BEIJING – Xin Xin is a 24-year-old west Beijing native who runs her own media consultancy.

In 2006, she bought a limited edition Mini Cooper GP.  Only three of them exist in China.  Two years later, with her parents’ help, she forked over $200,000 in cash for a pink Porsche Cayman.  "I like the lines of the car," she said.  "It's very pretty....  And I like changing gears so you can accelerate very quickly." 

It's extraordinary enough to hear that someone this young in a nation still making the transition from a low-income to a middle-income economy can buy a top-shelf German sports car.  (In cash! In a city with Beijing's traffic problems!)

But what's more remarkable, for retailers and advertisers, is that Xin Xin’s not the only one.  In fact, many other young Chinese women are snapping up high-performance sports cars.  (One woman named Guo Meimei was pilloried after she posted on China's Twitter-like service, Sina Weibo, photos of herself with some of her cars, including a Maserati and a Lamborghini.  At the time, she claimed to be working for the Red Cross Society of China, which triggered a flurry of Netizen speculation that she was siphoning funds, the Red Cross was corrupt, or she was the mistress of some official.)

Fiat – whose Maserati brand now counts China as its second biggest market after the U.S. – says 30 percent of its Maserati customers in the mainland are women – far greater than the percentage of women buyers in Europe or the U.S., which ranges from 2 to 5 percent.  

The number of women who buy Ferraris in China is double the global average.  About 300 models were sold in the mainland in 2010, with women accounting for 20 percent of the sales. 

"[Women] are  much more involved in China about buying the car: the look, the feel, the actual decision to buy the car," said Matthew Bennett, Asia-Pacific Director at Aston Martin. 

But they're not just, ahem, steering the decision on what family car to purchase.   

They're buying high-performance sports cars for themselves.

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"The culture is very different," said Angelica Cheung, Editorial Director of Vogue China.  "A lot of women in China are very independent women....  They really made their own fortune.  They earned their own success.  And they just feel that, I can have what men have." 

Indeed.  Xin Xin, who takes her cars out regularly to a local track to race other drivers, said, "We Chinese girls not only have a heart of girls, we also have a wild heart for driving sports cars.  You can feel the charm of racing cars just like boys do." 

Which drives sports car aficionado Paolo Gasparrini, well, a little nuts.

"I am thinking of my country, Italy, you don't give your sports car to your wife, frankly speaking, not so easy, here it's easy," he said.  On a regular basis, Gasparrini sees young Chinese women driving a high-performance sports model around the streets of Shanghai. 

"You see much more here than in Europe, [where] we have a different attitude about car[s]," he continued.  "The men, we are very jealous about [our] cars....  But here it's fantastic.  It's very, very open." 

Role reversal
In fact, as president of L'Oreal China, Gasparrini thinks the average Chinese luxury consumer is very open to displaying symbols of wealth and power in ways that their European or American counterparts might be a little shy about. 

"I think that in the Chinese culture there is not a taboo" about men spending time and money on grooming products, he said.  Ten years ago, such products were virtually nonexistent in China.  Today, it's an industry worth nearly $800 million.  

"Nobody pulls your leg if you take care of your face...so little by little more and more Chinese men use [these grooming] products," said Gasparrini, whose company dominates the men's sector with its Biotherm and L'Oreal Paris lines.  In fact, 30 percent of Biotherm's overall sales come from its men's skincare products. 

They're consumed by Chinese men like Jacky Sun, an ebullient young Shanghai native who had just purchased a Biotherm skin cleanser.  "More and more of my friends like to use these things, because they think it's very important...to leave a good impression on other people," he said. 

A recent survey by the Hurun Group, a consultancy which tracks China’s wealthy elite, finds that these impressions are critical to the rich.  

“Chinese luxury consumers are in general younger, many under 40 years old….  Furthermore, they are mainly new rich, with a rather short history of luxury consumption.  Therefore, the social function of luxury goods is most important to them,” according to the GroupM Knowledge—Hurun Wealth Report 2011.

But some luxury goods also serve a practical function.   

The 'man bag'
Going back to our young Shanghai native, Sun possesses another important status accessory – the man-bag. 

"The purse?  My friend says that's a purse," laughed Sun as he held up his small shoulder bag.  "This way I can make my hands free, and it can take my wallet, my key, small stuff, so I like it....  Sometimes my friends from America will tease me that it's a purse, a woman's purse, but I still like it.  I don't care." 

