CSG news update -- 2006-09-25

From China Study Group <chinastudygroup@gmail.com>
Date Mon, 25 Sep 2006 02:00:37 -0700



China Study Group news update

Policy on cooling pays off: adviser
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=2&art_id=28020&sid=10079210&con_type=1
The Standard | 2006-09-25
Ivan Tong and Olivia Chung
A State Council-level government economist predicts new measures to rein in rapid economic growth are unlikely because fresh signs are emerging that fixed-asset investment is slowing and the rise in property prices has moderated.  In an exclusive interview with The Standard and its sister publicat...

China won't go barging in on coup crisis
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20470340-2703,00.html
The Australian | 2006-09-25
Rowan Callick
THE neighbour of Thailand most anxious about last week's coup is China.  Relations between Beijing and Bangkok became especially intimate during the five-year leadership of Thaksin Shinawatra, whose grandparents migrated from China's southern Guangdong province.  Close economic connectio...

A Crisis of Trust Takes a Toll on Chinese Society
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-trust24sep24,1,2396471.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
LA Times | 2006-09-24
Mark Magnier
BEIJING — Talk about swimming with sharks.  Zhang Xingshui, an attorney with the Beijing Kingdom law firm, knows that like people everywhere else in the world, the Chinese don't always trust lawyers, who often promise things they can't deliver. But in China, he says, lawyers don'...

U.S. waste paper turned to treasure in China
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=519697&category=BUSINESS&newsdate=9/24/2006
Philadelphia Inquirer | 2006-09-24
Bob Fernandez
PHILADELPHIA -- At Big Moe's paper-recycling plant in South Jersey, workers dump bins of medical records, federal documents, old legal papers and undeliverable mail onto a conveyor. 	  The documents ride two stories up to a roaring 500-horsepower shredder that growls and ka-chunks as it bites ...

China guards its economic growth
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2371984,00.html
The Times | 2006-09-24
Michael Sheridan
CHINA and America stand at a crossroads in the world's most important trading relationship this weekend.  US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson spent last week in Beijing arguing for China to let its currency, the yuan, rise in value and to open its markets to more foreign competition.  Paulso...

What if China is overvalued?
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060924/BUSINESS/609240477/1003
Bloomberg | 2006-09-24
William Pesek
What weighs 25 million tons?  Well, 1,000 replicas of the USS Enterprise. Or 68 Empire State Buildings. Or China's expected apple harvest this year.  Wow, 25 million tons! It's these kinds of shocking factoids that remind us how big a story China is. At $2.2 trillion, China's economy...

Struggling China state companies win stay of execution
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/905b4d36-4bea-11db-90d2-0000779e2340.html
Financial Times | 2006-09-24
Francesco Guerrerain and Richard McGregor
More than 2,000 of China's worst-performing state companies have won a stay of execution by being excluded from the country's new bankruptcy law until the end of 2008.  The move, aimed at cushioning the social impact on employees of financially strained state companies, will slow the dispo...

A quiet cash coup
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=31&art_id=27875&sid=10014972&con_type=3&d_str=20060923&sear_year=2006
LA Times | 2006-09-23
Don Lee
American diplomats made a big splash early this year when they opened an embassy near Wat Phnom, the sacred hill of temples in Cambodia where Phnom Penh was founded.  United States Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli trumpeted the three-story marble-and-granite outpost as a "powerful symbol" of American i...

Victims of a `Chinese takeaway'
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=48&art_id=27778&sid=9908048&con_type=1&d_str=20060922&sear_year=2006
Daily Telegraph | 2006-09-22
Richard Spencer
The Chinese developers of Thames Town, a model British village being built in the suburbs of Shanghai, were keen to make the details as authentic as possible.  How authentic they turned out to be came as a surprise to the owner of a pub and fish and chip shop in the seaside town of Lyme Regis, Dor...

China Accused of Reneging on Rights Pledge
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china22sep22,1,125649.story
LA Times | 2006-09-22
Ching-Ching Ni
BEIJING — Amnesty International said Thursday that the Chinese government had not lived up to its assurances that human rights in the country would improve after Beijing's selection as host of the 2008 Olympic Games.  The London-based human rights group cited a list of abuses in China, i...

Tiananmen protester released after 17 years
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1878439,00.html
AP | 2006-09-22
A Chinese factory worker has been released after serving 17 years in jail for setting fire to a military vehicle during the Tiananmen Square protests. Zhang Maosheng was 21 in 1989 when he was jailed on a charge of counter-revolutionary arson.  According to the Hong Kong-based Information Centre f...

UK in secret deal with Italy on China trade
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/7d6ff982-4a7e-11db-8738-0000779e2340.html
Financial Times | 2006-09-22
George Parker and Andrew Bounds
Britain has offered a secret deal to Italy under which it would back Rome's demand for punitive tariffs on cheap Chinese shoes in return for Italian support for the UK's long-hours work culture.  The classic example of European Union horse-trading has dismayed retailers, who claim a deal w...

Chronicling China in upheaval
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/21/opinion/fmlede22.php
International Herald Tribune | 2006-09-22
Joan Dupont
Jia Zhangke is the most discreet of prize winners, a slip of a director who leads China's sixth generation of filmmakers. "Still Life," shot in Fengjie, the heart of China's controversial Three Gorges Dam project, was the surprise Golden Lion winner of the Venice festival. It was not a popul...

New China property rules jolt foreign investors
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=22&art_id=27764&sid=10019928&con_type=1&d_str=20060921&sear_year=2006
Reuters | 2006-09-21
International property investors dreaming of big returns in China have been jolted by new rules on inward investment imposed by a government desperate to control spiraling prices.  While lawyers hatch plans to maneuver through the regulations, fund managers are pausing to wonder whether compliance...

Professor's pay slip highlights teachers' dilemma
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-09/21/content_694195.htm
China Daily | 2006-09-21
Guo Qiang
People may think that professors, especially those at famous universities, are wealthy, but they say they are rather poor.  Assistant professor at prestigious Peking University A Yi. [File]  Assistant professor at prestigious Peking University A Yi made it clear his monthly salary of 4,768 yuan ...

Online survey axed after most reject Chinese identity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1875731,00.html
The Guardian | 2006-09-19
Jonathan Watts
Chinese authorities have shut down an online survey that found most respondents would prefer a different nationality if they were born again. According to the South China Morning Post, two editors of the host website, NetEase, have also been fired in the past few days, prompting speculation that the...