From the AP:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, on a trip to China, opened a first-of-its-kind city tourism office in Beijing on Monday that he hopes will encourage travel to his hometown and pump hundreds of millions of dollars into its economy.

“Los Angeles is putting down a permanent welcome mat for the tens of millions of Chinese tourists who will visit our great city in the coming years,” Villaraigosa said in a statement. “More tourism means more jobs and a healthier economy.”…

…The tourism office, run by the convention and visitors bureau, will target Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. It will market Los Angeles as an attractive business and leisure destination, and travel agents will help provide resources for international travel.

The office expects to vie for a good share of an anticipated 100 million Chinese travelers who are expected to visit the United States annually by 2020…

Any suggestion on sights, fellow Angelenos?

For all of China’s recent and much touted diplomatic successes in Africa and elsewhere, any friendships forged won’t last long if this kind of thing keeps up:

Deep in the tunnel of the Collum mine, coal dust swirls thickly, and it’s stifling for workers such as Chengo Nguni. He describes his $2-a-day job with a sigh: His supervisor yells incomprehensibly in Chinese. His rubber boots leak. The buttons to control the flow of ore out of the mine often deliver an electric shock.

But the worst thing about life in the Chinese-owned mine in southern Zambia is that there is no such thing as a day off. Ever.

The unhappiness with the Chinese goes far beyond a few disgruntled workers and up to the highest levels of government:

The growing resentment sparked an acrimonious debate in Zambia’s recent presidential elections, with Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong making comments suggesting that Beijing might sever ties and investors might pull out if leading opposition candidate Michael Sata won the Sept. 28 vote.

Sata, who at one point threatened to expel Chinese traders if he became president, lost the election, and he alleged massive vote fraud. In the heat of the campaign, his Patriotic Front claimed that the use of Chinese computers to tally the count could skew results in the government’s favor, an accusation strongly denied by Chinese Embassy officials.

Sata argued that most Chinese investors in Zambia were exploiters who brought the country no benefit. He accused Li of interfering in the election.

“I find the reaction by the Chinese government very childish and dictatorial,” Sata said, accusing China of campaigning for the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy, which has been in power 15 years.

It’s one thing to make deals with other governments without any regard for ideology or character of said governments. It’s quite another to exploit foreign workforces. Nationalism and resentment of outsiders are traits you’ll find in just about every country in the world, perhaps submerged but ready to rise to the surface if conditions are right.

Dave weighs in on a Clash of Civilizations…

Uber-blogger and professor emeritus at Miskatonic University Brad DeLong has published part of David Landes’ article Why Europe and the West? Why Not China?, in which Landes takes a stab at the old Joseph Needham question about why China got beat by Europe in the tech race. This often reminds me of the game “not it” – usually the one declared the loser is the one who didn’t even know there was a contest in the first place.

This question puts the entire focus on history being a race to the finish between civilizations. Take that logic to the ultimate extreme and you’ll find the racial nationalism of many a BBS that appears to based solely on repeated viewings of the movie Highlander: There can be only one! So let’s all keep in mind that the question itself is loaded and ready for some of the more infamous PKD commenters. Landes’ particular stab at the problem seems to be: “First, China lacked a free market and institutionalized property rights. The Chinese state was always stepping in to interfere with private enterprise — to take over certain activities, to prohibit and inhibit others, to manipulate prices, to exact bribes… The Europeans knew much less of these interferences. Instead, they entered during these centuries into an exciting world of innovation and emulation that challenged and tempted vested interests and kept the forces of conservatism scrambling. Changes were cumulative, news of novelty spread fast and a new sense of progress and achievement replaced an older, effete reverence for authority.”

Landes appears to be borrowing the language of a stock market analyst. Europe is an “exciting” IPO that “challenged” conventional thinking, in contrast to the “scrambling” “effete” conservatives. The Reformation as Google. The Church and monarchs as brick and mortar dinosaurs. Who was pets.com? Manicheism?

Landes’ argument seems to deal in huge generalities, blurring different European culture s, Chinese dynasties and several centuries. And he makes some very unclear distinctions. The Chinese state would “prohibit and inhibit” activities – in other words, pass laws and enforce them? Elizabethan England had plenty of price controls, and the East/West India Companies was always closely tied to the Crown and Parliament. In England, as in China, they often didn’t work.

