Those wacky Taiwanese animators are back, this time with a biting parody of the infamous "Chinese professor" ad issued by the advocacy group Citizens Against Government Waste. Only this time, instead of a triumphant Communist Party lecturer, it's a computer-generated panda telling the assembled students what's what.

Here's the transcript:

Beijing 2030

What makes nations grow?

Is it smart people?

Is it freedom? Ha! this is China!

No! It's selling cheap crap to gullible customers... like in America. Our little round-eyed friends will buy anything.

But how do we maintain our power?

Well, you can manipulate the RMB, pay slave wages, offer few chances for upward mobility. Cut corners on product safety.

Melamine? A little toxin only hurts a little.

No wonder wimpy Americans need universal health care.

Finally, steal technology. Look what we copied from Steve Jobs! [shows futuristic iPad]

Of course, what really makes China great... [laughs] is we have motherf*cking talking pandas.

China's latest film exports will not be on display at the 23rd annual Tokyo film festival thanks to a spat over Taiwan sovereignty:

The head of the Chinese delegation, Jiang Ping, told festival organizers that the Taiwanese delegation must not attend the festival under the name Taiwan, but as "Chinese Taipei," which Taiwan used while participating in the Olympic Games, shortly before celebrities began to walk down a green carpet to mark the start of the festival.

Jiang, also deputy director-general of the Film Bureau of the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), told reporters, "We protested against the organizers introducing the two delegations as 'China and Taiwan.' And our request to introduce Taiwan as "Chinese Taipei or China's Taiwan" was rejected by the organizers."

Of course, this will be seen as part of a larger issue than what Ang Lee's homeland gets to call itself. Anti-Japanese protests broke out in half a dozen Chinese cities over the weekend and the Japanese government has formally protested the presence of Chinese military patrol boats near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Before he became Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden famously ripped his then opponent's lack of experience. "The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training," he said.

Nowhere is this more true than in China, where would-be leaders spend years toiling in the Communist Party's lower ranks, clawing their way to the top in a dog-eat-dog political culture that rewards loyalty, economic performance, and savvy backroom maneuvering.

Today, China announced that Xi Jinping has been named  the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, an important sign that he's successfully navigated this gauntlet and is destined to take over in Beijing once Hu Jintao retires in 2012. He'll have two years to learn the ropes as a civilian overseer of the world's second most powerful military, essential training for any Chinese leader.

Xi's ascent is probably a good thing as far as the West is concerned. Here's how China analyst Cheng Li described him few years back:

Xi has leadership experience in economic administration and favors pro-market reforms. In the provinces that he ran, Xi was particularly noted for his promotion of the private sector. His likely policy priorities lie in enhancing economic efficiency and promoting market liberalization, continuing China's high rates of GDP growth, and expanding China's integration into the world economy. 

The rap on Xi is that he's a "princeling" -- a Chinese politician who owes his career to family connections (guanxi ) rather than hard work (his father was a top party official). Many in China are critical of this youngish group of party leaders, but Xi seems to have acquited himself well thus far. In 2008, he oversaw the successful Olympic Games, and last year he headed China's 60-year celebrations. He has a law degree and a master's in chemical engineering, and has styled himself as tough on corruption. His wife is a famous folk singer.

At a meeting last week with Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, Xi pledged to work toward closer bilateral ties with the United States, though he's made undiplomatic remarks in the past. On a tour of Latin America in 2009, Xi seemed to catch a bit of the region's anti-yanqui fervor, telling a gathering of Chinese expats, "There are some foreigners who have eaten their fill and have nothing better to do than point their fingers at our affairs. China does not, first, export revolution; second, export poverty and hunger; or third, cause unnecessary trouble for them. What else is there to say?"

Though most analysts think Xi will succeed Hu, the appointment probably won't end the speculation over his putative rival Li Keqiang, a close protégé of Hu's with deep ties to the powerful Communist Youth League. Li's faction doesn't think much of the princelings, though there doesn't appear to be any rift between Xi and Li -- at least not one that has spilled into public view. Li is widely thought to be in line to succeed Wen Jiabao as premier, the No. 2 job in China's political system.