As a report by the Los Angles Times put it, “Luxury leather goods makers can't believe their luck:  Both sexes in the world's most populous country adore purses.” 

“Our survey shows about thirty percent of male consumers buy bags or shoes regularly,” said Mao Mao Xun, Beauty Director at Men’s Health China.  Moreover, “Chinese men have a different view of masculinity from that in the West.” 

A random sampling of interviews with young men in central Beijing suggests the practical benefits of toting around a small handbag outweigh any Western conventions of masculinity.   

Jing, who did not want to give his full name, was toting a leather clutch during a visit to Sanlitun Village one Saturday afternoon.  It was given to him by his mother, and he raved about its functionality.  Other men said they’d rather wear a shoulder bag than have a bulky wallet and cell phone jammed into their pockets. 

“Given the commuting nature of our Chinese consumer, we find that cross-body bags, bags that hang over their body, are much more popular than they would be here in the United States,” said Victor Luis, President of Coach International Retail, which has designed special editions for the China market.  In fact, male consumers make up half of Coach’s mainland China sales of premium handbag and accessories. 

And it’s not just Coach.  All the foreign luxury brands sell well in China. 

”Bags are very discernible,” said Mao.  “You can easily tell the brand by a bag.  Many Chinese buy these products to be known, to be noticed.” 

There’s no question these young consumers get noticed.

Xin Xin, the owner of the Pink Porsche, is already working on her next purchase. 

"Lamborghini," she said confidently. 

And this time she's planning to buy it with her own cash.

 

BEIJING – Getting caught leaking state secrets is no laughing matter in China

On Monday, Wu Chaoming, a researcher at the People’s Bank of China, and Sun Zhen, from the National Bureau of Statistics, were sentenced to six and five years, respectively, for passing on sensitive information to people they shouldn’t have.

Four other people who weren’t identified by officials have also been arrested in connection with leaked economic secrets.

The cases show how some officials have learned to profit from the veil of secrecy that surrounds sensitive economic data in China. These and other recent cases also illustrate how easy it is to run afoul of the country’s wide-reaching and opaque privacy laws. 

The country’s topsy-turvy stock market is still heavily influenced and guided by the government’s “silent hand.”  This, paired with the fact timely data is often in short supply, makes advanced knowledge of economic information especially valuable.  So, for example, finding out about upcoming government moves to curb inflation would allow traders and brokerage houses to reap a tidy profit.

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Up-to-date information is also especially valuable in China, whose super-charged economy – GDP grew by more than 9 percent in the third quarter of 2011, outpacing most of the rest of the world – is growing so fast that valuable data in the public domain quickly becomes stale.

While declining to say what specific secret information had been leaked, Du Yongsheng, Deputy Director of the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets, on Monday said some of the officials arrested had not directly sold secrets to brokerages.  Rather, they were paid for “speaking engagements” by firms eager to get a heads up economic trends.

Unsurprisingly, the government has launched an aggressive campaign to eliminate both intentional and accidental leaking of classified economic information.

In prepared remarks to the media yesterday morning, the Deputy Director General of the ponderously named Procuratorial Department of Duty and Infringement on Citizen’s Rights of the Supreme People’s Directorate, warned that the government would “strike hard” against those who tried to profit from such leaks.

"The leaking of national macroeconomic data harms economic operations, prevents fair market competition and affects government credibility, thereby causing heavy losses to the interests of the country, society and individuals," the official, Li Zhong Cheng, said.

In Sun and Wu’s cases, their advanced knowledge of money supply, gross domestic product numbers and the consumer price index put them in an excellent position to trade on their insider information.

There has long been a culture of paying for what is perceived to be secret economic data, as well simply getting a read on policy important debates, writes Tom Orlick, a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of “Understanding China's Economic Indicators.”

“Well-connected academics and analysts in government think-tanks routinely request a consulting fee for meetings with investment banks and their clients,” according to Orlick.

Journalists looking to get a scoop or a steer on important economic data have also been warned.

“I think it’s normal for some media organizations, in particular foreign media organizations to try to forecast China’s economic data, to judge the economic performance of our country,” Director Li said. Some reporters were also using “back channels” to verify state secrets, he said.

