China's Century

Sunday, May 8, 2005 » general link

The new Newsweek has a pretty good article on the rise of China into a new superpower, with a bunch of interesting looks at different aspects of the culture over there, including a blurb about an efficiency-crazed CEO who sometimes likes to smash flawed refrigerators with a sledgehammer.

Here's an excerpt by a Malaysian writer talking about Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao's concurrent tours through Asia in 2004:

Bush talked obsessively about terror. He sees all of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that's not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We're retooling our economies, we're wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we're trying to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all of this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda.

Kind of inspiring and still so, so depressing.