We all know that China's energy needs are expanding rapidly, as the country builds the equivalent of two Chicagos from scratch every year and many utilities companies are seeing their business expand 30 percent or more annuallly. 

But it's not only China that's going to be building a lot more new power plants. Speaking Wednesday at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, one of America's largest power companies, made this prediction: Through a combination of (expected) tightening in carbon controls and normal wear-and-tear, he expects that 100 percent of the power plants operating in the U.S. today will be shut down by 2050.

In other words, America, too, will be building a whole new power infrastructure over the next 40 years. 

That's surprising enough, but Rogers went on to make the case for the U.S. and China cooperating  -- or at least, the private sectors in both countries cooperating -- in power sector solutions. Consider: Both countries are reliant today on coal (the U.S. derives 50 percent of its energy from coal, whereas China derives 80 percent). Together the U.S and China consume 42 percent of total energy consumed in the world, and are responsible for about 40 percent of global carbon emissions. China is building new power infrastructure, and America will have to replace or retrofit the majority of its existing power infrastructure. Since we share some similar challenges, and operate at similar scales, couldn't we learn something from each other in the process? 

For instance, ENN, a large Chinese power company, is piloting a smart (eco) city in Langfang, 30 miles south of Beijing. The project will be built over the next year, and Rogers is watching closely to see what lessons his company might learn from the experiment. In other ways, Duke Energy and ENN are already collaborating directly, especially in research. While it's true that intellectual property concerns will scare off many other potential collaborations, it's also worth pointing out one thing American companies can gain from partnering with Chinese companies: know-how about scaling-up and bringing down costs for deploying new technology. Such lessons, born of trial and error overseas, may be worth bringing home to Wichita. 

Another thing that unites the U.S. and China: No one knows what's next.

This moment is "one of the most uncertain times in the history of our industry, and I've been a CEO for 22 years," Rogers said. He was referring in large part to the looming question of whether the U.S. Congress will regulate carbon in the future (see Ryan Lizza's piece, "As the World Burns" in this week's New Yorker for an enlightening, if depressing, inside look). Happily, in my opinion, he's now assuming the question is not if, but when. Surely, at some point in the next, oh, 50 years -- the anticipated lifespan of a power plant -- Congress will tighten the carbon belt. Or at least that's the calculation he's making.

With the likely withdrawal Saturday of the Palestinians from their ill-advised direct talks with Israel, it looks increasingly like Barack Obama's foreign policy is headed for catastrophic failure.

Nearly across the board, the president's initiatives are going down in flames. Nowhere is this more true than in Pakistan where, Jane Perlez reported Wednesday, the civilian government in which the U.S. has invested billions is perilously close to collapse -- if not facing a military coup.

Now comes word that Pakistan is cutting off NATO's supply lines into Afghanistan in retaliation for U.S. helicopter strikes in Pakistani territory -- strikes made necessary because the Pakistani military can't, or won't, crack down on militants unless they threaten the Pakistani state directly.

As for the war in Afghanistan, it's going very badly.

Further east, the United States seems headed for a disastrous currency war with China, although Beijing's recent diplomatic blunders have sent Asian countries running into Uncle Sam's loving arms.

To the west, Iraq still has yet to form a government after seven months of post-election deadlock, and attacks on the Green Zone are metastasizing in a frightening way.

One rare bright spot is Russia where, despite the complaints of Cold Warriors and human rights campaigners, relations are at their highest point since the Yeltsin era. But much of the good work Obama's team has done could easily unravel, especially if the Senate deep-sixes the new nuke treaty.

As for Iran, it's a mixed bag. Obama has kept Europe on board with tough sanctions, and brought along a few other players. But China is likely to undercut those efforts and relieve the economic pressure, leaving the United States and Israel with few options for stopping Iran's nuclear drive. Meanwhile, the drums of war are beginning to beat in Congress.

