Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Stupid Question
Stupid Question Dan was the doorman of a club in a big city. Everyday, thousands of people passed his door, and a lot of them stopped and asked him, "What's the time, please?" After a few months, Dan said to himself, "I'm not going to answer all those stupid people any more. I'm going to buy a big clock and put it upon the wall here." Then he did so. “Now people aren't going to stop and ask me the time," he thought happily. But after that, a lot of people stopped, looked at the clock and then asked Dan, "Is that clock right?”
english joke
One girl went to the preacher and confessed her sin. Girl: Father, I have sinned. Preacher: What did you do, little girl¡ Girl: Yesterday, I called a man a son of a Bitch. Preacher: Why¡ What did he do to you¡ Girl: He touched my breast. Preacher: You mean like this¡ (The guy did it.) Girl: (A little shy from the touch) Yes. Preacher: Thats no reason to call him that. Girl: But he also took off my cloth. Preacher: You mean like this¡ (He did it again.) Girl: Yes, thats what he did. Preacher: Thats still no reason to call him that. Girl: And he put his you-know-what into my you-know-what... Preacher: (evil laugh...) You mean like this¡ (And you-know-what) Girl: (After a few minutes...) Ugh... Yeah, thats what he did... Preacher: My dear girl, thats still no reason to call him a... Girl: But he had AIDS!! Preacher: THAT SON OF A BITCH!!!
The motorbike accident
There's the sad story of the poor guy who was in a terrible motorcycle accident. When he came out from under the anesthetic, the doctor was leaning over him anxiously. "Son," he said, "I've got some good news and some bad news. "The bad news is that your were in a very serious accident, and I'm afraid we had to amputate both your feet just above the ankle." "Jesus," gasped the patient. "What's the good news?" "The fellow in the next bed over would like to buy your boots."
Travel Expenses
A businessman walked into a New York City bank and asked for the loan officer. He said he was going to Europe on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The loan officer said the bank would need some security for such a loan. The business man then handed over the keys to a Rolls Royce that was parked on the street in front of the bank. Everything checked out and the loan officer accepted the car as collateral for the loan. An employee then drove the Rolls into the bank's underground garage and parked it there. Two weeks later the businessman returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest which came to $15.41. The loan officer said, "We do appreciate your business and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a bit puzzled. While you were away we checked and found that you are a multimillionaire. What puzzles us is why you would bother to borrow $5,000?" The business man replied: "Where else in New York City can I park my car for 2 weeks for 15 bucks?"
Mutes
Joke:2 Mutes There were two deaf mutes standing on a street corner talking to each other in sign language. Mute #1 (SIGN) "What would you like to do?" Mute #2 (SIGN) "I don't know, what about you?" Mute #1 (SIGN) "Let's get my car, find some girls, drive to a dark space and have some fun." Mute #2 (SIGN)"Good idea." So they get his car, find some girls, drive to a dark spot and are having a ball when the guy in the back seat taps the guy in the front seat on the shoulder... Front Seat Mute (SIGN) "What?" Back Seat Mute (SIGN)"Have you got any protection?" Front Seat Mute (SIGN) "No. Don't you?" Back Seat Mute (SIGN) "No. We had better go to a drug store and get some." They proceeded to drive to a drug store and the man in the back seat gets out and goes inside. In two minutes he is back outside and taps on the car window. Inside Mute (SIGN) "What?" Outside Mute (SIGN) "I've got a problem." Inside Mute (SIGN) "What?" Outside Mute (SIGN)"I can't make the druggist understand what I want." Inside Mute (SIGN) "I know What to do." Outside Mute (SIGN) "What?" Inside Mute (SIGN) "Go back inside. Put five dollars on the counter. Put your pecker on the counter. He'll know what you want." Outside Mute (SIGN) "Good idea." The man goes back into the drug store and two minutes later he's back at the car window. Inside Mute (SIGN) "Well?" Outside Mute (SIGN) "It didn't work." Inside Mute (SIGN) "What do you mean?" Outside Mute (SIGN) "I did what you told me to do. I went inside. I put 5 dollars on the counter. I put my pecker on the counter. He put his on the counter. It was bigger than mine. He took my 5 dollars."
About Drivers
Joke:About Drivers What's the first thing that come to your mind when you see a Chinese man driving a BMW 3 series? * A pimp What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see a Malay man driving a BMW 3 series? * Ahmad What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see an Indian man driving a BMW 3 series? * A car jockey What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see a Bhai driving a BMW 3 series? * A car repossesor.
Bambi
Joke:Bambi George and Harriet were married twenty-five years. They decided to celebrate with a trip to Las Vegas. When they entered the hotel/casino and registered, a sweet young woman dressed in a very short skirt, became very friendly. George brushed her off rather rudely. Harriet objected, "George,she was nice, that young woman, and you were so rude." "Harriet, she's a prostitute." "I don't believe you. That sweet young thing?" "Let's go up to our room and I'll prove it." In their room, George called down to the desk and asked for Bambi to come to room 1217. "Now," he said, "you hide in the bathroom with the door open just enough to hear us, okay?" She did. Soon, there was a knock on the door.George opened it and Bambi walked in, swirling her hips provocatively. "So, I see you're interested after all," she said. George asked, "How much do you charge?" "$125 basic rate, $100 tips for special services." George was taken aback. "$125! I was thinking more in the range of $25." Bambi laughed derisively. "You must really be a hick if you think you can buy sex for that price." "Well," said George, "I guess we can't do business. Goodbye." After she left, Harriet came out of the bathroom. "I just can't believe it." George said, "Let's forget it. We'll go have a drink, then eat dinner." At the bar, as they sipped their cocktails, Bambi came up behind George pointed slyly at Harriet, and said, "See what you get for $25?"
Canada America
An American will say, "Hot day!" A Canadian will say, "Hot day, eh?" meaning "It's a hot day, isn't it?" This is something deeper than spelling or pronunciation. It goes to the heart of the less-assertive Canadian character. The United States was born when Americans revolted against King George III and asserted their independence. Canada never came to a similar point of self-assertion and that little word "eh?" is their refusal even to assert that it's a hot day without inviting somebody else to verify it. One definition of a Candian is "a North American who refuses to join the revolution". Another way to tell the difference between a Canadian and an American is to invite the suspected Canuck to lunch and watch him eat. If he's really upper crust, he'll eat like an Englishman, with knife and fork held firmly in his right and left hands. He'll cut with his knife, pack the results on the back of his fork and convey the food to his mouth with the fork still in this left hand. Many an American eats with knife and fork, too, but in a different way. He takes the knife in his right hand and the fork in his left to cut up the food. Then he puts the knife down and takes the fork in the right hand to convey the food to his mouth. A common garden-variety Canadian does the job differently. He doesn't use his knife at all, except for particularly stubborn steaks and other such tough foods. Instead he takes the fork in his right hand and leaves the knife beside his plate. Then he cuts the food with the edge of the fork and feeds himself with the fork held in the same hand. But suppose all these tests are inconclusive. There's one more, rather dangerous, way to tell a Canadian from an American. Just remark to the suspect that Canadians and Americans are so much alike that it's hard to tell one from the other. If the person involved is an American, he'll probably agree. But if he's a Canadian he'll let you know, in no unterms, that you're wrong. And that stubborn sense of difference is one main reason why the two countries, despite similarities, remain separate. (I'm pretty sure I agree with the last statement, but I'm not too sure if I like being called a wimp that doesn't even dare to assert that it's a hot day. (Which it is today.) And I'm tremendously relieved to know that I'm upper crust when it comes to eating. -KO)
A cat’s dictionary
purring: Sound of a cat manufacturing cuteness. purrverse: poem about a strange kitty. purranoia: The fear that your cat is up to something. Human being: Automatic door opener for cats. purrpetual:Everlasting love for domesticated felines. purrson: A male kitty. purrpetual motion:A kitty playing.
Chewing Gums
Joke:Chewing Gums An American tourist in Bangkok went to a Thai Restaurant and ordered a steamed prawn as the main course. After finished, he called the Thai waiter. He asked the waiter "what do you do with the prawn shells?" The waiter answered, "we throw away!". The American proudly says, " in America, we send to factory. We make prawn crackers". Then he ordered some oranges.. After he finished eating the oranges, he asked the Thai waiter, "what do you do with the orange peels?". The waiter answered, "we throw away!". The American then said, " in America, we send to factory. We make marmalades". The Thai waiter just quiet. The American, took out the chewing gum, the wrapper says, " Made in Thailand". While chewing the gum, he called the waiter and asked him, " what do you do with the used chewing gum?" The waiter said, " we throw away!". The American said , " in America, we send to factory. We make condoms!!" The Thai waiter, fed up of the American, then asked him, " what do you do! with used condoms?" The American replied, "we throw away!!" The waiter then said, "in Thailand, we send to factory. We make chewing gum!!!!"
Why E-mail is like a penis...
Some folks have it, some don't. Those who have it would be devastated if it were ever cut off. Those who have it think that those who don't are somehow inferior. Those who don't have it may agree that it's neat, but think that it's not worth the fuss that those who have it make about it. Many of those who don't have it would like to try it. (e-mail envy) It can be up or down. It's more fun when it's up, but it makes it hard to get any real work done. In the long distant past, its only purpose was to transmit information vital to the species. Some people still think that's the only thing it should be used for, but most folks today use it just for fun most of the time. If you don't apply the appropriate measures, it can spread viruses. If you use it too much, you'll find it becomes more and more difficult to think coherently. We tend to attach an importance to it that is far greater than its actual size and influence warrants. If you're not careful what you do with it, it can get you into a lot of trouble! If you stay on it too long your hands cramp up. Wife gives you funny look when asked to kiss it. If caught using someone else's; you better have a good reason. Hard to sleep at night if it hasn't been checked in a while. Sometimes you dream your using it, then wake up and realize you did. The stuff you get from it is sometimes hard to swallow.
She choked
Joke:She choked A man was visiting his wife in hospital where she has been in a coma for several years. On this visit, he decides to rub her left breast instead of just talking to her. On doing this, she lets out a sigh. The man runs out and tells the doctor who says this is a good sign and suggests he should try rubbing her right breast to see if there is any reaction. The man goes in and rubs her right breast and this brings a moan from his suggests the man should go in and try oral sex, saying he will wait outside as it is a personal act and he doesn't want the man to be embarrassed. The man goes in then comes out about five minutes later, white as a sheet and tells the doctor his wife is dead. The doctor asks what happen to which the man replies: "She choked."
China beat Columbus to it, perhaps
China beat Columbus to it, perhaps
An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world
THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.
It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.
Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionise our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.
The map (shown above) will be unveiled in Beijing on January 16th and at the NationalMaritimeMuseum in Greenwich a day later. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world”. In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418 which showed the barbarians paying tribute to the Ming emperor, Zhu Di. The copyist distinguishes what he took from the original from what he added himself
The map was bought for about $500 from a small Shanghai dealer in 2001 by Liu Gang, one of the most eminent commercial lawyers in China, who collects maps and paintings. Mr Liu says he knew it was significant, but thought it might be a modern fake. He showed his acquisition to five experienced collectors, who agreed that the traces of vermin on the bamboo paper it is written on, and the depigmentation of ink and colours, indicated that the map was more than 100 years old.
Mr Liu was unsure of its meaning, and asked specialists in ancient Chinese history for their advice, but none, he says, was forthcoming. Then, last autumn, he read “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies, in which the author makes the controversial claim that Zheng He circumnavigated the world, discovering America on the way. Mr Menzies, who is a former submariner in the Royal Navy and a merchant banker, is an amateur historian and his theory met with little approval from professionals. But it struck a chord: his book became a bestseller and his 1421 website is very popular. In any event, his arguments convinced Mr Liu that his map was a relic of Zheng He's earlier voyages.
The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).
The commentary on the map, which seems to have been drawn from the original, is written in clear Chinese characters which can still be easily read. Of the west coast of America, the map says: “The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists.” Of the Australians, it reports: “The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.”
But this remarkable precision, rather than the errors, is what critics of the Menzies theory are likely to use to question the authenticity of the 1418 map. Mr Menzies and his followers are naturally extremely keen to establish that the 1763 copy is not a forgery and that it faithfully represents the 1418 original. This would lend weighty support to their thesis: that China had indeed discovered America by (if not actually in) 1421. Mass spectrography analysis to date the copied map is under way at WaikatoUniversity in New Zealand, and the results will be announced in February. But even if affirmative, this analysis is of limited importance since it can do no more than date the copyist's paper and inks.
Five academic experts on ancient charts note that the 1418 map puts together information that was available piecemeal in China from earlier nautical maps, going back to the 13th century and Kublai Khan, who was no mean explorer himself. They believe it is authentic.
The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognises that the earth is round. “The Chinese were almost certainly aware of longitude before Zheng He set sail,” says Robert Cribbs of CaliforniaStateUniversity. They certainly assumed the world was round. “The format of the map is totally consistent with the level of knowledge that we should expect of royal Chinese geographers following the voyages of Zheng He,” says Mr Thompson.
Moreover, some of the errors in the 1418 map soon turned up in European maps, the most striking being California drawn as an island. The Portuguese are aware of a world map drawn before 1420 by a cartographer named Albertin di Virga, which showed Africa and the Americas. Since no Portuguese seamen had yet discovered those places, the most obvious source for the information seems to be European copies of Chinese maps.
But this is certainly not a unanimous view among the experts, with many of the fiercest critics in China itself. Wang Tai-Peng, a scholarly journalist in Vancouver who does not doubt that the Chinese explored the world early in the 15th century (he has written about a visit by Chinese ambassadors to Florence in 1433), doubts whether Zheng He's ships landed in North America. Mr Wang also claims that Zheng He's navigation maps were drawn in a totally different Chinese map-making tradition. “Until the 1418 map is scientifically authenticated, we still have to take it with a grain of salt,” he says.
Most forgeries are driven by a commercial imperative, especially when the market for ancient maps is booming, as it is now. The Library of Congress recently paid $10m for a copy of a 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer. But Mr Liu says he is not a seller: “The map is part of my life,” he claims.
The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.
An ancient map that strongly suggests Chinese seamen were first round the world
THE brave seamen whose great voyages of exploration opened up the world are iconic figures in European history. Columbus found the New World in 1492; Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; and Magellan set off to circumnavigate the world in 1519. However, there is one difficulty with this confident assertion of European mastery: it may not be true.
It seems more likely that the world and all its continents were discovered by a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435. His exploits, which are well documented in Chinese historical records, were written about in a book which appeared in China around 1418 called “The Marvellous Visions of the Star Raft”.
Next week, in Beijing and London, fresh and dramatic evidence is to be revealed to bolster Zheng He's case. It is a copy, made in 1763, of a map, dated 1418, which contains notes that substantially match the descriptions in the book. “It will revolutionise our thinking about 15th-century world history,” says Gunnar Thompson, a student of ancient maps and early explorers.
