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Have you compared the Chinese constitution to the actions of their government?

You should check out http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html - specifically "CHAPTER II. THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS"

Okay I need to stop watching Fox

This link works I swear

People's Daily

I half joke that all the hub-bub over the bird-flu research papers being released is unnecessary - all any 'terrorist' has to do to get a 'superbug' is to get involved in any chicken farm. (Or pig farm.)

And no, small-scale farms show no evidence of being any less likely to reduce chances of 'growing' and spreading disease. Keeping a bunch of animals in confinement is asking for it. Period.

"Responding to a U.S. request to explain China's policies regarding blocking U.S. websites, China's foreign ministry said the country's Internet policies have been open and clear. '

It's open and clear that if you speak up against the Chinese government, a Party member, or a western multinational, you will be imprisoned. If you persist, you will die, the family will be billed for the execution(whether by bullet or execution truck), with possible harvesting of organs.

The Chinese government encourages and actively supports the Internet's development and we also protect the freedom of expression of citizens in China,' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

Only if it doesnt interfere with Articles 54 and 55 of the
PRC's Constitution. Then those technologies are used to bring people into compliance by force.

'We welcome foreign companies to invest and develop here, and we will continue to foster an open policy market.'

Only if they allow China's home market to copy the foreign technology or use it to more efficiently put down dissidents.

(Before you wish to mod me into oblivion, consider the actions that China has done - instead of stating that I dont understand.)

You'd be very popular in these places, all of which could produce more food on their own if government was not taxing and subsidizing and regulating food in the world:

Swaziland: HIV patients 'eat dung to make drugs work'

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/out_of_food_zimbabweans_eating_cow_dung/

Food Prices Fuel Egypt Unrest

Egypt and Tunisia usher in the new era of global food revolutions

Spike in global food prices contributes to Tunisian violence

Food price jumps protested in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco

Egypt and Tunisia: rocked by the global food crisis

Hunger in Syria, Libya and Yemen

Ukraine to control food prices

Rising food prices increase squeeze on poor - Oxfam

As Food Prices Spike, Azerbaijanis Endure Border Chaos To Shop In Iran

For dummies: The impact of the global food crisis on Azerbaijan - in pictures

Estonia Raises Inflation Forecast on Global Food and Fuel Prices

Nigeria: food price up as inflationary rate drop

High food prices 'caused Niger hunger'

Mexico: Food prices reach record high

China's food price inflation hits 14.4% in June

Lithuania and Latvia catching up with Estonia

Food prices rise, wages donâ(TM)t

China food prices spike as floods ruin farmland

Brazil: Food Prices Surge and Head Toward Dangerous Levels

Rise in food prices causing major concerns in Russia

Stockpiling as Russian food prices soar

Food prices have soared most in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina

Thousands protest against high food prices in Delhi

India: A spike in food prices is especially painful for the poor

I bet it would get pretty personal for you if you came to these places and started spouting your socialist views on how cheap food is that your government is subsidizing farmers and then paying farmers to destroy it

Swaziland: HIV patients 'eat dung to make drugs work'

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/out_of_food_zimbabweans_eating_cow_dung/

Food Prices Fuel Egypt Unrest

Egypt and Tunisia usher in the new era of global food revolutions

Spike in global food prices contributes to Tunisian violence

Food price jumps protested in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco

Egypt and Tunisia: rocked by the global food crisis

Hunger in Syria, Libya and Yemen

Ukraine to control food prices

Rising food prices increase squeeze on poor - Oxfam

As Food Prices Spike, Azerbaijanis Endure Border Chaos To Shop In Iran

For dummies: The impact of the global food crisis on Azerbaijan - in pictures

Estonia Raises Inflation Forecast on Global Food and Fuel Prices

Nigeria: food price up as inflationary rate drop

High food prices 'caused Niger hunger'

Mexico: Food prices reach record high

China's food price inflation hits 14.4% in June

Lithuania and Latvia catching up with Estonia

Food prices rise, wages donâ(TM)t

China food prices spike as floods ruin farmland

Brazil: Food Prices Surge and Head Toward Dangerous Levels

Rise in food prices causing major concerns in Russia

Stockpiling as Russian food prices soar

Food prices have soared most in Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina

Thousands protest against high food prices in Delhi

India: A spike in food prices is especiall

Yeah because the freedom to download a CAM rip of a sequel to a reboot of a recast of a movie based on a crap 1960's TV series for free and rather than paying a few bucks to see it in a cinema is totally the same as the freedom to call for people's rights under the countries constitution to be respected

So people being sued for downloading bad copies of worse movies in the US is totally the same as Liu Xiaobo being arrested for asking the Chinese government to respect things like Article 35 of the Chinese constitution

According to this Chinese article he's a big jerk who loves foreign money and attention and hates China. He is greedy and only risks his life and spends time in jail because he is an arrogant rockstar-type.

