Today in China

Today in China Daily

Today’s first page of China Daily is quite interesting… It nicely summarizes the situation in China.

Of course, the most important news is the orbital trip of Nie Haisheng and Fei Junlong.
Just another ‘normal’ day in space
Everything is going fine in Shenzhou V where Astronaut Nie Haisheng spent his 41th birthday. They continue to conduct scientific experiments and also try to find the remaining defects in the spacecraft design. Shenzhou VII being expected to become almost the definitive version of China-made space vessels, Zhang Bainan - chief designer of China’s spacecraft system, said.

Then, we have the economic disputes between emerging China and the West with another failure to solve the dispute between US and China on Textiles.
China, US fail to break the impasse in textile talks
While Europe and China succeeded to get an agreement with limiting the annual growth in 10 types of textiles to 8-12.5 per cent till the end of 2007, US would only propose a low rate that is not acceptable by China. After the failure, the Bush administration is expected to even impose restriction on a wider range of textile products.
This may seems to be a good move to protect the US manufacturers but might be a bad thing for retailers and consumers who benefit from the cheap China-made products.
The question now is, will they have to do the same with Indian Textiles in a few months?

Besides economic problems, China is also facing social problems.
Jealous man shoots students; injures 16
An unmarried man, jealous of his peers who have children, went mad and shot students in Guangde County, East China’s Anhui Province. 16 of the pupils are injured, some seriously. Villagers are saying that Liu Shibing, the suspect, is mentally unsound and threatened in the past to kill other people’s kid. But isn’t this one of the consequences of the unbalanced gender proportion in China caused by the family planning, the one family one kid policy to refrain the demographic growth of the Chinese population?

And then, for sure, we have a news about the Olympic Games!
Wushu to be part of Beijing Olympic Games
This is good news for a lot of people fond of this martial arts that nicely merge fighting and esthetics. This is the first time that Wushu will be included in the Olympic Game. Medal will be awarded but will count in the official tally of nations like taekwondo and tennis.

And then, a cultural note for the Nobel Prizes
British playwright wins Nobel literature laurels
Harold Pinter, British playwright and poet, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature awarded by the Swedish Academy. What is interesting in the way China Daily presents this news is that they first emphasize the fact that Harold Pinter in politically engaged, criticizing the United States and its war in Iraq - and the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair. And then talks about his artistic works including plays such as “The Room”, “The Birthday Party”, “The Dumb Waitress” and “The Caretaker”.
Aren’t they pushing in first page a British Dissident?
Okay, enough politic for now…