Word: china
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...entered this week's round of climate negotiations as the global bad guy, a holdover from eight years of barely veiled contempt for the process from former President George W. Bush's Administration. But China wasn't far behind. The world's biggest country is now its biggest carbon emitter, and its sheer rate of economic expansion - fueled chiefly by polluting coal - ensures China won't lose that spot anytime soon. While the U.S. earned the world's antipathy for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol, China, as a developing nation, had no requirements under that pact...
...strategy worked - perhaps too well. In August, Lou's appearance on the show not only boosted viewer numbers but also sparked an intense nationwide debate about the essential meaning of being Chinese. Over the past month on Internet chat rooms, where modern China's sensitive issues are thrashed out by netizens long before they reach the heavily censored mainstream media, Lou's ethnicity has been the subject of a relentless barrage of criticism, some of it crudely racist. Many think she should not have been allowed to compete on a Chinese show, or at least not selected to represent Shanghai...
...recently as the 1970s, foreigners were largely barred from living in China, let alone marrying a local. China does not easily accept mixed-race children as true-blooded Chinese: as soon as a child is born, the parents are required to register with the authorities as to which of the 56 government-approved ethnic groups their child belongs; there are no mixed-race categories. Lou feels she is very much Chinese. "When I meet somebody for the first time, they'd often ask me how I can speak Chinese so well, and I tell them, 'Because I'm a Chinese...
...China undergoes an astonishing demographic shift and more foreigners make their homes in the Middle Kingdom, Lou is by no means the only one being treated differently. Recent decades have seen a surge in the number of mixed-race couples. According to the data offered by Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, from 1994 to 2008, each year there have been about 3,000 more mixed-race marriages in Shanghai. But as the children of that first generation of mixed-race marriages come of age, their moves to gain acceptance in society - like Lou's participation in the TV show - have exposed...
...China continues to open up, this kind of phenomenon will become ever more prevalent," says David Zweig, a professor of humanities and social sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "This is part of the process of internationalization, but we can only hope that Chinese people, including netizens and the people whose views tend towards extremism, can come to accept that there are many mixed-race people, both in China and worldwide...