CHINA NOW

Hundreds of villagers in eastern China have held three days of protests at a solar panel plant over pollution fears. Residents in the nearby village of Hongxiao said they became concerned after the deaths of a large number of river fish. One 64-year-old villager told the Associated Press that the factory - located close to a school and kindergarten - discharges waste into the river and spews dense smoke out of a dozen chimneys. Chen Hongming, a deputy head of Haining's environmental protection bureau, was quoted by Chinese news agency Xinhua as saying that the factory's waste disposal had failed pollution tests since April. The company is a subsidiary of a New York Exchange-listed Chinese solar company, JinkoSolar Holding Company. Both firms have made no comment about the protests or pollution allegations. The factories affected include a large lead-acid battery plant operated by Shanghai Johnson Controls International Battery Company - a unit of the New York-listed industrial giant Johnson Controls.

The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau said in a statement that a "small amount of children living in the Kangqiao area... were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood in early September".


Personal note: As human beings we have a responsibility to protect our children, our families, our communities and our environment. One would hope one day, sooner the later, that this same responsibility is incorporated by businesses that have an impact of the very core of life itself.

A maritime arms race is under way in the South China Sea. Beijing is rapidly developing a host of military capabilities that will enable it to project power well beyond its own shores. According to Dr Andrew Erickson, a China expert at the US Naval War College: "China does not want to start a war, but rather seeks to wield its growing military might to 'win without fighting' by deterring actions that it views as detrimental to its core national interests." Three weapons systems are emblematic of China's broadening strategic horizons.

read more at link above...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8770945/China-faces-subprime-credit-bubble-crisis.html

Cheng Siwei, head of Beijing's International Finance Forum and a former deputy speaker of the People's Congress, said interest rate rises and credit curbs to cool overheating were inflicting real pain on thousands of companies used by local party bosses to fund the construction boom.

"The tightening policy is creating a lot of difficulties for local governments trying to repay debt, and is causing defaults," he told a meeting at the World Economic Forum in Dalian. "Our version of subprime in the US is lending to local authorities and the government is taking this very seriously."

"Everybody assumes that they will be bailed out by the central government if they default, but I disagree with this. It means that the people will ultimately pay the bill for it all, at a cost to the broader welfare."

"Those who are not highly indebted are forced to help those who are," he said, echoing the debate over moral hazard that has divided opinion in the West since the banking rescues.

Local governments have created more than 6,000 arms-length companies to circumvent restrictions on bond issuance, creating a huge patronage machine for party bosses that has largely escaped central control.

burgundia wrote:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8770945/China-faces-subprime-credit-bubble-crisis.html

"Everybody assumes that they will be bailed out by the central government if they default, but I disagree with this. It means that the people will ultimately pay the bill for it all, at a cost to the broader welfare."

"Those who are not highly indebted are forced to help those who are," he said, echoing the debate over moral hazard that has divided opinion in the West since the banking rescues.

Sounds just like what the US did making the tax payer ball out the banks who are crooks when it comes to their business practices. There is a world-wide economic revolution going on against the banksters and it will only continue to worsen unless there is a jubilee - where all debt is dissolved world-wide and we start from scratch with new policies and practices based on sound exchange as compared to credit. It is the attitude of credit indebtedness as a 'good thing' that is enslaving us all.

I actually can envision a future and elimination of the monetary systems where everyone has smart cards that one can only spend what one has and not more. But then, that would be a different world where one wouldn't even need smart cards because in a world of cooperation - individuals understand what it means to work together in a healthy environment where money is not the reward, therefore not needed. Of course this would be a world without military conflict, greed or strife. It would be a world where folks want to help each other and make the environment even more beautiful and abundant.

Burgundia, my most secret desire is to feed the world healthy nutritious food that individuals can grow themselves in their back yard or on their balcony. And start teaching this in grammar school to the children where each child gets their own aquaponics system as it is the children who introduce their the parents to new ideas. I'm more of an avocet of a fish in everyones pot and veggies growing on the porch in vertical gardens.

The Sun Curve, from Inca Biospheric Systems, is a closed loop vertical aquaponic micro farm (yes, that’s a mouthful) powered by solar panels, a wind turbine, and a battery bank. It grows plants vertically using water from its fish pond which also acts as a resevoir and nutrient source.

