He is heading a delegation of Canadian business leaders aimed at forging closer economic ties.

Those business leaders signed nearly $3 billion worth of deals with Chinese enterprises Thursday.

China has a particular interest in Canadian energy, which is worth many more billions.

This includes a proposed Canadian pipeline to the Pacific Ocean.

It would move sludge-like oil known as bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands to the West Coast, where it could be shipped to China.

But not all Canadians are on board with the proposal.

This week, aboriginal groups from British Columbia sent an open letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao asking China to raise the native community’s concerns about the pipeline with President Harper.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Chief Jackie Thomas, one of the signatories of the letter, about why native communities do not want the pipeline.

But as Chinese waters are increasingly depleted of sea turtles, Chinese poachers are going further afield to find them. That includes hunting in waters that both China and the Philippines claim, like the waters around the Philippine island of Palawan.

The area is home to the endangered hawksbill sea turtle, a species so ancient it predates some dinosaurs. It can grow to be as large as one meter across, according to Glenda Cadigal, of the Palawan Council on Sustainable Development.

“It lays 1,000 eggs,” she said, “and when it lays the eggs in one area, all the hatchlings that hatch from that area will go back to the same spot to lay its eggs at the time it is mature.”

But fewer turtles are making the journey of late, she said. She estimates that their population around Palawan is down about 20 percent from a decade ago, because of poaching, mostly by Chinese.

Sea turtle entangled in net (Photo: NOAA/Wiki Commons)

Cadigal said that some Chinese boats caught near Palawan had tools onboard for stuffing turtles.

The Philippine navy, which patrols those waters, captured a Chinese boat of poachers in December. The boat had two big outboard motors, according to Giovanni Bacordo, deputy commander of the Philippine Armed Forces, Naval Forces West. He said it tried to ram the patrol boat, and then it fled.

“So we gave chase for about 19 minutes until their outboard motors bogged down,” Bacordo said. “While we were giving chase, they were throwing away some equipment overboard, and maybe some dead sea turtles, we don’t know. But the following day, we recovered a fishing net, weighing about a ton, and three more dead sea turtles. So all in all, we recovered nine dead sea turtles, and three live ones.”

Six Chinese were arrested. The alleged poachers said they came from China’s Hainan province, more than 600 miles away. There’s a thriving black market there in sea turtles — a single sea turtle can go for $3,000.

Chinese police in Hainan do periodically crack down on turtle poaching. Still, General Juancho Sabban, who heads the entire Philippine Armed Forces Western Command, suggests the Chinese poachers aren’t operating entirely on their own. He thinks they must have a mother ship, perhaps just commercial, and perhaps not. He said some Chinese poachers have befriended Palawan locals, and have even offered to buy sea turtles from them, which makes him suspicious, as a military man.

“By doing so, they are able to step on Philippine soil, befriending the populace, which to us in the military is a very common ploy in a more advanced planning. You have to immerse and know the local culture, as well as mingle with them and establishing a support base,” Sabban said.

So far, there’s no proven link between the poachers and the Chinese military. But other Chinese fishing boats have been known to lay down markers in contested waters near here.

As for the accused poachers, the six caught in December await trial. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has said China is watching, and wants the Philippines to treat them fairly. Glenda Cadigal of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development said, if anything, Chinese poachers in the past have been treated too fairly. They’ve been allowed to post bail and leave — or the Chinese embassy posts bail for them.

“I’m not into the bailing, because the lives of these wildlife species – you just pay a certain amount, and then you’re free? For me, it’s not fair,” Cadigal said. “They don’t have their voices, and we should be the ones protecting them.”

There’s now a group in Hainan called “SeaTurtles 911,” which is trying to rescue captured sea turtles, and spread awareness in China that hunting endangered turtles is bad for the environment.

But demand lingers, and the supply near Palawan seems too tempting for poachers to resist – especially with the Chinese government insisting that these waters are China’s to exploit.

But what they don’t know is what those ancient forests sounded like. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a glimpse.

The study was conducted by Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a biologist at the University of Bristol, in the UK. He studies how crickets and katydids communicate with sound.

Last year, he received an unusual request from some paleontologists in China. They had unearthed the fossil of a 165-million-year-old katydid.

“They asked me if I will be able to estimate how this animal [made] sounds – which frequencies this animal was using,” said Montealegre-Zapata.

Male katydids (also known as bush crickets) sing to attract females. They produce their songs by rubbing their wings together. One wing has a toothed vein that’s strummed by the other wing.

Montealegre-Zapata examined the ancient Chinese katydid. “The fossil [had] well developed teeth in both wings,” he said.

He measured those teeth and the length of the wings, and then he figured out what the calls of the prehistoric katydid might have sounded like.

Whereas the songs of most modern-day katydids are made up of a range of notes (“something like shhh shhh shhh shhh – very noisy,” he says), the ancient katydid song consisted of a single note. (See video for the reconstructed song of the ancient katydid.)

The fact that these animals sang a single note suggests that they lived in a noisy environment.

“If you are in a noisy environment, when many animals are singing, and you produce a single note, you will produce a private communication channel just between you and the receiver in the middle of the noise,” he said.

In this case, the receivers of that communication were presumably females of the species. Scientists in China have tracked down fossils of some of those ancient females. Montealegre-Zapata’s now plans to study them, to understand how their ears worked.

Accompanied by a 20 strong trade delegation, she is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in the capital.

