South Korea and China lead the world’s 20 largest economies in the percentage of economic stimulus money they invest in environmental projects, the United Nations Environment Program reported Thursday.
Other members of the Group of 20 trail well behind in their percentages of such investment from stimulus money, the U.N. agency found.
via Stimulus Is Greenest in South Korea and China – NYTimes.com.
An article from NY Times regarding the struggle China is facing.
One question is “What will China do?” said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. And, just as importantly, he added, it’s “Will Congress accept it?”
The world may get an answer to the first question tomorrow, when Chinese President Hu Jintao speaks to the U.N. General Assembly. He is expected to announce a major climate change plan, which some experts say could include a new five-year commitment to reducing the greenhouse gas content of China’s economy, and may indicate when China plans to peak its emissions before lowering them.
via China Emerges as the Yin and the Yang of the Global Warming Problem – NYTimes.com.
I am currently working on the OakMapper project that aims to enable citizen science using the web and mobile phone, which has a very similar approach as EpiCollect. OakMapper Mobile is built for iPhone and is now in AppStore. Check it out. I hope to try out EpiCollect with a Android phone one of these days.
A mobile phone application will help professional and “citizen” scientists collect and analyse data from “in the field”, anywhere in the world.
The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles – on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species – in a web-based database.
The data is statistically analysed and plotted on maps that are instantly available to those same phones.
The approach is outlined in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
The software has been developed for so-called smartphones that run Google’s Android open-source operating system.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Mobile app sees science go global.
The water is rising…
An operation to raise the level of water in the Three Gorges’ reservoir to 175 meters began early Tuesday.
The level increased to 146.3 meters at 11 a.m. Tuesday from the 145.87-meter mark when the operation began, said Yuan Jie, chief of the control center of the China Three Gorges Project Corporation.
via China begins raising Three Gorges reservoir level to 175m — china.org.cn.
Greater transparency and access to information for the media in Shenzhen, my hometown.
Government officials in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will soon be required to be more accountable to the media, the city has announced.
From 1 December, officials could be sacked or reprimanded if they do not respond quickly to media requests.
Chinese media is tightly controlled by the state and independent investigative reporting is rare.
Shenzhen’s policy follows a relaxation of restrictions on foreign journalists after the Beijing Olympics.
“We are determined to change the random, passive and disorderly situation surrounding government press releases,” Su Huijun, the director of Shenzhen’s municipal press office, said.
“Shenzhen’s regulation will provide a meaningful experiment for this issue in China,” Mr Su was quoted as saying by China Daily, the country’s main state-run English language newspaper.
via BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China city ‘to open up to media’.
The role of the internet and the “angry youth” are observed to play a part in China’s response to President Obama’s policy of raising the tariff to 35% on tires imported from China. The voices on the internet seem to have exerted pressure on the Chinese government to retaliate US punitive tariff measure. In other words, the collective voices, expressed via the internet, can have a political will, power and influence on Chinese national and international policies. This political dynamic has been emerging for the past 10 years. And it will be very interesting to observe how the government handles this growing online nationalism and its impact on the government’s policies.
The Chinese government’s strong countermove followed a weekend of nationalistic vitriol against the United States on Chinese Web sites in response to the tire tariff. “The U.S. is shameless!” said one posting, while another called on the Chinese government to sell all of its huge holdings of Treasury bonds.
…
The Chinese government sometimes organizes blog postings to defend its own policies. But some postings on the tire decision have been implicitly critical of the Chinese government, making it unlikely that they are part of an orchestrated effort.
“Why did our government purchase so much U.S. government debt?” said one posting signed by a “Group of Angry Youths.” It continued, “We should get rid of all such U.S. investments.”
via China Moves to Retaliate Against U.S. Tire Tariff – NYTimes.com.
An interesting aspect about the Chinese people who believe in the “feng shui” and the sound of the numbers.
The number nine in Mandarin, jiu, has the same pronunciation as the word for “perpetual” or “forever.”In Beijing, 18,979 couples got married or received licenses, according to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. That broke the capital’s previous record of 15,646 couples who chose Aug. 8, 2008, because eight is a lucky number in China and is pronounced like the word for becoming rich. Aug. 8 also was the opening day of the Olympic Games in Beijing.The national one-day marriage record of 314,000, also set on Aug. 8 of last year, appeared likely to be broken as well Wednesday, as huge, starry-eyed turnouts were reported in cities throughout China, Xinhua said.
via Chinese Couples Take Advantage of an Auspicious Day to Marry – NYTimes.com.
