China Considers Requiring Families to Care for Elderly from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

Caring for the elderly has long played an important role in Chinese culture. But rapid economic growth has forced adult Chinese children to abandon their hometowns to find jobs in other parts of the country — often leaving their elderly parents on their own. This cultural shift has led Chinese officials to consider a law that would require adult children to care for their parents. Sheryl WuDunn, banker with Mid-Market Securities and author of “China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power,” joins us to discuss this trend in China and how it compares to the United States. Lily Weasner immigrated to America from China in 1971. She recenlty visited China to care for her own mother, who was ill, a job that traditionally falls to the eldest child. Download the podcast here.

Deborah Fallows: Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language

From Booklist: Fallows manages to take the relatively dry subject of translation and create a warm and witty memoir. Dwelling less on her own feelings then on the intricacies of language mastery, she shares experiences after she and her husband moved to China that taught her just how complex Mandarin can be. Such as the fact that there are 400 syllables in Mandarin as opposed to 10 times that number in English, making tone crucial in conversation. Fallows makes all this fascinating by writing in a thoroughly engaging manner that not only invites readers into her experiences, but also delights them with her discoveries. There is confusion with a Cantonese cab driver, the manicurist who envisioned “almost perfect happiness,” and the employee at Taco Bell who thought Fallows wanted to hug him (she was inquiring about takeout). From observations about maps, naming children, and the struggle over one language for a nation where over 300 million speak something other than Mandarin, Fallows takes readers on a ride through Chinese culture that is as entertaining as it is informative.





From Time Magazine: Deborah Fallows and her husband, the Atlantic's James Fallows, are no strangers to life in a foreign country. Over the course of their careers they've upped sticks and moved to foreign lands, from Africa to Southeast Asia. But even their many years as expatriates could not have prepared them for what they would experience throughout their three years living in a country as overwhelming and chaotic as China. In her book, Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language, Fallows, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard University, details the struggles and triumphs she had while learning one of the world's most difficult languages. She spoke to TIME about what her study of Mandarin taught her about life in China, the country's dizzying transformation and the value of learning languages.





From The New York Times: [Deborah Fallows] spent three years living in China with her husband, the journalist James Fallows. Since she’s a linguist by training, her method of getting under the skin of the country was to immerse herself in its language. In “Dreaming in Chinese,” she uses key phrases and concepts to unlock aspects of the society that interested or surprised her, casting light along the way on many idiosyncrasies of the Chinese view of the world. Fallows doesn’t arrive with many preconceptions. Instead, she takes the Chinese as they see and present themselves. And she soon discovers that what the Chinese think is important isn’t always what we think is important. One thing they’re interested in is ensuring good luck. This explains why the Beijing Olympics began on Aug. 8, 2008, at 8:08 p.m. Eight, ba, rhymes with fa, “as in fa cai, which means ‘to become wealthy,’ ” making it a very auspicious number. And even though Aug. 8 was well into the rainy season, it didn’t rain.

The West and China: Nobel v. Confucius from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

We take the long view on China's rise and the West's uncertain future, with Stanford historian Ian Morris. His new book is "Why the West Rules --for Now."

Download the podcast here. See also: The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium (Oxford Studies in Early Empires), The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society (2nd Edition), Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Key Themes in Ancient History)

Look again: Reform of China’s financial sector has slowed. This might prove dangerous: China's financial system - from The Economist

A week ago, The Economist had this to say about the China and its economy, from within the context of a review of the book, Red Capitalism:

Anyone who is overly impressed with the apparent resilience of China today would do well to read a new book by two bankers who have worked there for many years, Carl Walter and Fraser Howie. “Red Capitalism” avoids the standard approach to Chinese analysis, which uses mounds of macroeconomic data that even Chinese regulators acknowledge are replete with flaws. Instead, the authors examine how China’s financial system has grown from pretty much nothing three decades ago into the dynamic, bewildering and possibly doomed set of institutions that fill the landscape today. The book is, in many ways, a story of remarkable progress. In 1974 a delegation to the United Nations led by the future Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, almost never left home because there wasn’t enough cash in the banking system—the entire Chinese banking system—to pay for the delegates’ plane tickets. Conditions worsened even further after that. By 1978, when Mr Deng returned from yet another political exile to assume power, China’s formal financial system had shrunk to a single institution, the People’s Bank, whose head office was made up of 80 people buried within the Ministry of Finance. [...] Skipping ahead, China now has more dollars than it can spend and its financial system is populated by a constantly expanding array of institutions. This is no accident. As “Red Capitalism” describes, it was Mr Deng’s goal, pursued with the vital support of his immediate successors, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who pushed through changes that were thoughtful, often brutal, and sometimes mistaken.

