好猪，坏猪/Good Pig, Bad Pig

During Chinese New Year, Hong Kong does its best impersonation of a ghost town. Stores close, newspapers halt publishing and passengers can get a seat on the subway with ease. That's not to say the city's bustle disappears completely. More like its transferred to all things related to the New Year, like the Victoria Park flower market, the Tsim Sha Tsui night parade and the harbor fireworks display. They all attract crowds that can try even the most patient visitor. A colleague reported seeing a parent use a young child as a battering ram to move through the flower market throngs this weekend, and after witnessing the masses last year I find that entirely acceptable behavior. The kid might disagree.

One of the main New Year's preoccupations is predicting what the next 12 months will be like. And that requires knowing just what year this is. In advertising and the press this has been widely called the Year of the Golden Pig. But the South China Morning Post ran a story recently stating that this will be the much less auspicious Year of the Fire Pig. The Golden Pig tale is likely the result of "commercial hype," the story said, with shopkeepers and restaurateurs using the holiday to promote sales. The hype has continued unabated over the past week, so I called Edwin Ma, a Hong Kong astrologer, to check. He said this is indeed the year of the Fire Pig. "This is not the Golden Pig," he says. "I don't know why they make this out to be the Golden Pig." Perhaps because it has to do with money. "The Golden Pig is the good pig. The Golden Pig is defined by wealth and a lot of money. You can collect money," he says. "The Fire Pig is no good. The Fire Pig will burn everything. They are the opposite." For those waiting for the Golden Pig, hope is only 24 years away, in 2031.


from TIME

中国世纪/Chinese Century!

I had read this article for above 3 times to make sure I could keep the mojority of the words I didn't know kept in mind.And of course,I was interested in this theme-China!
In addition to ,I fortunately found the translation.

The railroad station in the Angolan town of Dondo hasn't seen a train in years. Its windows are boarded up, its pale pink façade crumbling away; the local coffee trade that Portuguese colonialists founded long ago is a distant memory, victim of a civil war that lasted for 27 years. Dondo's fortunes, however, may be looking up. This month, work is scheduled to start on the local section of the line that links the town to the deep harbor at Luanda, Angola's capital. The work will be done by Chinese construction firms, and as two of their workers survey the track, an Angolan security guard sums up his feelings. "Thank you, God," he says, "for the Chinese."

That sentiment, or something like it, can be heard a lot these days in Africa, where Chinese investment is building roads and railways, opening textile factories and digging oil wells. You hear it on the farms of Brazil, where Chinese appetite for soy and beef has led to a booming export trade. And you hear it in Chiang Saen, a town on the Mekong River in northern Thailand, where locals used to subsist on whatever they could make from farming and smuggling--until Chinese engineers began blasting the rapids and reefs on the upper Mekong so that large boats could take Chinese-manufactured goods to markets in Southeast Asia. "Before the Chinese came here, you couldn't find any work," says Ba, a Burmese immigrant, taking a cigarette and Red Bull break from his task hauling sacks of sunflower seeds from a boat onto a truck bound for Bangkok. "Now I can send money back home to my family."
You may know all about the world coming to China--about the hordes of foreign businesspeople setting up factories and boutiques and showrooms in places like Shanghai and Shenzhen. But you probably know less about how China is going out into the world. Through its foreign investments and appetite for raw materials, the world's most populous country has already transformed economies from Angola to Australia. Now China is turning that commercial might into real political muscle, striding onto the global stage and acting like a nation that very much intends to become the world's next great power. In the past year, China has established itself as the key dealmaker in nuclear negotiations with North Korea, allied itself with Russia in an attempt to shape the future of central Asia, launched a diplomatic offensive in Europe and Latin America and contributed troops to the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. With the U.S. preoccupied with the threat of Islamic terrorism and struggling to extricate itself from a failing war in Iraq, China seems ready to challenge--possibly even undermine--some of Washington's other foreign policy goals, from halting the genocide in Darfur to toughening sanctions against Iran. China's international role has won the attention of the new Democratic majority in Congress. Tom Lantos, incoming chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and a critic of Beijing's human-rights record, told TIME that he intends to hold early hearings on China, on everything from its censorship of the Internet to its policies toward Tibet. "China is thinking in much more active terms about its strategy," says Kenneth Lieberthal of the University of Michigan, who was senior director at the National Security Council Asia desk under President Bill Clinton, "not only regionally, but globally, than it has done in the past. We have seen a sea change in China's fundamental level of confidence."

Blink for a moment and you can imagine that--as many Chinese would tell the tale--after nearly 200 years of foreign humiliation, invasion, civil war, revolution and unspeakable horrors, China is preparing for a date with destiny. "The Chinese wouldn't put it this way themselves," says Lieberthal. "But in their hearts I think they believe that the 21st century is China's century."

That's quite something to believe. Is it true? Or rather--since the century is yet young--will it be true? If so, when, and how would it happen? How comfortable would such a development be for the West? Can China's rise be managed peaceably by the international system? Or will China so threaten the interests of established powers that, as with Germany at the end of the 19th century and Japan in the 1930s, war one day comes? Those questions are going to be nagging at us for some time--but a peaceful, prosperous future for both China and the West depends on trying to answer them now.

WHAT CHINA WANTS--AND FEARS
If you ever feel mesmerized by the usual stuff you hear about China--20% of the world's population, gazillions of brainy engineers, serried ranks of soldiers, 10% economic growth from now until the crack of doom--remember this: China is still a poor country (GDP per head in 2005 was $1,700, compared with $42,000 in the U.S.) whose leaders face so many problems that it is reasonable to wonder how they ever sleep. The country's urban labor market recently exceeded by 20% the number of new jobs created. Its pension system is nonexistent. China is an environmental dystopia, its cities' air foul beyond imagination and its clean water scarce. Corruption is endemic and growing. Protests and riots by rural workers are measured in the tens of thousands each year. The most immediate priority for China's leadership is less how to project itself internationally than how to maintain stability in a society that is going through the sort of social and economic change that, in the past, has led to chaos and violence.

