【百帖笔记领勋章】samuel 的随手记

Samuel_ChenSJ

2014-10-22  The first shot!

"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."

Samuel_ChenSJ

2014-10-23  The second record

"Killing Me Softly With His Song"-Roberta Flack

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song

I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him to listen for a while
And there he was this young boy, a stranger to my eyes

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song

I felt all flushed with fever, embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters and read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish but he just kept right on

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song

He sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there
And he just kept on singing, singing clear and strong

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song

Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me

He was strumming my pain, yeah, he was singing my life
Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words, killing me softly with his song

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 27-10-2014 11:53
2014-10-23  The second record

"Killing Me Softly With His Song"-Roberta Flack

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

MICHELLE07

"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."
Thanks for sharing, beautiful start!

2楼的歌语之玫瑰也刚分享过

我记得这个论坛大约有20人以上贴过这首歌。

语之玫瑰

MICHELLE07 发表于 28-10-2014 09:00
"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."
Thanks for sharing, beautiful start!

知道这首歌那么多人都喜欢真开心
经典就是经典

Samuel_ChenSJ

MICHELLE07 发表于 28-10-2014 06:00
"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."
Thanks for sharing, beautiful start!

谢谢鼓励啊！ 看来大家都很喜欢这首歌啊！  

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 27-10-2014 11:53
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 28-10-2014 09:49
Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Hong Kong’s protests
Poor conversation

The city’s leader suggests democracy could give the poor too much power
Oct 25th 2014 | HONG KONG | From the print edition


IT WAS a scene that must have made China’s leaders squirm with uncomfortable memories. On October 21st senior officials in Hong Kong held talks live on television with protesters clad in T-shirts displaying the slogan “Freedom now”. The encounter was the first between the two sides since pro-democracy unrest broke out in Hong Kong nearly a month ago, and the first of its kind anywhere in China since hunger-striking students in Tiananmen Square met government leaders in 1989. The meeting, however, was as unproductive as the one 25 years ago. As The Economist went to press, angry students were still on the streets.

On the eve of the talks Hong Kong’s leader, Leung Chun-ying, set a tone that won few hearts among the determined few hundred, and sometimes several thousand, demonstrators who have snarled traffic in parts of the city since late September. Mr Leung told foreign journalists that full democracy would involve a “numbers game” that would skew policies towards the poor. The protests were triggered by a ruling in August by China’s parliament that candidates for the post of chief executive, as Hong Kong’s leader is known, be chosen by a “nominating committee” largely formed of pro-establishment figures including many businesspeople. The winner would be selected, for the first time in Hong Kong’s history, by popular vote.

The meeting was held in a campus conference room. It was led on the government side by the territory’s most senior civil servant, Carrie Lam, and was watched on giant screens by thousands of protesters on the streets. Many of them booed when officials spoke and cheered their own side. (Chinese state television broadcast a couple of minutes of the two-hour event, but carried none of the protesters’ remarks; the mainland’s media have strenuously censored news of the unrest.)

The demonstrators had plenty to boo about. Ms Lam offered no big concessions and all but admitted that her hands were tied. Hong Kong, she said, was “not an independent entity” and could not “decide on its own its political development.” She said she was afraid the two sides could only “agree to disagree”, but that she hoped more talks would be held.

Ms Lam said the Hong Kong government would send a report on the protest movement to officials in Beijing, but did not say how this might affect their thinking. Almost certainly, the answer is: not much. Mr Leung has echoed their views that unspecified “foreign forces” are behind the unrest, and has said that Hong Kong is “lucky” that the central government has not yet felt it necessary to intervene. He has suggested there might be ways of making the nominating committee more representative. But student leaders appear little interested in what would probably be small tweaks.

They also seem little deterred by heckling from angry groups of residents who have grown tired of the prolonged disruption to traffic and business. Speaking to a crowd of pro-democracy protesters after taking part in the meeting with officials, one student leader, Yvonne Leung, said: “They want us to give up, but we won’t. The government has not given us what we want so we will continue to stay.”

A day after the talks heavy rain dampened some protesters’ spirits. But many were prepared. What is often called Hong Kong’s “umbrella revolution” has not transformed the territory’s politics, but participants still proudly carry the symbol of their unrest.

From the print edition: China

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 28-10-2014 10:08
Hong Kong’s protests
Poor conversation

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.​

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 30-10-2014 09:59
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.​

Electricity
Generational shift

China is developing clean sources of energy. The problem is getting them used

MUCH of what China has achieved in the past three decades—its impressive economic growth, the rise of its global stature and the considerable improvement of living standards for hundreds of millions of people—is attributable to one decision: ditching the Maoist model of central-planning that had shackled the economy. Yet some important industries have yet to embrace the market. Power generation is one. As China struggles to reconcile its soaring energy demand with its need to clean up an increasingly toxic environment, reform is becoming more urgent.

China knows it must reduce its reliance on dirty coal and increase its use of (more expensive) renewable energy. Of the new power-generating capacity that China built last year, renewables such as wind and solar power for the first time accounted for more than the share made up of fossil fuels and nuclear energy.  

China wants to satisfy the surging electricity demands of its increasingly urban population and to keep its industries running smoothly. It does both reasonably well and blackouts are rare. But officials fret about how grumpy—and vocal—people are becoming about the poisonous air that envelops so many Chinese cities. (An annual international marathon race, pictured above, took place in Beijing on October 19th in air that was nearly 14 times more polluted than the safety limit recommended by the World Health Organisation.) China is aware that its standing abroad will partly depend on its efforts to limit carbon emissions. This will involve weaning itself off coal, which supplies nearly 80% of its energy.

Progress is being hampered by a largely unreformed power industry dominated by large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which operate under a mix of rigid planning, secrecy and poor regulation. Power suppliers have too little incentive to compete on price, efficiency or greenness. Two international NGOs, the World Wildlife Fund and the Energy Transition Research Institute, describe the SOEs that control all transmission and distribution and most non-renewable generation as “unregulated corporate monopolies”. Their bosses are usually appointed by the central government, but they often ally with regional leaders to resist oversight by a variety of largely toothless regulators.

One problem is China’s system for “dispatch”; that is, determining which power sources will supply electricity to the grid at any given time. A report by the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), an American NGO, notes that in most countries dispatch decisions are made in order to minimise costs (including environmental ones). In China regulations would appear to encourage a similar approach: grid-operators are supposed to give priority to electricity supplied by more efficient and greener producers. In practice, grid-operators are more inclined to help coal-fired plants recoup the cost of their investments. Both sides are members of a cosy club of energy-related SOEs. Even if the grid-operators were to try to stick to the rules, they would struggle. Coal plants can easily conceal how much they waste and pollute.

Generators of wind and solar energy thus find themselves handicapped by more than just the high cost of their technologies. Much of China’s most cleanly produced energy is wasted. For wind power, rates of “curtailment”, or energy generated but not taken up by the grid, have improved in recent years as grid systems have become better able to cope with the technical challenge of handling such unsteady sources of power. But the rate still stands at about 10% nationwide. In Britain it was less than 2% between 2011 and 2013.

The government launched pilot reforms in five provinces in 2007 to encourage more efficient dispatch, but they achieved little and have not been expanded. Max Dupuy of RAP’s Beijing office says the scheme met opposition because of its failure to compensate coal-fired plants for the revenue share lost to clean producers.

At the height of China’s boom virtually all available power was needed so there were fewer dispatch decisions to be made. Ivan Chung of Moody’s, a rating agency, says that, with growth slowing, grid-operators could now seize the chance to get the right dispatch policies. Reforms would help: more competition in management of the grid (State Grid Corporation, the world’s largest state distributor of electricity, controls most of it), harsher penalties for producers and transmitters of dirty energy, bigger incentives to use clean sources, and the creation of a powerful regulator. Officials in Beijing mostly favour such changes. But they will struggle to subdue the last bastions of the Maoist economy.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 30-10-2014 09:59
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.​

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 31-10-2014 09:21
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

Rule of law in China
China with legal characteristics

Xi Jinping is invoking the “rule of law”. That’s risky for him and good for China

DRAFTERS of Communist Party documents in China are masters of linguistic sleights; Deng Xiaoping invented the term “socialist market economy” to satisfy hardline ideologues while he steered the country towards capitalism. Now the party is trumpeting a new slogan: “Socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics”. At an annual plenum that ended on October 23rd, the Central Committee promised that it would be implemented by 2020 (see article) and would lead to “extensive and profound” changes. If they are anything like as significant as those that Deng’s catchphrase heralded, then this is a welcome development.

This new enthusiasm for the rule of law springs from the campaign against corruption. Xi Jinping, the party leader, aims to restrain officials and prevent their rampant corruption from causing public anger to boil over. The Central Committee has decided to make local courts more impartial and to penalise officials for telling judges what to decide. And, lest everyday laws continue to fail to have the desired effect, Mr Xi is invoking the highest law of all: the constitution.

Officials will now have to swear loyalty to China’s constitution. There is to be a new “National Constitution Day”. Schools are to teach its importance. The idea is to make it clear to errant officials that, no matter what they may think of ordinary laws and regulations, there is a big one they cannot ignore. The constitution, for example, enshrines property rights. Of the many thousands of “mass incidents” of unrest each year in rural China, 65% relate to disputes over the (often illegal) seizure of land by officials. Mr Xi wants to make it clear that their behaviour is not just illegal but also unconstitutional. That sounds scarier.

Mr Xi’s initiative is good news in two ways. First, it has encouraging implications for his anti-corruption campaign. Xi-watchers are uncertain whether the campaign is a sincere effort to clean up the country or an excuse for a purge of officials the president has taken against. That he is emphasising the rule of law, rather than just continuing to pick off his enemies, suggests that the target really is corruption.

Using China’s constitution is a risk for Mr Xi—which is the second reason why this development is good news. The constitution is festooned with language relating to political rights. It guarantees freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association and of religious belief. Thanks to an amendment in 2004, it even guarantees “human rights”. Campaigners invoke the constitution in their cause. Last year journalists at Southern Weekend, a newspaper based in Guangzhou, went on strike after propaganda officials changed a leading article that called for guaranteed constitutional rights.

Rights? Wrong
The party says Chinese interpretations of such notions as human rights are different from those in the West, and continues to persecute dissidents, Christians (see article) and other trouble-makers. Many Chinese, however, believe that terms such as “human rights” mean exactly the same in China as they do elsewhere. By invoking the constitution so strongly, Mr Xi is likely to reignite calls among the country’s beleaguered liberals for it to protect citizens more broadly than he intends.

Mr Xi has been presiding over the most sweeping crackdown on dissent that China has seen in years. He has clearly felt no compunction about using the law to do so, and it seems highly unlikely that he intends to use the constitution to check the power of the party itself. Yet he is clearly a brave leader who is prepared to take risks. If he really wants to clean up the system and defuse public anger, he should give Chinese citizens the rights enshrined in the constitution. It is the only way to bring about the “extensive and profound” change he has promised them.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 31-10-2014 09:21
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.​

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 31-10-2014 09:27
Rule of law in China
China with legal characteristics

Rules of the party

A call to revive the country's constitution will not necessarily establish “rule of law”

IN A lengthy document published on October 28th the Communist Party called for no less than an “extensive and profound revolution” in the way China is governed. This would involve establishing “rule of law” by 2020 and giving new emphasis to a long-neglected constitution which, among other things, enshrines freedom of speech and of the press. However, the party means far less by all this talk than might be imagined. President Xi Jinping is embroiled in a campaign to instil discipline in his corruption-riddled party. He hopes a blast of fresh rhetoric and some legal reforms will help curb official abuses of power and the anger they fuel. It is not his plan to reduce the party’s importance.

The nearly 17,000-character “resolution” was endorsed by the party’s 370-member Central Committee at an annual plenum five days earlier (pictured, above). Such documents are normally kept secret for a few days to allow lower-ranking party officials to digest them. The document, and the plenum itself, were striking. It was the first Central Committee meeting in the party’s history to focus on building “rule of law”, and it was the first time that the committee had given such a place of honour to the constitution. In the past the party has often preferred to keep quiet about it because of its liberal-sounding clauses, including the stirring declaration that “the state respects and preserves human rights”.

The resolution declared that December 4th would henceforth be National Constitution Day, that officials would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the constitution, and that it would be promoted “throughout society”. Everyone, including party members and the armed forces, “must regard the constitution as the fundamental guideline of their activities”, the document says. Mr Xi had talked up the constitution for a while after he took over as China’s leader late in 2012, but had appeared less eager after liberal intellectuals began speaking of the constitution as a way of checking the party’s power. Now he appears enthused again. The plenum ruled that all regulations which violate the constitution must be revised.