This is her fifth visit to China, a strategic economic partner for Germany.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Much of Europe looks to Germany to help pay the bills, but many there dream that China will swoop in and solve the Eurozone’s debt crisis. Today, German chancellor Angela Merkel went to China to discuss Europe’s financial woes, and she’s apparently asking China to contribute to a bailout fund. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing. What is China’s response to this request, Mary Kay?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, today Angela Merkel met with Premier Wen Jiabao, and he did call the European debt crisis urgent, and said that China is considering more participation in helping to resolve it, possibly by contributing to the bailout fund for the euro. This is new. Up until now Chinese leaders have been saying you know, we’re very interested in Europe getting out of the debt crisis, it’s important to us. Europe as a whole is China’s biggest trading partner. And over the past year trade has fallen off because of the economic crisis. What seems to have changed is that the Chinese government has recognized that if it doesn’t step in this could drag on a lot longer than is comfortable for its economy.

Werman: So it’s kind of self protection. Is there anything else in it for China?

Magistad: Certainly good will, but in the past that hasn’t been high on China’s list for reasons why it would spend billions of dollars or invest billions of dollars somewhere else. There was a lot of push back back in the autumn when China was getting pressure, getting asked from Europe you know, could you help out? A lot of Chinese were saying online, why would you do that? You know, we need money for schools. We need money for better hospitals. We need money for all kinds of things here, why would you be putting China’s money elsewhere? And the government could come back and say you know, one way that we have money to spend on things like schools, and hospitals and so forth is we trade with other countries. And if those countries go down it’s gonna hurt us too.

Werman: Will that be enough to keep the Chinese people quiet?

Magistad: Hard to know. The Chinese people haven’t been very quiet lately. There are 500 million of them online now and they’re very vocal these days.

Werman: What does China make of suddenly being perceived as this white knight being able to come to the rescue of countries in Europe?

Magistad: I don’t think China sees itself as a white knight, and if anything, instead of throwing up its hands and saying “Whoa, that’s not our role; our role is to look for good places to put our money, good investments for us to make for our purposes; and we think you guys should get your house in order because it’s good for you and it’s good for us. But you know, if we invest in you it’s because we see benefit for ourselves. We’re not doing this out of charity.”

Werman: Has anybody in China discussed a worst case scenario in which a big global session happens and where China might find itself it that were the case?

Magistad: Well, I think going back to 2008, a lot of Chinese analysts were looking at worst case scenarios, and that was why there was a big infusion of cash from the government in stimulus spending. Now, the government feels that it actually has a bit of breathing room to be able to slow down you know, white hot economic growth, and think more about the quality of growth, recognizing that it can’t keep putting so much money into infrastructure and into real estate, which is what was driving growth. It needs to be thinking about ways of increasing domestic consumption, and that means fundamentally changing the structure if the economy, including having more of a social safety net for ordinary Chinese citizens.

Werman: Let me ask you this, Mary Kay, just to go back. Merkel also apparently asked China to use its influence with Iran on its nuclear program. How did that go over?

Magistad: Yeah, she said that she’d like to see China persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. And Wen probably listened politely, but later told Chinese journalists that China objects to Western nations politicizing what he called the normal commercial relationship China has with Iran. What he was referring to is that China imports about 11% of its crude oil from Iran, that makes it China’s third biggest supplier of crude oil. And China opposes sanctions and really doesn’t want to get involved in that way. If anything, it’s gonna use its clout to try to make sure that there isn’t too much pressure on Iran.

Werman: The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad. Always good to speak, thanks.

Magistad: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Eighteen-year-old Sarah Osorio, bubbly and beautiful, is enjoying her reign this year as both Miss Palawan and Miss Kalayaan – the name of a contested chain of islands in the South China Sea. Osorio shows me a scene from the video of the beauty contest, where she’s wearing a red bikini.

She said she wasn’t so keen on showing so much skin. She joined the pageant to make a serious point — about the Kalayaan Islands.

“China’s claiming Kalayaan as its own,” she said. “The Philippines don’t have any capability to fight China. China is very big, compared to Philippines.”

Osorio grew up spending a month each summer on Kalayaan’s biggest island. It’s just a tenth of a square mile.

“We’re a small island — no activities, no entertainments,” she said. There’s no electricity so after 6 p.m. there’s nothing to do but sleep.

When I asked her why people choose to live there, she said: “To show that it’s ours, that we have that island for the Philippines.”

Osorio’s parents are among the 60 civilians who claim residence on Kalayaan’s main island, Pag-asu. The idea is just to have a presence – and Osorio’s family is doing its part. Her dad’s a local legislator. Her uncle lives there, too; he’s a fisherman. According to Osorio, he’s had problems with Chinese boats near the island.

“He told me Chinese people were around their area, fishing and fishing and fishing. If you talk to them, they harass you,” Osorio said. It’s mostly shouting matches, she said. But there’s been more physical contact than that, on the broader South China Sea.

Over the past year or so, China has become increasingly aggressive about asserting its claim to almost the entire South China Sea, and the oil and gas reserves its seabed may contain.

When ExxonMobil announced in October that it had found what looked like a sizable natural gas field near the Vietnamese city of Danang, China warned that foreign companies shouldn’t proceed in waters that China claims.

The Philippines has had its own challenges. General Juancho Sabban, who heads the Western Command of the Philippine Armed Force, shows off what he calls a “Chinese donation” to his marine patrol boats – a confiscated Chinese fishing boat.

“They had GPS, they had radios. They had air compressors, for deep sea diving,” which, he pointed out, you normally wouldn’t find on a fishing boat.

Sabban thinks this boat was doing surveillance. It tried to ram a smaller Philippine patrol boat, so, he said, the patrol had to shoot to disable the engine.

The Chinese who were arrested on the boat said they were just fishermen. But Sabban said they were bailed out by the Chinese embassy, and then they disappeared.

He said similar boats have left construction materials near islands the Philippines claims. Sabban has promptly cleared them, because when this happened on Mischief Reef in 1995, the Chinese erected a structure almost overnight, and now have a permanent presence there. It’s about 130 nautical miles from the Philippines and 600 from China.

According to the International Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from its shores. But China maintains it has a historical claim to islands even farther away, because it found them and named them first.

“In layman’s terms, it’s absurd, unbelievable,” General Sabban scoffs. He points out that the Philippines can also cite historical records of its fishermen who went to China. “So are we also legalized to claim South China Sea?” he asked.

Sabban sees China’s new assertiveness in the South China Sea as being less about protecting questionable historical claims than about the fact that the Philippines and Vietnam are both opening up waters they claim to foreign companies. Shell and Chevron are already active in the Philippines, and the country is soliciting bids for 15 more offshore exploration blocks.

“This year, there will be more drilling in the West Philippine Sea, and we expect that by the end of this year, more rigs will be in place,” Sabban said.

Protecting an oil rig will be one of the military exercises the Philippines does with the US military this spring. A Philippines delegation was just in Washington last week to talk about enhanced US military support in the South China Sea. Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, spoke about US interests at the Center for a New American Security in Washington last month.

Spratly islands map showing occupied features marked with the flags of countries occupying them. (Graphic: US govt)

“This area is vital to the United States,” Greenert said. “It’s been an area vital to our navy and our focus for decades, because of our economy, our trade routes.”

Greenert said the challenge is to keep those trade routes open – and peaceful – while keeping belligerence to a minimum. “How do you have a conversation with someone who is insistent that you’re in the wrong place? You either stop talking, or you keep talking, and you watch how you ratchet up the rhetoric,” he said.

China’s view is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of the South China Sea. In November, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said, “disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved through friendly consultation between directly involved sovereign states.” He added that any interference from outside forces would only “complicate matters.”

China would rather point out, one-on-one, to the Philippines that the $30 billion in trade it has with China could double in a couple of years – or China could punish it, as the Communist Party-owned newspaper The Global Times has suggested, for turning to the US for more military muscle to counter China’s claims. The Global Times has also remarked that these “little countries” in the region should stop challenging China’s interests, or they’ll ‘hear the roar of cannon fire.’

“The Chinese shouldn’t be telling us to get used to that,” responded General Sabban. “We have been hearing the sound of cannons for 40 years.”

General Sabban added, have they forgotten the Vietnam War? A small country can hold out against a superpower, when its core interests are at stake. It can hold out even better – when another superpower stands ready to come to its aid.

He announced the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will look into unfair trade practices in places like China.

Host Lisa Mullins talks with Bruce Gilley, associate professor at Portland State University, about what the move means for US relations with China.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: President Obama seemed to make reference to the rescue operation in Somalia last night. As he entered the House chamber for his state of the union address he was heard this to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Barack Obama: Good job, tonight, good job tonight.

Mullins: The president made no mention of the operation in his speech though. When he did venture into foreign policy last night, the president focused elsewhere, and one topic he mentioned several times was trade with China. Here’s what President Obama said for instance, about counterfeit goods that are made in China.

Obama: It’s not right when another country lets our movies, music and software be pirated. It’s not fair when foreign manufacturers have a leg up on ours only because they’re heavily subsidized. Tonight, I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trading practices in countries like China.

Mullins: That’s President Obama speaking last night. Bruce Gilley is an associate professor of political science at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. There has been as you know, a lot of anti-China rhetoric in domestic politics. This new unit, this Trade Enforcement Unit that he talked about last night, just politicking or for real?

Bruce Gilley: Well, both, it’s politicking in terms of the timing of the creation of the unit, which is clearly to do with the elections this year, but for real in the sense that once you create an institution it takes on a life of its own and this does come at a time in China-US relations when you know, for the first time the United States is feeling a real sense of threat from the challenge of a rising China.

Mullins: Can you describe for us in terms of trade anyway, where that threat stands right now? How serious it is.

Gilley: For a long time the United States policy towards Asia has been to keep its markets open and turn a blind eye to trade subsidies and unfair subsidies of state companies in Asia. And the logic has always been that ultimately the United State benefits because it makes Asia more prosperous and integrates it with the American economy and the liberal trading order. The problem is that China is of a size that the United States has never dealt with this strategy, and China’s size is starting to have notable impacts on American exports, of products that can be copyrighted, as well as impact on manufacturing here in the US.

Mullins: But if there is some kind of enforcement unit does that combine with perhaps any kind of tax incentives, make it more likely that manufacturing jobs will come back here to the US instead of going to or staying in China?

Gilley: No, I don’t think so. I think if you listen to the speech, what he really had in mind was IPR protection.

Mullins: This is intellectual property rights.

Gilley: Intellectual property rights, plus of course, he did mention the question of health and product safety, which is you know, making sure that products coming into this country not just, are not being dumped, but also are meeting the regulatory standards that they’re supposed to meet.

Mullins: Meaning what? This will all be strengthened, but it doesn’t mean necessarily more jobs here.

Gilley: No, I don’t think it does. I think this is part of a broader strategic rethinking of the United States’ relationship with China in which China is being in some sense graduated from the status of a developing country to one that is the United States is equal and which the United States is now going to no longer give the benefit of unalloyed access to the American market irrespective of how the state subsidizes products there.

Mullins: Okay, so if the tide is turning does that mean there is likely to be a backlash on the part of the Chinese?

Gilley: Of course, we’ll see if there is an immediate backlash when the presumptive Chinese leader in weighting, Shee Jeen Ping, visits the White House I believe in a couple of weeks. And I think the view in China is going to be this is kind of a strategic singling out of China because the United States is afraid of our growing strength.

