links for 2008-11-28
-
A remarkable collection of links compiled by East Asia librarians at Harvard University.
Life Magazine China Photos Now on Google
I’m just starting to look through what they’ve posted, but via Kottke I’ve learned that Life Magazine and Google have teamed up to release many of the magazine’s never-released images. Naturally I started fooling around with China and Beijing pictures, and I found this among many others: an image of the south side of Gulou, the Drum Tower, with what is presently Di’anmen Wai Dajie (地安门外大街) in the foreground. This particular image is irritatingly undated, but is listed as by Dmitri Kessel, many of whose black and white photos are dated 1946.
Below, a similar framing from Oldtasty on Flickr, dated 2004:
UPDATE: Austin at Time has also posted some China images from the collection.
China Tops Japan as Biggest Holder of U.S. Debt
Just a little note.
It had been on my mind since Tobias at Observing Japan noted Japan’s erstwhile distinction as the holder of the most U.S. Treasury bills. He was discussing Niall Ferguson’s column, named with the “unfortunate word” Chimerica, and noted: “Ferguson does not mention that Japan holds more US treasuries than China, meaning that surely US-Japan bilateral negotiations are no less necessary thank US-China negotiations.” (He noticed the news, and updated the post.)
China increased its holdings to $585 billion in September, compared with $541.4 billion in August. Meanwhile, Japan shaved its holdings from a high of $600.7 billion in March of this year down to $571.4 billion in September.
China’s now the leader, but at least if we judge by dollar holdings, Japan still deserves attention.
links for 2008-11-18
-
Bank of America buys more of China Construction Bank.
-
Abstract submission for the annual conference of the Harvard East Asia Society.
-
The number of Americans studying in China increased by 25 percent, and the number of Chinese students studying at American universities increased by 20 percent last year, according to the report, “Open Doors 2008.”
-
In an interview published in The Financial Times of London on Monday, the official, Maj. Gen. Quan Lihua, did not say whether China was in fact building a carrier.
China, Japan, and Transpacific Academic Exchange: New Data
China is the hot new place to study abroad. That’s the headline The New York Times culls from the Institute of International Education’s new report on educational exchanges between the United States and a battery of other countries. But China is still only the fifth most common destination for U.S. students, and is still second to India in sending students to the United States.
Some people like to make arguments about what one country thinks of another by how many students go there. Certainly, there are likely to be consequences if large numbers of students from one country study in a particular other country, but it’s hard to know the causes. This passage from the country fact sheet on China from IIE suggests that politics are relevant, at least in some cases.
China sent no students to the US from the 1950s until 1974/75. In the 1980s, numbers of Chinese students grew dramatically, and in 1988/89, China displaced Taiwan as the leading sender. China was the leading place of origin from 1988/89 until it was displaced by Japan in 1994/95. In 1998/99, China overtook Japan as the leading sender, and remained in the number one position until being overtaken by India in 2001/02, and has remained in second place since.
It’s my bailiwick to compare Chinese and Japanese relations with the United States, so I’ll add some more. While the number of Chinese students in the United States increased 19.8 percent over last year’s report, Japan sent 3.7 percent fewer and was the place of origin of only 5.4 percent of foreign students in the United States. (I’m pretty sure data on China–Japan exchanges is released by the two governments, so hopefully I can find that later.)
If we compare U.S. students’ destinations, both China and Japan appear to be gaining popularity. China comes in fifth (after the U.K., Italy, Spain, and France), and Japan 11th. Both countries gained over the previous year—China by 25.6 percent and Japan by 13.6 percent, beating the overall increase of 8.6 percent. The Olympics should not be a factor here because the most recent data in the IIE fact sheet is 2006/07. This perhaps lopsided but concurrent increase in interest is bourne out in language enrollments, at least at Harvard University, where a professor mentioned in a speech some weeks ago that both languages had grown enrollments significantly.
What, if anything, does this tell us? On its own, not a lot. But I’ll give you a little more. More students from the United States are going to Japan and China, but among the top 20 destinations, several other countries also beat the 8.6 baseline increase: Spain, France, Argentina, South Africa, Czech Republic, Chile, Ecuador, and India. Only Asian countries and Saudi Arabia beat the 7 percent overall increase in number of students studying in the United States.
links for 2008-11-17
-
Blog of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at Australia National University
-
Chinese leaders sent congratulations that included a subtle reminder that they expected Obama to acknowledge their contentious claim to the self-governing island of Taiwan. Moreover, on the day Americans voted, the Chinese issued a policy paper on Latin America that the US has long considered its backyard
-
Sakurai Kunitoshi is a member of the Okinawan Environmental Network and President of Okinawa University.
-
In this interview, Wang Jisi, Dean of International Studies at Beijing University and a leading Chinese specialist on international relations, tackles the question of the end of US hegemony and US-China relations.
-
China has become the first country to list internet addiction as a mental disorder as stated by the Ministry of Health. According to one of the definitions in a manual by Chinese psychologists, anyone who spends over 6 hours on the computer with a mouse has the disorder, and a guideline is expected to head to hospitals soon.
