What is happening in this photo that is making these children so emotional?

(Real caption after the jump)

Read on

On Thursday, China's Ministry of Public Security announced that the police had arrested 63 traders accused of buying rat, fox, and mink meat and then selling the meat as mutton. Apparently, the crime ring had been mixing the meat with gelatin, red dye, and nitrates before selling it in Shanghai and neighboring Jiangsu province. How appetizing.

It has been quite a year for food scandals, what with IKEA's horsemeat meatballs and China's floating dead pigs. To China's credit, the country appears to be tackling the food safety issue head on (state media report that Chinese law enforcement officials have arrested more than 900 people for selling fake or tainted meat in the last three months). But this latest revelation has shocked more than reassured, leaving many in China to wonder whether the "mutton" stewing on their stoves is really made of lamb after all.

But never fear! Foreign Policy reached out to North Carolina-based artist Laura Ginn, who, after organizing a rat-themed five-course dinner in New York last year, has become somewhat of a rat meat connoisseur. With her help, we hereby offer you five ways to know you're eating rat.

1. It smells like rat. Rats secrete an oil onto their skin that gives them their distinct "rodenty" odor. Some compare the smell to that of a warm tortilla, says Ginn, while others compare it to urine. Regardless, it's distinctive. While it's true that the odor lessens after the rat is skinned, and again after the rat is cooked, no amount of cooking can ever completely get rid of the smell.

2. It tastes like rat. The oil rats secrete gives them a distinctive taste as well. Ginn describes it as quite pungent and gamey -- most similar to raccoon or rabbit. Blended with other meats, rat becomes a lot less distinctive, so you'd have to be rather discerning to notice it.

3. It tastes delicious when brushed with a moonshine glaze and barbecued. Of all the ways Ginn has eaten rat, this is her favorite preparation. A close second is smoked rat jerky served on brioche French toast. So, if you happen to be savoring a moonshine-BBQ dish, or think there is something slightly "rodenty" about the gamey and delicious jerky you are consuming, you might want to check the ingredients.

4. It looks like lamb. When it's raw, pinkish/red rat looks very much like lamb. Unfortunately for the Chinese, when ground, rat can look a lot like any generic ground meat. When cooked, rat looks more like rabbit, Ginn thinks, just because of the shape of the cuts.

5. You're in Asia. According to Ginn, rats are most commonly eaten in Asia because of the rice crop. In areas where rats feed off rice paddies rather than garbage, the rodents are considered safer to eat. Of course, it isn't clear whether the rats marketed as mutton in China were healthy, rice-fed rats or sewer-dwelling, garbage-eating, Templeton-esque rats. The New York Times reports that the arrest announcement "did not explain how exactly the traders acquired the rats and other creatures." Rats are also disease carriers, so when Ginn organized her meal she ordered hers from a company that supplies specially raised, grain-fed rodents to zoos.

Bon appétit!

We may not know much about the man currently plowing full speed ahead toward international nuclear crisis, but one thing we do know for sure is that he is young -- 29 or 30. And this, most news outlets seem to agree, is an important factor in understanding how we wound up where we are today -- and where we may be headed. CNN calls Kim Jong Un "a rash young leader." "Young, reckless, without great political savvy," writes the Christian Science Monitor. The Daily Mail calls the North Korean supreme leader a "boy despot."

It's conventional wisdom that age and experience are calming forces in international relations -- that with a few gray hairs comes the moderation and wisdom to avoid, say, calling other, much larger states, "boiled pumpkin[s]." But one academic study on the question finds the connections between age and political crises to be a little more nuanced. For every brash, brassy Louis XIV -- who, at 29, invaded the Spanish Netherlands in 1667 and was forced to give almost all of it back a year later -- there is a Nikita Khrushchev placing missiles on Cuba in his late 60s.

A 2005 study from the Journal of Conflict Resolution examined the ages of the leaders involved in 100,000 interactions between states from 1875 to 1999, and found that, in fact, the older the leader, the more likely he is to both initiate and escalate conflicts. Having an experienced counterpart on the other side of a dispute didn't seem to help much either. The study found that the risk of escalation -- to use of force, and then to all-out war -- also increases as the age of the leader in the second state goes up.

