In early January, Chian released journalist Jiang Weiping after he served five years of a six year sentence for daring to publish details about official corruption in China.
In 2001, Jiang was sentenced to six years in jail for publishing details about alleged corruption by Liaoning provincial governor Bo Xilai as well as details of corruption […]
In January, China’s National Statistic Bureau released a report revising its GDP growth for the past several years upward significantly.
The NSB reviseed upward GDP growht estimates for every year from 1993 to 2004 except for 1998. Based on the new figures, China’s economy grew an average of 9.9 percent annually from 1993-2004.
And these new figures […]
China has started making moves toward liberalizing its currency market, though not fast enough for some in the U.S. government who bizarrely complain that China keeps the yuan artificially low.
In December, China announced that it approved 13 foreign and domestic banks who would be market movers for the yuan. If it follows through, this will […]
Just randomly web surfing the other day I ran across a page promoting Lester Brown’s latest book, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble. According to a promotional page at the Earth Policy Institute,
“Environmental scientist have been saying for some time that the global economy is being slowly undermined […]
Worldwide demand for steel is driving iron ore and steel prices to new heights.
China’s economic expansion, which has helped drive oil upward, has also put strains on worldwide supplies of iron ore and steel sending prices through the roof. According to the BBC, for example, the cost of steel jumped 8 percent in January 2005 […]
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect on February 16, without the world’s largest generator of greenhouse gases, the United States. In addition, the protocol exempts large greenhouse gas generating countries such as China and India from its requirements.
Under the terms of the treaty, it would be ratified once countries representing 55 percent of greenhouse gas […]
Toward the end of 2004, China launched another crackdown against Internet cafes in that country, closing almost 13,000 of them that were operating “illegally.”
China sets out strict guidelines for Internet cafes, limiting the types of computer games and content that can be accessed, and requiring strict identity checks and the keeping of automated logs to […]
In late December 2004, Judge Richard Goldberg of the U.S. Court of International Justice blocked the United States from imposing emergency quotes on the import of textiles from China.
In order to appease U.S. textile companies, the Commerce Department prepared to impose a number of emergency quotas on the import of jeans, underwear and other clothing […]
In January, China’s population officially passed the 1.3 billion mark according to that country.
Oddly enough, China state-run news media used the birth of the 1.3 billion child to trumpet the success of the one-child policy. But, all things considered, the one-child policy has been an abject failure. It did little to slow China’s population […]
After a five day visit to China, World Food Program executive director James Morris announced that his organization would no longer provide food aid to China. Noting China’s phenomenal economic progress over the past 25 years, Morris said that China no longer faces the sort of food insecurity problems that the WFP must, of necessity, […]