And yet for all their internal challenges, the Chinese seem to want their nation to be a bigger player in the world. In a 2006 poll conducted jointly by the the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Asia Society, 87% of Chinese respondents thought their country should take a greater role in world affairs. Most Chinese, the survey found, believed China's global influence would match that of the U.S. within a decade. The most striking aspect of President Hu Jintao's leadership has been China's remarkable success in advancing its interests abroad despite turmoil at home.

Surprisingly for those who thought they knew his type, Hu has placed himself at the forefront of China's new assertiveness. Hu, 64, has never studied outside China and is steeped in the ways of the Communist Party. He became a party member as a university student in the early 1960s and headed the Communist Youth League in the poor western province of Gansu before becoming provincial party chief in Guizhou and later Tibet. Despite a public stiffness in front of foreigners, Hu has been a vigorous ambassador for China: the pattern was set in 2004, when Hu spent two weeks in South America--more time than George W. Bush had spent on the continent in four years--and pledged billions of dollars in investments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba. While Wen Jiabao, China's Premier, was visiting 15 countries last year, Hu spent time in the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. In a three-week period toward the end of 2006, he played host to leaders from 48 African countries in Beijing, went to Vietnam for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, slipped over to Laos for a day and then popped off for a six-day tour of India and Pakistan. For someone whose comfort zone is supposed to be domestic affairs, that's quite a schedule. "Look at Africa, look at Central America, look at parts of Asia," says Eberhard Sandschneider, a China scholar who is head of the German Council on Foreign Relations. "They are playing a global game now."
As it follows Hu's lead and steps out in the world, what will be China's priorities? What does it want and what does it fear? The first item on the agenda is straightforward: it is to be left alone. China brooks no interference in its internal affairs, and its definition of what is internal is not in doubt. The status of Tibet, for example, is an internal matter; the Dalai Lama is not a spiritual leader but a "splittist" whose real aim is to break up China. As for Taiwan, China is prepared to tolerate all sorts of temporary uncertainties as to how its status might one day be resolved--but not the central point that there is only one China. Cross that line, and you will hear about it.

This defense of its right to be free of interference has a corollary. China has traditionally detested the intervention by the great powers in other nations' affairs. An aide to French President Jacques Chirac traces a new Chinese assertiveness to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, "They felt they can't allow that sort of meddling in what they see as a nation's internal affairs." But the same horror of anything that might smell of foreign intervention was evident long before Iraq. I visited Beijing during the Kosovo war in 1999, and it wasn't just the notorious bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade that year that outraged top officials; it was the very idea of NATO's rearranging what was left of Yugoslavia. Wasn't the cause a good one? That didn't matter.

China's commitment to nonintervention means that it doesn't inquire closely into the internal arrangements of others. When all those African leaders met in Beijing, Hu promised to double aid to the continent by 2009, train 15,000 professionals and provide scholarships to 4,000 students, and help Africa's health-care and farming sectors. But as a 2005 report by the Council on Foreign Relations notes, "China's aid and investments are attractive to Africans precisely because they come with no conditionality related to governance, fiscal probity or other concerns of Western donors." In 2004, when an International Monetary Fund loan to Angola was held up because of suspected corruption, China ponied up $2 billion in credit. Beijing has sent weapons and money to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, whose government is accused of massive human-rights violations.

Most notoriously, China has consistently used its place as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to dilute resolutions aimed at pressuring the Sudanese government to stop the ethnic slaughter in Darfur. A Chinese state-owned company owns 40% of the oil concession in the south of Sudan, and there are reportedly 4,000 Chinese troops there protecting Beijing's oil interests. (By contrast, despite the noise that China made when one of its soldiers was killed by an Israeli air strike on a U.N. post in Lebanon last summer, there are only 1,400 Chinese troops serving in all U.N. peacekeeping missions worldwide.) "Is China playing a positive role in developing democracy [in Africa]?" asks Peter Draper of the South African Institute of International Affairs. "Largely not." Human Rights Watch goes further: China's policies in Africa, it claimed during the Beijing summit, have "propped up some of the continents' worst human-rights abusers."
China doesn't support unsavory regimes for the sake of it. Instead China's key objective is to ensure a steady supply of natural resources, so that its economy can sustain the growth that officials hope will keep a lid on unrest at home. That is why China has reached out to resource-rich democracies like Australia and Brazil as much as it has to such international pariahs as Sudan and Burma, both of which have underdeveloped hydrocarbon reserves. There's nothing particularly surprising about any of this; it is how all nations behave when domestic supplies of primary goods are no longer sufficient to sustain their economies. (Those Westerners who criticize China for its behavior in Africa might remember their own history on the continent.) But China has never needed such resources in such quantities before, so its politicians have never had to learn the skills of getting them without looking like a dictator's friend. Now they have to.

WORKING WITH CHINA

Assuming a bigger global presence has forced Beijing to learn the art of international diplomacy. Until recently, China's foreign policy consisted of little more than bloodcurdling condemnations of hegemonic imperialism. "This is a country that 30 years ago pretty much saw things in zero-sum terms," says former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. "What was good for the U.S. or the West was bad for China, and vice versa." Those days are gone. Wang Jisi of Beijing University, one of China's top foreign policy scholars, says one of the most important developments of 2006 was that the communiqué issued after a key conference on foreign affairs for top officials had no reference to the tired old terms that have been standard in China's diplomatic vocabulary.

Washington would like Beijing to go further. In a speech in 2005, Zoellick invited China to become a "responsible stakeholder" in international affairs. China's national interest, Zoellick argued, should not be narrowly defined, but would be "much better served by working with us to shape the future international system," on everything from intellectual-property rights to nuclear nonproliferation. Says Zoellick: "I'm not sure anyone had ever put it quite in those terms, and it clearly had a bracing effect."

That would imply that China's behavior has changed of late. Has it? A U.S. policymaker cautions, "It's important to see the 'responsible stakeholder' notion as a future vision of China." In practice, this official says, "They've been more helpful in some areas than others." When the stars align--when China's perception of its own national interest matches what the U.S. and other international powers seek--that help can be significant. Exhibit A is North Korea, long a Chinese ally, with whom China once fought a war against the U.S. As North Korea's leader Kim Jong Il developed a nuclear-weapons program in the 1990s, China had to choose between irking the U.S.--which would have implied doing little to rein in Pyongyang--or stiffing its former protégé.
Hu's personal preferences seem to have helped shape the choice. He is known to have been stingingly critical of Kim in meetings with U.S. officials. Michael Green, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council until December 2005, says Hu had long indicated to visiting groups of Americans his skepticism about Kim's intentions. When the North finally tested a nuke last fall, China joined the U.S. and other regional powers in condemning Kim and supported a U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Pyongyang. Says a senior U.S. official: "If you asked experts several years ago, Could you imagine China taking these actions toward a longtime ally in cooperation with us and Japan? Most people would have said no."

