If keeps up, pressure will mount for trade sanctions in the US against the Chinese. The currency issue is a big deal.

Playboy has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to .

makes it clear that China is still a dictatorship that does not respect human rights.

China came out against the actions taken by North Korea.

China said on Monday it firmly opposed North Korea’s nuclear test, denouncing it as “brazen” in unusually strong language, and demanded Pyongyang stop any action that could worsen the situation.

China also urged North Korea to return to six-party talks it has hosted aimed at dismantling the North’s nuclear programmes. The talks, which have been stalled for nearly a year, also group South Korea, Japan, the United States and Russia.

This situation gives China the opportunity to become a responsible player on the world stage. This action by North Korea is a slap in the face of the Chinese. Hopefully the Chinese will work with the United States, Russia and the Japanese to come up with a strong, unified response.

is what happens in societies that aren’t free.

and other powers to address the issue of Iranian nukes:

The United States and five other major powers agreed Friday to take the next step toward imposing sanctions on Iran for failing to comply with a U.N. resolution to prevent it from subverting its nuclear energy program to develop a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. and European officials.

But in response to Russian and Chinese wariness about the impact and effectiveness of sanctions, the group also agreed to keep the door open to diplomacy, the officials said. The chief negotiator will remain available for talks if Iran chooses to come to the table and suspend its uranium enrichment program. As soon as Iran suspends enrichment, any U.N. sanctions would also be suspended, they said.

The Chinese don’t drink much wine, but many predict that will begin to change as more Chinese get exposed to affordable wines. Surprisingly, the first wines they try might be made in China. Smart money is betting that .

Not as much as many might expect, once productivity costs are factored in.

Despite New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s widely embraced thesis that the world is flat because technology makes outsourcing and therefore globalization a breeze, a new Conference Board study shows otherwise.

The report released this week by the well-respected research organization best known for its consumer confidence index and the index of leading economic indicators, says the competitive advantages of outsourcing are in some cases completely wiped out due to low productivity.

“One critical lesson for businesses that benefit from one-time labor-cost benefits when investing in ‘low wage’ countries is that productivity gains from new technology and innovation have to keep pace with often fast-rising wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers or the ‘cost advantage’ begins to erode,” says Bart van Ark, Director of the Conference Board international economic research program.

In other words, the comparative cost advantage of taking a business to low-wage countries such as China or India, where manufacturing costs are lower than in the U.S., are often not the giant bargain they seem when wages are adjusted for low productivity, according to the report.

Amnesty International is to improve human rights leading up to the 2008 Olympics:

With 687 days to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government needs to work quickly if it is to fulfil its promise to the International Olympic Committee to improve human rights ahead of the 2008 Games.

In its latest assessment of the Chinese government’s performance in four benchmark areas of human rights ahead of the Olympics, Amnesty International found that its overall record remained poor. There has been some progress in reforming the death penalty system, but in other crucial areas the government’s human rights record has deteriorated.

Chinese border guards reportedly on approximately 70 people trying to cross from China into Nepal.