Mr Xi’s aim, however, is not to encourage the liberals. A decade ago the constitution was amended to include explicit protections for human rights and private property. Citizens with grievances briefly took heart and attempted to use these clauses to challenge official abuses of power. They were ignored, roughed up or arrested. Under Mr Xi, Chinese academics and journalists have been banned from expressing support for “constitutionalism”: a term that the party sees as a codeword for Western democratic values.

The Central Committee made clear the party had not changed its stance on this. “We absolutely cannot indiscriminately copy foreign rule-of-law concepts and models,” it said. Yang Xiaojun of China National School of Administration told People’s Daily Online, a party mouthpiece, that the party needed to “strengthen internal propaganda and education” to prevent any misunderstanding that the constitution was like a Western one.

Some legal scholars believe there might be a change in the offing: the Supreme People’s Court, the country’s highest judicial body, could begin using the constitution to review lower-court rulings. But if so the aim would not be to protect civil liberties, but to give the central authorities more control over the legal system. People who independently challenge the party will continue to be punished harshly. Mr Xi, indeed, has presided over a sweeping crackdown on dissent since he came to power.

Mr Xi’s aim appears to be to use the constitution to rein in local officials whose routine flouting of the law causes public anger and many thousands of protests every year. By making them swear to uphold the constitution, he is trying to make clear that they are not above the law when it comes to such matters as property rights. He does not expect them to ignore restrictions on demonstrating; the party has never acknowledged a contradiction between such laws and the constitution’s guarantees.

The Central Committee said new types of courts would be set up that will cross several administrative regions; their judges, in theory, will not be so easily beholden to local officials. In addition, the party will now assess whether officials have interfered in legal cases when deciding on their prospects for promotion. Judges are to bear “lifelong responsibility” for their decisions in cases.

Official English translations refer to the importance of “rule of law”. But Mr Xi’s tactics appear better suited to a different translation of the Chinese term, yifa zhiguo: “rule by law”. His aim is to strengthen law to make the party more powerful, not to constrain it. Randy Peerenboom of La Trobe University in Melbourne says Mr Xi’s measures seem intended to make China’s courts work better and more consistently, “more like [in] Singapore”—a country that Chinese officials sometimes hold up as a model of benign authoritarianism. But the fate of its own elite is to remain in the hands of the party. On October 28th Xinhua, an official news agency, said a former general, Xu Caihou, had confessed to bribe-taking and that legal proceedings against him had begun. This was only made possible by a decision in June to expel him from the party; members cannot stand trial. The plenum produced no news about the most high-profile target of Mr Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, Zhou Yongkang, a former chief of domestic security. Prosecutors will have to wait until the party issues its verdict.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 3-11-2014 11:21
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.​

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 6-11-2014 11:22
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Corruption in the housing market
To those that have

The bureaucrat’s house-price discount

OFTEN the trickiest part of being a corrupt bureaucrat is not how to find new ways to extort money or accept bribes, but how to hide the ill-gotten gains. No one wants to end up like “Uncle House”, as a district official in the southern province of Guangdong was dubbed by internet users. He was outed two years ago by online anti-corruption activists after acquiring 22 properties that on his salary he clearly could not afford.

However, research by Hanming Fang of the University of Pennsylvania, and Li-An Zhou and Quanlin Gu of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University suggests that the housing market is a source of illicit riches, as well as a place to park them. The authors find that Chinese bureaucrats consistently pay less when buying houses, receiving on average a 1% discount.

The most likely explanation is that this is a form of bribe by property developers. Supporting this theory is the authors’ finding that officials who regulate property, and senior public servants, enjoy the biggest discounts. Those from provincial governments, for example, received a 4% reduction, roughly equivalent to two-thirds of their yearly salary.

The authors examined over 1m mortgage contracts, which contain detailed statistics on the applicant, such as his income and employer, and the house in question. They then compared the average price paid by bureaucrats with that paid by those in the private sector. These estimates probably underestimate the corruption as they do not cover houses purchased by the spouses or children of bureaucrats.

Until recently the property market seemed a one-way bet for corrupt and honest citizens alike. At their peak, house prices in some big cities were growing by 20% a year. But in recent years the market has been cooled by rules such as limits on the number of properties each citizen can buy and on the mortgage subsidies the state supplies. Prices are reported to have declined by 1.3% in September, marking the fifth consecutive monthly fall, suggesting that the restrictions may have worked too well. Keen to avoid a collapse, the government has begun to unwind some of the restrictions in second-tier cities.

