Talking Points, March 31 - April 14, 2010

Talking Points
March 31 - April 14, 2010

The Great Wall 22 centuries ago. The Grand Canal 14 centuries ago. These are just two of early China’s many remarkable engineering triumphs. Beyond the complex engineering involved, these projects were possible because powerful centralizing states effectively mobilized and allocated vast resources towards their construction. Today’s Chinese state is similarly powerful and ambitious. Among its recent engineering achievements:

-- quadrupling expressways between 2000 and 2009, with plans to go from 65,000 km (40,625 miles) at present to 85,000 km (53,125 miles) by 2020 -- laying 3,800 km (2,375 miles) of high speed rail by 2009, with construction underway for another 9,000 km (5,625 miles) by 2012, the US does not yet have any operating high speed lines

-- building 770 km (481 miles) of subways and light rail lines in ten cities by 2009, fifteen more cities are putting in 1,100 km in new or expanded systems

-- erecting a 32 km (20 mile) bridge to link Shanghai to its new deep water port and a 36 km (22.5 mile) bridge across Hangzhou Bay

-- constructing the mammoth Terminal 3 at Beijing airport and the remarkable venues for the Olympics and Shanghai Expo, the terminal is 3 km long and is 60% larger than the Pentagon

China's government plans to spend $300 billion on rail development 2010-2012.	edz'sta snapped this picture of the "Harmony" bullet train in Suzhou.
Jonathan Rawle took this photo of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge's hotel and observation tower under construction.	Stamps issued to commemorate the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.

Huge sums have been spent on these projects. China is set to spend more than $100 billion on rail this year. The Beijing –Shanghai high speed line alone is costing more than $30 billion and more than 110,000 workers have labored on it.

This spending and employment helped China weather the global financial crisis better than others and planners hope that the transportation improvements will improve lives and foster continued economic growth. Some analysts doubt this and, in the short term, it’s clear that some projects haven’t yielded economic gains. A recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted one such effort. The Libo airport was built to facilitate the development of tourism in mountainous Guizhou province. Designed the accommodate 220,000 passengers a year, the $53 million project was finished in 2007. In 2009, however, only 151 used the airport. Tens of millions of passengers, though, are already riding subways, trains, and using expressways built in the past few years.

Beyond this construction boom, China’s engineers are playing a big role in other advances. China’s successfully launched manned and unmanned space missions. Some military engineering was on display in the 60th national day parade last October, though the most graphic display of technological prowess occurred in 2007 when Chinese forces shot down one of their own satellites.

Foreign firms are now turning to Chinese engineers and scientists. A 2009 article published by the National Academies said there were 1,200 foreign research and development centers in China. Microsoft set its up in 1998 and employs 350 researchers. The chief technology officer of Applied Materials recently moved to China to be closer to the firm’s researchers and many of its clients. Even Google, which recently relocated its Chinese web search operations to Hong Kong plans to maintain its research operations in China.

Many of China’s best engineers are trained at Tsinghua University, one of China’s finest comprehensive universities. We were pleased to have sixteen of Tsinghua’s top researchers visit USC last week for the fourth annual USC-Tsinghua engineering research forum. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Green and Smart for a Sustainable Future.” Presentations by USC and Tsinghua scholars explored topics such as improving the energy efficiency of data centers, increasing the efficiency of low carbon energy, new materials for solar power generation, carbon sequestration, nanomaterials, and smart oil fields and smart electricity grids. In addition to exchanging ideas on their own projects, scholars also looked for opportunities to work together. Even before the most recent forum, USC and Tsinghua researchers were collaborating on a half dozen major research projects.

Such US-China exchanges and collaboration could do much to further economic growth and address our pressing needs to increase energy efficiency and develop effective pollution controls. China has rapidly expanded the number of engineers being trained, but the quality of those educated outside the major centers has been questioned. Several years ago, a McKinsey survey reported that human resource specialists at multinational firms felt that only 10% met global standards. Tsinghua and other top schools, however, have been on a hiring binge, bringing in top talent from the US and elsewhere. China’s share of patents and scholarly articles is increasing.

Engineers have long enjoyed prestige in China. Many current and former party and state leaders

were trained as engineers. Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao , Premier Wen Jiabao, and half of the current Politboro were educated as engineers. (Click here to see a list of engineers in the Politboro or on the State Council.)

At USC this week, Chen Shengluo will speak in Chinese on how students at five elite Chinese universities see the US and Chinese political systems and an international collection of scholars and filmmakers will discuss the role of film in documenting communities in China and in shaping perceptions of these people and places. Several films will be screened. We hope you can join us. Details are below and in the calendar section of our website.

