BusinessWeek, Jan 30, 2012 (Starring Varyag)

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(1) Paul M Barrett, China's 65,000-Ton Secret. Warship? Never! The two-decade voyage of the Varyag—from Russian castoff to Macau pleasure palace to China's first aircraft carrier. Bloomberg BusinessWeek,Jan 30, 2012 (cover date)
http://www.businessweek.com/maga ... ecret-01252012.html
("For a carrier of that vintage, the Varyag would be a middleweight, envisioned as the platform for several dozen short-takeoff, vertical-landing fighter jets, as well as 8 or 10 helicopters. By contrast, a U.S.S. Nimitz-class supercarrier has a load displacement of nearly 100,000 tons and room for at least 70 planes, many of them longer-range")

(2) Michael Forsythe and Dexter Roberts, China's Next Boss Has Some Capitalist Cred. Xi Jinping, likely China's next President, ran a province that’s a showcase for private enterprise in the People's Republic.
http://www.businessweek.com/maga ... -cred-01262012.html
(Xi was Zhejiang party chief 2002-2007)

Quote:

"Zhejiang has the smallest gap between rural and urban consumption of any of China’s 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Farmers in Zhejiang have, on average, the biggest homes anywhere in China, and the province ranks fifth in per capita gross domestic product.

"Economists who study the province’s relatively equitable income distribution say the “Zhejiang model,” which stresses small and medium enterprise, offers a possible solution to rising social unrest caused by a widening wealth gap.

Note:
(a) Muscatine, Iowa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscatine,_Iowa
(The name Muscatine is unusual in that it is not used by any other city in the United States; The name Muscatine is believed by some to have been named after the Mascouten native American tribe)

(i) Austin Ramzy, Why China’s Future Leader Is Going to Iowa. Time, JAn 24, 2012 (blog)
http://globalspin.blogs.time.com ... pop1?xid=gonewsedit
("In 1985, Xi, who was then a Hebei provincial official and director of the Shijiazhuang prefecture feed association, visited Iowa as part of a sister state/province program. He stayed with a family in Muscatine")
(ii) Mike Ferguson, Chinese VP Might Visit Muscatine. Muscatine Journal, Jan 25, 2012
http://muscatinejournal.com/news ... 4-001871e3ce6c.html
(In 1985 "Xi stayed in the homes of Dick and Cynthia Maeglin and Eleanor and Tom Dvorchak. The Meaglins are still in Muscatine, but the Dvorchaks have since moved to Florida")
(b) The report quotes Mr Christian Murck, president of the Beijing-based American Chamber of Commerce, as saying, "“We continue to be concerned both in terms of what’s happening in China, where the movement toward a market economy seems to be pretty much stalled, and in terms of what state-owned enterprises will be able to do in markets like the U.S. or Europe or Africa.

Minxin Pei, Remembering Deng in Our Crony-Capitalism Era; As long as pro-market reforms are a means to preserve the political monopoly of the CCP, such reforms will fall. Financial Times, Jan 24, 2012.

There is no need to read but the following quotation:

"In most societies, datingthe start of the reform is easy, but pinning down its demise is not. Such appears to be the case with post-Mao China. Few would disopute that reform began in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping returned to power.

"Dating the demise of Chinese reform is perhaps is impossible, mainly because no single event in the past two decades marked its passing. It suffered the death by a thousand cuts--small but consequential steps taken by Beijing that have gradually reversed the direction of the Chinese economy. In all likelihood, China's reform died in the last decade, following the country's entry into the World Trade Organization


(3) Edmond Lococo, China Unicom's Smart Call on Cheap Phones. Low-end handsets have set off a smartphone boom in China.
http://www.businessweek.com/maga ... hones-01262012.html

Quote:

"China Unicom Hong Kong (CHU), the nation’s No. 2 carrier and an iPhone distributor, really saw its business take off last year when it began pushing smartphones that cost 80 percent less than Apple’s coveted device. After previously courting high-end customers, China Unicom in May started selling handsets from local manufacturers Huawei Technologies and ZTE that cost less than 1,000 yuan ($158), about half a month’s salary for an urban Chinese worker.

"More of the new subscribers will go to China Unicom and third-place China Telecom at the expense of China Mobile, the No. 1 carrier, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. One reason: China Mobile uses a homegrown 3G network standard that is not supported by as many international handset makers. China Mobile’s market share will drop to 38 percent from 44 percent in 2010, according to the survey.

"Huawei sold 4.47 million handsets there through the first nine months, and ZTE sold 3.03 million. During the same period, Apple sold 5.6 million iPhones in China as its market share dropped to 10.4 percent in the third quarter from 13.3 percent the quarter before, according to Gartner. 'Low-end smartphones are selling like hotcakes,' says Samsung Securities’ [Paul] Wuh, 'and there is nothing in the market trends that suggests this is not going to continue.'

(4) Zeke Turner, The Euro Zone's Bridges from Nowhere. Those bridges on the back of euro notes were conceptual—until a rebellious Dutch designer got to work.
http://www.businessweek.com/maga ... where-01262012.html

Note:
(a) Euro banknotes have the following denomination: 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500, whose fronts (but not backs) can be seen in the website of European Central Bank,
http://www.ecb.int/euro/html/eurocoins.en.html
(b) Photo Gallery: The Bridges of Spijkenisse. Der Spiegel, Nov 4, 2011
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-74793.html

(i) For Romanesque-style bridge, see bridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge
("The greatest bridge builders of antiquity were the ancient Romans. The Romans built arch bridges and aqueducts that could stand in conditions that would damage or destroy earlier designs. Some stand today. An example is the Alcántara Bridge, built over the river Tagus, in Spain. The Romans also used cement, which reduced the variation of strength found in natural stone")
(ii)
(A) Renaissance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
(There is a consensus the Renaissance began in Florence, Tuscany in the 14th century)
(B) Renaissance architecture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_architecture
(Stylistically, Renaissance architecture followed Gothic architecture and was succeeded by Baroque architecture; Developed first in Florence, with Filippo Brunelleschi as one of its innovators; Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture)

(c) The report says, "The emerald green, Baroque €100 bridge is Stam’s favorite."
(i) Peter Hooghiemstra, Dutchman Builds Euro Bridges. Radio Netherlands Worldwide, June 30, 2011 (with thumbnails).
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutchman-builds-euro-bridges
(ii) Baroque
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque
(The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe; The popularity and success of the Baroque style was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church; section 1 Etymology: contrast Renaissance)
(d) Bridge. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchec ... naissance-and-after

In the pulldown menu of "Table of contents" (situated under the search box), the section heading "The history of bridge design" includes "Roman arch bridges" and "The Renaissance and after."