Word: hued
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...arrests earlier this month of four employees of the mining giant Rio Tinto have thrown relations between China and Australia into an uproar and cast a dangerous chill on China's foreign business partners. On July 5, the Shanghai State Security Bureau arrested Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, a Chinese-born Australian, and three Chinese employees on suspicion of stealing state secrets. While China's murky criminal-justice system makes it difficult to unearth any specifics of the charges, the state-run China Daily reported on July 15 that the Rio Tinto representatives allegedly bribed officials from 16 Chinese steel...
...usually in cases involving people seen as threats to the ruling Communist Party. Turning it on China's foreign partners, Western observers say, could undermine global commerce. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has made a point of burnishing his country's links to China, said the detention of Hu jeopardizes China's trade relations with his nation and the rest of the world...
...nation's food supply. In 1955 officials launched a campaign to promote birth control, only to have their efforts reversed in 1958 by the Great Leap Forward - Mao's disastrous attempt to rapidly convert China into a modern industrialized state. "A larger population means greater manpower," reasoned Hu Yaobang, secretary of the Communist Youth League, at a national conference of youth work representatives that April. "The force of 600 million liberated people is tens of thousands of times stronger than a nuclear explosion...
...fact, despite the challenges he has faced this month and his looming lame-duck status, Hu may actually be at the height of his power, says David Zweig, who teaches political science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. "It takes any new party secretary four to five years just to get the party under control after he takes over," Zweig says. "Having appointed many of his stalwarts to senior (posts), Hu is now probably in a position to exert considerable influence on decisions even after he steps down in 2012 through his control of the Organization Bureau...
...Certainly there are reasons to think a power grab could be triggered if, as Shih puts it, "they find some dirt on one of the top leaders." Hu is increasingly a lame duck. He is set to retire in 2012, after his second five-year term as President and Communist Party General Secretary...