A GOP senatorial candidate in Michigan, Pete Hoekstra, ran a Super Bowl advertisement featuring an Asian woman speaking broken English and thanking Hoekstra's opponent, Debbie Stabenow, for her free-spending ways. The ad hit a nerve in America, angering many for its portrayal of an Asian-American woman speaking broken English. The Michigan chapter of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group said it was "deeply disappointed" by the ad, and political commentators criticized it across the board. The 'blame China' ad is becoming a fixture in American political campaigns;  see for example the 'xiexie Mr. Gibbs', or the 'Chinese professor.'

While the woman in the Super Bowl ad wears a hat more often associated with Vietnam, the ad's website, www.debbiespenditnow.com, makes it clear that it is targeting China: Chinese coins, fans, an airplane, and the phrase "The Great Wall of Debt"  decorate the site.

This ad, however, received almost no attention in China. There is scant chatter of it on Sina Weibo or Tencent Weibo, the two most popular Twitter-like microblogging services. The NFL, lacking the popularity that Yao Ming brought to the NBA, is rarely watched in China anyway, and the ads this year that drew any attention were mostly car commercials.

Only a handful of Twitter users wrote about it in simplified Mandarin (the way Chinese is written in Mainland China, unlike the traditional characters which the Debbiespenditnow website inexplicably employs). One who did so is a software engineer working in the Netherlands who tweets under the name lihlii.  "I don't think it's racist," he said in a phone interview. "It's about America losing jobs."

Broadly speaking, there is a whole different idea of political correctness in China. Asking how much someone makes a month within the first minute of meeting them doesn't raise eyebrows in China, and neither, generally speaking, do blanket racial statements, like commenting on the perceived cleverness of the Jews.  On the other hand, questioning Hu Jintao's ability to govern makes for awkward cocktail party chatter.

Those who did object to the ad generally did so in an American context. Michael Anti, a popular blogger who has lived in the U.S. as a Nieman Fellow, wrote on Twitter:

"I think the problem with the ad is that it's racist, not anti-Chinese. As a Chinese I should be amused by this ad, because it seems more like Southeast Asia. But Chinese in America are easily enraged by that sort of prejudicial defamation of the image of a Chinese woman. Also, her English is not the Chinglish of a Mainland Chinese."

So what Super Bowl ads are controversial in China? Last year Groupon ran one featuring actor Timothy Hutton saying: "The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry." This ruffled feathers for contravening  state policy and conventional wisdom that Han Chinese are helping Tibet (and for its inaccuracy: fish curry is probably eaten more in Vermont than Tibet). Groupon employees at the time said that the advertisement complicated the company's expansion plans into China, and they eventually pulled the advertisement.

The year 2012 will see a stream of new books in the patented Thomas Friedman "Oh My God the Chinese Are Eating Our Lunch with Environmentally Friendly Chopsticks" mold. Some will be more worthwhile than others. One book in particular, however, is sure to stand out, if only for the title: "Becoming China's Bitch: And Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now." 

The author, Peter D. Kiernan, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, explains in the introduction that "it's not a book about China exactly. It's about how America got diverted and lost momentum, and a dragon leapt into the breach. It's also about getting our mojo back."

I spoke with him over the phone:

FP: When did you first realize we were in danger of becoming China's bitch?

PK: When it first occurred to me was in 2008, as a card-carrying member of a discredited class, everyone in Wall Street had to re-think everything. We had gone through a 30 plus year bull market. We now had to wrestle with the idea of who was going to fund the 42 percent of our government that has to be borrowed. Whenever you depend on one major source of finance, if it's too heavy in one area, it deserves a re-thinking.   

We haven't really thought clearly about this as a nation. It was a part of this re-thinking everything. We have a much greater co-dependency on China than we'd like to acknowledge. The book is not solely about China, but Becoming China's Bitch is about the cost to our dithering.  

FP: How is the 1 percent different from the 99 percent in their fear of becoming China's bitch?

