1. AP: Obama to host Dalai Lama on Friday at White House
President Barack Obama will host Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama for a meeting on Friday, the White House said, in a move that could rankle already tense relations between the U.S.
and China. The exiled leader, who is in the U.S.
for a speaking tour, is famed for his peaceful struggle for greater Tibetan autonomy that is bitterly opposed by China. The last time he met with Obama, in 2011, China blasted the meeting and said it had damaged Chinese-American ties. China was similarly irked when the two met in 2010. Friday’s meeting was likely to draw further protest from Beijing. China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in the past, Chinese authorities have denounced the spiritual leader as a separatist and blamed the Dalai Lama for instigating self-immolations by Tibetans inside China. Obama was to host the Nobel laureate for a private, morning meeting in the White House’s map room. Traditionally, when Obama meets with presidents and prime ministers, he hosts them in the Oval Office and allows reporters to witness a short portion of the meeting. The decision to hold the meeting elsewhere and to close the meeting to reporters could signal an attempt to avoid the appearance of a formal meeting between two heads of state.
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2. WSJ: Dalai Lama's U.S. visit: More business, less Tibet
Exiled spiritual leader speaks about capitalism and
nonviolence in public, on politics and China in private.
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3. NYT: Obama’s plan to meet Dalai Lama draws swift Chinese rebuke
President Barack Obama plans to meet at the White House on Friday with the Dalai Lama, a visit that drew a swift rebuke from the Chinese government, which has tried to diminish the influence of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader and his efforts to promote the autonomy of Tibet. The administration portrayed the visit as part of an effort to promote a “middle way” solution to the fate of Tibet, where China has been trying to tamp down a stubborn movement for greater autonomy that has involved the self-immolation of more than 125 Tibetans, mostly monks and nuns, since 2008. “The president will meet with the Dalai Lama in his capacity as an internationally respected religious and cultural leader,” said a statement issued late Thursday by Caitlin Hayden, a National Security Council spokeswoman.
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4. Reuters: China urges Obama to cancel meeting with Dalai Lama
China urged the United States on Friday to scrap plans for U.S. President Barack Obama to meet exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama later in the day, warning that the planned meeting would "seriously damage" ties between the countries. The White House National Security Council said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama at the White House on Friday in a show of concern about China's human rights practices. Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama is a "gross interference" in China's internal affairs, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement on the ministry's website.
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5. NYT: Chinese censors have kept their hands off ‘House of Cards’
“Mao is dead. And so is his China.”So says Vice President Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey,
to Xander Feng, the corrupt Chinese billionaire played by Terry Chen, in the newest season of “House of Cards,” the highly acclaimed Netflix political drama about the machinations of a ruthlessly ambitious American politician and his wife. It’s not often one hears a line this politically provocative on a Chinese state-regulated entertainment platform. But with more than 15 million total views on Sohu, one of China’s leading Internet portals, the latest episodes (and this line) have been played many times over since the much-anticipated release of the show’s second season last week. The new season of “House of Cards” focuses on a host of issues that would typically be regarded as sensitive by the Chinese authorities: cyber-espionage, currency manipulation, tensions between China and Japan in the East China Sea, and the extravagant and corrupt lifestyles enjoyed by the offspring of China’s revolutionary leaders. Despite its heavy emphasis on China, however, the show did not undergo any censorship by government authorities before its release, Charles Zhang, founder and chief executive of Sohu, said in an interview on Tuesday. The episodes available online on Sohu, said Mr. Zhang, are no different from the American version aside from the addition of Chinese subtitles.
Sohu has secured the rights to broadcast the first three seasons of “House of Cards.” “This is only a fictional story, not something that actually happened,” Mr. Zhang said.
Kevin Spacey as the ruthless American politician Francis Underwood with Robin Wright as his wife, Claire. Nathaniel E. Bell/Netflix, via Associated Press
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6. NYT - Editorial: Frank Underwood, boffo in Beijing
What accounts for China’s phenomenal interest in “House of Cards,” the fictitious show from Netflix that depicts Machiavellian politics playing out in Washington’s inner circle with the utmost in back-stabbing, cynical glee? The second season of the series was released on Feb. 14 and zoomed to the top spot in
shows streamed by Sohu, the Chinese equivalent of Netflix, to Chinese customers. Those watching reportedly includes an enthusiastic Wang Qishan, one of the Communist Party’s most powerful members who is running the latest crackdown on official corruption. Could the rush to see the series be related to the fact that, so far, it has been spared Beijing’s relentless censorship, a standard burden for other imports? The distributor says a major part of the audience includes government officials and workers in Beijing
searching for escapist entertainment. Some of the
plotlines would seem especially
sensitive to many Chinese leaders because they touch on such realities as Chinese
cyberespionage, trade wars, currency manipulations and the rising tensions with Japan over the East China Sea. “Mao is dead, and so is his China,” the American vice president, Frank Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey in all his tooth-and-claw candor, tells a corrupt Chinese businessman. There’s no sign yet of a show built around China’s infamous Document No. 9, the memo that surfaced last
year revealing how President Xi Jinping aims to silence democracy advocates and reinforce party discipline. It is far safer for the regime to offer American political flaws as a common denominator of all governments. But wait: There are reports that a publisher plans a Chinese version of the novel upon which the series is based. Is some Chinese TV
adaptation even imaginable? Will some upper-echelon Chinese official, paralleling the Underwood character, suddenly turn in mid-malfeasance for a Shakespearean aside to his Chinese audience, confessing to some dirty truth of dictatorial power? Stay tuned.
