Word: muchness
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...order. Its association with it, after all, began violently: the shock of the Opium Wars 170 years ago, a collision that led to what the Chinese think of as a century of humiliation during which nine foreign nations tromped through the country. Americans often ask why Chinese care so much about sovereignty. To which Chinese say, Come back and ask after you've been invaded by nine countries. (See "Could Obama Get Around China's 'Great Firewall...
...Both politically and economically speaking, this gets it about right. The reason it's in China's economic interest to allow the RMB to rise a bit is plain enough: At a moment when much of the world is still trying to climb out of a disinflationary hole, China's got a burgeoning inflation problem. Prices are rising at about 3% annually now, and it's now got its own real estate bubble to deal with. Cooling things off a bit is clearly the government's priority this year, and a rising currency helps. It makes imports more affordable...
Independent safety experts have said that China's actual total of mining deaths could be much higher, since mine operators and local authorities face pressure to conceal accidents. This year nine Chinese reporters were jailed for accepting bribes to cover up a mine disaster in Hebei province that killed 34 miners a little over a month before the start of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. By contrast, the recent rescue at the Wangjialing pit has received close coverage from state-run press. "This kind of heroic rescue operation always gets a lot of coverage in the official Chinese media...
...where there are strong incentives to overlook safety problems. "The people who are tasked with doing the investigations are the same people who have financial interests in the mines themselves," says Crothall. "You can't really rely on them to do a thorough or independent job." Mining usually pays much better wages than farming, and in some parts of China's central northern coal belt, the taxes paid by mines make up the bulk of local government revenues...
Elements of the Kyrgyz nomadic heritage still shape much of this largely pastoral and agrarian society. The brand of Sufi Islam practiced by the majority of the population has blended easily with sky- and nature-worshipping traditions of an earlier era. Though now illegal, the distasteful custom of wife-kidnapping - where a woman is unsuspectingly and often forcibly seized and taken to her husband-to-be's home - perseveres in parts of the country. (See a TIME piece on whether Moscow subverted the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan...