The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s ankle-deep heap of porcelain sunflower seeds bewitched recent visitors to London’s Tate Modern. But in early April Ai’s strong criticisms of the regime led to his disappearance somewhere in Beijing. On June 22, eighty-one days later, he reappeared at home. Not freed: reappeared, which can mean something closer to house arrest.
There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home: Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as Ghetto at the Center of the World shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people. Gordon Mathews’s intimate portrayal of the building’s polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope. Gordon Mathews’s compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet. —University of Chicago Press
The United States and China are now the two largest economies in the world. The relationship between the two countries is multifaceted and goes well beyond economic relations, but questions of macroeconomic imbalances have remained at the heart of bilateral discussions between the two. Given their importance to the world economy, these imbalances have also become central to multilateral discussions about global economic governance. This study examines the two countries’ macroeconomic imbalances of the last decade and the diplomacy surrounding them through the lens of political economy, positing that there are significant internal divisions within each country and that the policy outcomes that emerge may differ significantly from those that a powerful, unitary actor might impose.
One recent weekend, I went for a walk through the alleys around the Qianmen shopping district, once Beijing’s commercial heart and still home to nationally known traditional shops. One of its chief side streets, Dazhalan, had been turned into a Ye Olde Pekinge-type street: its façades scrubbed and tarted up a bit too much but the famous stores still selling their century-old brands of cotton shoes, medicine, hats, and sweets. It was kitschy but the buildings were more or less real and the stores crowded with shoppers and tourists from the provinces.
Concerning the Past:
It is hard to fit Henry Kissinger’s latest book, On China, into any conventional frame or genre. Partly that is because the somewhat self-deprecatory title conceals what is, in fact, an ambitious goal: to make sense of China’s diplomacy and foreign policies across two and a half millennia, and to bring China’s past full circle in order to illuminate the present. In form, the book is highly idiosyncratic, for it is not exactly a memoir, or a monograph, or an autobiography; rather it is part reminiscence, part reflection, part history, and part intuitive exploration.
As the southern Yangtze region struggles with its worst drought in a century, China’s grand plans for water diversion projects and its Three Gorges Dam have come under renewed scrutiny, as have expectations Beijing can maintain economic stability. Beyond the environmental disaster wracking southern China, questions are growing of whether Beijing is veering towards a similar fate itself, with city planners expecting a 30 percent increase in the capital’s population in a region that’s already far beyond its carrying capacity.
I first went to Datong in 1984 and was immediately taken by this gritty city in China’s northern Shanxi Province. Along with half a dozen classmates from Peking University, I traveled eight hours on an overnight train, arriving in a place that felt even more old-fashioned than Beijing was at the time.
Over the past decade, numerous mass lead poisoning incidents have been reported across China. In response, Environmental Protection Ministry officials have become more outspoken, directing local officials to increase supervision of factories and enforce existing environmental regulations. The ministry has also said that it will pursue criminal penalties for businesses and local officials who violate environmental restrictions. However, these promises fall short of addressing the health consequences of lead poisoning and fulfilling the right to health for children exposed to lead. The report draws on research in heavily lead-contaminated villages in Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Hunan provinces. The report documents how, despite increasing regulation and sporadic enforcement targeting polluting factories, local authorities are ignoring the urgent and long-term health consequences of a generation of children continuously exposed to life-threatening levels of lead.
In recent years the number of companies releasing sustainability reports has continued to increase on a global level as well as in China specifically. In China, the number of sustainability reports reached over 700 in 2010. There is a widely established expectation that companies wanting to obtain a leadership position and become competitive in the global marketplace need to effectively manage their environmental and social performance, disclosing challenges and achievements in a sustainability report. Moreover, corporate product and service innovation should aim to contribute to society's well-being. Studies show that in China, however, most companies release sustainability reports for reasons of reputation and development of government relationships, not fully taking advantage of opportunities for risk management and investor relations. This study aims to support the Shanghai Stock Exchange in developing more comprehensive guidelines for its sustainability reports.