Meanwhile in Europe, the heresies “made newness a virtue and a source of delight”. Correct me if I wrong, but apparently in Chinese history oppression is a sign of oppression, while in European history the heresies (for which people were opressed and executed) were a sign of “newness” and “delight”. I guess Torquemada was, in fact, the Greenspan of his day, keeping the markets going?

The Chinese “exacted bribes”, while the Canterbury Tales complained about the Pardoner doing… exactly the same, plus condemning you to eternal hellfire. I have never, never had a Chinese official tell me I will burn in Hades for not bribing him. A stupid egg, maybe, but not damned. Not even the most liberal translation of “Mei you” gets you there.

If the response from Landes is “Yes, but see, Chaucer is an example of the European creative genius responding to this injustice with innovation!”, then I would challenge Landes to show me the classical Chinese novel, opera or story that doesn’t deal with corruption. Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh, anyone?

As for the question of China not having an Industrial Revolution, I say check out the work of Ken Pomerantz and Bin Wong over at Columbia (links below). Geography and not being a bunch of warring nation states seem like better explanations for China’s different path than some free market revisionism, but more it’s even more important to consider that this is as a good a case as any eurocentrism. To say China failed at “two chances” to match “European achievement” is about as clear an example as I can imagine. When history becomes about meeting one civilization’s standard, it becomes myopic, if not hopelessly biased.

Bonus question: when China enter its “Modern Era”? According to Mao, it was 1840 – the first Opium War. Landes perhaps would say the same. Is that accurate? What about the heady boom of the Song Dynasty? Zheng He’s voyages in the Ming? There’s alot of aspects of “European Modern” scattered across China’s history.

China and Europe 1500-2000 and Beyond: What is Modern?

China, Technology and Change by Lynda Shaffer

Does Modernity Begin With the Song Dynasty?
————————————-

I’m not religious, and I don’t think religious beliefs are necessary to act in a decent, moral way. That said, we could learn a lot from these people:

Dozens of Amish neighbors came out Saturday to mourn the quiet milkman who killed five of their young girls and wounded five more in a brief, unfathomable rampage.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, was buried in his wife’s family plot behind a small Methodist church, a few miles from the one-room schoolhouse he stormed Monday.

His wife, Marie, and their three small children looked on as Roberts was buried beside the pink, heart-shaped grave of the infant daughter whose death nine years ago apparently haunted him, said Bruce Porter, a fire department chaplain from Colorado who attended the service.

About half of perhaps 75 mourners on hand were Amish.

“It’s the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family. I broke down and cried seeing it displayed,” said Porter, who had come to Pennsylvania to offer what help he could. He said Marie Roberts was also touched.

“She was absolutely deeply moved, by just the love shown,” Porter said.

another post from Dave, who is making my job really easy…

It seems that former South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon is going to be the next Secretary General. China, among others, pushed hard for an Asian Secretary General this time around and word has it they took a shine to Mr. Ban during the Six Party Talks in which he played a key role.

But coming right on the heels of the SecGen process will be the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, and Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer is tipped to be in the top three contenders, with a 15 to 1 shot according to Australian bookies. The other two nominees, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, are running at 2.75 to 1 and 3 to 1 respectively.

Nobel insider Stein Toennesson, head of the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO), says of Rebiya: “She’s the ideal candidate: she’s a woman, she’s Muslim and she’s Chinese”. Interesting way to phrase it, since the first two criteria have to do with approval, the last criteria is one of condemnation. And the Chinese wouldn’t see it as recognition of one of their own: they claim Rebiya is a terrorist.

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Hey, guys. Me again! Not much news from other parts of the world here, so when I saw this I knew it had to be put up for discussion. Raj

Chechen war reporter found dead

Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist known as a fierce critic of the Kremlin’s actions in Chechnya, has been found dead in Moscow. The 48-year-old mother of two was found shot dead in a lift at her apartment block in the capital. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body, the Interfax news agency said, quoting unnamed police sources. She fell seriously ill with food poisoning in 2004 which some believed to be an attempt on her life. The award-winning journalist fell sick while on her way to report on the Beslan school siege. A murder investigation is now underway.

Call me cynical, but I have a feeling that her killers won’t be found (or some random thugs will be fingered). Although I doubt her death was “ordered” as part of a government conspiracy, it seems to me that the ever-increasing authoritarianism in Russia is leading to people like this being murdered just because they challenge the State. This cannot go on, because unchecked it will just lead eventually to another Police-state – just a capitalist rather than Communist one.

