Beijing Embrarks on a Mission Impossible Over New Media

choi

(1) Kathrin Hille, Beijing Embrarks on a Mission Impossible Over New Media; The party's worry about losing control over the media have already been holding up reforms. Financial Times, Nov 1, 2011.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Ch ... xft-1743046498.html

My comment: The report does not convey earth-shattering information. What is valuable is the journalist's clinical observation:
(a) Paragraphs 1 to 3:

"A bursting property bubble, soaring inflation, growing social unrest and boisterous online media that highlight all these problems every day should have given China's communist party more than enough to worry about when they convened their annual policy conclave earlier this month.

"The meeting of the party's central committee was all the more important as it was expected to prepare and set the agenda for the big one a year from now, when members have to decide on the next generation of leadership.

"Instead, of all things, they chose to talk about culture. In no less than 17,368 characters, the resolution passed vby the committee state truisms such as 'culture is the lifeboold of a nation and the spiritual home of the people.'

(b) The rest of the report talks about ordinary Chinese: "The mood has deteriorated rapidly over the past year," "Such a general sense of dissatisfaction," and "The lack of confidence and firm beliefs, and citizens' willingness to speak out about their confusion."
(c) The summary and quotations say it all, so you need not read it if you do not want to. In my view, however, the report is a good snapshot of China's zeitgeist.

zeitgeist (n; German zeit time, period, era + geist spirit): "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era"
www.m-w.com


(2) Ed Crook, The Pendulum Swings; Analysis; American Oil Independence; After a decade in which extracting gas from shale has opened up reserves that could last the US 100 years, a breakthrough is also happening in oil. Ending a lonng reliance on imports from afar is now a realistic prospect, with geopolitical as well as econimic consequences. Financial Times, Nov 1, 2011
("Many analysts expect that in the coming decade the US will leapfrog Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's largest producer of liquid hydrocarbons, counting both crude oil and lighter natural gas liquids such as propane and ethane")

(a) Excerpt in a window of the print: 'It's amazing how far we have come in four short years. And we're just seeing the beginbning of it'

(b) In the other window of the print:
(i) 44%  Petroleum's current share of the US deficit on trade in goods
(ii) 20.7m  Barrels a day consumed by the US in the peak year of 2007

(c) My comment:
(i) The remark in (a) is made by Mr "Clay Bretches of Anadarko Petroneum, who worked on the NPC study."
* The preceding paragraph mentions "the National Petroleum Council, an advisor to the us government with members from the industry, academia and environmental groups."
* One of the world’s largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies, Anadarko Petroleum Corp
was formed in 1959 after the discovery of large amounts of natural gas in the Anadarko Basin (the basin comprises the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and southwest Kansas), is public (listed in NYSE) and headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Wikipedia
(ii) There is no need to read the rest of the FT report.


(3) Yu Yongding, Beijing's Red Knight Will Not Ride to the Rescue of the Eurozone; Don't blame China if its help is short of your expectation. It has never claimed it can save you from debt, and will not. Financial Times, Nov 1, 2011.

My comment:
(a) the significance of the op-ed is the introduction at its end: "The writer is a former member of Chia's central baank monetary policy committee." He might speak for China.
(b) There is no need to read it.

(4) Jonathan Soble, Panasonic Warns It Faces Loss of $5.3bn; ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT; Group begins costly TV business revamp; Write-off marks strategic reversal. Financial Times, Nov 1, 2011.

My comment: The expected loss of for the entire year (2011). There is no need to read it.