The numbers are huge, but in China they are still a small percentage of the overall workforce. That is, if the reports are accurate and not understated. The potential for a civil backlash is growing.

Nearly 5 million migrant workers had returned home by the end of November, accounting for 5.4 percent of rural migrant workers, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.

Many of them had lost their jobs as the global financial crisis took its toll across the country.

The 4.85 million migrant workers were mainly from 10 provinces including Sichuan, Hebei, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan.

Meanwhile, employers in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian and Shandong, as well as Shanghai, have sacked 2.45 million people, accounting for 5.2 percent of the workforce in these areas, the ministry said.

Shanghai Daily

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

It is a new front of an old war to control the vast wealth locked beneath African soil. Niger’s northern desert caps one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world’s largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.

NY Times via Gainesville Sun

It is foolish to accept Chinese economic figures at face value. China remains a centralized communist state. It has no incentive to produce honest data on its economy, nor do the people in the trenches have any incentive to report the economic truth up the line to their superiors. Everything about the economy of China should be treated with suspicion.

As the risk of deflation looms large on top of weaker exports and declining private real estate investment, China’s economy may continue to slow down in the quarters immediately ahead but regain growth momentum in the second half of next year, according to a Morgan Stanley report released on Wednesday.

In its China Economics Outlook for 2009, the Hong Kong-based Morgan Stanley Asia forecast China’s baseline GDP growth would be around 7.5 percent next year, with the bull and bear scenarios projected at 9 percent and 5 percent respectively.

The projection came after the country’s economic indicators showed that the impacts from the global financial crisis on China’s tangible economy have become much severer.

The exports totaled $115 billion last month, down 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first monthly decline since June 2001, the General Administration of Customs said on Wednesday. The previous decline, a much smaller 0.6 percent, reflected slumping US demand after the tech bubble burst.

The producer price index (PPI), a measure of inflation at the factory level, decelerated sharply to an annual rise of 2 percent in November. It was also slowest rise for the PPI since May 2006, which prompted worries about the fast-slowing economy and rising deflation risks.

Late last month, the World Bank has revised down its forecast for China’s GDP rise of next year from 9.2 percent to 7.5 percent.

Wang Qing, Morgan Stanley Asia chief economist on the Chinese economy, said that three factors, namely the cooling-down in real estate investment, a massive de-stocking of raw material inputs in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of international commodity prices and the weakening external demand, had caused China’s economy to slowdown rather sharply.

The “triple-whammy impact” however could barely maintain its full force throughout 2009, although the ravage would likely continue to be felt though in the first quarter of next year, he said. “We believe that China’s economic outlook for next year is best characterized as getting worse before getting better, laying the foundation for a firmer recovery in 2010.”

As the fiscal stimulus package came much faster this time than that during the Asia financial crisis, Morgan Stanley expected the effect to be apparent by mid-2009. Besides, the slow recovery of the G3 economies — the United States, European Union and Japan– after the unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy actions might have led to an improving external demand by the second half of next year and thus would contribute to a modest recovery of the Chinese economy.

China Daily

A TWO-year-old boy was orphaned in the southwest Chinese city of Chongzhou when his parents drank pesticide after a nasty row.
The tragedy, reported in the state media last month, bears testimony to the dark side of reform – suicide rates that are now among the highest in the world.

On average, a Chinese person takes his or her own life every two minutes, giving the world’s most populous nation a dismal record as it prepares to celebrate 30 years of otherwise spectacular economic reform.

“With the reforms, society has become more complicated,” said Huo Datong, the first psychoanalyst to practise in China.

“Individualism has become more pronounced and psychological problems have become more and more serious,” he said from Chengdu, a city in the southwest.

Since reform kicked off in 1978, the Middle Kingdom has been through enormous upheavals and so has the psyche of its 1.3 billion people.

Society has been uprooted as traditional family and clan structures have disintegrated, straining social relations and putting the individual under immense stress, experts say.

In just one generation, China’s millennia-old civilisation has become one dedicated almost entirely to profit, with profound consequences.

In the overall rush to get rich, a culture of competition places huge pressure not least on children, who usually have no siblings and face almost impossible expectations from their parents to be successful.

In a country where three or even four generations used to live under one roof, the elderly are now abandoned – once an almost unthinkable crime – while rural migrants go to the cities to work, leaving their children behind.

“We see more patients in psychiatric hospitals who are there because the economic development has caused old family bonds to dissolve. People are more isolated from others,” said Dr Huo.

It is a time of unprecedented possibilities for education, leisure and travel and more people are allowed to climb the social ladder than ever before.

But at the same time many Chinese succumb to a frightening sense of insecurity.

In the past, the Communist Party regulated everyone’s lives, guaranteeing the “iron rice bowl” of government support from cradle to grave.

This is no longer the case and many Chinese have lost their footing.

The Australian

China on Sunday announced a massive USD 2.61 million military assistance package to Nepal in its bid to checkmate India’s influence over the Himalayan country.

The liberal assistance includes USD 1.45 million for procurement of military equipment apart from USD 1.16 million promised by Beijing during Nepal Defence Minister Ram Bahadur Thapa’s visit two months ago.

Chinese deputy Chief of Staff Lt Gen Ma Xiaotian, who is currently in Nepal on a five-day visit, announced the package of 18 million Chinese Yuan (USD 2.61 million) as part of its plans to boost defence cooperation with Kathmandu.

An agreement was signed with Nepal today by a 10-member military delegation, led by Ma, after meeting Nepal Defence Minister Thapa, the Defence Ministry said.

The Chinese military delegation that arrived here yesterday is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and Nepal Army’s chief Rukmangad Katuwal during his stay in Kathmandu.

Three major Chinese delegations have come to Nepal within a month, as exchange of visits between the two countries have increased following the formation of the Maoist-led government.

Zee