The map (shown above) will be unveiled in Beijing on January 16th and at the NationalMaritimeMuseum in Greenwich a day later. Six Chinese characters in the upper right-hand corner of the map say this is a “general chart of the integrated world”. In the lower left-hand corner is a note that says the chart was drawn by Mo Yi Tong, imitating a world chart made in 1418 which showed the barbarians paying tribute to the Ming emperor, Zhu Di. The copyist distinguishes what he took from the original from what he added himself
The map was bought for about $500 from a small Shanghai dealer in 2001 by Liu Gang, one of the most eminent commercial lawyers in China, who collects maps and paintings. Mr Liu says he knew it was significant, but thought it might be a modern fake. He showed his acquisition to five experienced collectors, who agreed that the traces of vermin on the bamboo paper it is written on, and the depigmentation of ink and colours, indicated that the map was more than 100 years old.
Mr Liu was unsure of its meaning, and asked specialists in ancient Chinese history for their advice, but none, he says, was forthcoming. Then, last autumn, he read “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, a book written in 2003 by Gavin Menzies, in which the author makes the controversial claim that Zheng He circumnavigated the world, discovering America on the way. Mr Menzies, who is a former submariner in the Royal Navy and a merchant banker, is an amateur historian and his theory met with little approval from professionals. But it struck a chord: his book became a bestseller and his 1421 website is very popular. In any event, his arguments convinced Mr Liu that his map was a relic of Zheng He's earlier voyages.
The detail on the copy of the map is remarkable. The outlines of Africa, Europe and the Americas are instantly recognisable. It shows the Nile with two sources. The north-west passage appears to be free of ice. But the inaccuracies, also, are glaring. California is shown as an island; the British Isles do not appear at all. The distance from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean is ten times greater than it ought to be. Australia is in the wrong place (though cartographers no longer doubt that Australia and New Zealand were discovered by Chinese seamen centuries before Captain Cook arrived on the scene).
The commentary on the map, which seems to have been drawn from the original, is written in clear Chinese characters which can still be easily read. Of the west coast of America, the map says: “The skin of the race in this area is black-red, and feathers are wrapped around their heads and waists.” Of the Australians, it reports: “The skin of the aborigine is also black. All of them are naked and wearing bone articles around their waists.”
But this remarkable precision, rather than the errors, is what critics of the Menzies theory are likely to use to question the authenticity of the 1418 map. Mr Menzies and his followers are naturally extremely keen to establish that the 1763 copy is not a forgery and that it faithfully represents the 1418 original. This would lend weighty support to their thesis: that China had indeed discovered America by (if not actually in) 1421. Mass spectrography analysis to date the copied map is under way at WaikatoUniversity in New Zealand, and the results will be announced in February. But even if affirmative, this analysis is of limited importance since it can do no more than date the copyist's paper and inks.
Five academic experts on ancient charts note that the 1418 map puts together information that was available piecemeal in China from earlier nautical maps, going back to the 13th century and Kublai Khan, who was no mean explorer himself. They believe it is authentic.
The map makes good estimates of the latitude and longitude of much of the world, and recognises that the earth is round. “The Chinese were almost certainly aware of longitude before Zheng He set sail,” says Robert Cribbs of CaliforniaStateUniversity. They certainly assumed the world was round. “The format of the map is totally consistent with the level of knowledge that we should expect of royal Chinese geographers following the voyages of Zheng He,” says Mr Thompson.
Moreover, some of the errors in the 1418 map soon turned up in European maps, the most striking being California drawn as an island. The Portuguese are aware of a world map drawn before 1420 by a cartographer named Albertin di Virga, which showed Africa and the Americas. Since no Portuguese seamen had yet discovered those places, the most obvious source for the information seems to be European copies of Chinese maps.
But this is certainly not a unanimous view among the experts, with many of the fiercest critics in China itself. Wang Tai-Peng, a scholarly journalist in Vancouver who does not doubt that the Chinese explored the world early in the 15th century (he has written about a visit by Chinese ambassadors to Florence in 1433), doubts whether Zheng He's ships landed in North America. Mr Wang also claims that Zheng He's navigation maps were drawn in a totally different Chinese map-making tradition. “Until the 1418 map is scientifically authenticated, we still have to take it with a grain of salt,” he says.
Most forgeries are driven by a commercial imperative, especially when the market for ancient maps is booming, as it is now. The Library of Congress recently paid $10m for a copy of a 1507 world map by Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer. But Mr Liu says he is not a seller: “The map is part of my life,” he claims.
The consequences of the discovery of this map could be considerable. If it does indeed prove to be the first map of the world, “the history of New World discovery will have to be rewritten,” claims Mr Menzies. How much does this matter? Showing that the world was first explored by Chinese rather than European seamen would be a major piece of historical revisionism. But there is more to history than that. It is no less interesting that the Chinese, having discovered the extent of the world, did not exploit it, politically or commercially. After all, Columbus's discovery of America led to exploitation and then development by Europeans which, 500 years later, made the United States more powerful than China had ever been.
he language business in China： English beginning to be spoken here
he language business in China： English beginning to be spoken here
The market for English-language education in China is huge. The profits are not
“MY MOTHER used to be an engineer, but now she's a housewife. I don't like her job. I want to be a designer. I like to think up new ideas.” Not the words of a young British or American child, but a nineyear- old Chinese girl in Shenzhen city, southern China. And Shun Yushun is no prodigy. She is typical of her English First school, one of 68 on the mainland started by a Swedish-owned language-teaching chain.
Yushun belongs to a new generation in a country where older folks, deprived of education during the Cultural Revolution, speak almost no English at all. Even young adults struggle, having passed through an archaic school system that still insists on the brute memorisation of words and grammar. Zhang Jin, a 24-year-old from remote Guizhou province, studied English from the age of 12 and then for four years at HuananUniversity. But she has trouble putting a sentence together.
Today the Chinese are obsessed with English. Anything up to a fifth of the population is learning the language. As Gordon Brown, the British finance minister, observed on a trip to China last year, in two decades China's English speakers will already outnumber native English speakers in the rest of the world. This is fuelling a market that comprises everything from books, teaching materials and tests to teacher training and language schools themselves. At $60 billion a year, China is already the world's largest market for English-language services, estimates Mari Pearlman at ETS, an American group that developed TOEFL, a well-known test of English-language proficiency.
The bulk of this, she says, is spent on teaching materials: dictionaries, language textbooks and classroom aids. Most of these are supplied by the education arms of foreign companies in partnership with local firms. Macmillan has sold more than 100m school textbooks in China with its partner FLTRP, which has a fifth of the market and is the leading Chinese publisher of English-language books. Longman (which belongs to Pearson, part-owner of The Economist), Oxford University Press and HarperCollins have popular bilingual dictionaries, while Thomson Learning has licensed its teaching materials to People's Education Press.
Never too young to learn
Demand for textbooks has been boosted by the government's recent lowering (from 12 to nine) of the age at which primary-school pupils start to learn English, and many eastern cities have begun teaching it at six. On some estimates, English texts now account for up to one-fifth of the country's entire book sales. Though foreign publishers must license books to Chinese publishers, almost half the English-teaching market involves the purchase of foreign copyright.
There is also an increasing call for high-tech teaching. At its kindergartens, Beijing's municipal government has just started testing interactive whiteboards made by a British firm, Promethean. At 33,000 yuan ($4,125) a go, they enable teachers to integrate traditional materials with movie clips, radio broadcasts and other internet content. Nicole de Lalouvière, the director of learning at the British Council in Beijing, claims its website, managed with a Chinese partner and offering free tests, vocabulary and business English, has become “the biggest online university in the world”, with 2m students
Testing is also growing fast, as students with overseas ambitions practise for international college-entrance exams, and Chinese employers seek proof of English ability. Once again, foreigners are in pole position, though the two main suppliers, ETS and a venture between the British Council and Cambridge Assessment, are run as not-for-profit organisations. Teacher training promises to become another big market, given the shortage of half a million English teachers in state schools and Beijing's push to improve English ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
Finally, there are the private language schools themselves—some 50,000 of them, reckons Ms Pearlman, from family-run outfits to chains such as English First, Wall Street English and New Oriental, a Chinese operator that claims to be the biggest, with 2.5m enrolled students. While such schools were established for adults, the demand today is from parents willing to spend up to half their household income to boost their offspring's chances. The 550 students at English First's Shenzhen school used mostly to be adults; now more than 70% are children. And they are getting younger. The rage at kindergarten these days is English-speaking classes for four-year-olds.
Adults and college students, meanwhile, can choose from the many business-English classes at foreign colleges, such as the universities of Illinois, Maryland and Nottingham, which are establishing MBA courses and even entire campuses in China to tap into the huge numbers of potential students.
Yet not all this readily translates into profit. Education remains highly regulated. It is no accident that the state propaganda department controls the ministry of education, which only recently allowed (heavily edited) English textbooks from foreign publishers into the state system. Foreigners still cannot publish in China, receiving only royalties on their content. Their partners (such as FLTRP) use their materials to do a roaring business training teachers and running conferences. Though selling books to private language-schools can be more lucrative, these schools are also shackled. Foreign chains need a Chinese partner and must have their teaching materials approved. The difficulties and costs prompted English First to franchise all but four of its 68 schools: after a decade in China it has yet to recoup its investment.
The Chinese government is not entirely comfortable with western teaching methods. China has no government drive to welcome native English speakers, unlike Japan, where the ministry of education runs the 19-year-old JET programme, which puts thousands of foreign teachers to work in state schools. Indeed, until a few years ago, private language schools in China could be fined for hiring foreign English teachers.
Although China's passion for English is palpable, it will become a lucrative and open market only if China's Communist Party allows it to. It is reluctant because, along with English textbooks and teachers come western ways of learning and thinking—ways that might one day threaten the party's authority.
The market for English-language education in China is huge. The profits are not
“MY MOTHER used to be an engineer, but now she's a housewife. I don't like her job. I want to be a designer. I like to think up new ideas.” Not the words of a young British or American child, but a nineyear- old Chinese girl in Shenzhen city, southern China. And Shun Yushun is no prodigy. She is typical of her English First school, one of 68 on the mainland started by a Swedish-owned language-teaching chain.
Yushun belongs to a new generation in a country where older folks, deprived of education during the Cultural Revolution, speak almost no English at all. Even young adults struggle, having passed through an archaic school system that still insists on the brute memorisation of words and grammar. Zhang Jin, a 24-year-old from remote Guizhou province, studied English from the age of 12 and then for four years at HuananUniversity. But she has trouble putting a sentence together.
Today the Chinese are obsessed with English. Anything up to a fifth of the population is learning the language. As Gordon Brown, the British finance minister, observed on a trip to China last year, in two decades China's English speakers will already outnumber native English speakers in the rest of the world. This is fuelling a market that comprises everything from books, teaching materials and tests to teacher training and language schools themselves. At $60 billion a year, China is already the world's largest market for English-language services, estimates Mari Pearlman at ETS, an American group that developed TOEFL, a well-known test of English-language proficiency.
The bulk of this, she says, is spent on teaching materials: dictionaries, language textbooks and classroom aids. Most of these are supplied by the education arms of foreign companies in partnership with local firms. Macmillan has sold more than 100m school textbooks in China with its partner FLTRP, which has a fifth of the market and is the leading Chinese publisher of English-language books. Longman (which belongs to Pearson, part-owner of The Economist), Oxford University Press and HarperCollins have popular bilingual dictionaries, while Thomson Learning has licensed its teaching materials to People's Education Press.
Never too young to learn
Demand for textbooks has been boosted by the government's recent lowering (from 12 to nine) of the age at which primary-school pupils start to learn English, and many eastern cities have begun teaching it at six. On some estimates, English texts now account for up to one-fifth of the country's entire book sales. Though foreign publishers must license books to Chinese publishers, almost half the English-teaching market involves the purchase of foreign copyright.
There is also an increasing call for high-tech teaching. At its kindergartens, Beijing's municipal government has just started testing interactive whiteboards made by a British firm, Promethean. At 33,000 yuan ($4,125) a go, they enable teachers to integrate traditional materials with movie clips, radio broadcasts and other internet content. Nicole de Lalouvière, the director of learning at the British Council in Beijing, claims its website, managed with a Chinese partner and offering free tests, vocabulary and business English, has become “the biggest online university in the world”, with 2m students
Testing is also growing fast, as students with overseas ambitions practise for international college-entrance exams, and Chinese employers seek proof of English ability. Once again, foreigners are in pole position, though the two main suppliers, ETS and a venture between the British Council and Cambridge Assessment, are run as not-for-profit organisations. Teacher training promises to become another big market, given the shortage of half a million English teachers in state schools and Beijing's push to improve English ahead of the 2008 Olympics.
Finally, there are the private language schools themselves—some 50,000 of them, reckons Ms Pearlman, from family-run outfits to chains such as English First, Wall Street English and New Oriental, a Chinese operator that claims to be the biggest, with 2.5m enrolled students. While such schools were established for adults, the demand today is from parents willing to spend up to half their household income to boost their offspring's chances. The 550 students at English First's Shenzhen school used mostly to be adults; now more than 70% are children. And they are getting younger. The rage at kindergarten these days is English-speaking classes for four-year-olds.
Adults and college students, meanwhile, can choose from the many business-English classes at foreign colleges, such as the universities of Illinois, Maryland and Nottingham, which are establishing MBA courses and even entire campuses in China to tap into the huge numbers of potential students.
Yet not all this readily translates into profit. Education remains highly regulated. It is no accident that the state propaganda department controls the ministry of education, which only recently allowed (heavily edited) English textbooks from foreign publishers into the state system. Foreigners still cannot publish in China, receiving only royalties on their content. Their partners (such as FLTRP) use their materials to do a roaring business training teachers and running conferences. Though selling books to private language-schools can be more lucrative, these schools are also shackled. Foreign chains need a Chinese partner and must have their teaching materials approved. The difficulties and costs prompted English First to franchise all but four of its 68 schools: after a decade in China it has yet to recoup its investment.
The Chinese government is not entirely comfortable with western teaching methods. China has no government drive to welcome native English speakers, unlike Japan, where the ministry of education runs the 19-year-old JET programme, which puts thousands of foreign teachers to work in state schools. Indeed, until a few years ago, private language schools in China could be fined for hiring foreign English teachers.
Although China's passion for English is palpable, it will become a lucrative and open market only if China's Communist Party allows it to. It is reluctant because, along with English textbooks and teachers come western ways of learning and thinking—ways that might one day threaten the party's authority.
Building the nation：China's next building site
Building the nation：China's next building site
Planning a rival for Shenzhen and Shanghai
ITS economy shows few signs of needing one, but China is revving up what officials call a “new engine of growth” to supplement the dynamos of Shanghai and Shenzhen, the two port cities at the forefront of the country's economic transformation. A strip of industrial sprawl and barren semi-wasteland that stretches for 150km (90 miles) along the northern coast is being turned into a development zone far bigger than either Shanghai's or Shenzhen's. And its planners have been given the central government's blessing to experiment with a wide range of economic and bureaucratic reforms.
The government has high hopes for this venture. The Binhai New Area, as the zone is called, is intended to help a swathe of northern China, including the capital, Beijing, and the provinces around the Bohai gulf, enjoy the same kind of economic boom generated by Shenzhen in the Pearl River delta and by Shanghai in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. With the help of tax incentives and (for now) far cheaper land than either Shanghai or Shenzhen, officials hope to make the zone a manufacturing powerhouse for everything from aircraft and cars to microchips and chemicals.