But nobody in Washington is getting carried away. Beijing has been helpful on North Korea because it's more important to China that Pyongyang not provoke a regional nuclear arms race than it is to deny the U.S. diplomatic support. Contrast such helpfulness with China's behavior on the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions. In December, China signed a $16 billion contract with Iran to buy natural gas and help develop some oil fields, and it has consistently joined Russia in refusing to back the tough sanctions against Tehran sought by the U.S. and Europe. "It's hard to say China's been helpful on Iran," says a senior U.S. official, and there is little sense that such an assessment will change any time soon.

Within its own neighborhood, there are signs that China's behavior is changing in more constructive ways. China fought a war with India in 1962 and another with Vietnam in 1979. For years, it supported communist movements dedicated to undermining governments in nations such as Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. Yet today China's relations with its neighbors are nothing but sweetness and light, often at the expense of the U.S. Absorbed by the arc of crisis spreading from the Middle East, the U.S. is simply less visible in Southeast Asia than it once was, and China is stepping into the vacuum.

While American exports to Southeast Asia have been virtually stagnant for the past five years, Chinese trade with the region is soaring. In the northern reaches of Thailand and Laos, you can find whole towns where Mandarin has become the common language and the yuan the local currency. In Chiang Saen, signs in Chinese read CALL CHINA FOR ONLY 12 BAHT A MINUTE. A sign outside the Glory Lotus hotel advertises CLEAN, CHEAP ROOMs in Chinese. It is not aid from the U.S. but trade with China--carried on new highways being built from Kunming in Yunnan province to Hanoi, Mandalay and Bangkok, or along a Mekong River whose channels are full of Chinese goods--that is transforming much of Southeast Asia.
Nor is China's smiling face visible only to its south. In a cordial state visit last year, Hu reached out to India--an old rival with which it still has some disputed borders. The two countries pledged to double trade by 2010 and agreed to bid jointly for global oil projects on which they had previously been competing. Hu has also sought to mend ties with Japan, another longtime rival, with whom China's relations have deteriorated in recent years. Last October, Hu met the new Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in Beijing just days after Abe took office, a visit Hu called a "turning point" in frosty relations between the two countries and which Premier Wen described as a "window of hope."

WHOSE CENTURY?

So, a China whose influence is growing but that is trying to ease old antagonisms--what's not to like?

In one view, nothing at all, as long as China's rise remains peaceful, with China neither provoking others to rein in its power nor slipping into outward aggression. And yet as remote as a confrontation seems today, there are some China watchers who fear a conflict with the West could still materialize in coming years. They point to two factors: the modernization of China's defense forces and the risk of war over Taiwan. The authoritative Military Balance, published annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, estimates that China's military spending has increased nearly 300% in the past decade and from 1.08% of its GDP in 1995 to 1.55% in 2005. (By contrast, the U.S. spends 3.9% of its GDP on defense, and the U.S. economy is more than five times as big as China's.) China's most recent defense white paper, published last month, showed a 15% rise in military spending in the past year. Place such an increase in the context of Taiwan policy and you can start to feel queasy. The island has been governed independently since the defeated forces of Chiang Kai-shek retreated there in 1949. Beijing wants to see the island reunited with the mainland one day. The U.S., although it has a one-China policy and has no formal diplomatic mission in Taiwan, is committed to defend Taiwan from an unprovoked attack by China.

In all likelihood, war over Taiwan is unlikely. After a miserable 200 years, China's prospects now are as bright as ever, the opportunities of its people improving each year. It would take a particularly stupid or evil group of leaders to put that glittering prize at risk in a war. Those in Taiwan who favor independence--including its President Chen Shui-bian--have singularly failed to win the support of the Bush Administration. "China," says Huang Jing of the Brookings Institution in Washington, "is now basically on the same page as the U.S. when it comes to Taiwan. Neither wants independence for Taiwan. Both want peace and stability." China's military buildup is best seen as a corollary of changes in Chinese society. Where Chinese military doctrine was once based on human-wave attacks, it now stresses the killing power of technology. There's nothing new, or particularly frightening, about such a transformation; it's what nations do all the time. If the Sioux hadn't learned how to handle horses and shoot Winchesters, they wouldn't have wiped out Custer's forces at the Little Bighorn.
But other aspects of China's rise are real and troubling. China is a one-party state, not a democracy. Some U.S. policymakers and business leaders like to say there is something inevitable about political change in China--that as China gets richer, its population will press for more democratic freedoms and its ruling élite, mindful of the need for change, will grant them. Could be. But China is becoming richer now, and if there is any sign of substantial political reform--or any sign that the absence of such reform is hurting China's economic growth--it is, to put it mildly, hard to find.

Does China's lack of democracy necessarily threaten U.S. interests? One answer to that question involves looking back to the cold war. The Soviet Union was not a democracy, and although the U.S. contested its power in all sorts of ways, American policymakers were content to live with the reality of Soviet strength in the hope (correct, as it turned out) that communism's appeal outside its borders would wither and Russia's political system would become more open. Is that how the U.S. should treat a nondemocratic China? In the forthcoming book The China Fantasy, James Mann, an experienced China watcher now at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, warns that living with a more powerful, nondemocratic Beijing would not be easy for the U.S. In crucial ways, the U.S. has less leverage over China than it ever had over the Soviet Union. China holds billions of dollars of U.S. government assets. American consumers have come to rely on cheap labor in China to provide goods at Wal-Mart's everyday low prices. The Soviet Union, by contrast, was an economic basket case: it had minimal foreign-exchange reserves and was desperate for U.S. and European high technology.

