tagged w/ Han
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http://www.futureenergysolutions.comHow to save money on home energy bills? Home energy measurement, wireless house... more
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Han Ahn Soon finished her Art Degree in 1998. She created her brand Han Ahn Soon in 1999. The brand has been featured at Tokyo Fashion Week since 2003. Han Ahn Soon is about tenderness, strength, being cool, fun and beauty.The Autumn/Winter 2011-12Han Ahn Soon finished her Art Degree in 1998. She created her brand Han Ahn Soon in... more
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China may not be a rich place, but even still it has a lot of income inequality. Throughout hte entire country, we see a big difference between incomes in coastal cities and in the rural, inland communities. Overall, the per capita GDP (nominal) in China is about $3,300, compared to those poor bastards with democracy in Taiwan at $17,000 per person, or about $31,000 per person in politically and legally separate Hong Kong. Now, China has a much lower cost of living (*cough cough peasant slavery*), so on a purchasing power basis, so on a purchasing power parity basis, this is something like $6,000 per person per year, compared to $44,000 in Hong Kong, or $31,000 in Taiwan.
In Xinjiang, things are a little less rosy. Not only have they lost control of their homeland and endure a foreign police state, but the basic economics of survival are against them. In rural Xinjiang as a whole, these people live on around $560 per year. In southern Xinjiang, the average is around $330 per year per person. Now remember, this is an average, and income inequality in China is terrible, so the median person is doing even worse. Northern Xinjiang's economy is run "by the Han-dominated Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a quasi-military organization established to pacify the region." For Xinjiang as a whole, the per capita GDP is up to around $2,900, mostly due to the central government's control of the capital Urumqi, and it's money being spent to bring in Han Chinese to assimilate the province.
Chinese policies are made at many different levels with many different objectives. Certainly, the Uighurs do get some breaks. And certainly, the tide of cash from Beijing is lifting many boats. As Han companies come into this Islamic Central Asian area, the character of things has also changed. Halal foods (meaning religiously ok for Muslims to eat) are now an industry dominated by Han Chinese. Ancient landmarks thousands of years old are being demolished by Han companies for "development projects." Curious, since Xinjiang has immeasurably vast expanses of empty, cheap land to develop on - why might Beijing want these testaments of ancient culture destroyed ?
Xinjiang has historically been poor, ever since the demise of the Silk Road, when trade between China and the Middle East and Europe was transferred to boats. The GDP of the province is now around $60 billion, in the Chinese empire whose GDP is around $4 trillion. Also keep in mind, all these numbers reported are from the Chinese government, and may be manipulated up or down for political reasons.China may not be a rich place, but even still it has a lot of income inequality.... more
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Urumqi is the capital and center of Han Chinese power in the province of Xinjiang (formerly East Turkestan). The indigenous Uighur ethnic group has been subjected to expropriation of land, violation of their traditional Central Asian Islamic culture, and second class citizenship since the People's Liberation Army invaded the country in 1949. Last week, tensions came to a boiling point after the murder of Uighurs in far away Guangdong province, leading to massive demonstrations across the country, er, province.
Like its more well known sister Tibet, this stepchild of the Chinese empire is restive, and when any attempts at assembly and protest happen, the Chinese police and army deliver a smackdown. The Chinese government admits to 156 dead, more than a thousand injured, and thousands more arrested.
As we all know, the world economy has been tanking, and when the economy goes down, the poorest are the hardest hit. Few places are poorer than rural China, and few in rural China have more disadvantages than the Uighur Turks. When you're poor and oppressed, getting beaten to death by the police can start to seem better than telling your wife that either she or the kids get to eat this month. Rule number 6: Economic downturns produce desperate rebellion.
Racism in China is fairly well managed by the central government. They plan the racism carefully (*cough cough forced abortions in Tibet*) to prevent any of the conquered nations in the empire from being able to organize significant resistance (*cough cough murder of thousands of Tibetan priests*). Even in the Beijing Olympics, when China tried to show off how proud it was of its "ethnic minorities," the trotted out 56 Han Chinese kids dressed up in traditional outfits of different ethnic groups. Most Westerners couldn't tell the difference, of course... but the minorities in China got the message. China is an empire that has historically been managed by lots of "foreigners," such as Mongols and Manchus, and the Communist Party is sensitive to the fierce "nationalism" this has produced. Ethnicity in China is a complicated matter.
Back in the good old days after 9/11, China managed to cut a deal with Bush - cooperation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in exchange for considering Uighur Muslims as "terrorists." This deal produced one of the most tragic stories of Guantanamo Bay, as four Uighurs were imprisoned for years because they were associated with people on China's "terrorist" list. Though their innocence of any wrong doing was quickly established, China threatened any country that was willing to harbor these "terrorists." So the biggest countries willing to accept them after the US released them were Bermuda and Palau, islands far away from China with no significant trade links.
Xinjiang (literally, "New Frontier") has had long and strained relationship with the Chinese empire. Alternatingly conquered by China and independent, East Turkestan was allied with the Soviet Union sometimes and the Kuomintang other times during World War 2, and when the Communist Chinese had finally won the Chinese Civil War, the Soviets didn't care to oppose other Communists from invading. East Turkestan wasn't able to seriously resist the massive Communist armies, and armies headed for the hills to resist guerilla style until the mid 1950's.Urumqi is the capital and center of Han Chinese power in the province of Xinjiang... more
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China just delivered a stunning, real-world demonstration of the changes rocking -- and transforming -- modern journalism.
When deadly riots broke out in the western province of Xinjiang last week, the Chinese government sprang into message control mode. It choked off the Internet and mobile phone service, blocked Twitter and Fanfou (its Chinese equivalent), deleted updates and videos from social networking sites, and scrubbed search engines of links to coverage of the unrest. At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area.
That's right, it slammed the door in the face of new media -- and offered traditional reporters a front row seat.
China's leaders realized that it's one thing to try to spin the on-the-ground views of bused-in reporters ("To help foreign media to do more objective, fair and friendly reports," in the words of the government's PR agency), but quite another to try to spin the accounts and uploaded images of tens of thousands of Twittering and cell-phone camera-wielding citizens.
The Chinese have clearly learned the lessons of Iran.
The same can't be said about New York Times columnist Roger Cohen who, writing about covering the Iran uprising, recently claimed:
To bear witness means being there -- and that's not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.
No news aggregator tells of the ravaged city exhaling in the dusk, nor summons the defiant cries that rise into the night. No miracle of technology renders the lip-drying taste of fear. No algorithm captures the hush of dignity, nor evokes the adrenalin rush of courage coalescing, nor traces the fresh raw line of a welt.
How bizarre is it that Cohen chooses to attack the tools of new-media-fueled reporting by citing the very event that highlights the power of those tools -- and the weakness of his argument?
Indeed, search engines, news aggregation, live-blogging, and "miracles of technology" such as Twitter, Facebook, and real-time video delivered via camera phones, played an indispensable part in allowing millions of people around the world to "bear witness" to what was happening in Iran.
The truth is, you don't have to "be there" to bear witness. And you can be there and fail to bear witness.
Obviously, there is tremendous value in being an eyewitness. But we have to always keep in mind that the conclusions drawn by eyewitnesses are greatly influenced by the eyes doing the witnessing.
Malcolm Muggeridge famously called this "the eyewitness fallacy" -- the tendency of people to see, in eyewitness accounts, what they want to see.
[more at link]China just delivered a stunning, real-world demonstration of the changes rocking --... more
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asherp
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added this
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3 years ago
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