BEIJING —Using technology to get the most out of your workers, it seems, is a goal shared by employers around the world. From Silcon Valley to Shanghai, punch cards and time clocks are being upgraded with biometric tracking, fingerprint recognition and facial scanning to avoid fraud such as so-called “buddy clocking.” But now, Bejing Daily […]
Tag: china
-Analysis- BEIJING — A recent United Nations report predicted that the year 2017 will be the turning point for China’s demography. After reaching its peak that year, the population will start to drop. And yet at the same time, as a recent survey of China’s State Council showed, each major Chinese city has plans to […]
BEIJING — Like others, as a child I used to daydream about taking a shovel and hunting through our yard for priceless treasure buried from ancient times. What I never would have imagined is that such an act can get you into serious trouble — even if it’s done on your own property. It’s a […]
BEIJING — A few days ago, a video showing Zhou Huzhen, the board chairman of Hebei College of Science and Technology, captured the attention of the Internet. The inevitable existential questions followed: Are Chinese universites bona fide educational institutes? Or are they really there just to maintain the power of the status quo? Zhou Huzhen […]
-Analysis- BUENOS AIRES — We’re now very much in the “hangover” stage, the proverbial “morning after,” as countries all over the world face painful adjustments now that the party years — when China’s booming economy fed a seemingly insatiable appetite for outside products — are finally over. While the pain may not be as intense […]
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Discount Communism
In 1995, Chairman Mao was no longer such a hot commodity: If you bought one bust of the communist leader at this Beijing market, you got one free.
Law enforcement agencies that bring cases to court, and the administrators who act as court overseers, have far more power and influence than judges, who are often pressured to render false verdicts. How it works, and why the system needs overhauling.
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China Reflections: From Mao To Xi
NEW YORK — For some years now, I have been observing China from a distance, never going back to the country that I called my third home for many years. Back then, during my long stays in China, I learned a lot about the country and its culture. In the past, foreigners had to travel […]
BEIJING — After enjoying years of double-digit growth, China’s luxury car market has screeched to an unprecedented slowdown with a growth rate of less than 6% for the first half of 2015. But there is one notable exception to the slowdown: the Beijing Benz Automotive Co. (BBAC) — the joint venture between the Chinese state-owned […]
-Analysis- BEIJING — China has been woefully behind its Western counterparts in the use and sharing of big data. A recent proposal by the government’s State Council aims to make up lost ground, promoting the collectioin and sharing of data between government departments and a gradual opening up of public data resources to improve social […]
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The Worst Place In China To Do Business
In the provinces of Northeast China, the planned economy of the Mao Zedong era are still firmly in place.
As the lifting of sanctions appears to move closer to reality, business and government leaders from leading economies are eager to restore trading ties with Tehran
A pregnant Chinese woman must abort her baby, or see her husband fired. After first changes to family planning laws, sweeping reform is now urgently needed.
Guangming Daily, Aug. 25, 2015 Even as it dominates headlines around the world, the Chinese stock market crash is getting notably scant coverage at home. After a record drop in share prices at week’s opening, the front page of national state-run newspaper Guangming Daily made no mention at all of the stock exchange and accompanying […]
From the SARS health crisis and high-speed train crash to the latest explosion in Tianjin, Chinese officials don’t understand damage control or how to communicate with the public.
BLACK MONDAY IN CHINA Photo: Zhang Yixi/Xinhua/ZUMA Chinese stocks plunged 8.5% today after their worst trading day since the beginning of the 2007 financial crisis. What Xinhua described as “Black Monday” saw the Shanghai Composite index’s entire gains for the year wiped out after weeks of free fall, despite strong government intervention. The crisis intensified […]
A BBC documentary shows what happens when intense Chinese instructors meet a classroom of UK teenagers accustomed to some degree of autonomy. A culture clash ensues. What China can learn from the experiment.
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The Gift Of Music
My grandson has quite the collection of exotic instruments that I’ve brought to him from my travels. That includes this Chinese wind instrument called sheng, made of several reed pipes.
This week’s currency setbacks for the world’s second-largest economy have created a financial ripple effect across the globe, with stock market nosedives and raw material prices dropping to dangerously low levels.
Hundreds of thousands of Asian university graduates in both the the U.S. and China are opting for startups and business ventures, not finance or industries, as the path to riches.
