September 2012

Even in Chinese, “911” is shorthand for September 11 and the events that transpired 11 years ago today. Web users in China have taken to social media to mark the anniversary, some waxing philosophical about the passage of time and the elusiveness of world peace, others repeating the claim, often heard here, that the world’s largest terrorist organization was, in fact, the United States. The tension between those in China wishing to commemorate the tragic attacks on the U.S., and those suspicious of offering America even the slightest sympathy, are a reminder of the wariness many Chinese feel about American power.

Wang Tao at UBS thinks it is not really real: Well, that is what we call a bit of make-believe. Sure, the weak August data seem to have prompted more policy actions by various government agencies and we expect better implementation and coordination as well. But a closer look at the newly announced approvals shows that these projects have been approved in the past 2-3 months, some as early as April and May, and most of these projects are part of the local governments’ 12th Five Year Plans. In other words, many readers believed that the government suddenly rolled out a RMB 1 trillion stimulus package in the past week ahead of the weak August data, but the truth is that the NDRC just suddenly PUBLISHED the project approvals of the past few months, perhaps to demonstrate that the government’s policy support in the form of infrastructure investment has already been underway.

Speculation intensified on Monday over the whereabouts of China’s presumptive new president, Xi Jinping, who has been missing from public view in recent days as the country prepares for a crucial leadership change.

Li Zhensheng’s photographs of the Culutural Revolution are perhaps the most complete and nuanced pictorial account of the decade of turmoil ignited by Mao Zedong.

Mr. Li was a photojournalist for the local paper in Harbin, capital of China’s northernmost province of Heilongjiang. That is where he did his life’s work documenting the Cultural Revolution, taking the “positive” propaganda images of masses whipped up in revolutionary fervor for the newspaper, and also the “negative,” more nuanced, questioning pictures. He snipped those frames off his film and hid them under the parquet floorboards of his house until the revolution ended. He did not show these pictures in China until the late 1980s. Even today, given the sensitivities that linger over the Cultural Revolution in China, his work is more often seen overseas rather than at home.