At the Frontlines of the Global Transition
In 2008, on the eve of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama greeted a huge and bouyant crowd in Chicago with this invocation to unity: “This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while …
Maybe, for just a moment last night, like when the early returns from Virginia put Mitt Romney well ahead of President Obama, I wondered whether we’d have a new White House occupant. Then fresher election results from Virginia, and from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio, Iowa, and finally Florida showed Obama earned a clear victory. The president’s supporters, very plainly, are thrilled, as they should be. But there is no glee for the …
It takes a transcendant candidate — a Bill Clinton, a Ronald Reagan — to beat an incumbent president. Mitt Romney, who’s repudiated his signal achievements as a governor and shifted views as often as the game plan strategy required, certainly is not that. So I anticipate that Barack Obama will win a second term today, an honor that he has earned and deserves. Still, we are a dangerously immature country. How does a president govern …
It’s not like the Chinese aren’t listening when President Obama and Mitt Romney accuse them of stealing American jobs, subsidizing exports to the U.S., and cheating on the real value of the yuan. They hear the critique and they’re annoyed for good reasons. But if the president and Romney really want to address China as a threat to the U.S., they ought to be talking about a different set of issues, like the resource-wasting, pollution …
Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, yesterday described the confrontation between population growth and water in China, arguing that a nation developing as fast as that one is bound to hit big economic and ecological impediments. For readers of Circle of Blue, where I serve as senior editor and a global correspondent, this is not a new thought. In fact, in recent months we’re seeing lots of fresh evidence that the groundbreaking reporting we’ve …
Urumqi, the largest city in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, last year opened a 42-kilometer bus rapid transit network, fueled by natural gas and composed of three lines and 55 station stops. It’s a beautiful thing in a traffic-jammed city with risky levels of air pollution. Photo/Keith Schneider URUMQI — The first time we boarded the bright orange articulated Line 3 buses of this desert city’s year-old Bus Rapid Transit network, we got lost. As an …
On a still Aoshawei Bay, lines of marine shellfish bouys stretch shore to shore. Photo/J. Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — At dawn the surface of Aoshawei Bay is a grid of black spots, line after line, straight as the rays of the rising sun, from one shoreline to the other. The spots are bouys that support the submerged platforms and thick netting that grow scallops and clams, oysters and mussels, and enclose immense …
China plans a 16,000-kilometer high-speed rail network. Already, 13,500 kilometers have been built, including the line between Beijing and Qingdao. Photo/J.Carl Ganter, Circle of Blue QINGDAO — It’s 670 kilometers, about 420 miles, between Beijing and this Pacific coast city of glass towers, 10-lane boulevards, sandy beaches, and 8 million metropolitan residents. On China’s high-speed white and blue bullet train, the trip takes four hours and 20 minutes. Whoosh! In the United States, meanwhile, the …
Though no longer a New York Knick, Jeremy Lin is a brand in China as big as this building sign in Qingdao. Photo/Keith Schneider QINGDAO — Granted I’ve spent decades loving the New York Knicks, even though they’ve been hapless for over a decade. Plus, I’m convinced the NBA is the most exciting sports league in the world. Yet even with such personal predilections, it’s easy to argue that the best story in America this …
China’s steady growth relies, in part, on its capacity to build new rail lines, a transportation option available here in Beijing and throughout the country. Photo\Keith Schneider BEIJING — The Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the U.S. government’s marvelous data gathering groups, has spents months making public facts about job and business growth that tell an unexpected story about the American economy. Two of the biggest generators of new jobs and rising incomes in …