What's going on? The authors of the study, "Leader Age, Regime Type, and Violent International Relations," speculate that older leaders may have fewer institutional constraints on them, having gained credibility and freedom to act by virtue of their experience:

One example of this is the presidency of George H.W. Bush in comparison to the presidency of Bill Clinton. Bush, as a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, an ambassador, and a vice president, had amassed an enormous amount of institutional credibility ... that gave him a greater latitude to direct U.S. military policy.

In addition, the authors reason, the shorter time horizons of aging leaders may prompt them to take greater risks in the hopes of building a legacy.

So does this mean that we should all take a deep breath and relax about North Korea -- that young Kim is exactly who we want in charge in this situation? Not quite. The authors go on to look at how the relationship between age and leadership changes when the data set is reduced to just "personalist regimes" where power is concentrated in the hands of a single leader. Here, they find that the relationship is turned on its head: younger leaders are actually slightly more prone to initiate and escalate crises. Why? The authors hypothesize that young autocrats may face fewer institutional constraints from the get-go.

This is important to note when looking at Kim's behavior, because most North Korea watchers believe North Korea's institutions don't restrain Kim's behavior; if anything, they drive him to be more aggressive, as the only institution whose voice really matters in the Hermit Kingdom is the military (not an uncommon situation in many autocratic regimes -- perhaps suggesting that young despots beholden to the military are just as institutionally constrained as their counterparts in democracies, but pushed toward aggression rather than peaceful behavior).

The authors do close on a somewhat reassuring note -- they encourage further study of the effect having children has on leaders' aggression: "Testosterone concentrations ... [are] lowest in the new father population immediately after their wives" give birth, they write.

Good news for those of us who want peace on the Korean peninsula: Kim Jong Un is rumored to be a new father.

In her article for FP today, Laurie Garrett wonders whether thousands of dead pigs washing up in Shanghai's rivers and two Chinese citizens dying of a new flu strain are early symptoms of the next big pandemic. What's more, she writes, the potentially contaminated pork has already entered the Chinese food supply. "On March 25," Garrett notes, "Chinese authorities seized manufactured pork buns that were found to be made from Zhejiang pigs that had died of the mysterious ailment."

The prevalence of dicey food products -- including dead, diseased, or otherwise dodgy pork -- has long been an issue in China. But the recent tide of dead hogs sweeping through Shanghai -- said to partially stem from a crackdown by authorities on the dead-pig trade -- has produced some fascinating reporting that gives us a more detailed look at the economics driving China's market for illegal pig meat.

It's pretty straightforward: farmers who can't send a pig to be butchered once it has died don't want to totally write off their investments -- not when there's a chance to still make some of the money back. But according to recent reports, Chinese authorities have some policies in place that aren't exactly making the problem better.

According to this report, from the Oriental Morning Post, a 100-kilogram (roughly 220-pound) pig sells for about 600 yuan ($100) -- still a hefty sum in rural China. Feed costs total at least 150 yuan ($25).

Since July 2011, the central government has had a policy in place to pay some farms -- those that raise more than 50 pigs a year -- compensation of 80 yuan ($13) for every dead pig, according to the South China Morning Post. But 89 percent of the pigs raised in the city of Jiaxing -- thought to be the main source of the hogs that wound up in Shanghai's Huangpu river -- come from small farms, according to the report, and don't qualify. Even those that do often don't see the money.

To make matters worse, this thorough Shanghai Daily primer on the illegal pig trade says farmers in Zhejiang province were supposed to pay 50 yuan ($8) per carcass to so-called "dead pig collectors" hired by the local government who would then dispose of the carcass. Not surprisingly, most farmers opted not to pay this fee when illegal pig traders were around who were happy to pay 1 yuan per 500 grams of pig flesh. The result? Jiaxing pig collector Lu Gensong told Shanghai Daily he didn't collect a single carcass between 2009 and 2012. ("You Shanghai residents just don't realize how many dead pigs you have eaten before," one restaurant owner told Xinhua.) 

And those illegal pork butchers? They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves -- perhaps well enough to pay even more than they're already shelling out for dead pig flesh if necessary. A CCTV investigation into the dead pig trade found that three butchers -- sentenced to life in prison last November -- had processed 77,000 carcasses, making almost 9 million yuan ($1.5 million) in profit.