The plant roots, growing media, and a colony of microorganisms act as a biological filter, cleaning the water for the fish. Originally developed to support remote clinics and refugee camps in third world countries, the system recycles the water, using about 10% of the water consumed in traditional farming and gardening. The Sun Curve can store enough power in its battery bank to run a built in water pump, ultraviolet filtration, and a computer/phone.
Looking for a living wall or vertical garden system to screen your balcony while you grow veggies, fresh aromatic herbs, or flowers either indoors or out? The modular system is great for creating a small green wall or larger vertical garden on the terrace or in the kitchen.

I love your idea Carol..and the photos too.

Thanks burgundia. I just got this book on vertical gardening and really was excited about learning more. Can you imagine something like this really taking off? I mean, how easy is this? Growing the garden on a wall... or even in the kitchen with some grow lights. Inside one wouldn't have to contend with all the insects. All one needs is a gravity flow Big Berkey for purified water and their good to go.

(Reuters) - China will next week launch an experimental craft paving the way for its first space station, an official said on Tuesday, bringing the growing Asian power closer to matching the United States and Russia with a long-term manned outpost in space. The Tiangong 1, or "Heavenly Palace," will blast off from a site in the Gobi Desert around September 27-30, adding a high-tech sheen to China's National Day celebrations on October 1, the Xinhua news agency said.

The small, unmanned "space lab" and the Long March rocket that will heave it skyward have been readied on a pad at Jiuquan in northwest Gansu province, Xinhua said, citing an unnamed spokesperson for the country's space program.

It will be the latest show of China's growing prowess in space, and comes while budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back U.S. manned space launches.

...This week, NASA unveiled plans for a deep-space rocket to carry astronauts to the moon and Mars. President Barack Obama has called for a human expedition to an asteroid by 2025 and a journey to Mars in the 2030s.

China launched its second moon orbiter last year after it became only the third country to send its astronauts walking in space outside their orbiting craft in 2008.

read more at link above...

This is so sad it breaks my heart. Here is a man who left the US so he could help the people of China with their pollution problem and now he can't leave to go home to his family in the US. Families need to be protected.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_CHINA_FREE_BUT_NOT_FREE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-09-30-05-06-10

BEIJING (AP) -- In the year-plus since he was released from jail, scientist Hu Zhicheng has been free, free to drive from his Shanghai apartment to his office two hours away, free to get acupuncture treatment for chronic back pain, free except to leave China and rejoin his family in America.

Twice Hu went to airports to board flights out of China only to be turned back by border control officers. A China-born U.S. citizen and award-winning inventor of emission control systems for autos, Hu has written to the police who investigated him for infringing commercial secrets and met with the prosecutors who dropped the charges for lack of evidence. Yet he has not been allowed to leave - nor told why.

"My priority is to go home and be with my family," said Hu, slight, soft-spoken and reserved. "I know how much they have suffered."

Writ large, Hu's case shows the pitfalls that Chinese who study and work in the West face when they return to apply their entrepreneurial zeal to the booming China market. Trade disputes that would be civil suits in the West become criminal cases in China. Chinese companies often cultivate influence with local officials and thus may rally law enforcement and a malleable legal system to their side when deals go awry.

In Hu's case, he and his wife believe that the company which accused him of secrets theft persuaded authorities to keep the travel ban in place. In China, sometimes punishment goes on even when the law says stop.

Police in the eastern port of Tianjin where the dispute occurred said its case against Hu was closed long ago. The city's prosecutors office did not answer questions about the case, nor did the company, Hysci (Tianjin) Specialty Materials Co. Both said the senior officials knowledgeable about the affair were away. With no apparent charges or investigation pending, lawyers said Hu should be free to go abroad under Chinese law.

For Hu, it has been a nearly three-year ordeal, from the 17 months spent in a 20-to-30-inmate group cell in a Tianjin jail to an equally lengthy time since his release. "Even though technically he's not a prisoner any more, he still is. The prison is a little bigger," said a U.S. diplomat familiar with the case.

The separation and uncertainty have taken a toll on him and his family. His wife has battled insomnia and left needed repairs to their Los Angeles area home go undone while she frets. Their daughter wrote her college admissions test essay on her father's troubles. Now a student at University of California, Berkeley, she visited him in Shanghai last July - the only family member to see him - and launched an Internet petition to bring him home.