For as yet unexposed “Uncle House” types, this may be a good time to clean up their portfolios. The furore over corrupt officials has prompted the government to introduce a property register. The hope is that will succeed in uncovering the full extent of illicit holdings and corruption. However, the register is to be implemented completely only by 2020, affording shady bureaucrats plenty of time to move their wealth into the shadows. China’s property market may indeed one day become transparent, but not so soon as to give officials moonlighting as speculators an immediate reason to panic.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 6-11-2014 11:22
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

A hedge between keeps friendship green.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 6-11-2014 11:27
Corruption in the housing market
To those that have

Foreign policy
Showing off to the world

The capital is about to host President Xi Jinping’s diplomatic coming-out party

THE factories have closed down for a few days, and millions of cars have been ordered off the roads. Clear blue skies appearing over a usually smog-choked Beijing always mean one thing: a big event is about to get under way.

From November 10th President Xi Jinping will welcome world leaders to this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit. Not since the Olympics in 2008 have so many leaders gathered in the capital, and they will include the heads of the United States, Russia and Japan. It is a defining moment for Mr Xi’s foreign policy. Having established himself at home as China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping, he now seems to want to demand a bigger, more dominant and more respected role for China than his predecessors, Deng included, ever dared ask for.

Respect begins by putting on a good face to guests. Chinese bullying over disputed maritime claims has done much to raise tensions in the region. But now Mr Xi appears to be lowering them. In particular, China’s relations with Japan have been abysmal. The government has treated Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, with both venom and pettiness, implying he is a closet militarist. The relationship had sunk to such a low that it will count as notable progress if Mr Xi shakes Mr Abe’s hand—even if he does little more—at the summit.

On November 11th and 12th, Mr Xi will host a state visit in Beijing for Barack Obama. It is the second summit with the American president, following one at Sunnylands in California in 2013. It will be a good show, with a scenic walk and all that. But the substance appears less clear. At the time of Sunnylands, there was much Chinese talk of a “new type of great-power relationship” with America. Yet since it implies a diminished role for America, at least in Asia, Mr Obama does not seem inclined to go along. The two men appear likely to co-operate in a few areas, including climate change, trade and investment. They will agree to a bit more communication over respective military movements in and over the seas near China. But hopes that cordiality at Sunnylands might lead the relationship to blossom may come to little.

In truth, Mr Xi does not have much respect left for Mr Obama; the Chinese dismiss him as weak-willed in foreign policy. And so much of Mr Xi’s ambition lies elsewhere. Above all, the dream is to return China to its rightful place in a world in which, according to Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, “China will be at the centre, and every other nation will have to consider China’s interests.”

This attitude is most familiar to China’s neighbours in the South China Sea and East China Sea. China has upset the Philippines by grabbing a disputed reef; Vietnam, by moving an oil rig into contested waters; Japan, by challenging its control over uninhabited islets; and even South Korea which, though on good terms, was concerned along with others when China declared an “Air Defence Identification Zone” over the East China Sea, demanding that planes inform it when entering it.

Yet Mr Xi has also courted friends under the catchphrase of “peaceful development”. He has pushed multilateral initiatives, including a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which many of China’s neighbours, including India, have signed up to. A New Development Bank has also been set up with fellow “BRICs”—Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.

One of Mr Xi’s playmates is President Vladimir Putin. China and Russia have a history of mutual distrust, but Mr Xi’s first trip abroad as president, in March 2013, was to Moscow. Since then the two countries have struck a long-stalled gas deal and, according to Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, a pact on cyber-security. China backs Russia’s pro-Syrian stand in the UN Security Council and has refused to condemn Russia’s territorial incursions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine—though it loves to preach non-interference.

A strong thread that binds the two countries is American dominance in international affairs. “No country”, said Mr Xi at a security summit earlier this year to which Mr Putin was invited, “should attempt to dominate regional security affairs or infringe upon the legitimate rights…of other countries.” Mr Xi did not name America, but a month earlier Mr Obama had in Tokyo emphasised that America’s security pact with Japan extended to the Japan-controlled Senkaku islands, which China claims and calls the Diaoyu.

