Meng Hongwei, Interpol Chief’s final text to his wife, a knife. The meaning is clear that he is in terrible trouble. The Chinese says to wait for his phone call.
There are few international posts that China has taken. One of the most controversial ones is assigning a Chinese person to lead Interpol. Meng Hongwei 孟宏伟, Interpol Chief, is now missing in China, whereabouts and reason for his disappearance, unknown. China is well known to have a terrible human rights record towards both Chinese and foreign people within China. There is no openness for free speech, nor is the rule of law universally applied.
Chongqing, China, 重庆，Shapingba District, 沙坪坝区 Google Maps in Chinese
A Chinese friend randomly sent me her GPS coordinates. She was on a highway, deep within Sichuan province, just outside of Chongqing. Because Chongqing, with a population greater than the whole population of Canada, 30.1M people (2015), is so huge, this meant that she was just on the outskirts of the city. Mapping her GPS coordinates, between Google and Baidu maps, was, as usual, confusing. Here is the exercise.
The original coordinates sent to me were 29.656019,106.444153, or 29°39’21.7″N 106°26’39.0″E, 7PX8MC4V+CM. 沙坪坝区 Shapingba My Windows PC returned this URL: https://www.google.com/maps/place/29°39’21.7″N+106°26’39.0″E/@29.650779,106.3959376,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x0!8m2!3d29.656019!4d106.444153?hl=zh-CN
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Chongqing, China, Shapingba District: Mapping Exercise
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Chinese QQ QZone’s photo image display javascript gets in the way of saving large images
On Chinese QQ QZone people have walls similar to FB. QZone uses an image display script in your browser. If the image is large when you right click and you can save the image as .PSB or .JPG, but it will not render in your browser, as .PSB is an unknown file type. I believe QQ’s javascript manipulated the image so you can zoom and move around, but this gets in the way if you want to see the original pic and zoom for yourself.
脱掉, 杜德偉 Alex To, Youtube video, lyrics. This is a popular song on Douyin 抖音.
作词：廖莹如
作曲：Frank Farian
China, for domestic consumption, recently decided to reclassify rainbow trout and related species as salmon. Once filleted and placed on a plate the two look very similar, but are completely different fish.
Salmon are born in fresh water but then live a good majority of their lives in the ocean. Salmon only return to fresh water to breed and then die. Rainbow trout live their whole lives in fresh water. These two are completely different fish.
There is a lot of fraud in China. The articles hint that much of what is sold in China as salmon has for years been rainbow trout, grown in aquaculture farms in Qinghai Province, far, far from the ocean. This fraud cheats Chinese people.
Infrequently there comes an essay from a high level Chinese government official that somewhat departs from the Chinese Communist Party line of thought. Authors of these essays must be very careful as such articles could, now or in the future, be used to investigate and or incarcerate. A fine balance is always required. This 2017.07.21 article by Luo Jianbo, the head of the China policy centre at the Central Party School, walks this fine line, and with eloquent writing. I hope that this essay will not be taken in the wrong way and result in his removal, or worse.
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Luo Jianbo: China’s Savior mentality is unacceptable, Essay
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Cracking the China Conundrum, Yukon Huang, 2017, book review
Ch 1
-growth model, pp 8
-unbalanced growth: low personal consumption, high investment -> huge trade surplus -> risk to lt growth
-uneven growth due to urbanization and regional differences
-personal consumption cannot grow without increased govt expenditures in social services to supplement personal consumption
-property bubble: most of debt is public, emerging private property market still finding balance
-excessive lending for huge growth: banks can pass poor decisions to state -> no risk of collapse
-competition in China also depends on local govt entities
Ch 3
orgins of Growth model
-p 42, late 1990s privatization of housing -> housing worth more that what they paid -> wealth effect spurred consumption
-wealth gap is growing, rural vs urban
-issues:
1. unbalanced growth
2. debt during economic slowdown
3. external trade, FX, FDI
Chinese character Ying, used in names, is not part of the standard Chinese character set. This would be a huge issue in China. Ying has a second, rising tone, or Ying2
Silly me I thought that the standard Chinese character set was, well, standard. In reality it is not inclusive to all Chinese characters. Friend David tipped me off to this article.
The Economist journo Zhang Ying wrote that her given name “Ying” had given her trouble in China. This character is not part of the Chinese character set for Ubuntu, nor can I find it online at MDBG.net
My friend from China is going to visit Australia as a tourist and wishes to also visit New Zealand. She owns her own business. This makes it very difficult to get a New Zealand tourist visa, as thee is a requirement for business owners:
If you own your own company, we require the following:
- Business licence with capital verification report
- Statement about the business scope and the number of employees Recent business tax returns with income statement Recent bank documents showing daily business transactions
如为私营业主，须提供以下材料：
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Chinese Tourist to New Zealand: Visa Requirements for Business Owners
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