PK: I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about the one percent in the book or in my life. What I do spend the vast majority of my time focusing on is the 99 percent. We have developed a dependency, and that dependency allows us to be poor savers, roughly 5 percent saving rate in America, compared to 30 percent in China.  

I literally believe that we have been opiated as a nation. I believe we've been diverted about issues. The debt ceiling has been raised 100 times since you started working here-it's no big deal. These are not problem solving conversations. These are skin rashes that have nothing to do with the problems. Occupy Wall Street is not the problem, but the symptom. Among them, we have worked ourselves into a co-dependency.

FP: What can we do to prevent becoming China's bitch? How do we make China our bitch?

PK: The title is deliberately provocative, I understand. It's meant to push people outside their comfort zone. We're inert. How do we snap people out of it? We helped create an export monster. We helped them because we developed an appetite for their goods. So we've kind of gotten in this dynamic of exports for finance-we will buy your cheap goods so we can stock our Wal-Mart shelves. They're moving up the value chain. And in exchange for that, we'll look for you to be our number one lender, and that, in pop psychology, you call a co-dependency-exports for finance. They're stuck with us, we're stuck with them. Stalemates, or co-dependencies like this, don't last forever.

This is a guest post from Nick Frisch, a writer based in Hong Kong:

"The outside world got a listen at North Korea's curious soundscape during yesterday's widely-covered funeral of Kim Jong Il. Like the Hermit Kingdom itself, the DPRK's aural heritage is a musical mishmash: bombastic or solemn Soviet anthems aped by the North's uniformed orchestras and Red Army-style choirs, but also deeply Korean, pan-peninsular folk classics like Arirang, an unofficial anthem on both sides of the DMZ.  (It has also been expanded into an iteration of Pyongyong's infamous song-and-dance spectaculars, the Arirang Mass Games.)

As Kim Jong Il's coffin and cortege wended their way through Pyongyang's snowy streets yesterday, it wasn't just the route and imagery that sought inspiration and legitimacy from the 1994 funeral of Kim Il Sung, his still-revered father and predecessor. "Memorial Song of a Partisan," played in 1994, was specially re-recorded by a Korean People's Army Band and piped out to sobbing crowds. It evolved from a Russian folk song adapted by the WWII-era anti-Japanese resistance fighters who grew into North Korea's founding elite. With the original's lilting waltz meter and tempo rectified to a solemn march, a switch to a dour minor key made the transformation into "Partisan" complete; it is now a standard dirge for state occasions.

Similar music greets visitors to Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where the eldest Kim lies on display and his just-departed son lay in state until yesterday.  As in 1994, the Song of General Kim Jong Il, which has "happy" and "sad" versions tailored to a given state occasion.

Not to be outdone, Kim Jong Un, North Korea's recently-anointed "supreme commander", was first introduced to his people and the world through song: as speculation mounted over Kim Jong Il's health difficulties and the elevation of Kim Jong Un, reports of a new song from the state's propaganda hit-machine began to circulate in 2009.  Recounts scholar of North Korean propaganda B.R. Myers, "young North Koreans had been taught to sing a song glorifying a certain General Kim, whose vigorous stride (so the lyric goes) was making the very rivers and mountains rejoice. That this General was not the current leader, whose name is invariably invoked in its full three syllables, was clear enough, ergo the poem's subject had to be the successor to the throne."

Now, that throne is his.

The outpouring of grief in North Korea over the death of Kim Jong Il -- captured in an FP slideshow today -- has many people asking the same question: Are the copious tears shed for the authoritarian ruler real, staged, or -- more unsettling yet -- a product of brainwashing?

We can't know for sure, of course. But there's plenty of speculation. Reuters notes that while grieving has been coordinated in North Korea, there have also been reports of spontaneous outbursts of sorrow at gymnastics competitions and village loudspeakers. The Washington Post's Philip Kennicott thinks many of the tears, like those following the death of Josef Stalin in Russia, are genuine -- the products of concern about stability and continuity, "mass hysteria," and the inability to "conceive of life without the Dear Leader."

