FOLLOWING CHINA.....

Report: China Trade Deficit Up to $540M
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) News
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-China-Trade-Deficit.html
"Customs officials said the sharp rise in imports was driven by ``the country's sustained need for raw materials and energy'' for its booming economy, said the Web site of the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily."

China Pledges to Guard Against Inflation
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) News
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-China-Banks.html
"SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Battling soaring investment that it says threatens the fragile financial system and is fueling inflation, China's central bank is boosting the reserves banks are required to hold in an attempt to restrain excess lending."

China's Need for Metal Keeps U.S. Scrap Dealers Scrounging
By ANDREW POLLACK and KEITH BRADSHER; Andrew Pollack reported from Los Angeles for this article and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. (NYT) 1858 words
"At a time when toys, televisions and other products made in China are flooding into the United States, helping push the trade deficit to record levels, there is at least one American product for which China has a nearly insatiable demand -- industrial junk. ... Sales of scrap metal to..."

Trains take Olympic strain
www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-02 13:37:54

" BEIJING, April 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Beijing's subway system will carry an estimated 1.7 million Beijingers this weekend, many to cemeteries at Babaoshan.

Even outside peak travel periods, such as that created by Pure Brightness Day on April 5, the rapidly expanding system carries 1.35 million of us every day.

Regardless the rise of the private motor car, the subway represents the most efficient way of getting from A to B for most Beijingers.

With the capital's traffic bottlenecks now the stuff of legend, the majority of streetwise residents still favour the underground network. ..."

THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-04/02/content_1397925.htm

Shanghai to host cartoon Expo during May Day Holidays
www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-08 10:34:42

" BEIJING, April 8, (Xinhuanet) -- Shanghai will stage an expo featuring popular cartoon characters during the May Day holidays. Visitors will enjoy hot cartoon images, like Sailormoon Superstars and Digimon.

Visitors will enjoy hot cartoon images, like Sailormoon Superstars, Digimon and Gundam, as well as original pictures, posters and moulds.

It will also have fun activities, like a mimic show and a cartoon mould-making competition.

This expo aims to strengthen people's awareness of the damage caused by piracy and help them appreciate the value of authentic cartoon products.

Nearly two thirds of all cartoon related publications in China are pirate ones. In addition, newspapers and magazines use cartoon images without formal authorization.Enditem "

Is there any free press in China?

"Permanent residence control loosens
www.chinaview.cn 2004-04-02 09:34:49

BEIJING, April 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Public Security yesterday cleared away a major obstacle for a myriad of local men who want to marry women from outside the capital.

Starting this month, brides who come from outside will be allowed to become permanent residents if they stay wed Guangzhou men for more than six years, Qi Xiaolin, deputy director of the public security bureau, said yesterday.

Meanwhile, children from those marriages can register as Guangzhou residents (with permanent residence certificates) so they enjoy local preferential policies in education, employment, elections and so on.

"This is really good news for local men, especially those older than 30," Qi said. "

THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-04/02/content_1397365.htm

I need something to offset the government controlled media. What publications will provide factual articles on China?

An oldie, but a goodie. Yet, China still keeps the Capitalist Revolution quiet... How can they still call themselves Communists? Repression alone?

Leftist Americans in China grieve shift to capitalism

October 1, 1996
Web posted at: 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT)
From Correspondent Andrea Koppel

BEIJING (CNN) -- Dairy farmers Joan Hinton and Sid Engst have always been at home on a farm. Sid, in fact, hails from a family of dairy farmers in upstate New York.

But for close to 50 years now, the couple have made their home a world away from their native United States. Hinton said they never intended to stay in China so long, but were too caught up to leave. (4 sec./43K AIFF or WAV sound)


Nearly a half century ago, China's socialist revolution inspired American leftists such as Engst and Hinton to move to China. They dreamed of building a new society, a place where capitalism would be abolished for good.

Now, capitalism is back in, and radical leftist politics are out. But Hinton and Engst still live and work outside Beijing, and still hang on to their old dreams.

In 1949, the same year of the Chinese revolution and the founding of the People's Republic of China, the couple married in a mountainous Chinese community and joined the cause to which they've been devoted ever since.


"The change in China in those 30 years was really fantastic, and we lived through it," Engst recalled. "It was inspiring to be part of it."

But their story doesn't begin and end there. Before joining Engst in China, Hinton had been a young nuclear physicist who was involved in research that helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II.

Her move to China happened as the so-called "red scare" in the United States was growing, and convinced some Americans that pretty, young Joan Hinton had become a spy for Red China.


What the people back home didn't realize, according to Hinton, was that she was living with her husband and their children on a tiny commune in a remote part of China.

"There was just nothing," Hinton said. "There was no doctors, there was no electricity, there was no radios, there was no roads, and here you are supposed to be making atomic bombs. I mean it was ridiculous, completely ridiculous."

