Posted by Martyn

Ross Terrill, author of The New Chinese Empire, in this article argues that China’s rise is not to be feared, that a balance should be preserved between China and Japan and that China could be easily brought to heel by America and her Asian allies should the need ever arise:

A middle-class push for property rights, rural discontent, use of the internet, 150 million wanderers hovering between village and city, a suddenly ageing population bringing financial and social strains, all dramatise some contradictions of “market Leninism”. Travelling one road in economics and another in politics makes it difficult to arrive at a set destination.

The expansionist claims of Beijing are transparent and unique among today’s powers. But the Beijing regime, while a dictatorship, is a rational dictatorship. It can count the numbers. It is often patient in fulfilling its goals.

This major power seems to know it has major problems. If faced with a countervailing equilibrium it will probably act prudently. It surely realises that others – US, Japan, Russia, India – have a variety of reasons for denying China the opportunity to be a 21st century Middle Kingdom. In Beijing and Shanghai and Xian, I find less talk of China being near to eclipsing the US than I find at Harvard and the Australian National University. China may not be the new colossus it seems to either its enemies or its distant worshippers.

Posted by Martyn

Matthew Stinson, on his excellent site, features an interesting article by Japanese journalist Yoichi Funabashi – Should Prime Minister Koizumi send China a thank-you note? – which asserts that Prime Minister Koizumi should thank China for contributing to his Liberal Democratic Party’s recent election victory. It puts forward a good argument that the victory had more to do with the reaction to external pressure from China rather than the recent political rebranding of the LDP as a “reform party”:

It is almost unthinkable to envision such a large LDP victory without considering the violent anti-Japanese demonstrations that swept through China last summer and spring or Beijing’s visible effort to block Japan’s bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat. Koizumi has been seen as “standing tall” against China, as he has postured himself as a kizen, or fearless, leader.

In fact, as covered on this site in an earlier post, the five warships that China sent to the Chunxiao gas field two days before the Japanese election might well have served to increase Koizumi’s parliamentary majority.

An open thread. What are your weekend plans?

I’ll start things off with Dave’s comment from the old thread…

Posted by Martyn.

China’s One-Child Policy began in 1979, meaning that the children born in the first year are now 26 years old, barely over the legal age to marry in China. Since the 80s, the male-female ratio has risen from 108.5 boys to 100 girls, to 111/100 in 1990, 116/100 in 2000, and is now almost 120/100. The problem, is all to come:

And the sobering answer is that this vast nation, now the world’s fastest-growing economy, is confronting a self-perpetuated demographic disaster that some experts describe as “gendercide” — the phenomenom caused by millions of families resorting to abortion and infanticide to make sure their one child was a boy.

The age-old bias for boys, combined with China’s draconian one-child policy imposed since 1980, has produced what Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, described as “the largest, the highest, and the longest” gender imbalance in the world.

In 2000, there were 19 million more boys than girls aged 0-15. The article also estimates that, over the next decade, a staggering 40 million Chinese men will be unable to find wives due to the gender imbalance. Social problems, including crime, criminal gangs, drug use and prostitution are all expected to rise in the years ahead.

In response, the government has launched the “Girl Care Project” in China’s poorest provinces designed to encourage the birth of girls. As well as discouraging pre-birth sex selection and female infanticide, the initiative exempts some girls from school fees and offers an annual payment of US$150 for life for couples who do not try for a son after already bearing two girls. Preferential treatment in health care, housing and employment is also part of the initiative.

Any policy that attempts to address this problem is a good thing, however, the phrase ‘too little, too late’ does spring to mind:

An American demographer, who has been closely following China’s population program and who spoke on condition of anonymity, lauded China’s “coming to grips” with the problem.

“Still, they are in a deep dilemma — emotional and policy dilemma — because the solution to the problem will conflict with other parts of their population strategy to reduce birth rate or some of the measures could perhaps make the problem even worse,” warned the demographer.

Posted by Martyn.

The Shanghai Daily reports that a researcher for the China Youth Association has exposed (pun intended) a new threat to public health and morality: naked Internet chatting. “A game for a few mentally abnormal people, a new threat to public health and safety” said Liu Gang, author of the new research paper, as this article attests:

Up to 20,000 Chinese Internet users log on to chatrooms each night in which users in various states of undress talk to each other with the help of Web cams, citing China Youth Association researcher Liu Gang.