This lack of leverage over Chinese behavior may make for an uncomfortable future. Mann sees a time when a powerful China not only remains undemocratic but also sustains unpleasant regimes in power, as it does today in such nations as Zimbabwe and Burma. Such behavior could make the world a colder place for freedom. Green, the former National Security Council staff member, agrees that China "wants to build speed bumps on the road to political globalization and liberalization" and is "particularly against any attempt to spread democracy." Sandschneider, the German China expert, says the Chinese "talk about peace and cooperation and development, which sounds great to European ears--but underneath is a question of brutal competition for energy, for resources and for markets."

How can that competition be managed? And how can the U.S. and its allies convince the Chinese not to support rogue regimes? The key may be to identify more areas in which China's national interests align with the West's and where cooperation brings mutual benefits. China competes aggressively for natural resources. But as David Zweig and Bi Jianhai of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology argued in Foreign Affairs in 2005, it would make just as much sense for the U.S. and China--both gas guzzlers--to pool forces and figure out how to tap renewable sources of energy and conserve existing supplies. For a start, the U.S. could work to get China admitted into the International Energy Agency and the G-8, where such topics are debated.
The U.S. can also encourage China's leaders to recognize that irresponsible policies will diminish China's long-term influence. As China expands its global reach, it will find itself exposed to all sorts of pressures--of the sort it has never had to face before--to behave itself. Already, there are voices in Africa warning China that it is acting just like the white imperialists of old. In the Zambian city of Kabwe, where the Chinese own a manganese smelter, the local shops are stocked with Chinese-made clothes rather than local ones. In the oil-rich delta region of Nigeria, where Chinese rigs have a reputation for poor safety and employment practices, a militia group recently warned the Chinese they would be targeted for attack unless they changed their ways.

There are some glimmers that such criticism is having an impact in Beijing. The Chinese, says Joshua Kurlantzick of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "are beginning to understand that some of their policies in Africa are turning people off" and have quietly turned to the U.S. and Britain for help in devising foreign-aid policies. A former senior U.S. official says Chinese officials have been closely monitoring the growing international distaste over its support for the Sudanese government. Congressman Lantos says younger Chinese diplomats "are embarrassed that the Chinese government is prepared to do any business with Sudan for oil despite what is happening in Darfur." Slowly, slowly, engagement with China, debate with its leaders--and the hope that as they see more of the world, they will understand why so many want to shun dictatorships--may all act to shade Chinese behavior.

Such engagement will always be controversial. Like it or not, it involves cozying up to a nation that is not a democracy--and does not look as if it will become one soon. But China is now so significant a player in the global economy that the alternative--waiting until China changes its ways--won't fly. There is still time to hope that China's way into the world will be a smooth one. Perhaps above anything else, the sheer scale of China's domestic agenda is likely to act as a brake on its doing anything dramatically destabilizing abroad.

On the optimistic view, then, China's rise to global prominence can be managed. It doesn't have to lead to the sort of horror that accompanied the emerging power of Germany or Japan. Raise a glass to that, but don't get too comfortable. There need be no wars between China and the U.S., no catastrophes, no economic competition that gets out of hand. But in this century the relative power of the U.S. is going to decline, and that of China is going to rise. That cake was baked long ago.

With reporting by Hannah Beech / Bangkok, Simon Elegant, Susan Jakes / Beijing, James Graff / Paris, Megan Lindow / Dondo, Alex Perry / Johannesburg, Bill Powell / Shanghai, Andrew Purvis / Berlin, Simon Robinson / Kabwe, Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson / Washington From TIME


