Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems pretty quick to throw the g-word at China, considering his own country's historical sensitivities:

"The incidents in China are, simply put, a genocide. There's no point in interpreting this otherwise," Erdogan said.

It's not exactly that simple. There's a case to be made that China's suppression of the Uighurs combined with it's efforts to build the Han population in Xinjiang constitute genocide under the 1948 convention, which includes "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" as part of the definition. But this is a pretty broad interpretation, especially considering that the local Han population has been suffering attacks as well. 

It's also surprising to see a Turkish president so willing to use the word genocide this freely. Turkey has charged quite a few people over the years -- including the country's most famous author -- with insulting Turkishness for saying similar things about the massacre of Armenians after World War I or the killing of Kurds in more recent years. Erdogan himself has attacked proposals that Turkey apologize for historical wrongdoings.

Is this really a conversation he wants to start?

TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. isn't the only city facing a rash of problems with its subway system these days.

A Beijing train went into "Explosion Mode" on Sunday as a piece of scrap metal touched the electrically-charged third rail, setting off "two explosions in the tunnel":

Just about every last soul on the train started -- in essence -- crapping out, totally unable to believe that this kind of trauma was happening. The train had just managed to approach Fuxingmen when a third explosion was reported. At this point, people just got out of the train the moment the doors opened and got the hell out of the station. Smoke was pretty much everywhere.

The state news media didn't report the story, but it's probably safe to assume Chinese riders, like their counterparts in the United States, might be avoiding front cars for a while.

GETTY IMAGES

If there were still any doubts about capitalism's arrival in China, this puts it to rest. Wealthy mainlanders are increasingly taking to the grassy fields as polo becomes yet another mode of expression:

The founder of the Nine Dragons Hill Polo Club, today's host in fact, is Steve Wyatt. He says in China polo is becoming the perfect way to show you have made it.

"It is hats, beautiful dresses, finest champagne, whisky and people looking at the best cars," he explains.

Is China learning to trot before it can walk?

In October, Huang Guangyu was the second-richest man in China, having built a fortune through his appliance company Gome. But in November, "The Price Butcher," as Guangyu was known, suddenly disappeared, with hushed reports that he was 'in trouble.' Now, not only is Guangyu being held by Chinese authorities in an undisclosed location on charges of bribery and stock manipulation, but Der Spiegel reveals that his disappearance is part of a larger anti-corruption effort undertaken by the Communist Party:

The deep fall of corporate CEO Huang, the son of a farmer and a self-made man who worked his way up from being a minor radio merchant to the powerful head of a company with about 1,350 retail stores, is increasingly claiming political casualties.

At the beginning of the year, the vice minister for public safety and senior criminal prosecutor for economic crimes, Zheng Shaodong, was arrested, as was his deputy Xiang Huaizhu. According to reports in the Chinese media, the two top officials allegedly took bribes from Huang.

In April, two high-ranking Communist Party officials from Guangdong, China's important exporting province which borders Hong Kong, were arrested on corruption charges[...]

President and Communist Party Chairman Hu Jintao apparently wants to use the affair to clean up the party ahead of October's celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. The affair is also an opportunity to fundamentally restructure the world's manufacturing powerhouse in response to the global economic crisis.

Whether the anti-corruption efforts last long enough to be more than a gesture at the next anniversary remains to be seen. But such is the fear among wealthy Chinese of becoming targets that Forbes's list of richest Chinese is "colloquially known in China as 'pig slaughter lists.'" Talk about a mixed blessing.

Nelson Ching-Pool/Getty Images

The Chinese government made waves again yesterday as it released its controversal new Internet censorship program known as "Green Dam -- Youth Escort."

The move has privacy activists fuming over China's declaration that all new computers must be equipped with the software. But although the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology claims Green Dam is capable of blocking inappropriate content with "95 per cent accuracy in 0.2 seconds," initial consumer reports say the program has been less than effective:

I have to come to this Web site and curse. After we installed the software, many normal Web sites are banned. ... For example, when [Network News] reports that there is a campaign against pornographic Web sites, the software bans the story because the term "pornographic Web sites" was used. Don't tell me how great the software technology is, because this is a piece of junk."

 And another:

How much flesh color does it take to make something 'pornography'? I went on the Internet to check out some animal photos. A lovely little naked pig was sent onto the black list. Pitiful little pig! I was curious, so I looked up some photos of naked African women. Oh, they were not censored!"