Others are more skeptical, however. In an appearance on PRI's The World last night, British professor Hazel Smith, who lived in North Korea for two years, suggested that those doing the crying represent the minority who've benefitted under Kim Jong Il's rule, pointing to footage broadcast by North Korean state media of wailing students from Pyongyang's No. 1 Secondary School as evidence:

Pyongyang No. 1 Secondary School is where the elites go to school and where they would have been filmed by the North Korean TV to show all this grief in order to put on a show for the world. So the main question is what about the rest of the people? Most people think that Kim Jong Il doesn't provide them with a decent life, enough food to eat, that they've suffered a calamitous degradation of their lives economically over the past 20 years.

So what has mourning in the impoverished country looked like? The first instance of public grief came on Monday morning in North Korea, when a television presenter dressed in black haltingly announced Kim Jong Il's death:

Over the past two days, the state-run Korean Central News Agency has released a series of videos showing the North Korean people -- mainly those in the capital -- "overcome with grief." In the clip below, employees of the Kwangbok Area Supermarket in Pyongyang -- which Kim visited during a "field guidance" tour only days before his death -- rush to a stage where the North Korean leader's picture is displayed, fall to the floor, and weep hysterically. One worker says she welled up with tears when she caught a glimpse of Kim's "haggard face" during his visit to the supermarket, according to a KCNA translation.

In another video released today, North Koreans young and old weep before a photo of Kim Jong Il at the April 25 House of Culture in the capital. "I can hardly believe his demise," one young woman shrieks. Another woman, the curator of the Jonsung Revolutionary Museum, adds that Kim "did not even allow the people to erect his statue and monument." She pledges fealty to Kim's revolutionary cause and to the leadership of his son and successor, Kim Jong Un. 

KCNA is publishing article after article about the country's "veritable sea of mourners" (5 million strong in Pyongyang alone, per the news agency) whose "wailing voices are rocking heaven and earth." This Russia Today montage captures some of the other scenes that have been playing on North Korean television, including that shot referenced above of students from No. 1 Secondary School (at 1:00):

In another instance of grieving today, Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance since his father's death, visiting Kim Jong Il's coffin and saluting military officials in what smacked of a symbolic transfer of power:

What's perhaps most striking about all the images above -- the hysterical, collective weeping, the ascendant son visiting his father as he lies in state -- is how closely they mirror the scenes that came out of North Korea in 1994, when Kim Il Sung died and Kim Jong Il assumed power. Check out this footage from that period:

"He is the eternally immovable mental mainstay of the Korean people," KCNA declares today of Kim Jong Un. One can't help but feel like history is repeating itself.

Update: In an analysis on Wednesday, the New York Times notes that the convulsive grieving in North Korea is "an accepted part of Korean Confucian culture," a practice compounded by coercion and Kim Jong Il's cult of personality. "Not hewing to this tradition would invite social and state opprobium," the paper writes. Indeed, according to ABC News, a North Korean defector once wrote that in the wake of Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, "The party conducted surveys to see who displayed the most grief, and made this an important criterion in assessing party members' loyalty."

Money for clean energy is creating political messes all over. Of course, there are the Obama administration's ongoing troubles over loans to now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. Now comes a report from Reuters saying that green energy loans to bolster China's businesses may be in danger of defaulting, due to falling demand from Europeans, their biggest customers.

From the report:

State banks provide easy loans to the sector amid the Chinese government's push to develop clean energy. Provincial governments that have helped build solar companies are also pressuring banks to continue lending, which may add to the woes of the struggling industry.

The glut of production and swelling inventories of the panels that turn sunlight into electricity have already driven down prices by about 40 percent so far this year. Analysts expect prices to slide by another 10 percent by early next year.

...

"Over the next six months, there won't be profits to be made," said CLSA's solar analyst Charles Yonts. He expects some companies to start defaulting on loans and put themselves up for sale.

"Balance sheets across the solar sector are already stretched to breaking."

This comes on top of other setbacks for China's green energy aspirations this year. In September, the Chinese had to shut down a solar panel plant following protests against the its pollution. Other economic concerns including the rising number of "ghost cities" amidst the Chinese property bubble, are rattling the markets and prospects for growth.

