With U.S. Busy, China Is Romping With Neighbors

With U.S. Busy, China Is Romping With Neighbors
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03LETT.html

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 2 — When Citibank was casting around for a brand name speaker at its annual retreat here, the bank spurned the usual Western investors. Instead, Citibank chose the Chinese ambassador, Lu Shumin, one of a new generation of diplomats from Beijing who speak flawless English and play a mean game of golf.

The envoy's presentation was relentlessly upbeat: what Southeast Asia sells, China buys. Oil, natural gas and aluminum to build bigger bridges, taller buildings, faster railroads to serve the country's flourishing cities, like Shanghai, which is beginning to make New York City look like a small town. Palm oil for frying all that food for the swelling middle class, even eggs from faraway New Zealand on the region's southern periphery.

China's buying spree and voracious markets provide the underpinning, he said, for the peaceful coexistence that everyone wants.

China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll

China Tells Its Public of Enormity of AIDS Toll
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/asia/03AIDS.html

BEIJING, Dec. 2 — With China taking its first real steps toward a full-scale public awareness campaign about AIDS this week, the degree of ignorance caused by past government denial is evident in the dazed expression of Zhao Pingyuan.

Pedaling his bicycle along a narrow alleyway in the graceful old Houhai neighborhood, Mr. Zhao, 33, stopped beside a new government AIDS poster. He had not noticed the poster, or AIDS, before.

"I've never heard of it," he said. "I'm from Henan Province. We don't have it in Henan." Told that Henan is an epicenter of AIDS, with huge numbers of cases and deaths, Mr. Zhao shook his head. "There is nothing like that," he said. "It would have been on television if people had died of AIDS."

This week, in a flurry of publicity coinciding with World AIDS Day, AIDS is finally all over television in China. New public service announcements promote awareness and even recommend condom use.

Casting a Fresh Eye on China With Computer, Not Ink Brush

Casting a Fresh Eye on China With Computer, Not Ink Brush
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/arts/design/03SHAN.html

SHANGHAI, Nov. 27 — Yang Fudong, a 32-year-old Chinese video artist, is in high demand on the international art circuit. The Venice Biennale and the Georges Pompidou Center showed his work this year. He travels to Florida to exhibit at the Art Basel Miami Beach show, which opens on Dec. 4. In January he plans to visit Manhattan when the Museum of Modern Art shows his work at the Gramercy Theater. He will also be included in an exhibition organized by the International Center of Photography that opens in June.

Part of the fascination surrounding Mr. Yang is founded on his place at the center of a digital whirlwind in China, where a new generation of artists have spurned the canvases of Mao-like heads that the West considered so avant-garde in the 1990's. Instead, he and his friends are creating videos about personal feelings and anomie amid the warp-speed change in China.

Attack of the Killer Bras

Attack of the Killer Bras
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/10/opinion/10KRIS.html

SHUN SHUI VILLAGE, China — The most important thing happening in the world today is the rise of China, and that's the reality hovering in the background of the delicate U.S.-China talks under way in Washington this week.

So I decided to "cover" the talks not in Washington, where it's easy to be overwhelmed by details of Chinese bra imports and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but here in southern China's Taishan area, which accounted for a majority of Chinese emigrants to the U.S. until a few decades ago.

The descendants of Taishan include my wife, Sheryl WuDunn. (A WuDunn is what you get when you cross a Wu ancestor who doesn't speak English with a U.S. immigration officer who doesn't speak Chinese.) When Sheryl and I first traveled here in 1987, we met her distant cousins, poor peasants who spent their time wading in the rice paddies. The entire clan had about as many teeth as Sheryl does.

Bo Chen and Rui Su

Bo Chen and Rui Su
By JENNIFER TUNG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/fashion/weddings/07VOWS.html

IT was a slow day at the Municipal Building in Manhattan, something that worked to the advantage of Bo Chen and his bride, Rui Su, who were clearly in a hurry. They waited only a few minutes to pay the $25 fee for a civil marriage ceremony and then were whisked into the wedding chapel without even sitting in the chairs lining the hall outside.

