China's All-Seeing Eye
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

In all of these cases, U.S. multinationals have offered the same defense: Cooperating with draconian demands to turn in customers and censor material is, unfortunately, the price of doing business in China. Some, like Google, have argued that despite having to limit access to the Internet, they are contributing to an overall increase of freedom in China. It's a story that glosses over the much larger scandal of what is actually taking place: Western investors stampeding into the country, possibly in violation of the law, with the sole purpose of helping the Communist Party spend billions of dollars building Police State 2.0. This isn't an unfortunate cost of doing business in China: It's the goal of doing business in China. "Come help us spy!" the Chinese government has said to the world. And the world's leading technology companies are eagerly answering the call.

As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to "set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing's most populated districts." General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls "thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running." IBM, meanwhile, is installing its "Smart Surveillance System" in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a "2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010." By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq...   more »

...Few of his contemporaries think of George Walker Bush as a visionary American president, unless they are using the term to imply a touch of madness. Yet early in his second term Bush launched a bold initiative to try to establish closer American ties with India, the world’s biggest democracy, in what may eventually be judged by historians as a move of great strategic importance and imagination...

Bush... has managed to cast aside 40 years of hostility and suspicion between America and India – and even agreed to start collaborating over nuclear energy – in the hope of strengthening India and its economy. And all for a special reason: the rise of China. ...   more »

Here's an interesting article re the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) Project. I disagree with the article's conclusion (it omits the vast online support to be provided to olpc students), but I think it deserves further discussion here on SCIY. What do you think?

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At the Consumer Electronic Show this week, the One Laptop Per Child foundation was supposed to make two announcements—the number of computers it sold under the Give One, Get One holiday program and a new olpc machine made jointly with Intel. But now Intel has pulled out or been pushed out of the project with olpc, depending on who you believe. It’s a mess and a mess of huge dimensions that encompasses a conversation of profit vs. nonprofit, nationalism vs. colonialism, technology vs. pedagogy, rote vs. experiential learning, Western design vs. Eastern design, good intentions vs. bad intentions. It doesn’t get bigger, or nastier. ...   more »

Thanks to Rich for recommending the excellent openDemocracy.net, in which this article appeared. ~ ronjon

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The price of oil is approaching $100 a barrel, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is accumulating faster than the most pessimistic scenarios are predicting, anthropogenic climate change is occurring. The recognition that the world's scientists, diplomats and media gathered at the Bali climate-change summit are arguing over - the necessity of moving beyond dependency on a fossil-fuelled, carbon-emission-based global economy - is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.

Where is leadership in the quest for a new model to come from? The results of a BBC opinion-poll inviting the views of 22,000 people in twenty-one countries, released in November 2007, included the striking discovery that the Chinese were the most willing to change their lifestyle and accept higher energy prices in order to save the environment. ...   more »

Here are two stories—one of construction and the other destruction. While in China a Hindu temple is being built, the historic 40-metre tall Bamiyan style Buddha in Pakistan’s Swat valley is in the process of being reduced to rubble.   more »

China will become the world’s biggest carbon polluter this year, overtaking the United States, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a bleak forecast of soaring global demand for fossil fuels. The rapid growth of the Chinese and Indian economies will raise global energy demand by 50 per cent by 2030, the agency said in its annual World Energy Outlook. India and China alone will account for almost half of the increase.

The agency pointed a finger at soaring coal demand, which threatens to upset carbon reduction targets, as it painted an alarming picture of a future of energy insecurity, soaring oil prices and a massive increase in carbon emissions. The dash towards prosperity in Asia will be fuelled by hydrocarbons - and mainly by increased burning of coal – with an inexorable rise in carbon emissions, hastening climate change.

Accelerating demand for oil, which will reach 116 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, up 32 per cent, will require huge investments to keep pace, the IEA said, and the sums are increasing. Inflation has taken its toll, and the agency reckons that $5.4 trillion (£2.6 trillion) must be spent to raise capacity, up a quarter from the estimate last year. It gives warning that plans to raise output from new projects may not compensate for the decline in existing fields.

“A supply-side crunch in the period to 2014, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out,” the IEA said in its report. ...    more »

For the foreign officials gathered at President Bush's two-day climate summit meeting this week, there's a cruel reality - no matter whether they opt for the voluntary, go-slow American path to emissions cutbacks or the more muscular United Nations approach, there's no way to stop catastrophic global warming if China doesn't also go green.

Without fast, concerted action to help China clean up its emissions-spewing economy - using lessons already learned by Bay Area scientists and regulators - the world's fight against climate change may be doomed to defeat.