Looks like the U.S. is taking a page out of this playbook for assange.

Pressure is mounting on the UN's International Maritime Organization

China knows how to put the kibosh on that sort of thing.

following the decision by the US government last week to impose a strict 230-mile buffer zone along the entire US coast

Countdown to WTO injunction on the US government's new 'anti-competitive' shipping regulations:

5..4..3..

Western manufacturers and workers can't compete with unregulated totalitarian regimes and third-world workers that willingly tolerate "crazy bad" contamination. When you choose to indulge yet more environmental regulation please consider what might be done to prevent your noble intentions from simply evacuating more industry out of the West. International NIMBYism isn't morally admirable.

Yes, I'm sure the spokesman is right, just like how the spokesmen are right when they say China isn't blocking rare earth metal exports to Japan, or like how when they say that Tibet has been part of China for thousands of years, or like how when they say China has never been an aggressor or conquered in its many-thousand year history.

I recommend you read this letter bomb on the AMPONTAN blog regarding just how bad these "technology transfers" really are, and how they are, to put it simply, state-sponsored mega-corps strong-arming foreign companies into giving them secrets and IP. Keep in mind that while China does not care about foreign IP, they are trying to force foreign automakers into giving IP rights to Chinese companies. In other words, IP only matters to them when they it's good for their own domestic companies and they can use it to bully.
Letter bombs (11): Coming up on the rail

I don't know why we are relying on a Google translated article when Xinhua News Agency (state run) offers their own English translations (second copy) of this exact news release. And they're much more readable. Such news sites often offer me periodic enjoyment.

Patent and innovation discourse aside, it should be noted there's an interesting piece comparing the locality of populations in the US vs China. Let's face it, China (and the Southeast Asia region this connects them with) have a higher population density and a greater need for this high speed lengthy rail. It's also going to bring much needed economic development via freight shipments to very poor areas that the United States probably wouldn't experience on a corresponding scale.

Oh, also, there's some pretty entertaining rail-envy springing up.

And before you call it outright theft, consider the history of the "technology transfer" program that seeded all this. It sounds like there's going to be lengthy lawsuits lasting a decade or more and that the companies have reason to sue -- good reason. I wonder how this is going to affect future "technology transfer" programs to China. Also, one last bit of praise: NPR's radio coverage of this has been top notch.

"According to a study commissioned by the European Patent Office on " The cost of a sample European patent", the total cost of obtaining a typical Euro-direct patent (validated in 6 countries, with 10 claims on 3 pages, 11 pages of description) was about 30,000 in 2003. In its July 2000 proposal for a Community patent, the European Commission also estimated the costs for obtaining a European patent in 8 countries at around 50,000, including estimated translation costs of 12,600, agent's fees of 17,000 and renewal fees of 16,970 (see Memo/00/41). "

http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/documents/HowMuchPatent_0000003793_00.xml.html

"The Commission said that a European patent validated for example in 13 countries would cost as much as 20,000 euros (about 24,800 U.S. dollars), of which nearly 14,000 euros (about 17,360 dollars) arises from translations alone.

By using only three languages, the cost could be reduced to 6, 200 euros (7,688 dollars), according to the proposal."

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90853/7049592.html

there's a reason I said
"unless you happen to be a fully qualified and practising patent laywer yourself with lots and lots of free time on your hands."

If you're fully qualified to write bulletproof patent applications that won't be rejected because of some legality and your time is worth exactly zero then filing for a patent in a single unusually cheap country might approach your claims.

If on the other hand you are a developer, not a laywer, and your time is in fact worth more than zero dollars then getting those patents is ridiculously expensive. Especially for small companies which tend to be operating on the edge anyway.

So I repeat.

Bullshit!

While China has the largest number of coal mining fatalities in the world, the highest road death toll (and actually said to be 40% higher than official figures), the collapse of poorly-built schools in earthquakes, parents rioting in China because of lead poisoning from children's toys - and one could go on and on - you have to ask the question...

Is the Chinese government complicit in "undermining national unity" and "infringing upon national honor and interests"?