Among the video presentations currently available at our website are Richard Baum’s “confessions of a Peking Tom,” a reflection on 45 years of China watching, Tom Gold's discussion of how the internet is tying Chinese entrepreneurs to supporters abroad, Huang Kwei-bo’s discussion of Taiwan’s flexible external policies, Deborah Brautigam’s look at Chinese activities in Africa, and Judith McKay’s review of efforts to squelch tobacco use in China. Among the interesting multimedia additions to US-China Today are interactive charts on China’s aging population and its growing nuclear power resources. Asia Pacific Arts offers new interviews and reviews. Both publications include daily news updates, among those now at the APA site are notes about Chinese bands touring the US and Bob Dylan’s reaction to not being permitted to perform in Beijing and Shanghai.

Thanks for reading and sharing Talking Points. We value this opportunity to bring you news about China-related events across North America and we look forward to hearing from you. Please write to us at uschina@usc.edu.

Best wishes,
The USC US-China Institute
china.usc.edu

Write to us at uschina@usc.edu
Subscribe to Talking Points at china.usc.edu/subscribe.aspx
Support the USC US-China Institute with your tax deductible gift at giveto.usc.edu/

Events

USC 

04/01/2010: China Watcher-Confessions of a Peking Tom
University of Southern California
Davidson Conference Center, Club A&B, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Time: 4:00PM - 6:00PM
Dr. Richard Baum, a political science professor at UCLA, will speak on his new book.

04/05/2010: China`s Recent Medical Reform
USC Health Science Campus Norris Cancer Center, Topping Tower Room 4444
1441 Eastlake Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90033
Cost: RSVP required
Time: 12:00PM - 1:30PM
USC Institute for Global Health presents a lecture on China`s recent health reform with Dr. Gonghuan Yang. 

04/07/2010: How Do Chinese University Students Perceive the Political Systems of China and the United States? A Survey of Five Key Universities in Beijing
USC US-China Institute, FIG 202
3535 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Cost: Free
Phone: 213-821-4382

04/08/2010: Cultural Dimensions of Visual Ethnography: U.S.- China Dialogues
Conference locations (various locations, please see program listed below); Film screenings (Leavey Auditorium)
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089
PLEASE RSVP TO JIA TAN AT jiatan@usc.edu
The USC US-China Institute and the USC Center for Visual Anthropology present a symposium featuring the screening of several ethnographic films and extensive discussion of visual ethnography by Chinese and American scholars, documentary filmmakers and new media practitioners. 

04/14/2010: Small Happiness: Women of a Chinese Village
University of Southern California
Taper Hall (THH) 101, Los Angeles , CA 90089
Cost: Free
Time: 6:00PM - 8:00PM
The documentary by Carma Hinton explores sexual politics in rural China with segments on love and marriage, foot-binding, child-bearing and birth control. 

California

04/01/2010: The Political Impact of New Media in China
UCLA 10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA
Cost: Free
Time: 4:00PM - 5:30PM
The UCLA Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Anne-Marie Brady on the impact of the continuing evolution of new media on governance in China as well as elite political dynamics. 

04/02/2010: Indigenous Knowledge?: The Politics of Traditional Chinese Medicine
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 4:00PM - 6:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Judith Farguhar on contemporary Chinese medicine as a weave of local historical constraints, global economic and epistemological pressures, and clinical and pedagogical pragmatics. 
 
04/05/2010: China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom
UCLA 10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA
Cost: Free
Time:  4:00PM - 5:30PM
UCLA Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Richard Baum on forty years of learning about and interacting with the People`s Republic of China. 

04/05/2010: When Village Meets Financial Tsunami: Reconfiguring Urban Space and Cultural Belonging in South China
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 4:00PM - 6:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Helen Su on village life in a district of Guangzhou that is being developed into a new Central Business District. 

04/07/2010: Remembering the Past Bitterness to Salve Present Injuries: Rural Women and New Uses for China`s Collective Past
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 5:00PM - 7:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Gail Hershatter on how rural socialist construction depended on women’s work in the cotton fields and their domestic labor. 

04/07/2010: Punctuations: Taiwan in 1989, 1999, and 2009
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 5:00PM - 7:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Ping-hui Liao on three small but timely events on Taiwan. 

