by Jacky Jin, Visiting Scholar ‘07

According to China’s National Statistics Bureau, 24.5 million households with a total of 75 million people became middle class families in 2005. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences states that they earned annual incomes as high as $10,000, while a report published in December 2005 from the Boston Consulting Group and the Wharton School documents middle class earnings above $8,700.

China’s central government informally supports the interests of the middle class through favorable tax policies and employment opportunities. But Party authorities have not formally legitimized this social group and show some concern about whether its emergence could trigger attempts to change the political system. Some experts predict that the rising middle class poses a hidden threat to the Communist Party’s (CPC) current regime. (more…)

Aryn Baker (’01) writes a review of NPR correspondent Sarah Chayes’ new book on Afghanistan, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, for Time:

Optimistic at first, Chayes joins forces with the family of future President Hamid Karzai to run an NGO dedicated not just to physical reconstruction, but to mending relations between Muslims and the West. “The window of opportunity seemed unparalleled,” she writes. “Here was a Muslim country that had twice in two decades rid itself of tyranny thanks to U.S. assistance … Afghanistan might be the place where some of the damage could be repaired.” But with mounting frustration she chronicles the mistakes of U.S. officials who had no clear vision for the country once the Taliban were defeated.

Read the full review here.

Recent graduates Matt Vree, Venessa Gregory and Catherine Price spent a month in South Korea last summer producing multimedia stories on the US military in South Korea for the innovative News 21 project (part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism). The group used a mix of video, audio and print to examine troop life, the miliatary’s legacy in South Korea and a village fighting demolition to make way for a base expansion, among other stories

To see the stories visit the project’s main page and find the South Korea link in the bottom left corner.

Alum Andrew Leonard (’91) writes in his How the World Works blog at Salon.com on recent research that suggests climate change led to the downfall of the Tang Dynasty:

You will have to scour the annals of history mighty hard to find a woman who has been blamed for more mischief than the legendary Tang dynasty concubine Yang Guifei. Helen of Troy may have launched a thousand ships, but Yang Guifei is said to not only have seduced the Xuanzong Emperor into neglecting his imperial duties, but also, through her connections to the rebel general An Lushan, to have contributed to the ultimate fall of the entire dynasty. Since Xuanzong ruled at the apex of the Tang dynasty, and the Tang is considered the peak of classical Chinese culture, that means Yang has been scapegoated for the crime of murdering nothing less than the greatest flowering ever of Chinese culture.

The Jade Beauty bears a heavy burden. But what if it wasn’t her fault? What if the real culprit was (drum roll please) climate change.

Read the full post here.

Elsewhere in his blog, Andrew writes about YouTube, Japanese cartoons and copyright infringement by anime geeks.

Omid Memarian, Inter Press Service (IPS)
January 10, 2007

In a bid to clamp down even harder on information disseminated through the Internet, Iran’s hardliner government has demanded the registration of all websites and weblogs sourced in the country by Mar. 1, drawing objections from many Iranian bloggers who say the move clearly violates free speech. A committee of government officials, including members of the intelligence, judiciary, telecommunications, and culture and Islamic guidance ministries, will be in charge of approving the content of websites. The committee is commissioned with blocking or filtring websites or weblogs that they deem illegal. (more…)

Journalism school alum Austin Ramzy (’03) is among four TIME magazine writers running the magazine’s new China Blog (中国博客), launched under the notion that “if you take your eyes off China for even a few days, a lot can change.”

An excerpt from Austin’s first post (on the return of Bird Flu in Hong Kong):

Avian influenza has returned to Hong Kong, but hardly anyone here seems panicked. In late 2005 and early 2006, when the disease killed 13 people on the mainland and more than a dozen infected birds were found in Hong Kong, people followed the news with dread. Now it barely inspires a murmur. I think I’ve heard just one concerned comment so far.

Read the full post here.

By Josh Chin
Special to Covering Asia

ALASHAN – A shock of deep-blue water surrounded by a seemingly endless expanse of rolling sand dunes, Moon Lake sits on the frontlines of one of the most important battles in China’s escalating war on environmental degradation.

It is also home to an opulent “eco”-resort—complete with five-star bungalows, paragliding, and a dune buggy course—that may or may not be the answer to the thorniest problem in Chinese environmentalism.

(more…)

By Edward Wong, (’98)
January 3, 2007,

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — It would be an ambitious project even in a Middle Eastern country not embroiled in war: build an American-style university where classes are taught in English, teachers come from around the world and graduates compete for lucrative jobs in fields like business and computer science. Yet some of the leading lights of Iraq’s political and intellectual classes are doing exactly that, even as the bloodshed widens.

Their planned American University of Iraq is modeled after the famous private universities in Cairo and Beirut. The project’s managers have a board of trustees; a business plan recently completed by McKinsey & Company, an international consulting firm; three candidates for university president; and $25 million, much of it in pledges from the American government and Kurdish sources. To fulfill their dream, they need much more: $200 million to $250 million over 15 years, said Azzam Alwash, the board’s executive secretary.

Read the rest of the piece here.

In a December 30 book review for the Straits Times, Dean Orville Schell writes on a surprising admission of war guilt from one of Japan’s most conservative newspapers :

‘IT IS our obligation as Japan’s most influential newspaper to tell our readers who was responsible for starting the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War.’ So writes Mr Tsuneo Watanabe, editor-in-chief of Japan’s (and the world’s) most widely circulated newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, in the introduction to the book, From Marco Polo Bridge To Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible…

It has never been easy for a nation to face up honestly to the bitter fact of having committed war crimes, genocide, unjustified foreign aggression, or having mistreated and killed its own people. Japan is no exception. Although there have been numerous initiatives to investigate its war guilt, especially its occupation of China, there has not yet been an official effort comparable to what the Germans undertook to take collective responsibility for their war crimes.

Read the rest of the piece here.