“[This is] not allowed,” Li added.  “I’d like to remind our friends from the media here of the importance of abiding by China’s laws and regulations… otherwise you will be subjected to the consequences of the law.”

What exactly is a state secret?

While the government last year laid down new laws ostensibly meant to curb the number and scope of state secrets leaks, critics say the definitions are still vague and could be used to silence political opposition.

According to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Guarding State Secrets, they can be defined in the following ways:

1. Secret matters concerning major policy decisions on state affairs; 2. Secret matters in the building of national defense and in the activities of the armed forces; 3. Secret matters in diplomatic activities and in activities related to foreign countries and those to be kept secret through commitments to foreign countries; 4. Secret matters in national economic and social development; 5. Secret matters concerning science and technology; 6. Secret matters concerning activities for safeguarding state security and the investigation of criminal offenses; 7. Other matters that are classified as state secrets by the national department for the administration and management of state secret-guarding.

The ambiguity of these classifications have led to high-profile arrests and convictions of foreign businessmen.  The most notable case involved Stern Hu, an Australian national who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing commercial secrets.

Less well publicized was the plight of Xue Feng, an American geologist working for an American consulting firm who was arrested in 2007 and sentenced to eight years in prison for trying to buy a database that showed the location of oil wells belonging to a Chinese government-owned company – information that was readily available for sale online.

Both men were charged and sentenced before the new state secrets regulations were passed, but it is unlikely that the new laws would have helped them.

It remains to be seen when, and if, the state secrets laws will be defined more narrowly.

What is clear is that the policy will remain an effective way for the Communist Party to keep corrupt officials in line, and a headache for foreign companies trying to compete against companies that are plugged into the government’s economic planning apparatus. 

SLIDESHOW: China's booming middle class

PU'ER, YUNNAN PROVINCE – The name of this area is synonymous with the delicate leaf prized by tea aficionados in China and beyond.   

For at least 2,000 years, families have cultivated Pu'er tea in the rolling hills of Yunnan, bordering Myanmar. 

The tea is known for its intense earthy flavor, which devotees say improves with age.  However, it’s also valued for reputed health benefits: the ability to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, reduce fat, and cleanse the liver of toxins.

All this led to crazy auction prices few years ago.  Reports in 2007 suggested some aged vintages of Pu’er were going for as much as $10,000 for 10 grams (0.35 ounces).

One year later, that bubble burst.  The market for this special fermented tea collapsed after a buying frenzy turned into a selling spree by unscrupulous wholesalers who had driven up prices artificially.

Many farmers who were caught up in the frenzy were left with nearly worthless supplies of tea, but many others had carefully spread their risk.

To coffee.

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Nestle comes to Yunnan
In 1988, Yunnan produced 1,500 tons of coffee beans.  This year, it’s expected to produce 35,000 tons, and that figure could double in five years. Coffee is now the province’s third-largest export product after tobacco and flowers.

“Before I started growing coffee, I couldn’t afford a house like the one I live in now,” said Wang Zhongxue, a robust 72-year-old who cuts a striking figure with his machete.  “My house back then was made of mud and the living conditions were terrible.  When it rained outside, it rained inside, too.”

Last year, Wang earned around $18,000 from his coffee plants.  Chinese farmers on average earn about $900 a year.

The toothy farmer said he was introduced to the idea of growing coffee back in 1992 by experts, both Chinese and foreign.  “They taught us the whole system,” he said.

Some of them came from Nestle, the Swiss foods giant.

“We are in a mountainous area, the climate is good, so it’s a suitable area to grow coffee,” said Wouter De Smet, manager of the Nestle Agricultural Service based in Pu’er. 

As early as 1988, Nestle decided to support the cultivation of Arabica beans in Yunnan and has been working closely with local officials to develop the company's program.

“We are working with the farmers on a [relationship basis]…so we give training and technical assistance to the farmers, which is completely free to the farmers,” explained De Smet.  Training and assistance includes everything from growing to processing to marketing.

Roughly 80 percent of the farmers selling beans to Nestle are small scale, "smaller than three hectares," (approximately seven acres) according to De Smet.  During the last season, after the harvest (September-February), the smallest farm delivered Nestle five pounds whereas the largest farm delivered 413 tons.

“We buy directly from the farmer without need of the middleman or the local trader,” said De Smet.  That way, Nestle can better monitor the quality of the coffee beans – half of which are exported to Nestle factories worldwide and the other half goes to its factories in Dongguan.

