China Pot Calls US Kettle Black

If you want true idiocy, if you want really find those people who have a  face palming, woeful misunderstanding of how their own country operates, go no further than the China Daily.  To whit, the headline that grabbed out attention - "US Spying Agencies are Out of Control".

The China Daily, English language mouthpiece for the Chinese Community Party, the political party that has presided over the worst famine in human history, and the longest period of systematic human rights abuses in the world has taken it upon itself to slap the wrists of US spy agencies.

 

Change in China: Mindboggling Stats

China Skinny has gathered together an impressive page of stats just in case you didn't quite get how much China has changed (and how fast).

In 1990, China had a total of 5.4 million vehicles on the road.  Fast forward 22 years, and 19 million cars and trucks were sold in China in 2012 alone.   As recently as 2010, Nokia had a 70% share of China's smartphone market.  In the first six months of 2013, 150 million smartphones sold in China and less than 5% of them were Nokias. Even with all the food scandals, Chinese consumers are eating almost three times more meat than they were in 1990, including 1.7 million pigs a day.  But it is urban migration that's really changing consumer habits.  Since 1990, China's urbanisation rate has more than doubled to 53% and there are now more than 123 Chinese cities with more people than Barcelona.

Consumer spending still lags behind the US, but that's all set to change in 2018, barring any apocalyptic showdowns with Japan, or a nationwide bird flu epidemic, that is.

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Examining The Taiwanese Crisis

The Wall Street Journal presents an excellent analysis of the crisis facing the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense in the light of the death of one of it's soldiers on a military base.

In previous years, PRC guns have been trained on Taiwan.  Relations have warmed between the Chinese mainland the island in recent years, but suspicions still remain on both sides.  The Communist government famously announced that it would be ready to wash the island with blood, so things probably couldn't get much worse.

The accident death of solider Hung Chung-chiu has brought Taiwan it's worst crisis in recent memory.  His alleged transgression - taking a forbidden cell phone into his barracks - resulted in extreme physical punishment, and ultimately his death, sparking debate as to what exactly was going on at the base he was stationed on.

Conscription is due to officially end in a couple of years time, turning the Taiwanese army into a purely volunteer force, something that could potentially weaken the position of the US in Asia.

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