Is Mr Xi’s foreign policy succeeding? Only in parts. China’s maritime assertiveness has pushed some neighbours closer to Japan and America. But for long China will remain Asian nations’ biggest trading partner. It is busy pursuing regional and bilateral trade agreements while an American-led trade initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, is bogged down. At APEC Mr Xi will seek to build on those economic relationships. And, given China’s heft, by and large he will succeed.

And what of global ambitions? If Mr Xi wants a bigger role in the world, then China will have to engage better with the big issues, including the environment, terrorism and health. Here the picture is mixed. This week China and Russia together blocked an international plan for an ocean sanctuary in Antarctica. On counter-terrorism, China puts more effort into getting everyone to acknowledge it faces an al-Qaeda-type threat in Xinjiang than it helps in much worse terrorist hotspots.

Yet global health is an example of how Chinese policy can change. Only a few weeks ago, during preparations for Mr Xi’s summit with Mr Obama, officials appeared to see their American counterparts’ obsession with Ebola as proof of Americans always coming to them only with the latest irritating pebble in their shoe, as Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, puts it. But since then China has announced a trebling of its commitment to fighting Ebola, to $120m, making it the second-most generous of any country. One way or another, China’s rise continues.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 7-11-2014 15:37
A hedge between keeps friendship green.

While there is life there is hope.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 11-11-2014 09:27
While there is life there is hope.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 13-11-2014 16:17
We loved with a love that was more than love.

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 7-11-2014 15:46
Foreign policy
Showing off to the world

Hong Kong's domestic helpers
The other Occupy Central

A COMMUNAL sit-in of sorts blocks the streets of Central, the main financial district of Hong Kong. The assembled crowd is peaceful. Some play cards or paw at their smartphones. Others lie under umbrellas, catching up on sleep. While the world in recent weeks has come to know the alliance of electoral-reform advocates who call themselves Occupy Central, this is something different. And it has been going on for years.

These participants are foreign domestic helpers, called “amahs” locally. There are about 320,000 of them in Hong Kong, almost exclusively female and mainly from the Philippines and Indonesia. Many spend their single day off each week sitting on flattened-out cardboard boxes, acquired from trolley carts pulled around by local entrepreneurs. Some build elaborate temporary houses with room partitions and outer walls. Anywhere else in the world this cardboard city would raise eyebrows, but not in Hong Kong.

For a few weeks, small fortune has favoured the weekend influx of such house maids who take up the pavements, overpasses and public squares of Central on a typical Hong Kong Sunday. The pro-democracy students have largely spared the main business district; their protests have mainly affected the nearby government district of Admiralty, the shopping district of Causeway Bay to the east, and the Mong Kok area of Kowloon on the opposite side of the harbour.

Foreign domestic-helpers represent about 8% of the workforce in Hong Kong. But their unequal treatment is enshrined in law, which denies them the higher statutory minimum wage (SMW) mandated for local residents. In October, just after the Occupy protests began, Hong Kong's labour department announced that the minimum allowable wage (MAW) for foreign maids signing new contracts would be increased by HK$100 (US$13) to $4,110 per month. Employers’ representatives reacted angrily at the perceived largesse; the equivalent figure in Singapore is HK$3,000. But the maids had been hoping for much more. The MAW was HK$3,860 in 1998, and has moved up and down since.

The current rate of HK$30 per hour is being reviewed. Some are calling for an increase to HK$36 for 2015. But even at today’s rate, any Hong Kong resident doing a maid’s shift—8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 294 days a year (they get 7 days’ annual leave and 12 statutory holidays), would earn a minimum of HK$70,560 annually. A foreign maid could be paid as little as HK$49,320.   

This difference is partially offset by the provision of food and accommodation to the foreign workers; free shelter counts for a lot in Hong Kong where property is notoriously expensive and cramped. But few envy these perks. Dinner-party stories do the rounds about maids sleeping in cupboards and above bathtubs. Some maids have their own tiny rooms, but in larger households helpers sleep together in bunk beds.

Last year, after a lengthy legal battle by a maid from the Philippines who had been working in Hong Kong for more than 17 years, the territory's highest court ruled that foreign domestic-helpers could not acquire permanent residency (and thus the better wages that go with it). Little wonder, then, this other disenfranchised constituency has not turned out in support of the Occupy movement.

