By Claire Cain Miller (’06), Forbes
November 11, 2006

Microcredit is booming in India, but the loans don’t often pull people out of poverty.

In the K.R. Puram slum in Bangalore, India, a group of 15 women gather in a small, muggy living room. The electricity comes and goes, turning the fan and the single bare lightbulb on and off. Flies buzz around the room, and children run in and out.

The women have borrowed $330 and meet weekly to make repayments. The loans were meant to serve as capital for them to start small businesses and, eventually, lift themselves out of poverty. But the women say the loans haven’t turned into new income. Sitting in a circle on the floor, some sound sad and others angry. One woman has started selling firewood, but others haven’t started businesses at all. Instead, they say, the money helped them pay for urgent expenses, such as their children’s school fees.

Read full article here (free reg. required)

[NOTE: This story came out of the Spring 2006 Covering India course taught by Carolyn Wakeman and The Hindu's Parvathi Menon]

By Austin Ramzy (’00), Time.com
October 29, 2006

It was a scene straight out of a Hong Kong gangster flick. On a November morning in 2002, local property tycoon Harry (Cigar) Lam was enjoying breakfast in his usual spot at Luk Yu Tea House, a Hong Kong institution famed for its tasty dim sum and indifferent service. At about 9 a.m., a nearby diner paid for his meal, walked up to Lam’s table and killed him with a gunshot to the head.

At the murder trial of eight suspects in Shenzhen last week, details emerged that only added to the impression that real life was being scripted by an imaginative screenwriter. The alleged mastermind: Yeung Ka-on, a former TV actor turned property developer. But Yeung said he had only passed on an envelope from an organized-crime kingpin in Taiwan named Chen (Brother Abalone) Chun-chieh. Prosecutors say the envelope, which contained a photo and information about the victim, made its way to alleged mob boss Lau Yat-yin, accused of having its contents—and $50,000—delivered to two assassins from Hunan province. As the three-day trial wrapped up on Friday—the verdict will be given at a later date—an attorney for Yang Wen, the accused shooter, told reporters his client had admitted killing the tycoon and believed he should be executed for it.

Read the rest of the article here.

Many if not all Chinese journalists want to report with truth and accuracy but are frustrated by lack of access to local government officials, one of China’s most well-known TV news personalities said on the sidelines of a visit to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism on October 26.

Malcolm Wang, host of CCTV’s talk news program Face-to-Face (面对面), acknolwedged that Chinese reporters must also contend with inviolable political restrictions.

“The political system is the same as it has always been,” he said. “There is a bottom line we cannot cross.”

Wang, described by himself and others as China’s Larry King, was visiting the J-school as part of a delegation of Chinese media officials and journalists on a tour of the U.S. to observe the American media landscape and study American approaches to journalism education.

(more…)

Tina Qian, Visiting Scholar ‘06

China’s rapid economic growth over the last two decades has invited widespread acclamation as well as speculation. Not only China itself but also global nations now seem to believe that a revitalized China has risen to be one of the major powers on the world stage.

This kind of optimistic sentiment reached a climax when the official China Central Television broadcast in November a 12-episode documentary named ‘The Rise of Great Powers.” Its purpose was to teach China and its people how to learn from the experiences of those has-been giants in the world.

But while applauding the achievements China has made so far, we should also not neglect the underlying cost, what has been paid already and what is still to be paid in the near future.

(more…)