His son, 13 when they last met, is growing up without him. "I haven't seen him in three years. Then he was up to my chest," the 49-year-old Hu said holding his hand mid-sternum. "Now he's about six feet tall," he said, removing his wire-rimmed glasses and turning his head to cry during a recent interview with The Associated Press in a Beijing coffee shop.

A few reports about Hu's situation have surfaced in Chinese-language media. Since his release, he and wife Hong Li refused repeated requests for interviews, hoping that quiet lobbying of Chinese and U.S. officials would bring him home. Their frustration growing, Hu agreed to be interviewed, providing the fullest account of his predicament.

"My life is miserable. What do they want from me?" said Hu.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it has asked China's foreign ministry and a phalanx of Tianjin politicians and agencies for help and the reasons for Hu's travel ban to no result. There are other cases like Hu's, the embassy said, without specifying how many.

An acclaimed inventor of catalysts - chemical agents that speed up or slow reactions - for automobile catalytic converters, Hu has nine U.S. patents to his name and dozens more in Europe and elsewhere. He spent 20 years abroad doing research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and working for multinationals such as Engelhard Corp. in New Jersey. Among his breakthroughs: a catalyst that gives sports utility vehicles pollution controls comparable to sedans.

He left that in 2004 to return to his native China along with his family and grab opportunities in a rocketing Chinese auto market that was short of experienced innovators.

"It was really quite simple. In the U.S. the air quality is generally good - blue skies. In China you rarely see blue skies. So cleaning up the pollution would be much more effective, much more meaningful," said Hu.

His wife, Hong Li, holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering and set up a company to supply materials for catalytic converters to Wuxi Weifu Environmental Catalysts Co., a local company near Shanghai trying to build top-grade equipment to supplant foreign imports. In 2006, when a noncompete agreement with Engelhard lapsed, Hu became chief scientist, and later president, for Wuxi Weifu.

Soon the dispute surfaced with Hysci (Tianjin) Specialty Materials Co., which had ties to Hu and Li. Hysci was a supplier to Engelhard, recommended by a team Hu led to China in 2000, and its chairman Zhou Jun was a university classmate of Li's. Hysci accused Hu of pilfering a process to make a zirconium catalyst and providing that information to Li's company, a competitor, according to an open letter to Tianjin authorities that she posted on Sina Corporation's popular Internet portal in March 2010.

By late 2007, signs of trouble grew. Tianjin police repeatedly showed up at Hu's offices in Wuxi 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) to the south. A legal adviser warned him that the accusations may lead to criminal charges. He moved his family back to Los Angeles. "I saw the risks," Hu said. "The police kept coming. When my colleagues saw the police, they got scared."

Hu and Li say Hysci's business had fizzled and was losing customers while chairman Zhou squabbled with chief executive Dou Shuhua, a farmer-turned-entrepreneur and well-connected politically in Tianjin. A bank account belonging to Li's business remains frozen by Tianjin police, and she has not returned to China.

While Hu waited in detention, Tianjin's No. 2 Intermediate Court batted the case back to investigators for more evidence before approving prosecutors' request to withdraw the case on April 29, 2010. Ten days later, escorted by two U.S. Embassy officials, Hu made his first aborted trip to the airport.

"The border police in Beijing airport said 'Contact the Tianjin police detectives in charge of your case,'" Hu recounted. The scene was repeated three months later, though without the U.S. officials, when he went to board a Hong Kong-bound flight in Wuxi, he said.

Left in limbo, Hu has been consumed with trying to find out why he cannot leave and with seeking treatment for a herniated disc in his spine, a problem that arose soon after he left jail. He feels outmatched by a well-connected local company, having lived outside China for so long and having failed to cultivate the contacts Chinese prize for smoothing business.

"I'm used to the U.S. and following the laws," Hu said. "Clearly China is a different place."

BEIJING (CNN) -- A bill that will penalize China for allegedly manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage is headed for a vote in the U.S. Senate Tuesday, adding pressure on China to appreciate the yuan. China opposes the bill and warns of a trade war if the bill is passed.

