Word: communistes
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...slices of the China market, but not everyone in the world's fastest-growing economy is interested in a Chopard or a Blancpain. One small clique of collectors prefers to concentrate on homegrown brands - and they don't mean upscale makes. Their obsession is for mechanical watches produced by communist factories from the 1950s to the 1970s, and stems from a mixture of historical curiosity and opportunism. It's an area of collecting that has been barely explored, with no price barriers to entry...
...Chan snapped up his A623 in an online auction for just under $150 - underscoring the fact that early communist-era Chinese mechanical watches are within the financial reach of almost anyone. "Even many rare models can still be found for [around] $75," Chan says. To be sure, some pieces occasionally fetch impressive sums (a 1955 Shanghai Watch sold at auction for over $15,700 in 1996), but for the moment no one is talking about the investment value - only the pleasure of getting your hands on a quaint piece of revolutionary history...
...predictable of challenges: discontent in Tibet and international condemnation of Beijing's record of repression. The extent of their surprise can be gauged by their reaction--a brutal crackdown on dissent at home and a deaf ear to criticism from abroad--which is more reminiscent of the heavy-handed communist regime of old than the modern, moderate Beijing that the Olympics are meant to showcase...
...line has left many observers puzzled. The wiser course would seem to be a more measured response: to practice better crowd control, manage the media better, try negotiation instead of knee-jerk repression. But China's rulers have shown little such dexterity. Some of the reasons are straightforward. The Communist Party is deeply secretive and highly bureaucratic, and its members are steeped in a long-standing culture of self-preservation. "Part of the head-in-sand problem has to do with entrenched bureaucratic interests," says China expert Perry Link of Princeton University. Officials who have devoted most of their careers...
...tone is also reflected on the Chinese Internet, with students and overseas Chinese encouraged to show support for the Beijing Games during the torch relay. Unlike the period after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, when the patriotism of many Chinese abroad was dampened by a distrust of the Communist Party, the torch protests have inspired cries of unity. "From now on, we will fight for ourselves," one Chinese woman in San Francisco wrote in a Chinese Internet forum. "We know it is our ever-stronger motherland that's frightening the western world. It is our development and confidence that's causing...