Foreign Landlords and Globalization

China may lease foreign fields
Wow, this is pretty interesting. So China plans to rent land from other countries, grow food on it, and then ship the food back to China to decrease grain prices. At first glance, this would seem like globalization at it’s best: I mean without low transportation costs, how else could this [...]

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Mass Struggle

Revolution is fun.
There was this time when I helped to organize a rebellion of student workers against our organization’s leadership for their imposition of the boring ‘packet making’ task upon us with no compensation. With rousing speeches filled with Marxist rhetoric and denunciation of the students who tried to be rational or worked with the [...]

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Looking at the Sides

And this time, I’m not talking about the Free Tibet and Beijing supporters. Instead, I’m thinking about:

The ultra-nationalistic protesters who advocate boycotting Carrefour and have been spreading all sorts of rumors about evil foreigners on the internet.
The moderate Chinese citizens who are against the boycott and are trying to lower the amount of nationalism in [...]

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Dalai Lama Talks and MIDI cancelation

Dalai Lama Aides to talk with CCP
Sure, I don’t really expect anything to come out of this, but something is better than nothing. I mean the Dalai Lama mentioned this a while ago, but the CCP finally came out and made it official. Maybe they’ve been talking this whole time and they only just announced [...]

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No May Sales at Carrefour

Carrefour to Scrap Sales
Damn, I was actually kinda looking forward to this. I mean sales of up to 50% from May 1st to the 4th? There’s so much stuff I want to get, like a welcome mat, a nice blanket, a fan for the coming summer, yogurt, Kirin milk tea, cheese, ham… oh, and tuna [...]

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Understanding the Hukou System

So I’m currently reading China: Transitions and Growth by Barry Naugton. (Not a bad read, a little academic and dry, but not bad) I’m currently on the part about the urban-rural divide and he mentioned that in 2005, there was going to hukou reform in three provinces. The reforms were supposed to remove the distinction [...]

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Jin Jing, Carrefour, and The Mob

First, a little definition for all those who are uninitiated in the ways of China:
Jin Jing is that girl in the wheelchair who protected the torch when them Free Tibet people tried to grab it from her in France.
Carrefour is a French supermarket chain that was/is highly popular in China. There are currently a lot [...]

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China’s Stock Market Plunge

China’s Stock Market Falls in Half in Six Months
Oh dear me, I soooooo called it… but then again, it was so bloody obvious that everyone called it. So I still remember distinctly back when I was hanging out in hot and humid Guangzhou getting my knee looked at by this old doctor dude. There were all these [...]

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Nationalism v. ‘Olympic Spirit’

Ah… the Beijing Olympics…
There was so much hope in the beginning. The Chinese officials were saying they will host the best Olympic games the world has ever seen. They poured tons of money into the project, taking advantage of their abundance of labor to reconstruct the entire city. New airports, stadiums, cherry blossoms being planted [...]

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I (L) China and Boycotting Carrefour

So if you have Chinese friends on your MSN messaging account, you would probably notice a lot of these (heart) CHINA things next to their names. And if you’re in China with a cell phone you’re probably getting messages at 2:00am at night telling you to boycott Carrefour.
I’m not going to rant about how idiotic [...]

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