Most student protesters are not drawn from Hong Kong’s privileged classes. They too have legitimate concerns about inequality and a lack of fair representation. Still, their ongoing experience of being brushed off by the government should spur them to think differently about the overlooked amahs.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 17-11-2014 15:52
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.

We love the things we love for what they are.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 17-11-2014 16:16
Hong Kong's domestic helpers
The other Occupy Central

Farewell
Analects says "Goodbye"

IT IS tempting to start this farewell note with some pithy yet profound quote from Confucius about the nature of change, the importance of rituals or how all good things must come to an end. But this is a temptation that should be resisted. For as we explained as clearly as we could when we launched the blog and decided to name it “Analects”, the choice was not meant to imply our endorsement for Confucius’ philosophy. Or to take sides in the political battles over his legacy. Or—heaven forfend—somehow to compare ourselves to this (or any other) great sage. The Confucian connection to the word Analects of course helped make it suitable for our purposes, but far more important was its appeal as an English word, derived from ancient Greek, denoting “things gathered up”, “literary fragments” or “gleanings”.

That seemed to fit well with what we tried to do in nearly 400 posts over the past three years, and it will remain relevant to what we continue to do with our online coverage of China. But things are indeed changing and Analects, alas, is coming to an end. It is giving way to our online China page, where we will consolidate the China-related content of our weekly print edition with supplemental reporting from our correspondents and freelance contributors. (If you use an RSS reader to read Analects, you should now point it here.)

The end of Analects, together with the end of many other Economist blogs, is part of a larger effort to make our website more focused and better organised, especially now that our new Espresso app (for both Android and the iPhone) is in place to keep you up to speed with the daily tick-tock from around the world. Our sister blog, Banyan, is also going away and in its elegiac farewell offers more detail on what went into our thinking about these changes and what they will mean for readers.

It has been a great joy to gather up the many fragments these past three years. They included both navel-gazing (a review of nearly 170 years’ worth of China coverage in The Economist) and naval gazing (items here, here, and here about the multiple sea disputes to which China is party). They ranged from the whimsical, like our very popular post on a Russian and a Ukrainian who climbed a skyscraper in Shanghai, to the gross, like this report on yet another Chinese food-safety scandal.

One thing Analects allowed us to do was offer the occasional offbeat look at the historical context of the latest news with, for example, a piece on how the choreography of the National People’s Congress has changed since the 1980s; or another on why Richard Nixon never lost his lustre in China. The new arrangement will offer less scope for this sort of work, but we will not hesitate to break form just a little if we think it is warranted.

As Analects says goodbye, its editors offer hearty thanks, both to the many correspondents who gathered things up on our behalf and to our loyal readers. We hope that our gleanings have helped you to glean a sense of just how interesting and important the China story is, and we invite you to follow us over to the online China page.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 26-11-2014 11:43
We love the things we love for what they are.

Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 26-11-2014 12:02
Farewell
Analects says "Goodbye"

Spam messaging
106 ways to annoy

China flounders in its efforts to combat text-messaging spam

SPAM, as every user of mobile phones in China is aware to their intense annoyance, is a roaring business in China. Its delivery-men drive through residential neighbourhoods in “text-messaging cars”, with illegal but easy-to-buy gadgetry they use to hijack links between mobile-phone users and nearby communications masts. They then target the numbers they harvest, blasting them with spam text messages before driving away. Mobile-phone users usually see only the wearisome results: another sprinkling of spam messages offering deals on flats, investment advice and dodgy receipts for tax purposes.

Chinese mobile-users get more spam text messages than their counterparts almost anywhere else in the world. They received more than 300 billion of them in 2013, or close to one a day for each person using a mobile phone. Users in bigger markets like Beijing and Shanghai receive two a day, or more than 700 annually, accounting for perhaps one-fifth to one-third of all texts. Americans, by comparison, received an estimated 4.5 billion junk messages in 2011, or fewer than 20 per mobile-user for the year—out of a total of more than two trillion text messages sent.