Mullins: Bruce Gilley is associate professor at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. Nice to have you on the program.

Gilley: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

This sounds impressive from one angle, that just over 10% of Chinese lived in cities when the Communist Party came to power in 1949, and not quite 19% when economic reforms started in 1979. (By comparison, more than 50% of Americans lived in cities by 1920.)

Since China’s economic reforms started, a rush of migrant workers from villages has provided legions of construction workers, factory workers, and other workers who have provided the muscle and verve to power their part of China’s economic transformation. Some 250 million rural migrants now live in China’s cities.

The problem is, the system is still skewed against them. On the one hand, China’s leaders say they want China to become ever more urbanized. They see how bigger cities breed innovation, and use energy and other resources more efficiently on a per capita basis. They also see how infrastructure construction keeps economic growth up, especially for the state-owned enterprises they care about most.

But the migrant workers who are pouring in the cities are not being given a fair chance to transform themselves and their children into China’s urbanites of the future. Deep urban prejudices against rural migrant workers haven’t gone away. The condescending sneers might be slightly more hidden than before, but many urban parents still don’t want their kids in classes with rural migrant kids. In a fiercely competitive environment, they don’t want these ‘backward’ village kids to slow down the rest. They don’t seem to care that many of these village kids will become fellow citizens of the city, so it’s in the interests of those already living there that they be well-educated, socialized to urban living and able to contribute to the fullest of their potential.

The government isn’t exactly helping. It has resisted getting rid of the “hukou,” or residence permit system, that Mao Zedong had put in place to keep the farmers on the farm, while preserving urban privileges. So much for the Communist revolution waged in the name of workers and peasants. Migrant laborers, when they come to cities, may or may not be able to get their kids into established urban schools. And many purpose-built migrant schools have been shut down by local city governments.

Even if migrant kids get into urban primary schools, they’re still required to go back to their villages for an inferior level of education in high school. And then they have to take national college entrance exams, where the students who live in cities from birth, and go to the better urban schools, need lower scores to get into university. It effectively enforces an established hierarchy – great for the urban elite, not so much for the aspiring rural poor.

It should then come as no surprise that as income disparity and underclass frustration grow, so does the number of protests in China. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank, now pegs it as about 180,000 protests a year, or almost 500 a day.

Most are linked to land grabs by local governments, eager to make a buck by taking land away from villagers and selling it to developers. This has happened so much, throughout China, that the central government is concerned China is coming close to not having enough land under cultivation to feed its people.

China has passed another milestone this past year – now, some 500 million Chinese are online. Most are in cities, but a growing number are in China’s rural areas. Most Chinese now also have mobile phones, including villagers – and it’s given them a powerful tool to communicate and organize when they feel aggrieved, and want to be heard. China’s leaders are scrambling to keep up, and control the conversation.

The story of China in the decades to come will likely not just be one of economic and urban growth – but of an ever-more sophisticated population, challenging the status quo, and – in virtual and urban environments — having an ever-richer conversation about what they’d like China to be and become. The challenge for China’s leaders is to do more than try to contain or keep up with this conversation. It’s to recognize the change, and transform themselves. Whatever great leaps China has made, in urbanization and the embrace of the Internet, this challenge stands as potentially the biggest leap of all.

The dragon is traditionally considered a sign of good luck.

So millions of people in China, Korea and many other places are hoping for a really good year.

So, if you do business with anyone in China, you might want to keep that in mind.

Another business tip comes from Martin Fridson, a contributor to Forbes who’s been writing about some of the most common misconceptions western business people might have when dealing with their Chinese counterparts.

One example he mentions is the myth about the Chinese character for crisis which many Westerners believe is a combination of the characters for danger and opportunity.

Not so, says Fridson.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Today marks the start of the Year of the Dragon in the Asian lunar calendar. The dragon is traditionally as sign of good luck. Millions of people in China, Korea and many other places too are hoping for a really good year. So, if you do business with anybody in China especially, you might want to keep that in mind. Another business tip comes to us from Martin Fridson. He’s a contributor to Forbes who’s been writing about some of the most common misconceptions that western business people might have when dealing with their Chinese counterparts. One example he mentions is the myth about the Chinese character for crisis, which many westerners believe is a combination of the characters for danger and opportunity. Not so, he says.

Martin Fridson: Well, the word for crisis is composed of two characters — the first stands for danger, but the second one is not really opportunity. It should be translated more as incipient moment or crucial point, so it’s a pretty straightforward description of a crisis.

Mullins: But we’ve been hearing this for years and year, there’s no opportunity in crisis, at least not in the Chinese characters?

Fridson: Well, in investments in general, it’s often possible to take advantage of a crisis when investors are panicking and prices are getting depressed below their intrinsic value. The challenge is not to get in too early because often you find that prices go down a lot more before they start to rise. So we shouldn’t take too literally the idea that a crisis automatically represents an opportunity.

Mullins: And literally though in the characters, the Chinese characters, you don’t find the word opportunity.

Fridson: No, that’s right.

Mullins: What are some of the others and maybe some that you’ve encountered, Martin?

Fridson: Well, one that’s gotten very popular is the story that when Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon went over to meet with China and start to open up the relations between the US and China. Kissinger, who asked Zhou Enlai, what was the impact of the French Revolution? And Zhou Enlai replied too early to tell. So this has taken as a sign of here’s the very long perspective that the Chinese take on any of these issues because here, 200 years later, he was saying it was too early to tell what the impact of the French Revolution was. As it turns out what he was referring to in the early 1970s was the student uprisings in Paris in 1968. So it really didn’t suggest anything along the lines of what the story is repeated and meant to convey.

Mullins: That’s such a tidy little story though.