"Should the proposed legislation be made into law, the result would be a trade war and that would be a lose-lose situation for both sides," said Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai."It would be detrimental to the development of economic ties and might have an adverse impact on bilateral relations."

Vice Minister Cui spoke in a press briefing one day before a high-level meeting in Beijing with his American counterpart, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell. The two senior diplomats are expected to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues.

Even if the bill passes in the Senate, it still needs to go through deliberation and vote by the U.S. House of Representatives.

House Speaker John Boehner has signaled his opposition to the bill. "I think it's pretty dangerous to be moving legislation through the United States Congress forcing someone to deal with the value of their currency," Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill. read more at link above...

October 11, 1011 - Economist Gordon Chang is being interviewed on FOX NEWS talking about the economic and banking crisis in China. He is saying that while the eyes of the business world have been focused on Greece and its problems, China is actually in far worse condition than Greece.

He says that Chinese banks haven't even made their interest payments on their borrowed funds for the last couple of months. The Chinese Central Bank in Beijing is having to pour a bunch of cash into these banks to keep them from going under.

Chang says that if these large banks in China fail, the ripple effect worldwide would be far more catastrophic than if Greece goes under.

Their oil issues are catching up with them and they don't have the money on hand to deal with it.

BofA-Merrill considers the risk of a China crash negligible -- a 0.13 percent probability event.

But the China bears are growing louder in their warnings of an impending doom. China simply cannot rely on fixed-asset investment to drive 8-percent-plus growth forever, they argue.

Heavily indebted local governments could default. A property market crash may drive hundreds or even thousands of developers out of business. Bad loans may pile up on banks' books, and China could face an all-out credit crisis.

"China is undoubtedly a severely imbalanced economy, suffering from credit-fueled investment and housing excesses that could easily spin out of control and crash, just like all the other 'highly regarded' economic bubbles before it," Societe Generale strategist and well-known bear Albert Edwards wrote in an October 20 research note.

Read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/24/us-economy-china-idUSTRE79N31320111024

(Reuters) - China's vast manufacturing sector expanded moderately in October to snap three months of contraction, reflecting the resilience of robust domestic demand that is likely to soothe fears of an abrupt slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

HSBC's flash purchasing managers' index (PMI) also showed price pressures eased in China, underlining consumer price data that has shown a slight pullback in inflation from three-year peaks.

The flash PMI, designed to give an early snapshot of the month's factory activity, rose to 51.1 in October from September's final reading of 49.9 as new orders and new export orders expanded.

The reading surpassed the 50-point level demarcating expansion from contraction for the first time since June, when the PMI was 51.6.

"Thanks to the pick-up in new orders and output, the headline flash PMI rebounded back into expansionary territory during October, marking a steady start to manufacturing activities in the four quarter," said Qu Hongbin, China economist at HSBC.

"Meanwhile, inflation components within the PMI results confirmed stable output prices growth and slower input price inflation. All these data confirm our view that there is no risk of a hard landing in China," he said.

read more at link above.


(Reuters) - A top U.S. trade official on Tuesday criticized China for policies he said were "hobbling" American sales but did not ask for new legislative authority to confront Beijing.

"Many of these troubling policies reflect China's strengthening of state control over its economy and a retreat from its initial strong push to liberalize markets in the first years after its World Trade Organization accession," Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis said in remarks prepared for a congressional hearing.

Marantis told the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee the Obama administration was "working day and night" to address concerns ranging from widespread piracy and counterfeiting of American goods to Chinese subsidies and industrial policies that hurt foreign firms.

"Our approach is founded on proven, vigorous enforcement and results-oriented dialogue," Marantis said, claiming the administration has already achieved some success.

read more at link above.


(Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers critical of China's trade policies will use a hearing on Tuesday to press the White House to lay out plans to confront Beijing, even as Republicans resist a bill to punish the world's second-largest economy for its currency policies.

With bipartisan concern about the loss of American jobs to China already an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, the House Ways and Means Committee hearing gives lawmakers a chance to blow off steam at Beijing and to grill top Obama administration officials on what the White House is doing.

"I look forward to hearing the administration's plan for addressing China's persistent barriers to U.S. exports and investment and exploring what should be done to ensure American employers and workers are treated fairly," Committee Chairman Dave Camp said in a statement last week.