Complaints over filter accuracy aside, it's still unclear whether the program actually works as advertised. In tests conducted by the South China Morning Post and the European Commmission's KDNet, Green Dam required intensive micro-management and failed to block explicit material on any consistent basis.

Chinese authorities have burned (in a single industrial furnace) over 860 pounds of smuggled drugs after a three-year effort to track and arrest more than 16,000 suspected dealers. But that's not all. A government spokesperson said drug enforcement agents only destroyed "about half" of the stockpile that was created as a result of the 2006-2008 operation.

Yesterday marks the 170th anniversary of China's Humen Opium Destruction, in which another government official had 1,000 tons of foreign drugs burned. Today's event was held in honor of the original.

JINGHUA.CN

The trial of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who worked for Al Gore's Current TV, started today in North Korea.

The two were arrested in March along the North Korea-China border, apparently reporting on the refugee situation. Pyongyang has charged them with "hostile acts" and espionage. If convicted, they face five to ten years in one of the country's feared labor camps.

North Korea gains some leverage over the U.S. and its allies by holding the women. In the past weeks, the country has stoked tensions by engaging in some serious saber-rattling, testing a series of missiles and a nuclear bomb; it's provoked South Korea to begin fortifying the militarized border and moving warships into better strategic positions. 

I'm more and more concerned by the situation, in which Lee and Ling are pawns in a reckless, needless game of military embrinkmanship. The easy answer here is, of course, that North Korea should simply stop testing missiles and join in six-party talks.

But since that situation is unlikely, it's China that needs to step up here. They have the best relationship with Pyongyang, much at stake, and the best opportunity to assuage the tensions.

That was quick. China's sex theme park, as featured in the last Friday Photo, was just a little too much for local officials.

Potential Twitter version: Bushies, asleep at switch, drunk on oil, missed boat."  

Meanwhile, guess who's taken up the emerald green mantle?

It might be startling to realize that China is far outpacing the U.S. on green-energy investment."

He is picking up on a recent report by the Washington-based think tank, Center for American Progress: "We Must Seize the Energy Opportunity or Slip Further Behind."

Osnos is, I think, one of the finest correspondents writing from China today. But here I beg to differ. Or at least urge a bit of a reframing.

Yes, China is and has been doing far more on the environmental front than most foreigners realize. Lord knows, this is a point worth emphasizing, and I've certainly beat the drum here myself.

But let's put this in perspective: First, as a general point, China has had ambitious green goals for several years, especially on energy efficiency, but implementation still lags behind reality. Before we cheer, or worry, too much about Beijing's presumed green-technology progress, let's see what actually gets built. Large earmarks for infrastructure, green or otherwise, are particularly susceptible to local corruption. (The shiniest government office buildings in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, were built out of something called the"poverty reduction fund.") Alas, lately we've seen a relaxing of green construction standards in China for the sake of putting economic stimulus money to work quickly. In sum: Setting budgets and targets is easy; follow-through is harder.

Second, on the particular matter of green-energy investment, pretty please stop putting so much faith in the framing of the Center for American Progress. I like CAP. They do good work. But they also have a long-standing habit of beating up on U.S. policy by pointing out that even China is doing more. I'm not against beating up on the U.S., or against giving kudos to China when due. But I am wary of how this formula can lead to exaggerated estimations of what China is in fact doing. (A few years back, CAP put out similar statements when Beijing announced lofty, and as yet unmet, energy efficiency targets.)

Lastly, and most importantly, I think that highlighting the competition angle could ultimately be counter-productive, as fun as it is to envision a U.S. vs China jolly green smackdown. Stressing a rivalry could ultimately lead -- not necessarily in Osnos’s hands, but in looser, more politically-minded interpretations -- to the impression that the race for green energy is somehow a zero-sum game. That any progress made by China (again, let’s be careful to avoid exaggeration here) is somehow threatening to the U.S. Like if the Soviets got to the moon first; oh no. It’s us or them; only one racer breaks the ribbon; get off our green lunar pathway!

Some might argue that Americans do best when their competitive instincts are aroused. But I tend to agree with Charles McElwee, an environmental lawyer in Shanghai whom Osnos cites and whose insights I've long found valuable: Fanning the flames of us-vrs-them-ism -- in the context of global issue that isn't so much a race to win as to survive -- could backfire. It could undercut political support on Capitol Hill for cooperative efforts, technology sharing, and perhaps even climate-treaty negotiations.