Fridson: Yeah, it’s one of those things that you wish it were true. Unfortunately, doesn’t happen to be.

Mullins: So how come these things last in our culture then? You know, it’s kind of popular culture, but these things have been repeated so often in business. And you say they can be dangerous or maybe embarrassing in the very least. What’s their staying power?

Fridson: I think they convey something that perhaps has an element of truth in it. They’re great stories. I think everyone who has been in business has found that if you can tell a story you can be a lot more effective in communicating than you can be presenting a lot of statistics. And unfortunately, when you dig into these you find that a lot of them just don’t have any basis.

Mullins: All right, so it sounds like the bottom line maybe for you on this Chinese New Year, for those doing business in China specifically, you get to the table, don’t ask for General Gao’s chicken.

Fridson: Well, General Tso is the most, the name it’s mainly known under. It seems to have picked up some other variance here in the US. But there was a General Tso. He was a prominent general, but as far as we can tell had nothing to do with the very popular dish of General Tso’ chicken, which was invented in New York in the early 1970s.

Mullins: How about Chop Suey, don’t tell me the same.

Fridson: Yeah, that was invented in San Francisco by Americans, similarly, fortune cookies were introduced into Chinese restaurants in the United States by Japanese chefs who had a similar dish in Japan.

Mullins: Martin, you’re throwing everything out the window, we’re gonna have to just start from scratch again. Anyway, Martin Fridson, contributor to Forbes and also he’s a strategist for BNP Paribas Investment Partners. So nice to talk to you.

Fridson: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

But now, as President Ma begins his second-term, some expect China to start ratcheting up pressure to build stronger political ties, and move Taiwan closer to reunification with China.

An early sign of that came in a post-election statement from Beijing. An anchor on China’s state-run television read a summary: “The Mainland is willing to join hands with the people of Taiwan from all walks of life, as they break new ground in peaceful development in cross-straits relations.”

Then came the kicker.

“This is on the basis of continuing to oppose Taiwan independence, and sticking to the 1992 consensus.”

The 1992 consensus really wasn’t a consensus. Beijing sees it as an agreement with Taiwan that there is one China, and it’s the People’s Republic of China, the PRC, with Taiwan as its province.

Taipei sees the agreement as the two sides agree to disagree on what “one China” means. For many Taiwanese, it’s a divided China, which may or may not ever reunite.

Actually, these days, a majority of Taiwanese identify themselves as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese, and don’t want to move toward reunification any time soon, and there are signs China’s getting impatient with that.

“China suffers from the rising challenger’s disease,” said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii, who was in Taiwan for the elections. Roy was referring to how China is increasingly challenging the United States and the status quo in their balance of power – especially related to Taiwan. He said China went easy on President Ma for a couple of years – increasing trade, improving ties, making no threats, and saying it could be patient.

“In short order,” Roy said, “we started hearing about debates breaking out among Chinese elites about whether China’s policy was being too tolerant toward Taiwan, allowing Taiwan to take advantage of the concessions China was offering without offering anything in return to the Chinese, the benefits the Chinese wanted, the political benefits.”

By that he means, political benefits that would draw Taiwan inextricably into Mainland China’s orbit, as increasing economic dependence already has.

Last October, Ma raised the possibility of a peace accord with China. It created an uproar in Taiwan. So he backed off and said he’d never do such a thing without a referendum. His re-election won’t change that, he said this weekend.

“That doesn’t mean I will go even faster,” Ma said, after his victory this weekend. “I will control the pace to make sure people can support it.”

Good thing, too, because while Ma won a majority, it was a much smaller majority than last time. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party got almost 46 percent of the vote, which could be a useful thing for Ma to point out to China’s leaders, if they pressure him for more concessions. Push too much, he could say, and you risk having a DPP president next time around. The DPP tends to favor a separate Taiwan identity.

The question is whether that’s enough incentive for China to stay patient. Denny Roy of the East-West Center said there’s one thing Beijing is increasingly impatient about – US arms sales to Taiwan.

“Arms sales remain an impending train wreck,” Roy said. “The Ma Ying-jeou position, that arms sales contribute to peaceful cross-strait relations, is the exact opposite of the PRC position, that arms sales contribute to tensions across the Taiwan Strait. One must assume that there’s a limit to Chinese tolerance of that contradiction.”

Roy added that the strength of the US commitment to Taiwan seems – unofficially – to be ebbing. At the same time, China is fast building up its military capability for, among other things, taking control of a populated island like Taiwan.

But that’s not really how China’s leaders want to play it. They’re also doing outreach to ordinary Taiwanese people, offering scholarships and cultural events. They’d rather seduce than overpower — far less messy, far less costly. But the suitor seems to be getting tired of waiting, and many Taiwanese wonder whether President Ma has the strength to hold out, and the canniness to keep China playing a softer game.

A man in the village of Wukan, in Guangdong Province, has been named the new village chief.

The man, Lin Zulian, led a protest over alleged land grabs by corrupt local officials.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to Michael Wines, New York Times Beijing correspondent.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Across the Taiwan Strait, a village in southern China has seen a political transformation. A man who lead a peasant revolt last month has now been appointed to run his village. Michael Wines of The New York Times has covered the Wukan protests.

Michael Wines: This was really an extraordinary protest in terms of what you see in China, which has a lot of protests. But this one was incredibly unusual because they actually seized control of an entire town and held it for something like 10 days. The villagers were very upset about what they saw as a misappropriation of their land by the village leaders who’d been in power for decades really. And it reached a breaking point after one of the representatives on a village council that was trying to negotiate deals to restores some of the land, a fellow by the name of Xue Jinbo actually died while in police custody and villagers go so angry that they actually forced all of the village leaders to flee the town, as well as the police. And so for the next 10 days it was really a place where the inmates were in control of the asylum.