中文：(摘自中新网）

中新网1月22日电 1月22日出版的美国《时代周刊》封面标题是《中国：一个新王朝的开端》，文内标题用的则是《中国世纪》，通过《时代》驻北京、曼谷、巴黎甚至包括非洲多 个国家共12名记者的联合采访报道，为读者勾勒出了“中国世纪来临”的画面:中国的经济和外交实力持续上升，海外投资和对全球天然资源的需求左右了世界经 济，外交上也积极进取，而美国的相对力量则在下滑，因此21世纪是中国的世纪。整组报道每个页码上部均以中文书法标以“中国世纪”，全文共分三个部分： “中国想要什么怕什么”、“与中国合作”和“谁的世纪”，摘要如下：
中国影响世界经济——从安哥拉到澳大利亚
“感谢上帝送来中国人！”——安哥拉保安由衷赞叹。安哥拉北宽扎省栋多一位保安对两 名勘测铁路线的工人竖起大拇指。在安哥拉，宽扎省栋多小镇的火车站几乎如同虚设,已经好多年没有见到一列火车了。火车站门窗已经被查封，颜色也随着岁月的 流逝慢慢退去，曾经在葡萄牙殖民统治时期的咖啡交易早已变成久远的回忆。长达27年的内战使这个小镇沦为战争的牺牲品，但从今年开始，栋多似乎看到了未来 的希望。一条连接栋多与首都罗安达的铁路将开始动工，中国建筑公司承担了这项工作。所以对此，栋多保安由衷的发出赞叹。其实，这样感谢的话语和建筑故事在 非洲人民中早已经耳熟能详。中国在非洲投资建设公路、铁路，在非洲开设纺织工程，钻井采油。同时，在巴西，中国人做大豆和牛肉贸易，在当地形成了一股出口 热潮。
感激中国人的情形也发生在南美巴西的农场和中南半岛的工地，一名在泰国湄公河流域为 中国公司开通河道的缅甸客工说：“在中国人到来之前，你根本找不到工作。现在我却可以寄钱回家了。”　在泰国北部湄公河沿岸的清盛港，当地人以往靠捕鱼和 走私维生，但自中国工程师打通了湄公河上游航线后，中国的商品可经水路运至东南亚国家，当地人的生活大有改善。
美国因处理中东问题不力，在东南亚地区的影响力已大不如前。改变东南亚的不是美国的 援助，而是与中国的商贸往来。中国与东南亚的贸易逐年递增，在泰国和老挝北部地区，有城镇的通用言语是普通话，人民币是流通货币，中文的广告标语随处可 见。连接昆明、河内、曼德勒和曼谷的新高速公路及湄公河每天运送的中国货物不计其数，改变东南亚的不是美国的援助，而是与中国的商贸往来。你可能知道成百 上千的公司涌入中国，在上海和深圳开设公司或工厂，但是你却对中国走向世界的事情知之甚少。中国通过它的海外投资和对原材料的需要，使其这个全世界人口最 多的国家影响着从安哥拉到澳大利亚很多国家的经济。
如今的中国，政治力量也和商贸影响力一同显现，在国际舞台上彰显大国风采。在过去的 几年里，中国逐渐成为朝核会谈中的主要协调者，与俄罗斯联合起来决定影响中亚的未来，还为联合国驻黎巴嫩维和部队贡献了力量。“中国在酝酿更加积极主动的 战略，”密歇根大学中国问题专家李侃如评论道，“无论在局部地区，还是整个世界，中国的信心倍增”。
由于美国把注意力集中在恐怖主义威胁和如何从伊拉克脱身上，在这种背景下，中国似乎准备对华盛顿的其他外交政策目标发起挑战。
目前，中国的国际影响力已经引起美国国会多数党——民主党的注意。美国众议院对外事 务委员会主席汤姆•兰托斯表示将举行对中国从互联网管理到西藏政策的听证会。而密歇根大学的肯尼斯•李伯瑟尔说道，“中国正在积极考虑它的策略，这一策略 不仅是地区性的，而且是全球范围的。”
闭上眼想想中国近两百年来的历史，你会觉得中国正目标明确地走在新时代。近代的中国是一部屈辱与奋斗的现代史。经过了200多年的战争与动荡岁月，中华民族正在同未来约会。李伯瑟尔说：“中国人都很谦虚，但说21世纪是中国人的世纪，一点也不夸张”。
中国正在学习国际外交技巧。美国前副国务卿佐利克说：“30年前，这个国家还在以不是你死就是我活的方式看待问题。对于美国或西方来说好的东西对中国来说就是不好的东西，反之亦然。”那样的日子已经一去不复返了。
这确实令人信服，对此，你可能要问这是真的吗？那么中国的崛起会与西方国家冲突吗？ 这个世纪仍然处于初期，这会成为现实吗？ 假如真是如此，那么何时会成真呢？对于西方来说，中国如此发展他们会心里舒服吗？中国能够在国际框架下和平发展吗？中国会威胁到其他超级大国的利益吗？中 国会变成19世纪末期的德国或20世纪30年代的日本吗？这些问题曾经一度时间困扰着美国。其实，我们大可不必担心。虽然种种迹象表明中国在崛起，但中国 只会和平崛起，中美间并不会出现战争以及失控的经济竞争。
第一部分：中国想要什么怕什么
　　处于200年来最灿烂时期。
　 中国崛起虽方兴未艾，但对内对外都面对挑战。中国经济增长10%，前年人均国内生产总值仅1700美元，远低于美国4万2千美元，而且待业人口比新增职位 超出20%，社会保障制度不健全，贪污问题有待解决。虽然存在这些挑战，但是中国人依然希望自己能够在世界舞台发挥更大的作用。2006年芝加哥国际事务 委员会和亚洲社会组织所作的一项调查显示，87%的中国人认为中国应该在全世界发挥更大的作用。大部分的中国人还相信，中国的国际影响力会在接下来的十年 中赶上美国。在胡锦涛主席的领导下，中国将会在海外取得更加显著的成就。
　　由于中国沿海与内陆发展失调，贫富不均，中国领导人最需要迫切处理的是内政议题，建立“和谐社会”。由于中国大陆目前正处于二百年来前景最灿烂的时期，几乎不可能对台动武。美国根本不支持“台独”，中美都渴望和平和稳定，陈水扁要求美国政府支持“台独”都失败而回。
　　布鲁金斯研究所 的中国问题专家黄靖表示，美国和中国都追求和平稳定，不会容许“台独”发生。一直以来，中国都不容外国势力干涉其内政。法国总统希拉克的一位助手称，中国 新的强势表现可以追溯至美国入侵伊拉克。他说：“他们感到他们不能允许这种事情的发生，他们认为这是对一个国家内部事务的干涉。”但这种对任何可能带有外 国干涉色彩的事情持警觉的态度早在伊拉克战争爆发之前就存在。我曾于1999年科索沃战争期间访问过北京，北约对中国驻南联盟使馆的轰炸只是使中国高级官 员感到愤怒的一个因素：高级官员对北约重新安排解体后的南联盟的想法感到愤怒，这个理由是一个好理由吗？这并不重要。
　　由于经济的需 要，中国对天然资源需求之大是前所未有，故中国仍未学会与以上国家的相处之道，在中国积极争取天然资源的问题上，美国就可以邀请中国加入能源组织和八国集 团，以协商化解分歧。美国前副国务卿佐利克说：“中国在30年前以零和角度考虑问题，对美国或西方好的，就是对中国坏，反之亦然。”然而今天的中国外交方 针已有翻天覆地的改变。