The Guardian reported in September that in 2010, the China Development Bank gave out nearly $30 billion in loans to the top 5 manufacturers of solar panels.  Several weeks ago, industry groups representing the U.S solar industry raised concerns to the U.S Commerce Department about possible dumping by Chinese manufacturers.

Despite the concerns, Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan announced a $1.7 trillion "strategic investment" today, which included money to be directed towards the alternative energy fields. Questions on how the banks will manage more green energy loans on their balance sheets still remain unanswered.

After all, as the in the U.S. case, a certain number of failures are inevitable in an alternative energy investment this big.  And it's not as if Wang has to go in front of Congress to explain himself every time one of these deals doesn't work out.

Next April, North Korea plans to partially open the Ryugyong Hotel, a quarter century after ground was first broken for its construction. The new opening date coincides with the 100th birthday of North Korea's founding father, the late Kim Il-sung.

The Ryugyong has been referred to in the international press as the 'Hotel of Doom' and "the worst building in the world". During its intitial construction phase, which began in 1982, the clunky but imposing outer space pyramid dwarfed its neighbors on the Pyongyang skyline and had been honored on stamps. But by 1992, continuing to mirror the state of North Korean affairs, the completed but empty 1,080 foot shell was underfunded, abandoned and airbrushed out of official photos.

Through the years of neglect, the 105-story Ryugyong's potential as the highest hotel in the world was surpassed four times by taller (completed) hotels and, though it once might have been the 7th largest skyscraper, it currently ties at #40.

The resurrection of the Ryugyong is said to come as a result of resumed funding by the Egyptian Orascom Group. It's been reported that new construction has already begun and that the forthcoming hotel might boast as many as five rotating restaurants. Critics may argue that North Korea could make better use of the 2 billion dollars it could cost to bring the Ryugyong back to life. But if all goes according to plan this time, the Ryugyong Hotel will soon be an enigma in a country not especially known for its hospitality industry.

The Dalai Lama shook up 370 years of tradition last March when he announced that he would step down from his post as the political leader of the Tibetan government in exile. Over the weekend the Nobel laureate shook things up again, saying: "When I am about ninety I will... re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not."

But Beijing and Dharamsala don't see eye to eye on much, and reincarnation is no exception. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told journalists on Monday that "the title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the central government and is illegal otherwise... the reincarnation of any living Buddha, including the Dalai Lama, should respect the religious rules, historical standards and state laws and regulations." China claims authority over this process based on the histories of its ancient emporers, whereas Tibetan's believe in finding the manifestations of the continuous mindstreams of their leaders.

Recently, China has asserted itself on the issue by appointing its own successors to Tibetan positions. Today's Panchen Lama, currently nominated for the Chinese version of the Nobel prize, was appointed by the Chinese government days after they arrested the Dalai Lama's own appointment (who hasn't been heard from since 1995.)

In handing off political power, the Dalai Lama hoped to prevent any instability his death and reincarnation might bring to Tibet. But China seems intent not to let him off that easy.

The recent Solyndra debacle involving U.S government subsidies towards a now bankrupt solar energy startup has dominated headlines in the U.S. But China is facing a more serious solar crisis.

After four days of protests at the Jinko Solar Holding, an NYSE listed company based out of Haining, Chinese officials have shut down the plant and apologized to citizens over  alleged dumping of toxic waste into the local river. The protests come after a large number of fish deaths from what are perceived to be high levels of fluoride in the water. The Los Angeles Times' Jonathan Kaiman reports:

The decision is an indication of the growing power of environmental protesters to sway government policy in China. As many as 500 villagers participated in the protests near Haining, an industrial city of 640,000 in coastal Zhejiang province.

The plant's operator, JinkoSolar, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, issued a public apology Monday.

"We cannot shirk responsibility for the legal consequences which have come from management slips," Jing Zhaohui, a company representative, said at a news conference.