Werman: And now the leader of that protest movement, Lin Zulian, is now the village party secretary, and that’s a pretty high position, like mayor. Why an emeritus disappointment for someone who did something that some in China might say is criminal?

Wines: Well, that’s a good question. You know, we can only speculate because obviously we aren’t on the inside of any of these deliberations. But what you can say is that what Mr. Lin, who headed the village during these protests, was really unusually adroit in winning world media attention to the events in Wukan. They staged some very media savvy protests. I was there during some of them, and they were incredibly photogenic. And so he got his message out to the entire world and it’s hard not to believe that that didn’t have an effect on the leaders of Guangdong Province, who eventually relented and actually sent an emissary, a very high emissary, to Wukan to negotiate with Mr. Lin. And he eventually agreed to stage an inquiry into the villagers’ grievances and into essentially exonerate those villagers who had been involved in the protests from any criminal liability. So it was quite a victory and to their credit I guess, the Guangdong officials have not stopped anybody from elevating Mr. Lin to a higher position.

Werman: Michael, what next for the village of Wukan? Will the residents have their grievances settled? Will they get all their land back?

Wines: That’s another good question. The people I talked to today say that the provincial authorities who have pledged to investigate the problems there have so far offered to return about one quarter of the land that they say was illegally taken from them. They want more and they say that if they don’t get more they will seek legal help, but of course, the Chinese legal system, which is controlled by the Communist Party is rather opaque, and it’s unclear what that would get them.

Werman: If it’s as you say, Mr. Lin, the new party secretary in Wukan, is adroit and got all this international attention on his village, I guess people will be watching. This has gotta be the brightest spotlight that’s ever landed on the village of Wukan in recent years, I imagine.

Wines: Well, by far. You know, this is the case in which people have actually risen up to fight city hall in a country that doesn’t appreciate people fighting city hall. And miraculously won. And that’s one of the reasons it drew so much attention. You know, it has been written about in many places, including by me, as a potential example of how the Chinese government is managing to adapt to the rising number of protests by its own citizens. You could call it a revolution of rising expectations because life is improving in China, but of course, people see their neighbors getting a better life and they want more. And the question is how the Chinese authorities deal with that, and in many, many cases the answer has been to send in the police whenever there’s a protest. And here’s a case where it was settled peacefully. And the question is are the Chinese authorities going to follow through and deal with their grievances, instead of glossing over their initial protests and then letting things slide.

Werman: The New York Times’ Michael Wines in Beijing, thank you very much.

Wines: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The building stands 30 stories tall and looks out over Dongting Lake.

The province is in south central China and its name means “south of the lake.”

The construction of the hotel in the short span of time was highlighted by a time-lapse video that went viral across the globe.

Hunan Province, China is the answer to the Geo Quiz.

The newly-constructed building is said to be earthquake resistant and extremely energy efficient.

The developer also says it was built at a third of the usual cost.

Anchor Marco Werman talks to The Atlantic’s James Fallows about the speedy transformation of China’s urban landscapes.

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The song’s satirical lyrics resonated with many young urban Chinese, who find to their dismay that a nothing-special apartment costs about 30 times their average annual income. “Happiness Lane” gave voice to growing frustration and resentment about an economic system that increasingly favors elites – especially those with Communist Party connections — and leaves others behind.

The singer, Chuanzi – real name Jiang Yachuan — started playing songs and writing music when he was a young man serving a stint in prison for starting a fight. He got out on good behavior, and kept singing. Now middle-aged, married, and raising a young daughter, he still sports the look of a rebel – long hair, long beard, a schlumpy style of dress.

I thought of Chuanzi when I started putting together a story on political humor in China. He readily agreed to be interviewed. He mentioned he was about to record a new song, and also agreed when I asked if I could come to the studio to watch.

He laid down the tracks – about how hard it was for young Chinese to afford to get married, buy a house and raise a child. He listened, chain-smoking, as the song was mixed. His wife sat quietly in the corner. His agent, a young woman named Wu Ting, also looked on.

At one point, she leaned over to a Chinese friend who’d come with me, and who’d helped arrange the interview. She asked what I’d be writing about. Political satire in China, my friend replied. Wu Ting was not pleased.

“It’s best not to air China’s dirty laundry to foreigners.” Minutes later, though, Wu Ting and Chuanzi were asking me eagerly about the possibility of touring in the United States.

Pekinese in the window. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Shaking off the incongruity, I got out my recorder and asked Chuanzi about the black-humored tone of his songs.

“I think the black humor is because most of us feel resigned to life,” he said. “We feel a lot of pressure in society, the pressure to survive. Playing music is one way to console our souls – whether it is to soothe people’s hearts or poke fun at life. It’s to help people get out of their hard situation.”

Just poking fun at life, I asked, or poking fun at the system that makes life hard?

“I’m poking fun at the difficulties in our life, the difficulties we need to face,” he said. “By poking fun, we gain a certain amount of momentum or a certain amount of power to change our lives. But the system, I don’t think we can change… I think I’m a very small potato. I think I’m too weak by myself to change things. But if we stick together – we artists – it’s possible to change the society, and even the system, and to push it forward.”

Chuanzi went on to complain about counterfeit products in China, about unsafe food and milk and cooking oil.

“We need to rely on our responsibility and our consciousness,” he said. “It’s a generation of lack of consciousness, and reliability and trust among people. We should, through our music, raise people’s consciousness, and improve their moral bottom line.”

Chuanzi’s agent was becoming agitated. She took her mobile phone and stepped out of the restaurant. She came back, and pulled Chuanzi aside. When he rejoined the interview, it was like a politically correct clone had taken his place. I asked what needed to change in the system to bring about the social change he desired.