The tasting center inside the Nestle compound in Pu’er was tiny, but the first thing we saw was a table with cups of coffee on top and spittoons next to each chair for the Nestle tasting panel. 

Two or three other colleagues joined De Smet in blind taste tests to check the quality. 

On any given day, they might taste-test 150 cups.

“We are not drinking,” De Smet emphasized.

If the beans fall below Nestle’s standards, the delivery is rejected, but De Smet said they also try to advise the farmer how to make improvements.

If the coffee passes muster, the farmer is paid right on the spot – either in cash or by bank transfer, depending on the amount.

The allure of 'black gold'
Understanding and tracking coffee prices is another skill Nestle provides to the farmers.

"Our farmers are becoming speculators," said De Smet, only half-jokingly.

Nestle announces coffee prices every Monday and Thursday via text message to all the farmers' cellphones. 

"We also get 150 to 200 calls from other farmers checking on the price," he said.  "It's up to the farmer to decide whether to sell.  There is no contract.  The farmers are free to choose."

Wang, the elderly farmer, said his daughter and her friends track coffee prices on computers.  “When the price goes up, we know it immediately,” he said. 

Sometimes dubbed “black gold,” coffee is the second most widely traded commodity after oil.  And in the past year, coffee prices have gone up nearly 92 percent on major exchanges around the world. 

“Some farmers are worried that coffee prices have risen so high now,” said Li. Zhongheng, director of the Pu’er City Experiment Demo Coffee Farm.  “They remember the Pu’er bubble," he said, referring to the fall in tea prices.

Li, an agriculture official who retired 10 years ago, started training local farmers in the region on how to grow coffee.  His farm is part of the province's more recent efforts to encourage farmers in Pu’er to try growing coffee – as outlined in the Pu'er and Yunnan governments' five-year plans.

But “we don’t encourage tea farmers to stop growing tea and switch to coffee,” said Li.  “We don’t support that.”

In fact, the farmers we visited were growing other cash crops in addition to coffee.  Wang has mango trees, which also help to shade and protect his coffee plants. 

Chen Bing, a 40-year-old farmer, abandoned corn and rice, mostly because they were too water-intensive, but he also farms tea in addition to coffee.  “We depend on coffee when the weather is dry and on tea when the weather is too wet,” he said.

Starbucks’ “seed-to-cup” strategy
Late last year, Starbucks announced it was going to get into the game and set up a government base farm in cooperation with Yunnan local officials.  The plantation will also include a development center farmer support center, and processing facilities.

“The purpose of that [is] really to demonstrate how to grow coffee in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible [way] and also how to improve the coffee farmers’ life," said Wang Jinlong, president and chairman of Starbucks Greater China. He added, "And really try to show and demonstrate…how to increase the yield.” 

And to ensure a steady supply of beans for the American coffee retailer – also the world's largest. 

Since entering the mainland market in 1999, Starbucks has nearly 450 stores in China itself and plans to triple that number to 1,500 by 2015.  In 2009, the company introduced to its customers a coffee blend that includes beans grown in Yunnan, “South of the Clouds.”  

The Yunnan coffee farm project marks the first time Starbucks is growing its own coffee directly – working with local farmers to grow and cultivate the crop – instead of just buying it locally or globally. 

“It is our seed-to-cup overall supply chain strategy which will really back…our idea of making China a second home market,” said Wang.

Back in Pu'er, some farmers have taken to brewing their homegrown product.

For visitors, though.

Although De Smet and my colleagues all enjoy the taste of Yunnan coffee, the farmers have yet to embrace it in their diet.

“Sometimes I can’t get to sleep after I’ve had coffee,” said Wang Zhongxue, the farmer.  “So I still drink tea.”

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Correspondent

TRIPOLI – Even from a remote perch in Libya, we heard about the horrific story making waves in China.

Last Thursday, a two-year-old girl crossing a street by herself in the city of Foshan in China’s southern Guangdong Province was hit by a car. The driver paused briefly as the girl lay between the front and rear wheels and then tore off, thumping her now-limp body again. 

Soon after, a second vehicle rolled over the girl, with the driver presumably unaware that a body lay on the road. The second driver also did not stop.

As if both these acts were not outrageous enough, 18 more people – on foot, on motorbikes, or on bicycles – passed by the girl, lying inert on the ground, and did nothing. Even a mother with her own child ignored the victim.