They want Tianjin city to regain its pre-Communist era status as north China's financial capital. Binhai's port, already north China's largest, is due to double its container-handling capacity by 2010. The zone has also allocated an expanse of coast for recreation: an old Soviet aircraft carrier is moored in one desolate spot as the centrepiece of what is intended to become a military theme park. It offers fashion shows in its cavernous hangar bay.
The green light for Binhai has been a long time coming. Tianjin's leaders established the zone in 1994, but it was not until last year that the central government gave a clear signal that it regarded this as a project of national importance, not just a local venture. In March the development of Binhai was listed as one of the country's goals in a five-year economic plan adopted by China's legislature. On June 6th a central government document declared Binhai to be an “experimental zone for comprehensive reform”. Hitherto only Pudong New Area, Shanghai's flagship development zone, had enjoyed this title, which it acquired last year.
Binhai has emerged as the development zone darling of China's president, Hu Jintao, and its prime minister, Wen Jiabao (himself a native of Tianjin), just as Shenzhen was to the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and Pudong was to Mr Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Shenzhen, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, and Shanghai, with its pre-Communist history of capitalist flair, were obvious places to set up zones offering privileged terms to foreign investors. In the north, more deeply imbued with old-style Communist thinking and riven by rivalries (not least between Tianjin and neighbouring Beijing), choosing a place to act as economic trend-setter and investment hub proved more difficult. Lobbying by Tianjin's mayor, Dai Xianglong, a former chief of the central bank who took up the city post in 2002, clearly helped.
The prominence recently given to Binhai suggests that for all the leadership's rhetoric about pushing more investment towards less developed regions in the centre, west and north-east of the country, the coast is still seen as the best bet for sucking in money. By naming Binhai as a testing ground for reform, the leadership is also sending a signal that it is not fazed by recent public criticism of some aspects of economic change, including the inroads made by foreign investors. Binhai hopes another $20 billion of foreign capital will be invested in the zone by 2010, compared with $15.9 billion between 1994 and the end of last year (most of it in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, a long-established foreign investment enclave within Binhai where the likes of Motorola, Toyota and Samsung have large factories). And despite worries about overheating, Binhai is aiming for average annual GDP growth of 17% for the next five years. In the same period, it will spend $15 billion on infrastructure.
Binhai is still working out the details of its “comprehensive reform” package. Pi Qiansheng, a deputy Communist Party chief of Tianjin and Binhai's ebullient boss, says the central government is likely to approve them next month. Political reform is not high on the agenda, apart from efforts to streamline bureaucracy. Chinese leaders have been wary of calls by some academics for Shenzhen, 1,900km (1,200 miles) to the south, to be given greater freedom to conduct experiments with democracy. Binhai, much closer to Beijing, is hardly likely to be a trailblazer.
Binhai officials prefer to talk about reforms in the financial sector (more freedom for venture capitalists and private investment in banking) and what
they call “land administration”. This is a euphemism for one of the most hotly debated issues of China's current economic reforms, namely whether, and how, to turn rural land into a marketable commodity. Remarkably for such a senior party official, Mr Pi says that “privatisation of land is a possibility”, although he suggests that this is not about to happen soon. Xiao Jincheng, a government researcher in Beijing, says Binhai is considering a different approach from that of Pudong and Shenzhen, where the government simply appropriated land from peasants with little compensation. Binhai's innovation could be to allow peasants to sell land-use rights and profit from the proceeds.
Market-oriented reforms will be less apparent in the supply of water. Tianjin, like much of northern China, has an acute shortage of it. Binhai will depend on water diverted from the YangtzeRiver basin, a massively expensive project, as well as desalinated seawater, which is also costly. The government, rather than industry, is likely to bear most of the burden.
Planning a rival for Shenzhen and Shanghai
ITS economy shows few signs of needing one, but China is revving up what officials call a “new engine of growth” to supplement the dynamos of Shanghai and Shenzhen, the two port cities at the forefront of the country's economic transformation. A strip of industrial sprawl and barren semi-wasteland that stretches for 150km (90 miles) along the northern coast is being turned into a development zone far bigger than either Shanghai's or Shenzhen's. And its planners have been given the central government's blessing to experiment with a wide range of economic and bureaucratic reforms.
The government has high hopes for this venture. The Binhai New Area, as the zone is called, is intended to help a swathe of northern China, including the capital, Beijing, and the provinces around the Bohai gulf, enjoy the same kind of economic boom generated by Shenzhen in the Pearl River delta and by Shanghai in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. With the help of tax incentives and (for now) far cheaper land than either Shanghai or Shenzhen, officials hope to make the zone a manufacturing powerhouse for everything from aircraft and cars to microchips and chemicals.
They want Tianjin city to regain its pre-Communist era status as north China's financial capital. Binhai's port, already north China's largest, is due to double its container-handling capacity by 2010. The zone has also allocated an expanse of coast for recreation: an old Soviet aircraft carrier is moored in one desolate spot as the centrepiece of what is intended to become a military theme park. It offers fashion shows in its cavernous hangar bay.
The green light for Binhai has been a long time coming. Tianjin's leaders established the zone in 1994, but it was not until last year that the central government gave a clear signal that it regarded this as a project of national importance, not just a local venture. In March the development of Binhai was listed as one of the country's goals in a five-year economic plan adopted by China's legislature. On June 6th a central government document declared Binhai to be an “experimental zone for comprehensive reform”. Hitherto only Pudong New Area, Shanghai's flagship development zone, had enjoyed this title, which it acquired last year.
Binhai has emerged as the development zone darling of China's president, Hu Jintao, and its prime minister, Wen Jiabao (himself a native of Tianjin), just as Shenzhen was to the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and Pudong was to Mr Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Shenzhen, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, and Shanghai, with its pre-Communist history of capitalist flair, were obvious places to set up zones offering privileged terms to foreign investors. In the north, more deeply imbued with old-style Communist thinking and riven by rivalries (not least between Tianjin and neighbouring Beijing), choosing a place to act as economic trend-setter and investment hub proved more difficult. Lobbying by Tianjin's mayor, Dai Xianglong, a former chief of the central bank who took up the city post in 2002, clearly helped.
The prominence recently given to Binhai suggests that for all the leadership's rhetoric about pushing more investment towards less developed regions in the centre, west and north-east of the country, the coast is still seen as the best bet for sucking in money. By naming Binhai as a testing ground for reform, the leadership is also sending a signal that it is not fazed by recent public criticism of some aspects of economic change, including the inroads made by foreign investors. Binhai hopes another $20 billion of foreign capital will be invested in the zone by 2010, compared with $15.9 billion between 1994 and the end of last year (most of it in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area, a long-established foreign investment enclave within Binhai where the likes of Motorola, Toyota and Samsung have large factories). And despite worries about overheating, Binhai is aiming for average annual GDP growth of 17% for the next five years. In the same period, it will spend $15 billion on infrastructure.
Binhai is still working out the details of its “comprehensive reform” package. Pi Qiansheng, a deputy Communist Party chief of Tianjin and Binhai's ebullient boss, says the central government is likely to approve them next month. Political reform is not high on the agenda, apart from efforts to streamline bureaucracy. Chinese leaders have been wary of calls by some academics for Shenzhen, 1,900km (1,200 miles) to the south, to be given greater freedom to conduct experiments with democracy. Binhai, much closer to Beijing, is hardly likely to be a trailblazer.
Binhai officials prefer to talk about reforms in the financial sector (more freedom for venture capitalists and private investment in banking) and what
they call “land administration”. This is a euphemism for one of the most hotly debated issues of China's current economic reforms, namely whether, and how, to turn rural land into a marketable commodity. Remarkably for such a senior party official, Mr Pi says that “privatisation of land is a possibility”, although he suggests that this is not about to happen soon. Xiao Jincheng, a government researcher in Beijing, says Binhai is considering a different approach from that of Pudong and Shenzhen, where the government simply appropriated land from peasants with little compensation. Binhai's innovation could be to allow peasants to sell land-use rights and profit from the proceeds.
Market-oriented reforms will be less apparent in the supply of water. Tianjin, like much of northern China, has an acute shortage of it. Binhai will depend on water diverted from the YangtzeRiver basin, a massively expensive project, as well as desalinated seawater, which is also costly. The government, rather than industry, is likely to bear most of the burden.
How to make China even richer
IN 1940, nine years before his Communist Party seized power, Mao Zedong set out his plans for a “new China”. The republic would, he said, “take certain necessary steps” to confiscate land from rural landlords. Under the principle of “land to the tiller”, it would then “turn the land over to the private ownership of the peasants.” If only things had turned out this way.
The “necessary steps” involved widespread slaughter. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of landowning rural residents and their families were executed or beaten to death by fellow villagers. The peasants got their small parcels of land, but not for long. By the late 1950s, private land ownership had been eliminated and peasants had become property-less members of “People's Communes”. It was an upheaval that, along with bad weather and a frenzied attempt to catch up with American levels of industrial production, contributed to millions more deaths in a nationwide famine.
As our survey describes, China has yet to undo the damage. A few years after Mao's death in 1976, the People's Communes were dismantled. Under Deng Xiaoping, agricultural production soared as for the first time in 30 years peasants were allocated (but not given full ownership of) plots of land to farm independently. This marked the start of the economic transformation that today holds the world spellbound. But it is the prosperity of urban China that mesmerises foreign businesses. Since its boom in the early 1980s, the countryside has lagged ever further behind.
This time, a genuine great leap forward
Deng kept in place two pillars of the Maoist rural order: collective land ownership and an apartheid system that barred rural residents from moving to the cities. The latter has begun to erode, due to the need for cheap labour to sustain a manufacturing boom. But the former remains firmly in place.
Now is the time to revive Mao's vision of a new landowning order. This would ease rural strife, fuel growth and help develop the genuine market economy the leadership claims to want. Giving peasants marketable ownership rights, and developing a legal system to protect them, would bring huge economic benefits. If peasants could mortgage their land, they could raise money to boost its productivity. Ownership would give them an incentive to do so. And if peasants could sell their land, they could acquire sufficient capital to start life anew in urban areas. This would boost urban consumption and encourage the migration of unproductive rural labour into the cities. For China to sustain its impressive growth rate and reduce inequalities, getting the many tens of millions of underemployed peasants off the land and into wealth-creating jobs is essential. The exodus would help those left behind to expand their land holdings and use them more efficiently.
No government, least of all the control freaks who run China, would embark on such a momentous exercise lightly. Communist Party ideologues are all too aware that a failure to handle rural issues properly can be destabilising. They worry that allowing peasants to sell their land could restore a rural landowning class, and that peasants would sell up in huge numbers and descend upon ill-prepared cities, throwing up shanty towns and pushing up crime.
Some officials also see collective ownership of rural land as one of the few remaining badges of China's professed “socialism”, and fear the explosion of divisive political debate if this bit of constitutional dogma is changed. In China's case, however, it is the absence of reform that is proving destabilising, as peasants protest violently against land seizures by local governments keen to exploit the land themselves. Though materially better off than they were in 1949, many peasants say that local bureaucrats have in effect become the landlords, sometimes using mafia-type gangs to push them off their fields.
A few opponents of land reform in the countryside say they are acting in the rural population's own interests. They point to the lack of social-security provisions for peasants. Though peasants have limited control over the land they farm, in most cases it can at least help to feed them.
The weakness of this argument is that forced appropriations by local governments have already deprived as many as 40m peasants of some or all of their land since the early 1990s, with little or no compensation. Besides, the best way to secure the welfare of the peasants is not to keep them trapped on underworked land but to spend more directly on services for the poor. With strong revenue growth, a low budget deficit and a booming economy, China can afford this. Compensating peasants for appropriated land on the basis of market values, not just minimal agricultural ones, would help too. And introducing a value-based property tax would persuade local governments to worry less about losing the one-off revenues they now enjoy from the sale of land rights.
It would be disingenuous to deny that land reform will loosen party control in the long run. A decade ago almost all urban housing was owned by the state. In one of the most dramatically successful economic reforms of the past quarter century in China, most is now privately owned. This has fostered the growth of a middle class that wants guarantees that its new assets are safe from the party's whims. Property owners are electing their own landlord committees—independent of the party—to protect their rights. A new breed of lawyers, not party stooges as most once were, is emerging to defend those whose properties are threatened by the state. Property owners want a clean environment around their homes. Green activism, which hardly existed in China a decade ago, is spurring the development of a civil society.
Even so, China's Communist Party has shown that it will take big risks if economic development demands them. Hence the widespread closure and privatization of state-owned enterprises in the past decade, with the loss of millions of jobs. The leadership knows that China's history has been one of recurring bloody upheavals by landless peasants; it is caught between wanting to retain control and wanting to avoid another upheaval. This is the moment to complete the unfinished business of rural reform.
The “necessary steps” involved widespread slaughter. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of landowning rural residents and their families were executed or beaten to death by fellow villagers. The peasants got their small parcels of land, but not for long. By the late 1950s, private land ownership had been eliminated and peasants had become property-less members of “People's Communes”. It was an upheaval that, along with bad weather and a frenzied attempt to catch up with American levels of industrial production, contributed to millions more deaths in a nationwide famine.
As our survey describes, China has yet to undo the damage. A few years after Mao's death in 1976, the People's Communes were dismantled. Under Deng Xiaoping, agricultural production soared as for the first time in 30 years peasants were allocated (but not given full ownership of) plots of land to farm independently. This marked the start of the economic transformation that today holds the world spellbound. But it is the prosperity of urban China that mesmerises foreign businesses. Since its boom in the early 1980s, the countryside has lagged ever further behind.
This time, a genuine great leap forward
Deng kept in place two pillars of the Maoist rural order: collective land ownership and an apartheid system that barred rural residents from moving to the cities. The latter has begun to erode, due to the need for cheap labour to sustain a manufacturing boom. But the former remains firmly in place.
Now is the time to revive Mao's vision of a new landowning order. This would ease rural strife, fuel growth and help develop the genuine market economy the leadership claims to want. Giving peasants marketable ownership rights, and developing a legal system to protect them, would bring huge economic benefits. If peasants could mortgage their land, they could raise money to boost its productivity. Ownership would give them an incentive to do so. And if peasants could sell their land, they could acquire sufficient capital to start life anew in urban areas. This would boost urban consumption and encourage the migration of unproductive rural labour into the cities. For China to sustain its impressive growth rate and reduce inequalities, getting the many tens of millions of underemployed peasants off the land and into wealth-creating jobs is essential. The exodus would help those left behind to expand their land holdings and use them more efficiently.
No government, least of all the control freaks who run China, would embark on such a momentous exercise lightly. Communist Party ideologues are all too aware that a failure to handle rural issues properly can be destabilising. They worry that allowing peasants to sell their land could restore a rural landowning class, and that peasants would sell up in huge numbers and descend upon ill-prepared cities, throwing up shanty towns and pushing up crime.
