A lot of conversation over the last few weeks about what China is for many firms. and what it is not.

It is a conversation that, while recently catalyzed by Google’s announcement that they were looking at pulling the plug, is a conversation that I would say is had on a basis that is more frequent than many would like to admit to at time. Typically preceded by an event of some sort, commercial or political, and can be defensive, self defeating, or well analysed depending on the person, and one of the more interesting analysis I have seen lately comes from James McGregor in his recent piece in Time, The China Fix, where he writes the following:

Read more at the link.

The planet is so small and Asian economic development so big that the north American west coast ozone surges from Asian pollution. Too many people industrializing and too much dirty energy technology.

Springtime ozone levels above western North America are rising primarily due to air flowing eastward from the Pacific Ocean, a trend that is largest when the air originates in Asia. These increases in ozone could make it more difficult for the United States to meet Clean Air Act standards for ozone pollution at ground level, according to a new international study. Published online Wednesday, Jan. 20, in the journal Nature, the study analyzed large sets of ozone data captured since 1984.

"In springtime, pollution from across the hemisphere, not nearby sources, contributes to the ozone increases above western North America," said lead author Owen R. Cooper, Ph.D., of the NOAA-funded Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "When air is transported from a broad region of south and east Asia, the trend is largest."

We'd be better off with more nuclear power. But coal electric is cheaper than nuclear. So China's continuing a massive coal electric build up. Expect a lot more pollution where that came from.

Read more at the link.  

"我宁可站在墙外享受自由，也不愿在墙内活在刽子手的刀刃下。"

From the WSJ:

To many CEOs, China seems a land of immense opportunity. That's tempered, of course, by the many difficulties of actually doing business there—the regulatory strictures and caprice, corruption and the myriad quirks that come with operating in any developing economy. But do the benefits of being in China actually outweigh the costs? Two recent cases, one big and one small, suggest some businesses think well, maybe not.

The big one is Google, which announced Tuesday afternoon that it might leave entirely. The proximate cause is a mid-December cyber attack that allegedly included "theft of intellectual property" and attempts to hack email accounts of human rights-activists in China, the United States and Europe. Also, and perhaps not coincidentally, Google now says it's queasy over its 2006 deal with Beijing's mandarins to filter some search terms in exchange for permission to operate in the mainland. "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn," chief legal officer David Drummond wrote on the company's blog.

Read more at the link.