prc

Beijing’s R&D budget: 5 trillion yuan (US$758.4 billion)

Sean Darby, Asia strategist for Nomura international (HK) Ltd., estimated the amount of spending over the next five years in a report this week at 5 trillion yuan (US$758.4 billion), an even bigger amount than the mammoth – and successful – 4 trillion yuan stimulus package announced by the central government in 2008 as an attempt to minimize the impact of the global financial crisis.

Hugh Peyman, the managing director of Research-Works, the leading independent equities research firm based in China, told Asia Sentinel that “It will be larger than people think. We are 60 percent of the way through a 25-year program to get R&D up to 2 percent of GDP, yet 75 percent of the spending lies ahead in the last decade to 2020.”

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The top American envoy to North continues to sound hopeful about a new round of North Korea diplomacy

In the wake of the shelling of Yeonpyeong island, the US and South Korea held large-scale military exercises in the area.

China has called for a resumption of six-party nuclear disarmament talks but the US, Japan and South Korea have so far been reluctant to agree without a sign from Pyongyang that it is sincere.

In recent days, however, statements from both the Koreas have appeared more conciliatory, suggesting talks could be a possibility.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and teacher, Szeto Wah has died at the age of 79 from lung cancer

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From Hong Kong Mr Szeto was a thorn in its side: a man who clearly gave the lie to the party’s claim to be the sole representative of Chinese patriotism. Mr Szeto was a critic of British colonial rule, but also of the party’s dictatorial ways.

I feel for Newsweek‘s mandarins, who really want to pick a presidential winner AND humiliate the Tea Party.

The cable-news crowd will undoubtedly scoff at [current Ambassador to China and former Republican governor of Utah, Jon] Huntsman’s prospects in a Republican primary. After a right-wing resurgence flooded Congress with Tea Party Republicans, the field doesn’t appear particularly inviting to a moderate Obama appointee. But

So, Robert Kaplan is sleeping with the Commiesnow.

As before, he views the rise of the Chinese military as “wholly legitimate” — the product of growing commercial realities, not a drive for conquest. “If you governed China, with the responsibility of lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese into an energy-ravenous, middle-class lifestyle,” he writes, “you, too, would seek a credible navy in order to protect your merchant fleet across the Indian Ocean and western Pacific.”