China
The People's Republic of Apple
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the three most important technology companies in the world and they now mirror the world's three most important economies. Apple is China, booming but autocratic. Microsoft is Europe, wealthy, stagnant, and declining. Google is the USA, an immature but powerful force for freedom prone to arrogance and to fighting too many wars at [...]
How am I doing?
You stagger off of a crowded jet into the world's largest airport — the sprawling creation of British architect Norman Foster in Beijing. From the air, the airport is designed to look like a dragon. Inside, its high roof is ablaze with the reds and golds of imperial China. Whatever. It's a fine airport, but [...]
China 2009: An Ox in a Box.
A journalist once claimed that after a week in China he could write a book, after a month, he could produce a good article, but after a year he had nothing to say — so complex and layered was the country's economic, political, and cultural life. Unfortunately for pithy summaries, my recent visit to Beijing [...]
The JamKid Blogs China
Long-time readers of JamSideDown know a bit about the JamKid, profiled two years ago here, and featured in our trip to the Iowa caucus here. He is Jamie Manley, my oldest son and at 16, no longer a kid. During his freshman year in high school, Jamie studied Chinese history and seemed to like it. [...]
The Man Who Loves Scholars
I am a huge fan of Simon Winchester — a peripatetic Brit who writes brilliantly about geology, lexicography, and sinology. At his best, Winchester turns science into biography by demonstrating how an obscure scholar shaped our view of the world. Winchester majored in geology at Oxford and worked in the field for many years before [...]
Boycott the Beijing Olympics?
Christopher Hitchens: "Those who care or purport to care about human rights must start to discuss this problem in plain words. Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto.. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if [...]
Perspective on Global Warming
Each day, humans pump two billion pounds of carbon into earth’s atmosphere — the industrial exhaust from activities that have dramatically improved our lives. The extent to which the earth’s climate is changing more than it would change anyway, how much warming is a valid scientific concern vs. noise in very complex models, the contribution [...]
Purify This
Reuters is reporting that Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has vowed to "purify" the Internet …describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country’s sprawling, unruly online population. Hu made the comments as the ruling party’s Politburo — its 24-member leading council — was studying China’s Internet, which claimed 137 million registered [...]
6. Walling and Ducking
Beijing and Hong Kong, China Veterans of Beijing business travel early on coined a term for the experience of being received by Chinese hosts: "walling and ducking". Calvin was right when he told Hobbes that "verbing weirds language", but there is a good case for an exception here. We did our share of walling and [...]
5. The Ashtray of History
Beijing, China Outside of Tienamen and the national currency, Mao Zedong has now been reduced to a cultural relic. Mao ashtrays are the height of Beijing kitsch, available in the local flea markets. Mao statuary, posters, and Little Red Books are available as well, but these sell mainly to tourists. Vendor: "Get Little Red Book! [...]
4. Party On: The Evolution of Government in China
Beijing, China Urban development. Xintiandi is a famous upscale bar and restaurant scene in a revived Shanghai neighborhood. I ate a killer lunch there one rainy afternoon. Xintiandi was developed by Shui On Land, a high profile and innovative property developer whose CEO Vincent Lo shared his development vision at a dinner I attended in [...]
3. Soldiers and Soap Operas: Notes on moving around in China
Beijing, China Bikes. Some people pay instinctive attention to buildings; others notice sounds, hemlines, or textures. I always notice bikes. My kids tease me because I often notice the make and model of oncoming bicycles while driving. I clearly recall the black Flying Pigeons and Phoenix beasts that dominated Chinese cities and countryside in 1974. [...]
2. The New Mandarins: Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist
Beijing, China China today still claims to be a communist country but bears absolutely no resemblance to Marxism-Leninism, to Maoism, or to any other known flavor of communism (well-placed rumors even have the CCP discussing a name change. I’d be happy if they just took Mr. Genocide off of the currency). To be sure, China [...]
1. The Finger Factory
Shanghai, China By November of 1974, Shanghai was down and out. The Great Leap Forward with its backyard steel mills and mass starvation and the Cultural Revolution with its rejection of culture, breakup of schools and families, and utter disruption of remaining Chinese economic life had left the city shabby — a rock star after [...]
China, After 32 Years
I visited China for about 25 days in November of 1974. Nixon had opened the country with his visit to Mao in 1971, the US ping-pong team played in Beijing in 1972, but generally "Red China" was as closed to visitors during the reign of Mao as North Korea is today. My visit occurred during [...]
The Dear Train Collector
North Korea is an economic train wreck in part because its neglected trains are falling apart. It is hard to run a garrison economy with broken trains. Hat tip to Strategy Page for discovering the creative approach devised by the Dear Leader to solve this vexing problem: "..food and fuel supplies sent (from China) to [...]
Now that we have vaccinated several million chickens…
New Scientist does a nice job summarizing the current state of flu vaccine production. Let me break their article into questions and answers. Q: We keep hearing that H5N1 will mutate, become transmissible, and trigger a pandemic. Is this really likely? LAST month, eight members of a family in Sumatra fell ill with H5N1 bird [...]
Virtual Daughters
A conversation at work today with a colleague who is adopting a Chinese girl, reminded me of the strange issue of China’s gender imbalance – and how
it may be supporting China’s most valuable Internet company. The Christian Science Monitor has reported that 17% more boys are born in
China than girls and the imbalance may as high as 50-60% for couples permitted to have second or third children. Although the bias is reduced in cities, China
remains an overwhelmingly rural country. The resulting demographic imbalance has no precedent in history: tens of millions of men, perhaps 15% of the
male population and growing by about 2 million men annually, will never find wives. China, knowing a revolutionary tinderbox when it sees one, has outlawed
selective abortion and ultrasound — and now pays bonuses to parents of girls. As the Monitor notes however, ultrasound is available on the black market.
Couples allowed only one child, frequently insist that it be male. If you want to continue the family lineage, or just have grandchildren, this is not an
optimal choice (as Marginal Economics 