Company officials are claiming that recent rainfall, and poor containment of solid waste at the factory contributed to runoff which fed into the river system. While there have been no human casualties as of yet, much of the toxins that killed the animals, including lead, are linked to human  neurological conditions as well. Jinko's shares also took a hit today from the news, declining by nearly 10 percent in today's trading.

As the Guardian's Jonathan Watts reported, the clash is also indicative of the types of challenges that China faces as it struggles to move away from a primarily coal-based energy portfolio toward one including cleaner tech. Furthermore, the protest will bring further questions about the extent to which China's support of solar manufacturers can last.

As the AFP noted, China's extensive use of "cheap labor and state support" has bolstered the industry into producing nearly 70 percent of the world's supply. FP's Clyde Prestowitz recentlyfurther into detail on how China's aggressive policies are eating into production from countries including the United States.

Of course, the burgeoning sector isn't going to go very far if clean tech proves prone to toxic accidents. 

A deep freight train rumble struck South Korea's capital as a series of landslides engulfed entire villages. Screams resounded from buildings as they were dragged down mud rivers. Drivers scrambled to their car roofs as entire portions of the highway were swept away.

Relentless rains have crippled the region, with some reports placing the death toll at 67. Thousands of police officers, firefighters and soldiers are scrambling to aid victims and search for potential survivors. But in some areas, rescue missions have been stalled due to another potential disaster: landmines. Between 1999 and 2006, the South Korean military dug up mines from the Korean War on Wumyeon Mountain in southern Seoul, but ten could not be located. Residents have been warned that these land mines could have been knocked loose by floods and debris. Authorities hope that a concrete wall resting near the mountain will hold back the missing mines.

While an army official told reporters that the lost ammunition posed no real danger, as the grenades are stored in wooden boxes and the mines are detached from their fuses, similar instances have resulted in deaths in the region. In 2010, floods carried a North Korean landmine into a river close to the border. Two South Korean men, who were fishing in the area, came across the mine. One instantly died, the other was wounded. Officials reported more than 30 mines had been swept into South Korea.  The Demilitarized Zone -- the two and a half miles dividing North and South Korea --  is littered with mines. Many unsuspecting villagers have come across the deadly weapons, losing arms, legs and, sometimes, their lives.

Both North and South Korea experience an annual rainy season, but this year's rains have proven to be the worst in a century. North Korea's widespread deforestation makes it even more vulnerable, with few trees to stop the powerful landslides. Aid and supplies have been distributed quickly around Seoul, but rescuers expressed concern over potential electrocution in flooded parking lots and construction sites. Over 4,500 people have been driven from their homes.

The water bombs, as some are calling the pounding rain storms, have stopped for now, but here's hoping the real explosives won't bear their ugly heads. 

YANG HOE-SEONG/AFP/Getty Images; PARK JI-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images; JANG SEUNG-YOON/AFP/Getty Images; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images; JANG SEUNG-YOON/AFP/Getty Images

Last week, when confronted by reporters, a manager of a knock-off Apple store in Kunming, China said, "There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."

Technically, he wasn't correct -- Chinese law does prohibit businesses from copying the "look and feel" of other companies, but China is often accused of failing to enforce the law. And, after Chinese officials investigated the store -- and several others in the city -- it is still open. A blogger first wrote about the carbon copy business last week, leading to a flood of terrible publicity. Chinese officials said over the weekend they would investigate "all the city's electronic stores." Today, they announced they were closing two fake Apple Stores (out of at least five in the city). However, the reason had nothing to do with their brazen flouting of copyright laws. The businesses didn't have the proper permits.

"Media should not misunderstand the situation and jump to conclusions. Some overseas media has made it appear the stores sold fake Apple products," Chang Puyun, spokesman of Kunming government's business bureau, told Reuters. "China has taken great steps to enforce intellectual property rights and the stores weren't selling fake products."

According to CNET News, China and Apple have a complicated relationship.