Although Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China, Chinese citizens are still able to take advantage of the internet and mobile technologies to increase communication and information gathering.
Reporting from Shenzhen, China – When Jiang Dabao lost his right hand to a molding machine three years ago, his factory boss said he wasn’t eligible for workers’ compensation. Unemployable, Jiang whiled away his days in the Internet bars that thrive here in China’s manufacturing heartland.
Eventually he tapped into an online forum on QQ, a popular social networking service, where he found a workers advocacy group that helped him win a $30,000 settlement.
“Before I got hurt, I had no idea how to use a computer or even the Internet,” said Jiang, who identified himself by his childhood nickname for fear of official reprisal.
Forums such as the one used by Jiang have become the Chinese proletariat’s equivalent of Facebook or Twitter. And the conversations taking place on those channels are seen by some as the faint beginnings of a labor movement, and one that might have muscle.
via Chinese workers use Internet for shoptalk — latimes.com.
While introducing OPhone into the Chinese mobile market, China is also talking with Apple about releasing iPhone into the market later on this year.
From LG GW880 leaks out, runs Android on China Mobile:
It’s sort of interesting that China is where all the Android action seems to be going down lately, but here we are, staring at the LG GW880 — essentially the company’s first Android phone. Of course, “Android” in this case means China Mobile’s custom WiFi-less OPhone platform, which means we’ll probably never see this guy outside of the Middle Kingdom, but it’s a fair look at what LG’s handset designers think an Android set should look like: 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen, 256MB RAM, GPS, and a five megapixel camera. Honestly? We’re hoping LG has grander plans for those other Android phones it has planned for this year — we’ll just have to wait and see. Hit the read link for a few more shots in the meantime.
From Its Ophone Débuts, as China Mobile’s Keeps in Touch iPhone Opportunities
In an e-mail to the Wall Street Journal, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said she could confirm that the sales agreement with China Unicom is not exclusive, which reignites the possibility for cooperation between Mobile and Apple. China Mobile has been hoping to launch the TD iPhone by Apple, but Apple has been hesitant on the issue.China Mobile has officially released its Ophone, based on its own platform, and with its Mobile Market, opened two weeks ago, China Mobile has already launched a version suitable for the Chinese market to compete with iPhone’s beautiful hardware and its APP Store,
“Both Ophone and iPhone have their own characteristics and they do not need to compete against each other.” says Wang. In Wang’s outline of the mobile internet in the future, China Mobile will challenge the 3G market with both Ophone and iPhone.
As mobile technologies continue to advance and become available to the Chinese consumers, will they take advantage of the computing and networking power of these tiny devices? For example, I am currently working on the OakMapper project, in which I take advantage of the onboard GPS unit of the iPhone to submit a suspected Sudden Oak Death (SOD) infected oak tree. Can Chinese consumers use these devices, GPS-enabled, to carry out environmental accountability?
This article raise a number of questions that I am interested in and hope to research on.
Polluters in China are operating in a “black box” of secrecy, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has warned amid a rash of violent protests related to industrial poisoning.
Offenders are protected by the vast majority of local authorities defying Beijing and violating state law by refusing to disclose information about pollution, with a study showing just 4 out of 113 local governments complied.
The ministry said this lack of transparency was partly to blame for recent riots over lead and manganese poisoning in Shaanxi, Hunan and Fujian, which has affected thousands of children.
via Local governments keep Chinese public in the dark about pollution | Environment | guardian.co.uk.
Later in this article, Majun commented that
“China has never had a tradition of opening up government information before,” said Ma, a winner earlier this week of the coveted Ramon Magsaysay Award for integrity in government. “The conclusion from our survey is that this is doable. If the local governments share best practice they can easily improve.”
Given China’s economic and political context, is it really that easy to change the “tradition?” Or do the local governments (with the central government’s “encouragement”), need a more detailed, well thought-out, and incremental roadmap?
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