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Joshua Wong of the group Scholarism is 17 years old and just entering college. His arrest and detention of 40 hours for stepping into a government building area led to increased protests. In 2012 Wong was part of protests that led to the withdrawal of a "patriotic classes" plan for Hong Kong schools. Asked what Hong Kong would be like in 10 years, he says, "there will be universal suffrage." The age of the protesters is one remarkable aspect of these protests, as they are not just young, but very young. And this should give Beijing pause, as this is China's next generation. And what seemed right in your own day may not be right around the corner as time passes, as Mr. Jinping and his revolutionary veteran father experienced, struggled with, and overcame in their own lives because of the tolerance of others.

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Taiwan's president Ma Ying-jeou calls on Beijing to allow true democracy in Hong Kong. For the first time in the debate on Hong Kong and democracy Mr. Ma challenged the idea that democracy is not suited to China. He told the Taipei National Day audience "Now that the 1.3 billion people on the mainland have become moderately wealthy, they will ofcourse wish to enjoy greater democracy and rule of law. Such a desire has never been a monopoly of the West, but is the right of all humankind." Ma called on China to experiment using the pragmatic sense shown by Deng in adopting capitalism- "Thirty years ago, When Deng Xiaoping was pushing for reform and opening up in the mainland, he famously proposed letting some people get rich first. So why could'nt they do the same thing in Hong Kong, and let some people go democratic first."

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Wang Xiaofang is a former bureaucrat and writer who documents real life stories of corruption in China's bureaucracy by using fictional characters. A similiar approach by another Chinese writer Mo Yan in literary novels led to him being awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. Censorship in China has not affected writings using fictional characters and literary novels of this kind. It may be seen by the government as a way to let the public ventilate some of its frustrations with corrupt bureaucrats and communist party officials in China. It also shows how widespread the problem has become and is a serious matter for the future of the Communist Party. Wang tells the Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival after he entered the official bureaucracy he felt the desire "not to be spiritually crippled." Wang is the author of the Civil Servant's Notebook, which is described as a guide for the 1.4 million people taking the civil service exams in China each year. This suggests that China's new leadership sees this as one of the ways to give right direction to young people joining the civil service, and comes with a new focus on corruption. Wang is also part philosopher in his musings when he says China has lost its traditional culture and cannot adopt western culture, and so it remains confused at a crossroad. This leads to his idea of operators in China's official circles as people who have lost their faith and spiritual home. ...

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At the end of the 2012 Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Xi Jinping assumes the post of chief of the Communist Party of China. He also assumes the post of head of the Central Military Commission, which makes him head of the armed forces of China. Li Keqiang, the incoming prime minister, is the only member of the party Politburo Standing Committee selected by current president Hu Jintao. Jinping is supported by Jiang Zemin, former president. Four of the other five members are older party leaders placed in these positions by former president Jiang Zemin, who succeeded Deng Xiaoping and started China's three decade long modernization. The seven member Standing Committee governs China by consensus. This will limit the room for change, especially as the other five members are in their mid 60-s and favor the status quo. Xi Jinping is 59, Li Keqiang is 57. Xi becomes president in the spring of 2013, and Li becomes prime minister to run the government ministries. The optimism for Li who is the best educated of China's leaders, holding a doctorate in economics from Peking University, and an early interest in constitutional law, is restrained by the institutional arrrangements that favor the status quo. Some experts in China see the new leaders likely to make major changes only if confronted by a crisis. In his live television acceptance speech Xi focussed on China's "rejuvenation," with improvements in the party bureaucracy, tackling corruption, and improving the lives of ordinary people, for better schooling, jobs, incomes, health care, better housing conditions, social security and the environment. From the rush to modernize and build infrastructure attention is now shifting to creating better conditions for the Chinese people....

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The situation in China with recent rural migrants shown to be different from the migrants from rural areas in the earlier phase of development after the opening in 1990 under Deng. The overnight eviction of recent rural area migrants from Beijing, referred in official documents as "low-end population" leaves this segment of the population (about 90 million) facing uncertain future. The previous generation of rural migrants were seen as more stable as they could farm and had connections to the villages and rural areas. The new migrants lack connection to villages and have little experience working on farms. They were born since 1980, and are seen in party documents as a new generation of migrants. The earlier generation had seen the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and memories of poverty, and were focused on basic needs.  The new generation of migrants is more dissatisfied, has more education but of lower quality, some were left behind in rural areas by parents who migrated to cities, and men in this group face a lack of women partners because of the one child system and decline in female births. Two thirds of these migrants are unmarried and the men lack the income to pay what is called a reverse dowry of having an apartment and a car to attract women for marraige. The governing party sees this new group of $90 million which has no access to subisidized education and health care under the resident "hukou" system as a source of instability in urban areas of China. ...