第二部分：与中国合作
　　中国外交行为凸现建设性——美国应该与中国合作。
　　更多地参与国际事务已促使中国去学习国际外交技巧。中国已经放弃了那种除抨击霸权主义和帝国主义之外无其他内容的简单外交。中国著名外交政策学者、北京大学的王缉思教授称，2006年一个最重要的动向是中央外事工作会议后发表的公报未再提及一些过时的措词。
　　美国希望中国能 够在这方面走得更远。佐利克在2005年的一篇讲演中邀请中国成为国际事务中“负责任的利益攸关方”。佐利克认为，中国国家利益的定义不应当太狭窄，中国 的国家利益可以“通过与我们共事确定未来国际制度得到更好的达成，合作事项可以包括知识产权、防止核扩散等所有事务”。佐利克说：“我不能确定是否曾有人 使用过这些措词，它显然产生了一种拉动效应。”这可能暗示中国的行为近来已发生了变化。事实是这样的吗？美国的一位决策者对此持谨慎态度，这位官员称： “将‘负责任的利益攸关方’概念作为对中国未来的设想很重要。他们在一些领域向我们提供比其它国家更多的帮助。”当中国对自身国家利益的看法与美国和其它 国际大国的祈求相一致的时候，这种帮助具有非常重要的意义。这一点在朝鲜核实验问题就非常突出，但不是所有的美国政治家都被这一点冲昏了头脑。在与邻国关 系方面，有迹象显示，中国的行为正越来越具有建设性。中国1962年曾与印度发生战争，1979与越南发生过战争，它还曾支持过印尼、新加坡、马来西亚等 国的共产主义运动，但中国现在与其邻国的关系只能用甜蜜和轻松来形容。美国由于深陷中东地区的危机，它在东南亚的影响力已大不如前，中国正在大力加强与东 南亚的合作关系。
　　美国对东南亚的 出口在过去的五年里一直停滞不前，中国与东南亚的贸易却在迅猛增长。在泰国和老挝北部地区，有许多城镇的通用语言是普通话，人民币是流通货币。 在泰国的清盛，一个中文的广告牌上写着：“致电中国，每分钟只要12泰铢。”一家宾馆外的广告牌用中文写着“房间干净、便宜”。与中国的贸易带动了中国云 南昆明至河内、曼德勒、曼谷新的高速公路项目和沿湄公河的公路建设项目，这些公路正在运送不计其数的中国商品。正在改变东南亚的不是美国的援助，而是与中 国的贸业往来。
　　中国“微笑的脸 庞”不仅只局限于南方。虽然中国与印度素有积怨，目前仍有边界纠纷，但中国国家主席胡锦涛去年在访问印度时仍向印度伸出了合作的双手，两国承诺在2010 年前使两国贸易量翻一倍，共同竞标它们曾互相竞争的全球石油项目。胡主席还试图修复与日本的关系，日本很长时间一直是中国的对手，两国关系最近几年出现了 恶化。胡锦涛2006年10月在北京会见了刚就任日本首相不久的安倍晋三。胡锦涛主席称安倍的来访是两国陷于低潮的关系的“转折点”，温家宝总理则称，安 倍访华开启了改善两国关系的“希望之窗”。
第三部分：谁的世纪？
　　中国军事发展正常——政治制度令美国感到不快。
　　那么，这样一个影响力不断扩大又在极力避免传统冲突的中国有什么不好吗？
　　一种观点认为， 这种情况很好，只要中国的崛起仍然是和平的，只要中国既不挑衅他国招制遏制，又不对外侵略扩张。尽管今天看起来冲突还是很遥远的事，但仍然有一些中国观察 家担心，中国同西方的冲突将在未来几年内成为现实。他们指出两个方面的因素：中国的国防现代化和台海战争的风险。
　　中国与西方的政 治制度不同就一定会威胁到美国的利益吗？要回答这个问题需要回顾冷战时期。苏联与西方的政治制度不同，尽管美国同它在各个方面进行竞争，但美国的决策者满 足于承认苏联力量的存在，同时希望(后来的发展证明这一希望是正确的)在苏联之外共产主义的吸引力会变得微弱，苏联的政治体制会变得更加开放。美国也应当 这样对待中国吗？詹姆斯•曼(中文名字孟捷慕)是一位经验丰富的中国问题观察家，他目前在约翰•霍普金斯大学高级国际关系研究学院任职。他在即将出版的新 书《中国狂想》中警告说，与一个更加强大而且政治制度不同的中国打交道，对美国来说不是一件易事。美国在关键领域对中国所持有的筹码要远远少于对前苏联 的，中国拥有数十亿美元的美国政府债券，美国的消费者已经依赖于沃尔玛超市的低价商品，而这些低价商品是由中国廉价的劳动力所提供的。相反，前苏联的经济 状况很糟糕：它只有很少量的外汇储备，并且非常迫切地需要美国和欧洲的高技术。
　　如何控制这种竞争？美国和其盟国怎样才能说服中国不要去支持那些“流氓政权”？这些问题的关键可能是确定更多中国国家利益和西方利益相一致、合作将使双方互惠互利的领 域。中国正积极地争夺自然资源，但正如香港科技大学的崔大伟和毕建海2005年在《外交事务》杂志所称的那样，对于中国和美国这两个石油消费大国而言，联 合起来开发再生能源和节约现有储备的方法，对双方具有同等重要的意义。作为一个开始，美国可以努力让中国加入国际能源组织和八国集团，这类组织正是就上述 问题进行辩论的地方。
　　美国也可以鼓励 中国的领导人去认识到“不负责任”的政策将削弱中国的长远影响力。随着中国拓展全球影响力，它将发现自己面临种种压力，其中一种压力它以前从来不必面对， 那就是“行为规矩”。中国在一些穷国的做法，包括中国公司的某些安全和雇用措施的不当，已经引起了当地人的反感。
　　中国必定和平崛起——中美之间不一定有战争
　　有迹象显示国际社会对中国的批评已经起到了一定的作用。一位美国前官员称，中国官员们一直在密切关注着由于中国对苏丹政府的支持而招致的越来越多国际社会的批评。美国众议院议员兰托斯称，慢慢地与中国进行接触、与它的领导人进行辩论。
　　这样的接触将永 远会充满争议。不论你是否喜欢，这意味着结交一个与西方不同政治制度的国家，而且这个国家看起来也不会很快改变其政治制度，但是中国现在是全球经济中如此 重要的博弈者，以至于等待中国改变行为的另一方案是行不通的。我们依然有时间去希望中国融入世界的过程是顺利的，也许最为重要的一点是，中国国内预算的庞 大数量很可能起到阻止它在别国采取极端行动的作用。乐观的观点认为，中国崛起为全球大国的过程是可控的，这个过程不是必然引发德国或日本崛起时发生的那种 恐怖局面，让我们为此举杯庆祝，但不要过分乐观。中国和美国之间不一定要有战争、灾难以及失去控制的经济竞争。但在这个世纪里，美国实力将会相对削弱，中 国的实力则会提高。这个蛋糕很早以前就烤好了。

