There needs to be a fine balance point between sharing personal information on the internet and privacy concerns. I am a private person and thus bias towards not sharing personal information on the internet. Once information goes out to the World Wide Web I know that it will be propagated and disseminated at will, far beyond any one country or individual’s control. Once out, there is no reeling it back in. Facebook is testing this fine line by allowing third party application developers to save the personal information of their clientele. They allow personal information to be shared by default. That’s too much for me. I’ll follow the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s lead and block this privacy breach, and I think you should as well.
Chinese guards are everywhere, but were very strict after 6-4
Life after the 6-4 killings was quite different. While martial law was declared some weeks before 6-4, I really did not see much change in my life. Post 6-4, security was heightened both inside my campus as well as outside on the street. For a couple of months I personally felt the burden of watchful eyes and a sense that you really had to be careful what you did, what you said (outside the campus), where you went and when, and I was not even part of the protest. It was like living under the stereotypical communist regime, in contrast to the freedom of pre 6-4.
Chinese consumer will not easily become a nation of spenders
Please bear with me for just a moment. So the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US has precipitated a global credit crisis, where banks cease or curtail new lending and call in outstanding commercial and personal loans. Overdrawn Americans lose their houses to the banks and reduce spending. Companies cannot expand without loans, reduce their business, and lay off employees. US unemployment rates skyrocket and consumers put the brakes on spending. This effect goes around the world, precipitating reduced global spending. China and other predominantly export oriented countries get hit hard. Their factories lay off workers and close. It seems all is not economically well in the world.