Some officials also see collective ownership of rural land as one of the few remaining badges of China's professed “socialism”, and fear the explosion of divisive political debate if this bit of constitutional dogma is changed. In China's case, however, it is the absence of reform that is proving destabilising, as peasants protest violently against land seizures by local governments keen to exploit the land themselves. Though materially better off than they were in 1949, many peasants say that local bureaucrats have in effect become the landlords, sometimes using mafia-type gangs to push them off their fields.
A few opponents of land reform in the countryside say they are acting in the rural population's own interests. They point to the lack of social-security provisions for peasants. Though peasants have limited control over the land they farm, in most cases it can at least help to feed them.
The weakness of this argument is that forced appropriations by local governments have already deprived as many as 40m peasants of some or all of their land since the early 1990s, with little or no compensation. Besides, the best way to secure the welfare of the peasants is not to keep them trapped on underworked land but to spend more directly on services for the poor. With strong revenue growth, a low budget deficit and a booming economy, China can afford this. Compensating peasants for appropriated land on the basis of market values, not just minimal agricultural ones, would help too. And introducing a value-based property tax would persuade local governments to worry less about losing the one-off revenues they now enjoy from the sale of land rights.
It would be disingenuous to deny that land reform will loosen party control in the long run. A decade ago almost all urban housing was owned by the state. In one of the most dramatically successful economic reforms of the past quarter century in China, most is now privately owned. This has fostered the growth of a middle class that wants guarantees that its new assets are safe from the party's whims. Property owners are electing their own landlord committees—independent of the party—to protect their rights. A new breed of lawyers, not party stooges as most once were, is emerging to defend those whose properties are threatened by the state. Property owners want a clean environment around their homes. Green activism, which hardly existed in China a decade ago, is spurring the development of a civil society.
Even so, China's Communist Party has shown that it will take big risks if economic development demands them. Hence the widespread closure and privatization of state-owned enterprises in the past decade, with the loss of millions of jobs. The leadership knows that China's history has been one of recurring bloody upheavals by landless peasants; it is caught between wanting to retain control and wanting to avoid another upheaval. This is the moment to complete the unfinished business of rural reform.
China: Olympian efforts
With Turin 2006 well under way, Beijing 2008 is fast approaching
TENSE though China's 76 athletes at the winter Olympics may be as they put their training to the test, the pressure on another, larger Chinese team also present in Turin may be even greater. The organizing committee for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has sent 200 staff to Italy to see what lessons they may learn when their turn comes to stage a spectacular.
The people of Beijing rejoiced wildly when their city won its Olympic bid in 2001, deeming it a potent symbol of China's swelling importance. Eager to live up to expectations, the government is determined to make the event a huge success. Beijing is already well along in building its Olympic infrastructure, and no one seems to doubt that all 37 sport venues—14 of them brand new—will be ready on time, as will housing and support facilities. Less successful, though, have been Beijing's efforts to improve its air, long ranked among the urban world's dirtiest.
Upon winning the 2008 bid, Beijing vowed to boost the frequency of what it calls “blue sky” days. But this January saw only nine of them, less than half as many as last January. Car traffic and dusty building projects, Olympic and otherwise, are largely to blame, and the city now plans even sterner pollution controls.
The traffic also clogs the roads. But even if all the roads now under construction fail to relieve the congestion, the city's officials will not hesitate to restrict non-Olympic traffic. Such are the advantages of running an authoritarian state.
The most troublesome issues may concern people rather than objects. One campaign aims to improve the manners of Beijing's notoriously courtesy-free residents, so that hawking, spitting and queuejumping do not make a poor impression on outsiders. Chinese officials likewise risk looking bad if they fail to reform their own behaviour. Most of the 21,000 journalists set to cover the games will expect more openness than Chinese officialdom usually grants. Human-rights activists and other campaigners may well try to seize the Olympic spotlight. The police will have to handle any ensuing difficulties with restraint. Anything like their usual thuggish response will not go down well abroad.
The Chinese authorities understand these potential hazards, but foreigners working with the local organisers fear they may be unable to avoid them. The national games staged in Nanjing last October were widely seen as a test run for the Olympics, and the outcome was far from encouraging. Despite sterling new infrastructure and impressive pageantry, the event was marred by doping, match-fixing and disputes about referees' decisions.
All these would, of course, be dwarfed by a serious incident involving Taiwan. That is unlikely, but not impossible. Some pundits fear that the island might be tempted to use the approach to the Olympics as cover for steps toward independence, hoping China's fear of wrecking the games would mute its response. On this theory, the most ardent pro-independence forces in Taiwan might think it better to act than to wait: mainland military strength is growing steadily, and a future American administration might be less likely than the incumbent one to defend Taiwan. China certainly takes the idea seriously. A Chinese general, Peng Guangqian, said two years ago that Taiwan was mistaken if it thought China “might not raise a hand because of the Olympics.”
TENSE though China's 76 athletes at the winter Olympics may be as they put their training to the test, the pressure on another, larger Chinese team also present in Turin may be even greater. The organizing committee for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has sent 200 staff to Italy to see what lessons they may learn when their turn comes to stage a spectacular.
The people of Beijing rejoiced wildly when their city won its Olympic bid in 2001, deeming it a potent symbol of China's swelling importance. Eager to live up to expectations, the government is determined to make the event a huge success. Beijing is already well along in building its Olympic infrastructure, and no one seems to doubt that all 37 sport venues—14 of them brand new—will be ready on time, as will housing and support facilities. Less successful, though, have been Beijing's efforts to improve its air, long ranked among the urban world's dirtiest.
Upon winning the 2008 bid, Beijing vowed to boost the frequency of what it calls “blue sky” days. But this January saw only nine of them, less than half as many as last January. Car traffic and dusty building projects, Olympic and otherwise, are largely to blame, and the city now plans even sterner pollution controls.
The traffic also clogs the roads. But even if all the roads now under construction fail to relieve the congestion, the city's officials will not hesitate to restrict non-Olympic traffic. Such are the advantages of running an authoritarian state.
The most troublesome issues may concern people rather than objects. One campaign aims to improve the manners of Beijing's notoriously courtesy-free residents, so that hawking, spitting and queuejumping do not make a poor impression on outsiders. Chinese officials likewise risk looking bad if they fail to reform their own behaviour. Most of the 21,000 journalists set to cover the games will expect more openness than Chinese officialdom usually grants. Human-rights activists and other campaigners may well try to seize the Olympic spotlight. The police will have to handle any ensuing difficulties with restraint. Anything like their usual thuggish response will not go down well abroad.
The Chinese authorities understand these potential hazards, but foreigners working with the local organisers fear they may be unable to avoid them. The national games staged in Nanjing last October were widely seen as a test run for the Olympics, and the outcome was far from encouraging. Despite sterling new infrastructure and impressive pageantry, the event was marred by doping, match-fixing and disputes about referees' decisions.
All these would, of course, be dwarfed by a serious incident involving Taiwan. That is unlikely, but not impossible. Some pundits fear that the island might be tempted to use the approach to the Olympics as cover for steps toward independence, hoping China's fear of wrecking the games would mute its response. On this theory, the most ardent pro-independence forces in Taiwan might think it better to act than to wait: mainland military strength is growing steadily, and a future American administration might be less likely than the incumbent one to defend Taiwan. China certainly takes the idea seriously. A Chinese general, Peng Guangqian, said two years ago that Taiwan was mistaken if it thought China “might not raise a hand because of the Olympics.”
China: How the other 800m live
China's leaders are aware of the problem in its rural areas. They are terrified of the solution
A SPECTRE is haunting China—the spectre of rural unrest. The leaders of the Communist Party know it, and fear it as only the inheritors of a revolution born of rural desperation can. This week, as China's supreme legislative body (aka the rubberstamping National People's Congress) met for its annual tenday session, addressing the plight of the country poor was at the top of its agenda. But worrying about something and curing it are two very different things.
It is not just that China's farmers have missed out on the double-digit growth that has transformed urban China and turned its richest cities into some of the most dynamic in Asia. The real problem for the leadership is that, in some ways, the lot of the rural poor has got worse. The old communist system offered a life of terrible drabness, but at least it guaranteed certain basics, including free or nearly free health care and education. As China has become more of a market economy, those support systems have largely collapsed.
At the same time, many farmers have lost their livelihoods. The rapid growth of the cities has resulted in their land being seized for development with little or no compensation. Many of the most violent disturbances in recent months have come not from laid-off factory workers, as in the past, but fromfarmers protesting about these depredations. Communism may be nearly dead in all but name in China,but it survives in the form of one last taboo: the fact that the right of individuals to own agricultural land is tenuous at best. And the local governments that control most of that land do not administer it well. Perennially strapped for cash, because so much of it is consumed in the long bureaucratic trickle-down from the central government to the counties, they are more or less forced to squeeze farmers as hard as they can.
Beyond recognising the problem (China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, called it a “deep-seated conflict”that “cannot be ignored”), this week's congress approved a 15% increase in the money earmarked for agricultural development, rural services and the like. But even though the amount to be spent has now risen to 340 billion yuan ($42 billion), or 8.9% of the entire budget, China's vastness makes it trivial. Some 800m people still live in the countryside, so the new spending amounts to less than an additional $7 a year each.
What more could the central government do? Most obviously, it could introduce a proper system of land rights. If that remains an ideological bridge too far, for the time being at least, it could at least fund its provinces adequately, which would mean that the poorer, more rural ones could afford to treat farmers better. That would involve inter-province transfers at a much higher rate than now.
Finally, it could do a lot more to encourage efficient government by provincial and local governments. A big part of the problem is that these lower tiers of government are run incompetently. The reason is hardly a mystery. With a press that is muzzled (and, if anything, getting tamer, thanks to a media crackdown directed from the very top), officials are in no sense accountable to the people whose lives they control.
The remedy that dares not speak its name
How, though, to make officials accountable? China does hold some highly constrained elections for village councils. For many years, it has talked of extending the election system upwards to townships, to counties and perhaps higher. There have even been some electoral experiments at township level. For the present, however, the Communist Party, intent on retaining its monopoly of political power, will try to spend and manage its way out of trouble. History suggests that it will fail. The spectre in China's countryside will not be laid to rest until Chinese leaders accept the need for democracy.
A SPECTRE is haunting China—the spectre of rural unrest. The leaders of the Communist Party know it, and fear it as only the inheritors of a revolution born of rural desperation can. This week, as China's supreme legislative body (aka the rubberstamping National People's Congress) met for its annual tenday session, addressing the plight of the country poor was at the top of its agenda. But worrying about something and curing it are two very different things.
It is not just that China's farmers have missed out on the double-digit growth that has transformed urban China and turned its richest cities into some of the most dynamic in Asia. The real problem for the leadership is that, in some ways, the lot of the rural poor has got worse. The old communist system offered a life of terrible drabness, but at least it guaranteed certain basics, including free or nearly free health care and education. As China has become more of a market economy, those support systems have largely collapsed.
At the same time, many farmers have lost their livelihoods. The rapid growth of the cities has resulted in their land being seized for development with little or no compensation. Many of the most violent disturbances in recent months have come not from laid-off factory workers, as in the past, but fromfarmers protesting about these depredations. Communism may be nearly dead in all but name in China,but it survives in the form of one last taboo: the fact that the right of individuals to own agricultural land is tenuous at best. And the local governments that control most of that land do not administer it well. Perennially strapped for cash, because so much of it is consumed in the long bureaucratic trickle-down from the central government to the counties, they are more or less forced to squeeze farmers as hard as they can.
Beyond recognising the problem (China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, called it a “deep-seated conflict”that “cannot be ignored”), this week's congress approved a 15% increase in the money earmarked for agricultural development, rural services and the like. But even though the amount to be spent has now risen to 340 billion yuan ($42 billion), or 8.9% of the entire budget, China's vastness makes it trivial. Some 800m people still live in the countryside, so the new spending amounts to less than an additional $7 a year each.
What more could the central government do? Most obviously, it could introduce a proper system of land rights. If that remains an ideological bridge too far, for the time being at least, it could at least fund its provinces adequately, which would mean that the poorer, more rural ones could afford to treat farmers better. That would involve inter-province transfers at a much higher rate than now.
Finally, it could do a lot more to encourage efficient government by provincial and local governments. A big part of the problem is that these lower tiers of government are run incompetently. The reason is hardly a mystery. With a press that is muzzled (and, if anything, getting tamer, thanks to a media crackdown directed from the very top), officials are in no sense accountable to the people whose lives they control.
The remedy that dares not speak its name
How, though, to make officials accountable? China does hold some highly constrained elections for village councils. For many years, it has talked of extending the election system upwards to townships, to counties and perhaps higher. There have even been some electoral experiments at township level. For the present, however, the Communist Party, intent on retaining its monopoly of political power, will try to spend and manage its way out of trouble. History suggests that it will fail. The spectre in China's countryside will not be laid to rest until Chinese leaders accept the need for democracy.
China's Accession to WTO and Participation in Economic Globalization
----Speech at the Luncheon of the 21st Century Forum by Minister for Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation
SHI Guangsheng
(June 16th, 2000)
Respected Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the new millennium, the issue of development has caught redoubled attention from various countries in the world. Facing the new century, CPPCC has invited people of insight in all walks of life at home and abroad to conduct discussions on the theme of Economic Globalization, which is of great significance to the expansion of consensus, strengthening of cooperation and promotion of development. I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to brief you on China's accession to WTO and participation in economic globalization.
China's entry into the WTO has caught worldwide attention. Since last year, the negotiation process for China's accession has been obviously paced up. Among the 135 WTO members, 37 have requested for bilateral talks with China. Up to now, 32 members including US and EU have concluded negotiations and signed bilateral agreements with China. Mexico, Switzerland, Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica are the members yet to clinch a deal with China. At present, relevant talks are being intensified and all the bilateral negotiations will be put to an end shortly. The tenth Working Party Meeting on China's accession will be convened in Geneva very soon, at which multilateral talks will be carried our for the Protocol on China's Entry into the WTO so as to eventually complete relevant legal procedures for China's accession. We believe it won't be long before China becomes a full member of WTO.
After its accession to the WTO, China's reform and opening drive will enter a new historic era. Joining the WTO is the requirement of our reform and opening up which is in the fundamental interest of China. Joining the WTO will enable China to conduct international trade and economic cooperation under the multilateral, stable and unconditional MFN principle provided by WTO members, thus cultivating a favorable international environment for the development of China's national economy and foreign economic and trade relations. Joining the WTO will further accelerate China's opening to the outside world and advance the establishment and perfection of the socialist market economic system. Joining the WTO will also quicken the industrial restructuring of China, let the advantageous industries get even stronger and uninterruptedly improve the quality and level of China's economic development.
Of course, while producing opportunities, accession to the WTO will also bring challenges to China. Because the overall economic development level of China is not very high, the reform of SOEs are yet to be finished, the international competitiveness of some trades is not strong enough and the laws and regulation system is not that complete to adapt to the demand of the modern market economy. After entering into the WTO, China's economic administration system will have to adapt to the changes and deserve further improvement. Some industries and enterprises may be affected to various degree and suffer from certain negative impact. However, through reform and opening up over the past 20 years, China's comprehensive strength has been constantly raised with much experience to respond to the complicated international economic situation accumulated and international competitiveness and ability to withstand the risks tremendously heightened. What's more, the deeper the reform and opening drive becomes, the stronger risk-resisting ability we will enjoy. Therefore, we have the determination and confidence that through the deepening of reform and opening wider to the outside world, we can turn pressure into motive force to take the challenges arisen from our accession to the WTO and enable the national economy to achieve new progress on a continuous basis.
