138 « Week In China

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WiC 138 (Feb 17, 2012)

Economy, Talking Point The mysterious fall of Chongqing deputy mayor signals a power struggle

"We haven’t entered the deep waters yet,” Wang Lijun told the New York Times last year. A few months later, Chongqing’s deputy mayor and former ...

China Consumer Why Starbucks can afford to raise prices in China

Back in 2008, Starbucks in the US spilled the business beans rather embarassingly, closing 600 stores in acknowledgement that the company had expanded ...

Aviation EU infuriates China with new carbon tax, but still asks for…

This week the president of the EU Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, were both in Beijing to meet Chinese ...

China and the World China’s next leader goes back to Muscatine

NBA executives probably cannot believe their luck. In the space of a week they’ve had two massive slam dunks with the China audience. The first was ...

Economy Outcry may see private lender avoid death penalty

A favourite saying during the Cultural Revolution was that “wrongly killing a hundred people is better than letting a single guilty one escape.” In ...

Energy & Resources Chinese and Canadian relations have never been better. Why? Oil

Stephen Harper eats his greens. His mother will be very pleased to hear it. And so were watching Beijingers last week, as the Canadian prime minister ...

China and the World Goodwill ambassador Mark Rowswell talks about Stephen Harper’s recent visit

Mark Rowswell, aka 'Dashan', was recently named Canada's Goodwill ambassador to China. The fluent Mandarin-speaker is a household name for 1.3 billion ...

Banking & Finance The authorities are looking to introduce junk bonds

The Predators’ Ball was a lavish event held by Drexel Burnham Lambert in the 1980s to promote its fastest-growing product: the junk bond. Quite what ...

Internet & Tech How rival web firm is taking on Sina Weibo

Move over Yao Chen, TV host He Jiong is now China’s most followed celebrity on weibo, China’s Twitter-like equivalent. The 37-year-old ...

Property As fewer buy properties, rents in Beijing are going up

One of China’s more controversial television series in recent years was Dwelling Narrowness. One of the show’s main storylines followed the ...

Entertainment New TV drama breaks taboos in portrayal of post-war turmoil

First it was time-travel drama. Then game shows and dating programmes. And now foreign TV series are for the chop, too. On Monday, SARFT announced ...

Society Few know the horrors of Tangshan’s earthquake

"The 23 seconds of the earthquake were probably the most concentrated instant of destruction humanity has ever known,” writes author James Palmer. ...

Red Star Jeremy Lin

Born in 1988, Lin grew up in Palo Alto, California. His basketball career has been anything but smooth sailing. When he graduated from Harvard in 2010 ...

Society Valentine’s Day continues to grow in popularity in China

Like many couples, Changmao and Chunzi chose an auspicious day for their wedding: February 14 or Valentine’s Day. But the two lovebirds turn out ...

Planet China Police forces are normally on the lookout for criminals, but in…

Police forces are normally on the lookout for criminals, but in Chengdu the local constabulary is looking for love instead. According to Mop.com, one ...

Cartoons iPads seized in China!

Apple is the leading foreign brand in China. That’s according to Brand China 2012, a survey of 21,000 consumers carried out by Nikkei BP Consulting. ...

And Finally Award for country’s most harmonious home sparks debate

The Chinese ideal of three generations living harmoniously under the same roof is one that has endured through the ages. Confucius taught that ...