For too long, on climate matters, the U.S. and China have been stuck in a dusty stalemate, with both sides refusing to budge first -- especially with regards to seriously considering carbon caps -- while they eye each other as threats, and competitors. Somehow this Gunsmoke scenario needs to end.

Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images

Amid all the hype about China becoming the world's new superpower, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that people have been expecting this moment for a long time. A really, really long time.

Here's a passage from Barbara Tuchman's excellent biography of Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the U.S. general who tried in vain to prop up Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalists:

America at this time [the early 1900s], newly directed toward Asia by the recent acqiusition of Hawaii and the Philippines, was dazzled by the vision of the opportunities for her enterprise and outlets for her commerce in the Far East. China seemed the area of America's future and took on vast importance. John Hay was credited with having said that whoever understands China holds the key to the world's politics for the next five centuries. "Our future history," declared President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905, "will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe."

Speaking with the New York Times, a top Chinese economist explained why China is cutting its holdings of U.S. bonds by quoting John Maynard Keynes: “If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.”

With that reasoning in mind, China sold U.S. Treasuries and other foreign bonds in the first two months of the year; it returned to buying them in March. Around two-thirds of China’s foreign reserves are held in dollars.

That bulk holding has complicated relations between the two economic super-powers during the Great Recession. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the central bank governors have expressed concern about the U.S. economic situation and their exposure to it -- though the resumption of  purchases in March suggests they may believe the outlook is better.

Still, numerous economists and policy experts have suggested careful, controlled, slow draw-down would be a good thing for both countries. 

Passport reader John Duffell sends in the above newspaper supplement from Malawi. He writes:

I'm an American who's been living in southern Malawi for nearly a year and a  half. Yesterday morning, during a trip to town, I picked up a copy of  Malawi's "Daily Times" newspaper to find a 12-page advertisement celebrating  "50 years of democratic reform in Tibet" It's mostly about how grateful the  people of Tibet are that China has reclaimed what's rightfully hers, and  given them freedom at long last. [...] The ad spread looks remarkably like editorial content, and I've since learned that it was paid for by the Chinese Embassy in Malawi. 

There's more info on Duffell's blog including a bizarre conversation with the newspaper's editor.

It's not news that China is waging a public relations campaign along with its economic expansion in Africa, but it's a bit hard to understand why Malawians would care that much about Tibet, or why China would care that much what they think.

Have any other readers in Africa seen anything similar?

Photo: John Duffell/Flickr

You may have seen that Matt Drudge has a screaming headline up right now, BEIJING TO PITCH NEW GLOBAL CURRENCY; DUMP DOLLAR." (Drudge links to a muuh more carefully worded Financial Times story.)

This strikes me as a significant moment, but let's hang on a second before we lose our heads.

The story, also reported by the Wall Street Journal, is based on this rather mildly worded speech by Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China's central bank.

In it, Zhou asks, "What kind of international reserve currency do we need to secure global financial stability and facilitate world economic growth, which was one of the purposes for establishing the IMF?"

Theoretically, an international reserve currency should first be anchored to a stable benchmark and issued according to a clear set of rules, therefore to ensure orderly supply; second, its supply should be flexible enough to allow timely adjustment according to the changing demand; third, such adjustments should be disconnected from economic conditions and sovereign interests of any single country. The acceptance of credit-based national currencies as major international reserve currencies, as is the case in the current system, is a rare special case in history. The crisis called again for creative reform of the existing international monetary system towards an international reserve currency with a stable value, rule-based issuance and manageable supply, so as to achieve the objective of safeguarding global economic and financial stability.

Though Zhou does not say so explicitly, the clear implication is that the dollar isn't doing these things. Interestingly, he cites John Maynard Keynes:

Back to the 1940s, Keynes had already proposed to introduce an international currency unit named "Bancor", based on the value of 30 representative commodities. Unfortunately, the proposal was not accepted. The collapse of the Bretton Woods system, which was based on the White approach, indicates that the Keynesian approach may be more farsighted.

[T]he technical and political hurdles to implementing China's recommendation are enormous, so even if backed by other nations, the proposal is unlikely to change the dollar's role in the short term. ... The central banker's proposal reflects both China's desire to hold its $1.95 trillion in reserves in something other than U.S. dollars and the fact that Beijing has few alternatives. With more U.S. dollars continuing to pour into China from trade and investment, Beijing has no realistic option other than storing them in U.S. debt.

Looks like you can hang on to those greenbacks for a little while longer.