Upcoming political meetings between Xi and Obama, relatively slow news other than that. Some of the links are from Sinocism.
- China in soft power push with foreign students from CNN (lots of scholarships supposedly available for laowai)
- Love and marriage: China plays the dating game from CNN (i wonder what longitudinal studies will find with this, culturally very different than arranged marriages)
- Smithfield Foods to be bought by Chinese firm Shuanghui International from The Washington Post
- Scotch Makers Target China With Premium Bottles from The Wall Street Journal (waiting for ron burgundy, anchorman…)
- Will the Real Chiang Kai-Shek Medal Please Stand Up? from The Wall Street Journal
- Aging Chinese Face a Bleak Picture from The Wall Street Journal (opportunities for NGOs and non-profits)
- What China Can Learn From America’s Hot Dogs from The Wall Street Journal (facility hygiene for one thing)
- Short Seller Seeks Valley ‘Pretenders’ from The Wall Street Journal
- The Return of the Red Flag from Caijing (gov’t push to buy chinese luxury car brands, will it be anymore successful in the long run for the competitiveness when the brands go overseas?)
- China’s Flawed Balance-of-Payments Position from Project Syndicate (great write-up of something that is typically filled with hyperbole)
- China’s Shadow Banks: The credit kulaks from The Economist (about wealth management products. see what my friends explanation of how it works. i am still a skeptic, not because of the lack of regulatory oversight, but because of the lack of transparency by the firms and what looks like ponzi-style schemes — hard to investigate when press freedom is severely curtailed).
- Tencent Adds Literature Website to Its Offerings from Caixin (just a couple more days of “free” music on the mainland, wonder how long bootleg books will be tolerated)
- Eat your heart out: Chinese e-commerce firm delivers packages within hours from Engadget