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

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According to Forbes Live Free or Die psp , the online community in China is exploding, growing to No. 2 30 Days of Night movies Trapped Ashes psp behind the United States.

A fast-expanding online population, estimated to hit 136 million by the end of 2006, has been the engine behind China’s explosive growth in the Internet industry despite the government’s water-tight control of the content that can be made public online.

This growth in the nation’s Internet population–now the world’s second largest behind the U.S.–has driven a 47% surge in total online spending, to 276.8 billion yuan ($35.5 billion), according to a comprehensive annual survey released by the Beijing-based Internet Society of China, a national industry business association.

The Chinese economy

is still on fire.

Ahead of his trip to China, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave his first major speech in which he called for a reassessment of the US policy towards China.

Mr Paulson declared “the United States has a huge stake in a prosperous stable China – a China able and willing to play its part as a global economic leader.”

The US and China share huge areas of mutual economic interest, and highlighted energy and the environment as two specific issues where the two countries should work together.

“The biggest risk we face is not that China will overtake the US but that China will not move ahead with the reforms necessary to sustain its growth,” he said.

The speech implicitly downgrades the importance of the Chinese exchange rate as a stand-alone issue, setting it instead as part of a necessary shift towards more market-based economic management.

However, Mr Paulson warned Beijing “the level of anti-trade and anti-China sentiment in the US is also significant and growing.”

He told the Chinese authorities that they underestimated “at China’s own peril” the extent to which the currency issue was “viewed by their critics as a symbol of unfair competition.”

He called on China to press ahead with liberalisation across a broad front, including financial sector reform, fiscal and regulatory policies to reduce excess savings, currency liberalisation and enhanced protection for intellectual property rights.

We’ll see how the Chinese respond.

As the building boom heats up in cities like Shanghai, resentment is building against foreign influences over the new architecture:

Most of the area’s narrow rows of traditional shop-houses and dimly lit tea houses have been torn down to make room for luxurious glass-fronted malls. The few traditional structures that remain have been revamped to house avant-garde fashion boutiques, designer bistros, and chic martini bars.

The district’s new look is the work of Hong Kong developer Vincent Lo and American architect Ben Wood — a protégé of architect Benjamin Thompson, who revitalized Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Wood said he wanted to bequeath Shanghai “a great European-style public space where people could go enjoy themselves.”

But Xintiandi and other Western-designed projects in Shanghai are causing much resentment among some Chinese architects, who say new buildings in the booming city should be more reflective of China’s culture, history, and modern reality. The new glass and steel towers rising over the city, they say, are alienating local people and turning this historic city into a soulless shell.

Some Chinese architects say they are so upset with the post-modern skyline framing Chinese cities that they have launched a “New Culture Movement” that rallies around the slogan, “Chinese houses created by Chinese.”

“A building is an integral part of cultural origin [and] to show our due respect and passion for Chinese culture, we are advocating designs that are in tune with our lifestyle and adaptable to China’s realities,” Chen Shimin, chief executive of the China Real Estate Design League and an initiator of the movement, said at its launch this April.

As China continues to grow, expect more expressions of these sentiments.

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