A smorgasbord of China-related links.  Xi and Obama are meeting out in Sunnylands right now (good VF article covering Sunnylands last year).  I wonder if Xi’s wife (Peng Liyuan) will dump her iPhone now that Apple is allegedly part of the NSA PRISM program.  Thanks to Sinocism for several of the links.

• Governments Move in on Taxi Apps from The Economic Observer (protectionism for SOEs)
• It’s Official? Alibaba doing more business than Amazon + eBay from Alizila
• U.S. Loses Supercomputer Title to China, For Now from The Wall Street Journal (another white elephant ‘face project’ — no useful apps for it, see China’s Not-so-Super Computer)
• Facebook and Twitter go live in China – but only for Chengdu business forum from South China Morning Post (laowai would pay big bucks for an ‘expat’ package, China Telecom is leaving money on the table…)
• Like the sun, newspaper circulation rises in the east and falls in the west from The Economist (this is actually a technologically myopic strategy by PRC planners, especially when state media outlets open bureaus overseas.  the younger demographic obtains all of their information from the internet, very few, if any — buy print media aside from niche magazines.  continual funding of these is of course a matter of propaganda but also a financial albatross)
• China’s State Sector Strikes Back from The Wall Street Journal (how to truly privatize/reform these SOEs and satiate special interests?)
• Corruption on College Campuses from The Economic Observer (none of my students want to work in a factory or on a farm, nor do their parents want them to.  will go to great lengths to get “degrees.”  See What are Chinese colleges like?)
• Survey: Chinese millennials are highly optimistic about the future from Shanghaiist (undoubtedly materially better off than any other generation of Chinese on the mainland, will that growth rate continue for their own offspring?)
• Renren.com Teams With Youku-Tudou To Grab More Online Video Users from China Tech News
• Infographic: Chongqing girls are cheapest to marry, Shanghai women most expensive from Shanghaiist (I have many stories from first hand experience and/or observation)
• Korean Culture: Why do korean girls point two fingers up when they get their picture taken? from Quora (a lot of laowai/expats ask me this too, because it is common across east asia)
• In China, Big Data is Becoming Big Business from BusinessWeek (not sure there are many opportunities for foreign firms to work directly as a data provider or host, probably can do contracts for vendors/supply chain)