It seemed only fair. Since falling in love they had lived on opposite sides of the world — she in Harbin, China, and he in Flushing, Queens.

China Regrets Decision by U.S. to Limit Imports

China Regrets Decision by U.S. to Limit Imports
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19CND-CHIN.html

HONG KONG, Nov. 19 — The Chinese government gave a temperate response today to the Bush administration's decision to limit the growth of imports of certain Chinese fabrics and garments, contending that the move violated free trade principles.

The Commerce Ministry in Beijing issued a statement expressing its regret and its opposition to Washington's action, but stopped short of threatening retaliation against American exports to China or promising an appeal to the World Trade Organization.

China Set to Act on Fuel Economy

China Set to Act on Fuel Economy
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/business/worldbusiness/18AUTO.html

GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 17 — The Chinese government is preparing to impose minimum fuel economy standards on new cars for the first time, and the rules will be significantly more stringent than those in the United States, according to Chinese experts involved in drafting them.

The new standards are intended both to save energy and to force automakers to introduce the latest hybrid engines and other technology in China, in hopes of easing the nation's swiftly rising dependence on oil imports from volatile countries in the Middle East.

They are the latest and most ambitious in a series of steps to regulate China's rapidly growing auto industry, after moves earlier this year to require that air bags be provided for both front-seat occupants in most new vehicles and that new family vehicles sold in major cities meet air pollution standards nearly as strict as those in Western Europe and the United States.

China Lowers the Wall for U.S. Cars and Parts

China Lowers the Wall for U.S. Cars and Parts
By DANNY HAKIM and KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/business/worldbusiness/13auto.html

DETROIT, Nov. 12 - In a move to quell criticism of its huge trade surplus with the United States, China agreed to let the Big Three automakers send it about 15,000 cars and trucks over the next couple of years as well as more than $1 billion in parts from General Motors, the companies said Wednesday.

China also said that it would allow G.M. to import cars directly, without using a local partner, and G.M. said it was moving into the auto lending business in China.

The deals with G.M., the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Group were among a flurry of import allowances, including large wheat and aircraft purchases, that were expected from China ahead of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's visit to the United States, scheduled for early December.

China's Improving Image Challenges U.S. in Asia

China's Improving Image Challenges U.S. in Asia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 15, 2003; Page A01
By Philip P. Pan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42820-2003Nov14.html

BANGKOK -- Once seen largely as an intimidating trade competitor, a diplomatic bully and a potential military threat, China is building a new reputation among its neighbors as a responsible regional power and an essential engine of Asian economic growth, according to diplomats and analysts in Asia.

Though many in Asia remain wary of rising Chinese power, perceptions of China are shifting across the region. In Southeast Asia, China has played down territorial disputes and promised to share its growing prosperity through investments and trade benefits. In South Korea, it has replaced the United States as the top trading partner and won praise for trying to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea. And in Australia, Chinese President Hu Jintao last month became the first Asian leader to address parliament.

Rat Poison: Murder Weapon of Choice in Rural China

Rat Poison: Murder Weapon of Choice in Rural China
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/international/asia/17CHIN.html

LONGFENG, China — The red-and-white banners with the latest government propaganda fluttered above the grimy main street, warning farmers at an outdoor market about a substance that might not spring to mind as a dire menace: rat poison.

Yet the Chinese government regards the most lethal form of the poison, called Dushuqiang, very seriously. Since Oct. 1, anyone convicted of making, storing or selling the poison faces a prison sentence or even death. Government agents have raided illegal stocks and urged residents to hand over any private stashes.

At Play in Chinatown's Backyard

At Play in Chinatown's Backyard
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/nyregion/13COLU.html

Blind Man Chin shuffles into Columbus Park in Chinatown, lifts his wooden chess set and shakes the pieces inside, sounding a crackle that scatters the pigeons. It is his invitation to play.

Someone always accepts, rising from among the dozens of Chinese chess players to lead him to a picnic table and set up his board. Mr. Chin, 60, whose first name is Wing, plays from memory, shouting the moves he wants to make and listening to those called out by his opponent. He plays game after game until the sun sets over Lower Manhattan. Then he takes the train home to Brooklyn.