(Warning the video is very graphic, but it can seen here from a Chinese broadcast or here from the BBC).

It wasn’t until a female trash collector saw her and proceeded to pick the girl up that she was moved to the side of the road. The trash collector asked passers-by who the girl belonged to, and eventually the mother appeared, distraught, to claim her daughter named Yueyue.

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All of this was caught on surveillance cameras. A clip was posted on China’s popular micro blog, Sina Weibo on Sunday, generating a huge outcry as netizens counted the number of people who glanced at the girl and ignored her plight – all in the seven minutes she lay on the road until the Good Samaritan carried her to safety.

The story, which has been a leading headline on all of China’s news sites, touched a nerve in the country, with many decrying the lack of moral standards and general disregard for fellow human beings.

One report quoted the first driver as saying, “If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan."

Some news reports and online discussions made the point that civil behavior is not always rewarded in China. Many people fear they’re being subject to some sort of scam while others remember still a well-known case from 2006, when a man helped a woman who had fallen only to have her accuse him of causing the injury to begin with.  She filed a suit against him, in which the judge ruled the man wouldn’t have come to her aid had he not caused the fall.

 

State-run news agency Xinhua has reported both drivers of the vehicles that ran over the girl have been apprehended by police.

Yueyue, meanwhile, is in critical condition with serious brain injuries, breathing with the help of a ventilator. Her parents are asking eyewitnesses to come forward with any additional information.

The story of Yueyue’s hit-and-run stands in stark contrast to another story that picked up steam online over the weekend.

Last Friday afternoon, a woman fell into a scenic tourist lake in Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern province of Zhejiang. A Western woman who was walking by saw the Chinese woman struggling and quickly jumped into West Lake to save her. 

After swimming back to shore, the foreigner dragged her onto the bank. The victim remained conscious and appeared out of danger. Police turned up ten minutes later, and the Western woman left quietly. Several websites reported she was American.

What was notable in this instance was the response of those who read the story online.

In addition to giving the rescuer high praise (“That American girl is great, she has a beautiful character”), people also made unfavorable comparisons to Chinese behavior:

“According to Chinese laws and regulations, if she hadn’t pushed the girl into the water, why ever would she save her?”

Thanks to China Digital Times for the translations.

Adrienne Mong is NBC’s Beijing correspondent. She is on assignment in Libya.

By Adrienne Mong, NBC News

BEIJING –They are a feared species, threatening to invade America’s Midwest and cause the collapse of an ecosystem and a $7 billion industry.

They prompted one U.S. lawmaker to say, “We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed-ahead mode.”

“They” are Asian carp.

The fish were imported from Southeast Asia in the 1970s to help clean ponds at wastewater treatment facilities and fish farms in the American South. 

But they escaped into the Missouri and Illinois rivers during flooding of the Mississippi River. A twenty-pound Asian carp measuring three feet long was found just six miles south of Lake Michigan in July 2010.

Biologists worry that the invasive fish will starve native ones to death. A hardy creature that breeds easily and with no natural predators in the U.S., the Asian carp can eat up to 40 percent of its body weight in plankton every day.

Concern is so great that Asian carp have been “the subject of state lawsuits, EPA and Congressional hearings, and U.S. Supreme Court motions,” according to a U.S.-based environment magazine.

A task force comprising more than 20 state, regional, and federal officials monitors the fish’s every move.

There’s even a carp czar, appointed by the White House, to oversee the $80 million federal effort to keep the Asian carp from getting into the Great Lakes. 

But the state of Illinois has a simpler solution.

Send them to China.

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‘If you can’t beat ‘em, you eat ‘em’
A few years ago, Chinese-American businessman David Shu was on a trip to China, where he met some clients who had heard about attempts to poison the Asian carp in Illinois rivers and asked, “Why are they killing the Asian carp?”

Shu teamed up with Ross Harano, who had just stepped down as Illinois trade director, to find a way to persuade Chinese to buy Asian carp from the state.

The problem was one that anyone who’s ever set foot in a Chinese restaurant knows: the Chinese like their seafood fresh. That’s what the restaurant aquariums are for – to keep fish and shellfish alive until the very last minute.

The Asian carp from Illinois were going to be sold frozen; moreover, they were too pricey for local Chinese consumers.