The hearing with U.S. Treasury Under Secretary Lael Brainard and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis comes just two weeks after the Senate passed legislation to push China to let its currency rise in value.

Many U.S. lawmakers contend Beijing keeps its yuan weak to gain an advantage in international markets.

But with House Speaker John Boehner refusing to schedule a vote on that legislation for fear it could start a trade war, Camp plans a broader inquiry into a host of Chinese policies believed to hurt U.S. exports and sales.

In addition to questioning Brainard and Marantis on the yuan's value, the panel will dig into issues such as China's subsidies to state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfers, discriminatory government regulation, poor enforcement of U.S. copyrights and patents and a multitude of other barriers to U.S. exports and investment.

"We want to find that balance between aggressively enforcing our rights without provoking a trade war that would boomerang back on the U.S. economy and cause additional job losses," Representative Kevin Brady, who chairs the Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, told Reuters.

read more at link http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/24/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE79N77F20111024

BEIJING — A long-running dispute between farmers and local officials in southern China exploded into open rebellion this week after villagers chased away government leaders, set up roadblocks and began arming themselves with homemade weapons, residents said. The conflict in Wukan, a coastal settlement near the country’s booming industrial heartland in Guangdong Province, escalated on Monday after residents learned that one of the representatives they had selected to negotiate with the local Communist Party had died in police custody. The authorities say a heart attack killed the 42-year-old man, but relatives say his body bore signs of torture. Spasms of social unrest in China have become increasingly common, a reflection of the widening income gap and deepening unhappiness with official corruption and an unresponsive justice system.

The unrest began in September, when thousands of people took to the streets to protest the seizure of agricultural land they said was illegally taken by government officials. The land was sold to developers, they said, but the farmers ended up with little or no compensation. After two days of protests, during which police vehicles were destroyed and government buildings ransacked, riot police moved in with what residents described as excessive brutality. Last Friday, the authorities responded by sending in a group of plain-clothes policemen who grabbed five of the representatives, including Mr. Xue. Two days later, he was dead. According to a 24-year-old villager who described himself as Mr. Xue’s son-in-law, his knees were bruised, his nostrils were caked with blood and his thumbs appeared to be broken.

The account, published Tuesday, cited public security officials who said Mr. Xue had a history of asthma and heart disease and it referred to a report by forensic investigators who found no evidence of abuse. “We assume the handcuffs left the marks on his wrists, and his knees were bruised slightly when he knelt,” Luo Bin, deputy chief of the Zhongshan University forensics medical center told Xinhua.



Personal note: The problem. Follow the money. Land was taken without consent or adequate compensation. The people protested. One died at the hands of the police. Doesn't this seem familiar? Isn't this similar to what is going on globally with all of the Occupy Wall Street protests? The people are being exploited for the financial gain of a select few. Protesters (those individuals who are being exploited) get hurt and some die. Greed is the seed and death is the fruit. Solution: Eliminate greed. Prosecute the offenders (those very few individuals who initiate exploitation for their own selfish personal gain). Let accountability begin with the offender.

The hackers’ interest in companies as small as Salt Lake City-based iBahn illustrates the breadth of China’s spying against firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The networks of at least 760 companies, research universities, Internet service providers and government agencies were hit over the last decade by the same elite group of China-based cyber spies. The companies, including firms such as Research in Motion Ltd. and Boston Scientific Corp., range from some of the largest corporations to niche innovators in sectors like aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, according to intelligence data obtained by Bloomberg News.

‘Stealing Everything’

“They are stealing everything that isn’t bolted down, and it’s getting exponentially worse,” said Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

China has made industrial espionage an integral part of its economic policy, stealing company secrets to help it leapfrog over U.S. and other foreign competitors to further its goal of becoming the world’s largest economy, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a report released last month.

“What has been happening over the course of the last five years is that China -- let’s call it for what it is -- has been hacking its way into every corporation it can find listed in Dun & Bradstreet,” said Richard Clarke, former special adviser on cybersecurity to U.S. President George W. Bush, at an October conference on network security. “Every corporation in the U.S., every corporation in Asia, every corporation in Germany. And using a vacuum cleaner to suck data out in terabytes and petabytes. I don’t think you can overstate the damage to this country that has already been done.”