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A new rail link would connect western Tibet with Kathmandu, Nepal. This is part of deals signed in Beijing between Nepal and China during visit of Nepal's prime minister Prasad Oli to China.

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Analysts say the second phase of building China's strategic petroleum reserve will begin in the first half of 2011. This addition is expected to be for 168 million barrels, adding to the 100 million barrels in the reserve. China International Capital Corporation, a Beijing investment bank, says this stocking up and the rising inventories at Chinese oil companies could increase oil prices by $6.50 a barrel in 2011 and 2012. Existing Chinese reserves cover only 12 days of demand, compared to the 103 million barrels or 40 days for the US strategic petroleum reserve. This increases the uncertainty in world oil markets. A daily addition of 150,000 barrels a day would meet one third of the expected second phase in 2011, and this amounts to about 10% of the International Energy Agency's forecast increase in global demand for 2011. At the same time if oil gets too expensive, China could decide to wait for a more opportune time to build stocks.

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President Trump says the U.S. could permanently cut off funding to the WHO and revoke U.S. membership if the group does not make changes in the way it operates showing a lack of transparency in its operations and dependence on China. Mr. Trump says the WHO has shown "alarming lack of independence" from Beijing. In a direct letter to the Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus -"it is clear the missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly to the world." Mr. Trump gave the WHO 30 days to make "major substantive improvements" or he would cut funding and reevaluate U.S. membership. Mr. Trump said in the letter that the WHO ignored early reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan, failed to share information with other countries. The U.S. which has the largest contribution by far to the WHO was unable to influence the organization. The U.S. has influence in finance at the IMF, the World Bank, and in the tech world, yet this did not extend to important matters of public health. It could be that public health had become an afterthought in the rush to prominence in tech and finance. The contributions of the U.S. exceed anything any other country has made. During the 2 years 2018 and 2019 the U.S. contributed $893 million, according to WHO records, cited in the WSJ. During this period the contribution of China was $86 million with an additional $50 million added recently. The $2 billion Mr. Xi said China will contribute is incorrectly reported as for the WHO, it is what China says it will use to support Africa and other countries in the world to fight the pandemic. ...

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The Kashmir Valley and the Kashmir region had a multiethnic community of Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in the hundreds of years before 1947. It all disappeared after the cabinet meeting of Liaquat Ali Khan on 12th September 1947 when the plan to attack Kashmir using armed Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces was approved. By the end of that year the surprise invasion had split Kashmir into two regions and led to a large scale dispersal of Sikhs, Hindus and other ethnic communities. This BBC report shows how this happened and how it changed a once peaceful region with a multiethnic society. Till the 15th century this region was Hindu and Buddhist with influences of Tibetan Buddhism and a center of creativity for Sanskrit culture and language. It changed with the Afghan and Persian invasions by 1580 and conversion to Islam of some of the Hindu population. By 1700 the Mughal empire decline and Afghan, Durrani dynasties ruled till about 1800 when the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh included Kashmir in the Sikh Empire based in Lahore, Punjab. This lasted under British patronage of the Dogra dynasty of Sikhs till 1947. In the 1901 Census of the British Indian Empire, the population of the princely state of Kashmir was 2,905,578. Of these 2,154,695 were Muslims, 689,073 Hindus, 25,828 Sikhs, and 35,047 Buddhists. The Muslim population was not homogenous and contained many tribes and the Gilgit Baltistan region was Shia Muslim, the Kashmir Valley Sunni Muslim and the mountainous regions had Pathans and many other tribes. This is why the region may have had Sikh and British rule for 150 years with even the Muslim communities existing with many different sub religions and living in amulti racial multi ethnic fabric that was upset by the invasion from the newly created state of Pakistan based in Islamabad using Pathan tribesmen and supporting military forces. What changed this was that after Kashmir was split in two by this invasion, China entered the northern border region of Kashmir called Aksai Chin and parts of Ladakh by building roads in 1956-57 and the occupation by China of this region including Tibet thousands of miles from Beijing in a remote region expansion by Communist China. ...

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The most alarming report is that from researchers at Peking University Health Sciences Center in Beijing, which shows 10 years of data on lead poisoning. Its conclusion: About 34% of children in China have blood levels that exceed the WHO limit of 100 micrograms per 1 litre of blood. A whole generation of children may be compromised. To avoid being noticed factories that have toxic byproducts or emissions are being setup in the countryside. Lead products are added to herbal products that are sold by weight to make them weigh more. It is regularly added to plastics and vinyl to make it temperature resistant. Once in the human bloodstream lead mimics other substances like calcium and zinc and iron and binds to sites in the brain intended for calcium disrupting brain cells leading to ireversible brain impairment. See the article in August 2, 2007 NYT, about the recall of 1 million Mattel toys, Elmos and Big Birds, for lead detected in them. Note that Mattel's monitoring system did not catch this, it was caught by a retailer....