Apple's business is intertwined with China, creating a love-hate relationship. Nearly all of the company's products are born in huge factory complexes in the country's interior, some as large as midsized cities, and Apple has started to move into China's retail market, with four official Apple stores in the sprawling country. But China has also been the source of numerous leaks, cheap knock-offs, piracy and other headaches for Apple. The fake Apple stores have been one of the most impressive such violations to date in their attention to detail.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office says counterfeiting and intellectual property theft in China cost U.S. businesses an estimated $48 billion in 2009.

What would you do if you bought a shiny new Apple computer (from what looked to be a shiny Apple store) only to find out that the store that sold it to you was a total fraud? We're guessing there would probably be some screaming involved. For customers in the Chinese city of Kunming, the revelation that their city's Apple hub was a counterfeit (albeit, a damn impressive counterfeit), has led to angry customers demanding refunds.

Reuters described the scene today, two days after news about the fake store spread, thanks to an eagle-eyed American expat blogger:

‘When I heard the news I rushed here immediately to get the receipt, I am so upset,' a customer surnamed Wang told Reuters, near tears. ‘With a store this big, it looks so believable who would have thought it was fake?'

Wang, a petite, 23-year-old office worker who would not give her first name, spent 14,000 yuan ($2,170) last month buying a Macbook Pro 13-inch and a 3G iPhone from the Kunming store. She wasn't issued a receipt at the time, with staff telling her to come back later.

‘Where's my receipt, you promised me my receipt last month!' Wang shouted at employees, before being whisked away to an upstairs room.

On Wednesday, an American blogger living in Kunming first wrote about the store, which popped up in her neighborhood:

They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks ... We struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple.

The media pounced and the story spread quickly. It's even been given the crazy-animated-news treatment (yes, that appears to be Steve Jobs in a Darth Vader helmet).  

The store said its products were genuine Apple computers and were being sold at the same price as you would find on Apple's website. And staff said they were angry by all the media attention the blog has caused.

"The media is painting us to be a fake store but we don't sell fakes, all our products are real, you can check it yourself," one employee told Reuters. "There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."

The image shows a 105 meter bridge in eastern Burma reportedly destroyed by the army on June 30 with heavy artillery.

It's in an area of the country dominated by the Shan ethnic group, the largest minority in Burma, who have been at war on and off with the government for decades.

Many Shan have fled to neighboring Thailand, claiming human rights abuses by the Burmese.

"This bridge was strategic," said Jaden McNeely of the NGO Global Refuge. His group distributed cameras to Burmese people to obtain evidence of abuses like this. "It moved everything from animals to tools for local villagers."  He said the army has destroyed a number of bridges in the area.

According to McNeely, the Burmese army suspected the Shan army of using it to move supplies across.

Yeoh spent time with the recently freed opposition leader in December, when she traveled to Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi's son, Kim Aris, according to the Daily Telegraph.

"She did not have the chance to enter [Burma] again," said a Burmese official, according to the Telegraph. "She was deported straight away on the first flight after arriving at [Rangoon] International Airport."

"When it comes to being kicked out and deported, it's very arbitrary," said a writer who has traveled there frequently in the last few years, though has also been denied entry on several occasions. "Meeting with Suu Kyi is very on the edge, because it's clearly anti-government. If you go to her headquarters, there's a very good chance you'll be taken to the airport directly afterwards or they won't let you back in next time."

The writer, who didn't want to be named so as not to harm the chances of getting into the country in the future, said the Burmese authorities have a long blacklist of people they won't allow in.

Yeoh was likely placed on the blacklist because she is a high-profile celebrity and didn't hide the fact that she met with Aung San Suu Kyi on her last visit.

And of course she's making a sympathetic movie of Aung San Suu Kyi. Yeoh described the film as an "incredible love story that has political turmoil within." Presumably, she's referring to Aung San Suu Kyi's marriage to British historian Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999 in England. Aung San Suu Kyi could not visit him because she believed she wouldn't be allowed to return to Burma. In the last 10 years of his life, he and his wife had only seen each other five times.

Aung San Suu Kyi spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest. She was freed last November, just days after elections in the country that were criticized by the international community as a sham and which her party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted.