China's accession to the WTO can promote not only the development of Chinese economy, but also that of the world economy and will inject new impetus into the progress of Asian economy and world economy. We are delighted to note that now the Southeast Asian countries have shaken off the shadow of the financial crisis in succession and returned to the track of development. In the coming 10 years, the world economy is likely to enter a new growing period with the increasing rate higher than that of the 1990s. China has a population of over 1.2 billion, it is the 7th largest economy in the world and the 9th biggest trading nation globally. For seven years in a row, China has been the developing country with the biggest amount of FDI utilization. For 2 decades and more, China's economy has demonstrated vigor and vitality with an annual average growth rate of 9.7%. China has become one of the countries that enjoy the highest economic growth speed in the world. China's entry into the WTO will provide unprecedented opportunities to the healthy development of China's economy, it will also make new contribution to the prosperity of the Asian economy or even the world economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mankind is at the threshold of the 21st century, and driven by the revolution of science and technology, world economy is undergoing broad and profound changes. Currently, the new economy has just been unfolding, restructuring of the world economy has been speeded up, regional economy has been developing quickly and the economic globalization has been obviously paced up. Economic globalization is the objective trend of the economic development in the world today, featured by the free flow and optimized allocation of capital, technology, information and service in the global context, making the economic interdependence and interaction between various countries ever stronger, and has brought about new driving forces and opportunities for the economic development of all countries in the world. However nobody can deny the fact that under the circumstances where international economic new order is yet to be established and the difference of economic development level of all countries is fairly big, the benefits enjoyed by different countries from the process of economic globalization are not balanced. Compared with developed nations, developing countries are confronted with more pressure and challenges.
Facing the trend of accelerated economic globalization, we hold that all countries, in particular, developing countries should take active part in the economic globalization process, grasping the opportunities to develop ourselves, and at the same time, proceed from the actual situation of our respective countries and bring our own advantages into play, foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses to welcome the challenges of economic globalization.
After achieving its membership in the WTO, China will open wider to the outside world with a more active attitude, which constitutes an important step of China's energetic participation in the economic globalization. China will further open the market of trade in goods, trade in services and other areas, gradually advance the opening up of commerce, foreign trade, finance, insurance, securities, telecommunication, tourism, intermediary services and other fields. China has a huge market with big potential and wide prospect. With the ever deepening of China's opening drive and the ever improvement of our economic strength, Chinese economy will be more closely linked to the world economy, the huge market potential that China enjoys will be turned into realistic purchasing ability and more business opportunities will be provided to industrial and commercial communities of all countries in the world. I believe that the Chinese market will become one of the most energetic markets of vitality in the world, and an important component of the world market that allows no negligence.
After entry into the WTO, China will undertake correspondent obligations while enjoying rights according to the principle of balance between obligations and rights. This is a very important reflection of the active participation by China in the economic globalization. As a big responsible nation, China will strictly abide by the WTO rules and honor its commitments. At present, China is, in line with the WTO rules and the requirement of establishing socialist market economic system, conducting a thorough checking-up of the laws and regulations concerning foreign trade and economic cooperation and will make amendment and addition according to the legal procedures, speeding up the establishment and improvement of the foreign-related economic administration system in conformity with the international practice, pushing forward the economic restructuring and the industrial up-grading, spreading the knowledge and the rules regarding the WTO, promoting the training of talents, so as to continuously improve the macro regulatory and control ability of the government as well as the international competitiveness of enterprises and therefore get well prepared for the more fierce international competition.
After entry into the WTO, China will play a constructive role in the formulation and perfecting the multilateral rules, which is a very important content of China's involvement in the economic globalization. China will take active part in the new round of WTO negotiations. China holds that, the new round of negotiations should reflect interests and requirements of the developed countries as well as those of the developing countries; the developed nations should earnestly implement their obligations committed in the Uruguay Round Agreement and improve the environment of market access for developing countries; the formulation of new trade rules should have the equal participation of developing countries and their economic development objectives and corresponding market opening model should be taken into careful consideration, the new round of multilateral trade negotiations should concentrate on the issues directly related to trade. China is willing to join hands with other WTO member to actively promote the establishment of a fair, reasonable international economic new order in order to let more countries including the developing ones share the opportunities and benefits brought about by the multilateral trading system and therefore realize the balance of interests and common development.
China will enthusiastically implement the "going global" opening strategy, which is an important measure of China's active participation in the economic globalization. Over the past 20 years, China's opening up has been dominated by "attracting foreign investment", namely to promote the constant development of economy through intensive attraction of foreign capital, introduction of foreign technology and managerial experience. With the strengthened economic power and raise level of opening up of China, we will encourage Chinese enterprises to go global, better utilize international and domestic resources and markets, and realize the integration and combination of "attracting foreign investment" and "going global". The implementation of the "going global" opening strategy will not only be helpful for China to explore economic development from a global perspective, take more active part in the international division of labor and cooperation on our own initiative, but also be conducive to the strengthening of economic relations between China and various countries in the world and promote the economic development of relevant countries and regions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The evolving trend of economic globalization is a distinct characteristic of our time. Facing the new situation of the speedy development of economic globalization and China's promising accession to the WTO, we are ready to enhance economic and trade exchanges with all countries in the world under the principle of equality and mutual benefit, friendly consultation and common development, and make concerted efforts to contribute to the development of the world and the prosperity of mankind.
Translated by YUAN Yuan
Proofread by HUANG Rengang
SHI Guangsheng
(June 16th, 2000)
Respected Mr. Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the new millennium, the issue of development has caught redoubled attention from various countries in the world. Facing the new century, CPPCC has invited people of insight in all walks of life at home and abroad to conduct discussions on the theme of Economic Globalization, which is of great significance to the expansion of consensus, strengthening of cooperation and promotion of development. I would like to avail myself of this opportunity to brief you on China's accession to WTO and participation in economic globalization.
China's entry into the WTO has caught worldwide attention. Since last year, the negotiation process for China's accession has been obviously paced up. Among the 135 WTO members, 37 have requested for bilateral talks with China. Up to now, 32 members including US and EU have concluded negotiations and signed bilateral agreements with China. Mexico, Switzerland, Ecuador, Guatemala and Costa Rica are the members yet to clinch a deal with China. At present, relevant talks are being intensified and all the bilateral negotiations will be put to an end shortly. The tenth Working Party Meeting on China's accession will be convened in Geneva very soon, at which multilateral talks will be carried our for the Protocol on China's Entry into the WTO so as to eventually complete relevant legal procedures for China's accession. We believe it won't be long before China becomes a full member of WTO.
After its accession to the WTO, China's reform and opening drive will enter a new historic era. Joining the WTO is the requirement of our reform and opening up which is in the fundamental interest of China. Joining the WTO will enable China to conduct international trade and economic cooperation under the multilateral, stable and unconditional MFN principle provided by WTO members, thus cultivating a favorable international environment for the development of China's national economy and foreign economic and trade relations. Joining the WTO will further accelerate China's opening to the outside world and advance the establishment and perfection of the socialist market economic system. Joining the WTO will also quicken the industrial restructuring of China, let the advantageous industries get even stronger and uninterruptedly improve the quality and level of China's economic development.
Of course, while producing opportunities, accession to the WTO will also bring challenges to China. Because the overall economic development level of China is not very high, the reform of SOEs are yet to be finished, the international competitiveness of some trades is not strong enough and the laws and regulation system is not that complete to adapt to the demand of the modern market economy. After entering into the WTO, China's economic administration system will have to adapt to the changes and deserve further improvement. Some industries and enterprises may be affected to various degree and suffer from certain negative impact. However, through reform and opening up over the past 20 years, China's comprehensive strength has been constantly raised with much experience to respond to the complicated international economic situation accumulated and international competitiveness and ability to withstand the risks tremendously heightened. What's more, the deeper the reform and opening drive becomes, the stronger risk-resisting ability we will enjoy. Therefore, we have the determination and confidence that through the deepening of reform and opening wider to the outside world, we can turn pressure into motive force to take the challenges arisen from our accession to the WTO and enable the national economy to achieve new progress on a continuous basis.
China's accession to the WTO can promote not only the development of Chinese economy, but also that of the world economy and will inject new impetus into the progress of Asian economy and world economy. We are delighted to note that now the Southeast Asian countries have shaken off the shadow of the financial crisis in succession and returned to the track of development. In the coming 10 years, the world economy is likely to enter a new growing period with the increasing rate higher than that of the 1990s. China has a population of over 1.2 billion, it is the 7th largest economy in the world and the 9th biggest trading nation globally. For seven years in a row, China has been the developing country with the biggest amount of FDI utilization. For 2 decades and more, China's economy has demonstrated vigor and vitality with an annual average growth rate of 9.7%. China has become one of the countries that enjoy the highest economic growth speed in the world. China's entry into the WTO will provide unprecedented opportunities to the healthy development of China's economy, it will also make new contribution to the prosperity of the Asian economy or even the world economy.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Mankind is at the threshold of the 21st century, and driven by the revolution of science and technology, world economy is undergoing broad and profound changes. Currently, the new economy has just been unfolding, restructuring of the world economy has been speeded up, regional economy has been developing quickly and the economic globalization has been obviously paced up. Economic globalization is the objective trend of the economic development in the world today, featured by the free flow and optimized allocation of capital, technology, information and service in the global context, making the economic interdependence and interaction between various countries ever stronger, and has brought about new driving forces and opportunities for the economic development of all countries in the world. However nobody can deny the fact that under the circumstances where international economic new order is yet to be established and the difference of economic development level of all countries is fairly big, the benefits enjoyed by different countries from the process of economic globalization are not balanced. Compared with developed nations, developing countries are confronted with more pressure and challenges.
Facing the trend of accelerated economic globalization, we hold that all countries, in particular, developing countries should take active part in the economic globalization process, grasping the opportunities to develop ourselves, and at the same time, proceed from the actual situation of our respective countries and bring our own advantages into play, foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses to welcome the challenges of economic globalization.
After achieving its membership in the WTO, China will open wider to the outside world with a more active attitude, which constitutes an important step of China's energetic participation in the economic globalization. China will further open the market of trade in goods, trade in services and other areas, gradually advance the opening up of commerce, foreign trade, finance, insurance, securities, telecommunication, tourism, intermediary services and other fields. China has a huge market with big potential and wide prospect. With the ever deepening of China's opening drive and the ever improvement of our economic strength, Chinese economy will be more closely linked to the world economy, the huge market potential that China enjoys will be turned into realistic purchasing ability and more business opportunities will be provided to industrial and commercial communities of all countries in the world. I believe that the Chinese market will become one of the most energetic markets of vitality in the world, and an important component of the world market that allows no negligence.
After entry into the WTO, China will undertake correspondent obligations while enjoying rights according to the principle of balance between obligations and rights. This is a very important reflection of the active participation by China in the economic globalization. As a big responsible nation, China will strictly abide by the WTO rules and honor its commitments. At present, China is, in line with the WTO rules and the requirement of establishing socialist market economic system, conducting a thorough checking-up of the laws and regulations concerning foreign trade and economic cooperation and will make amendment and addition according to the legal procedures, speeding up the establishment and improvement of the foreign-related economic administration system in conformity with the international practice, pushing forward the economic restructuring and the industrial up-grading, spreading the knowledge and the rules regarding the WTO, promoting the training of talents, so as to continuously improve the macro regulatory and control ability of the government as well as the international competitiveness of enterprises and therefore get well prepared for the more fierce international competition.
After entry into the WTO, China will play a constructive role in the formulation and perfecting the multilateral rules, which is a very important content of China's involvement in the economic globalization. China will take active part in the new round of WTO negotiations. China holds that, the new round of negotiations should reflect interests and requirements of the developed countries as well as those of the developing countries; the developed nations should earnestly implement their obligations committed in the Uruguay Round Agreement and improve the environment of market access for developing countries; the formulation of new trade rules should have the equal participation of developing countries and their economic development objectives and corresponding market opening model should be taken into careful consideration, the new round of multilateral trade negotiations should concentrate on the issues directly related to trade. China is willing to join hands with other WTO member to actively promote the establishment of a fair, reasonable international economic new order in order to let more countries including the developing ones share the opportunities and benefits brought about by the multilateral trading system and therefore realize the balance of interests and common development.
China will enthusiastically implement the "going global" opening strategy, which is an important measure of China's active participation in the economic globalization. Over the past 20 years, China's opening up has been dominated by "attracting foreign investment", namely to promote the constant development of economy through intensive attraction of foreign capital, introduction of foreign technology and managerial experience. With the strengthened economic power and raise level of opening up of China, we will encourage Chinese enterprises to go global, better utilize international and domestic resources and markets, and realize the integration and combination of "attracting foreign investment" and "going global". The implementation of the "going global" opening strategy will not only be helpful for China to explore economic development from a global perspective, take more active part in the international division of labor and cooperation on our own initiative, but also be conducive to the strengthening of economic relations between China and various countries in the world and promote the economic development of relevant countries and regions.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The evolving trend of economic globalization is a distinct characteristic of our time. Facing the new situation of the speedy development of economic globalization and China's promising accession to the WTO, we are ready to enhance economic and trade exchanges with all countries in the world under the principle of equality and mutual benefit, friendly consultation and common development, and make concerted efforts to contribute to the development of the world and the prosperity of mankind.
Translated by YUAN Yuan
Proofread by HUANG Rengang
currencies: on the slide
The dollar's decline seems finally to be under way. It still won't balance America's books
A GIGANTIC current-account deficit ought to be bad news for a currency. For the dollar, reality seems at last to be coming into line with the textbooks. In the past month or so the greenback has lost 6% against the euro, 7% against the yen and3% on a broad trade-weighted basis. This week it dipped below eight Yuan for the first time since China abandoned its fixed rate of 8.28 to the dollar last July. Even before the markets' recent upset, caused largely by inflation worries, there was reason to believe that the dollar was on the prolonged slide that economic logic suggests is overdue
Before anybody starts talking about a turning point it is worth considering two caveats. First, the dollar has defied gravity less dramatically than many people think—especially once you cast your gaze beyond the euro, the yen and the Yuan. The dollar's broad trade-weighted index has fallen by 18% since February 2002. Last year, notes Jim O'Neill, of Goldman Sachs, the greenback lost against the Canadian dollar (which has a weight almost as big as the euro's) and some important emerging-market currencies such as the South Korean won (which counts for about the same as the pound sterling)
The second caveat is that once you look at the euro and the yen, the dollar has been here before, and not that long ago. At the start of 2005, the greenback was weaker against both the euro and the yen than it is now, but gained against both currencies in the course of the year. Asian central banks, which have helped sustain both the current-account deficit and the dollar by buying Treasury bonds in startlingly large quantities, have little interest in a weaker greenback. Oil-exporting countries are also thought to have been putting at least some of their extra revenues into dollar-denominated assets, including treasuries. Neither source of current-account funding looks likely to dry up just yet. And even this week, some investors have shown that they see the dollar as a safe haven.
