There is a real – and sad – possibility that U.S.-China relations this year might become tenser.
Tensions have been lurking about for years on a variety of issues, including trade and currency valuation. The Google news this week – announcing that the company wanted an unfiltered search engine in China and sophisticated cyber attacks against Gmail – marks the first cork to pop for 2010.
For the most part, China - including its economy and the nation as a whole – is ascending. Its leaders are using their new economic, political and global clout in many noticeable ways.
I remember a time, in the 1990s or so, when Chinese leaders looked at successful Western companies and said: We must learn from you.
This was done in the context of China’s economic trajectory, from moving from a developing status to a more developed one.
Many Western business leaders were treated like superstars in Beijing and Shanghai in ways they never imagined at home.
There were face-giving banquets, motorcades with black sedans, five-star hotels and business cards with big titles.
In television interviews, hosts asked Western business leaders how they became so successful and lobbed easy-to-answer questions. There were speeches packed with many adoring audience members who looked at the leaders as if they literally had invented the Internet.
The word “friendship” must have popped up numerous times in these conversations that used translators.
I’m Chinese American. I’ve always argued for strong, cooperative long-term relations between the United States and China.
I think it’s time that we in the West, if we have not done so already, say to Chinese leaders: It’s time we learn from you.
A 30-year-old man that U.S. authorities say had a role in making firebombs used in a 2001 attack on the University of Washington has been convicted on drug charges in a mountainous region of China, The New York Times reported Friday.
Justin Solondz will serve a three-year jail sentence issued by a Chinese court in Dali, which is located in Yunnan province. Dali police said they found 33 pounds of marijuana in his rented house, Times reporter Dan Levin wrote.
A local prosecutor said that Solondz, an environmental activist in the United States, also had a “drug laboratory” at his house, according to the newspaper article.
After Solondz, who apparently used two aliases in China, finishes his jail sentence, he will be sent to the United States to stand charges for his reported involvement in an “arson rampage” in Washington, Oregon and California.
If there’s anything that I’ve learned in my short time observing tofu, it’s that the food – often criticized as bland mass – can reflect life’s ups and downs.
Earlier this week, there was an up, when Hodo Soy Beanery opened its organic tofu shop in Oakland, Calif.
On Thursday, there was a bit of a low when Quong Hop & Co., a South San Francisco tofu company, was ordered to pay $90,000 in fines for failing to keep its plant clean.
The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office announced the fines that covered the past two years, reporter Sean Maher of the San Mateo County Times wrote.
The company – which says it was one of the first tofu businesses in the United States – essentially did not keep its food area free of pests, according to the article.
Do you remember that question – which has become a cliche – where a car dealer stands next to you on the lot and asks:
“What would it take for you to drive away in this car today?”
These days, with the recession still dominating discussions, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a lot – lower pricing, tax breaks, special discounts, access to a competitive credit rate and cash for your old model.
And with Christmas fast approaching, The New York Times ran an informative piece on the forecast for holiday retail sales since some analysts expect it to be as sobering as last year – meaning as dismal as the late 1960s.
Nichi Bei Times, which launched after World War II to help “reconnect” Japanese Americans returning from internment camps, will publish its final edition Sept. 10, the company announced this week.
The 63-year-old newspaper has been suffering years of advertising and circulation losses, the company said.
But some Nichi Bei Times staff members and Asian American community leaders hope the formation of the nonprofit Nichi Bei Foundation will enable them to receive grants and donations to continue the newspaper.  Â
If the publication ceases, it would mean the loss of Northern California’s oldest Japanese American newspaper. It reportedly has about 8,000 subscribers.
The National Park Service announced last week that former Japanese American internment sites will receive $960,000 to boost awareness of this chapter of World War II history, The Associated Press reported.
Reporter Mead Gruver explained that the money, which will consist of 19 grants going to various sites or groups, will support a museum at what was the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming and oral history projects involving internees.
In California, Manzanar and Tule Lake internment camps will receive money as will sites in Hawaii, Texas, Utah and Idaho.
It’s always disappointing when you hear about humans tampering with food. It’s even more appalling when it’s bean curd that reportedly includes a formaldehyde-methanol mixture.
Police in Indonesia this week apparently seized gallons of formalin that were used to make tofu in a Cipinang, East Jakarta factory, according to a Jakarta Post article.
The public informed Jakarta police about the use of the ingredient, which the University of Minnesota reports “is used as a fixative to preserve tissue samples in health care laboratories.”
The article neither listed the tofu brand name nor stated whether the product is shipped to other countries. Investigators also did not provide a motive.
If eating is the common thought when it comes to bean curd, then supplying the coveted soybean also must come to mind.
U.S. soybean farmers probably have Indonesia on their list of buyers and places to visit. If not, they should. Soybean production in Indonesia is dropping, according to a recent Jakarta Post article.
Buried in the story is some noteworthy market intelligence about, well, tofu and tempeh consumption.
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