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On December 29th 2007 just before the new year 2008 the year of the Beijing Olympics a predicition that sooner or later, sometime soon maybe after the Olympics the stock market in China which is running at some 65-75 time earnings in Shanghai and Shenzen is going to blow up. Its a facade of an orderly equity market which it isn't. The state control many of the stocks and how the stock market operates, good information on companies is scarce, some of the earnings and the investments of companies are in the stock market itself, and not many shares actually change hands as government held companies or other companies have large holdings. Without good accounting who knows if the earnings are not inflated. There are very few alternative investments as savings accounts yield less than inflation and Chinese laws do not permit investing abroad so all this money is flooding the stock markets and it keeps going up so there isn't the situation where stocks go up and down as in a normal market.

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With 121 medals the U.S. team did better than in any Olympics except 1984. Britain did extremely well, and the Australians were overestimated. China did not do as well as in the Beijing Olympics, which was expected. The British investment in training athletes has paid off since the London Olympics, getting 67 medals.

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Media accounts have given so much attention to the Nixon Feb. 1972 visit to China that most people may be unaware that this was just an important yet small beginning. The significance of what happened after 1972 is not fully understood. In 1973 the US liasion Office was setup in Beijing and China's liasion office in Washington DC.  Beyond this not much happened. Why? In 1972 election year the Watergate scandal started in June of that year only 4 months after the Nixon China visit. Nixon was too engaged with fighting impeachment that there was not much followup to the visit to China. In 1974 Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford became president. Till Carter became president in 1976 and in 1977 negotiations began to upgrade relations with premier Deng Xiaoping visiting the US in 1979. In China too a lot was happening. Mao was hospitalized in 1972 during Nixon's visit to China, the reason for the urgency on the Chinese side. In 1976 within a few months first premier Chou en lai and then chairman Mao passed away. A power struggle led to the head of the Military Commission Deng taking control. It was not till 1977 under Jimmy Carter 5 years after 1972 that China began full normalization, gained diplomatic recognition as the People's Republic of China and trade, cultural contacts were started.   ...

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BYD shares have fallen sharply as sales of its gasoline powered cars have declined in the Chinese market, declining by 43% from the high by Feb. 8, 2012. Part of the problem is that sales have shifted to foreign brands. BYD pushed ahead with developing electric car technologies, but the market appears to be moving in the direction of gasoline-electric hybrid cars, in which the Japanese manufacturers have the lead. BYD sold very basic cars at the low end of the price range. In 2009 and 2010 the government provided incentives with reduced sales tax for cars with small engines and subsidized sales in rural areas, which helped BYD sales. These program were phased out. In 2011 restrictions on cars went into effect for Beijing, with license plates for the municipal region reduced by two thirds, to limit the automobile congestion in the city. The license plates were distributed using a lottery system., This further shifted purchases to the higher price end made by foreign brands. BYD now sees the future sales potential in hybrid gasoline-electric cars and has changed its strategy....

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This report in the WSJ gives a detailed profile of Liu He, who as vice premier and top regulator is now a top economic official in charge of the financial system and the industrial sector. The appointment will be confirmed at the annual meeting of China's legislature in March 2018. Liu He is a classmate of Jinping at Beijing's Middle School 101, went to Renmin University for a degree in Industrial Economics, and studied at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. As the superregulator and overseeing the central bank, Liu He's team has set the goal of bringing financial risks in the Chinese economy under control in 3 years. This team also setup the 2018 economic blueprint that made "Xi Thought" the guiding principles for running China's economy. Financial risks in China's economy from the high debt to GDP ratio which worsened after the 2008 financial crisis and higher lending practices, are seen as a threat to the economy. Policy now is focused on stabilizing the economy and setting a long term path to slower but sustained growth, so that the entire country can share in the benefits of modernization that the coastal regions and parts of the country in the east have experienced during a period of rapid growth. Even the quashing of term limits for presidentcould be seen in the light of this economic blueprint as financial risks could lead to other serious problems if a stable path for the economy is not set and followed over the next decade. As part of this effort Xi Jinping has focused his efforts on corruption to improve perception of the party in the country. Liu He is the main economic official speaking for Jinping at Davos Forum. Another member of the circle advising Jinping is Wang Quishan, who has helped run the anti-corruption campaign. Both Liu He and Wang are expected to handle the future relationship with the U.S. Liu He's policy ideas are for strengthening the state sector with mega mergers, closing less profitable competitors, reducing industrial overcapacity, and making the remaining companies stronger and more profitable. This includes making firms more efficient, better run and more profitable- in the words of the economic blueprint to make "state capital stronger, better and bigger."   ...