Of course it is. In fact this shit happens all over the world. So the very idea of prosecuting the *citizens* of China for being uppity (and often rightly so) is the absolute, utter height of spiteful hypocrisy. [citation needed]

They are building many nuclear reactors:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90884/6640166.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country#Countries_with_nuclear_power_plants

http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/index.html (search/highlight "China" on that page)

And I think they are trying to control the supply of materials used for motors and batteries.

Go figure :).

???

If I wanted to read chinese propagada, I would go to the source:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

You know, I wish I 1) spoke some variant of Chinese and 2) knew more about Chinese media outlets. I wrote a journal post about this situation back when it was developing and tried to find a diverse viewpoint in Chinese news related to Google's ultimatum. It turned out to be more humorous and an exercise in futility than anything else. Does anyone who speaks the language know of a 'subversive' news source out of China? Or anything at all offering balanced and multiple views in the reporting? All I see is multiple sources looking like they are offering you unbiased news when, in fact, they are regurgitating something to you that is within a government approved standard deviation of the government approved message.

Really, really sad. Also a stark reminder of how thankful I should be of the diversity of our press in the United States no matter how sorry it may look at times ...

???

If I wanted to read chinese propagada, I would go to the source:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

Naah.. in- con- ceivable.

One of China's communist controlled tabloids recently printed this headline Bill Gates bats for China. Perhaps Google should be faulted for tolerating China's totalitarian regime, but Microsoft embraces it. After all, when Gates says, "The Chinese efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited.", he means that you can access Microsoft.com and MSN in China. He's happy enough that all potential threats to both the Communist and Microsoft power structure, (facebook, blogspot, youtube, wikipedia, google...) are blocked or filtered in China. I was somewhat surprised (maybe I shouldn't have been), that the Chinese government seems to have a default blacklist policy. New webdomains are blocked even though they have almost no content (much less content critical of this government.) The people of China are wonderful, they deserve much more than the current regime has any intention of providing. We can thank Bill Gates of Microsoft for looking the other way while the government of a country where he stands to make billions leaves its own people in poverty. Wal-Mart and many other corporations have the same "don't ask, don't tell" policy when dealing with China's or indeed any other totalitarian government. Thank you Google for at least showing the world that the emperor has no clothes. Many of us will always respect that. And whether it is tomorrow or 1000 years from now, when the good people of China finally find their way out from under their government's oppression, they will thank you too.

Will this be like Chrome beating our Safari's market share? It did only take a year or two to overtake the 7+ year old Safari, I wonder if that will happen with this too, solely due to the size and name of Google.

No. They live in China, they don't have your fancy 1st Amendment.

You're right. All citizens of China have is Article 35, translated: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."

AFAIK DVD and CD-ROM use similar red lasers. But the filesystem is often different (ISO 9660 vs UDF) and other things like that. There were proposals at the time Bluray was launched to have higher-density DVD using red lasers. Even the Chinese made some specs like this. But it lost out because the improved storage was not large enough to justify buying a new drive. Not to mention getting content in the format. Sony jump started Bluray adoption by adding it to every PS3 sold.

What worries me is a truck-mounted EMP generator deployed in the Wall Street area.

In today's financial markets, if Wall Street went down for a week, when it came back up, New York would no longer be the center of the financial universe.

(Of course, that's going to happen anyway; a debtor nation can't control the world financial system for long. China is shortening the maturity on its 2.1 trillion in Treasury paper and starting to buy real assets, mostly natural resources.)

China mandated micro-USB charging sockets in December 2006, so the EU is just falling in line. Yawn.

And South Korea did so a year earlier.

Maybe with EU on board we'll see handsets for the US market meeting the standard without having to wait forever while the US carriers get their shit together.

China mandated micro-USB charging sockets in December 2006, so the EU is just falling in line. Yawn.

no one in iran knows the truth, because there is no free press

everyone outside iran knows the truth, because there is free access to a free press

and what in your mind makes you think that the us govt can control the world media?

well, let's go with your paranoia, and make believe for the moment the us govt really can control the media. not even just american outlets, but even the likes of news.com.au and news.bbc.co.uk: any western media outlet. this is some extreme paranoia to believe that, but let's go with your bizarre pov for a moment

well then, what's preventing me from going to:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/

is your assertion the us govt can control these news sources?

but my whole point is right there in those links: the fact that i can even click on those news sources if i choose to, and no one is going to knock on my door for doing that, and no one is blocking my access to official russian or chinese news sources, and i feel no fear in clicking those links, then what the hell does that leave your assertion about who is controlling "the media" or your right to free access to news sources in the usa?

why the heck do you have the whole notion of a free press and its implications completely ass backwards in your mind?