Benson Li, 19, enters his own piece of the park on the opposite end, three basketball courts away. He glides across the concrete pavement in a baseball cap and cargo pants, shaking friends' hands with a special finger snap that is their private greeting, and then settles in for a game of cards, usually hearts or spades.

Mr. Chin and Mr. Li have never met. They live in distant worlds, separated by language, age and, in some ways, cultural identity. But they share one palpable need: to keep coming back to the same small and crowded patch of green that is Chinatown's communal backyard.

China Begins Giving Free H.I.V./AIDS Drugs to the Poor

China Begins Giving Free H.I.V./AIDS Drugs to the Poor
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/08/international/asia/08CHIN.html

BEIJING, Nov. 7 — The Chinese government has started providing free treatment for poor people with H.I.V. and AIDS and plans to expand the program next year until every poor person who has tested positive is receiving medical help, a top Health Ministry official said in a speech this week.

The speech on Thursday by Gao Qiang, the executive deputy health minister, confirmed anecdotal reports from AIDS sufferers in central China, who say health workers began handing out free anti-retroviral drugs several months ago in Henan Province, a region ravaged by AIDS.

Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time

Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time
By JOSEPH BERGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/nyregion/10CHIN.html

During the blackout in August, reporters for the city's four Chinese dailies did not have electric generators to see them through the night. But that did not stop one of them, Ming Pao Daily News, from trying to best its rivals.

The half-dozen reporters in the Chinatown bureau of Ming Pao wrote their stories in longhand on a large table inside a generator-powered Holiday Inn.

One reporter then walked with the stories uptown and across the Queensboro Bridge to the newspaper's main office, in Long Island City, where five editors who had camped out overnight typed them into the computers as soon as the electricity came back on at 5:15 a.m. By 10 a.m., the papers were in readers' hands.

Although some of the city's 300 ethnic newspapers may have a languid, less-than-fresh feel, the Chinese press is aggressive. And the competition is about to get more cutthroat. The Oriental Daily News, among Hong Kong's biggest newspapers, is considering coming to New York City to become the fifth Chinese daily.

China's Factories Aim to Fill the World's Garages

China's Factories Aim to Fill the World's Garages
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/02/automobiles/02CARS.html

SHANGHAI — China, long a nation of pedestrians, cyclists and buses, is undergoing an automobile revolution. Sales of cars, vans, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles here overtook similar sales in Germany this year, and production surpassed South Korea's.

For now, most of the cars and light trucks made here are sold here. But China — already the world's dominant manufacturer of products from toys to facsimile machines to furniture — is laying plans to become a big exporter of cars. Automakers are producing cars here to the same designs that they use in the United States, with Honda making Accords in Guangzhou that are identical to those it manufactures in Ohio.

Toxins Are Part of Cost of Boom in China's Exports

Toxins Are Part of Cost of Boom in China's Exports
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/international/asia/04CHIN.html

TAIZHOU, China — The first thing that struck Shen Yunxiang when he descended into the bowels of Hisun Pharmaceutical was the smell, or rather the lack of it. It was as if the sewage system had been scrubbed with ammonia, he said, leaving only a sickly sweet aroma strong enough to overpower the stench of human waste.

In less than a minute, though, he realized that the company had exposed him to something far more noxious than feces. He had been sent, unwittingly, to release chemical runoff that Hisun had collected haphazardly beneath the factory, possibly to avoid paying fees to dispose of toxic waste.

Mr. Shen's chest constricted. His breathing grew labored, his head faint. Then Feng Huaping, his brother-in-law and fellow migrant worker, who had climbed down first, gasped, "Grab my hand, get me out," before collapsing in a puddle of muck.

Mr. Shen was the lucky one. He emerged with migraines and lung congestion, and doctors are still trying to diagnose the illness that is causing them. Mr. Feng died that night. A third migrant worker, Tang Dejun, also died in Hisun's fetid plumbing after he was sent down to finish the job the next day.