Tag: China

Big Rare Earth Discovery in Nebraska

China has emerged as the world’s predominant supplier, controlling 97 percent of the global market for rare earths. In recent years, lawmakers have expressed concerns about China’s “rare earth” dominance, and these concerns were heightened when Beijing temporarily halted exports to Japan last year during a territorial dispute. Despite having such obscure names as praseodymium, promethium and samarium – no copper or zinc here – they are necessary for such routine contemporary technologies as magnets, laser pointers and miniature electronics, such as iPods.

Quantum acquired a circular piece of land – a bit more than 4 miles in diameter – near Elk Creek late last year. The land, which the U.S. Geological Survey projects may have one of the world’s largest deposits of niobium and rare earths, has since been poked, prodded and drilled to determine whether it held any niobium, which has never been mined in the U.S., or rare earths, which the U.S. has not mined in almost 10 years

via Neb. mine find to challenge China’s dominance of vital rare minerals – Washington Times.

China’s Invisible Man – Liu Bolin

35-year-old Liu Bolin, from Shandong, China, manages to camouflage himself in any surroundings, no matter how difficult they might be.

Liu works on a single photo for up to 10 hours at a time, to make sure he gets it just right, but he achieves the right effect: sometimes passers-by don’t even realize he is there until he moves.

The talented Liu Bolin says his art is a protest against the actions of the Government, who shut down his art studio in 2005 and persecutes artists. It’s about not fitting into modern society. Despite problems with Chinese authorities, Liu’s works are appreciated at an international level. Thanks to Tim Marks.

Liu Bolin…The Invisible Man… – v1kram’s posterous.       2nd Link to more pictures

China’s Burning Coal Has Cooled the Climate

In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming. China’s coal use doubled 2002-2007, according to US government figures.

Although burning the coal produced more warming carbon dioxide, it also put more tiny sulphate aerosol particles into the atmosphere which cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back into space.

Piers Forster from the UK’s Leeds University, who led the IPCC chapter analysing factors affecting global temperatures, said the new study was “interesting and worthwhile”.”The masking of CO2-induced global warming by short term sulphur emissions is well known – it’s believed that the flattening off of global mean temperatures in the 1950s was due to European and US coal burning, and just such a mechanism could be operating today from Chinese coal,” he told BBC News.

via BBC News – Global warming lull down to China’s coal growth.

China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills

China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.

Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt.

Mainland Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bills are reported in column 9 of the Treasury report linked here.

Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.

Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.

via China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills | CNSnews.com.

Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad

17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.

“I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it,” said the boy surnamed Zheng in Huaishan City. “A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.” Continue reading “Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad”

Cancer Leading Cause of Death in China

Cancer is now the leading cause of death in China. Chinese Ministry of Health data implicate cancer in close to a quarter of all deaths countrywide. As is common with many countries as they industrialize, the usual plagues of poverty — infectious diseases and high infant mortality — have given way to diseases more often associated with affluence, such as heart disease, stroke, and cancer.

While this might be expected in China’s richer cities, where bicycles are fast being traded in for cars and meat consumption is climbing, it also holds true in rural areas. In fact, reports from the countryside reveal a dangerous epidemic of “cancer villages” linked to pollution from some of the very industries propelling China’s explosive economy. By pursuing economic growth above all else, China is sacrificing the health of its people, ultimately risking future prosperity.

Lung cancer is the most common cancer in China. Deaths from this typically fatal disease have shot up nearly fivefold since the 1970s. In China’s rapidly growing cities, like Shanghai and Beijing, where particulates in the air are often four times higher than in New York City, nearly 30 percent of cancer deaths are from lung cancer.

via Cancer is now the leading cause of death in China | Grist.

