oHong Kongers remain under the spell of the mouthless one from Sanrio. Simon cites an SCMP item on a promotional event that went sour.:

The opening of an art exhibition of Japan’s most famous cartoon
character degenerated into farce at the Arts Centre yesterday as more
than 1,000 outraged fans complained about unfair arrangements
preventing them from getting a limited edition Hello Kitty toy. After
hours of heated discussion, manufacturers Sanrio Hong Kong vowed to
produce another set of the toys to calm the crowd.
Exhibition organisers and Sanrio hoped to bring Hong Kong fans an
artistically inspiring and nostalgic experience to celebrate Hello
Kitty’s 30th birthday. But fans who had queued since 11pm on Wednesday
night had just one goal - to buy one of 300 "detective-style" Hello
Kittys made especially for the exhibition. The exhibition opened at
10.30am and the 300 toys, plus other limited edition items such as
umbrellas, went on sale when the doors opened. Only 70 fans were
allowed into the hall at a time.
By noon, however, more than 1,000 were queuing outside.

Unlike earlier such Kitty-related mobs, no injuries were mentioned.

Japundit reports on a tour bus based on a Hello Kitty theme. As nothing good ever comes from the mouthless one, I expect we shall soon be hearing of a horrific bus accident.

This evil must be stopped.

Ian Lamont, who is doing content research on Xinhua at Harvard, is excited by a discovery of an online depositary of almost a decade’s worth of North Korean propaganda.:

This is awesome! Someone in California has taken North Korean propaganda from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) from 1996 to the present, and dumped it into a searchable database with a Web interface.

Asiapundit is also impressed, particularly with the random insult generator.:

In the wake of the blog-city ban, Imagethief has developed some possible surveys for Xinhua.:

Which lickspittle, Anti-China foreign hate-site should be banned next?
A) The Peking Duck
B) The Horse’s Mouth
C) Angry Chinese Blogger
D) Imagethief
E) Ban ‘em all, and have the authors beaten with rubber hoses! In fact, ban all media.

Unfortunately, they’ve all been banned except for Richard. Speaking of which, I haven’t been missing his absence from the Duck. Other Lisa and Martyn are doing an excellent job as guest bloggers. Lisa delivers an opus on China’s internet censorship. Martyn brings us a must-read on the China no one talks about.:

While China’s surge certainly may continue, it’s also possible that the
awakening giant may stumble badly, a notion not on enough radar screens
in Washington. And a failed China could damage American interests to a
greater extent than a strong China. That’s hardly the conventional
wisdom, but it’s worth examining.

While Korea may have missed out on the iPod craze, Jason at Wandering to Tamshui notes that there is another Northeast Asian economy where Apple still shines.:

Yet another reason to buy an iPod: they play a huge role in Taiwan’s tech economy.
It’s
no secret that most of the world’s notebook computers come from Taiwan,
but not a lot of attention is paid to the fact that most of the guts
found in the ubiquitous iPod are made by Taiwanese companies (some of which have production facilities in China).

Kudos to Mr Wang, the Library of Congress has approved his blog as an official electronic resource.:

Isn’t this amazing? The US Library of Congress cites me as an electronic resource on politics in Singapore.
I’d be really flattered, except that (1) I personally wouldn’t trust
myself very much as a library resource, and (2) looking at the list of
cited Singapore blogs, I really don’t get the impression that the list
was carefully chosen.

This is a true rarity, "good news about governance in the Philippines."

This is another rarity, the Onion is again becoming worth reading. India blog Chapati Mystery points to this:

Calcutta Fire Marshal: Many Indian Homes Lack Bride Extinguisher

CALCUTTA, INDIA—Failure to own or use a bride extinguisher results in
millions of rupees of property damage in India annually, Calcutta fire
marshal Prasad Chandra said in a press conference Monday. "This tragedy
occurs far too often when well-meaning husbands, attempting to collect
on a dowry, ignite their brides indoors. The damage is often compounded
when a burning bride attempts to escape and spreads the flames to other
homes," Chandra said. "If you absolutely must burn your bride, avoid
additional destruction with an affordable bride extinguisher. And, if
possible, confine the burning to your backyard bride pit."

