Word: guangdong
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...widespread power blackouts because it can't produce enough electricity to meet booming demand. Faced with production-line shutdowns, many factories are generating their own power with diesel generators, further depleting China's overtaxed supply of petrochemicals. One foreign executive whose company has invested in a power plant in Guangdong province says oil prices are so steep that the venture is now barely turning a profit. It can't raise rates because tariffs are fixed by the government?and the government doesn't want to relax tariffs because that would contribute to inflation. "If prices go up a little higher...
...still an eminently respectable performance. But in a world kept constantly on edge by terrorism, the threat of a price shock triggered by a spectacular attack on energy infrastructure or by further instability in the Middle East can't be dismissed. Says the foreign executive at the Guangdong power plant: "Oil is our biggest expense?and our biggest uncertainty...
...languished for years, relying on uninspired castoffs from local basketball and soccer teams. That changed dramatically in 2001, when Beijing was awarded the 2008 Games and funding kicked into high gear. "When I was an athlete, we had to train on grasslands," says Miao Lin, a hockey referee in Guangdong province. "Now, we've got more money and the training facilities have improved." Earlier this year, China assembled its first-ever national junior team, so a promising hockey crew will be ready for the Beijing Games. "I believe we'll be able to contend for the gold in 2008," predicts...
...even in this brave new world of hyper-athleticism, no country systematically trains its kids as young and as hard as China does. Wu He, vice director of Guangdong's table-tennis association, has been involved in the sport for 46 years, first as southern China's champion and then as a coach. When he started out, most kids were 12 when they were picked by talent scouts for municipal-level sports academies. "Today, children must start, at the very latest, at six years old," he says. "Otherwise it's too late." To increase the level of play, China lowered...
...single Summer Olympics. The cruelty of a system that enlists so many children and brings success to so few has led even the victorious to question the nation's obsession with Olympic glory. Xiao Jian, a lanky 30-year-old with an overgrown buzz cut, came to the Guangdong Sports Technology Institute?one rung higher on the sports hierarchy than Weilun?as a fencer back in 1989. At last year's national games, he was the men's ?p?e champion. But he was left off this year's Olympic roster due to what he says are complex disputes between...