So Harano, who is now Director for International Marketing at Big River Fish, found himself mapping out a marketing strategy that ultimately made more economic sense than simply just trying to pit their frozen product against local varieties sold live in China.

Coining the term “wild-caught” to market the Illinois carp, Big River Fish try to emphasize its freshness. 

“There are no pollutants,” said Harano in a conversation with NBC News. “The fish feed on algae in Illinois rivers. They have a very non-muddy taste.”

“We sell it as a high-end fish to high-end restaurants, so the cost is not an issue,” he said. In particular, Big River Fish is ringing up sales mostly in northern China. “There’s a better market for fish like this in northern China than down south,” he added.

In July 2010, the Beijing Zuochen Animal Husbandry Co. agreed to buy Asian carp from Big River Fish. The aim was to ship at least 30 million pounds of fish by the end of this year. The small start-up from Illinois could make $20 million a year exporting the carp to China.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, you eat ‘em,” said Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn at a much heralded signing ceremony.

The deal seems an elegant solution to a worrying ecological problem. 

But it also appears to address, in a more modest way, another issue: unemployment. 

With a state grant of $2 million, Big River Fish is in the final stages of acquiring a new 10,000-square foot plant in Pike County, to which it will add another 30,000-square feet, enabling it to reach its export target.

The new plant is not the 80,000-square foot facility Big River Fish had hoped to purchase back in March, owing to a paperwork glitch. The hiccup put the company “behind track” on its timetable, CEO Lisa McKee acknowledged to NBC News.

Once the new plant is secured – hopefully by Nov. 1, according to McKee and President Rick Smith – Big River Fish will increase its plant work force from 12 to 61.  An additional 120 jobs will come from hiring more fishermen to harvest more carp.  Not insignificant, says Harano, for a county of 17,000 people that in 2010 registered more than 10 percent unemployment.

Slowly creating jobs via China
The Big River Fish deal exemplifies the kind of salesmanship Quinn wants for his state. He continued to tout the culinary advantages of Illinois carp even last month during a rare trip to China.

“We have wonderful rivers in our state,” he told NBC News just before dashing off to attend a special carp luncheon. “Some of the freshest waters in the country, and the Asian carp we have are big and meaty. We catch them wild, and we ship them to China.”

Quinn peddled other Illinois specialties during his eight-day trip through China – with the aim of drumming up business, jobs creation, and investments in his home state.

In a major coup, he persuaded Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., a top wind turbine manufacturer in northwestern China, to build a $200-million wind farm in Lee County, which will provide electricity to some 25,000 homes. 

It’s the largest U.S. project to date for Goldwind, and the Illinois governor stressed that it will create a dozen permanent jobs and more than 100 construction jobs.

Another deal announced on Quinn’s trip was for Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) to sell 180,000 tons of soybeans to China by the end of next year – a deal worth about $50 million. China already buys a quarter of all U.S. soybeans and is Illinois’ third largest exports destination.

Chinese trade & economic reforms critical
But there are skeptics about just how much Quinn and others can recoup his state’s job losses and whether these minute steps towards creating jobs by boosting exports will be enough.

There seems to be consensus among most pundits in Washington that selling more American goods to growing economies, like China, will mean more jobs. 

But getting more U.S. goods into China requires a few substantive reforms on the part of Beijing, skeptics say. 

One of those measures is currency reform, and the Chinese central government is balking at Washington’s efforts to get it to move more aggressively to strengthen the yuan against the U.S. dollar.  A weak yuan makes Chinese exports cheaper and imports from the U.S. and other countries more expensive.

More specifically, for Illinois, a survey from the Economic Policy Institute found that the Land of Lincoln lost 118,200 jobs in the past decade as a result of the U.S. trade deficit with China. 

In particular, traditional manufacturing industries took the brunt of the job losses: auto parts production, fabricated metal products, electronics, and specialty steel – areas in which the Chinese have sought to compete.

“Increases in the bilateral trade deficit with China will lead to growing trade-related job displacement in Illinois for some time to come,” said Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute survey, unless Beijing reforms its trade and economic policies – particularly on the Chinese currency. 

“Until those policies are reformed,” he wrote in an email to NBC News.  “The growth of imports and job displacement will vastly exceed the growth of export-supporting jobs for Illinois, and all other U.S. states.”

BEIJING—For a significant centennial, it’s not getting the fanfare we’ve grown used to witnessing in China.