Against these caveats there are a number of reasons to argue that something fundamental may just have shifted against the dollar. The first is the removal of a temporary prop. Last year American companies were allowed a lower tax rate on profits repatriated from abroad. Now, that support for the external deficit and the dollar has been taken away
A second change has to do with international differences in interest rates. Until recently, the dollar was helped by the Federal Reserve's policy of raising interest rates (a quarter of a percentage point at 16 consecutive meetings after June 2004) at a time when the Europeans held steady. Now the tables are turned: markets are worried that the Fed will stop at 5%, but the European Central Bank is raising interest rates and will probably soon be joined by the Bank of Japan.
This is linked to a third point: there has been a change in beliefs about how economies are faring. Whereas the rattling pace of America's economy is expected to slacken in the second half of the year, the slower-growing euro area and Japan are thought to be picking up—even if in Europe this is still more evident in confidence surveys than in hard figures. Fourth and most pressing, there are deeper concerns about the American economy. Wall Street is much more worried about inflation than it was a few months ago—and markets are yet to be convinced that the Fed's newish chairman, Ben Bernanke, will tackle inflation with sufficient vigour.
It would be nice to think that the dollar's decline heralded an orderly adjustment of global imbalances (the greenback's latest tumble may have been started by a stern communiqué from the G7 last month about the world economy). But do not get your hopes up. Although a fall in the dollar should help to reduce America's current- account deficit, by making exports cheaper and imports dearer, it will have to go a lot further to make much of a dent. Indeed, the current-account deficit has carried on climbing these past few years, even though the greenback has been weakening for most of the time. One way or another, America is still going to have to save more and the rest of the world save less
A GIGANTIC current-account deficit ought to be bad news for a currency. For the dollar, reality seems at last to be coming into line with the textbooks. In the past month or so the greenback has lost 6% against the euro, 7% against the yen and3% on a broad trade-weighted basis. This week it dipped below eight Yuan for the first time since China abandoned its fixed rate of 8.28 to the dollar last July. Even before the markets' recent upset, caused largely by inflation worries, there was reason to believe that the dollar was on the prolonged slide that economic logic suggests is overdue
Before anybody starts talking about a turning point it is worth considering two caveats. First, the dollar has defied gravity less dramatically than many people think—especially once you cast your gaze beyond the euro, the yen and the Yuan. The dollar's broad trade-weighted index has fallen by 18% since February 2002. Last year, notes Jim O'Neill, of Goldman Sachs, the greenback lost against the Canadian dollar (which has a weight almost as big as the euro's) and some important emerging-market currencies such as the South Korean won (which counts for about the same as the pound sterling)
The second caveat is that once you look at the euro and the yen, the dollar has been here before, and not that long ago. At the start of 2005, the greenback was weaker against both the euro and the yen than it is now, but gained against both currencies in the course of the year. Asian central banks, which have helped sustain both the current-account deficit and the dollar by buying Treasury bonds in startlingly large quantities, have little interest in a weaker greenback. Oil-exporting countries are also thought to have been putting at least some of their extra revenues into dollar-denominated assets, including treasuries. Neither source of current-account funding looks likely to dry up just yet. And even this week, some investors have shown that they see the dollar as a safe haven.
Against these caveats there are a number of reasons to argue that something fundamental may just have shifted against the dollar. The first is the removal of a temporary prop. Last year American companies were allowed a lower tax rate on profits repatriated from abroad. Now, that support for the external deficit and the dollar has been taken away
A second change has to do with international differences in interest rates. Until recently, the dollar was helped by the Federal Reserve's policy of raising interest rates (a quarter of a percentage point at 16 consecutive meetings after June 2004) at a time when the Europeans held steady. Now the tables are turned: markets are worried that the Fed will stop at 5%, but the European Central Bank is raising interest rates and will probably soon be joined by the Bank of Japan.
This is linked to a third point: there has been a change in beliefs about how economies are faring. Whereas the rattling pace of America's economy is expected to slacken in the second half of the year, the slower-growing euro area and Japan are thought to be picking up—even if in Europe this is still more evident in confidence surveys than in hard figures. Fourth and most pressing, there are deeper concerns about the American economy. Wall Street is much more worried about inflation than it was a few months ago—and markets are yet to be convinced that the Fed's newish chairman, Ben Bernanke, will tackle inflation with sufficient vigour.
It would be nice to think that the dollar's decline heralded an orderly adjustment of global imbalances (the greenback's latest tumble may have been started by a stern communiqué from the G7 last month about the world economy). But do not get your hopes up. Although a fall in the dollar should help to reduce America's current- account deficit, by making exports cheaper and imports dearer, it will have to go a lot further to make much of a dent. Indeed, the current-account deficit has carried on climbing these past few years, even though the greenback has been weakening for most of the time. One way or another, America is still going to have to save more and the rest of the world save less
COLOR SYSTEM OVERVIEW
COLOR SYSTEM OVERVIEW
(Y. Nayatani, K. Takahama, H. Sobagaki, and K. Hashimoto,"Color appearance model and chromatic adaptation transform,"Color Res. Appl., 15:210-221 (1990).）
In the age of office automation and electronic imaging, office documents are being processed, transported, and displayed in a variety of ways. The scope of document processing is enormous; it encompasses page layout, document length, collation, simplex/duplex, color, image quality, finishing, and binding. If the office system is networked, then another dimension of network-related issues-protocol, file format, page description language, compression/decompression, job management, error handling, user interface, and device driver-has to be addressed. Digital color-imaging systems process electronic information from various sources; images may come from a local-area network, a remote-sensing device, different color workstations, or a local scanner. After processing, a document is usually compressed and transmitted to several places via a computer network for viewing, editing, or printing. Moreover, the trend in the industry is moving toward an open environment. This means that various devices such as scanners, computers, workstations, modems, and printers from multiple vendors are assembled into one system. Implementations should be based on public-domain technology rather than proprietary standards. This will allow vendors equal access to the market for system components and give users the widest choice in selecting components. It is a vastly large task to enable the communication of all system components regardless of differences in the operating system, file format, page description language, and information content. Ideally, the exchange should not cause information loss or alteration. A closer look at a document may reveal that it consists of different types of images, primarily text, graphs, and pictorial images. These all have different image characteristics and representations such as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) for text, vector for graphs, and raster for pictorial images. Each type of image and its associated attributes like the font, font size, halftone, gray level, resolution, and color have to be dealt with differently. In such a complex environment, there is no doubt that many compatibility problems occur when an image is acquired, transmitted, displayed, and rendered. ?
With the fast development of Internet technology, large volumes of data in the form of electronic documents from the Web. For the purposes of data integration and data exchange, more and more existing sources, such as relational databases, support public XML export, and increasing amount of public and private data is described in a semi-structured way. A number of issues need to be addressed when we integrate data from different sources, including heterogeneous and duplicate data, multiple divisions and partners, and changes.? Data heterogeneity results from the use of different information management systems to store data and each system has its own data structure and access methods. Relational database management systems benefit from the universal acceptance of Structured Query Language (SQL) as the primary means of getting answers whilst document and email repositories are generally accessed using text search engines with varying interfaces and capabilities. Because these systems were not designed with interoperability in mind, each must generally be accessed using source-specific applications or application programming interfaces (APIs). ? Another difficulty in data integration is data duplication-different systems represent the same piece of data in different ways. For example, customers may be identified by name in one database, but by account number in a second repository, may identify the same customer by email address. Frequently a required piece of information is derived from multiple data points. Data integration is further complicated when customers do business with multiple divisions within a large company, or with other partners. Similarly, answering questions about the state of a company's supply chain requires access to vendor and distributor information sources. Doing business electronically across the firewall gives rise to security and data ownership issues. Finally, data integration has to deal with different types of changes; change in business requirements and strategies, in IT systems, mergers and acquisitions, and new product launches. This demands that a data integration solution be sufficiently flexible and adaptable.One possible solution for the data integration problems mentioned above is to provide an XML Web services break down the barriers between different computing platforms, development environments and communications networks, allowing organizations to work together electronically without the expense and delay of agreeing on semantics, schema, interfaces, and other application integration. XML provides the flexibility for handling data with differing structures. As XML is becoming the principal medium for data exchange over the Web and for information integration in general, increasing amounts of public and private data are described in XML. XML data is usually defined in a tree or graph based, self-describing object instance model (Boncz and Kersten, 1999). However, semi-structured data is incompatible with the flat structure of relational database tables, and so the growth of XML data requires new and complex query optimization techniques.Creating XML files with a text editor would be a lot easier if you didn't have to close all those HTML tags. First you have to add the XML declaration and the root opening and closing HTML tags. Next, you start adding element opening and closing tags one at a time. Of course, once you have the initial sequence completed you can just copy and paste to repeat the required elements. After doing this hundreds of times you'll be looking for a faster way to create XML files.Some XML editors will automatically add the closing tag after you have finished typing the opening tag but, you still have to type the brackets around the opening tag. I kept thinking this process should be easier. So, I came up with a solution that allows you to create XML files without using HTML tags.This console application will create an XML file based on user input. Just enter the file name, how many element fields you want, and the name of each field. Optionally, you can include a data type separated by a comma after the field name. You can just enter the field name because the data type is not required. The structure of the XML file that is created will be compatible with the .NET Dataset and can be easily added to a database.In addition to creating the XML file, an XSL file and HTML file are also created. The HTML file uses client side JavaScript to transform the XML file using the XSL file. This provides an easy way to view the new XML file by displaying it in a table layout.The download includes both the source code and the already compiled application. You can start using the executable right away or customize it to meet your needs. All you will need is the .NET Framework and a text editor, like Notepad, to build this application.Improving ASP Performance with Data CachingOne of the nicest features of ASP.NET is the ability to cache page content. This can be used to substantially reduce load on a website's database - which is an obvious attraction if the site uses Microsoft's Access to store data rather than SQL Server. Unfortunately there is no built in caching system in classic ASP, but it is easy to build one by using the Application object to store data. When to use ASP Caching. Caching is most useful for data that changes - but not too often. For example an e-commerce store could display a list of popular products, or an information site could display a list of press releases. Don't forget that it is also possible to build functionality into the admin part of the site so that the cache would be flushed if new content is added to the database. That way the website administrator would not have to wait until the cache timed out in order for new content to appear on the website.Remember that data stored in Application variables is visible by all the users of the website。
numerical analysis
numerical analysis
Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). This means it deals mainly with real variable or complex variable questions, numerical linear algebra over the real or complex fields, the solution of differential equations, and other related problems arising in the physical sciences and engineering.
General introduction
Some problems in continuous mathematics can be solved exactly by an algorithm. These algorithms are called direct methods. Examples are Gaussian elimination for solving systems of linear equations and the simplex method in linear programming.
However, no direct methods exist for most problems. We might then try to replace the continuous problem by a discrete problem; this process is called discretization. Another possibility is to use an iterative method. Such a method starts from a guess and finds successive approximations that hopefully converge to the solution. Even when a direct method does exist, an iterative method may be preferable because it is more efficient.
?
The generation and propagation of errors
It follows that the study of errors forms an important part of numerical analysis. Errors arise in iterative methods because the approximate solutions differ from the exact solution. Similarly, discretization induces a discretization error because the solution of the discrete problem does not coincide with the solution of the continuous problem. Even when a direct method is employed, round-off errors arise because of the use of floating point numbers.
Once an error is generated, it propagates through the calculation. This leads to the notion of numerical stability: an algorithm is numerically stable if an error, once it is generated, does not grow too much during the calculation. This is only possible if the problem is well-conditioned, meaning that the solution changes by only a small amount if the problem data are changed by a small amount. Indeed, if a problem is ill-conditioned, then any error in the data will grow a lot.
However, an algorithm that solves a well-conditioned problem may or may not be numerically stable. An art of numerical analysis is to find a stable algorithm for solving a well-posed mathematical problem.?
ApplicationsThe algorithms of numerical analysis are routinely applied to solve many problems in science and engineering. Examples are the design of structures like bridges and airplanes (see computational physics and computational fluid dynamics), weather forecasting, climate models, the analysis and design of molecules (computational chemistry), and finding oil reservoirs. In fact, almost all supercomputers are continually running numerical analysis algorithms.
As a consequence, efficiency plays an important role and a heuristic method may be preferred above a method with a solid theoretic foundation because it is more efficient. Generally, numerical analysis uses empirical results of computation runs to probe new methods and analyze problems, though it of course also employs mathematical axioms, theorems and proofs.?
SoftwareNowadays, most algorithms are implemented and run on a computer. The Netlib repository contains various collections of software routines for numerical problems, mostly in Fortran and C. Commercial products implementing many different numerical algorithms include the IMSL and NAG libraries; a free alternative is the GNU Scientific Library. A different approach is taken by the Numerical Recipes library, where emphasis is placed on clear understanding of algorithms.?
There are a number of computer programs used for performing numerical calculations:
·??MATLAB is a widely-used program for performing numerical calculations. It comes with its own programming language, in which numerical algorithms can be implemented. ·??GNU Octave is a free near-clone of Matlab. ·??R programming language is a widely used system with a focus on data manipulation and statistics. Several hundred freely downloadable specialized packages are available. ·??Scilab. ·??IDL programming language. Many computer algebra systems such as Mathematica or the Maple computer algebra system (free software systems include Maxima, Axiom, calc and Yacas) can also be used for numerical computations.
?Areas of studyThe field of numerical analysis is divided in different disciplines according to the problem that is to be solved.?
Computing values of functionsOne of the simplest problems is the evaluation of a function at a given point. But even evaluating a polynomial is not straightforward: the Horner scheme is often more efficient than the obvious method. Generally, it is important to estimate and control round off errors arising from the use of floating point arithmetic.?
Interpolation, extrapolation and regression
Interpolation solves the following problem: given the value of some unknown function at a number of points, what value does that function have at some other point between the given points? A very simple method is to use linear interpolation, which assumes that the unknown function is linear between every pair of successive points. This can be generalized to polynomial interpolation, which is sometimes more accurate but suffers from Runge's phenomenon. Other interpolation methods use localized functions like splines or wavelets.
Extrapolation is very similar to interpolation, except that now we want to find the value of the unknown function at a point which is outside the given points.
Regression is also similar, but it takes into account that the data is imprecise. Given some points, and a measurement of the value of some function at these points (with an error), we want to determine the unknown function. The least squares-method is one popular way to achieve this.?
Solving equationsAnother fundamental problem is computing the solution of some given equation. Two cases are commonly distinguished, depending on whether the equation is linear or not.
Much effort has been put in the development of methods for solving systems of linear equations. Standard methods are Gauss-Jordan elimination and LU-factorization. Iterative methods such as the conjugate gradient method are usually preferred for large systems.
Root-finding algorithms are used to solve nonlinear equations (they are so named since a root of a function is an argument for which the function yields zero). If the function is differentiable and the derivative is known, then Newton's method is a popular choice. Linearization is another technique for solving nonlinear equations.?