If you're wondering why you'd pay to have your pig carcasses disposed of when you can be paid for them instead, well --it seems some farmers in Zhejiang province have been wondering the same thing.

The Chinese government on Tuesday continued to deny that a Chinese frigate locked its radar on a Japanese destroyer earlier this year. The denial comes a day after Tokyo-based Kyodo News quoted unnamed "senior Chinese military officials" admitting for the first time that it happened -- but only by accident, they said.

It's worth noting, especially in light of Beijing's official denial, that we don't know who these Chinese officials are, or why they're speaking up now. But the report, if true, is disturbing precisely because the alleged standoff happened accidentally. According to the officials, the radar lock was an unplanned, "emergency decision" taken by the commander of the frigate -- one that did not include communication with fleet command or navy headquarters. This line in particular from Kyodo's report does not inspire confidence:

"The communication system used by the Chinese navy is not as advanced as those of Japan and the United States, a senior official said, explaining why the commander did not seek guidance."

Great. At a time when Chinese authorities seem to be making efforts to dial down tensions with Japan over disputed islands, could a war between East Asian superpowers be sparked by accident -- by some frigate commander gone rogue?

That nuclear war could come about in just such a scenario was, of course, a major concern during the Cold War. But decades of tension, as well as apocalyptic visions of global annihilation as a result of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. locking horns, produced carefully designed systems to minimize the damage any one rogue actor could inflict (only the president can access the nuclear codes), and to minimize misunderstandings from more minor incidents (the Kremlin-White House hotline).

But East Asia -- relatively free of military buildup until recently -- doesn't have these same systems in place. A soon-to-be-released report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies highlights the danger that emerges when a region's military systems develop faster than its communication mechanisms, and finds that accidental war in East Asia is a real possibility:

Across East Asia, advanced military systems such as anti-ship missiles, new submarines, advanced combat aircraft are proliferating in a region lacking security mechanisms that could defuse crises. Bilateral military-to-military ties are often only embryonic. There is a tangible risk of accidental conflict and escalation, particularly in the absence of a strong tradition of military confidence-building measures."

The Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands dispute has been marked by an increasing number of deliberate provocations on both sides: surveillance vessels entering nearby waters, patrol planes making passes by the islands, scrambled fighter jets. These are planned actions, designed to incrementally heighten tensions. But the more fighter jets that get scrambled without good communications systems in place, the higher the chances that these deliberate moves escalate beyond what either Japan or China is anticipating.

That being said, it's important to note that historians still question whether any wars have truly been started by accident. (War "is almost by definition a deliberate and carefully considered act," writes Michael Howard.) The origins of World War I -- sometimes dubbed the accidental war -- are still hotly debated, for example. But Reuters recently noted that China, while seeking to cool tensions with Japan, is at the same time taking steps to increase central control over its military (putting paramilitary agencies under a single command, for instance) to prevent accidents -- a sign, at least, that one party in this conflict is taking the possibility seriously.

We hear plenty about drugs and conflict diamonds; but the international black market for timber -- a global trade that has been plaguing the forests of South America, Central America, and Asia for years, and one that is estimated to be worth anywhere from 30 to 100 billion dollars a year -- gets a lot less attention.

Illegal wood had a rare moment in the spotlight on Feb. 19, when Interpol reported the results of its first international operation to target timber trafficking. "Operation Lead," which brought together law enforcement agencies from twelve Latin American countries, was carried out over a month late last year and resulted in the seizure of the equivalent of 2,000 truckloads of timber (worth millions of dollars) and the arrests of more than 200 people.

While individual countries in the region, such as Columbia and Brazil, have cracked down on the illegal trade in the past, the transnational nature of the crime makes it difficult for domestic law enforcement agencies, which are limited in their jurisdiction, to be very effective. An international approach has the potential to be more successful. According to the head of Interpol's Environmental Crime Program, Operation Lead has laid the foundations for future efforts to combat the global trade.