Read that Economist article, here. The Financial Times mentioned the book in "China starts crackdown on insider trading":

Mainland China’s markets are notoriously opaque and speculative. Everyone, from small retail investors to top fund managers, appears to trade on tips from contacts who claim to have “inside” information. “If you ask any Chinese investor whether they think a chairman or executive of a company is trading in their own stock, nine out of 10 would expect that to be the case just as they would expect a government official to be taking bribes,” says Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism and other books on China’s stock markets. Last week’s announcement marked the first time the Chinese cabinet has publicly addressed the issue of insider trading and was interpreted by investors as a signal of the government’s determination to head off a new stock bubble.

Read that full FT article here. See also: Out of the Red: Investment and Capitalism in Russia, Capitalism's Brutal Comeback in China (Red Banner Reader), Out of the Red : Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe, Red Capitalism: An Analysis of the Navajo Economy

Decades Later, Chinese Consumers' Tastes Change from NPR: Business Story of the Day Podcast

Chinese consumers are spending. Karl Gerth, a professor at Oxford University, tells Steve Inskeep that Chinese consumerism already is changing the world. He writes about it in a new book called As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything.

Download the podcast of the show here. See also: As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers Are Transforming Everything, China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Harvard East Asian Monographs), Politics, Character, and Culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth (Contributions in Sociology)

"China's Economic Growth Leads to Packed Roads, Push for Expanded Railways" from Voice of America by Stephanie Ho

China's rapid economic growth is causing some strains - and they are increasingly evident on the roads of the country's big cities. Traffic jams fill news headlines and create headaches for a growing number of people. Beijing is the capital of the world's most populous country. At rush hour, the city's roads become clogged. The city has 4 million cars, and 2,000 more are added every day. [...] The government stresses rail as an environmentally cleaner and more efficient urban transportation method. Tsinghua University economist Hu Angang backs that view. Hu says up until 2015, the Chinese government will invest $600 billion (four trillion yuan) to develop high speed railroads, and fast railroads, and long-distance railroads. He says rail is safe and energy-saving.

Read the Voice of America article here. See also: The Political Economy of Uneven Development: The Case of China (Asia & the Pacific), Economic and Social Transformation in China: Challenges and Opportunities, Achievement Evaluation of IFI Assistance Loans to China (1981-2002), The Chinese Economy in Crisis: State Capacity and Tax Reform (Studies on Contemporary China)

Simon Tay on America and Asia from The Economist: Books and arts

The author of "Asia Alone" discusses the rise of China and why its neighbours hope for continued American engagement in the region [...]

Listen to the Economist podcast here. See also: Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America, A Mandarin in the Making: Reflections by Ngiam Tong, Pacific Asia 2022: Sketching Futures Of A Region, Reinventing ASEAN

"That" New York Times

Last month, I asked a friend at LSE if he could refer me to some good reads on economics, from within the bubble of mainland China. He referred me to academic papers that I could've downloaded from his journals database online, but ultimately, these were academic papers that were white washed, or what would be considered to be so, by mainland university students, studying economics. No, I wanted propaganda, but credible propaganda. He couldn't deliver anything along those lines. In fact, the articles he did mention, most of these scholars were folks that did stint in Shanghai but had last names like Winchester. No thanks. And then I saw this video about the currency wars heating up, and the political jabs that were coming out of the EU. That lead me to a search, which in turn lead me to Currency Wars, by Song Hongbing. This is the read I'm going to need in my library. I'm going to boot up a few shelves dedicated to just this kind of idea about economics, coming from within that bubble of mainland China. (My new, juicy hobby.)

Here in China, economic observers are noting that the Chinese posture toward the Americans has decidedly shifted.

“This time, the Chinese side is trying to change its attitude to be more active, to be more aggressive, to balance the two sides,” said Song Hongbing, author of “The Currency War,” a best-selling if conspiratorial book on the American economy. “They just started to change their attitude for the future.”

Chinese officials are expressing their disdain in forums around the world. Last month, Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, delivered a lecture at the British Museum in London in which he blamed the American government for the subprime mortgage crisis that came close to freezing Western debt markets and required extensive intervention by the Federal Reserve. The turmoil, he said, was “counteracting the course of global civilization.”

That New York Times article's here.

1. Don't you just love quotes of quotes?
2. Re-brand "The New York Times" as "That New York Times" 

Scott Simon from KQED's Forum Podcast

Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, joins Michael Krasny in the studio. Simon's new book "Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other" chronicles his experience adopting two little girls from China.

