Believe it or not, China has an entire weather-modification department devoted to trying to stop rain for the opening night of the Olympics. Will they succeed?

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Domestic Politics, Economy, Energy, Environment, Sports at 7:53 pm

With pollution out of control, the Chinese government needs to do something to improve the air during the Olympics. Otherwise, they’re going to have lots of sick athletes and their glorious PR campaign will fall flat. The solution? Force factories to stop production in the weeks leading up to the games.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Domestic Politics, Economy, Energy, Environment at 10:22 pm

Now that’s progress!

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade, U.S. Relations at 5:53 pm

This isn’t a surprise, given the rampant growth of the Chinese economy and stock market, but this article from Forbes is troubling.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy at 3:24 am

Is the Chinese stock market setting itself up for a huge crash? Business Week reports that many Chinese companies are padding their reported earnings with stock market gains. This is a very dangerous sign.

Some global funds are moving away from China and moving towards stocks in Europe.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 4:26 pm

The growth of the domestic auto market has been huge, but it’s still below expectations, hurting domestic manufacturers.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Uncategorized, Economy, Manufacturing at 3:57 pm

China was looking at U.S. banks even before the latest write-downs. Now that trend is accelerating.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 3:55 pm

It’s not nearly as high as the Chinese government wants it to be. The Chinese are naturally conservative with their spending habits, and that could hamper future growth.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Culture, Economy, Labor, Manufacturing at 10:32 pm

The Chinese stock market is going through a serious correction, and it’s dragging down U.S. stocks as well.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Monetary Policy, Trade, U.S. Relations at 6:04 pm

News Corp. not doing well in China:

Not sure if this was Murdoch trying to manage expectations but he was emphatic about the difficulties News Corp. faces in China, especially with MySpace. “We don’t do very well in China. … All I would say there is that nobody—and I challenge anyone to argue this—nobody, none of the American media companies or British media companies have made any impact there yet. … It is a vast market, but it is certainly a very, very sensitive one and as we have seen what happened to Google there and what happened to eBay there, it is very difficult, even to—to Yahoo, it is a very difficult market for outsiders.”

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Economy, Trade at 10:48 am