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Fearful that demonstrations could boomerang and scare off foreign investors, China has toned down the state media's reporting about Japan and muzzled Web sites such as Anti-Japan Vanguard. The result: No new protests.
A year ago, the "Anti-Japan Vanguard" Web site was plastered with fiery screeds demanding Tokyo atone for its World War II aggression. These days, it advertises industrial machinery, with only its inflammatory Web address, http://www.japanpig.com, to remind visitors of its former identity.
emperor wrote: - like pep-pills taken by GIs during the vietnam and korean wars?
55 million Chinese women are illiterate Wed Jul 19, 3:20 AM ET
A total of 55 million Chinese women are illiterate, forcing them to live more disadvantaged lives than their male counterparts.
The figure was given by Zhao Shaohua, vice chairwoman of the All-China Women's Federation, while attending a conference on Asian women in Beijing, the Xinhua news agency reported.
"Women in rural areas who lead poor lives account for more than 60 percent of the total rural laborers," she said. "Besides, women's incomes are lower than men's and the gap is widening."
China has done considerable work in recent decades to spread primary education and eradicate illiteracy, but in a plan announced in March only promised free nine-year compulsory education for all rural students within two years.
Poor farmers faced with choosing whether to put their son or daughter through school often prefer educating sons, leading to a far higher illiteracy rate among women than men.
Previous reports have suggested the illiteracy rate among Chinese women is nearly 16 percent, while it is just six percent among males.
Under the plan rural parents would no longer have to pay tuition and would only have to pay the costs of books and supplies. But schools are poorly monitored and underfunded and excessive fees charged by them could still force parents to take their daughters out of school.
The fact that Chinese is one of the world's most complex writing systems also does not help.
China's spending on education amounted to just 2.79 percent of GDP in 2004, far less than the world average of 4.2 percent. It plans to increase spending to 4.0 percent of GDP within the next five years.
AssKissinger wrote:I guess they can fuck better than they can read.
American Oyaji wrote:AK,
Every mammal instinctually knows how to screw.
No one had to teach YOU to keep thrusting until something happened, did they?
American Oyaji wrote:AK,
Every mammal instinctually knows how to screw.
Buraku wrote:China on Thursday blasted the UN Security Council's failure to agree a statement condemning the killing of four UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, amid signs of a backlash on other key negotiations.
Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) - North Korea has ordered its soldiers and citizens to prepare for wartime mobilisation, a senior South Korean intelligence official said yesterday as the parties wait for China to decide whether it will take part in talks with the United States, Russia, Japan and South Korea to discuss ways to get North Korea back to the six-nations talks.
North Korea's Taepodong-2 test launch on July 4 has triggered a profound debate about Japan's future. Following the test, a major Japanese newspaper reported what appeared to be a trial balloon for a major strategic debate about adopting a preemptive strike option for Japan's Self Defense Forces if the country is ever threatened with a nuclear ballistic missile strike.
That's the real problem. I mean, space is a big enough place for stuff like this to float around, but if the space shuttle, ISS, a soyuz capsule or even an astronaut doing a spacewalk gets hit by bits of weather satellite coming the other way at a combined speed of 50000 km/h then they're royally fucked. Then we're talking Columbia many times over.Buraku wrote:The James Bond-style exercise left a several-hundred- meter-wide cloud of scrap metal floating around in space
The lower orbits are already becoming dangerous places from all the debris and lost tools floating around.
I would have thought aliens capable of travelling al this way will have invented some kind of deflector, so the only civilisation that space garbage really poses a threat to is the one without deflectors... us! :PAssKissinger wrote:That stuff protects us from aliens, dude. Now go back to talking to your plants.
[SIZE="1"]Dude, he's talking to a plant! [/SIZE]
SYDNEY, Australia - President Bush said in an interview broadcast Friday that he would be concerned about China's military if the country ever turned hostile, and he urged allied countries to keep their troops in Iraq.
Speaking to Australia's Sky News network in Washington ahead of a visit to Australia an annual meeting of Pacific Rim leaders, Bush addressed China's growing economy and military.
"My view of China is that they're internally focused to the extent that they want economic growth and vitality, they're externally focused in order to get the raw materials they need, but if they ever turn hostile, I would be concerned about the military," Bush said
Buraku wrote:Chinese Sub Pops Up Undetected in U.S. Navy Exercise
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/3540
Commentary by William Pesek
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Intelligence reports. Unemployment statistics. National-security estimates. Political polls. World leaders sure have their hands full digesting reams of data.