Monday marks the 100^th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution, which began on October 10, 1911. 

The armed uprising ended not just the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) but the era of Imperial dynasties.  It established a democratic republic—the first such government in Asia.  It brought to worldwide attention Sun Yat-sen, considered the father of “modern” China.

And yet for all its significance in modern Chinese history, the anniversary of the 1911 revolution—as it’s more commonly known in the West—is garnering nowhere near the ceremonial fanfare accorded to the last two major such historic moments in China: last year’s 60^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and last July’s 90^th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Consider that pre-eminent example of propaganda: film.

Re-writing history through film
For mainland China’s 60th birthday, a “special gift” was presented by the country’s film industry.  Called “The Founding of a Republic,” the movie chronicled the events of the Chinese civil war, laying out how the Communist Party defeated the Nationalists to establish the People's Republic of China.

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The star-studded historical epic featured some of the best-known luminaries from the mainland and Hong Kong (a famous face appeared virtually every three minutes in the movie).  The likes of Jackie Chan, Zhang Ziyi, and Jet Li helped it break ticket sales records for a domestic production.

Then to mark the 90^th year of the founding of the party earlier this year, “Beginning of the Great Revival” was heavily marketed across China, again featuring top Chinese actors.  Cinemas were told to clear the decks for the film’s release, and Western blockbusters like “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” were rumored to be held until ticket sales for “Revival” reached $120 million.

In contrast, “1911” held its premiere in relative obscurity--in northeastern Jilin Province, part of the original homeland of the Manchus, who founded the Qing Dynasty.  The other two films held splashy premieres in the Chinese capital.

Of course, the Chinese government has hosted some gala events—including the opening of a new museum in Wuhan dedicated to the 1911 Revolution and a ceremony on Sunday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where a giant portrait of Sun Yat-sen has been sitting outside on Tiananmen Square since National Day.

But the coverage and the propaganda have been carefully calibrated.  Any discussion of the revolution’s underpinning theme--young revolutionaries’ dreams of democracy--could go seriously awry for a government already under pressure from a restive populace within and the Arab Spring without.

The party has at least two compelling reasons to control the historical narrative.  For one, Sun Yat-sen was not only the father of modern China, he was the founder of the Kuomintang aka the Nationalist Party, which now holds court in Taiwan.  It’s a rival government, by the way, which is very democratic and very open.

And then there is the Communist Party raison d’etre.

"Raising" a patriotic consciousness
“[Since the 1990s, the party] has deliberately tried to foster and associate itself with a conspicuously more patriotic consciousness among the Chinese people,” said Julia Lovell, a historian who teaches at the University of London.

Lovell most recently published a wonderfully read-able and erudite book, The Opium War, in which she combed through both Chinese and English language sources to detail the events of the first Opium War (1839-42) and to illustrate how the Anglo-Chinese encounter would define China and its later history.  (The book has marvellous nuggets like Qing Emperor Daoguang struggling to come to grips with his antagonists: “Where in fact, he wondered in a communication of May 1842, is England?  Why are the English selling us opium?  What are the Indians doing in their army?  How is it they have a 22-year-old woman for a queen?  Is she married?”)

The party derives its source of power and legitimacy from a well-told chronicle—one which casts the Opium War as “the tragic curtain-raiser of modern Chinese history [and] the start of China’s humiliation,” according to Lovell.  In turn, the party has cast itself as the saviors of the nation, nationalist heroes who struggled against a Western conspiracy to destroy China.

“It’s been a key way in which the Chinese Communist Party has tried to shore up its legitimacy after the debacle of 1989,” said Lovell, referring to the year of the Tiananmen Square protests, in which the Party found itself in serious crisis—its rule and its ideology challenged from all sides.   “It also hints at the insecurity of the Chinese Communist Party and their need to re-invent themselves in the new era.  This is something they need to keep on doing as China continues to change at a remarkable rate.”

Incidentally, owning one’s history is not a responsibility that lies solely with Beijing.

Now that the balance of power is shifting from the West to the East, “[W]e do now need to make up our minds how we’re going to approach episodes in our history—imperial misdeeds in our history—that took place in countries like China,” Lovell added.

BEIJING—A year ago today, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a writer and activist imprisoned in a northeastern Chinese prison.

