mall in Nanjing, China is set to open with all manner of "copycat" stores, sporting awnings with none-too-subtle reinterpretations of well-known Western brands. If you're looking for your morning pick-me-up, go no further than "Bucksstar" coffee, the place for all your $5 latte needs in Nanjing. When you get hungry, mall visitors can patronize the local "OMC McDnoald's" or even grab some "Pizza Huh." Perhaps the pizza chain name is in reference to the quality of the ingredients? When I first stumbled upon this article, I actually did a half-spit take. Could this be legit, I thought? Yet in a country with a rapidly emerging consumer class and growing lust for fancy French wine and gated communities, it starts to make more sense. For many individuals, owning and consuming brands legitimizes their place in the world, announcing their ascension to the modern global economy. The creators of this mall in Nanjing seem to have come to a similar conclusion - even a knockoff of the real thing, no matter how awkward and blatant to Western eyes, is better than no brands at all.

Hello Everyone,
The movie that I selected starred Jackie Chan, and is entitled the Shinjuku Incident. It is one of his more serious roles, as the genre is Crime Drama. I must say that I prefer this movie over his movies that released in the US (with the exception of the first Rush Hour). I completed some research, and I do know that the producers had difficulty getting the movie released in China because of censorship issues. Most areas in China do not have the movie rating system that we use in the US (i.e. PG, R, G, PG-13, etc.); therefore, the movie would have been released to all audiences, including children. I tried to highlight the central theme and topics in the video that is posted above. I must say that I was very naive about the racism that exist within the Asia culture itself. The movie highlights the causes and effects of the racism between the Japanese and Chinese populations. It appears that Japan is currently dealing with the same issues that the United States is faced with today (i.e. increased crime, immigration, racism, etc.). However, the movie does an excellent job of highlighting the perspective of the immigrants and why they choose to resort to crime and other extreme measures.

One thing that really bothered me about the film was their portrayal of Western women. I noticed that they never displayed the Japanese or Chinese women as being sexual, but immediately highlighted that about the Western women. It made me wonder where that stereotype came from (i.e. US movies, music, etc.).

I also took several Japanese history and language courses, so I was extremely happy to watch a Chinese/Japanese movie. It was interesting to hear the differences in their languages. I also laughed a a particular scene when the translator could not understand what the Chinese men were saying because the hundreds of dialects that they use in China. It reminded me of the very first video we watched for the course, "The Brits Get Rich in China".

I don't want to ruin the movie by explaining too much, so please enjoy.

Thanks,
Brittne

George Post 11 - U.S. Pandas Off to China !

http://video.ap.org/?f=WASEA&PID=u_oC3hMQbyYbAuse2wIzzGiN_lLsL3L9

Superstar farewell for US-born, China-bound pandas
By BRETT ZONGKERASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


Senior Zoo Curator Brandie Smith feeds 4 and a half-year-old giant panda Tai Shan a piece of pear shortly before the panda left the National Zoo for China in a steel crate in Washington, on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010. "I wanted to feed him pear because it's his favorite," says Smith, "he's a great bear with a great personality and he did a great job today." On Thursday, 3-year-old Mei Lan of Atlanta and 4½-year-old Tai Shan of Washington will fly to new homes in Sichuan, China, to become part of a panda breeding program. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
WASHINGTON -- They were treated like pop idols - except for being stuck in travel crates.
Adoring crowds and television viewers watched Thursday as American-born giant pandas Mei Lan and Tai Shan were loaded onto a special cargo jet for a flight to their new homes in China for breeding.
Normally placid, 3-year-old Mei Lan from Zoo Atlanta whirled and paced in her crate as flashbulbs popped. Tai Shan, a 4 1/2-year-old born in Washington, hid at first but was drawn into view as his longtime keepers at the National Zoo knelt silently at his crate to say goodbye, hand-feeding him slices of apples and pears.
One zookeeper wiped away tears. Federal police officers escorted Tai Shan to the airport, and FedEx workers transporting the pair buzzed around in "Panda Team" jackets to go with the huge panda emblem painted on their jet. News networks provided live coverage of the plane waiting on the tarmac and taking off.
As the Boeing 777's giant engines rumbled to life, tears started to flow for panda lover Mara Strock of Burke, Va., who looked on with other invited guests.
"I love Tai Shan so much, I don't know how I'm going to handle it," she said, watching the plane pull away.
Clutching a stuffed black-and-white bear, 10-year-old Caleigh Davis of Springfield, Va., said she was sad to see Tai Shan go but glad he could go with his cousin.
"The thing I'm most afraid of is that he's going to eat too much food," she said, "and have a sick stomach."
Millions of people fell in love with the pandas as star attractions in zoo exhibits and by watching them grow up via online panda cams. And in Washington, the animals have a particularly long and symbolic history.
The first panda couple at the National Zoo, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, arrived in 1972 as a gift to the American people from China after President Richard Nixon's historic visit.
The pair lived more than 20 years at the zoo and produced five cubs - but none survived. That's partly why Tai Shan, the first cub to grow up in the nation's capital, is so adored.
Pandas may be China's most compelling ambassadors as the country clashes with the U.S. on many issues, including trade, human rights and Internet security. Tai Shan's departure gave diplomats a rare moment of harmony.
"He is a tangible, and furry, manifestation of cooperation between the United States and China," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday.
Xie Feng, minister of the Chinese Embassy, said Tai Shan "has grown up with the blessing, love and care of the American people."
"He has now grown into a handsome young man, and it's time for him to go home," he said.
China lent Tai Shan's and Mei Lan's parents to U.S. zoos for conservation, and now they will become part of a breeding program in their endangered species' native land. About 1,600 giant pandas live in the wild, and another 290 are in captive-breeding programs worldwide, mainly in China.
Mei Lan, the first cub born at Zoo Atlanta in 2006, could be seen pacing back and forth when her steel crate was driven out onto the Atlanta tarmac and past a row of television cameras.
Mei Lan's parents, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, had a second cub - Xi Lan, a male born in 2008. Zoo officials in Washington are hoping for another cub as well.
For animal keeper Nicole Meese, Tai Shan's departure is personal. He was a baby when she first held him, and she later spent late nights calling him down from trees. Now she's traveling with him to ease the transition, ready to teach his Chinese keepers the hand signals he uses.
"Every day, he makes me smile," she said.