Of course, if Obama really wants to make a hash of the world, I can think of no better way than to start launch airstrikes on Iran. But I doubt he's going to do that.

I'm not sure if this series of ads are a signal of growing Chinese influence in the Middle East, the culture of violence and impunity in Mubarak's Egypt, or the passions aroused by competition among dairy products in our globalized marketplace. But whatever their hidden meaning, they're brilliant. (And many thanks to Issandr Amrani and Steve Clemons for pointing them out).

Law enforcement agencies are buzzing over the news of the largest food smuggling case in U.S. history:

US authorities have indicted 11 German and Chinese executives for conspiring to illegally import $40m (£52m) worth of honey from China.

The executives were accused of being part of an operation which mislabelled honey and tainted it with antibiotics in an attempt to avoid import duties.

The smugglers were attempting to avoid U.S. anti-dumping laws by mixing it with Indian honey, which begs the question: how can you tell where honey is originated from?

The prosecutor for the case, federal attorney Patrick Fitzgerald -- yes, that one --  explained the situation:

The charges allege that these defendants aggressively sought and obtained an illegal competitive advantage in the US honey market by avoiding payment of more than $78 million (60.9 million euros) in anti-dumping duties, and while doing so deliberately violated US laws designed to protect the integrity of our food supply.

For the record I am not the first offender of making bad puns related to this story. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), in a statement, wrote that he was happy authorities were taking this "honey laundering" seriously, and also hoped for the creation of a national honey standard so that this "crackdown on Chinese imports sticks."

I'm just personally worried that this may be a part of a Dr. Who plot come to life.

In its latest effort to keep employees from leaping from their dorm room balconies, Taiwanese tech manufacturer Foxconn held a pep rally yesterday at its industrial campus in Shenzhen, China. Employees received free T-shirts that read "I <3 Foxconn" and colorful pom-poms to wave in the air. Others got to dress up as superheroes and historical characters:

Twenty thousand workers dressed in costumes ranging from cheerleader outfits to Victorian dresses filled the stadium at the factory complex, which was decorated with colorful flags bearing messages such as "Treasure your life, love your family." The workers chanted similar slogans and speakers described their career development at Foxconn. 

Foxconn has been dogged by a wave of suicides this year in the face of low wages and hard working conditions. Already, the company's installed anti-suicide safety nets to catch would-be jumpers and raised wages 30 percent, but judging by its employees' lackluster response to its rah-rah efforts, Foxconn may need to find another way to inspire the troops. Watch.

While advocates of net neutrality in the U.S. are wringing their hands this week over whether Google and Verizon are too closely aligned, the Chinese government -- which owns the world's largest wireless carrier, China Mobile -- just announced plans to enter the country's fast-growing search market.

As The New York Times' David Barboza reports:

State-owned China Mobile — the world’s biggest cellphone carrier — and Xinhua, China’s official state-run news agency, signed an agreement Thursday to create a joint venture called the Search Engine New Media International Communications Co.

China already has the world’s largest number of Internet users, more than 420 million, and also the largest number of mobile phone subscribers, more than 800 million ...

Analysts say Beijing is pushing state-run companies to take a more active role online. China Central Television, the nation’s dominant broadcaster, is trying to develop its own online video site. Xinhua News Agency is trying to build a global platform of news providers using television and the Internet. 

Search is one of a handful of sectors in China wholly dominated by private companies. Most of today's state-steered behemoths, like PetroChina and the Agricultural Bank of China, got their start in a bygone era, well before the Internet. China Mobile, launched in 1997, is one of Beijing's few recent blockbuster government start-ups.

At present, Baidu, the decade-old search giant headquartered in Beijing and registered in the Cayman Islands, commands a hefty majority of the Chinese search-advertising market, about 70 percent. Baidu CEO Robin Li has been increasingly in the international limelight -- including a round of high-profile interviews with western media outlets last week. Baidu launched in 2000 and rivals, including Google, which entered the Chinese search market later have had trouble catching up. (Even before recent political troubles ensued, Google trailed Baidu significantly in China.) Today there's no guarantee that a state-run enterprise will be any luckier in dethroning Baidu, without under-the-radar help.