I just got home, it’s nearly midnight, and what do I find in my inbox but another guest-post from Davesgonechina…enjoy!

I just couldn’t resist. From Harpers, which is so shrill it is now exporting surplus beyond U.S. shores:

For the past seven years, a coalition of Korean-American human rights and religious groups have been pressuring congress to urge Japan to accept responsibility for forcing women and girls into sexual slavery during the World War II era. This shouldn’t be terribly controversial, since the historical facts are clear…

Japan has always been able to block attempts to pass a congressional resolution on the exploitation of
comfort women, partly because it runs a lavishly-funded Beltway lobbying operation. The Bush Administration has quietly assisted in attempts to block a resolution on comfort women. According to Mindy Kotler, the director of Asia Policy Point, a research center on Japan and northeast Asia, the Administration views Japan as the key regional bulwark against an emerging Chinese regime that may be hostile to the United States in the future. “The administration wants Japan to be a central part of America’s Asian security architecture—above Australia, India, and the British Navy,” she said. “Any issue that the Japanese have defined as disturbing has been shunted aside to ensure that nothing upsets the alliance with Japan – and I mean nothing, whether it’s a trade dispute or taking responsibility for the comfort women.”

Not long ago, though, it looked like a measure had a decent chance of getting through. The coalition pressing Congress on the issue had traditionally sought to win a concurrent resolution, which must be approved by both chambers. This year the coalition worked for a resolution in only the House, and one was finally brought forth in April by Democrat Lane Evans of Illinois and Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey. The non-binding measure called on Japan to formally “acknowledge and accept full responsibility” for the sexual enslavement of “comfort women” and to stop denying its crimes – for example, by stripping mention of the topic from school textbooks.

The resolution was referred to the International Relations Committee and quickly gained co-sponsors, which alarmed the Japanese government. Enter Bob Michel, a top Washington lobbyist with Hogan & Hartson and a thirty-eight-year House member from Illinois, who served fourteen years as the G.O.P.’s minority leader. The Japanese government pays his firm about $60,000 per month to lobby on the sole matter of historical issues related to World War II, which also include claims concerning Japan’s vile abuses of American P.O.W.s, including the use of slave labor. (Michel, incidentally, is only the most prominent of a small gang of lobbyists which Japan retains to handle World War II issues.)

…On September 22, twenty-five congressional co-sponsors of the measure, including Mike Honda of California, the leading Japanese-American in Congress, sent a letter to Hastert and Boehner asking them to bring the resolution to the floor before Congress adjourned for the November elections. But mysteriously, no word was heard from the G.O.P. leadership about when the resolution would be brought to a vote.

Exactly what happened next is not clear, but word on the Hill is that the Bush Administration, Michel, and other Japanese lobbyists went to work on Boehner – and on Hastert, who reportedly is hoping to be named ambassador to Japan after he retires and who made clear that he was unhappy with the resolution. By last Wednesday, Boehner’s office had made clear that the comfort women resolution would not be brought to a vote before the end of the week – a key deadline since Congress would be adjourning until after the midterm elections. (Michel declined to return calls, as did the offices of Congressmen Boehner and Hastert, both of whom may be preoccupied with other pressing mattersat present.)

So there’s the Asia perspective on Foleygate: a pervy old Congressman’s fall from grace may just lead to Congress wagging their finger at Japan’s 60 year old (admittedly more abusive and horrific) perving, should the House come under Democratic control with a leadership that play ball with Bob Michel.

Special Bonus: Abe says no to Yasakuni. Thank God someone changed their tune for once. The Japanese government under Koizumi was turning out to be like a Giordano shop having a sale: blasting the same bloody song on loop to passersby for days and days and days…

Today’s guest-post is from Davesgonechina – more, Dave!

Slate has a tasty offering on the soggy state of Chinese dumplings (meant to include jiaozi and assorted other meat-in-dough Chinese cuisine):

Dumpling rage, like road rage, strikes without warning. My first attack came in my mid-20s, while dining at Raku, a Washington, D.C., “pan-Asian” restaurant. I made the mistake of ordering something called Chinese dumplings. Out came a bamboo steamer containing what resembled aged marshmallows – dumplings cooked so long they were practically glued to the bottom of the container. Try as I might, I could not pry them loose, until one ripped in half, yielding a small meatball of dubious composition.