According to several international studies released in recent months, China is in the process of overtaking the United States as the world's No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions. But a closer look at the numbers shows even more startling news - China's emissions growth will soon outstrip that of the entire industrialized world combined. Even if China meets its own targets for energy-efficiency improvements, its greenhouse gas emissions will increase by about 2.5 billion metric tons over the next five years, an amount far larger than the 1.05 billion tons in reductions imposed by the Kyoto Protocol on wealthy nations and on the United States, which has since withdrawn from the treaty. ...   more »

More results of global warming?  - ron

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An elderly woman feeds her ducks on a boat, which is her temporary home after the village was flooded, in Fengyang County, east China's Anhui province July 21, 2007.

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When it comes to putting yourself in the shoes of others, cultures that emphasise interdependence over individualism may have the upper hand.

In a new psychological experiment, Chinese students outperformed their US counterparts when ask to infer another person's perspective. The researchers say the findings help explain how misunderstandings can occur in cross-cultural communication.    more »

Thanks to Rakesh for suggesting this article:

BEIJING — It was only three months ago that international energy officials revised a prediction that China would surpass the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases by 2009 or 2010. It could happen, they warned, as early as the end of this year. -- That may have been conservative.

China's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, already have exceeded those of the United States, according to a report released this week by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. -- The study estimated that the surging demand for power from China's rapidly expanding economy caused carbon dioxide emissions to rise by 9% in 2006. That increase, coupled with a slight decline in the United States, meant that China's emissions for the year surpassed those of the U.S. by 8%, the Dutch report said. ...

China's emissions have outpaced predictions because the economy has grown faster than expected. With construction booming, China produces an estimated 44% of the world's cement, Olivier said. And with its factories' fuel needs rising, China has been completing construction of coal-fired power plants at a rate of about two a week. -- In the next eight years, the International Energy Agency estimates, China will build as many power plants as exist today in all of the European Union countries. Birol said the West needs to find incentives to help China invest in cleaner forms of energy than coal, because when coal plants come on line, they generally last decades. ...   more »

Beijing's financial mandarins have tried ever-so-carefully to calibrate just the right amount of credit tightening to prevent China's $2 trillion-plus, high-speed economy from overheating—without going too far and engineering an unwanted slowdown. It has been difficult, given the massive liquidity sluicing through the economy, and China's still-undeveloped financial markets.

The narrowing interest rate differential could make the Chinese currency, and the prospect of more appreciation in the future, more attractive to currency traders. President Hu Jintao's government is also under heavy international pressure to let the yuan—widely viewed as undervalued— rise in order to cool China's export growth and massive global trade surplus—which hit $177 billion last year. ...   more »

NORFOLK, Va. -- At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said. - Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said.

“They will exploit anything and everything,” the senior official said, referring to the Chinese hackers’ strategy. And although it is impossible to confirm the involvement of China’s government, the attacks are so deliberate, “it’s hard to believe it’s not government-driven,” the official said. - The motives of Chinese hackers run the gamut, including technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD networks for future action, the official said. ...   more »

ON the vanguard of venture capital, the buzzwords of late have been “alternative energy” and “China.” Are the two worlds about to collide?

Seed investors are financing, or considering financing, start-ups in China that are developing equipment for wind and solar power, clean water and food alternatives and technology to promote energy efficiency.

While this may seem to be an arbitrary combination of two of the hottest trends in venture capital — sort of like the first person who mixed peanut butter and chocolate — there is a growing number of investors who believe that the potential reward in China is worth the tremendous risk. ...   more »

Atkin's Architecture Group recently won the first prize award for an international design competition with this stunning entry. Set in a spectacular water filled quarry in Songjiang, China, the 400 bed resort hotel is uniquely constructed within the natural elements of the quarry. Underwater public areas and guest rooms add to the uniqueness, but the resort also boasts cafes, restaurants and sporting facilities.

The lowest level runs with the aquatic theme by housing a luxurious swimming pool and an extreme sports center for activities such as rock climbing and bungee jumping which will be cantilevered over the quarry and accessed by special lifts from the water. With a stunning visual presentation as shown here, it's no wonder this project took home the first prize. This is a fine example of an ultra modern facility co-existing amongst its natural environment. ...   more »

A national report in China indicates that the country could face a rather staggering gender imbalance over the next 15 years, with as many as 30 million more men of marriageable age than women by 2020...

Industrialized nations typically produce between 105 to 107 boys for every 100 girls... China’s Family Planning Commission, however, found that there are currently 118 boys born for every 100 girls, and in some regions like the southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, according to an Associated Press report on the study, “the ratio has ballooned to 130 boys to 100 girls.” ...   more »

During the age of dinosaurs, tiny squirrel-like creatures climbed trees and jumped into the darkness. Then they spread their limbs and glided away - the first known mammals to take to the air, a new report says.
The species is revealed by a fossil find in northeastern China, which pushes the known history of mammalian gliding or flying back by more than 75 million years. — The creature may have even beaten birds into the air. ...   more »