04/07/2010: Surviving the Dragon: A Tibetan Lama`s Life Under Chinese Rule
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 5:00PM - 6:30PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Arjia Rinpoche on his book, which provides a rare window into a tumultuous period of Chinese history and offers readers an uncommon glimpse inside a Buddhist monastery in Tibet.

04/08/2010: "Still Life" (2006): a film by director Jia Zhangke
UC Berkeley
Townsend Center for the Humanities
Cost: Free
Time: 4:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a screening of the film Still Life. 

04/09/2010: The Chan Database Project
UCLA
243 Royce Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Cost: Free
Time: 3:00PM - 4:30PM
The Asia Institute presents a Numata Colloquium Series Talk by Professor Christoph Anderl on the recently initiated Chán Database Project.  
 
04/12/2010: `Assembly` (2007): a film by director Feng Xiaogang
UC Berkeley
IEAS Conference Room, 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor
Cost: Free
Time: 4:00PM
UC Berkeley`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by the screening of Assembly. 

North America

04/02/2010: Little Moth
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
Cost: $7 members; $9 students/seniors; $11 nonmembers
Phone: 212-288-6400
Time: 6:45PM - 8:45PM
Part of the "China`s Past, Present, Future on Film" series. 

04/09/2010: Gai Shanxi and Her Sisters
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
Cost: $7 members; $9 students/seniors; $11 nonmembers
Phone: 212-288-6400
Time: 6:45PM - 8:45PM
Part of the "China`s Past, Present, Future on Film" series. 

04/10/2010: The Search
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
Cost: Free admission. Limit 2 tickets per person.
Phone: 212-288-6400
Time: 3:30PM - 6:00PM
Part of the Soul-Searching in Tibet: Films by Pema Tseden (Wanma Caidan) series 

04/12/2010: From Common to Heavenly: The Changes in Daoist Ritual in Medieval China
202 Jones Hall
Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544
Cost: Free
Time: 4:30PM - 6:30PM
Princeton University`s East Asia Studies Program presents a talk by Stephen Teiser. 

04/13/2010: Blood and Self in Modern Chinese Medicine and Culture
School of Social Work Building, Room 1636
1080 South University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106
Time: 12pm
University of Michigan`s Center for Chinese Studies presents a talk by Professor Bridie Andrews Minehan on Chinese medicine`s connection to the concept of modernity. 

04/13/2010: China Boys, with Nicholas Platt
Asia Society and Museum
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021
Cost: $10 Asia Society members; $12 students with ID/seniors; $15 nonmembers
Phone: 212-288-6400
Time: 6:30PM - 8:30PM
The Asia Society presents a talk with Nicholas Platt on his experiences as a young foreign service officer traveling with President Nixon on his historic trip to China in 1972. 

Exhibitions  

09/22/2009 - 06/30/2010: China`s Great Wall: The Forgotten Story
NYC offices of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York, NY
The Forgotten Story is a series of historically-based photographs of the Great Wall of China. It is a collaboration between Jonathan Ball, a California based photographer, and David Spindler, one of the world`s foremost experts on Great Wall history.

03/28/2010 - 07/25/2010: Secrets of the Silk Road
Bowers Museum
Address: 2002 North Main Street, Santa Ana, California 92706
Cost: Adults/$18 Weekdays; $20 Weekends/ Students & Seniors/$16 Weekdays, $18 Weekends; Children (under six) Free
The Bowers Museum presents an historic exhibition of over 150 objects drawn from the rich collections of the Urumqi Museum and the Institute of Archaeology of Xinjiang reveals surprising details about the people who lived along the ancient Silk Road.

01/01/2010 - 12/31/2010: Ancient Arts of China: A 5000 Year Legacy
Bowers Museum
2002 North Main Street, Santa Ana, California 92706
Bowers Museum presents a collection that portrays the evolution of Chinese technology, art and culture.

 

____________________________________________________________________

Please invite others to subscribe to USCI’s free email newsletter for regular updates on events and programs. We will not share names or email addresses with any other entity. Sign Up.

We provide information about China-related events as a community service. If you would like your event considered for inclusion in the USCI calendar, please click here to submit event details.

If you would like to support USCI by making a donation please visit http://www.usc.edu/giving/.

USC U.S. – China Institute
3535 S. Figueroa St.
FIG 202
Los Angeles, CA 90089-1262
Tel: 213-821-4382
Fax: 213-821-2382
Email: uschina@usc.edu
Website: http://china.usc.edu 

You have received this e-mail because you have subscribed to receive updates from USCI. If you feel this message has reached you in error or you no longer wish to receive our updates, please click, unsubscribe, and enter "Remove" in the subject line.