After her release, she gave her first video broadcast interview to Foreign Policy, which chose her as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010.

Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi testified before the U.S. Congress -- via video -- for the first time ever, urging the United States to do more to push Burma on the lack of democratic progress.

"We are seeing that the regime is not taking action against what Aung San Suu Kyi is doing and she is relatively free to attend meetings in her office and meet with whom she wants," said Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. "This is their way of reaching out to the international community, which has been putting pressure on them."

Din said the regime will inevitably crack down again.

"[The regime] has opened the door a little, but their way of opening the door is to say you have to accept and obey the system and work within it. They have done it in the past. Really, the door is not open."

China and its neighbors have been engaged in tit-for-tat muscle-flexing maneuvers in recent weeks over who controls areas of the strategically important and resource-rich South China Sea, causing headaches in the region and elsewhere, and raising fears of a more serious flare-up.

What's the fight about?

It's a territorial dispute that goes back decades, but has grown more heated as China has become bolder on the world stage. China claims it has the right to just about the entire South China Sea. Its neighbors, not surprisingly, dispute that claim and say China is using its power to bully them. Vietnam has been the most vocal in recent weeks, holding live-fire drills on the water and urging international mediation led by the United States.

Vietnamese leaders have been bolstered by popular outrage domestically at China's actions. But they are not alone. The Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei have all claimed a part of the territory.

"It would be as if [the United States] just declared the entire Atlantic Ocean was our territorial waters, and anyone else who tried to explore it, we could do what we want to them -- cut their cables, sink their ships," Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations told Passport. "They are not just going to let China take it over. China's claim is so enormous it would take up the entire sea. Their claims are absurd."

What's so significant about the territory?

For starters, it's one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. But more importantly, it's loaded with oil. No one knows quite how much, though, since exploration has been so difficult given the political climate surrounding it. China estimates there could be as many as 213 billion barrels of oil reserves, which would place it second in the world behind only Saudi Arabia. That might be vastly overstated; American scientists estimate it's closer to 28 billion barrels. The sea could also possess large quantities of natural gas reserves.

How tense is it in the region right now?

Kurlantzick and other experts are quick to point out that this is not the first time tensions have spiked in recent years. In 1995, after China built structures on the Spratly Islands, the Philippines was able to convince the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to issue a rare statement denouncing China's action. But this feels different, experts say, not least because China has grown so much more powerful and confident. And other countries are acting less restrained as well. On June 13, Vietnam staged live-fire naval exercises, and the Philippines announced late last week it would soon send its biggest warship to a disputed part of the sea.

Meanwhile, China has been stepping up its confrontational posture, and not just rhetorically. On May 26 and June 9, its boats cut the cables of Vietnamese oil exploration ships. In response to Vietnam's naval exercises, it sent one of its largest vessels to "patrol" the waters, and it promised to send hundreds more in the coming years, meaning the water dispute will become increasingly militarized.

What's Washington's position?

Vietnam has urged the United States to get involved and mediate a resolution. How likely is that? The United States has given no indication it wants a leading role, though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing last July at an ASEAN regional forum in Hanoi when she said, "The United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea," and she urged a binding code of conduct for the states involved in the dispute. But other American officials have played down her comments, according to Kurlantzick.

Last week, Sen. Jim Webb, a key congressional voice on Asia issues, said he would introduce a resolution pushing for China to enter multilateral talks over the disputed territory.

China's response came in the form of an editorial in its main military paper: "China resolutely opposes any country unrelated to the South China Sea issue meddling in disputes, and it opposes the internationalization of" the issue, it read.

How likely is this to escalate out of control?

Beijing has promised it won't use force against its neighbors over the dispute, and it would be an incredibly risky move for it to do so. Given that China relies so heavily on imported fuel from the Middle East -- most of which makes its way through the South China Sea -- a conflagration that shuts down that transit area would have devastating repercussions for the emerging world power. But, analysts say, all sides are acting aggressively. And the dispute is happening at sea, with ships that are increasingly less restrained. A small spark could set off a chain of events that leads to a real showdown, or worse.