“I think this is a question for the State Council (China’s main governing body) and the National People’s Congress (China’s legislature) to resolve,” he said. “We ordinary people have no right to speak on this.”

His agent left the table again. Again, she was on the phone. Again, she called Chuanzi away – and this time, put him on the phone. When he came back, he said there was an emergency at his recording company, and they all had to go. On their way out, the agent pulled aside my Chinese friend, and said she was cutting short the interview, on the advice of his recording company, because my questions were too sensitive. If I wanted to interview Chuanzi in the future, she said, I’d have to submit questions in advance for approval.

When my friend relayed this to me, I joked that this suddenly felt more like dealing with petty provincial Communist officials than with a folksinger known for his sharp social commentary. “All that’s missing is a demand for preapproval of my story,” I said.

A few minutes later, in came a text message, demanding preapproval of my story.

“I’m the manager of singer Chuanzi’s record company,” read the message from Xue Feng, manager of the recording company 13th Month. “Thanks for your interest in Chuanzi and his music. But based on the artists’ contract, we need to approve all publicity. Please send the report to us for review before broadcast. If anything unauthorized is broadcast, we reserve the right to take legal action. Thank you again.”

Ah, threats. Always the way to a journalist’s heart. I thought of the many times colleagues in China had been threatened by one government department or another – by those who must have actually thought this would lead to more favorable coverage. I thought of China’s ongoing quest for soft power in the world, and how simultaneous tactics of bullying smaller neighbors weren’t exactly helping the cause. And I thought about how a system affects the people in it, even those who make their name criticizing what the system does to people.

Chuanzi is a talented guy, who’s made his name singing about the inequalities of life in modern China. It’s a sad irony that those now making money off of him, and helping him make some of his own, seek to muffle his voice in the process. It’s a sad commentary on the state of free expression in China that they feel they should.

Hexiefarm cartoon (Photo courtesy of Hexiefarm)

“When the situation is getting tougher, the humor is getting stronger. That has been always the case,” said Xiao Qiang, who runs China Digital Times, a website that follows news and web trends in China. He said in this past year, as Chinese authorities have tried to step up control in the wake of pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, China’s online humor has, if anything, gotten sharper.

“Because especially when it comes to political and social matters, where there’s always a sense of repression there, speaking truth to power requires a lot of courage, and there’s risk involved,” Xiao said. “But humor can smooth that out.”

When two high-speed trains collided last summer, a former journalist named Liu Dongdong took a Chinese rock classic and rewrote the lyrics to create a satirical critique of government mismanagement – of the hi-speed train project, and of the accident.

The song quickly got millions of hits.

“These days in China, people are under a lot of pressure, and sometimes they feel helpless,” said Liu Dongdong. “I hope doing these songs helps relieve some of that pressure – and maybe even gets a little attention from the authorities so they do something about the problems.”

Figuring out what you can say online, and when, is a little like surfing, according to Liu – you catch a wave and ride it in while you can. You get your spoof out before the authorities realize what it is and take it down.

Another satirist who knows that drill goes by the name Crazy Crab. I asked if the authorities know his real name.

“I’m wondering that myself,” Crazy Crab said. “If they don’t know, I’m sure they’re trying to find out.”

Crazy Crab does an online cartoon inspired by George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” His is called Hexie Farm. Hexie can mean crab, or harmony. The Communist Party’s stated desire is for a “harmonious society” – that is, one without challenge to its rule. Hexie Farm is run by a Party, too, which is trying to usher in a “great, glorious and correct” era of harmony. Crazy Crab considers it a badge of honor that Hexie Farm is now a blocked search term in China. He said China’s leaders don’t really have a sense of humor.

“If they do, I can’t see it,” he said. “Their humor is unintentional; it comes from the absurd contrast between what they say and what they do.”

Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times agrees that the system doesn’t really breed leaders with a sense of humor, or even an individual sense of style. And yet, those leaders ignore political humor at their peril, especially from China’s younger generation. Xiao said they expect more from their leaders.

“They want more freedom, and humor, in the basic sense, is to carry a message,” Xiao said. “That message, in the political humor, is no less than demanding a freer society, a more equal and just society, and pointing to the fact that the power in China today is unaccountable to its own people.”

Yet many of those coming up with snarky satire don’t really believe the system is going to change anytime soon.

Chuanzi (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“I make fun of the difficulties we face in life. We can try to change our lives, but we can’t change the system,” Chuanzi said.

When I asked if he really believes that, he responded, “Well, I’m too small and weak. But if we stick together, musicians and other artists, maybe we can make some change to society.”

Chuanzi’s agent, who was sitting nearby, didn’t like the direction this interview was taking. Artists like Ai Weiwei got arrested for using humor to push for social and political change – although, much more aggressively and persistently than Chuanzi is doing here. The agent cut off the interview, and told me if I want to interview Chuanzi again, I’ll have to submit questions in advance– just like applying to talk to a Chinese government official.

A good satirist could have a field day with this.

You may have heard about Iran test-firing missiles this past week. But also fascinating, is what Iran calls its missiles.

The two that were test-fired on Sunday are named Qader (capable) and Nour (light) “While Nour literally means light, it is also a verse in the Koran,” said BBC Persian journalist, Pooneh Ghodoosi in a phone interview. “It symbolizes the victory of light over darkness – in the war between believers and non-believers.”

Take another: the the Sajjil missile Iran said it tested in 2008:

“This one is very much from the Koran,” Ghodoosi explained. “It is from a verse that talks about how a bunch of birds attack non-believers and throw stones at them. The birds are messengers from God.”

