I’ve got a stack of emails with great suggestions for posts. On top of that, the wires are awash in news about nutty nuke-happy Chinese generals, a nutty American general caught red-handed lying about Abu Ghraib, nutty Americans terrified of the Unocal buyout, and nutty Republicans singing in chorus that they love and stand by Karl Rove even if he turns out to be the real BTK killer. All these hot stories, but the sad truth is I am too worn out from this very wild week to comment on them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t. Thus, an open thread….

Thank God the SARS crisis brought about a maturity of China’s political leadership and a new age of transparency.

In the spirit of the 1930s Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, China is ignoring science it finds inconvenient. The head of the ministry of agriculture’s veterinary bureau, Jia Youling, has rejected research on bird flu published in the journal Nature last week by Yi Guan and his colleagues at the universities of Hong Kong and Shantou.

The paper concluded from genetic analysis that the H5N1 bird flu killing migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in north-west China had come from southern China. An independent team in Beijing reported similar findings. Chinese officials had claimed that the virus came from another country. Last week Jia told the official Xinhua news service that Guan’s paper “made the wrong conclusion” and “lacks credibility” because birds do not fly to Qinghai from southern China – even though this is a well-known migratory route.

Ominously, Jia added that Guan’s group did not even go to Qinghai or have permission to do the research, and that his lab does not meet safety standards. Yet Guan’s BSL3 lab complies with international standards, and his team collected samples from Qinghai before the government introduced rules last month saying no one could study dead animals or bird flu, or even report an outbreak of animal disease, without permission. “They are trying to close everyone’s lab,” Guan told reporters.

Ah, the joys of progress and reform. The scary thing is, if the scientists are correct, avian flu will make SARS look like a paper cut. If the CCP is actually impeding research and lying about it, they could be endangering the lives of millions.

Via CDT.

In honor of Bastille Day, and in recognition of one of America’s greatest and most beloved allies, I’ve given this thread a Frenchified name. Voulez-vous commenter?

The Times of London likes it:

Mao: The Untold Story exposes its subject as probably the most disgusting of the bloody troika of 20th-century tyrant-messiahs, in terms of character, deeds — and number of victims. This study, by Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, and her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, is a triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research. This is the first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all — the Red Emperor of China. Using witnesses in China, and new, secret Chinese archives, the authors of this magisterial and damning book estimate that Mao was responsible for 70m deaths. He boasted he was willing “for half of China to die” to achieve military-nuclear superpowerdom.

And same from the UK Guardian.

In Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday invariably, and with absolute justification, refer to the Cultural Revolution as ‘the Great Purge’. It so happened that the wrath of the Red Guard was directed against ‘intellectuals’, loosely defined as anyone who had any pretensions to learning. But the method by which they were suppressed – mass murder usually accompanied by gratuitous torture – was the same as that which Mao employed whenever he felt it necessary to strengthen his hold over China and its people. His entire life was punctuated with slaughter of such a magnitude that it could only have been ordered by a man who was criminally insane.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have not, in the whole of their narrative, a good word to say about Mao. In a normal biography, such an unequivocal denunciation would be both suspect and tedious. But the clear scholarship, and careful notes, of The Unknown Story provoke another reaction. Mao Tse-tung’s evil, undoubted and well documented, is unequalled throughout modern history.

He was candid about his megalomania. ‘Morality,’ he wrote, ‘does not have to be defined in relation to others. People like me want to satisfy our hearts to the full.’ His heart was satisfied only by the domination of his people, a term which he defined so rigorously that, even when he was indisputable ruler of China, he still wanted to dictate the thoughts of its population to ensure that they never even thought of turning against him. He safeguarded his position by murdering millions of his innocent compatriots.

These days, it is fashionable to point out that Adolf Hitler had redeeming features. He was good with dogs and other people’s children. Mao was hateful with everybody – his women, his wives and his son and daughter. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday deny him credit for the one episode in his blood-soaked career which, his apologists claim, at least adds an element of heroism to the savage saga: the Long March was a fraud.

I think I’ll have to read it to make up my own mind. As I’ve said before, Jung Chang’s style can drive me up a wall, but this sounds well worth a read. Has anyone here finished the book yet?

As all of us know, the concept of “The New Left” is wonderful, even if some of us Cold War Capitalis-types don’t like the word “left.” In theory, it sounds like the badly needed antidote to the Three Represents, and a recognition that the frightening class divide that plagues China won’t go away by itself. Sometimes a little affirmative action is called for, painful as it is to exploiters some in the business community.

This is an interview with one of the New Left architects, Wang Hui, and it reconfirms my initial enthusiasm for the movement — a very cautious and qualified enthusiasm, since, as I said when I first wrote about it, the New Left may be just new hot air. Then again, if Hu and Wen are as committed to it as Wang Hui says, maybe it’ll help remedy some of the inequities endured by China’s rural poor. (And I think Wen is committed; with Hu, you never know.)

A very brief excerpt from a piece anyone interested in Chinese politics and economics should read.

Q: Jiang Zemin, China’s former president, oriented the country along the lines of the U.S. model. Is that changing?

A: Yes, once China only looked to the U.S. Now, if you notice, Hu Jintao’s government is looking much more seriously at the whole world — not just to the U.S. but to Europe, Latin America, India and elsewhere.

The current leadership, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao,are much more concerned about social equality and the environment. Basically we’re seeing a reorientation of the policies of the last government.

Q: Are they also rejecting Jiang Zemin’s Three Represents theory, which sought to “empower the productive forces” of Chinese society — entrepreneurs — and came to be seen as a kind of Reaganeseque trickle-down economics?

A: The Three Represents has been used by too many people to say that China should have GDP growth at any cost — that it’s OK even if peasant migrant workers who build a great building will never get their salary.

