Excesses of Capitalism

The idea that corporations are real persons continues to grew. Now a mutual fund that is an empty shell because it is owned by another entity has been declared the only "person" that can be sued (but since it has no money...). See the NY Times' incredulous editorial here.

Money as Gifts

Princeton sociologist Viviana Zeilizer has an interesting Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes in which she argues that "Nostalgic traditionalists and hard-nosed realists" are both wrong when they argue that money is or is not suitable for gifts. "For over a century, Americans have been demonstrating remarkable ingenuity in turning money into meaningful personal gifts." She has interesting examples from the early 20th century issues of The Ladies' Home Journal of ways that people hide money in cards, artwork, or in boxes and small gifts. Very interesting, but she this tension is strictly American, or "Western." Chinese have no problem giving money as gifts. It is the major form of gifts at the Lunar New Year holiday. There is something about money being dirty, be it from religious or feudal traditions, that still requires it to be hidden or laundered in the West, while it can be used "rationally" or "realistically" in China.

Why China is in a bubble

It is not a popular view here (in Hong Kong), but it seems to me that we are in the midst of a bubble. Some simple signs:

• Soaring property prices
• Inflation rising rapidly (just announced at 5.1% for November, up from 4.4% in October and including an 11.7% rate for food), such that it has already caused riots (one in a school in Yunnan, over the rise in lunchbox prices, made the front page of the SCMP)
• Repeated attempts by the government in China, and in Hong Kong, to rein in speculation by raising bank deposit requirements and the property sales tax
• The growing difficulty people are having finding a job, especially the young new graduates (see the NY Times article on this here)
• The smug conceit one often hears that "China is different" (where have we heard that before...)

Hard to figure out how and when this is going to end, however. But it will not be pretty.

Bad gender research

Here are some comments I made to a journalist to critique some recently published social research. Basically, when you ask people yes/no questions, the number may be misleading. Most Hong Kong residents don't think much about homosexuality, and don't care much about it either. So asking them if they are for or against it is not very meaningful. Since the original study made the news, I was happy to comment to show that it was misleading. I'm a bit disappointed that this has ended up in the China Daily, the PRC mouthpiece that no one reads, but anyway...

Injustices USA

China does have a lot of problems, but it can be hard for someone unfamiliar with the country to understand how Chinese do not live with fear every day, given the prominence in the press of stories about the treatment of people like Liu Xiaobo and Zhao Lianhai. In fact, many of my Chinese friends are just as outraged by those cases as I am by some US stories, like the unbelievable racism and injustice described in this NPR story

Civil Rights, Judicial Bias Surround Texas Drug Case, by Wade Goodwyn.

Especially when one reads the accompanying Reporter's Notebook story that details the way some middle-class blacks blame the victims, one cannot imagine living in the US. But the victims themselves admit that they did not believe other Blacks who claimed the police was racist, until they experienced it in dramatic fashion themselves. While it is clear that the judiciary is much worse in China, from the point of view of ordinary people's daily life, it is actually quite similar. Both Americans and Chinese hear stories of gross injustices, and do what they can to redress them.

News Stories That Make Chinese Students Feel China Is Better Than the USA #1

This type of story, which shows the importance of money in US politics, convinces many Chinese students that US democracy is a sham. Americans are used to it so dismiss it, but it undermines the image of democracy (to say nothing about what the money does to democracy).

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/10/25/toxic-brew/

The Tea Parties didn’t arise spontaneously: they were boiled up by big business.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 26th October 2010

Maps

Funny maps. An anthropological technique for eliciting informants' world view transformed into comedy. Thank goodness we can laugh about this.