Beijing Briefs

From the article:

Since its inception in January 2008, the Labor Contract Law (LCL) has garnered a great deal of attention from international and local media alike.
Some have hailed it as a major step forward for workers’ rights, while others blame the law for contributing to high production costs and causing factory shutdowns across the [...]

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From the article:
Congress may be beating up on China to
improve its safety standards - but maybe it doesn’t have to: Chinese
citizens are doing that on their own. As the October 2007 Consumer
Rights and Corporate Responsibility Annual Conference held by the
Beijing Center for Business Ethics (CIBE) demonstrated, there is an
emerging, strong movement in China for better [...]

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From the article:
Most interesting to me was a quote I found of Thomas Friedman, the America economist, who had written in the New York Times: “Dalian would stand out in Silicon Valley.” This was in reference to the city’s frantic attempt to be a business and high tech center, rather than simply a dusty city [...]

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From the article:
What does rain have to do with the development of a modern city? Probably nothing in Canada, but while studying Chinese at Peking
University, I learned that in Beijing it is part of a whole new
approach to life. In the past, when drought threatened the city,
petitions were submitted to honorable ancestors. Today, technology is
called [...]

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Taken from Adbusters 70 March/April 2007:
Most of Beijing still gets around on bicycles. This was my main mode of transport when exploring the city, and I saw both the desperate and the enterprising use their bicycles to make money, offering service as movers of everything from furniture to tanks of butane gas. But I also [...]

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