So why timber? It is not as lucrative as the drug trade, but it still brings in a fair amount of cash. According to a recent Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) report, in Laos, rare rosewood logs can fetch $18,000 per cubic meter. The EIA also notes that traffickers can earn $1,700 for a high-quality mahogany tree on the Peruvian black market, and about $1,000 for a cedar tree. In 2006, illegal logging in Peru was bringing up to $72 million in profits per year. Some estimates put the yearly profits in Columbia as high as $200 million.

In Latin America, the drug and timber trades aren't mutually exclusive. Though the extent of the connection is not yet clear, timber trafficking overlaps with organized crime and the drug trade in interesting ways in countries like Colombia and Peru.

For one, it has been suggested that timber offers drug traffickers an opportunity to invest in a new illegal market -- to "diversify their portfolios" -- as some governments become more successful (however slightly) in cracking down on the drug trade.

In Peru, where an estimated 80 percent of total timber exports are illegal, the wood trafficking network has become so sophisticated that drug traffickers are now piggybacking on the timber trade -- literally. In 2006, a U.S. State Department cable (later released by WikiLeaks) reported that drug traffickers in the Andes moving coca paste and opium "appear to be getting involved in transport of illegal timber, for both its profitability and its utility as concealment." In 2010, Peruvian police seized nearly 400 kilos of cocaine and coca base hidden in a single shipment of Sinaloa cedar.

Logging may also be viewed as a profitable way to open land for the farming of coca. According to a 2011 UN report, since 1981, more than 3,000 square miles of Columbia's forests have been cut down illegally to make way for coca crops. In 2008, then Columbian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon announced, "If you snort a gram of cocaine, you are destroying 4 square meters of rainforest."

All considered, it isn't surprising that the illegal logging trade has taken a violent turn in some countries. Last year in Cambodia, an anti-logging activist and a reporter covering the illegal trade were both murdered. Three Brazilian activists were killed in 2011 -- just three out of dozens that have been murdered over the past several years.

It should be noted that illegal logging is not entirely run by timber kingpins and "wood mafias." Local communities also cut down wood illegally (to use, not to sell), and have probably been doing so for generations.

The countries affected are going to have to take strong action if they want to save their forests, because the problem is not going to fix itself. The world's appetite for high-value wood is high and is only getting higher. In its report entitled "Appetite for Destruction: China's Trade in Illegal Timber," the EIA states that between 2000 and 2011, the quantity of global log imports tripled, with a value that increased fivefold. China -- with wood product exports that have increased almost sevenfold in the past decade, with new construction projects beginning every day, and with a new bourgeoisie that covets fancy rosewood lounge sets (which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars), cars with wood-embellished interiors, and yachts -- comprises a large part of that demand. According to the EIA, China is the world's top importer of illegal timber. "More than half of China's current supplies of raw timber material are sourced from countries with a high risk of illegal logging and poor forest governance," including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Madagascar, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea.

Nicaragua in particular has seen enormous growth in its illegal timber market thanks to Chinese demand. In 2008, Nicaraguan exports of granadillo totalled about $127,000. In 2011, after other Central American countries enacted stricter wood export regulations, that number grew fifty fold, to $6 million.

China is in the midst of efforts to increase its own forest coverage; but Beijing is certainly going to have to step up its efforts at home if it wants to make up for the damage it is doing abroad.

China's 2-week New Year festivities kick off this weekend. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people will travel home and an obscene number of fireworks will be set off, causing cities throughout the country to sound like warzones.

The fireworks on sale to the general public range from cheap spinners to extravagant Olympics-grade pyrotechnics. These include a $200 66-pound package called Tonight Is So Beautiful that fires red and green bursts several stories high, writes David Pierson in the Los Angeles Times.

The most controversial fireworks this year are ones that reference Japan, including "I Love the Diaoyu Islands," about the small islands in the East China Sea administered by Japan (which calls them the Senkakus) and claimed by China, and the less subtle "Tokyo Big Explosion." For $54 "you can blow up Tokyo," the news portal China News Web said, explaining why the fireworks were so popular in Beijing. China-Japan tensions are worsening; the latest sign, in, early February, was when Japan said that a Chinese military vessel focused a radar used to direct weapons on a Japanese naval vessel near the islands.

