Chinese Economics Thread

P

PanAsian

Major
Better late than never, let's see if this actually makes a difference.

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China to Conduct Probe of Faked Air Pollution Data, Xinhua Says
4:58 AM EDT
April 2, 2015

China’s environmental protection watchdog will launch a two-year probe to root out falsified air quality data, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Some local governments make monitoring stations fabricate or tamper with air quality data to help meet national pollution standards, Xinhua reported, citing Environmental Protection Vice Minister Wu Xiaoqing on Wednesday. Fake data “severely compromises” the credibility of the government, Wu is cited as saying.
The central government has placed pressure on local governments to meet strict pollution reduction targets as it seeks to stem public discontent over dirty water and air pollution. President Xi Jinping pledged in March at the annual session of the National People’s Congress to punish violators of the nation’s environmental laws with an “iron hand.”
The environmental protection ministry told provincial governments last year to cut air pollutants by 5%-25% by 2017, compared with 2012 levels. China will target more “key” pollutants in 2016 under its next five-year plan, the country’s top planning document, according to officials at the environmental protection ministry.
The Chinese government started including data on pollutants smaller than 2.5 micrometers, considered the most harmful to human health, in its air quality monitoring in 2012, only after the U.S. embassy in Beijing had been broadcasting the pollutant levels. Ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing in November, authorities began blocking the U.S. embassy feed as smog levels rose.
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Blackstone

Blackstone

Brigadier
Equation said:
Racist and discrimination by one stupid Starbucks employee who is apparently doesn't know anything about China.:mad:

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Ignorant? Oh yeah! Wrongheaded? Definitely. But, racist? Nope, not enough evidence. The bottom line is let's not ascribe racism to a simple case of boorish behavior, unless there's evidence to the contrary.
 
K

kyanges

Junior Member
Blackstone said:
Ignorant? Oh yeah! Wrongheaded? Definitely. But, racist? Nope, not enough evidence. The bottom line is let's not ascribe racism to a simple case of boorish behavior, unless there's evidence to the contrary.
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That's true. So far the story only shows that a Starbucks employee acted solely on their assumptions based on what they thought a customer's ethnicity was, before the customer even had a chance to say anything. Definitely need more evidence to assert racism.
 
Equation

Equation

Lieutenant General
Blackstone said:
Ignorant? Oh yeah! Wrongheaded? Definitely. But, racist? Nope, not enough evidence. The bottom line is let's not ascribe racism to a simple case of boorish behavior, unless there's evidence to the contrary.
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Boorish behavior derived from racism. That perpetrator did not even talk to them like a human being. He just assume and took the position and action that they are Chinese spies without proof of evidence. The definition of racism is not as black and white.
 
AssassinsMace

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
I guess it depends on what's your definition of racism. People say Asians are racist for not smiling to them. This comes from the whole Korean store complaints back in the early 90s. I have never heard anyone say it's not racism. How is not smiling an act against someone? If someone of another race doesn't smile, is that racism? Never heard it called racism. So which one is more racist... not smiling or automatically assuming because of someone's ethnicity, you must be a criminal spying for China?

There was an article in Slate magazine about a month ago charging Asians were racist because they did nothing to support the Black Lives Matter protests. That's not true because I've seen pictures of Asians and Asian organizations participating in the nationwide protests. So doing nothing is now racist. I totally missed any coverage of the Chinese New Year parade in San Francisco this year but there was suppose to be protest at the parade over this. Ironic because in SF several elderly Asians have been severely injured or killed by muggers on the street targeted because of their ethnicity. Some of these acts were caught by security cameras. Very brutal how these elderly people were attacked. There was a charge of racism because all the attacks in the areas where these crimes happened were only to Asians. They said that wasn't racism because it was about robbery not hate. Racial profiling isn't racism? Korean store owners following people around a store isn't racial profiling and racism as charged? And no one is doing anything about how Asians are being targeted by muggers. Isn't that racism for doing nothing?
 
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D

delft

Brigadier
getready said:
The U.S.
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of Britain earlier this month for its participation in the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has put the spotlight on a set of questions that have dogged policymakers and economists for years: Who is in charge of global economic governance? Who sets and manages the rules? And should they be set multilaterally?

