China

On a recent visit to the Gobi desert, which stretches across China’s western Gansu province, I came upon an unusual sign. In the midst of a dry, sandy expanse stood a large billboard depicting a settlement the government intended to build nearby — white buildings surrounded by lush, green, landscaped lawns, and in the center a vast, gleaming blue reservoir. The illustration’s bright colors were quite unlike the actual surroundings, which consisted of dull sky that faded into a horizon of undulating, parched-brown hillsides.

The promotion of the renewable energy industry is central to the Recovery Act and the Obama administration's broader economic recovery program, but it is unlikely to create enough jobs or have a large enough domestic multiplier effect to contribute significantly to the economic recovery. It reflects an ambition to transform the economy into a green energy leader of the 21st century and tackle climate change. But these investments are a questionable short- or medium-term generator of growth and jobs.

Confucius said ‘The superior man is firm in the right way, and not merely firm.’  From a Chinese perspective, the same can probably be said about other nations.

When Hillary Clinton was running for the US presidency, she encouraged then President George W. Bush to boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to signal US frustration over China’s treatment of Tibet and lack of cooperation on Sudan.

I think it is pretty interesting that the Chinese have launched the China Foundation Center (CFC). A research center on philanthropy at Beijing Normal University also launched this year.

The Chinese economy is about to enter a new phase. The decision by the Chinese central bank to let the renminbi appreciate might seem minor. After all, the currency was allowed some flexibility before the global financial crisis, so China is arguably just returning to the status quo ante. But this decision is being made in the context of a proletariat that is growing restless. Schooled in the classics of Marxism-Leninism, the country’s political elite understands the dangers this entails.

The Chinese dream, like the American dream, has taken shape around the promise that each new generation will live better than the one before it. In recent years, that has meant more job options, more material comforts, and increasingly, home ownership. Last fall 80 percent of respondents to a China Youth Daily online poll said that home ownership was a prerequisite for happiness.

This just in from the Google corporate blog — the much anticipated announcement on Google's plans for operating in China. Users in mainland China who visit Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, which is housed on servers in Hong Kong. The search results on this site will not be censored:

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search

on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as

possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland

The quest to secure Middle Eastern oil and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consume much of the foreign policy establishment in Washington today. But in the next decade, more of the U.S.'s attention will shift to the new Middle East: China.

In the popular imagination, Tibet is a land of snow-capped mountains and sweeping vistas, fluttering prayer flags, crystal blue skies, saffron-robed monks spinning prayer wheels, and, perhaps most of all, timelessness. And likewise, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and its chief emissary to the West, is a man of abiding wisdom and compassion, an inspiration and moral compass, a beacon of calm in a frenetic modern world. Set aside the fraught politics of this contested region. If one word sums up what Tibet means to the West it is this: purity.

At a factory in Wuxi, China, workers lift solar panels onto conveyor belts, while others in white lab coats move between machines as they check on a process for etching and engraving silicon wafers to form solar cells.