But Beijing seems to have cracked down on the sale of anti-Japanese fireworks: a manager of the company selling them told the Associated Press that the government said to company that "China is a peace-loving country and should not do something damaging to the China-Japan friendship."

Why does this matter? Cracking down on sales of patriotic fireworks doesn't mean that Beijing's going to try to reduce tensions.

Rather, it's a nice illustration that China's non-democratic government is more restrained than the people it represents with regards to Japan. Chinese grass-roots hatred of the Japanese runs deep; officials can harness this hatred and allow protests against Japan, like they did in September, while keeping tensions in check. Sadly, if many Chinese had their way, "blowing up Tokyo" might be more than the name of a firework.  

The new user-generated Google Map of North Korea unveiled with some fanfare on the company''s blog Monday is a bit less than it initally seems. It isn't the most detailed publicly available map of North Korea. It's not even the most detailed map produced by Google -- that title belongs to the North Korea Uncovered project, produced by Google Earth, which has truly extensive mapping of the isolated country from its dams to its power stations and even its restaurants. (The head of that project, Curtis Melvin, comes off a touch bitter about all the attention the new Google Maps project has received in this Wall Street Journal story).

Where Google Maps does win out, however, is in easy accessibility (North Korea Uncovered requires a few downloads before it's usable). As an added bonus, the user review feature has produced a bit of a snarkfest. Users have left reviews on North Korean landmarks ranging from parks and monuments to gulags and nuclear testing facilities. While some are earnest, the vast majority are decidedly not. Here's a sampling of what's been posted:

Nuclear Test Facility, North Hamgyong, North Korea

Of all the barren, post-nuclear, wastelands I have visited this was by far the best. Of course Los Alamos is the classic, but no where else do you feel the warmth of the radioactive decay take you in its soft embrace quite as vividly as in the Hamgyong Nuclear Test Facility. However, be warned, reservations are required, as Hamgyong, is very exclusive. In fact, it is not uncommon to encounter the upper echelons of North Korean society. Once, I even met the North's biggest film star, Zao Xioping, who has stared in such famous films as, "Glory to the Industrial Proletariat in Their Moment of Triumph Over the Decadent Capitalists," and of course who could forget his appearance in the 2010 classic "Kim Il Sung and the Temple of Doom." If you're visiting the nearby Hamgyong Concentration Camp, the Nuclear Test Facility is a must!!

-E RR

Hwasong Gulag

Whilst it doesn't have the international reputation of Bukchang, Hwasong is certainly worth a visit for any gulag enthusiast.

-Chloe G.

Kumsusan Memorial Palace, Pyongyang

I found the fish tacos to be really underwhelming

-Richie Heimbrock

East Pyongyang Market, Pyongyang

Service is good, but selection is sub-par.

-Nicholas Toecker

Just a handful of what's out there, and there will surely be more to come

For the past week or so, Beijing has suffered from some of the worst pollution it has seen in years. The pollution levels seemed to peak on Saturday when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing's popular @BeijingAir twitter feed, which uses standards from the Environmental Protection Agency, posted a reading of 755 on the Air Quality Index standard. The scale only goes up to 500. Ed Wong in the New York Times reported that "levels between 301 and 500 are ‘Hazardous,' meaning people should avoid all outdoor activity. The World Health Organization has standards that judge a score above 500 to be more than 20 times the level of particulate matter in the air deemed safe."

Three quick points:

1. What's different this time?

Besides the scale; which, though depressing, is not unprecedented, Chinese media is more openly reporting on the weather. This is cannibalized from an email from a friend in Beijing, who wants to remain anonymous:  

China's state broadcaster CCTV used to call pollution "heavy fog" (dawu) they're now using the term that means something close to "haze". (wumai) On Friday they dedicated a surprising amount of time to the issue, and a Jan. 12 article on the Chinese weather service website reported that the air pollution was higher than the index is designed to handle.

The friend in Beijing also mentioned changing attitudes among Chinese towards pollution:

"Before the outrage over the discrepancy between official statistics, American embassy PM2.5 statistics, and individual perceptions of pollution, I had not one example of someone using the Chinese word for haze in casual conversation nor in weather reports. With this first bout of bad winter pollution I am shocked by the level of coverage but more so that air pollution is no longer "heavy fog" but now "haze."