Today he remains in jail for the crime of “inciting subversion of state power,” serving out an 11-year sentence.

His wife, Liu Xia, remains under unofficial house arrest in Beijing for no crime.

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A slender 51-year old poet and photographer, Liu has been cut off from the rest of the world ever since it was announced her husband would be given the prize.  She has no phone or Internet access, is under constant police watch, receives the rare visit from family members, and seldom is able to venture out.

“Liu Xia…leads a lonely and oppressed life," the wife  of another dissident was quoted as saying in a profile of Liu. 

NBC News interviewed Liu Xia in September 2010, just days before her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize.  She was skeptical that the Nobel committee would award Xiaobo the prize.  She described his mood as being good and his outlook as optimistic.  She remembered having premonitions when she read his manifesto for political reform--Charter 08--knowing he would go to prison for writing it.  She talked about the possibility of traveling to Prague for an exhibition of her photographs.

She appeared composed, bright, and alert.

But that time seems a world away today.  Liu has not been seen or heard in public since.

Her treatment is, sadly, not unique.

The Chinese government has taken a hard line against dissenting voices.  Another example widely cited is Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer and activist who has been beaten several times and had his property destroyed or confiscated.  His wife and daughter have also been subjected to unofficial house arrest.

Again, neither the wife nor daughter are guilty of any crime.  Yet, as one commentator in China observed this week, “[T]he Chinese government are detaining a six-year old girl.”

By NBC News’ Bo Gu

BEIJING – Within a day of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ death, over 63 million tribute messages had already been published on China’s Twitter-like, government-controlled, micro-blogging site Weibo.  

The huge outpouring reflects the mutual admiration between the tech pioneer and China’s 1.3 billion people.

China has become Apple’s fastest growing market, with revenue from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan reaching $3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2011 – six times the amount from the same period last year.  In an earnings report speech in July, new Apple CEO Time Cook acknowledged “China was very key” to the company’s bottom line.

Fans of Jobs flocked to the Apple store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood on Thursday, leaving flowers, cards and a poster-sized photo of the computer titan as customers continued to browse the shop inside.

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The popular Sanlitun Apple attracts not just customers, but dozens of illegal vendors trying to hawk Apple-related products outside as well.  The products are so popular and the vendors are so brazen that when iPads were officially launched, some of them went inside the store, bought dozens of iPads, and then tried to sell them right outside the shop for a higher price. 

Kuang Hao, a 21-year-old Beijing student who said he has been saving up to buy an iPod touch, told NBC News that he was sad about Jobs’ death, but didn’t believe the loss would affect Apple’s development. “It’s not one person’s career, but rather teamwork,” said Kuang.
 
Away from the shop, the tributes flooded in online.

“I’m not being pretentious or showing off here, but I started with a Shuffle three years ago, and now I’m using a Mac Pro,” Apple user “Xu Yanlin” wrote on his Weibo page.  “Apple products keep me company each night when I study or go to the library....Farewell, Qiao Bangzhu!” 

“Qiao Bangzhu,” meaning “Master Jobs” in English, is an affectionate nickname Chinese Apple fans bestowed on Jobs. It’s the title of a hero taken from a novel written by China’s most renowned martial arts fiction writer Jin Yong. 
 
Another user on Weibo, “Xiaoyu-meow,” expressed his admiration by saying, “I miss you, Jobs.  Please also make heaven this cool since we are all going there one day.”
 
Sina.com.cn, one of China’s leading Web portals, put up a special black-and-white front-page report to remember Jobs.  “[You] lived to change the world,” read the big headline on the site’s front page. The special tribute coverage included stories of his life, mourning and condolence messages from celebrities, reports translated from Western media, a video of Jobs and surveys of Apple users’ expectations for the future of the company.  

Apple just opened its newest store in Shanghai, its fifth in mainland China, on Sept. 23. The store is the largest in Asia and attracted over 100,000 customers in its first week of business. 

Young Chinese are keen to own Apple products – the whole country was shocked in June by the news that a 17-year-old boy from Anhui province sold one of his kidneys for $3,000 to buy an iPad, according to local reports. 
 
Outside the Apple store, next to the long line of fans waiting to spend some cash, a young man selling anti-scratch plastic covers for iPhones said he learned the news this morning when he “came to work” in front of the store.  The vendor, who preferred to stay anonymous, said his business had not been affected by the death of Master Jobs.