China's constitution has just as many homilies, pious hopes and guarantees of human rights as the US's. See, eg http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html As does almost every country in the word. It's how it plays in practice that makes the difference. (And last year I might have snarked that you should send one to the White House -- but I'm giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, so far.)

Let Japan acknowledge their prejudicial practices, and pass laws similar to our own Affirmative Action. Any company that fails to employ Bakunin pays penalties. A company that employs Bakunin, but prevents them from entering management ranks pays penalties. There is a problem, which is tacitly approved by the government. The government needs to make it clear that the conduct is unacceptable, and will be penalized.

I would guess that the govermnet isn't really serious about the problem, but the society over there is so homogenous, that government holding one minority forth and saying they're equal and need to be treated with respect would only make them stand out more, which would of course be counterproductive. The only way these people are going to be treated as the equals that they are is if either no one cares about it, which is unlikely, or if no one knows about it, which is entirely doable with simple steps.

Affirmative action style laws, I don't know if they work over here, but there's NO way they would work in this situation. Again, these people don't want to stand out. While that might sound wrong, I can't fault someone for wanting to erase past artificial distinctions rather than fighting for their rights.

On a more practical level, a company which complies with the spirit of the law won't investigate whether someone is of burakumin descent or not and that's the only way they'd know. If they didn't employ any burakumin, their logical response would be "we had no idea, we didn't hire any because we have no way of knowing who was a burakumin." And the chances that they would hire one WITHOUT doing the illegal investigations seem pretty low. As of 1999, there were about 2 million of them in a total population of 126 million. And many burakumin are concentrated in specific areas, so the chances of hiring one or promoting one at random are probably less than 1.5%, right? (I'm bad at basic math often.) So that wouldn't work.

Honestly? I agree that the Tibet - China issue is a lot more complicated than evil communist takes over peaceful buddhist community, but I think saying China was the best thing that could have happened to Tibet is going a bit far don't you think?

Not really.

FYI, yes, I see that TFA has a link to the Chinese government mandate.

Actually, those two journals are print journals I normally pick up in a bookstore. As for online sources, I'm not aware of any academic journals that are freely available online (unfortunately). For free online stuff, reading a nice variety of newspaper-like sites is probably as good as one can get. A few worth reading:

Science:

Eurekalert, Scientific Blogging, National Academies

Politics/Current events:

Moscow Times, Al Jazeera, PressTV, YNet, UN News Service, People's Daily

All this plus heavy use of Google News with custom sections, of course.

None of this is as good as the journals, but it's more current.

I read recently that China is also committing to unmanned aircraft, with a 1 billion yuan investment (US$150 mil)

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6564823.html

.
10% of the Knesset is Arabic.
There is a Mosque inside the Knesset for Muslims to worship at.
Mosques are prevalent throughout Israel.
Arabic businesses are thriving in Israel.
Blockades end when Hamas decides to have a ceasefire. The Blockades are strictly a reaction to the attacks by Hamas.
If you want to watch a business die, try to sell Jewish produced products in Gaza. It may not be a death sentence personally, but it will be to your business.

Seriously, if Hamas would just sit down and negotiate and have a cease fire, this would end. The blockade would stop. Things would improve. The fact that even Egypt doesn't want to deal with Hamas should say just how corrupt and insane that political party is...

Hahahahahahaha

China is communist in nothing but name. You really need to go there and check it out. China is a place for the rich, and the business men. The peasants have barely any rights at all, although this is changing, albiet, slowly.

You can see, from one of China's own newspapers, that social welfare only meets 5% of demand. And even that is probably pushing it.