The question of why the Chinese government wants to enter the search market now -- whether primarily for control or profit, or both -- is left to speculation. Does Beijing worry about its future ability to impose effective censorship mandates on private companies like Baidu, which so far has been pretty compliant? Do they see an opportunity to make big bucks? Baidu's Li, like Google's founding duo of Page and Brin, is now a multi-billionaire -- and the Chinese search market has plenty of room to grow, with just a third of the country now online, by Li's estimate.

Beijing never makes it a point to fully explain its intentions. Xinhua's Vice President Zhou Xisheng told the New York Times simply that the government's search engine plans were: “part of the country’s broader efforts to safeguard its information security and push forward the robust, healthy and orderly development of China’s new media industry.” An inscrutably all-purpose answer.

In a move that counter-proliferation experts have called a step backward, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is in "advanced negotiations" with Hanoi to share nuclear fuel and technology. Furthermore, in going against the model that the Obama administration used for other nuclear deals -- requiring the country to not enrich uranium -- the new agreement also reportedly allows Hanoi todo just that.  Although signatories of the UN's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have the right to enrich uranium, the United States has previously required countries interested in civilian nuclear cooperation to renounce that right. 

The WSJ found that many aren't too excited for the State Department-led negotiations that are expected to continue in the fall:

Congressional staff and nonproliferation experts briefed on the negotiations have been quick to criticize the State Department's position as a rollback of a key Obama administration nonproliferation platform. They also say Washington's position exposes it to criticism from Arab and developing countries that the U.S. is employing a double standard in pursuing its nuclear policies. […]

"It's ironic...as nonproliferation is one of the president's top goals that the U.A.E. model is not being endorsed here," said a senior Arab official whose government is pursuing nuclear power. "People will start to see a double standard, and it will be a difficult policy to defend in the future.

To make this even more interesting, China was completely uninvolved in the negotiations about the potential for uranium enrichment on its southern border. This comes after China criticized Secretary Clinton for supporting Hanoi's position on territorial disputes in the South China Sea…territorial disputes that seem to be ongoing.

The Chinese government has instituted a new anti-crime measure dubbed "sealed management." In less euphemistic terms, it's a handy new policy of effectively putting migrants on nighttime lockdown in their already decrepit villages. Though the targets of the policy are themselves Chinese, it's enforcement is reminiscent of some of the world's harshest immigration laws.

How has it worked in practice? Beijing officials have installed gates around migrant communities and forcibly locked the residents in from 11pm to 6am, all with the goal of reducing the city's hike in crime rates -- which the officials conveniently attribute to low-income civilians. Lest the padlocks and security cameras provide insufficient protection from the artificial enemy, the government has taken an additional cue from Jan Brewer: police patrol the gated neighborhoods at all hours to check the migrants' identification papers. Now there's xenophobia at its finest.

Only sixteen neighborhoods have been enclosed and locked down so far, but local officials are campaigning ardently to expand the system throughout the city. The ruling Communist Party has disseminated propaganda to portray the neighborhood compounds as a mutually beneficial social program (rather than, say, a thinly veiled quarantine of the poor):

"Closing up the village benefits everyone," read one banner which was put up when the first, permanent gated village was introduced in April.

[...]

"Eighty percent of the permanent residents applauded the practice," said Guo Ruifeng, deputy director of Laosanyu's village committee. He didn't say how many migrants approved, though they outnumber the locals by 7,000 to 700.

"Anyway, they should understand that it is all for their safety," he said. Guards only check papers if they see anything suspicious, he said.

"If they see anything suspicious?" But the assumption underlying the creation of the gated communities is that the migrants themselves are inherently suspicious -- and the police aren't likely to deviate from that deeply flawed rationale when choosing who to hassle. We've watched the descent down this slippery slope before, and it isn't pretty.