Listen to the podcast here, download the mp3 file here.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford from Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk by Steven Rose

A book on Soviet utopianism prompts Steven Rose to wonder if the dream of a fair, prosperous society can ever be fulfilled. When I first visited Moscow, in what now seems a far-distant era, a giant red neon sign beamed Lenin's famous phrase "Socialism plus electrification equals communism" across the Moskva river. The slogan encapsulated several central aspects of communist thought. First, optimism for the future. Second, that science and technology were both by definition progressive forces but were impeded by capitalism; only under communism could they enable the building of a society of abundance for the many, not just the few.

Full book reviews like these, are books in and of themselves, and require a full reading on the proper site. See the Guardian piece here. Also, check out this BBC podcast, where Francis Spufford and Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times debate the comparison between the China and the USSR in the 60s and their influence on the Western economies. [Still trying to see if I can order Red Plenty for my Kindle from Asia.]

Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-07-28 12:00:00] Just how important is food to the stability of a society? We'll examine the Romans and Mayans, modern challenges in the United States and China and more this hour with agricultural expert Evan D. G. Fraser, co-author of the new book "Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" (Free Press, 2010).

Listen to the full KERA radio podcast here.

China's Authoritarian Model from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-06-17 12:00:00] How will China dominate the world's markets and governments in the next hundred years and what does it mean for U.S.-China relations? We'll talk this hour with Stefan Halper, Senior Fellow at the Cambridge Centre of International Studies and author of the new book "The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century" (Basic Books, 2010).

Download the podcast here. Listen to the podcast show here.

Henry Luce: American dreamer from The Economist: Full print edition

The man who gave a name to the American century: The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century. By Alan Brinkley. Knopf; 544 pages; $35. Buy from Amazon.com: AT 14, though not later in life, Henry Robinson Luce was a great supporter of a revolution, the Chinese revolution of 1912. He wrote to a friend who was visiting Luce’s missionary parents in China, welcoming him to “a great land, peopled by a great nation, endowed with a great past, overshadowed by a greater future.” It was, he added, “the greatest and most stupendous Reformation in all history.” ...

Read the Economist piece on the book, here (subscription required, or you can do a cache search on Google for the bulk of it). Check this YouTube video out as well (from the Book TV channel).

Underreported: China's Gulag Prison System (The Leonard Lopate Show: Thursday, 19 November 2009) from Lopate - Underreported by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

President Obama was in China this week and he did speak out on the country’s human rights record. On today’s first Underreported segment, we’re taking a look at China’s expansive prison system, formerly called Laogai. We’ll examine how it was modeled after the Soviet gulag system and the accusations that forced labor is used in the camps. We’ll speak with Harry Wu, founder of the Laogai Research Foundation and Nicole Kempton, who edited the foundation’s book Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China.

The podcast can be downloaded here, or streamed here.

Comparing Education in China to the U.S. (The Brian Lehrer Show: Monday, 12 October 2009) from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Creativity versus Test-taking? Yong Zhao, professor at the College of Education at Michigan State University compares the Chinese and American education systems with his new book Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization.

Listen to the podcast show here, download the podcast show here.

James Fallows on China's Economy from KQED's Forum by forum@kqed.org (KQED Public Radio)

Does the global economic crisis spell doom for China? Not according to James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic. Fallows joins us to discuss China's current economic situation, and how Chinese entrepreneurs are turning hard times into opportunities. Fallows wrote the cover story for the April 2009 issue of The Atlantic, an article entitled "China's Way Forward." His latest book is "Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China."

Listen to the podcast here.

The New Asia from KQED's Forum Podcast

International policy expert Kishore Mahbubani discusses the growing influence of China and India, along with the implications for the rest of Asia and the United States. His new book is "The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East." Mahbubani is a dean and professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Listen to the full podcast here. Download the mp3 file here.

What Does China Think? from KERA's Think Podcast

China is big news this year. With a rapidly expanding economy, devastating environmental issues, and (oh yeah) the Olympics just around the corner everyone's talking about China. But how is the country changing politically and philosophically? We'll spend this hour with Mark Leonard, Executive Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book "What Does China Think?" (Public Affairs, 2008).

Listen to the full KERA show here. Download the mp3 here.

The High Price of Chinese Industrialization (The Leonard Lopate Show: Monday, 21 April 2008) from WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

China’s mass industrialization is coming at a high cost for many Chinese workers, from long hours and low wages to nearly unbreathable air. Financial Times editor Alexandra Harney’s new book is The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage. Events: Alexandra Harney will be speaking and signing books. Tuesday, April 22 at 6:30 pm. China Institute. 125 East 65th Street (between Park and Lexington Avenues). Alexandra Harney will be speaking and signing books. Monday, April 28 at 6:30 pm. Asia Society. 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street).

Download and listen to the podcast here (mp3 file).