Consistently Denied Responsibility

China has consistently denied it has any responsibility for hacking that originated from servers on its soil. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, didn’t respond to several e-mails and phone calls requesting comment. Wang Baodong, another Chinese government spokesman in Washington, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Based on what is known of attacks from China, Russia and other countries, a declassified estimate of the value of the blueprints, chemical formulas and other material stolen from U.S. corporate computers in the last year reached almost $500 billion, said Rogers, a former agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Massive Espionage Ring

The hackers are part of a massive espionage ring codenamed Byzantine Foothold by U.S. investigators, according to a person familiar with efforts to track the group. They specialize in infiltrating networks using phishing e-mails laden with spyware, often passing on the task of exfiltrating data to others.

Segmented tasking among various groups and sophisticated support infrastructure are among the tactics intelligence officials have revealed to Congress to show the hacking is centrally coordinated, the person said. U.S. investigators estimate Byzantine Foothold is made up of anywhere from several dozen hackers to more than one hundred, said the person, who declined to be identified because the matter is secret.

“The guys who get in first tend to be the best. If you can’t get in, the rest of the guys can’t do any work,” said Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer for Mandiant Corp., an Alexandria, Virginia-based security firm that specializes in cyber espionage. “We’ve seen some real skill problems with the people who are getting the data out. I guess they figure if they haven’t been caught by that point, they’ll have as many chances as they need to remove the data.”

Secretive Companies

U.S. and other companies have been secretive about the details of their computer security. When Google announced in 2010 that China-based hackers had raided its networks, it was a rare example of a U.S. company publicly revealing a cyberburglary aimed at its intellectual property -- in this case, its source code.

Mountain View, California-based Google, the world’s largest search-engine firm, said at the time that at least 34 other major companies were victims of the same attack. However, only two -- Intel and Adobe Systems Inc. -- stepped forward, and they provided few specifics.

Google vastly underestimated the scope of the spying. Intelligence documents obtained by Bloomberg News show that China-based hackers have hunted technology and information across dozens of economic sectors and in some of the most obscure corners of the economy, beginning in 2001 and accelerating over the last three years. Many of the victims have been hacked more than once. read more at link


Personal note: And now we know how this country technology is advancing so rapidly.

(Reuters) - China's plan for a new $300 billion sovereign wealth fund is as much a warning to Washington as it is a body blow to Brussels. It's the clearest sign yet of Beijing's waning faith in bonds issued by Europe and the United States. Europe's festering debt debacle, record low yields on U.S. Treasuries and a depreciating dollar all add weight to the view in China that the time is ripe to change investment tack.

"China has decided that real assets are better than broken debt fix promises and low interest rates," says Paul Markowski, president of MES Advisers and a long-time external adviser to China's monetary policymakers on global financial markets.Beijing has watched for two years as Europe's crisis has choked growth and demand in China's biggest export market and stoked default risks on the near $800 billion of euro zone government bonds it is estimated to own.

It has been a painful lesson.

After all, China had actively bought euro assets to guard its $3.2 trillion reserve pile against over-exposure to U.S. dollars, which have lost about a third of their value in the last 10 years as U.S. Treasury yields have sunk to record lows.

Reuters reported last week that the People's Bank of China plans to create the new vehicle with two funds, one for Europe and one for the United States, making China in aggregate the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund investor. The plan originated before Europe's debt crisis, sources said.

That gels with comments from investment sources with links to China's monetary authorities and foreign reserve managers who detect a clear desire in Beijing to acquire real assets in return for supplying fresh funds to bridge U.S. deficits and recapitalize European financial institutions and governments.

HAPPIER RETURNS

The $300 billion figure is consistent with the sum that Markowski and others calculate China has in excess reserves -- the amount beyond what Beijing would need to tackle a balance of payments crisis or a domestic funding emergency.