And Younghusband at Coming Anarchy spots an item on the newest member of the nuclear club.:

WASHINGTON, DC—A report released Monday
by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggests that there is reason to
believe that the former Soviet republic of Nukehavistan may be
manufacturing nuclear weapons.
"New intelligence indicates that the likelihood of Nukehavistan
possessing nuclear weapons is moderate to strong," said DIA Director
Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby in a press conference Monday.

In the US, two things are inevitable: death and taxes. In India, things work differently.:

If you are a tax-paying Indian, you will no doubt be delighted to know that some of your money is every month by the government in Delhi to dead people. Yes, dead people. About 10,000 of them.

I try to find at least one gratuitous image of the female body for each set of daily links. We can thank Manish at Sepia Mutiny for bringing us today’s model.

Kingfisher Beer has put its ‘swimsuit’ calendar
online. It’s just like the CNN site which annoys me daily (‘we
interrupt you with breaking news: Model of the Day!’), but with lotus
pads: zen cheesecake, if you will. There are so many floating flowers in the frame, you’d think it was pitching feminine products instead of beer.

Miss August.

Snopes reports an enduring urban legend from Thailand.

Anwar Ibrahim has been having lots of good fortune since moonbat Mahathir Mohamad retired as Malaysia’s Prime Minister. Now he has a real fortune.:

Yesterday, he won another court victory and claims "I’m Completely Vindicated". For his libel suit against Datuk Abdul Khalid @ Khalid Jafri Bakar Shah, the author of the book 50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM
(50 Reasons Why Anwar Cannot Become PM), Justice Mohd Hishamudin
awarded AnwarnRM4.5 million, RM4.0 million for defamation, RM500,000
for "conspiracy to injure", plus all legal costs.

If the Russia-China wargames are a sign of an emerging alliance of interests, Justin at the Moderate Voice ponders what the Russia-India games are a sign of.:

For Russia this is basically a middle finger to Beijing for its wish to
utilize the current ongoing war games with Moscow as a very direct
threat to Taiwan and its American backer. India’s obviously no friend
of China, so Russia’s very visible military cooperation with New Delhi
can be considered a reminder of its true, Russo-centric intentions.
Also, such cooperation will, at least in Putin’s mind, increase Indian
dependence on Russian military tech and help bring the country over
into Russia’s sphere of influence sometime down the line. If China is
the impetus for such an alliance, then so be it for Putin — India’s a
rival power, but its sights are not directly set on the former Soviet
Republics of Central Asia as China’s are.

Have a fun weekend. I’m off to spend an evening with the stars.:

More at the Shanghaiist.

Welcome to the oil edition. A larger picture of the side picture - a queue at a petrol station in Dongguan, China’s Guangdong province - as well as others can be found at Bingfeng Teahouse. China is facing an energy shortage. Imagethief posts an Asian Wall Street Journal article that has useful background on the situation in the South.

It isn’t just high international prices that’s causing China’s energy shortage, Mark Thoma at the Economist’s View points to two NY Times items explaining how the shortages relate to China’s transition to an overregulated market economy from an overregulated command economy.

The diesel and power shortages have one thing in common: they are
largely the result of the clash between China’s Communist past and its
increasingly capitalist present. The government has set retail prices
too low for diesel and electricity. So businesses, facing high world
oil prices, are supplying less of both.

Simon, with his always excellent Daily Linklets, covers much of the discussion, saving Asiapundit the trouble.

The oil shortage in China is getting global attention: Brad DeLong reproduces a NYT article, Gateway Pundit (via Instapundit, who is taking more of an interest in China these days…part of China’s rise?) and Bingfeng have photos, Economists View talks about China’s oil price controls, Barcepundit dregs up a 1998 article on a sex/oil swap in Ningxia.  As I noted in yesterday’s linklets, the SCMP puts
some of the blame on supply bottlenecks as well as the price control
system. Article below the jump.