But Wen Jiabao has personally intervened at the national level to try and get workers their payments,and a large amount of their salaries have been paid due to this intervention. At one level it’s quite laughable — that the premier of the country had to intervene to get workers their salaries. But on the other hand,it’s a symbol of the concerns of the current government. For example, these things did not happen in the previous government. Jiang Zemin didn’t do it.

Some cruel capitalists may see this as sentimental rubbish. But I think helping to ensure the workers get paid for their efforts is pretty commendable. It sounds good. In fact, it almost sounds American; I always loved my country’s compassion for those at the bottom. (Past tense, “loved.”) It’s a good thing.

Are there signs that China’s economic miracle might be losing steam? Since I am not an economist, I can’t predict that, but I can point out some of the recent news that indicates a weakening of China’s economic mystique.

To start, there’s evidence Japanese companes now see advantages in switching some of their investments in China over to India (and China’s sensitivty toward the Japanese in recent months hasn’t helped matters).

A growing number of Japanese companies are eyeing India as the next crucial investment destination, looking to cut back their reliance on China as much as to tap into the country’s huge market potential.

Concerns about China losing competitiveness when it eventually lets the yuan rise in value and the flare-up of anti-Japan sentiment this year have prompted Japan Inc. to look more closely at India as an alternative.

India’s strengths include its one-billion-plus population, a rapidly emerging rich middle class, well-skilled but still relatively cheap labour and political neutrality with Japan, all of which could offset a shaky infrastructure, analysts say.

China remains by far Japan’s most favoured and heavily invested region in Asia and will likely stay so for some time. Of some 4,100 Japanese companies operating around the world, more than half do business in China, compared with just 150 in India, according to a 2004 survey by business publisher Toyo Keizai.

India isn’t the only threat. A few weeks ago I saw how Taiwanese textile companies believe the golden age of manufacturing in the Pearl River Delta is ending, and that they might be better off setting up shop in Vietnam. [Might require registration.]

Thousands of foreign businesspeople, primarily Taiwanese, helped turn this southern Chinese city into one of the world’s busiest export manufacturing centers.

Now, amid rising wage and pension costs, energy shortages, tighter government regulation, traffic bottlenecks and other concerns, some of them are starting to look elsewhere. Their restlessness reflects a dark side to China’s economic boom, as growth pains and other issues prompt companies to reconsider starting up or expanding in China.

Chang Han Wen is having second thoughts. He came here from Taiwan in early 1991 when the area was still largely farmland, launching a shoe assembly line with 200 workers. He has since opened five factories, including three shoe plants that employ 3,000 people and produce 1.5 million pairs of specialty boots and high-end shoes a year for export to the United States and Europe.

But his sixth plant, a garment operation, sits empty. Chang has indefinitely postponed its opening, anxious about China’s tense trade relations with the West and the threat of more quotas that would limit clothing exports. That’s only part of his worries.

This year Dongguan’s minimum wage jumped more than 27%. Even with the increase, employers are struggling with worker shortages. Government inspectors are making the rounds at factories, enforcing work-hour rules and pension contributions that officials paid little attention to in the past. Electricity is in short supply, as is fuel.

All in all, Chang says, things have gotten so much tougher that his next investment may be in Vietnam, where many Taiwanese have gone.

“For manufacturers here, the golden period has passed,” he said.

I also believe that many American companies are finding the hassles of doing business in China simply not worth it. That doesn’t mean there’s not a huge line of companies gathered like barbarians at the gate to break into the Chinese markets. But the mantra that the future of all global business lies in China, and that if you don’t make it there you’re essentially out of the running — that seems to be out the window.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think things in China are anywhere near a crisis, let alone a collapse. But the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut could be slowing down as investors recognize opportunities elsewhere. We all know it can’t go on forever, and it could be the China Dream is finally losing some of its lustre. Maybe.

Right on. Glorious quotations from the CCP.

Oh, brave new world….

All I’ll say is rarely if ever have I seen so much hot air and so many cliches crammed into a single document of such extraordinary meaninglessness (and no shortage of hypocrisy, either). Mindnumbingly stupid.

It actually reached 115 American degrees here today — that’s 45.5 degrees Centigrade. And you think you’ve got it bad in Shanghai.

I have consciously and consistently avoided this topic because I try to post about things I feel competent discussing, and mergers and acquisitions are not my specialty. Allow me to break my silence, especially to point to the language opponents in HUAC Congress and the Pentagon are using to whip up China hysteria in the misguided debate. As though China’s overpriced acquisition of this tier-2 energy company is going to threaten our national security.

“I believe (China’s) aim is inexorably to supplant the United States as the world’s premier economic power and, if necessary, to defeat us militarily,” Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon strategist under the late President Ronald Reagan, told the hearing.

A successful CNOOC bid would increase China’s leverage over U.S. interests in Asia, warned Rep. Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He added that Chinese companies did not behave as normal commercial entities on the international market.

“Instead, they obey the political directions of China’s Communist government,” he said in an opening statement at the hearing.

Elsewhere in Washington, a U.S. government committee charged with reviewing offers for American companies by foreign entities declined to begin a review of CNOOC’s offer for Unocal, potentially delaying any deal between the two, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Look, if China wants to be the laughingstock of the global financial world, more power to them. As curmudgeonly Conrad said in the comments yesterday:

Why should it not, if CNOOC is willing to pay more for Unocal than anyone else? If the Chinese government wants to take money from its taxpayers and send it to American shareholders, that’s fine with me. My guess is that the money managers and hedge fund operators who are selling Unocal shares have a much better idea what they are actually worth than do Chinese government bureaucrats who are financing the purchase.

All we have to fear is fear itself, and getting everyone’s knickers in a knot over a shining example of free trade (stupid perhaps, but free) seems to me a massive waste of energy.