when the sun king ruled france, all of the propaganda and lies you pointed to above was in full force, deeply ingrained in the social dna of aristocrats and serfs. and yet the people still rebelled. not so much because they were smart and knew better, but simply because they were hungry

china's government has been described as the harvard alumni society with a standing army. it can do no wrong. it is perfect. except it isn't. it's human. it can, and has, made mistakes, and will do so again. the difference between the usa and china is that when the government deos something that proves deeply unpopular with the people, or makes some teribble mistake (the great leap forward, or invade iraq), or some horrible national crisis hits, in a democracy, the government can be swept aside and a new one can take its place, bloodlessly and without any effort. meanwhile, in china, in a totalitarian state, no matter how many lies are spread, the real world effects of that mistake or crisis persists, and grows, and stays a permanent mark on the system. not that the people have to even know the truth. they can blame foreign countries for something their own government did wrong if the propaganda machine is solid enough. but you can't make up a lie that covers an empty stomach. meaning: the mistakes compound over time, and you permanently impoverish the country, regardless of what the people believe is to blame for that impoverishment. and that leads to revolution: the empty stomach

the usa is not even 250 years old. and it is the most powerful country in the world. more powerful than much larger countries and much older civilizations. why?

because of democracy. when you have the freedoms and social stability in a democracy, you get a country that can adapt to horrible challenges and difficult times, and survive, because it can, with a snap of the fingers, change course with a new government and a new ideology. the ultimate in adaptive pragmatism. no totalitarian state can be that nimble. its more like an aircraft carrier trying to turn on a dime: it has massive investment in an ideological framework, and it cannot merely elicit edicts that contradict deeply ingrained ideology

well, actually, in some ways, it can. does it strike you as odd the the chinese communist party lords over the most capitalist system in the world? do you think this ideological hollowness results in no decrease in legitimacy?

that harvard alumni society with a standing army realizes this

a totalitarian state cannot persist, no matter how absolute its control over the people's will. for the sake of retaining power at all costs, it simply devoles into a weak, brittle, impoverished country. no lie fills an empty stomach. and then its revolution, or mass starvation, and even greater weakness

meanwhile, a democracy simply changes its ideological colors, and marches on, as demands and crises change, completely adaptive and nimble. this country outsurvives, outcompetes, and is richer than the ideologically brittle ones

so yes, if absolute retension of power is your point, yes, you win: you can lie to the people completely. however, if also want to have a country that can stay healthy and rich and survive as a force on the world stage, then you want a democracy, because a totalitarian state can do nothing but devolve into poverty over time

you can say china is an example contrary to this statement. actually, china is liberalizing economically, just not politically. the story is incomplete. there will come a point where any further growth, or even retention of growth, will require greater nimbleness that can only come from a democratic government. that further adhesion to a totalitarian ideological iceberg will simply mean china will begin to slide back into poverty. then its the empty stomachs of the peasants that will lead the way to revolution, that have always led the way to revolution, no matter what the propaganda is or what people believe

In ATL, the citizens at least could use the 5th Amendment's taking clause to get just compensation for any property lost to the government.

I had to look, but China does surprisingly have a version of the "eminent domain" clause in their Constitution - See #6 of "Amendment Fourth" down the page. Note it doesn't say "just compensation"... it just says they can take private property, and pay you something for it. Somehow I don't think, unless you are a Communist party big-wig, that value is decided by an impartial tribunal in a court of law.

Undersea cable damage is hardly rare--indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year, according to marine cable repair company Global Marine Systems. But last week's breaks came at one of the world's bottlenecks, where Net traffic for whole regions is funneled along a single route.

-FL

Orly?

Are you just joking, or a complete nutjob? I assume it's the former, just for the sake of sanity.

Inhabitants of the EU: 494.8, Millions, that is. Way more than Kentucky. Way more than the US, actually. Over half of the households in Europe are actually using computers. That's one hell of a market, if you ask me. MS can't, just can't afford to lose that market. And it's not only about the numbers - the European market is very innovative, many software companies are producing - well... software. Imagine if their environment wouldn't mostly use Windows as its main OS?

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_statistics
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90781/90877/6314195.html

Read the Chinese constitution, or at least just skim the guaranteed rights.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html

(See, for example, article 35:

Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.)

It's interesting that this document exists but, unlike the US Constitution, seems to hold no importance whatsoever.

Still, I'm glad this guy's standing up for himself.

(Completely Off-topic, but what the hell is that Dice Discussions Flash ad doing to Firefox to make it run so slow? Editors, you gotta pull this ad, this is ridiculous.)

Quite a few problems with that. :)

For one, I can't picture production capacity catching up with demand enough to lower prices to that level for at least a decade, and even that would take a trenemdous expansion rate. There's no way Nanosolar is going to *sell* at $0.99/W when the current market price if $5.80/W and they don't have enough production capacity to meet supply. They stated that they can *turn a profit* selling at $0.99/W. They'll sell for $5.70/W, $5.60/W, or whatnot -- whatever's the most they can charge and move all their capacity. They're not idiots. They're going to earn every last dollar they can, and pump it into new production facilities. Only as the market becomes saturated will prices drop.