(UPDATE 18:34) Sun Bin, as always, has worthwhile insights.:

1. The phenomenon in Guangdong showed that the oil oligarchs,
   although state owned, are rebelling by hoarding the gasoline. This is
   good evidence to rebuff China bashers in the CNOOC/Unocal incidence.
   Yes, the GM is indirectly appointed by the government, but P&L is
   definitely becoming a higher priority. This will likely set precedence as one of the crucial baby steps for the SOEs (state owned enterprises) to break free from state control.
2. Chinese gov’t will eventually have to give in to market force, by liberating gas price soon. Can’t think of other option
3. Well,
   there is a bad solution to the current mess. It could work in short
   term, provided oil price moves down in the international market. Not a
   good option. Anyway, this is the bad solution: subsidize the oil
   companies on a per-liter-sold base (sort of a negative sales tax). This
   is bad because it is easy to circumvent. And when it comes to finding
   loopholes against unsound policies, Chinese are genetically adapted and
   practically trained. e.g. a) parallel export /smuggling oil out of
   China (HK trucks have always been filling as much as they could before
   return to the border - now the risk is for regions outside HK and in a
   more organized scale); b) oil oligarchs can fraud higher sales # for
   more rebate from government; to name but a few. I am sure they are more
   creative than me
4. The better and easiest option is, of cource, let RMB appreciate a bit more (thanks Brad for
   reminding me the obvious). There are pros and cons, the oil price has
   risen by a percentage much larger than any feasible RMB appreciation
   could counter, but by feeding all numbers into a formula, there must be
   a solution as to what is the best percentage RMB should appreciate vs
   subsidy needed.

Mark Thoma also looks at alternative measures of growth and an article that questions China’s record of human development.:

Better news comes from the economies of China and most of the OECD
(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries: they
have grown in terms of both GDP per capita and wealth per capita. … It
would seem, therefore, that during the past three decades the rich
world has enjoyed sustainable development, while development in the
poor world (barring China) has been unsustainable. One can argue,
however, that the above estimates of wealth movements are biased. Among
the many types of natural capital whose depreciation do not appear in
the World Bank figures are freshwater, soil, ocean fisheries, forests
and wetlands as providers of ecosystem services, as well as the
atmosphere, which serves as a sink for particulates and nitrogen and
sulfur oxides. Moreover, the prices the World Bank has estimated to
value the natural assets on its list are based on assumptions that
ignore the limited capacity of natural systems to recover from
disturbances. If both sets of biases were removed, we could well
discover that the growth in wealth in China and the world’s wealthy
nations has also been negative.

At the Shanghaiist, Dan Washburn talks trade, investment and takes a piece out of Senator Charles Schumer.:

foreign investors’ complaints have almost always been related to
restrictions on the size of investments allowed — percentage of foreign
ownership — when it comes to Chinese companies and joint ventures. We
have heard of deals going awry with Chinese partners running off,
illegally, with intellectual property. (China also has a history of
obtaining, illegally and legally, and subsequently squandering
technology, never actually building upon this know-how to develop its
own advanced technology.) But we can’t imagine that any American
companies in industries involving technology would ever come to China
if giving up all of their trade secrets was required to do business
here … especially not companies in the aviation industry where
sensitive technology could have implications for China’s own military
capabitilies.

The New Economist notes that, for some, Europe’s textile quotas are economic suicide.:

As an armada of Chinese cardigans and trousers
lies stranded in European ports (by some estimates, around 60 million
items), some European politicians are finally starting to oppose this
madness. This morning’s Financial Times (subscribers only) features an article by Swedish, Dutch, Finnish and Danish ministers attacking the import ban.
Karien van Gennip, Bendt Bendtsen, Thomas Östros and Paula Lehtomäki
argue that the import quotas "were introduced, without proper regard
for the realities of modern commerce." The ministers don’t pull many
punches; these quotas will cost jobs.

(18:43) Logan Wright compares the strategic investment plans of foreign banks in China.

To close as we began, with a look at China’s energy situation, National Geographic (via Boing Boing) has a short item on power shortages in rural China.:

August 16, 2005—Speeding from the scene of the crime, a
Chinese boy tows a floating plastic bag of stolen natural gas last
week. Flouting a government ban, farmers around the central Chinese
town of Pucheng frequently filch gas from the local oil field.