GREECE APPROVES THIRD BAILOUT After what the newspaper Kathimerini describes as “a tempestuous night of debate,” Greek lawmakers this morning approved the deal reached with international lenders for a third Greek bailout. It will now go to the Eurozone’s finance ministers, who are due to meet later today, and all eyes will focus on the […]
ISIS CLAIMS BAGHDAD ATTACK ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack in Baghdad that killed at least 76 people and wounded 212 this morning. A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up inside the popular Jamila food market in Sadr City, a predominantly Shia neighborhood. It represents one of the biggest acts of violence in […]
GUNFIRE AT FERGUSON ANNIVERSARY MARCH Police officers in Ferguson, Mo., shot and wounded a young man who reportedly fired his gun at them during an otherwise peaceful protest march to commemorate Sunday’s one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of officer Darren Wilson. The suspect, who reportedly unleashed a “remarkable amount of gunfire,” […]
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Portugal In China
In central China’s Xi’an, we spent a memorable evening at a fancy hotel listening to traditional Chinese music. (The lady in the foreground was playing the guzheng, the one in the back the pipa). But what I remember most had nothing to do with the music: We were sitting next to Portugal’s then-President Mario Soares, […]
Though now a bonafide global power, the Chinese mentality still struggles with questions of self-confidence. It’s time for the ex “Sick Man of Asia” to embody its true strength.
For China’s State-Owned Enterprises, new reforms are aimed at linking senior management pay to the company’s performance.
-OpEd- PARIS — The late 1990s anti-globalization movement that protested against summits like the World Trade Organization in Seattle and G8 in Genoa used the slogan: “Another world is possible.” Is this “other world” now being constructed before our eyes by the BRICS, as the emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa […]
-Analysis- BEIJING — Included among Fortune“s recently-published Global 500 rankings of the top corporations worldwide are 106 companies from China, a new record for the country, and now second only to the United States in terms of representation on the prestigious list. But it’s imporant to note that the Global 500 rankings only reflect revenues […]
BEIJING — Wang Lin is one of China’s best-known (and self-proclaimed) qigong masters, drawing in the rich and famous with his spiritual healing methods and such proclaimed feats as chopping off snakes’ heads and bringing them back to life. This figure who many believe to be a simple charlatan has attracted senior public officials, movie […]
With the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and end sanctions, a look at the energy economics of this new world order. With politics everywhere, as always.
Photo: Ai Weiwei via Instagram TSIPRAS FACES SYRIZA REBELS As Greek deputies prepare to vote for a second time on a set of reforms needed for bailout talks to continue, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has lashed out at critics within his own ruling party. In comments to colleagues, Tsipras reportedly accused Syriza dissenters of “hiding […]
A key component of the growing “Chinese-style” international capitalism.
Governments around the world — democracies and dictatorships alike — often change school textbooks and courses to fit their own agendas. From US history to Syrian schoolchildren, here are some textbook controversies in the news recently: EGYPT: TEXTBOOK REVOLUTION Egyptian news site Mada Masr reports that the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and […]
Woefully under-regulated and sometimes abjectly illegal, waste incineration plants across China are raising resident hackles and, worse, releasing unknown levels of toxins into the air.
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Dairy In China, A Matter Of Distrust
BEIJING — In recent years, we have seen numerous Chinese dairy firms sign cooperation deals with and make acquisitions of foreign dairy companies. Such a strategy has thus helped introduce advanced technology into the Chinese market, and offer the advantages of low-priced international milk resources that allows China to compete against foreign brands’ milk-powder baby […]
From Facebook to Google, Baidu to VKontakte, the world’s biggest technology companies talk about their singular dedication to their users. Yet the road to becoming a global tech titan is inevitably lined with hard choices and conflicts of interest. Here are five prominent controversies where companies are accused of ceding to questionable demands of the […]
China’s President Xi Jinping is featured three times on today’s front page of Chinese state-owned newspaper People’s Daily. Xi arrived in Ufa, Russia on Wednesday for a flurry of diplomatic activity ahead of the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summits. The Chinese leader is pictured shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — The picture is not pretty: drug-related crime is spreading and deepening throughout China. The latest National Narcotics Control Report notes that the problem increasingly involves new types of synthetic substances, even as China has stepped up its efforts to effectively combat the trafficking and use of illegal drugs. Drug-related crimes used to […]
Photo: Panayiotis Tzamaros/ZUMA GREECE TALKS RESTART IN BRUSSELS Eurozone leaders and Finance Ministers are meeting today in Brussels to reopen negotiations on the fate of cash-strapped Greece, two days after a resounding “No” to austerity from Greek voters. Angela Merkel declared that “time is running out” and gave Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras hours to […]
Since ascending to the papacy two years ago, Pope Francis has been quietly and not-so-quietly leaving his mark on the world, pursuing a number of ambitious foreign policy goals. His nine-day trip to Latin America that begins Sunday will be mostly focused on pastoral issues. But from Cuba to Vietnam, the Middle East and environmental […]