OptimizationMain article: Optimization (mathematics).
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Optimization+%28mathematics%29&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1）
Optimization problems ask for the point at which a given function is maximized (or minimized). Often, the point also has to satisfy some constraints.
The field of optimization is further split in several subfields, depending on the form of the objective function and the constraint. For instance, linear programming deals with the case that both the objective function and the constraints are linear. A famous method in linear programming is the simplex method.
The method of Lagrange multipliers can be used to reduce optimization problems with constraints to an unconstrained optimization problems.?
Evaluating integralsMain article: Numerical integration.
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Numerical+integration&gwp=8&curtab=2222_）
Numerical integration, also known as numerical quadrature, asks for the value of a definite integral. Popular methods use some Newton-Cotes formula, for instance the midpoint rule or the trapezoid rule, or Gaussian quadrature. However, if the dimension of the integration domain becomes large, these methods become prohibitively expensive. In this situation, one may use a Monte Carlo method or, in modestly large dimensions, the method of sparse grids.
?Differential equationsMain articles: Numerical ordinary differential equations, Numerical partial differential equations.
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Numerical+ordinary+differential+equations&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1）
Numerical analysis is also concerned with computing (in an approximate way) the solution of differential equations, both ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations.
Partial differential equations are solved by first discretizing the equation, bringing it into a finite-dimensional subspace. This can be done by a finite element method, a finite difference method, or (particularly in engineering) a finite volume method. The theoretical justification of these methods often involves theorems from functional analysis. This reduces the problem to the solution of an algebraic equation.?
?
HistoryThe field of numerical analysis predates the invention of modern computers by many centuries. In fact, many great mathematicians of the past were preoccupied by numerical analysis, as is obvious from the names of important algorithms like Newton's method, Lagrange interpolation polynomial, Gaussian elimination, or Euler's method.
To facilitate computations by hand, large books were produced with formulas and tables of data such as interpolation points and function coefficients. Using these tables, often calculated out to 16 decimal places or more for some functions, one could look up values to plug into the formulas given and achieve very good numerical estimates of some functions. The canonical work in the field is the NIST publication edited by Abramowitz and Stegun, a 1000 plus page book of a very large number of commonly used formulas and functions and their values at many points. The function values are no longer very useful when a computer is available, but the large listing of formulas can still be very handy.
The mechanical calculator was also developed as a tool for hand computation. These calculators evolved in electronic computers in the 1940s, and it was then found that these computers were also useful for administrative purposes. But the invention of the computer also influenced the field of numerical analysis, since now longer and more complicated calculations could be done.
Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). This means it deals mainly with real variable or complex variable questions, numerical linear algebra over the real or complex fields, the solution of differential equations, and other related problems arising in the physical sciences and engineering.
General introduction
Some problems in continuous mathematics can be solved exactly by an algorithm. These algorithms are called direct methods. Examples are Gaussian elimination for solving systems of linear equations and the simplex method in linear programming.
However, no direct methods exist for most problems. We might then try to replace the continuous problem by a discrete problem; this process is called discretization. Another possibility is to use an iterative method. Such a method starts from a guess and finds successive approximations that hopefully converge to the solution. Even when a direct method does exist, an iterative method may be preferable because it is more efficient.
?
The generation and propagation of errors
It follows that the study of errors forms an important part of numerical analysis. Errors arise in iterative methods because the approximate solutions differ from the exact solution. Similarly, discretization induces a discretization error because the solution of the discrete problem does not coincide with the solution of the continuous problem. Even when a direct method is employed, round-off errors arise because of the use of floating point numbers.
Once an error is generated, it propagates through the calculation. This leads to the notion of numerical stability: an algorithm is numerically stable if an error, once it is generated, does not grow too much during the calculation. This is only possible if the problem is well-conditioned, meaning that the solution changes by only a small amount if the problem data are changed by a small amount. Indeed, if a problem is ill-conditioned, then any error in the data will grow a lot.
However, an algorithm that solves a well-conditioned problem may or may not be numerically stable. An art of numerical analysis is to find a stable algorithm for solving a well-posed mathematical problem.?
ApplicationsThe algorithms of numerical analysis are routinely applied to solve many problems in science and engineering. Examples are the design of structures like bridges and airplanes (see computational physics and computational fluid dynamics), weather forecasting, climate models, the analysis and design of molecules (computational chemistry), and finding oil reservoirs. In fact, almost all supercomputers are continually running numerical analysis algorithms.
As a consequence, efficiency plays an important role and a heuristic method may be preferred above a method with a solid theoretic foundation because it is more efficient. Generally, numerical analysis uses empirical results of computation runs to probe new methods and analyze problems, though it of course also employs mathematical axioms, theorems and proofs.?
SoftwareNowadays, most algorithms are implemented and run on a computer. The Netlib repository contains various collections of software routines for numerical problems, mostly in Fortran and C. Commercial products implementing many different numerical algorithms include the IMSL and NAG libraries; a free alternative is the GNU Scientific Library. A different approach is taken by the Numerical Recipes library, where emphasis is placed on clear understanding of algorithms.?
There are a number of computer programs used for performing numerical calculations:
·??MATLAB is a widely-used program for performing numerical calculations. It comes with its own programming language, in which numerical algorithms can be implemented. ·??GNU Octave is a free near-clone of Matlab. ·??R programming language is a widely used system with a focus on data manipulation and statistics. Several hundred freely downloadable specialized packages are available. ·??Scilab. ·??IDL programming language. Many computer algebra systems such as Mathematica or the Maple computer algebra system (free software systems include Maxima, Axiom, calc and Yacas) can also be used for numerical computations.
?Areas of studyThe field of numerical analysis is divided in different disciplines according to the problem that is to be solved.?
Computing values of functionsOne of the simplest problems is the evaluation of a function at a given point. But even evaluating a polynomial is not straightforward: the Horner scheme is often more efficient than the obvious method. Generally, it is important to estimate and control round off errors arising from the use of floating point arithmetic.?
Interpolation, extrapolation and regression
Interpolation solves the following problem: given the value of some unknown function at a number of points, what value does that function have at some other point between the given points? A very simple method is to use linear interpolation, which assumes that the unknown function is linear between every pair of successive points. This can be generalized to polynomial interpolation, which is sometimes more accurate but suffers from Runge's phenomenon. Other interpolation methods use localized functions like splines or wavelets.
Extrapolation is very similar to interpolation, except that now we want to find the value of the unknown function at a point which is outside the given points.
Regression is also similar, but it takes into account that the data is imprecise. Given some points, and a measurement of the value of some function at these points (with an error), we want to determine the unknown function. The least squares-method is one popular way to achieve this.?
Solving equationsAnother fundamental problem is computing the solution of some given equation. Two cases are commonly distinguished, depending on whether the equation is linear or not.
Much effort has been put in the development of methods for solving systems of linear equations. Standard methods are Gauss-Jordan elimination and LU-factorization. Iterative methods such as the conjugate gradient method are usually preferred for large systems.
Root-finding algorithms are used to solve nonlinear equations (they are so named since a root of a function is an argument for which the function yields zero). If the function is differentiable and the derivative is known, then Newton's method is a popular choice. Linearization is another technique for solving nonlinear equations.?
OptimizationMain article: Optimization (mathematics).
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Optimization+%28mathematics%29&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1）
Optimization problems ask for the point at which a given function is maximized (or minimized). Often, the point also has to satisfy some constraints.
The field of optimization is further split in several subfields, depending on the form of the objective function and the constraint. For instance, linear programming deals with the case that both the objective function and the constraints are linear. A famous method in linear programming is the simplex method.
The method of Lagrange multipliers can be used to reduce optimization problems with constraints to an unconstrained optimization problems.?
Evaluating integralsMain article: Numerical integration.
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Numerical+integration&gwp=8&curtab=2222_）
Numerical integration, also known as numerical quadrature, asks for the value of a definite integral. Popular methods use some Newton-Cotes formula, for instance the midpoint rule or the trapezoid rule, or Gaussian quadrature. However, if the dimension of the integration domain becomes large, these methods become prohibitively expensive. In this situation, one may use a Monte Carlo method or, in modestly large dimensions, the method of sparse grids.
?Differential equationsMain articles: Numerical ordinary differential equations, Numerical partial differential equations.
（http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Numerical+ordinary+differential+equations&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1）
Numerical analysis is also concerned with computing (in an approximate way) the solution of differential equations, both ordinary differential equations and partial differential equations.
Partial differential equations are solved by first discretizing the equation, bringing it into a finite-dimensional subspace. This can be done by a finite element method, a finite difference method, or (particularly in engineering) a finite volume method. The theoretical justification of these methods often involves theorems from functional analysis. This reduces the problem to the solution of an algebraic equation.?
?
HistoryThe field of numerical analysis predates the invention of modern computers by many centuries. In fact, many great mathematicians of the past were preoccupied by numerical analysis, as is obvious from the names of important algorithms like Newton's method, Lagrange interpolation polynomial, Gaussian elimination, or Euler's method.
To facilitate computations by hand, large books were produced with formulas and tables of data such as interpolation points and function coefficients. Using these tables, often calculated out to 16 decimal places or more for some functions, one could look up values to plug into the formulas given and achieve very good numerical estimates of some functions. The canonical work in the field is the NIST publication edited by Abramowitz and Stegun, a 1000 plus page book of a very large number of commonly used formulas and functions and their values at many points. The function values are no longer very useful when a computer is available, but the large listing of formulas can still be very handy.
The mechanical calculator was also developed as a tool for hand computation. These calculators evolved in electronic computers in the 1940s, and it was then found that these computers were also useful for administrative purposes. But the invention of the computer also influenced the field of numerical analysis, since now longer and more complicated calculations could be done.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Of Dogs and Men
Of Dogs and Men
Chester was my window on the mysterious bond between canines and humans.
The way I see it dogs had this big meeting. Oh maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting—an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that’s when they decided that humans were the up and coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest.
Cats had an even more negative reaction. When they heard the news they called their own meeting—in Paris of course—to denounce canine subservience to the human hyperpower.Their manifesto—La Condition Féline—can still be found in provincial bookstores.
Cats, it must be said, have not done badly. Using guile and seduction they managed to get humans to feed them thus preserving their superciliousness without going hungry. A neat trick. Dogs being guileless signed and delivered. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I must admit that I’ve been slow to warm to dogs.I grew up in a non-pet friendly home. Dogs do not figure prominently in Jewish immigrant households. My father was not very high on pets. He wasn’t hostile. He just saw them as superfluous an encumbrance. When the Cossacks are chasing you around Europe you need to travel light.This by the way is why Europe produced far more Jewish violinists than pianists. Try packing a piano.
My parents did allow a hint of zoological indulgence. I had a pet turtle. My brother had a parakeet. Both came to unfortunate ends. My turtle fell behind a radiator and was not discovered until too late. And the parakeet God bless him flew out a window once never to be seen again. After such displays of stewardship we dared not ask for a dog.
My introduction to the wonder of dogs came from my wife Robyn. She’s Australian. And Australia as lovingly recounted in Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country has the craziest wildest deadliest meanest animals on the planet. In a place where every spider and squid can take you down faster than a sucker punched boxer you cherish niceness in the animal kingdom. And they don’t come nicer than dogs.
Robyn started us off slowly. She got us a Border collie Hugo when our son was about 6. She knew that would appeal to me because the Border collie is the smartest species on the planet. Hugo could 1 play outfield in our backyard baseball games 2 do flawless front door sentry duty and 3 play psychic weatherman announcing with a wail every coming thunderstorm.
When our son Daniel turned 10 he wanted a dog of his own. I was against it using arguments borrowed from seminars on nuclear nonproliferation. It was hopeless. One giant “Please Dad” and I caved completely. Robyn went out to Winchester Virginia found a litter of black Labs and brought home Chester.
Chester is what psychiatrists mean when they talk about unconditional love. Unbridled is more like it. Come into our houseand he was so happy to see you he would knock you over.Deliverymen learned to leave things at the front door.
In some respects—Ph.D. potential for example—I don’t make any great claims for Chester. When I would arrive home I fully expected to find Hugo reading the newspaper. Not Chester. Chester would try to make his way through a narrow sliding door find himself stuck halfway and then look at me with total and quite genuine puzzlement.I don’t think he ever got to understand that the rear part of him was actually attached to the front.
But it was Chester who dispensed affection as unreflectively as he breathed who got me thinking about this long ago pact between humans and dogs. Cat lovers and the pet averse will just roll their eyes at such dogophilia.I can’t help it. Chester was always at your foot or your hand waiting to be petted and stroked played with and talked to. His beautiful blocky head his wonderful overgrown puppy’s body his baritone bark filled every corner of house and heart.
Then last month at the tender age of 8 he died quite suddenly. The long slobbering slothful decline we had been looking forward to was not to be. When told the news a young friend who was a regular victim of Chester’s lunging lovebombs said mournfully“He was the sweetest creature I ever saw. He’s the only dog I ever saw kiss a cat.”
Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all it is perfectly normal indeed deeply human to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision—a creature—of the purest sweetness﹖
Chester was my window on the mysterious bond between canines and humans.
The way I see it dogs had this big meeting. Oh maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting—an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that’s when they decided that humans were the up and coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest.
Cats had an even more negative reaction. When they heard the news they called their own meeting—in Paris of course—to denounce canine subservience to the human hyperpower.Their manifesto—La Condition Féline—can still be found in provincial bookstores.
Cats, it must be said, have not done badly. Using guile and seduction they managed to get humans to feed them thus preserving their superciliousness without going hungry. A neat trick. Dogs being guileless signed and delivered. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I must admit that I’ve been slow to warm to dogs.I grew up in a non-pet friendly home. Dogs do not figure prominently in Jewish immigrant households. My father was not very high on pets. He wasn’t hostile. He just saw them as superfluous an encumbrance. When the Cossacks are chasing you around Europe you need to travel light.This by the way is why Europe produced far more Jewish violinists than pianists. Try packing a piano.
My parents did allow a hint of zoological indulgence. I had a pet turtle. My brother had a parakeet. Both came to unfortunate ends. My turtle fell behind a radiator and was not discovered until too late. And the parakeet God bless him flew out a window once never to be seen again. After such displays of stewardship we dared not ask for a dog.
My introduction to the wonder of dogs came from my wife Robyn. She’s Australian. And Australia as lovingly recounted in Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country has the craziest wildest deadliest meanest animals on the planet. In a place where every spider and squid can take you down faster than a sucker punched boxer you cherish niceness in the animal kingdom. And they don’t come nicer than dogs.
Robyn started us off slowly. She got us a Border collie Hugo when our son was about 6. She knew that would appeal to me because the Border collie is the smartest species on the planet. Hugo could 1 play outfield in our backyard baseball games 2 do flawless front door sentry duty and 3 play psychic weatherman announcing with a wail every coming thunderstorm.
When our son Daniel turned 10 he wanted a dog of his own. I was against it using arguments borrowed from seminars on nuclear nonproliferation. It was hopeless. One giant “Please Dad” and I caved completely. Robyn went out to Winchester Virginia found a litter of black Labs and brought home Chester.
