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China confirmed this week that the number of its citizens living in cities has surpassed the rural population for the first time in its history. That massive urbanization — 690.79 million people are now city-dwellers according to the National Bureau of Statistics — has brought huge benefits, chief among them lifting hundreds of millions out [...]
It’s a very good thing that neural tube defects are relatively rare in the U.S., because they are very cruel conditions for a newborn to suffer. The two most common types of such birth defects are spina bifida – in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close properly — and anencephaly, in which [...]
China’s State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said this week that a large oil spill off the coast of Shandong province, near Beijing, is worse than previously stated, and that the government may seek compensation from ConocoPhillips, the U.S. oil company with a 49% stake in the oilfield. On Tuesday the agency said that two separate spills [...]
“In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold.” So Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote of his years of hard labor in 19th century Siberia, after a jittery Tsar Nicholas I banished the famed writer to the lonely Far East. For centuries, the massive swath of land east of Moscow and north of China has been a place [...]
When I lived in Hong Kong, I used to travel across the border into the People’s Republic, mostly for stories—like this one about the sex toy king of China—or for simple travel. (Particularly memorable were the all-night raves on the Great Wall of China which, sadly, have since been banned.) When I’d flip through my [...]
Just a quick note on a couple of interesting articles that surfaced today about the five-month drought in central China. The AP reports that Chinese businesses and residents are facing the largest energy crisis in years, as hydroelectric capacity is now at a low. Elaine Kurtenbach reports about the worst-affected areas: The worst will be [...]
Last week, WikiLeaks published a new round of diplomatic cables in concert with an annual meeting of the Arctic Council in Nuuk, Greenland. Written between 2007 and 2010, the cables highlight the lingering sense of global insecurity over who owns what at the rooftop of the world. They don’t cover any particularly new ground, but [...]
An interesting debate showed up in my Twitter feed today. A few followers of China’s green energy policies have taken climate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg’s recent opinion piece in the Washington Post to task for using some information that undersells what China has accomplished. I hadn’t read Lomborg’s article, which ran on April 21, but it [...]
Here in the U.S. there’s a lot of excitement that 2011 could really be the Year of the Electric Car. GM is coming out with its plug-in model the Volt, Nissan has the all-electric Leaf and Ford has announced a line of plug-ins, hybrids and electrics. Throw in outside-the-box ideas like the Israeli startup Better [...]
As the National People’s Congress kicks off in Beijing, Chinese leaders’ priorities for the nation were rolled out over the weekend in the 11th five-year plan (2011-2015). Among those priorities, which include pledges to improve pollution, increase clean energy production and reduce the nation’s yawning wealth gap, is tackling the food safety problems that have [...]