PM 2.5 refers to the smaller polluting particles that have not typically been included in government air quality statistics. This Wall Street Journal blog post offers a comprehensive explanation of the term and how it entered the Chinese lexicon, as well as further examples of state media referring to China's ivory skies.  

2. How do foreigners deal with the pollution?

Didi Kirsten Tatlow, a Beijing-based correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, writes about her family rules: "Above 100, and the air purifiers -- all four of them -- go on. Above 200, we wear face masks outdoors. Above 300 and no one exercises or plays outside, even with a face mask on. Above 500 and we try not to go out at all."

For my last 2+years in Beijing I lived in an apartment that, when I leaned out the window, had an unobstructed view of the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, a pair of roughly 100 feet high structures that were just over 2 miles away. When I could see the towers, I would run outside; otherwise, no deal.

3. What do you call pollution this gross?

Ed Wong writes of a day "when all of Beijing looked like an airport smokers' lounge," and cited Beijing residents online described the air as "postapocalyptic," "terrifying" and "beyond belief." The second worst day I remember in China, the skies were the color of gargled milk. The worst day the sky managed to turn colorless.

In the wake of a knife attack at an elementary school reportedly driven by predictions about the coming end of the world, Chinese authorities have detained dozens for spreading rumors about the coming apocalypse.

According to Xinhua, 93 people -- many of them members of a religious group called Almighty God, which promotes belief in the upcoming Dec. 21 Mayan doomsday -- have been detained as potential day of reckoning grows closer. At the same time, authorities have sought to play down any talk about the world ending, ordering  media last week to "strictly vet reports on the so-called "end of the world" and "strengthen positive guidance and forcefully guard against the creation and spread of rumors, as well as working up panicked feelings." The order appears to have been taken seriously, with newspapers publishing soothing quotes from various experts arguing that Friday will be like any other day, reports The Telegraph:

"Speaking to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Sun Xiaochun, a top professor from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "The event will be as destructive as when we throw an old table calendar into the rubbish can at the end of the year."

The idea that Friday will be the end of it all has gained quite a foothold in parts of China. Hebei Province farmer Liu Qiyuan, pictured above, has begun making "survival pods" out of fiberglass and steel for the event, while Business Insider reports that,

"...in Sichuan province, panic buying of candles has swept through two counties in the fear that an ancient Mayan prediction that the world will end on December 21 proves to be true.

"Candles are selling by the hundreds, with buyers constantly coming to the market. Many stores have run out," said Huang Zhaoli, a shopper at the Neijing Wholesale Market, to the West China City Daily newspaper."

The panicky feeling was not helped by an unnerving meteorological phenomenon last week that made it appear that the sky over parts of eastern China contained three suns.

He's performed with Madonna, has been on the Today show, and is scheduled to perform at a "Christmas in Washington" concert this weekend that President Obama plans to attend with his family.

But now South Korean rapper Psy -- chubby, goofy Psy, who horse-danced his way into so many American hearts this past year -- is now being dogged by some surprisingly vitriolic anti-U.S. comments from his past.

In 2004, Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, took part in a live performance of Korean band N.E.X.T.'s song "Dear American" in which he rapped:

Kill those f****** Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives

Kill those f****** Yankees who ordered them to torture

Kill their daughters, mothers, daughter-in-law and fathers

Kill them all slowly and painfully

Yikes!

The rap came two years after PSY had participated in a protest concert against the presence of 37,000 troops in South Korea. During the concert, Psy lifted a miniature American tank above his head and smashed it on stage, to cheers from the audience.

As many have noted, it's important to remember the context here: the protest concert came shortly after two middle school girls in Korea were killed after they were struck by an armored vehicle operated by U.S. soldiers (the soldiers were later acquitted of charges related to their deaths).  And the 2004 rap came in the wake of the beheading death of a Korean missionary in Iraq, after South Korea rejected the kidnappers' demands that it withdraw its troops.

Korea is an American ally, but has long been ambivalent about the presence of U.S. troops on its soil; many have also questioned the presence of South Korean troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Psy -- whose Gangnam Style video passed Justin Bieber's "Baby" last month to become the most-viewed video ever on Youtube -- has yet to comment.