"They want underlying assets. Equities, corporate bonds, real estate -- anything that governments want to flog," said one source involved in foreign exchange trading for official institutions such as central banks. But with a European debt crisis and the U.S. triple-A rating no longer a given, China's state investors have good reasons to push into new kinds of assets. read more at link above



Since China started economic reforms in 1978, the country's GDP has expanded faster than 10% a year. But China's single minded focus on economic growth has come with a price. China's environment is one of the most polluted in the world. Two-thirds of China's cities do not have clean water to drink. China has overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Only 1% of China’s urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the EU. China's Environmental Crisis is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Chi-Chu Tschang. http://bx.businessweek.com/profile/chichu-tschang/ctschang944/

(Reuters) - Dec 9, 2011 - China's central bank plans to create a new vehicle to manage investment funds worth a total of $300 billion (191 billion pounds) to improve returns on the world's largest stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The vehicle, which was planned well before the start of Europe's debt crisis and is aimed at improving returns on China's foreign exchange reserves, would operate two funds, one targeting investments in the United States and the other focused on Europe, said the source, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter. The vehicle's goal is to make more aggressive overseas investments for higher returns, said the source along with a second, independent source, who also declined to be named. read more at link

China's credit bubble has finally popped. The property market is swinging wildly from boom to bust, the cautionary exhibit of a BRIC's dream that is at last coming down to earth with a thud. It is hard to obtain good data in China, but something is wrong when the country's Homelink property website can report that new home prices in Beijing fell 35pc in November from the month before. If this is remotely true, the calibrated soft-landing intended by Chinese authorities has gone badly wrong and risks spinning out of control. The growth of the M2 money supply slumped to 12.7pc in November, the lowest in 10 years. New lending fell 5pc on a month-to-month basis. The central bank has begun to reverse its tightening policy as inflation subsides, cutting the reserve requirement for lenders for the first time since 2008 to ease liquidity strains. The question is whether the People's Bank can do any better than the US Federal Reserve or Bank of Japan at deflating a credit bubble. Chinese stocks are flashing warning signs. The Shanghai index has fallen 30pc since May. It is off 60pc from its peak in 2008, almost as much in real terms as Wall Street from 1929 to 1933.

"Investors are massively underestimating the risk of a hard-landing in China, and indeed other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China)... a 'Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept' in my view," said Albert Edwards at Societe Generale.

read more at link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8957289/Chinas-epic-hangover-begins.html

It appears that there are uprisings across the globe. China is just one of many.

The water level in China's Three Gorges reservoir has hit this year's highest since the world's largest dam began handling seasonal floods at the beginning of this month.

The water level in the reservoir, which is contained by the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang, of central China's Hubei Province, hit 158.9 meters high on Sunday evening, sources with the dam's managing authority said. The water level reached its designed highest mark of 175 meters on October 26, 2010.

At the beginning of July, the water level was lowered to about 145 meters in order to deal with floods expected from the Yangtze River, according to the coordination division of the China Three Gorges Corporation.

Two flood peaks, with a flow rate of 56,000 cubic meters of water per second, arrived at the reservoir on July 7 and 12.

A total of 8 billion cubic meters of water have been stored at the site during the past two weeks, according to the sources.

The world's largest hydropower project releases water in dry seasons to ease droughts and blocks water during rainy seasons to alleviate flood pressure in downstream areas.

Flooding has left more than 600 ships stranded on sections of the Yangtze River near the dam, and evacuation of the ships is under way, sources said.

http://www.bjreview.com.cn/headline/txt/2012-07/17/content_468514.htm

Remember a few years ago about the Chinese building the ghost city in China, to keep their economy busy? No one could afford to live in them, but they are there. Now there is evidence that they are building more of these uninhabited cities around the world.

MORE EERIE 'GHOST CITIES' POPPING UP
Shocking photographs reveal towns completely devoid of people

The Chinese have their own webbot program, and they can possibly see future events, such as the coastal flooding, or the mass relocation of populations.

WND and Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reported just last year that Google Earth photographs of China depict city after city of vast complexes consisting of office skyscrapers, government buildings, apartment buildings, residential towers and homes, all connected by networks of empty roads – with some of the cities located in China’s truly most inhospitable locations. At the time, China had an estimated inventory of 64 million vacant homes and was building up to 20 new ghost cities a year on the country’s “vast swathes of free land.”


http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/21/ghost-town-mongolia-inside-chinas-empty-cities/
http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/bizarre-chinas-eerie-ghost-cities-arise/

Is China Preparing A Gold Backed Currency?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfo4b5LAWj4



Love Always
mudra

Yes, they are. I had read where they wanted the Yuan to take the place of the USDollar as the world reserve currency and fully expect them to pull it off - that is if the US doesn't get their fiscal act together sooner then later.