This time, it appears that the protests are in Xinjiang, where the Muslim Uighur protested Chinese rule.
There are a number of non-Han areas in China, and I think that the indigenous people in those areas are all looking at the Olympics as a potential opportunity to demand greater autonomy and cultural respect.
Now the Chinese are claiming that Tibetan protesters are planning suicide attacks…..puhleeze.
When they won the Olympic bid, they should have hired a competent PR firm.
The PRC public relations apparatus may be the only one in the world more incompetent than the Democratic Party public relations apparatus.
The effects of the spreading protests on the China, and on the Olympics are as yet unclear.
I don’t expect a descent into anarchy, but China may soon take the gloves off, which would not be pretty.
In related news, the Chinese have decided to add some demonstration sports to the games:
傻冒儿 Stupid Hat aka ShaMao’er makes the following statement on Tibet:
3) I could not fucking believe that the first article about this I saw on CNN (other than the ticker at the bottom of the screen) featured Richard Gere in a 5 minute interview as the ‘expert’. How many real experts are there on Tibet and even Tibetan/Chinese relations in our universities and they choose that idiot.
I agree.
We have reports of rioting, with cars and shops set ablaze.
This is going to get very ugly very quickly.
It will make Tienanmen look like a tea party.
Since 2006, the Chinese nuclear arsenal has increased by 1/3.
When one considers the strategic needs of China, they would generally be geared towards protecting supply lanes for oil and other strategic materials, but we see a buildup here that is largely ICBMs and nuclear cruise missiles, which are useless in this scenario:
In fact, the only realistic use for these weapons is to deter the US from using their weapons as a threat to forestall specific Chinese actions **cough** Taiwan **cough**.
Were this simply a modernization, I don’t think that you would see an increase in warheads, because the older liquid fueled missiles would be decommissioned, and they have not been.
A new study of purchasing power parity (PPP) is showing that living standards for the bulk of populations in developing countries are far lower than previously estimated.
Basically, the relative purchasing power of currencies have been miscalculated, giving an unrealistic picture of the living standards of the average person in what is sometimes called the “3rd World”.
It means that poverty and inequality are far higher than under previous estimates:
Suddenly the world has more poor. Incomes declined in emerging economies: down by 40 percent in China and India, 17 percent in Indonesia, 41 percent in the Philippines, 32 percent in South Africa and 24 percent in Argentina. For Indonesia, the decline was far worse than the Asian crisis, and for China and India, the decline was worse than the one experienced by Germany during the Great Depression. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
The event was the release of new estimates of purchasing power parity, or PPP. Measured as part of a large international endeavor called the International Comparison Program, PPP aims to accurately calculate a country’s economic power rather than simply dividing total national output by a country’s population.
It’s hard to see this as anything but a full bore refutation of the facts that the free trade zealots use.
It appears that there has been a near freeze in weapons sales to China.
According to the report, this is driven by an incoherence in Russian technology transfer policy, which has seen extensive development and production deals with India, and very little with China, which has honked off the Chinese military establishment.
Ares recently posted a description of a new Chinese short range air-to-air missile.
Seeing as how I actually spent some time working in rockets and missiles (SAMs mostly) I though I’d look at their thoughts and add a few of my own:
First, the missile clearly has thrust vectoring, but it does not have any forward fins. These seem to run counter to each other.
A missile lacking forward fins typically has better long range kinematics (the ASRAAM, for example actually has beyond visual range capabilities), but the thrust vectoring shows a bias toward shorter engagement distances.
It should be noted that the fore body strakes probably contribute a quite bit to aerodynamic maneuverability, particularly at high speeds (you will note that the ASRAMM below lacks them)
The rocket motor is almost certainly relatively low thrust at launch, to allow for the vectoring paddles to work with relatively small actuators (the AIM-9X does not do this, but it is reusing an old motor). Additionally, since the thrust vectoring has little benefit at higher speeds, where aerodynamics work better, it’s likely that they are jettisoned shortly thereafter in flight.
The report states that the missile is an Imaging Infra Red system, and my guess would be that uses a scanning array, rather than a staring array (go to the Wiki link, it explains the difference fully). While there are applications where a staring array is crucial, such as astronomical devices, for AAMs, the advantages are in dispute, staring arrays are much more difficult to manufacture.
