China

The Atlantic magazine has a couple of great windows on China this month. J. Fallows shows how China is our industrial back office; Dallas, by the way, is, in part, a financial back office for New York. Interesting is that it has not grown on the Japanese or Korean model, that is the state favoring certain industries or companies. Like Topsy it has just grown as free trade zones were established. So that Japan makes Toyotas but China makes Del, IBM etc laptops. The branding is actually part of our profit and the Chinese pick up the littlest bit. Fallows, in part, covers the activity and career of an Irish business owner in China. Having learned and reported a lot, Fallows closes with asking him to suggest a Chinese government official of any level that might have been useful in facilitating the boom. "I don't know any," is the business man's response. Talk about hands off! But there is still more fascinating detail. The second article is about a 91 year Catholic bishop and his integration of being Chinese, and putting up with the communists, as well as the 'veneration of ancestors' and being Catholic.