While it may be easy to laugh about the past, the couple worries about China's future. Since reform began in the late 1970s, Engst and Hinton say they have watched their socialist dream fall apart as millions of Chinese embraced Western-style capitalism.


Still, since the early 1980s, the two have continued to devote their time and energy to a state-owned dairy farm on the outskirts of Beijing.

There, at least, the outside world feels far away. Once considered radical leftists by their native countrymen, Hinton and Engst are now too radical for most of China's countrymen.

An overview of Chinese history, politics--leading to present situation.

This is the final paragraph, written from a Communist viewpoint.
They see a crisis, too, but have a different solution (than mine.) :wink:

In part--

Needed: Revolutionary Party Leadership
Economic disaster, wars of mass destruction, heavy repression -- the specific mix cannot be predicted, but these are the ingredients of the capitalist future. The worst can be averted, class, if a revolutionary workers' leadership is built.

Central to the revolutionary program is the understanding that the existing Chinese state cannot be reformed in any fundamental way to serve the masses' interests. Like any capitalist state, it serves the ruling class. It needs to be overthrown and replaced by a state of the working class, organized through its own institutions: unions, workers' councils, factory committees and above all the revolutionary party.

Under capitalist leadership of any form, Maoist or openly bourgeois, China will remain prey to imperialism. The global predators seek to revive the pre-revolutionary warlords and protectorates, even under nominal central sovereignty, in order to more freely and directly carry out their superexploitation. Only a workers' state can truly unify China.

Within China, the fundamental conflict is not between sections of the ruling class, state bureaucrats and managers versus outright capitalists and party proponents of private capital. It is between the working class and the ruling class as a whole. The greatest disaster of the deformed workers' state and bureaucratic collectivist theories is that, at times of revolutionary upheaval, they led militants to rely on dissident reformist figures ultimately loyal to the ruling class like Imre Nagy in Hungary in 1956, and Lech Walesa in Poland. If the independence of the proletariat and its revolutionary party is abandoned, there is no way forward for the working class.

An old lament says that "the lives of Chinese have no worth." Superexploitation, famines, imperialist domination and corrupt dictatorships have combined to give the saying a tragic appearance of truth. But these times are coming to a close. The size, volatility and strategic situation of the Chinese working class -- in one of the weak links in the capitalist chain -- invest it with a tremendous revolutionary potential. The Chinese proletariat needs to build its revolutionary party in time to meet the looming crisis.

China with JB
JB, let's begin with your description of your life.

China with JB
JB, let's begin with your description of your life.

China with JB
JB, let's begin with your description of your life.

I appricated Mapleleaf's intense invitation


Life here, let me try to describe this complicated thing in a few lines: richer but with inappropriate comcept of fortune; confused with whether things around are "capitalism" or "socialism" or just to abandon the idea of "sm" ; lack of morality---compared with the past; hatred of endless corruption; pale in belief, particularly after the fall of Mao ideology; lack of access to express the depression, even if Japs deny Nanjing massacre or Yankees bomb the ambassy.


Honestly I am in the new generation of China (I am younger than 18 indeed, but trust me, to discuss with me will not be in vain :wink: ), I am frustrated of this generation. It resembles that of 1950s America. You may call that "lost generation.

Anyway, China is the most complicated and distinct case in the world I know so far. Everything goes into an unpredictable direction and scale.
That might be the reason this thread is valuable.

There are lots of things I can tell about China.
But execuse me as I tell in my description, There is something wrong with my PC and I am using my friend's laptop now. So the opportunity for me to get online will be rare in weeks.
Anyway, I will be back, and then I will fully join this discussion.


JB

My profile lists my interests...

I am known as Mapleleaf. I live in the North West corner of Georgia, United States. My travels cover most of the states and Canada. During my life, I have lived in California, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Hawaii and Missouri.

I would like to learn more about China. Also, I would be glad to answer questions about the United States.

Thanks for your invitation Mapleleaf.

Sorry I didnt read all the articles that were refered to the posts above... China's so far doing very good in the economy field, yep its a result of "Capitalist Revolution" in a way, but it's still different form capitalism.

In my opinion, the most important problem to china is how to rebuild the value of chinese culture in the new age. Just like JB said, we are kinda "lost generation".

Besides if you love travel, China definitely is a good choice ;-)

I appricated Mapleleaf's intense invitation too.
I 'll back soon.

i agree with you on most of your points

i almost couldn't believe your given age, your thoughts are as good as your english language.

I think the so called Capitalist and Communist are relative. To some degree, America or many European nations are not Capitalist exactly. Sometimes, people talk about the difference between these two kind of state as a political matter. I don't care about such discuss. As economic system, Capitalism and communism also are not the only two choices for a state. A good economic system is one that adapts the condition and situation of the country, but not what name it is called.