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7. Reuters: U.S. calls on China, Japan and Europe to boost domestic demand
China, Japan and Europe need to concentrate on boosting domestic demand to help
rebalance the world economy, the head of the U.S.
Treasury said on Friday. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told a
finance conference ahead of this weekend's G20 meeting that Japan's economic reforms, known as Abenomics after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had made progress, although more still needed to be done. Asked about the risks from China's shadow banking sector, Lew said the sheer size of the Chinese economy meant Beijing had the scope to deal with any dangers.
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8. Reuters: U.S. leads pushback against emerging market angst at G20
The world's rich nations pushed back against emerging market complaints about the spillover effects of their monetary
polices, saying on Friday they had to get their own houses in order and get with the agenda of lifting global growth. As finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 developed and emerging gather ahead of a weekend meeting in Sydney, many are already talking at cross purposes. Emerging nations want the U.S. Federal Reserve to calibrate its winding down of stimulus so as to mitigate the impact on their economies. Developed members reply that the troubles in the emerging world are mostly homegrown and domestic interest rates have to be set with domestic recoveries in mind. "Emerging markets need to take steps
of their own to get their fiscal house in order and put structural reforms in place," U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said at a financial conference in Sydney ahead of the ministerial meetings.
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9. NYT: Chinese paper links Ukraine strife to rapid political reform
The Chinese people should draw an important lesson from the turmoil engulfing Ukraine: Beware of rapid political reform, because it will only end in chaos and bloodshed. So advises an editorial in Global Times, a newspaper belonging to the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship, People’s Daily. The Soviet government, which collapsed in 1991,
was able keep a lid on tensions between the western and eastern parts of Ukraine, the paper said, but independence opened up a Pandora’s box of ethnic and religious tensions, resulting in a stagnant economy and holding back foreign investment. Ukraine, the country that supplied China with the hull of its first aircraft carrier — a product of its time as part of the Soviet Union — now has a per capita income only 60 percent of China’s, the paper said in its Chinese-language edition. Big countries like Ukraine, with 46 million people, it noted, often can’t overcome complex religious and ethnic divisions when confronted with rapid political change and, like the former Yugoslavia, descend into violent strife.
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10. Bloomberg: China hard landing war-gamed for world economy
The U.S.
economy may prove more prone to deflation than the Federal Reserve acknowledges and that may present a reason to keep monetary policy loose, according to a model created by Wells Fargo Securities LLC. Deflationary pressures have been “relatively high” since January 2010 and now have a 66 percent chance of prevailing in the U.S., according to Charlotte, North Carolina-based economists John Silvia, Azhar Iqbal and Blaire Zachary. Their calculations include factors such as the personal consumption expenditures price
deflator, unemployment rate and the Fed’s inflation target. The model is “useful for policy makers, investors and consumers who can attach a probability with each more-likely scenario of future price trends: inflationary, deflationary or price stability,” the economists said in a Feb. 17
report
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11. WSJ: China's latest data pose policy issues
With signs of economic slowdown, leaders balance targets against borrowing costs.
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12. WP: With 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to era of austerity
President Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social Security benefits. With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans. Instead, the president will focus on pumping new cash into job training, early-childhood education and other programs aimed at bolstering the middle class, providing Democrats with a policy blueprint heading into the midterm elections.
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13. FT: China training for ‘short, sharp war’, says senior US naval officer
China has been training for a “short, sharp war” against Japan in the East China Sea, a senior US military officer has claimed, in comments that underline the growing military tensions in the western Pacific. Captain James
Fanell, director of intelligence for the US Pacific Fleet, said that a large-scale Chinese military exercise conducted in 2013 was designed to prepare forces for an operation to seize disputed islands in the East China Sea, which Japan calls the Senkaku and China the Diaoyu. “We witnessed the massive amphibious and
cross military region enterprise – Mission Action 2013,” Capt Fanell said at a
navy conference last week in San Diego. We concluded that the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] has been given the new task of being able to conduct a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea
following with what can only be an expected seizure of the Senkakus,” he added.