It is not just missiles. Many of Iran’s military operations have political and historical references too.

“These words are able to move and motivate people. It is proof of the ideology behind the war. They are trying to portray this as a battle between holy people and unholy people,” Ghodoosi said.

Many cultures name missiles to send out messages steeped in religion or history. For example, some of Pakistan’s missiles are called Ghauri, Ghaznawi and Abdali.

What do they mean? Well, they’re all names of Muslim conquerors who defeated Hindu rulers – a clear message to arch-rival India (roughly 80 percent of India’s population is Hindu.)

India prefers Sanskrit names. References to weapons used by Hindu Gods also come up. Some of the missiles are called: Agni (fire), Prithvi (earth), Akash (sky), Trishul (trident, also the weapon used by Hindu God Shiva) etc.

There are other reasons behind naming of missiles in India.

W Selvamurthy, chief controller of life sciences and human resources at India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) told the Times of India that missiles are given names that have a “functional meaning and/or a scientific rationale.”

In China “historical or cultural references are not that common,” explained Professor Professor Steven Tsang, director China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham in the UK. “But names have a lot to do with the Leninist-Marxist heritage of the Communist party.”

There are missiles called Red Arrow or Red Bird – direct references to the Communist Party.

China’s Dong-Feng missiles literally mean “East Winds”. “After the launch of the Sputnik, Mao Zedong made a speech in which he declared – “the east wind (communism) prevails over the west wind (capitalism). The names of these missiles may well have something to do with this historic speech,” said Tsang.

China is no stranger to controversy about how its military names munition. The Taipei Times reported last year that Taiwan wasn’t pleased at the prospect of China calling it’s aircraft carrier “Shi Lang”.

Shi Lang was a Chinese admiral who crushed resistance in Taiwan and took over the island in the 17th century.

Singing Contest 'Super Girl' (Photo: Shizhao/Wiki Commons)

Satellite broadcasters in China have cut entertainment TV by two-thirds following a government campaign, state news agency Xinhua has reported.

An order by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to curb ”excessive entertainment” came into effect on January 1st.

The number of entertainment shows aired during prime time each week has dropped from 126 to 38, said the watchdog.

However, as The World’s Mary Kay Magistad explains, savvy Chinese youth are simply turning away from their televisions, and switch on laptops and pirated western DVDs instead.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Too much reality on television has lead authorities in China to crackdown on TV entertainment. Officials want fewer programs like this one, called If You Are the One, China’s answer to The Dating Game. A new policy went into effect on January 1 that restricts the number of such programs Chinese TV stations can air. The effect has been immediate. The 126 prime time entertainment on offer on Chinese TV in December have dwindled to 38 now. The programs that have been axed vary, according to The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Mary Kay Magistad: Game shows, dating shows, celebrity shows, talent shows where viewers vote, although they’ve already cut back on those, time travel shows, spy dramas and basically anything that the government feels is not implicating appropriate socialist values…anything where people are encouraged to be materialistic or sexual bawdy, or not to think enough about the sacrifices that the party made to give people the welfare and rices that they have now.

Werman: Okay, and before we go on, how does time travel programming fit into that?

Magistad: Well, that’s a really good question and I can only hazard to guess that if you were to say travel back in your time capsule, or car or whatever to say, 1945. And imagine a future where someone other than the Communist Party came to power things could get kind of interesting.

Werman: Mm, gotcha, okay. Now describe for us this show, Super Girl, which apparently has been one of the shows that’s cut. What’s wrong with it specifically?

Magistad: Well, Super Girl, it’s been constrained and that actually happened a while ago. Super Girl was wildly popular with huge swaths of the population. People would go out and campaign on the streets for the Super Girl who they wanted to win.

Werman: And it’s a talent show?

Magistad: It’s a talent show, it’s like American Idol.

Werman: But only for girls?

Magistad: But only for girls.

Werman: Right.

Magistad: Or young women. And then people would really get into voting. And the government looked around at this and was like uh, no, we’re not going to encourage this. And in fact when I went out and talked to people when they banned voting for Super Girl and said we’re just going to have judges in the studio, a number of people I talked to said but this was really great and I hope at some point in the future I’ll actually get a chance for my leaders for the government, which is exactly what the government didn’t want people to be thinking about.

Werman: Now, President Hu said we must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China. Why is this happening now?

Magistad: President Hu has been thinking a lot about how China can project its culture out into the world. It looks at the soft power that American culture has, the ability to attract, the ability to make others want to emulate you. And he’s thinking I want China to have that. Not just him, but the Communist Party in general. But they don’t know how to go about it. So they spent billions of dollars on Chinese television for external broadcasts. They have their Confucius Institutes around the world where they’re teaching Chinese and having Chinese cultural programs, but it’s still not taking the way they’d like it too. And indeed the television, and films and video games coming into China from the West are attracting Chinese youth. They’re much more interested in seeing a lot of that than they are seeing the sorts of programs that the Chinese government would like them to be focusing on. And what’s interesting here is the government seems to think that by limiting entertainment programming on television it will get China’s youth to sit down in front of the screen and watch what they want them to watch. But these are young people who have computers and have smartphones, and have pirated DVDs, and they can basically do whatever they like, so it’s kind of a losing game.

Werman: So this weekend practically speaking would you be able to go out in Beijing and see any Hollywood movie you wanted?

Magistad: You could go out in Beijing and go to a DVD store which is a legitimate store selling pirated DVDs. It’s very hard to actually find a non-pirated DVD in China. And you can get releases from 2-3 weeks ago that are still showing in American theaters.

Werman: The World’s Asia correspondent Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing talking about new restrictions on entertainment programming in China. Thank you very much.

Magistad: Thank you, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.