Sunday, January 31, 2010

The Chinese Finger trap

Hi all,

Sorry, went with a sort of cheesy title. I have a few different stories about China that I'd like to share and thought I'd put them together. I often lament my sense that Americans are a little complacent about their place in the world. China is rapidly modernizing, so are several other countries. I don't want this to be taken as a reason to 'attack China' (which, would be almost impossible, since who would pay for it--the Chinese have already lent us trillions of dollars for our two wars, they're not going to lend us any to attack them. By the same token, China is not interested in attacking us, since they really just want us to stay an open market and to pay them back their money some day.)

1. China has declared the economic crisis over as far as they are concerned. What this meant for them was single-digit (8.7%) growth instead of double digit (originally projected at 10+%). It's tough to get jobs in some sectors there, but as we see in following stories, they're creating jobs at an amazing rate.

2. Despite difficulties at Copenhagen, China is moving forward with clean energy technology--soon to eclipse Western countries as the single largest producer. They are also moving aggressively to find ways to finance the expensive conversion, provide incentives, and as a result, solar panels are popping up all over the place. Obviously, they could improve their environmental standards, but I'm glad they're making progress--when will we???

3. This was just an interesting piece by Brookings about where US and Chinese interests meet in Pakistan. A really useful insight into the dynamics of the AF-PAK challenge.

Enjoy your reading!
Best,
Alena

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