Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Apr 6, 2015

choi

(1) Dexter Roberts, China's Dickensian Boarding Schools.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... an-boarding-schools

Quote:

"Hunger and loneliness are commonplace, according to students, who spend more than 10 months a year at the school.

"China’s boarding schools are the product of a government policy of closing or merging small rural day schools in response to falling birthrates. According to the education ministry, more than 240,000 village schools have been closed since 2000 and replaced with thousands of academies built to board students. China has more than 100 million rural students in first through ninth grades. The proportion of them who live at school has grown rapidly in recent years, reaching more than a quarter in 2011, says Yang Dongping, director 院长 杨东平 of the 21st Century Education Research Institute 21世纪教育研究院 [an NGO] in Beijing. A large number of these children are what Chinese call liushou ertong, or 'left-behind children'

"A study by Stanford, the University of California at Davis, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Catholic University of Leuven found that fourth-graders in rural areas are at least two grade levels behind their urban peers in math and Chinese.  Fewer than one-half of rural students finish high school, compared with 90 percent in the cities.

"Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, cautions that China’s deficit in rural education could one day rise to the level of a national crisis. Just one-quarter of Chinese workers have a high school education, which makes the workforce less educated than those of Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa. 'There is no way China can become the high-wage, skilled economy its leaders say they want when 400 million working-age adults can’t read or write,' he says.

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Teaching at many rural schools is poor; living conditions are worse
(b) "The principal of a junior high school in Shaanxi * * * adds that a request for permission to hire more 'life teachers,' to help boarders with psychological issues, was rejected by the township education bureau.

"生活老师是管理住校学生的生活."  百度百科
(c) For Catholic University of Leuven, see Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katholieke_Universiteit_Leuven
(Dutch for Catholic University of Leuven, but usually not translated into English; a Dutch-speaking university in Leuven, Flanders, Belgium; founded in 1425 [by Pope Martin V], making it Belgium's first university)

Its official website says it is “autonomous.”  I do not know whether it is public or private.
(d) “With few if any extracurricular activities, students spend much of their spare time confined in classrooms engaged in ‘self study.’ Sixty-three percent of boarding students say they’re lonely, and almost a fifth are depressed, with many considering suicide, according to a study published this year by Growing Home, a Beijing research organization that focuses on education.”

Growing Home  歌路营
www.growinghome.org.cn/
(2008- )

choi

(2) Zhang Shidong, Allen Wan and Kana Nishizawa, It’s ‘Price-to-Whatever’ for Chinese Stocks.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... market-math-upended

Note:
(a)
(i) summary underneath the title in print: Money keeps pouring in as the market soars
(ii) quotation underneath the title in print: "Traditional market models may not be able to capture the full picture"
(iii) At the end of the print report: The bottom line A 77 percent rise in the Shanghai Composite Index in the past year hasn't discouraged investors from piling in.

(b) The URL provides an online report that is not verbatim, but very close to the print one.
(c) Hao “Hong 洪灏, the chief China strategist at investment bank Bocom International Holdings”

(i) from its official website: "BOCOM International Holdings Company Limited (BOCOM International 交銀國際) is the international investment banking and securities business flagship of the Bank of Communications Company Limited 交通银行 in Hong Kong. * * * commenced business in September 1999"
(ii) My guess is BOCOM stands for Bank Of COMmunication.

(d) print: "So what’s his advice?  Keep buying, of course. * * * [Hong] spell[ed] out his stance in a March 20 report titled 'Price-to-Whatever Ratio: A Bubble Scenario 市啥率，就是啥率.' ”

online: "So what’s Hong’s advice to investors?  Keep buying, of course."
(e) "Qun Liao, the Hong Kong-based chief economist and head of research at China Citic Bank International Ltd"
香港中信銀行研究部主管經濟學家 or 中信銀行(國際)首席經濟師兼研究部總經理 (I see both titles in the Web, both recent)  廖群

(f)
(i) three consecutive paragraphs ONLINE:

"For investors who still use valuations as a guide, the picture isn’t so sanguine.

"The Shanghai Composite’s median price-to-earnings ratio, which is less influenced by the nation’s biggest banks than a market-capitalization weighted average, has climbed to 44. That level has been breached just twice during the past decade, in late stages of rallies in 2007, when it climbed as high as 66, and early 2010, when the peak was 47. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has a median ratio of about 20, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

"The Shanghai index’s earnings yield, or profits as a percentage of the price, has shrunk to 5.6 percent, the lowest since May 2011 versus the nation’s highest-rated 10-year corporate debt, which has a 4.8 percent yield. Chinese companies with dual listings are 34 percent more expensive on the mainland versus Hong Kong, the widest gap since October 2011, according to the Hang Seng China AH Premium Index.

(ii) The third paragraph does not show up in print. The print has just one paragraph:

"For investors who still use valuations as a guide, there's reason for concern. The Shanghai Composite Index’s median price-earnings ratio has climbed to 44. The index has surpassed that level only twice during the past decade, in the late stages of rallies in 2007, when it climbed as high as 66, and early 2010, when the peak was 47. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has a median ratio of about 20, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.