Polluted Pig Carcasses Pulled from Shanghai Waterways
Shanghai Pigs 39 percent of the water in China’s main rivers is toxic to the point that human contact of any kind is strongly discouraged. And that was before authorities began pulling pig carcasses out of Shanghai’s Huang Pu River. The discovery of these dead pigs began on Saturday March 9t…
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Weekly Recap – Feb 18th to 25th
The Blade Runner Can’t Run, The Dash-Cam Meteor, PS4 – Not just Games, and The New Castro all in this week’s Recap
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A Changing Strategy: China in Third World countries
By examining China’s different focus on Africa since mid-1950, when the People’s Republic of China was just founded, and Latin America since the recent decades, one can clearly see how Beijing’s strategy in dealing with third world countries evolved and became more sophisticated. This change of policy results not only from different contemporary context but also China’s different diplomatic need. Originally when Chou En-lai started his Safari and China started its interaction with Africa in 1950s, the Communist government was new-born and hardly supported internationally. Facing hostility from the western forces and eventually having worsened its relationship with the Soviet in mid1950, China was eager to gain more global recognition and build up its influence (48 Alden and Alves). African nations, with their revolutionary movements going on and shared identity as developing countries, became a perfect “canvas for...
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Factionalism: Conflicting or Balancing
Though the Communist Party retains monopoly in Chinese government, the political competition over the power transition is in no way mild or simple. Particularly on the eve of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party, the competition between different factions within the party, mainly among Shanghai Clique, Princeling and Tuanpai, remains the focus in the election of the fifth generation of the CCP leaders. Under such context, the understanding of the internal balancing in this factionalism becomes essential in analyzing Chinese politics and future policies. The first faction, ‘Shanghai Clique’, draws its name from the shared working experience and network in Shanghai administration of most of its members. This faction extended itself mainly from the patronage of former CCP General Secretary Jiang Zeming and former PRC Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, two behind-the-scene players in Chinese politics after their retirement....
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Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands: Breaking the Status Quo?
If you ask about the size of the Diaoyu Islands (known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan), it’s only 1,700 acres [1]– approximately 1/1,000,000 of the size of China and 1/60,000 of the size of Japan. Yet the dispute over these islands has tightened the tension between China and Japan dramatically for the past two months. Both sides claim indisputable sovereignty over the islands and have shown no sign of compromising. Why, you may ask, are two big countries freaking out over these small islands? “If you ask of the significance of the island itself – there’s none.” said Professor Avery Goldstein, a Penn professor focusing on Chinese politics and international security, on a panel on Diaoyu Islands held by the Philomathean Society on October 4th, “Behind the dispute is really what China’s rise means to its neighbor in the long run.” From a broader...
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