The next U.S. president should add this to his must-read list: the Federal Reserve's H.4.1 table.
Economists have long weeded through the New York Fed's weekly release. With a dry, wonky name such as ``Factors Affecting Reserve Balances of Depository Institutions and Condition Statement of Federal Reserve Banks,'' it's no wonder U.S. presidents aren't known to peruse its contents.
Yet it will tell the next leader -- be it Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama -- how willing foreigners are to continue financing the U.S.'s way of life. Alas, there are good reasons for the U.S. to learn how to live without Asia's money.
The great stampede out of dollar assets that many analysts predicted hasn't happened. Demand for U.S. debt has been quite resilient amid a sliding dollar and a widening credit crisis. Even problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven't yet precipitated a massive capital exodus.
The operative word is ``yet.'' The almost $10 billion drop in central-bank holdings of agency debt this month doesn't necessarily mean the flight is afoot. Yet Asia is anxiously awaiting news of how the U.S. handles troubles at government- sponsored mortgage-finance companies.
China, for example, holds $376 billion of long-term U.S. agency debt and, according to James McCormack, head of Asian sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings Ltd. in Hong Kong, most of it is in Fannie and Freddie assets. Fannie and Freddie aren't just too big to fail -- they're too geopolitical to fail.
Catastrophic Risk
``If the U.S. government allows Fannie and Freddie to fail and international investors are not compensated adequately, the consequences will be catastrophic,'' Yu Yongding, a former adviser to China's central bank, said last week. ``If it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the current international financial system.''
Even if Fannie and Freddie are bailed out, recent events mark the end of the U.S.'s financing arrangement as we know it. It's a reality for which the U.S. should now plan.
China alone will be a prickly customer to deal with. A conservative estimate would put China's U.S. agency holdings at 10 percent of its gross domestic product.
Say the U.S. opted not to repay investors on time and in full. How would China's 1.3 billion people, awash in post- Olympics confidence, respond to the wealthy U.S. leaving China with big losses? If the tables were turned, you can just imagine the public outcry for the U.S. to stop lending to China.
Asia Holds Mortgage
Those arguing the U.S. will hold its ground in these turbulent times ignore how dependent the U.S. is on Asia's money. It's often said that the U.S. built a large, productive economy over the years, and Asia holds the mortgage. Well, it's true.
It's also true that Asia has few alternatives. The magnitude of the region's trade surpluses leaves few options other than parking money in the most liquid securities and keeping currencies from rising into uncompetitive territory.
One alternative is euro assets, though diversifying out of the dollar has its risks. If investors got wind of big dollar holders such as Japan, China or Russia rushing into the euro, markets would plunge and leave central banks with major losses.
While this is a tale of co-dependency, the real issue is the extent to which the U.S. is reliant on foreign money.
The U.S. current-account deficit was $176.4 billion in the first quarter, compared with the average shortfall of $100 billion since 1993. That isn't the product of the U.S. supporting global growth; it's about Asia's money helping the U.S. live perilously beyond its means.
Fractured System
If Wall Street's woes worsen, Asia will need those reserves to ward off speculators. Even so, the dollar's gyrations over the last year will make Asians wary.
The Fed's interest-rate cuts weakened the dollar 7 percent against the euro and 5 percent against the yen over the last year, while Bear Stearns Cos.' demise dented confidence in American-style capitalism. Sovereign wealth funds that plunged billions of dollars into U.S. banks may have second thoughts.
For Obama or McCain, the challenge will be to repair a fractured U.S. financial system and to wean consumers off their habit of overborrowing. The process will be even harder as the U.S. finds itself less able to rely on financing from Asia.
How would McCain pay for tax cuts without Asia's money? How would Obama follow through on his protectionist rhetoric in a region on which the U.S. is so dependent?
All the talk from Obama or McCain about a strong America ignores how the U.S. is losing some economic-policy autonomy. Any move by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to restructure U.S. agency debt now has foreign-policy consequences and will need to be looked at through that prism.
There's no doubt the next U.S. leader will be a busy man. What's less in doubt is that he will have to manage with less financial help from Asia.
Weird Al?GuyJean wrote:Taro Toporific wrote:Who's the transexual in the video sequence of the Letterman show?
homesweethome wrote:What about cooling in the summer?
Just wondering.....?
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