It was an outrage. To my friends’ embarrassment, I stood up and shouted at our waiter:

“What are these?”

“Dumplings,” he said.

“These,” I said, “are not dumplings. The skin is too thick. The meat is too small. It’s been cooked too long. The folding is done all wrong.” My friends begged me to stop, and the manager threatened to call the police.

I’m not a savvy enough dumpling connoisseur to start telling chefs what they’re doing wrong, but I too have suffered dumpling rage in the U.S. Indeed, it extends to other Chinese food outlets – who among us doesn’t believe that the mall food court chain Wok N’ Roll should be shuttered in the name of better U.S.-Chinese relations and better bowel movements? Perhaps every Confucian Institute ought to be equipped with at least one dumpling master to correct this injustice.

Who will join the revolution? And who just, well, doesn’t like dumplings at all?

Wow. Olbermann seems to up the ante with each new “Special Comment.” In this one, he calls Bush a serial liar, questions his moral fitness for office and pretty much labels him a coward. But this isn’t just name-calling; he uses example after example and constructs a devastating indictment of the Bush/Cheney regime, their disregard for truth, for democracy, for the Constitution, for anything other than the continuance of their own power.

You can watch it (and read the transcript) at the invaluable Crooks and Liars.

I make no claim of being a real China historian, but I do have an interest (okay, a mild obsession) in recent Chinese history, specifically the revolutionary period and the Peoples’ Republic pre-Deng.

In a system where there is no official opposition, in the sort of factional and court politics practiced under Mao, you frequently find political figures who are, in a somewhat uncharitable interpretation, the regime’s fixers. Their loyalities are fluid, or perhaps in some cases, they are able to take a very long view towards the accomplishment of their own goals. In a more positive reading, they are coalition builders, helping to bridge the gaps between bitter rivals and move projects forward. The much revered Zhou Enlai was a figure of this sort, the ultimate survivor, who only advanced his own agenda when he was relatively certain of success and rarely, if ever, went against the high tide, even if what was being proposed went very much against his own instincts and preferences. The Mao/Zhou relationship was complex and fraught with ambiguity; Mao depended on Zhou but never fully trusted him, while Zhou acted the part of the loyal, “good” official until the day he died, even though Mao’s more “revolutionary” programs seemed the antithesis of Zhou’s innately practical sensibilities.

Which is a long-winded, roundabout introduction to Joseph Kahn’s analysis of the ongoing anti-corruption probe that brought down Shanghai party leader Chen Liangyu, among others:

The investigation, the largest of its kind since China first pursued market-style changes to its economy more than a quarter-century ago, was planned and supervised by Zeng Qinghong, China’s vice president and the day-to-day manager of Communist Party affairs, people informed about the operation said.

They said Mr. Zeng had used the investigation to force provincial leaders to heed Beijing’s economic directives, sideline officials loyal to the former top leader, Jiang Zemin, and strengthen Mr. Zeng’s own hand as well as that of his current master, President Hu Jintao.

Aside from frightening officials who have grown accustomed to increasingly conspicuous corruption in recent years, the crackdown could give Mr. Hu greater leeway to carry out his agenda for broader welfare benefits and stronger pollution controls, which may prove popular in China today.

Some critics fear that it may also consolidate greater power in the hands of a leader who has consistently sought to restrict the news media, censor the Web and punish peaceful political dissent…

…Several party officials and well-informed political observers said they believed that the investigation had not yet reached its climax. They say Mr. Zeng hopes to dismiss two fellow members of the Politburo Standing Committee, Jia Qinglin and Huang Ju, who are under pressure to take “political responsibility” for corruption that has occurred in Beijing and Shanghai, their respective areas of influence.

If he succeeds in removing officials who serve on the nine-member Standing Committee, the party’s top leadership, the purge will amount to the biggest political shake-up since 1989, when Deng Xiaoping ousted Zhao Ziyang, then the party’s general secretary, after the crackdown on democracy protests in Beijing.

It would also be likely to seal Mr. Zeng’s reputation as China’s political mastermind, who mixes personal ambition with a nearly legendary ability to deliver results for his superiors. Officially ranked No. 5 in the party hierarchy, he is widely seen as exercising more authority within the party than anyone except Mr. Hu.

Here’s where it gets interesting. According to Kahn, until 2004, when Zeng Qinghong joined forces with Hu Jintao to push Jiang Zemin from his last post, Zeng was widely seen as being close to Jiang…

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