So, this afternoon I was standing in my host’s 4th floor office, checking out a map of China, when I felt the building sway. Or did it? I asked the others in the office – no one else felt anything. I felt fine, so it really didn’t make sense that it could be a dizzy spell.
The “building is swaying” sensation continued off and on over the next few minutes.

Shortly after, the text messages began to come in.
Apparently, when you come from a earthquake prone zone, you don’t notice the small tremors, like those generated over a distance. I’m not from an earthquake prone zone. (The epicenter of the quake was about 1000 miles from here.)
We left shortly afterwards for Silk Street Market, a multi-story bazaar dealing everything from leather goods to silk scarves, jewelry, nicknacks, shoes, silk rugs. The sales girls were, too say the least, “enthusiastic” about making sales.
“Lady, you want a purse? Lady, you want a t-shirt? Specur price for you.”
“No thank you, I want car.”
“Car?”
“Audi”
“Oh.”
“Lady, I can get you car!”
“Lady, you want a camera?”
“No, thanks, I have a camera. See? Here – I take your picture.”
“No, no picture.”
“Thanks! See – I took your picture.”
I’m not sure they were as amused as I was. I left the more serious job of haggling to my Chinese “business manager”.
I’ve lots of photos, including the weird ass CCTV building currently under construction. Those will have to wait until I’m home though, as I’ve no way to crop and upload them on this laptop.
At any rate, to update everyone on my Beijing epicurean adventure: Saturday we dined on KFC, last night – pizza. We stopped for cheesecake this afternoon while out shopping, so I skipped supper.
Heh.
Nobody does world travel like a redneck.

Greetings all. Not much to report so far, other than it appears that the Brazilians were here before us, and taught the Chinese everything they know about driving.
Plus, my hosts took me to a market where I was able to purchase enough Kraft Dinner to last me for the week.

Or we keep our 14 year old besequined ribbon twirlers at home;

Come to think of it, it would make a great Olympic event of itself: try to carry a torch (or baton, or any object) 31 miles through a major city, smiling the whole time, while being assailed by an angry mob.
As I write this post the relay is barely half-way across London, and the event is degenerating into what looks like a rolling series of Reagan shootings – someone attacks the procession, 20 policemen jump on them, another one shouts Go! Go! Go! and the torch continues on its way.

Because it’s easy to send completely ineffective political messages on the backs of kids who didn’t get a vote on the venue. “Seldom has so much been seized from so few to accomplish so little.”
Not so easy a symbolic “closing of the ports to Chinese goods”.

Nov 5;

China’s biggest company, the state-owned oil giant PetroChina, has become the largest in the world and the first to exceed $1trillion (£500bn) in value after its shares almost trebled on their first day of trading in Shanghai.
The milestone, which saw PetroChina surpass Exxon Mobil, the US oil company, adds another notch to the belt of corporate China as it flexes its muscles on the global stage.

Dec. 1;

The newly floated oil giant PetroChina has lost a third of a trillion dollars in nominal value in just three weeks, plummeting to a fresh low yesterday as angst gripped the Shanghai stock market.
The benchmark CSI 300 index of Chinese stocks has dropped 18pc in November, the worst one-month fall in more than a decade. The bourse has tumbled 22pc since peaking in mid-October after a wild speculative boom that saw prices triple in a year – much like the final phase of Japan’s Nikkei frenzy in 1989. It now qualifies as an official “bear market”.
[…]
But US investor Warren Buffett earlier cashed in his minority holding for a 600pc gain of $3.5bn (£1.7bn), warning that the Shanghai boom had become unstable. The Shanghai market still remains expensive with an average price to earnings ratio of 55.

Joe Molner in the comments;

The Porchlight Projects in Ontario and Alberta are currently handing out free energy efficient light bulbs for citizens ostensibly to help lower the use of electricity to light up porches across the provinces.
The sponsors are:
Alberta Energy
City of Medicine Hat
EnCana Corporation
EnWin Utilities Windsor , Ont.
The Ontario Government
Ontario Power Authority
Ontario Trillium Foundation
Admittedly the project is a commendable and worthwhile and even educational, however I find some hypocracy swamping at least the Ontario portion of the project PORCHLIGHT.
You see, my little twist in beauty is MADE IN CHINA!
So the next time I see that liar Premier McGuinty stand up and bemoan manufacturing jobs going off shore from Ontario, someone should remind him to stop buying stuff for Ontario from CHINA!!!

Bindeez are from Australia. That’s really all you need to know.

This is a potentially worrying development. With all the espionage China engages in in the West it is very disturbing indeed to think that they could control something as sensitive as widely used disk storage.
I certainly hope this deal doesn’t go through. It would be very difficult to detect all the ways such products could be compromised if used in highly sensitive applications.

“Do you believe Prime Minister Harper is taking the right approach in his dealings with China?”
Poll on this page. Scroll down about 1/4 of the way.
“Another Poll Gone Horribly Wrong” Update

A contest at China E-Lobby;

What would have been a better way to spend the $50 million in Canadian taxpayer money that went to Communist China last year?