Secondly, global warming is going to happen even if all killed ourselves today. There's too much inertia behind the problem. What we effect today is what things are going to be like in 2050, 2100, not the next decade or two.

Third, this doesn't address vehicles. Still have to take care of that gorilla in the corner. It also doesn't address industry CO2 pollution unrelated to power demand, such as steel production. Still, it's a great start.

Fourth, you don't need to cover a big expanse of desert at all. There's more than enough rooftop space in the world to meet demand. Example: China has 32521 square kilometers of urban area. Assuming 11% efficiency on these cells and 25% of that urban area being able to be coated in cells, and assuming an average insolation of 200W/m^2, we get a total power production of about 180 terrawatts. Current *world* demand is only 10 terrawatts. See where I'm going with this?

Fifth, ultracapacitors are too expensive for power storage currently. We're still going to need baseload power production until a cheaper method of storing power can be found. One concept that I find interesting relates to electric cars. To charge a car quickly in your garage, you're going to need a home charging unit. Your house just can't deliver power nearly fast enough for a five to ten minute charge. The idea I read is to use those for power balancing: have them charge themselves when there's a glut of electricity and discharge into the grid when there's a shortage. In exchange, utilities would give consumers a significant discount on their power bill.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200410/13/eng20041013_160062.html

22% overweight. So what's changed in the past 10 years? Is it increased affluence due to a booming economy?

I've known plenty of fat Asians here in Hawaii. Also on average the Caucasian population seems thinner than on the U.S. mainland. More excercise due to year round outdoor activities?

Hopefully this will be the start of a trend..

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200612/19/eng200 61219_334047.html

They should use USB chargers for all portable devices (assuming USB has enough juice to charge it).

For comparison, from the "Constitution of the People's Republic of China":

Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.

Good that those reasonable limits are in place, huh? The state has many pressing needs and can't allow Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, or other troublemakers to interfere with the people's "education in... patriotism, collectivism, internationalism and communism and in dialectical and historical materialism." (Art. 24)

Microsoft China was the first foreign-funded corporation to gain full membership in CSIA (China Software Trade Association.)

In 2002.

"With the membership, Microsoft will be expected to participate in a series of activities to be held by the Association on protection of intellectual property rights and software technology developing.

As the most influential software company in the world, Microsoft's participation would play a positive role in the development of the Association, said Chen Chong, the CSIA board chairman.

With China's WTO accession, China's software industry has to steer onto the same track as internationally accepted practices and operate in a global market." Microsoft Joins in China Software Industry Association

Also reported on the People's Daily Online. Including an interesting story about how they aren't experimenting with "space mutation breeding".

Aww, and I was so looking forward to the catchphrases that would've spawned.

Also reported on the People's Daily Online. Including an interesting story about how they aren't experimenting with "space mutation breeding".

Aww, and I was so looking forward to the catchphrases that would've spawned.

Not quite. Quote from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200505/29/eng200 50529_187357.html
"In 1978, China had a poor-stricken population of 250 million, and the figure has declined to around 30 million today." Assuming even that relatively high end figure is very close to only 2% of the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens classified as below the poverty level in China. The average Chinese citizen is more like the average Japanese citizen than might seem to be evident from your fully false statement that the average was an uneducated farmer. The similarity even applies to population age spectrum projections, they are both increasingly older populations.

It has already started, several years ago actually, with the Dragon Chip. It is based on RISC; the next generation the K9, will remove the FPU and redesign the x86 for greater similarity to RISC-allowing for greater potential of hardware emulation to run those future pesky programs that might require DRM support. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200209/27/eng200 20927_104011.shtml

Might be more accurate to say "an" online news site. There is of course People's Daily, Xinhua Net, etc. etc. etc.

Seeing China as this huge, backward giant with one, monolithic information source is so 1978. I mean, really, this story alone surely debunks that simplistic, wrongheaded, sadly common view...

Not all nuclear reactors. I'm afraid China is going to be the one who shows the west how it's done. I guess we'll let China whip us for the next ten years or fifteen years, then adopt what pans out.

Well, assuming we aren't still whining about 'Intellectual Property' and draining our resources fighting 'Rouge Dictators' when they have beaten us in cloning, stem cell treatments, computer science, computer hardware, and space exploration. Energy production almost seems small by comparison.