“At first, we thought if was merely a game for a few mentally abnormal people,” the paper quoted Liu as saying. “But as our research continued, we found the problem was much larger than expected,” Liu said.

Participants in the sites download chat software and attach video cameras to their computers, the paper reported. They then “talk with others while exposing themselves and performing provocative poses,” it said.

Moving swiftly along from the above line about the problem being ‘much larger than they expected’, Regina Lynn in her Sex Drive Forum goes as far as to say that this is a welcome solution to China’s worsening gender imbalance problem:

China might not like it, but the Internet gives those men a chance to flirt and build relationships with women outside their immediate environment — even outside the country. I’m not sure tradition or prejudice can stop the collective libido of 15 million young men.

Even if international relationships aren’t a realistic option for most people, online relationships certainly are. Face it. When your chances of settling down with the girl next door are limited by the number of rivals for her attention, where else are you going to go?

Cybersex has long provided an opportunity for people all over the world to get off, to explore deeper aspects of our sexuality, and to practice fantasies in a safe environment before attempting them offline. Now that more Chinese are getting internet access and webcams at home, it’s logical that they would explore the sexual possibilities of the technology.

As far as prudish government Internet censors are concerned, banning certain key words like d3m0cr@cy is well within their technological grasp, but how on earth can they prevent people from getting naked in front of their computer?

As the article goes on to remind us, China has not always been a sexually repressive culture, ancient China had, arguably, one of the most progressive cultures in the world towards sexual expression, both heterosexual and homosexual. After lagging behind the rest of the world somewhat, perhaps this is a sign that’s it’s now catching up fast.

Posted by Martyn.

The current fuel crisis in China is getting worse. The fuel shortages that have recently plagued China’s manufacturing hub of Guangdong Province for the last couple of months have now reached both Shanghai and Beijing. According to both Chinese newspapers and the Beijing correspondent of the UK Telegraph, 60 petrol stations in the Beijing area have now stopped selling 90-grade petrol (standard fuel used by small cars and taxis). Beijing taxi drivers, like their Guangzhou counterparts, are already complaining about both the price of fuel and the long queues at petrol stations in the capital.

As reported on this site several weeks ago, unlike most other nations, China’s government is under pressure from its own national oil refiners, SinoPec and PetroChina, to actually raise the price of domestic oil. As petrochemical companies around the world continue to make huge profits, the Chinese refiners are losing billions of yuan, with no end in sight.

The row is a test case for a government caught between the need to keep its hell-for-leather growth going and to deal with unsustainable, underlying economic flaws. Everyone agrees that China will have to stop controlling the price of oil as it does now, for economic and environmental reasons. But they also fear the effect on energy-reliant industry.

With company profitability tight, a rise in fuel prices could be a blow too far. Zhang Guobao, deputy director of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, told reporters a price rise could trigger inflation which would “affect the livelihoods of millions along with government expenditures”.

China’s State Information Centre (SIC) estimates that China will import approximately one billion barrels of crude oil this year, or over 40% of its oil requirements. Therefore, skyrocketing crude oil prices mean billions of dollars in extra payments for imported oil. For example, a US$10 per barrel increase would cost China an additional US$10 billion per year. China already has the world’s largest oil trade deficit in the world.

While global economists are correct when they cite basic economic principles and state that China can only solve the worsening oil price problem by raising domestic prices, what they don’t see are the hundreds of millions of Chinese people who would be adversely effected by either an initial price hike or the knock-on effect of rising prices/inflation. The vast majority of Chinese people do not drive BMWs and do not wear Patek Philippe watches. Even in the big cities, a lot of people scrape by on between US$50-250 a month.

No wonder the government are reluctant to quickly raise prices.

UPDATE: Don’t miss Sun-Bin’s latest post on China’s oil industry: Part 3 – Oligarchs and deregulation. It’s a Blogspot site unfortunately and, although Sun-Bin has kindly set up a mirror site for us China residents, the oil post isn’t up yet. China residents can therefore access Blogspot via this link.

Posted by Martyn.

Religion has made a big revival in China over the last two decades, bringing with it important implications for both society and politics. Some comparisons can be made with the rise of the Orthodox Church in post-communist Russia and Catholicism in Eastern Europe. Some commentators argue that the rapid post-Mao demise of socialism left a spiritual vacuum within modern China. However, whatever the reasons, religion is on the rise since China embraced economic reform, and with it, a more open and free society – within certain government limits.