Remember – you enter here

A closer look at the banking situation in China;

In 2002, Chinese officials admitted that 25% of the loans written by the state owned banks were non-performing. Standard and Poors and a number of others said it was closer to 50%, and possibly more. Within the space of four years, the Chinese administration has revised its estimation of the rate of non-performing loans down to an average of about 12%. How can this be done so fast? I’m not really sure. We are, of course, talking about the writing down or otherwise accounting for of many hundreds of billions of dollars of bad loans. I assume that it’s due to the fact that most or all of the bad loans have been transferred to special “asset management” companies set up by the government. I suspect that the banks have been able to revise their non-performing loans (NPL) ratio down so quickly by performing a debt-to-equity swap with these holding companies. The article linked to immediately above believes the asset management companies have taken a chunk of the banks’ loans and issued them with 10 year bonds in return.

Read it all.
h/t

The Epoch Times published, first in the Chinese language (in November, 2004) and thereafter in many translated versions, a document called NINE COMMENTARIES ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY which subsequently became available on the internet. This document reviewed the history of the Communist Party of China, exposing the distortions which the Communist Government of the People’s Republic of China still propagates and defends – distortions which (sadly) have been parroted by students of China’s recent history in our own learned communities, in editorial commentary and in policy-making circles. The effect of this publication of the Nine Commentaries has been electric. By May 10, 2005, 1.3 million persons had publicly registered their resignations from the Chinese Communist Party. Every day, another 10,000 resignations are posted on this internet site. Banners and posters have begun to appear throughout China with news of these resignations, and discussions are taking place everywhere. A high price has been paid by many of the signatories – in whose ranks are many teachers, public officials professional people of many sorts.
These shocking events have caused the Central Chinese Communist Party School to rush cadres to each of the 58 Provinces of China to organize study groups and to secure re-commitments to the CCP. It appears that this campaign in reaction to the Nine Commentaries may have boomeranged, as it has brought greater publicity to their existence and given greater currency to the words of the commentaries.
Not the least astonishing feature of this story – and certainly the most disappointing to me — is the almost total neglect of it by our media.

Via China E-Lobby

OK, OK, that saying died a warranted death many years ago, but it fits, dammit. Gerry over at the National Citizens Coalition has graciously posted his op-ed column in the Globe & Mail (behind a subscription wall), where he asks Belinda if she intends to honor her signed pledge to oppose gag laws.
I find it encouraging that the Globe has it under “Top Stories,” don’t you?
You can view the pledge on Gerry’s blog.

A few items on Chinada today, sent by various readers;
Refusing to jump on the “Rah! Rah! Chinada!” bandwagon, is the head of the Toronto Dominion bank, according to this Globe & Mail item on Canadian banking investments in China;

TD boss Ed Clark says he has no interest in chasing the Chinese dragon, and is instead focusing his external growth ambitions on the U.S. market. Through its TD Waterhouse brokerage, TD once had a small presence in Hong Kong, but that has since been shuttered. The bank has no beachheads on the mainland.

According to the Globe, Canada is “missing the boat” – why, the Chinese economy is positively titanic!
You’d think that feminists nationwide would be holding Million Hundred Candle Vigils or something to protest the Martin government’s eagerness to fund abuse against Chinese women with their tax dollars….

[The United Nations Population Fund] works closely with Beijing in that country’s drive to keep birthrates low. And that, critics say, makes it complicit in the forced abortions, forced sterilizations and even infanticides committed daily in China. Without U.S. funding, what will UNFPA do? Well, lucky for them, Canada has stepped in with more money to help make sure UNFPA can continue its work in China and elsewhere.

Read it all at the Western Standard (free registration required).
Speaking of population control, China executes more people than all other countries combined – not surprising, given their long list of capital offenses. But this is progress! According to the Times, their Supreme Court is taking a dim view on those courts known for executing “too many” innocent Chinese. As they say, “better late than ……ah, nevermind”.
Add your own in the comments. Items relating directly to China, only, please.

China E-Lobby picks up another acquisition by the Communist Chinese that has gone virtually unnoticed by the Canadian press. Or perhaps they do notice, but the subject is too close to Liberal Party vulnerabilities to risk mentioning too loudly.

CNPC buys up part of another Canadian oil firm: Meanwhile, the Communists continued their poaching of Canadian-owned resources (third and third items) with the Communist-owned China National Petroleum Corporation’s “$1.4 billion acquisition of the Ecuadorean oil assets of Canada’s EnCana Corp. this week” (Washington Times).

Add this to Sinopec’s 40% stake in a $4.5 billion oilsands project and the China National Offshore Oil Corp. purchase of 17% stake in MEGEnergy, as well as their buy out last month of Calgary-based PetroKazakhstan. They’re also eyeing Saskatchewan uranium.
So…. I wonder how long before a troubled Ontario Hydro is privatized to permit investment in “new infrastructure” by our new bestest frends?
A question those in the oppostiion benches might start posing, don’t you think?