RT Russia - All according to plan: China injects $2.8 billion into economy

RT RUSSIA LIVE: China's central bank injected money into the financial system for the first time since February, calming concerns that June's cash squeeze will be repeated at the end of July.

“There is nothing to worry about. 7.5% is still a healthy growth and is actually designed by the government to reduce the overrated economy and the secret now lies in domestic consumption,” Thorsten Pattberg, a research fellow at Peking University,  told RT. 

Pattberg with famed journalist Frank Ching in Beijing, July 2013

Certainly one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining talks I've heard at Peking University this year, also because it wasn't the usual propaganda work (the speaker is ethnic Chinese, but a naturalized American citizen). Frank Ching, famed journalist [Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the list is long] talked about Chinese nationalism, nationality, and the identity crisis of overseas Chinese. [The event took place in a little classroom, not one of the halls, letting alone one of the big auditoriums.] There are so many brilliant observations in his talk (read the transcript here), and the one that resonates best with my experience was the fact that China officially holds onto "all descendants of its people who emigrated overseas and claims them as its own." This, of course, makes all ethnic Chinese in the US potential spies, and most of the people of Singapore "foreigners in their own country." Chilling.

Censorship and Internet with Chinese Characteristics

TOKYO/BEIJING - Global Research TV, Canada - James Corbett is a Japan-based famed investigative journalist, host, and editor of well-known Corbett Report conducted this exclusive interview on current and relevant global topics such as cyber-espionage, internet and censorship, US-China relations, and the American dream vs the Chinese dream. [GO TO YOUTUBE] [GLOBAL RESEARCH TV]

Thorsten Pattberg and Riccardo Pozzo – Comparing China and the West

In Beijing with Riccardo Pozzo, philosopher, activist, and Director of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cultural Heritage of Centro Nationale de Ricerca in Rome, Italy, recently toured Beijing and promoted ‘The World Digital Library (WDL)’ project and ‘The European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO)’ initiative. (June 14, 2013)

At Beijing Sihai Confucius Academy

Visiting Beijing Sihai Confucius Academy (from left to right:) Pei Songxian, Feng Zhe, Thorsten Pattberg

Visit to Sihai Confucius Academy in Beijing (June 17, 2013). This academy is a private school that caters for children age 3-13 to learn Chinese classics, and to become experts and practitioners of Chinese culture. The student teacher ratio is 150 to 40, and 20 support staff. The curriculum heavily favors both Chinese and Western classics. Children board Monday to Friday at the academy and return home for the weekends.

The academy lies in the suburbs of Beijing on a mountain slide with forests, gardens, and beautiful mansions with clean and tidy halls, classrooms, playgrounds and student dormitories. Sihai Confucius Academy has successfully established itself as a brand, with its own farm product, a vegetarian restaurant chain, the Ertong education project, etc.

Moreover, Sihai Confucius Academy receives regular media attentionfrom home and abroad, hosts conferences, and publishes its own teaching materials, built from scratch its classical library, offers outdoor programs, organic farming, music classes, and is supported from famous Confucian scholars like Gu Zhengkun, Wang Caigui, Wang Dianqing, Guo Qijia, Roger Ames, He Guangrong, Ling Zi, and Tu Weiming. The list goes on.

And yes, the students here learn to recite the Dao De Jing, for example. Sometimes at the age of three. Really. [SEE WEIBO BLOG] [BACK TO MAIN]

Thorsten Pattberg with Gu Zhengkun, famed Daoist and Confucian scholar

Thorsten Pattberg 裴德思 and Gu Zhengkun 辜正坤, famed Daoist andConfucian scholar, professor of English literature, linguist, and Director of the Institute for World Literature and Comparative Studies at Peking University. Many people think that Professor Gu’s translation Lao Zi: The Book of Tao and Teh is maybe the most elegant in the English language. [BACK TO MAIN]

Thorsten Pattberg with John G. Blair and Jerusha McCormack, authors of Western Civilization with Chinese Comparison

(from left:) J. McCormack, J. G. Blair, and T. Pattberg

By the way, this 622-pages (3rd ed) course/resource book makes a great and inspirational read in China Studies. It’s all in there: the money-grabbing, the concubines, ghosts, arranged marriages, castration, the Europeans, the misery, the rejuvenation, the ecology, the Diasporas, the modern Chinese family… [See Review]

--Blair, John G., Hull McCormack, Jerusha (2010), Western Civilizations with Chinese Comparisons, Fudan University Press, Shanghai [BACK TO MAIN]

German Confucianism at Peking University

THIS PLACE is where I work, eat, sleep - 24/7. It’s a little building on PKU campus, close to the great lake. I got a gym card for daily shower. It’s the reclusive life of a junzi, no?

Anyways, it is here where I found inspiration for my essays on 'Shengren,' 'The End of Translation,' 'Vocab Wars,' 'Language Imperialism,' and 'Lingualism' which have been syndicated in East Asia's media, by circulation alone, millions of copies. [GO TO WEBSITE]