Update -- Psy has responded in a statement: "As a proud South Korean who was educated in the United States and lived there for a very significant part of my life, I understand the sacrifices American servicemen and women have made to protect freedom and democracy in my country and around the world. The song I was featured in - eight years ago - was part of a deeply emotional reaction to the war in Iraq and the killing of two Korean schoolgirls that was part of the overall antiwar sentiment shared by others around the world at that time.  While I'm grateful for the freedom to express one's self, I've learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I'm deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words."

"I have been honored to perform in front of American soldiers in recent months - including an appearance on the Jay Leno show specifically for them-  and I hope they and all Americans can accept my apology. While it's important that we express our opinions, I deeply regret the inflammatory and inappropriate language I used to do so. In my music, I try to give people a release, a reason to smile. I have learned that thru music, our universal language we can all come together as a culture of humanity and I hope that you will accept my apology."

h/t Haps

On Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party announced the seven people who would lead the country for the next five or ten years. Helmed by Chairman Xi Jinping, they're a mysterious bunch -- the world knows very little about what they think and how they will act. But still, their ascension is very significant, and whether or not they decide to institute "political reform" (i.e., liberalize the party) will help determine where China goes over the next decade.

As usual, this has caused a dilemma for western newspapers: Extremely important event + extreme surfeit of information = vague headlines.

"China's new leadership team not expected to push drastic reform" and "Don't expect reform from China's new leaders" the Washington Post wrote on Thursday.

The Financial Times seemed slightly more optimistic the Friday headline, "Chinese transition leaves many questions". The subtitle was, "Change of leadership prompts reform speculation."

Granted this vagueness is better than baseless predictions, but it's still worth noting again just how in the dark we are about elite politics in China.

Xi is slightly less than a mystery than his predecessor. Ten years ago Hu Jintao took power amid widespread bafflement about the man or his policies.  Articles in respected media outlets in 2002 expressed bafflement at the "faceless apparatchik" set to run the world's most populous country. Hu turned out to be fairly conservative, though that took a few years to be apparent. (In the meantime, there were headlines like that of the New York Times July 2003: "China's Leader Gives No Sign of Changes to Come".)

The most accurate prediction about Hu that I've seen comes from a Nov. 15, 2002 article in The New York Times:

''People think Hu will fulfill their own dreams,'' said Wu Guoguang, an expert in Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. ''The liberals see a reformer; the conservatives see a hard-liner. Sooner or later he will have to make some choices, and people will see his real colors. But it may take years for that to happen.''

It's a comment worth remembering when guessing about what direction Xi will take China in his early days in office. 

The sigh of relief from China was almost audible. Now Chinese officials "don't need to deal with unnecessary disputes over issues like currency and trade while dealing with its own political transition," said Vincent Ni, a correspondent for the Chinese business magazine Caixin, who's been covering the U.S. election. The state-run Chinese news agency Xinhua reported optimistically that "Obama has a unique opportunity to make an even more far-reaching impact on China-U.S. ties, if he has the political courage and wisdom to cast away the uncalled-for worries over China's rise."

The Chinese reaction hasn't been all positive. Woeser, a prominent half-Tibetan half-Chinese dissident blogger, wrote on Twitter (blocked but accessible in China) last night that although she hadn't supported Romney, she was disappointed with Obama's victory. I asked why, and she pointed to an essay she had written in response to his 2009 trip to Beijing, where although she was happy that Obama had mentioned the importance of basic human rights to "the head of the world's largest totalitarian system," he didn't come out and explain what those rights were. Writing for FP in mid-October, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University Shen Dingli said that Sino-U.S. relations tend to be better under Republican presidents. "The logic is simple: no delusion from the outset, fewer human rights distractions, frank talk, and concrete cooperation whenever possible," he wrote.

But the overwhelming response for Chinese netizens seems to be a sense of triumph, even vicarious glee at Americans' ability to choose.

This being the Chinese internet, things got a little weird. "It's same reason porn films are popular," the Wall Street Journal quoted a Chinese internet user as saying. "You want to do it but you can't so you content yourself with watching others." The British condom manufacturer Durex wrote a post on its Sina Weibo account that seemed to capture the spirit of Chinese views-and indeed, was forwarded an astonishing 43,000 times. It features the photo of an enthusiastic Michelle Obama with her hands out wide, above a photo of a tense Ann Romney holding up her thumb and her index finger.  The caption reads: "The difference between Obama and Romney."

