From the Wall Street Journal: Here’s an easy bet: The U.S. won’t solve the problems created by China’s economic juggernaut until it finds a way to tackle the big issue rather than sideshows like the country’s currency rate. The big issue is China’s state capitalism, the tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises that dominate half […]

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The next time you buy an Apple product, know that they COULD do something about work place conditions in the manufacturers in China. Manufacturers that have huge employee suicide numbers and what some have called inhumane working conditions. But Apple has chosen to play Pontius Pilate and wash their hands. Here, law professor Bill Black […]

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An explosion over the weekend killed three employees at a plant for the company that makes Apple ipods and ipads. Although this is showing up in technology trade magazines, it is also making to more general media web-sites. The Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) released a 20-page report (PDF) on May 6 on […]

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At the turn of the last century, i.e., early 1900’s, there was great press about a terrible tragedy. It was a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. It was a sweatshop in New York city’s garment district. A fire started and when employees tried to escape many of the exits were chained shut […]

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Another blog that I find to have some insightful, if counter to main stream media thinking, is Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis. He’s been on some of the problems in/with China and hits on one today about China’s industrial policy to steal technology (China use nicer words such as co-innovate or re-innovate with the only […]

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We’ve been saying this for a while, that China’s economy is built upon a fragile foundation. Its bought growth through weak wages and poor environmental controls giving an artificial impression of robustness. George Friedman, whom we’ve cited before, provides updated commentary on the weaknesses in China. From billions of people living in poverty to rising […]

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Nicholas Kristof: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 (Updated 3:05 am) By Nicholas D. Kristof New York Times News Service BEIJING — Psst. Don’t tell the Chinese government, but I started a Chinese-language blog here in China, and it contains counterrevolutionary praise of dissidents. It’s at http://blog.sina.com.cn/jisidao. Now let’s count — 1, 2, 3 … — and […]

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From Bloomberg Businessweek, they report on labor problems in China – at the educated end. This is the opposite of the USA where unemployment for those with a college education is below 5%, half the national average unemployment of 9.5%. The USA is having trouble creating uneducated jobs. China is having problems creating educated jobs. […]

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More people are connecting the dots between China’s currency manipulation and negative impacts in the USA and other countries. Economist Paul Krugman, whom you have to read with a very critical eye when he’s outside his specialty, is right in this blog on the NY Times web-site about China’s currency practices:  Right now, China is […]

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From the NY Times (our emphasis added): It is interesting to watch communist country companies trample on worker’s rights. Something is being lost in the vision. By ANDREW JACOBS BEIJING — These are heady days for China’s state-controlled banks. Last month, the Agricultural Bank of China made its stock market debut, bringing in $22 billion […]

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