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14. Reuters: Pentagon plays down intelligence officer's provocative China assessment
The Pentagon on Thursday played down remarks by a senior Navy intelligence officer who told a public forum that he believed China was training its forces to be capable of carrying out a "short, sharp" war with Japan in the East China Sea
.The comments by Captain James
Fanell, director of intelligence and information operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, were little noticed when he made them last week at a conference on maritime strategy called "West 2014" in San Diego. They can be seen here: link.reuters.com/qyq96v Fanell also predicted China, which declared an air defense zone last year in the East China Sea where it is locked in a territorial dispute with Japan over a string of small islands, would declare another air defense zone by the end of 2015, this time in the South China Sea.
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15. Economist: How to make the world $600 billion poorer
Barack Obama’s unwillingness to fight for free trade is an expensive mistake.
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16. CD: Natural gas in China can learn from US
As China is executing its ambitious shale gas development plans to reach 6.5 billion cubic meters (cm) by 2015, the US' experiences in the industry may offer a number of lessons for China, US and Chinese academics concluded
in a conference held in Beijing. Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy released a report on Tuesday summarizing the highlights of the day-long conference on China's shale gas development, which took place
atPeking University's Law School last month. The conference featured high-profile
participants including David Schizer, Columbia Law School Dean; Jason Bordoff, director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia School; David Sandalow, former acting undersecretary of energy at the US Department of Energy; as well as industry experts, scholars and Chinese government officials. "China has tremendous potential for shale gas development
.Production to date has been modest, but the government has ambitious goals," Sandalow told China Daily. "In the US, de-regulated prices, a competitive industrial structure, easily transferable mineral rights and a large pipeline network all contributed to the shale gas revolution.
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17. CD: US needs to do more to attract foreign direct investment: UHY study
The United States, the world's No 1 economy, is lagging behind most major economies - including some of the least developed and emerging ones - in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), according to findings from a new study by UHY, an international accountancy network.
The study looked at net FDI inflow over the last five years in 33 major economies, measuring how successful they have been in attracting FDI in relation to their GDP. The US - ranked No 29 on the chart - has attracted FDI the equivalent of 6.6 percent of its gross domestic product ($1.043 trillion), compared to a 17 percent global average, a 10 percent BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) average and a 20 percent European Union average. Rick David, executive vice-president and CEO at UHY Advisors, Inc, said the findings should take into consideration of the scale of the US economy as a whole. "While the US attracts an enormous amount of foreign investment, the size of our existing economy is quite large and, therefore, as a percentage of GDP
,the amount of FDI may appear less significant than that of other countries, the amounts are still larger than any other entity," David noted.
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18. Xinhua: 2014 key to China's economic reform
Foreign analysts say this year could be a turning point for China as the country's leaders continue to push for reform and a
rebalancing of its economy. Since the release of the action plan for air pollution prevention and control in last September, central and local governments have started to ease surpluses in production capacity and achieved tangible results. Some organizations said local authorities had shown determination to promote structural adjustment, with 22 provinces recently cutting their GDP growth targets, which could inevitably hinder the national economy's growth rate. "Reform and growth have apparent contradictions, China has to sacrifice part of its growth to implement reform policies," Xu Sitao, chief representative of the Economist Group in China told Xinhua on the sidelines of a round table discussion on the economics that will affect China and the world in 2014, held in Beijing Tuesday. "The Economist Intelligence Unit predicted that China's economy growth would slow down to 7.2 percent, not maintain 7.5 percent," he said, adding "Chinese leaders's tolerance of the slowdown demonstrated their determination for reform."
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19. CD: Can Tencent crack US market after Facebook-Whatsapp deal?
Facebook Inc will pay $19 billion in cash and stock for WhatsApp, a popular
smartphone messaging service. The lofty price tag shows the world's largest social network's determination to boost its mobile messaging service, a demographic where Facebook's influence has begun to wane. As the company gains an advantage in tapping into a new and relatively large group of youngsters actively messaging each other,
WeChat, the mobile messaging application from China's Internet giant Tencent, which is also aiming to woo the same demographic in the US market, faces a stronger rival now.
WeChat first went global in 2012. It has since made a splash in many emerging markets, including Southeast Asia and Latin America. However, capturing the US market can be difficult, according to Cao Junbo, chief analyst of iResearch Consulting Group.
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