An article in the New York Times yesterday uncovered proof that family members of China's premier Wen Jiabao -- though not Wen himself -- "have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion." The story results from months (if not years) of impressive sleuthing from NYT Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza, and while the online version of the story doesn't cite contributions from other correspondents his China-based colleagues probably had a hand in this 4,700 word behemoth.

The story, landing just two weeks before the expected starting date of the 18^th Party Congress, where Wen and his colleague President Hu Jintao will begin to formally yield power, is the latest in a stream of excellent reporting on the interplay between often shady business dealings and princelings-the well-connected sons and daughters of high-level leaders-- by Western reporters in China.

Here are four of the best, published over the last 12 months.

1. Wall Street Journal: Children of the Revolution

Although there was some controversy over whether the son of the then high-flying (and now disgraced) Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai actually drove a red Ferrari, the story masterfully details the money flowing through China's red elite:

On a recent afternoon at a new polo club on Beijing's outskirts, opened by a grandson of a former vice premier, Argentine players on imported ponies put on an exhibition match for prospective members.

"We're bringing polo to the public. Well, not exactly the public," said one staff member. "That man over there is the son of an army general. That one's grandfather was mayor of Beijing."

2. Bloomberg: Bo Xilai Clan Links Included Citigroup Hiring of Elder Son

Bloomberg, with a flush reporting budge and financial acumen, took the first deep dive into the wealth of a top Chinese official. Published on April 23, less than 2 months after Bo was removed from his post in Chongqing in the biggest Chinese political scandal in a decade, the Bloomberg piece uncovered that Bo's family fortune was at least $136 million:

The Bo clan's wealth contrasts with his modest official remuneration. As the Communist Party boss of Chongqing, he rated a salary of about 10,000 yuan ($1,585) a month, according to a report on the website of the Communist Party's official People's Daily newspaper."

3. Foreign Policy: Rotting From Within

General Liu Yuan, the son of Liu Shaoqi, a former head of state of China, offered a fairly unvarnished view of the military, in this April article by John Garnaut, China correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age:  

‘"No country can defeat China," Liu told about 600 officers in his department in unscripted comments to an enlarged party meeting on the afternoon of Dec. 29, according to sources who have verified notes of his speech. "Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting." This searing indictment of the state of China's armed forces, coming from an acting full three-star general inside the PLA, has no known modern precedent....

While Chinese leaders regard the United States as a likely future adversary, Liu is more worried about what the PLA, which hasn't seen significant combat since a militarily disastrous invasion of Vietnam in 1979, is doing to itself in times of peace. In his February speech, he described the army beset by a disease of "malignant individualism" where officers follow only orders that suit them, advance on the strength of their connections, and openly sell their services at "clearly marked prices."

4. Bloomberg: Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortune of Elite

The story that got Bloomberg blocked in China after it was published on June 29 revealed that Xi's extended family (though not Xi himself) have controlled assets of at least $376 million.

"Most of the extended Xi family's assets traced by Bloomberg were owned by Xi's older sister,Qi Qiaoqiao, 63; her husband Deng Jiagui, 61; and Qi's daughter Zhang Yannan, 33, according to public records compiled by Bloomberg...

Bloomberg's accounting included only assets, property and shareholdings in which there was documentation of ownership by a family member and an amount could be clearly assigned. Assets were traced using public and business records, interviews with acquaintances and Hong Kong and Chinese identity-card numbers."

Besides blocking Bloomberg's website as retaliation, The Financial Times reported that "people believed to be state security agents have tailed some Bloomberg employees; Chinese bankers and financial regulators have cancelled previously arranged meetings with Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief; and Chinese investigators have visited local investment banks to see if they shared any information with Bloomberg, according to people with knowledge of these incidents."

The New York Times' Chinese language edition published an uncensored version of their story on their website (a decision that other English language newspapers with web presences in China don't always make when they publish sensitive stories.) Their website has already been blocked; whether their reporters receive the Bloomberg treatment remains to be seen.