More about this issue

优劣标志/Good Signs, Bad Signs

My last entry on efforts to standardize translation of signage in Beijing drew a lot of commentary.

I agree with Brittany, who writes that more visitors to China ought to learn Chinese, though I'm not as worried as she is that more precise translation of signage is a threat to Chinese culture.

I also agree with those of you who said that getting the English right might take a long time. Of course it will. But I don't think this is really an issue of stages of development. I was in Tokyo over the weekend and though it's probably the most "developed" place I've ever been, the English signage is far from flawless there either. Then there's the signage in Kennedy Airport in New York. It's a disaster. I'm not even sure there are translations on the signs there at all. And the people who make the announcements, even in the international terminals, employ diction so abysmal that it's difficult for even native New Yorkers let-alone jet-lagged foreigners to understand what's being said. I cringe every time I'm in that terminal. I feel embarrassed as a New Yorker. I wish someone would fix the problem. Sometimes even translate announcements into standard English without being asked. So I can relate on some level to those of you who are Chinese and feel embarrassed by China's awkward translations.

Still I think it's possible to blow the significance of a few weird signs way out of proportion. It seems perfectly natural to me that there should be errors in translation. English and Chinese are very different languages (even the English of Foreign Ministry translators is often jarring), signage is idiomatic and therefore difficult to translate, and most of the people who erect signs aren't linguists.

What's way weirder than the mistranslations themselves is the way is they are invested with importance, as if proper English grammar is what stands between China and full-fledged developed nation status, or that there is such a thing. That this is the kind of issue that calls for a "campaign" and gets reported on as if it's major news seems a little nuts when you consider the more substantive problems the country has to deal with.

I think there are various reasons for this. One has to do with a kind of still-pervasive unease about national stature. It seems like these feelings are often manifest in a preoccupation with international standards and "getting up" to them, and the idea that China and it's people will be laughed at if certain codes of conduct aren't met.

China also has a history of fixating on symbols and trappings and conflating them with substantive achievements. This is a complicated issue because symbols function in complicated ways and often do have mysterious power over human behavior. But focusing on symbolic issues--as anyone who follows American politics knows all too well--is also a good way of distracting people from problems and issues that are more complex.

My sense is that both factors--concern with stature and fixation on trappings-- are at work in the signage translation campaign. China has invested the 2008 Olympics with so much symbolic power, as a badge of international legitimacy, as a chance to show that the country's athletes are not weak and so, by proxy, the country itself is strong, the proof that China is no longer isolated, by itself or by other countries. In this context, fixing the signs seems to spring from an impulse similar to the one that brought the world's celebrity architects to Beijing to design the Olympic venues, or Steven Spielberg to help direct the opening ceremony. Beijing has set the Olympics up as a chance to prove something to world and it wants to make sure it's dressed for the occasion.

Fine. Polish is important. But don't you think there's still something a little unbecoming about devoting so much energy to English signs when there are so many other more substantive issues that need attention?

Then again, as one of you said, maybe it's good for business. Maybe this is the right strategy. After all there are plenty of foreigners who come through Shanghai every year and think that's what the whole country is like. (By the way, read James Areddy's fantastic piece in the Wall Street Journal today on how Chen Liangyu spent the city's pension funds.)

Still, there's seems to me something pernicious about official formulations of "development" that put so much emphasis on superficial achievements like tall shiny buildings, gold medals and properly conjugated verbs, don't you think?

From TIME

全球变暖很可能是人为的/Global warming 'very likely' man-made

PARIS — The world's leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is "very likely" caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

The scientists — using their strongest language yet on the issue — said now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries," no matter how much humans control their pollution. The report also linked the warming to the recent increase in stronger hurricanes.

"The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone," said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.

The phrase "very likely" translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man's burning of fossil fuels. That was the strongest conclusion to date, making it nearly impossible to say natural forces are to blame.

What that means in simple language is "we have this nailed," said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system.

Sharon Hays, associate director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, welcomed the strong language of the report.

"It's a significant report. It will be valuable to policy makers," she told The Associated Press in an interview in Paris, where hundreds of scientists and government officials were meeting to discuss global warming.

Hays stopped short of saying whether or how the report could bring about change in President Bush's policy about greenhouse gas emissions.

The 20-page summary of the panel's findings, due to be officially released later in the day, represents the most authoritative science on global warming.

The new language marked an escalation from the panel's last report in 2001, which said warming was "likely" caused by human activity. There had been speculation that the participants might try to say it is "virtually certain" man causes global warming, which translates to 99 percent certainty.

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.

However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

But there is some cold comfort. Some, but not all, of the projected temperature and sea level rises are slightly lower than projected in a previous report in 2001. That is mostly due to use of more likely scenarios and would still result in dramatic effects across the globe, scientists said.

Many scientists had warned that this estimate was too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3-5 feet because of ice sheet melt.

Nevertheless, scientists agreed the report is strong.

"There's no question that the powerful language is intimately linked to the more powerful science," said one of the study's many co-authors, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, who spoke by phone from Canada. He said the report was based on science that is rock-solid, peer-reviewed, and consensus.

"It's very conservative. Scientists by their nature are skeptics."

The scientists wrote the report based on years of peer-reviewed research and government officials edited it with an eye toward the required unanimous approval by world governments.

In the end, there was little debate on the strength of the wording about the role of man in global warming.

The panel quickly agreed Thursday on two of the most contentious issues: attributing global warming to man-made burning of fossil fuels and connecting it to a recent increase in stronger hurricanes.

Negotiations over a third and more difficult issue — how much the sea level is predicted to rise by 2100 — went into the night Thursday with a deadline approaching for the report.

While critics call the panel overly alarmist, it is by nature relatively cautious because it relies on hundreds of scientists, including skeptics.

"I hope that policymakers will be quite convinced by this message," said Riibeta Abeta, a delegate whose island nation Kiribati is threatened by rising seas. "The purpose is to get them moving."

The Chinese delegation was resistant to strong wording on global warming, said Barbados delegate Leonard Fields and others. China has increasingly turned to fossil fuels for its huge and growing energy needs.

The U.S. government delegation was not one of the more vocal groups in the debate over whether warming is man-made, said officials from other countries. And several attendees credited the head of the panel session, Susan Solomon, a top U.S. government climate scientist, with pushing through the agreement so quickly.

The Bush administration acknowledges that global warming is man-made and a problem that must be dealt with, Bush science adviser John Marburger has said. However, Bush continues to reject mandatory limits on so-called "greenhouse" gases.

But this is more than just a U.S. issue.

"What you're trying to do is get the whole planet under the proverbial tent in how to deal with this, not just the rich countries," Mahlman said Thursday. "I think we're in a different kind of game now."

The panel, created by the United Nations in 1988, releases its assessments every five or six years — although scientists have been observing aspects of climate change since as far back as the 1960s. The reports are released in phases — this is the first of four this year.

The next report is due in April and will discuss the effects of global warming. But that issue was touched upon in the current document.