Given China’s controversial lending to countries with murky track records — not only in terms of good governance and political stability, but also credit ratings — the concerns about the direction of the new bank and the role that all shareholders will be playing are spot on. But the U.S. stance vis-à-vis the new institution and the role that China might play in it is also highly hypocritical. With Congress’s approval of International Monetary Fund (IMF) reform
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, is the United States in the best position to preach to others on the risk of using China’s mold for shaping the new bank?

As big developing countries, in particular China, have transformed in the last two decades, so has global economic governance along with it. But governance seems to evolve at a much slower pace than the world economy. The so-called Bretton Woods institutions — the IMF, the World Bank and, to some extent, the World Trade Organization (and its previous incarnation, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) — that have been in place since the end of World War II, reflect a world economic order dominated by the United States. Despite their 188 states-strong membership, both the IMF and the World Bank continued to be managed by the United States and western European countries — Britain, Germany, and France. The United States is the largest shareholder in the IMF, contributing approximately $65 billion, which gives Washington veto power on other countries’ deliberations thanks to the Fund’s weighted voting system.

For years, many around the world have called for reforms to the IMF’s governance to give other countries a greater voice in decision-making. To date, those efforts have been largely stymied. As a consequence, both the IMF and the World Bank continue to be seen as an extension of U.S. economic and geopolitical influence. This is despite the softening of the so-called Washington Consensus — policy measures that have been part of the IMF’s conditional lending — since the excesses of the 1980s and 1990s. And the fact that both the IMF and the World Bank are now much more diverse than they used to be — for instance,
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are from developing countries now — also has done little to change the perception that both organizations answer to Washington.

The AIIB’s creation is a response to Asia’s large infrastructure financing gap, which has been
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to be about $8 trillion between 2010 and 2020. However, besides this purely economic argument it would be difficult not to detect, behind the establishment of the new bank, China’s urge to advance its influence in the region. Under the current arrangement, the Asian Development Bank (ABD), which is a part of the World Bank, is primarily responsible for Asian infrastructure financing and other development projects. But China has limited impact on the Asian Development Bank, which is in the grip of Asia’s established powers, the United States and Japan.

But even if the AIIB’s creation is in China’s interest as the new regional power, the move does little to respond to the need to improve multilateralism and to strengthen global economic governance. In fact, it may do the opposite. The risk now is the creation of two blocs of economic influence in Asia: one led by China and the other by the United States and Japan. Demand for infrastructure investment is large enough to accommodate both — even a third development bank could probably find demand — but this is not the point. At stake is good governance and multilateralism — for instance, in a world of fragmented governance what would be the incentive for Congress to finally approve the IMF reform?

In addition to fragmented institutions and governance, the AIIB could present a risk of establishing divergent investment standards — a risk already significant in trade as China has reacted to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, of which it is not part, by accelerating its own trade arrangements in the region. Can the rest of the world — not only the United States — afford to leave China to set up its own standards on both trade and investment? The concern here is not on the quality of these standards — and the assumption is not that Chinese-set standards are by definition inadequate. It is on maintaining a harmonized, consistent, and multilateral framework of rules and standards that help integrate, rather than fragment, the world economy.

Rather than venting their frustration on Britain, the United States would benefit most from leading by example and embracing a two-fold strategy. First, Congress could press ahead and approve the IMF reform with no further delay. Second, the administration could engage with China on the issue of the new regional banks — the New Development Bank, better known as the BRICS bank, is the next down the line — within the setup provided by the G20.

Since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the G20 have been the leading forum for global economic and financial affairs, having taken over from the G8 after November 2008. Even if the G20 remains an informal forum without a secretariat, it has better adapted to the changing dynamics of the world economy than the IMF and the World Bank. In particular, the G20 have been better than the existing institutions at bringing in and engaging with emerging economies – all major emerging markets economies are members of the G20.

The outbreak of the global financial crisis was a catalyst, and a turning point, for global economic governance. The G20 have become critical for managing the world economy and, especially, for dealing with economic disruption and financial instability. This is why this forum should provide the context to discuss the setup of new multilateral institutions, such as the AIIB and other regional organizations, and to set the tone, and the rules, of the new global governance.
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IMF and World Bank, generally called the Washington organizations, have very murky reputations. Their policies in Africa in the late 20th century did great damage to education and the health services and so to the development of the local economies. Their policies in the matter of the financial crises in the last years of the 20th century was equally damaging to the countries in East Asia. No doubt with the experience of these terrible examples and with a more representative board AIIB will do much better.
 
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