Video – What to Do when the Commuter Train Passes through a Thai Market…

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.993789&w=425&h=350&fv=width%3D560%26height%3D440%26autostart%3Dfalse%26fullscreen%3Dtrue%26file%3Dhttp%3A%2F2Fjulian.bashir.wimp.com%2Fvideos43ll%2F6a182b1c035e4d15f948dcca4a085590_market.flv]

The market shown in the video is one located at Maeklong (Maekrong) a town near Bangkok. A news photo of the market from 2001 has the following caption:

Thai vegetable market vendors pull back temporary shades and their produce off a railway track to allow a cross-country train to pass through the middle of the town of Maekrong, 60 kilometers west of Bangkok, April 5, 2001. The bustling market, in the middle of the town, has to scramble from the tracks eight times a day as trains pass, a scene repeated in other rural centers and some city slums across Thailand every day.

In a blog entry on the Thailand Travel Blogs website, the blog writer, Richard Barrow, notes:

The journey was over very quickly and we soon entered a built up area. The outskirts of Maeklong. I knew that during the last 100 metres or so the train would pass through a market. Literally. I know it sounds strange but this was my planned highlight of the trip. I wanted to get pictures of the market stallholders pulling back their produce as we passed through the market. It had always intrigued me and I wanted to come and see for myself. For this event, I made sure I was at the front of the train. The door to the driver’s cabin was open and I asked him if it was OK if I took some pictures. He said “no problem”. As we approached a corner he sounded his whistle a number of times. Then, as we rounded the corner we were presented with the image in the above pictures. I thought I would see people rushing to grab their vegetables before it was run over by the train. But, they knew the train was coming and everything had been cleared!

And an article about the markets published on the Rex Features website notes that, in spite of regular interruptions by passing trains, the market works very well and only two people have died during the last twenty years.

posted with vodpod thanks to Bobb Bopp

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it’s math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

via Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior – WSJ.com.

China’s Next Generation

“Prison Break” is huge in China and its star, Wentworth Miller is not only mobbed everywhere he goes in China, he’s the frickin’ face of GM on TV commercials!

The show has never been aired on any Chinese TV network, only on the Web.

Xi Jinping (China’s next president and in his late 50s), for example, still remembers vividly being thrown in jail as a kid as a political prisoner on his dad’s behalf during the Cultural Revolution.  He’s China’s leader for the next decade, and his “Sixties’ were a bit different from the Boomers.

Conservatives in the West keep saying, Nixon went to China 40 years ago and look how the Party still rules! They say that because that’s all they want to see.  But we need to go back and read our history here.  The Cultural Revolution was a “long national nightmare” that trumps our Vietnam and Watergate by . . .  more than just a bit.  It was a national insanity and the bite it took out of the national psyche was closer to our Civil War than anything we’ve experienced since

So rather than expecting that much more  by the 50-something crowd, think of this more in terms of post-Cultural Revolution generations.  The first truly post-CR leadership generation comes online in 2022.

Read more: Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization

via Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization – Thomas P.M. Barnett’s Globlogization.

Global Aging

Worldwide, there is a 50 percent chance that the population will be falling by 2070, according to a recent study published in Nature. By 2150, according to one U.N. projection, the global population could be half what it is today.

Those who predict a coming Asian Century have not come to terms with the region’s approaching era of hyper-aging. Asia will also be plagued by a chronic shortage of women in the coming decades, which could leave the most populous region on Earth with the same skewed sex ratios as the early American West. Due to selective abortion, China has about 16 percent more boys than girls, which many predict will lead to instability as tens of millions of “unmarriageable” men find other outlets for their excess libido. India has nearly the same sex-ratio imbalance and also a substantial difference in birth rates between its southern (mostly Hindu) states and its northern (more heavily Muslim) states, which could contribute to ethnic tension.

Birth rates are falling dramatically across Latin America, especially in Mexico, suggesting a tidal shift in migration patterns. Consider what happened with Puerto Rico, where birth rates have also plunged: Immigration to the mainland United States has all but stopped despite an open border and the lure of a considerably higher standard of living on the continent. In the not-so-distant future, the United States may well find itself competing for immigrants rather than building walls to keep them out.

via Think Again: Global Aging – By Phillip Longman | Foreign Policy.