The report says that global warming has made stronger hurricanes, including those on the Atlantic Ocean, such as Hurricane Katrina.

The report said that an increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone strength since 1970 "more likely than not" can be attributed to man-made global warming. The scientists said global warming's connection varies with storms in different parts of the world, but that the storms that strike the Americas are global warming-influenced.

That's a contrast from the 2001 which said there was not enough evidence to make such a conclusion. And it conflicts with a November 2006 statement by the World Meteorological Organization, which helped found the IPCC. The meteorological group said it could not link past stronger storms to global warming.

Fields — of Barbados, a country in the path of many hurricanes — said the new wording was "very important." He noted that insurance companies — which look to science to calculate storm risk — "watch the language, too."

Associated Press Writer Angela Charlton contributed to this report.
By AP/SETH BORENSTEIN from TIME

What I'm reaing about

It's the second issue of 2007-Jan,22nd,07'.
I bought this issue from Taobao.com via internet .

Here's the content:

COVER

The Chinese Century (World)
Already a commercial giant, China is aiming to be the world's next great power. Will that lead to a confrontation with the U.S.?

ASIA

India: And Justice For All? (Law)

By ARYN BAKER | NOIDA

A serial-killing case in an Indian slum sparks fury over police indifference to crimes against the poor

GLOBAL ADVISOR

A Sense Of Appeal (Check In)
Mauritius' Oberoi hotel embraces the island's rich local heritage

A Walking Advertisement (Going Green)
Billboard posters are given a second life as stylish bags

Wall-To-Wall Kennedy (On Show)
Berlin's museum devoted to the Kennedys is the first museum of its kind outside the U.S.

Naturally Stylish (Design Watch)
Diorama Décor is the latest trend to hit New York City's design shops

ARTS

Books: Pyongyang Confidential

By TIM MORRISON

A hard-boiled detective tale penned by an ex-intelligence officer provides a richly human portrait of life in North Korea

Alienated Nation: An Inside Look at Burma

By PICO IYER

An insider reveals how Burma went from being a cosmopolitan center to an international pariah

NOTEBOOK

Japan: A Military by Any Other Name

By BRYAN WALSH

Japan raises its Defense Agency's profile, while its neighbors remain wary of any return to militarism

Letters
A Mirror into the Future


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谁的故宫/Whose Forbidden City?

I've always thought having a Starbucks in the Forbidden City was pretty tacky. But actually, when you look at it in the context of all of the other retail outlets, the ones pushing plastic jade beads and the cigarette lighters that play "The East is Red," the coffee shop seems pretty innocuous. So one question I'd ask Rui and co is, "Is it the fact that Starbucks is Western that makes it offensive? Or the fact that it's a fast food stand?"

If it's the Westerness alone, one could make the argument that pieces of the West have been making it into the Forbidden City for generations. Most visitors never get to see the stately mansion that Yuan Shikai (the military commander-turned President-turned, briefly, self-proclaimed emperor of the early 20th century) inhabited in the Western reaches of the palace enclosure. Its style is unmistakably Western; it's looks a little like you might find it in Brussels. But it's off limits to visitors. Some friends and I snuck a peek at it last year after a tour of some other Western-influenced and thus-far off-limits sections of the Forbidden City. We were almost stopped. My friend told the guards in officious tones that we were going to kaocha Yuan Shikai's former residence. Kaocha just means "examine" but it's a word frequently employed to describe the inspection tours popular with officials and the guards very quickly apologized and let us through.

What was most striking about Yuan's house was not its profound beauty (it has a few very graceful touches including balconies decorated with distinctively Chinese latticework), nor its profound decripitude, nor even the fact that practically no one ever gets to see it. What was shocking was that Yuan Shikai's elegant residence was being occupied by a regiment of the Chinese military. I can't remember just now, which branch. The soldiers at the gate were less easily duped than the guards, and after we'd admired the buidling for few minutes they shooed us away.

Don't know how Rui Chenggang would feel, but to me the guys with guns seem a lot more out of place in a national museum than a cup of coffee. Full disclosure: I'm pretty sure my friends and I stopped at Starbucks before we went exploring.

As I said, the day I went to look at Yuan's house I was in the Forbidden City on a tour of another Western-influenced section. This was a collection of private rooms that the Qianlong emperor had commissioned in the 1770s as a place to relax. A few years ago, after workers who had been living in the rooms moved out, it was discovered that under a few grungy layers, the walls were covered in spectacular trompe l'oeil that the emperor had commissioned in a Western style fashionable in Europe at the time. This section of the palace is known as the Lodge of Retirement. It's being restored with great care as a joint project between the Forbidden City and the World Monuments Fund.
Funding for the project was donated by Houghton Freeman, an American born just a few blocks away, to a family with long ties to China.

The tour was great. Freeman and his wife were both on hand and asking terrific questions. Mrs Freeman at one point made the observation that the temperature in one of the rooms we were visiting was, "colder than charity," an odd choice of words given the situation. When I suggested she could warm up with a cup of Starbucks, she seemed quite taken aback.

I was struck as we walked through the back alleys of the palace how many buidling had signs on them bearing the American Express logo. I guess Amex has also been among the donors responsible for funding restoration, and bravo to them for that, but the signs were everywhere. It was pretty vulgar. Starbucks is invisible by comparison.

The Lodge of Retirement is set to open this year, but it's still unclear (as far as I know) who will be able to visit it. The rooms are too small and delicate to accomodate large crowds. It'd be a shame if it just became a place for entertaining the rich and powerful. There's already plenty in the Forbidden City that's off limits to the general public, though tours can be arranged for, oh say Time Warner executives, when they come to town. Sometimes I worry that the Forbidden City is becoming too much like so many other parts of China, a place where the wealthy few have a completely different experience than normal folks. I understand the Forbidden City's probably still not in a position to make admission free, but I'm always seriously bummed out when Chinese migrant friends tell me they've lived in Beijing for years but never felt like they could afford a ticket.

Anyway, my point, if I actually have one, is that this palace, however magnificent, is a complicated and flawed place. Removing the Starbucks would probably be an improvement, but now that Rui Chenggang has the country's attention, maybe he can direct it toward a more sophisticated discussion about what else does and doesn't belong there.

from TIME