One of the world's less noticed ongoing ecological catastrophes, the underground coal fires that have been roaring in Northern China since the early 1960s. burn somewhere between 20 million and 200 million tons of coal per year. Spread out over nearly 10 miles, the fires, initially caused by poor mining practices but not helped by the area's arid climate, are also a major source of toxins and greenhouse gasses. The Inner Mongolia region where these fires are located are launching  a new effort to get them under control:

The regional government has earmarked an annual financing of 200 million yuan ($29.3 million) from 2009 to 2012 for fighting the fires, Ya said.

According to a harnessing plan, coal threatened by fire hazards is to be dug away to stop fires from spreading, while the fires are to be covered by sand. Other materials such as slurry are also pumped to help extinguish fires underground.

If it works, maybe they can tackle Turkmenistan's pit of flame next. 

Joking aside, China's rapidly explanded coal industry is not only an ecological disaster but a human one as well. China accounts for just 35 percent of the world's coal output, but 80 percent of coal-mining fatalities. Even with recent countrywide safety improvements, around seven Chinese coal miners are killed every day. 

Hat tip: Treehugger

Michael Posner, the Obama administration's top human rights official, has become the latest target of right-wing ire. At issue is Posner's recent remark about Arizona's controversial new immigration law, which he made during a press briefing Friday about the U.S. human rights dialogue with China:

QUESTION: Did the recently passed Arizona immigration law come up? And, if so, did they bring it up or did you bring it up?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: We brought it up early and often. It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society.

Posner, a heretofore obscure State Department official, is getting ripped by the likes of Rush Limbaugh ("How the hell do all these wackos end up in the administration?"), John Hinderaker ("What an idiot!"), and the New York Post ("Posner shames America"), and it's not hard to see why. Setting aside the immigration issue, conservatives don't like it whenever Americans criticize their own country's human right record, let alone in a way that could be construed as granting "moral equivalence" to a repressive place like China.

Posner clearly wasn't doing that, but I have to wonder what U.S. officials really think about this human rights dialogue. And how does the conversation actually go? U.S. official: "We think China should improve its human rights record." Chinese official: "Thanks for your input. I'll tell Hu Jintao right away! How come we didn't think of this sooner?"

But let's have a grownup discussion about this.

Read on

At any time, an estimated 10 million people are traveling across China by train. Some are seated; some rest on overnight bunks; some stand in hot, crowded cars. Some are leaving home, some are homeward bound, and some have no real home anymore, but are simply traveling to the next place they hope to find work.

Train stations everywhere are places of expectation and waiting. In China, stations are not monumental testaments to state ambition or the glory of empire or influence (as they were once in Victorian England or early-20th-century America), but rather unremarkable and often run-down edifices. The newer ones are cleaner, but hardly grand.

Near the old railway station in the city of Chongqing, I spoke with a group of a dozen people, seated on large plastic bags in which they carried clothes, bedsheets, and food. Their destination was the city of Kunming, in another province, where they had contacts with a construction company that would hopefully find them work. Their train left at 2 p.m. and would arrive early the next morning. Once in Kunming, the company had promised to help them find housing, most likely rundown apartments in the suburbs where five to eight people strangers would share a room.

The older members of the group were reluctant to talk, but a young couple, who seemed not yet beaten down by life, offered a glimpse into their lives. Yang Jia, 22, and Wang Wei, 24, were not married, but they had vague notions that if they ever stayed in one place, they would like to have a wedding. Since they'd met, the slender and attractive Yang had been following her construction-worker boyfriend on the road. In each new city, she looks for odd jobs, like hawking beer outside a supermarket. The most they ever stayed in one place was a year.

China's economic growth, largely driven by massive state-funded infrastructure projects, is churning money and creating more work, but often in a way that leads to fractured lives. "When this job is done," said Wang, one of tens of millions of migrant workers today in China, "we will look for another." He took a long drag on his cigarette and looked up at the station clock.