China’s spam problem has persisted for years, despite repeated declarations by the authorities that they will crack down. Why have their efforts failed? The elusive spam vans are part of the problem: they are difficult to track and profitable to operate. One car can send 200,000 messages a day for a daily fee of about 10,000 yuan ($1,600). This is about the cost of the device used to intercept numbers, which can be assembled at home. The equipment falsifies the numbers from which the messages appear to arrive. Chinese users can report spam texts, just as they can in many other countries. But spammers who are occasionally caught still reckon their trouble was worth it. Fines are paltry. The authorities recently proposed raising them to 30,000 yuan—peanuts to a spam-car crew.

The state-owned carriers are part of the problem. They earn at least a few Chinese cents from every spam text sent over their networks. In America and in some other markets, carriers have reasoned that the cost, both in dollars and to reputation, of dealing with angry customers outweighs whatever they could earn from spam. They have worked hard at blocking spam rather than depending on regulators to control the problem, says Tom Landesman of Cloudmark, a counter-spamming firm. India has tried to impose heavy penalties on operators that allow spam on their networks, Mr Landesman says.

In China, by contrast, the three largest mobile operators sell special numbers that start with the digits 106. These are exempt from rules limiting the number of messages that can be sent daily by a normal account. Regulators allow them to be used for non-commercial purposes, such as by companies to send messages to staff. But Tencent Mobile Security Lab, a software-security firm, found last year that 55% of mobile spam reported by users came from 106 numbers. After a documentary last year on these accounts by Chinese state television, China Mobile, one of the biggest carriers, admitted there were “loopholes and inadequacies” and said it would work to “hold people accountable”. The broadcaster estimated that the big three carriers earned hundreds of millions of dollars a year from spam text messages.

yearshappy

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 28-11-2014 20:25
Spam messaging
106 ways to annoy

Hi Samuel, you are a good role model for me
I'm having my head in the clouds

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 28-11-2014 16:38
Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.

Samuel_ChenSJ

yearshappy 发表于 29-11-2014 16:32
Hi Samuel, you are a good role model for me  
I'm having my head in the clouds

  Our dear Yearshappy, Thanks for your encouragement and apologize for making your head in the clouds .  
I will keep reminding myself to post more notes in this post until the hundredth one comes out.

Until now, I'm not a content maker.  I'm just a content mover.  

Samuel_ChenSJ

Samuel_ChenSJ 发表于 28-11-2014 17:25
Spam messaging
106 ways to annoy

Cross-border crime
Silk Road smuggling

China struggles with contraband from its neighbours

A HUNDRED metres from the tiered, gold-tipped roof of the official border crossing between China and Myanmar in Ruili, an unofficial international trade zone thrives—across a 7-metre (23-foot) high metal fence that divides the two countries. Small groups of Chinese gather to buy cigarettes, coffee and Chinese medicines through the bars from Burmese stall-sellers. Farther along the road, a man in a red T-shirt crosses from Myanmar to China in bright daylight through a rectangular hole in the railings.

China’s south-western province of Yunnan is trying to expand its imports from and exports to its land neighbours: Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. It shares more than 4,000km (2,500 miles) of border with them (in the picture above, watermelons from Myanmar are being loaded by Chinese workers onto a lorry in Ruili). The Chinese are not necessarily keen to import all of its neighbours’ products, however. The liveliest trade is in drugs. Yunnan borders on the Golden Triangle, a region notorious for its copious output of narcotics. Locals on the Burmese frontier point to fruit trees that now grow where opium used to, but the quantity of drugs seized has been rising. Yunnan’s border police confiscated 6.2 tonnes of drugs in 2013, almost double the amount in 2011. More than half the methamphetamine seized in China last year was from Myanmar and was seized in Yunnan. Drug smuggling between Vietnam and China, a lot of it through Yunnan, has risen sharply too.

Other forms of illegal activity are rife. Weapons smuggling is on the rise; signs written on walls near the China-Laos border in Mohan advertise guns and ammunition for sale. Most timber entering China from Laos and Myanmar is logged illegally, according to a report by Chatham House, a London think-tank. Contraband goods flow from China too. A Burmese politician told parliament in October that more than four-fifths of the 4m registered motorbikes in Myanmar were illegally imported. Many traders consistently underestimate the value of goods they are transporting to pay less tax.

Most insidious is the trade in people. On November 24th Chinese officers arrested a gang accused of selling 11 Burmese women as wives in rural areas for 50,000-90,000 yuan ($8,000-13,000) each. In 2013 Yunnan border police found more than 100 trafficked people, and arrested over 6,000 others who had crossed the border illegally.