Chester is what psychiatrists mean when they talk about unconditional love. Unbridled is more like it. Come into our houseand he was so happy to see you he would knock you over.Deliverymen learned to leave things at the front door.
In some respects—Ph.D. potential for example—I don’t make any great claims for Chester. When I would arrive home I fully expected to find Hugo reading the newspaper. Not Chester. Chester would try to make his way through a narrow sliding door find himself stuck halfway and then look at me with total and quite genuine puzzlement.I don’t think he ever got to understand that the rear part of him was actually attached to the front.
But it was Chester who dispensed affection as unreflectively as he breathed who got me thinking about this long ago pact between humans and dogs. Cat lovers and the pet averse will just roll their eyes at such dogophilia.I can’t help it. Chester was always at your foot or your hand waiting to be petted and stroked played with and talked to. His beautiful blocky head his wonderful overgrown puppy’s body his baritone bark filled every corner of house and heart.
Then last month at the tender age of 8 he died quite suddenly. The long slobbering slothful decline we had been looking forward to was not to be. When told the news a young friend who was a regular victim of Chester’s lunging lovebombs said mournfully“He was the sweetest creature I ever saw. He’s the only dog I ever saw kiss a cat.”
Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all it is perfectly normal indeed deeply human to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision—a creature—of the purest sweetness﹖
Run Through the Rain
She had been shopping with her Mom in Wal-Mart. She must have been 6 years old, this beautiful brown haired, freckle-faced image of innocence. It was pouring outside. The kind of rain that gushes over the top of rain gutters, so much in a hurry to hit the Earth it has no time to flow down the spout.
We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Wal-Mart. We waited, some patiently, others 4)irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I get lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories of running, splashing so carefree as a child come pouring in as a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.
Her voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in. "Mom, let's run through the rain," she said.
"What?" Mom asked.
"Let's run through the rain!" She repeated.
"No, honey. We'll wait until it slows down a bit," Mom replied.
This young child waited about another minute and repeated: "Mom, let's run through the rain."
"We'll get soaked if we do," Mom said.
"No, we won't, Mom. That's not what you said this morning," the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom's arm."
"This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?"
"Don't you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, 'If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!"
The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn't hear anything but the rain. We all stood silently. No one came or left in the next few minutes. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say.
Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child's life. Time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith. "Honey, you are absolutely right. Let's run through the rain. If get wet, well maybe we just needed washing," Mom said. Then off they ran.
We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing. Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories. So, don't forget to make time and take the opportunities to make memories every day!
To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. I hope you still take the time to run through the rain.
We all stood there under the awning and just inside the door of the Wal-Mart. We waited, some patiently, others 4)irritated because nature messed up their hurried day. I am always mesmerized by rainfall. I get lost in the sound and sight of the heavens washing away the dirt and dust of the world. Memories of running, splashing so carefree as a child come pouring in as a welcome reprieve from the worries of my day.
Her voice was so sweet as it broke the hypnotic trance we were all caught in. "Mom, let's run through the rain," she said.
"What?" Mom asked.
"Let's run through the rain!" She repeated.
"No, honey. We'll wait until it slows down a bit," Mom replied.
This young child waited about another minute and repeated: "Mom, let's run through the rain."
"We'll get soaked if we do," Mom said.
"No, we won't, Mom. That's not what you said this morning," the young girl said as she tugged at her Mom's arm."
"This morning? When did I say we could run through the rain and not get wet?"
"Don't you remember? When you were talking to Daddy about his cancer, you said, 'If God can get us through this, he can get us through anything!"
The entire crowd stopped dead silent. I swear you couldn't hear anything but the rain. We all stood silently. No one came or left in the next few minutes. Mom paused and thought for a moment about what she would say.
Now some would laugh it off and scold her for being silly. Some might even ignore what was said. But this was a moment of affirmation in a young child's life. Time when innocent trust can be nurtured so that it will bloom into faith. "Honey, you are absolutely right. Let's run through the rain. If get wet, well maybe we just needed washing," Mom said. Then off they ran.
We all stood watching, smiling and laughing as they darted past the cars and. They held their shopping bags over their heads just in case. They got soaked. But they were followed by a few who screamed and laughed like children all the way to their cars. And yes, I did. I ran. I got wet. I needed washing. Circumstances or people can take away your material possessions, they can take away your money, and they can take away your health. But no one can ever take away your precious memories. So, don't forget to make time and take the opportunities to make memories every day!
To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. I hope you still take the time to run through the rain.
Tough Questions In Job Interviews
Here are good answers to some of the tougher questions asked in job interviews. If you can smoothly supply answers like these during the interview, you are bound to make a good impression.
1. What is important to you in a job? Mention specific rewards other than a paycheck for example, challenge, t he feeling of accomplishment, and knowing that you have made a contribution.
2. Why do you want to work for this organization? Cite its reputation, the opportunities it offers, and the working condit ions. Stress that you want to work for this organization, not just any organ ization.
3. Why should we employ you? Point to your academic preparation, job skills, and enthusiasm about working for the firm. Mention your performance in school or previous employment as evidence of your ability to learn and to become productive quickly. If the job involves management responsibilities, refer to past activities as proof of your ability to get along with others and to work as part of a team.
4. If we hire you, how long will you stay with us? Answer by saying along these lines: "As long as my position here allows me to learn and to advance at a pace with my abilities."
5. Can we offer you a career path? Reply: "I believe you could, once I know the normal progression within the organization. Can you tell me about it?" The answer may be revealing.
6. What are your greatest strengths? Give a response like one of the following: "I can see what needs to be done and do it", "I'm wiling to make decisions", "I work well with others," " I can organize my time efficiently."
7. What are you greatest weakness? Identify one or two, such as the following:" I tend to drive myself too hard", " I expect others to perform beyond their capacities", " I like to se e a job done quickly, and I'm critical if it isn't." Note these weaknesses c ould also be regarded as desirable qualities. The trick with this question i s to describe a weakness so that it could also be considered a virtue.
8. What didn't you like about previous jobs you've held? Discuss the things you didn't like, but avoid making slighting reference to any of your former employers.
9. How do you spend your leisure time? Mention a cross section of interests-active and quiet, social and solitary -- rather just one.
10. Are there any weaknesses in your education or experience? Take stock of your weaknesses before the interview. Practice discussing them in a positive light. You'll find that they are minor when discussed along with all the positive things you have to offer.
11. Where do you want to be five years from now? Saying that you'd like to be president is unrealistic, yet few employers want people who are content to sit still. You might say, "in five years, I'd like to have my boss's job. " If you can't qualify for your boss's job by then, you may not be the fright candidate.
12. What are your salary expectations? If you are asked this at the outset, it's best to say, "Why don't we discuss salary after you decide whether I'm right for the job? "But if the interviewer asks this after showing real interest in you, speak up. She or he will probably try to meet your price. If you need a clue about what to ask for, say, " Can you discuss your salary range with me?"
13. What would you do if....? This question is designed to test your reposes. For example: "What would you do if your computer broke down during an audit?" Your answer there isn't nearly so important as your approach to the problem. And a calm approach is best. Start by saying, "One thing I might do is ..." Then give several alternative choices.
14. What type of position are you interested in? Job titles and responsibilities vary from firm to firm . So state your skills instead, such as "I'm good at figure work," and the positions that req
15. Tell me something about yourself. Say you'll be happy to talk about yourself, and ask what the interviewer wants to know. If this point is clarified, respond. If not, tell why you feel your skills will contribute to the job and the organization. This question gives you a great opportunity to sell yourself.
16. Do you have any questions about the organization or the job? Employers like a candidate who is interested in the organization. so this is a perfect time to convey your interest and enthusiasm.
1. What is important to you in a job? Mention specific rewards other than a paycheck for example, challenge, t he feeling of accomplishment, and knowing that you have made a contribution.
2. Why do you want to work for this organization? Cite its reputation, the opportunities it offers, and the working condit ions. Stress that you want to work for this organization, not just any organ ization.
3. Why should we employ you? Point to your academic preparation, job skills, and enthusiasm about working for the firm. Mention your performance in school or previous employment as evidence of your ability to learn and to become productive quickly. If the job involves management responsibilities, refer to past activities as proof of your ability to get along with others and to work as part of a team.
4. If we hire you, how long will you stay with us? Answer by saying along these lines: "As long as my position here allows me to learn and to advance at a pace with my abilities."
5. Can we offer you a career path? Reply: "I believe you could, once I know the normal progression within the organization. Can you tell me about it?" The answer may be revealing.
6. What are your greatest strengths? Give a response like one of the following: "I can see what needs to be done and do it", "I'm wiling to make decisions", "I work well with others," " I can organize my time efficiently."
7. What are you greatest weakness? Identify one or two, such as the following:" I tend to drive myself too hard", " I expect others to perform beyond their capacities", " I like to se e a job done quickly, and I'm critical if it isn't." Note these weaknesses c ould also be regarded as desirable qualities. The trick with this question i s to describe a weakness so that it could also be considered a virtue.
8. What didn't you like about previous jobs you've held? Discuss the things you didn't like, but avoid making slighting reference to any of your former employers.
9. How do you spend your leisure time? Mention a cross section of interests-active and quiet, social and solitary -- rather just one.
10. Are there any weaknesses in your education or experience? Take stock of your weaknesses before the interview. Practice discussing them in a positive light. You'll find that they are minor when discussed along with all the positive things you have to offer.
11. Where do you want to be five years from now? Saying that you'd like to be president is unrealistic, yet few employers want people who are content to sit still. You might say, "in five years, I'd like to have my boss's job. " If you can't qualify for your boss's job by then, you may not be the fright candidate.
12. What are your salary expectations? If you are asked this at the outset, it's best to say, "Why don't we discuss salary after you decide whether I'm right for the job? "But if the interviewer asks this after showing real interest in you, speak up. She or he will probably try to meet your price. If you need a clue about what to ask for, say, " Can you discuss your salary range with me?"
13. What would you do if....? This question is designed to test your reposes. For example: "What would you do if your computer broke down during an audit?" Your answer there isn't nearly so important as your approach to the problem. And a calm approach is best. Start by saying, "One thing I might do is ..." Then give several alternative choices.
14. What type of position are you interested in? Job titles and responsibilities vary from firm to firm . So state your skills instead, such as "I'm good at figure work," and the positions that req
15. Tell me something about yourself. Say you'll be happy to talk about yourself, and ask what the interviewer wants to know. If this point is clarified, respond. If not, tell why you feel your skills will contribute to the job and the organization. This question gives you a great opportunity to sell yourself.
16. Do you have any questions about the organization or the job? Employers like a candidate who is interested in the organization. so this is a perfect time to convey your interest and enthusiasm.
Rescue abused animals
Mistreat your animals and someone might take them from you. Allen (not his real name) is driving north out of Virginia in the middle of the night, with stolen property in the back of his van. But Allen isn’t a criminal – in fact he normally would never dream of breaking the law. The “property” he stole is a dog he calls Flash. Allen doesn’t particularly want Flash – in fact, in a few hours he’ll drop him off at a stranger’s house and never see him again. “I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing,” he explains. “The owner was plainly neglecting the dog, but the police wouldn’t do anything about it.” For over a year, Flash had been tied to a tree in front of someone’s house. “He was sick and malnourished,” says Allen. “More than once I saw [the owner] kick him for no reason at all.” Allen had repeatedly tried to get the owner to take better care of the animal, or to give it away to someone who would. Finally, he took matters into his own hands – in the dead of night, he took Flash off his chain and drove away with him. Within an hour, Flash had a new license tag and was being treated by a veterinarian who knew better than to ask questions. Pictures of the dog were put up on animal rescue websites, asking for someone to adopt the dog. A couple in New York offered to take the dog, and animal lovers in states along the way agreed to provide transportation. Nobody can say for sure how many animals like Flash are ‘rescued’ every year – receiving stolen property is a crime, so rescuers tend to stay in the shadows. But a growing number of empty collars attests to their work as more and more animals find their way to loving homes.
Glacier scientists mysterious death
He had lain in his icy tomb on an Alpine glacier in northern Italy for 5,300 years, a perfectly preserved Stone Age warrior, complete with fur robes, leather shoes and bow and arrow. But since being found 14 years ago, five of the people who came in close contact with Oetzi the Iceman have died, leading to the inevitable question: is the mummy cursed? Konrad Spindler, head of the Iceman investigation team at Innsbruck University, died on Monday, apparently from complications arising from multiple sclerosis. But that has not stopped his name being linked to a string of strange deaths related to the mummy. He had spent years studying the remains of the frozen warrior, who was discovered in the melting Similaun glacier, on the border between Italy and Austria in 1991. The 66-year-old scientist had been aware of curse theories, built around the supposition that the Iceman was angry at having been disturbed after 53 centuries, and used to joke: "The next victim could be me." The other "victims" of the mummy include the forensic expert Dr Rainer Henn, who placed the cadaver in a body bag with his bare hands, and who died in a road accident on his way to a conference to discuss his famous subject. The Alpine guide Kurt Fritz organised the transportation by helicopter of the mummified remains, and was killed by a snowslide in an accident in the mountains, in an area he knew well. He was the only one of a party of climbers to die. Then there was journalist Rainer Hoelz, who filmed the recovery of the Iceman, and who died of a brain tumour. The fourth death was that of Helmut Simon, the German tourist who spotted the Iceman in 1991 while on a walking trip with his wife. He became bitter that he was not recognised or financially compensated for his discovery. Last October he failed to return from a mountain hike and was found dead eight days later, the victim of a 300ft fall. Local newspapers recorded that his body was found frozen, under a sheet of snow and ice. A possible sixth victim has also been named, that of Dieter Warnecke, the man who helped find the missing 69-year-old and who died of a heart attack after attending his funeral. Like all good curse theories, natural death, accidents and sheer bad luck have been compressed into a single sinister hypothesis and with all this doom and gloom, there is only one piece of good news. Visitors to the museum in the Italian town of Bolzano specially constructed for the Iceman, where he is on display in a hi-tech refrigerated casket chilled to a glacial -6C, are expecting an increase in curious visitors.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has appeared on the front cover of Elle magazine in Ukraine posing in a designer dress.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has appeared on the front cover of Elle magazine in Ukraine posing in a designer dress.
Mrs Tymoshenko played a key role in the "Orange Revolution", her plait hairdo making her a distinctive figure.
Interviewed by Elle Ukraine, she said she was making full use of her looks in the male-dominated world of politics.
She is said by local media to have even charmed Russian President Vladimir Putin, who visited Kiev in March.
"Do you really think I can charm people? That's interesting, I never would have thought," Mrs Tymoshenko told Elle.
In an earlier interview, given in 2001, she was asked whether she would prefer to make the front cover of Playboy, Time or the Ukrainian women's magazine Natalie.
Mrs Tymoshenko said Playboy would be "the best choice for any real woman".
She added, however, that she might plump for Time instead.
Mrs Tymoshenko told Elle that her looks were all natural as she had no time for beauty treatments.
"I am going to disappoint your readers but I am not doing anything special for my appearance. After working 16 hours a day, all I have time for is sleep," the Ukrainian politician said.
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