Although residents in Northern China are no strangers to dirty air, a man from the smog-enshrouded Hebei province has decided to take the local environmental authority to court for failing to control air pollution.
In depicting U.S. politics as just as vicious, if not more, sociopathic than its Chinese counterpart, House of Cards delivered a sweet Valentine’s Day gift to the Chinese government. The show handed the Chinese state an instant victory when the protagonist, a seasoned U.S. politician, declares democracy “so overrated.” Even coming from the mouth of a villain, this is a verdict the Chinese state, which is always hoping to elevate its political model at the expense of others, is happy to hear.
David Vance Wagner: China’s latest “airpocalypse” has again sent air pollution in Beijing soaring to hazardous levels for days straight. Though the Chinese government has made admirable progress recently at confronting the long-term air pollution crisis, it will be years before Beijing’s air reaches acceptable quality.
Tim Franco is a French-Polish photographer based in Shanghai. He is fascinated by the transformation of Chinese cities and has been docummenting these changes since 2005. He also keeps tuned in to the underground art world and the social implications of urbanization in China. His first self-published book, Shanghai Soundbites, released in June 2008, depicts the evolution of the alternative music scene in China, particularly Shanghai. In 2012, Franco traveled for a year to document Chinese architecture and urbanism. His book, Metamorpolis, was published in 2015, foucsing on the fast rate of urbanization in the megacity Chongqing.
Franco’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Financial Times, and Le Monde, among other publications.
Tomoko Kikuchi is a Japanese-born photographer whose work is held in permanent collection at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Mori Art Museum, and the Kawasaki City Museum. She is the winner of the 38th Kimura Ihei Award (2012) and the first Prix Pictet Japan Award (2015).
She has published in Newsweek, The New York Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Der Spiegel, Financial Times, Paris Match, and V magazine, among others.
Kikuchi graduated from the Musashino Art University. In 2013, she was a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund grantee.
David Vance Wagner is Director for Strategic Partnerships, China, at the Energy Foundation. Wagner has worked on U.S.-China energy and environmental cooperation for over a decade. Before joining the Energy Foundation staff, he served as the China Counsellor in the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. Department of State, where he led U.S.-China dialogue and collaboration on climate change and clean energy. Prior to joining the State Department, Wagner co-led the China program at the International Council on Clean Transportation and served as the first and only foreigner at China’s national vehicle emission policy research center under the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Wagner earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in Environmental Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The $62 billion South-North Water Transfer Project would be rendered irrelevant if one-third of buildings in Beijing could collect more rainwater and recycle more wastewater, according to a Chinese ministerial official.
LinkedIn is now aiming its bow for the rocky shoals that have claimed Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even eBay: the Chinese market. On February 24, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the launch of LinkedIn’s Chinese-language site, still in beta, meaning it is a test edition subject to further improvement.
Matteo Mecacci served as a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (on its Foreign Affairs Committee) as well as an elected official of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly. Prior to taking up the Presidency at International Campaign for Tibet, he supervised elections in Georgia as the Head of Mission for the OSCE/Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) for the Presidential Elections in Georgia.
Mecacci was elected Chairperson of the Italian Parliamentary Intergroup for Tibet after being voted in as Deputy for the Radical Party on the Democratic Party lists at the 2008 general elections. In November 2009, he organized the 5th World Parliamentarians Convention on Tibet in Rome, which hosted the Dalai Lama and established an International Network of Parliamentarians on Tibet (INPaT). He became Co-Chair of the network in June 2010. He was a member of the Tibetan Election Observation Mission in March, 2011 when the Tibetan community in exile undertook elections for the Central Tibetan Administration leadership.
Mecacci served as the representative of the Transnational Radical Party and No Peace Without Justice at the United Nations in New York from 2000 to 2008. He was part of a coalition of international NGOs advocating the reform of the United Nations—in particular the United Nations Commission on Human Rights—and he was one of the promoters of the International Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies. He studied international law at the University of Firenze.
Diplomatic sources said Germany did not want to get dragged into the dispute between China and Japan, and dislikes China constantly bringing up Germany's painful past.