Nevertheless, despite adopting a more tolerant attitude to the practice of religious beliefs, the government still remains deeply suspicious of any third force, other than the state and the market, exercising control, or at least influence, with sections of the population.

Both the popularity of religion and subsequent government suspicion are adequately illustrated by the speed in which the quasi-religious movement, the F*L*G, swept across China several years ago, gathering supporters and converts in huge numbers. The government’s subsequent reaction was to strike hard and to strike fast. The movement’s supporters were rounded up and the government’s propaganda machine went into overdrive.

Chinese practitioners of the traditional and long-established religions and beliefs of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and Nestorianism (a form of Christianity from the Assyrian Church whose missionaries reached China in 635 A.D.) are conservatively estimated at 100 million with at least another 100 million more casual devotees. Government-sanctioned places of worship are regularly packed and underground churches are springing up all over the country like mushrooms after spring rain.

The potential problem, however, is that the government still insists on controlling almost every single aspect of religion in China. As this article points out, this risks the very real danger of provoking widespread resentment:

Why must Beijing continue to treat religion as something suitable for strict control, even quarantine, like some deadly infectious disease? Sometimes historical reasons are invoked to bolster the state’s antireligion stance. In the past, it is said, religion has encouraged factionalism, fanaticism and that paramount Chinese taboo, disorder.

At another level, the attitude seems driven by a deep fear in the Communist Party of allowing any kind of independent civil society to emerge. Even in today’s China, the country of headlines about miracle growth and irresistible rise, religious groups, like every other kind of association of any scale, from chess clubs to writers’ leagues, must be officially sanctioned, which actually means carefully controlled.

All true, but like so many other issues in China, blame cannot be simply laid at the feet of the CCP. Communist rule in China is but a tiny blip in her history. Even many centuries ago, China’s Confucian elite had little respect for religion and its practitioners. Throughout history, the state suppressed or controlled organized religion. Also, it can be argued that any government might be wary of organized religion after, for instance, the Taiping Rebellion was estimated to have killed some 20-50 million people between 1851-1864.

The current attitude of the government towards religious freed0m was also highlighted by U.N. rights envoy Louise Arbour during her recent visit to China. She concluded that two hum@n r1ghts issues needed special and immediate attention: trafficking of women and children, and freed0m of religion.

Posted by Martyn.

According to Chinese numerology, September 18 should be an auspicious day for a wedding because, in standard Mandarin Chinese, the pronunciation of the words “9-18” sound similar to ‘wishing for good fortune’. Chinese couples pondering their perfect wedding date usually seek such auspicious days as matter of course.

However, September 18 is significant for another entirely different reason that can only be found in history books – it’s also the day that historians attribute as the beginning of Japan’s military aggression which led to the full invasion of China in 1937. As a result, Chinese couples have been postponing their planned marriages on what some have called a “Day of Shame”.

September 18 isn’t an official public holiday in China but, in the 60th anniversary year of the end of World War II, the government has sanctioned commemorations, including public rallies, moments of silence, and the sounding of air raid sirens, as this AP article attests:

Chinese couples are avoiding getting married on the anniversary of a battle with Japan remembered as a national “Day of Shame,” reports said Thursday, in the latest sign of rising nationalism among the young.

Hotels in the northeastern city of Harbin report many couples have canceled wedding banquets booked for Sunday, the anniversary of the Sept. 18, 1931, attack by Japanese troops in northeastern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

“The reasons given are all the same: It’s a day of national shame,” Xinhua said, citing the manager of a hotel in Harbin’s Daoli district. It didn’t name the hotel or the manager.

Traditionally, Sept. 18 would be considered an auspicious day for a wedding according to Chinese numerology because the Chinese language version of the date, 9-18, sounds similar to a wish for good fortune.

But the date is also regarded as the start of Japanese military aggression against China that culminated in all-out invasion in 1937, and it has fallen out of favor amid rising nationalism.

Many Chinese feel Japan has never shown adequate remorse for its wartime brutality, sentiments encouraged by the Communist Party, whose wartime opposition to the invasion is part of its claim to legitimacy.

How is that for a creative title? I’m going to transplant Patrick’s latest comment to the previous thread and hopefully it will jump-start the conversation.

I’m off to Taiwan and won’t be posting for a few days. But fear not, a battery of highly skilled guest bloggers is waiting in the wings to keep this site kicking. Wish me luck in my new life, and I’ll try to report back as soon as I settle down a bit.