One possibility is that this is the product of South African and Chinese cooperation though, it looks a lot like the Denel A-Darter (see below). Note that the A-Darter has a 6″ diameter (166mm) as compared to the 5 inches of the Sidewinder, which implies superior kinematics because of greater fuel volume).
This should surprise no one. It appears that the dam is causing landslides, plagues of displaced rate, collapses on the shore of the reservoir, etc.
And in a few years, as the lands that are fertilized by the silt carried in the Yangtze start to grow poor, the silt will now settle in the reservoir,it’s just going to get worse.
It’s interesting, because if they break the Federal Reserve, and they can, they lose too, because they have lost their biggest market.
At this point, I’d like to see them use their power to keep us from striking Iran.
In an article in Fortune Magazine, of all places, they have Chinese President Hu Jintao sauing that excessive economic inequalities id damaging and destabilizing to a society.
That makes the Chinese body politic more evolved than ours.
Many of you have heard of the scramble in China to catch the millions of displaced rats from the 3 Gorges Dam to serve in Gourmet Chinese eateries.
The rising water below the structure evicted the rodents from the banks of Dongting Lake, “a series of wetlands and lakes”, into neighbouring farmland, where they quickly decimated 6,000 square miles of crops.
Desperate farmers at first deployed poison, but that simply killed the cats and dogs “traditionally use to combat the menace”, while doing nothing to reduce rat numbers.
However, they soon realised there was another, money-making solution to the crisis – a “major uptake in supply and demand for rat meat”, reported by live food traders in Changde at the western edge of the lake. One dealer told local media: “People there [Guangdong] are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good.”
The economics are as follows: farmers pocket around six to ten yuan a kilogram (20 to 35 pence a pound in old money, the Telegraph helpfully adds), while Cantonese restaurants knock it out as delicious rat stew for up to four quid a pound.
But while the solution to the problem may lie in part in Guangdong’s saucepans, the reasons behind the rat plague are rather more complex than a simple rise in water level. Initially, the Three Gorges Dam held back enough water from Dongting Lake’s “marshy banks” to create an improved environment for the animals and provoke a sharp population rise.
Simultaneously, a “sudden fashion” for snake meat in Hunan – with residents of the capital Changsha working their way through ten tons of reptile flesh a day, according to local environmental groups – has done for the rats’ main predator.
The whole sorry state of affairs is, these groups claim, fulfillment of their dire predictions about the environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam project.
While there is clearly a humorous aspect to this story, the underlying story is very troubling.
The rat infestation is simply the first of many troubling manifestations of this.
The Yellow River is so named because it is Yellow. With no lakes for sediment to settle in, the river flows quickly, carrying its nutrient laden cargo to the ocean.
The periodic floods serve to replenish the breadbasket of China. The estuary is fertile ground, and the where many fish in Asia spawn.
The dam will change all that, and other things too, in unanticipated ways, like the rats in this story.
Another sign of the oncoming crash. Vast quantities of capital racing hither and yon looking for the next big “15 minutes of fame” thing.
It’s a sign that the market is over capitalized and over priced, and due for a major correction.
It’s a game of musical chairs, and it gets most frantic towards the end.
By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com editor at large
June 28 2007: 1:41 PM EDTNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — As Google’s stock slouches toward $600 a share and Wall Street debates the future of Yahoo following the ouster of Terry Semel, it’s easy to forget that there are other Internet stocks out there competing for investor attention.
But for those who prefer to take a more worldly view of the World Wide Web, paying attention to areas outside of the U.S. has been incredibly rewarding, particularly for investors that have discovered the booming Internet sector in China.
Several Chinese Internet stocks trade in the U.S. on Nasdaq so investing in these companies is as easy as buying shares of Google (Charts, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500). And many Chinese Internet stocks have far outperformed America’s big two Net giants this year.
Shares of search engine Baidu, portals Sina and Sohu, online gaming companies The 9 Limited and Shanda Interactive and online travel site Ctrip.com are each up at least 20 percent this year, compared to gains of 8 percent and 14 percent for Yahoo and Google respectively.
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