CSG news update -- 2007-08-30

[China Study Group <chinastudygroup@gmail.com>]

China Study Group news update

As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
New York Times | 2007-08-29
JOSEPH KAHN and JIM YARDLEY
BEIJING, Aug. 25 — No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.   China's industrial growth depends on coal, plentiful but polluting, from coal mines like t...

Yu Dan and China's return to Confucius
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/arts/melvin.php?page=2
Internationa Hearld Tribune | 2007-08-29
Sheila Melvin
BEIJING: China spent the greater part of the last century struggling to become a modern nation. This often-brutal, but ultimately successful, quest led it to pillory its own intellectual heritage and embrace such foreign philosophies as communism and capitalism.  But after so many years spent look...

IT program for rural areas bridging education gap
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/6250353.html
China Daily | 2007-08-29
They might not sell lip balm in remote parts of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, but 25-year-old Chen Zeqing, a middle-school teacher from Xiamen in Fujian Province said he can live without it.  Chen is one of 137 volunteer teachers currently involved in the Partners in Learning project, whic...

Floods Leave 1,138 People Dead, 210 Missing in China
http://www.china.org.cn/english/news/222371.htm
 | 2007-08-29
Xinhua
Floods and related disasters have left a total of 1,138 people dead and 210 missing as of August 27, said the Ministry of Water Resources at a press conference held on Tuesday.  China's Water Resources Minister Chen Lei reported that the death toll so far this year was 50 percent less than the...

China's Hu says climate change on APEC agenda
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29225020070829
Reuters India | 2007-08-29
 BEIJING (Reuters) - Climate change is a priority for Beijing and should be on the agenda at the Asia-Pacific leaders summit next week, China's President Hu Jintao said during a phone chat with Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Wednesday.  "Climate change affects sustainable development...

Yahoo Asks Judge to Toss China Torture case
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136481-c,yahoo/article.html
PC World | 2007-08-29
Juan Carlos Perez
Yahoo Inc. wants a California court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the company by jailed Chinese dissidents.  In a filing Monday, Yahoo told the court that the lawsuit, which seeks to hold Yahoo accountable for the imprisonment and torture of the plaintiffs, should be tossed out various reas...

China miners 'survived on urine'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6968589.stm
BBC | 2007-08-29
 China miners 'survived on urine' Meng Xianchen (L) and Meng Xianyou (R) pictured in hospital robes The Meng brothers took five days to dig themselves out of the pit Two miners who escaped from a collapsed pit in Beijing ate coal and drank urine to survive, Chinese media has reported. ...

China rules out strategic participation in big Western companies - report
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/08/29/afx4064114.html
Forbes | 2007-08-29
 BERLIN (XFN-ASIA) - China does not plan on pursuing strategic participation in big Western companies in the near future, and notably not in German companies, the Financial Times Deutschland reported.  The newspaper said Chinese officials told German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has just wrapped ...

Scandal and suicide in China: A dark side of toys
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/business/23suicide.php?WT.mc_id=rssfrontpage
Internationa Hearld Tribune | 2007-08-29
David Barboza
They found the body hanging on the third floor of the Lee Der toy factory.  Zhang Shuhong, a 52-year-old businessman, had apparently committed suicide, just days after Mattel blamed his company, Lee Der Industrial, in Foshan, in southern China, for the recall of one million toys coated in toxic le...

17th CPC National Congress Proposed to Start on Oct. 15
http://www.china.org.cn/english/news/222366.htm
 | 2007-08-28
Xinhua
The 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is proposed to convene in Beijing on October 15 this year.  The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee decided at a meeting on Tuesday to make the proposal to the 7th Plenum of the 16th CPC Central Committee.  The meeting al...

Wages rise in China as businesses court the young
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/business/29labor.php?WT.mc_id=rssfrontpage
Internationa Hearld Tribune | 2007-08-28
Keith Bradsher
SHENZHEN, China: At the Dahon bicycle factory here, Zhang Jingming's fingers move quickly and methodically — grabbing bicycle seats, wrapping them in cardboard and smoothly attaching them to frames.  Working a 45-hour week, Zhang makes the equivalent of $263 a month; as recently as Febru...