| Bird's eye View of New Colombo Harbour             | |||
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Tech-addicted travelers ‘disconnect to reconnect’
Scott Sporleder/Camp Grounded
Participants in a recent "summer camp for adults" sponsored by Digital
Detox happily gave up their personal electronics for four days of camp
games, quiet time and actual face-to-face interaction.
The good news is that at a time when many travel companies have essentially become enablers — 4G! Free Wi-Fi! — a handful are encouraging guests to turn off their phones, stow their laptops and tablets and voluntarily embrace a technology-free “digital detox.”
“The fact that we can now carry a computer in our pocket that is more powerful than what was used to fly astronauts to the moon is amazing,” said Marsha Egan, life coach and author of “Inbox Detox and the Habit of E-Mail Excellence”. “The ability to be connected anywhere, anytime, 24/7, is both a blessing and a curse.”
It’s also, in many cases, self-induced. According to a May 2012 report from Google, 80 percent of smartphone owners never leave home without their device and 66 percent use them to access the Internet at least once a day.
Furthermore, 67 percent of cellphone owners find themselves checking their phone for messages, alerts, or calls — even when they don’t notice their phone ringing or vibrating, according to Pew Internet. Twenty-nine percent describe their phone as “something they can’t imagine living without."
'There was a little shock'
And social media only exacerbates the situation, says Levi Felix, founder of The Digital Detox (motto: Disconnect to Reconnect), which offers no-gadgets-allowed events and retreats in the San Francisco Bay area. “You post a picture or status update and then you get a beep or a buzz saying you got a ‘like’ or a retweet, so you go back to your phone. It’s a constant feedback loop and you get sucked in.”
Digital Detox
At Digital Detox, participants must give up their electronic tethers.
“We want to give people the opportunity to turn off their devices for a little while and re-evaluate what life is like when you’re not looking at a screen,” he said.
For Forest Bronzan, CEO of Email Aptitude, a San Francisco startup, that was exactly what he was looking for when he handed over his phone at the start of a Digital Detox retreat last summer.
“It’s one thing to say I’m going to take a day and try not to check email but at the camp, everybody is doing the same thing so it sort of forces you to unwind,” he said. “The first day, there was a little shock — wow, I’m not actually in front of a computer or my phone — but by the end, you just wanted to stay there.”
Root canal vs. working vacationWhile Digital Detox is about total disengagement, other companies take a less intensive approach. Seattle-based Via Yoga, for example, doesn’t forbid personal electronics during its week-long yoga and surfing retreat, but it does offer a 15-percent discount to guests who are willing to surrender their electronics for the duration of their stay.
“We suggest to everyone that they leave them at home so they have the time and space to enjoy their vacation,” said owner Susie Cavassa. “But it just seems harder and harder for people to unplug.”
Digital Detox
At Digital Detox events, attendees who want to share their thoughts are encouraged to type, not text.
“There’s this expectation about work today that we’re always connected,” said Ilene Philipson, a clinical psychologist and author of “Married to the Job.” “If they don’t check their email while they’re out of town, they come back to thousands of messages.”
In fact, according to a recent Harris Poll, 54 percent of respondents said that their employer expects them to work during vacations. Adding to the pain, so to speak: 51 percent said they would rather get a root canal than work on those vacations.
'No cellphones in the bedroom'“It seems employees are actually working harder when they're on vacation than when they're in the office," said Terrie Campbell, vice president of strategic marketing for Ricoh Americas Corp., which commissioned the survey. “They’re not able to disengage from their work either physically or mentally.”
Given the ubiquity of — and our increasing dependence on — digital devices, no one interviewed for this story suggests that people permanently disengage from technology. For those who can’t escape working while on vacation, Egan suggests setting aside specific times to do so rather than trying to multi-task during what is supposed to be family time.
And even proponents of total but temporary detox vacations insist they’re not anti-technology Luddites, but rather, hoping to gain insights that will help them navigate the work/life balance a bit better.
“For work, I’m much more cognizant of the need to recharge,” said Bronzan. “It may not be a digital detox twice a year but it’s taking an extra day a week and not be 100-percent consumed 24/7.
“On a personal note, my wife and I now have a ‘no cellphones in the bedroom’ rule.”
How economy and first class are growing even farther apart
Something is happening to on-board economy class, and it looks awfully familiar.
While airlines race to one-up the competition in their luxury or elite sections, their “cheap” seats have begun to resemble crowded bleachers at a football game.
Courtesy of Jet Airways
First class is getting swankier. Take the first-class suites aboard Jet
Airways’ fleet of 777s, which offer passengers 26 square feet of
private space.
But the front of the plane is increasingly luxurious. Delta, American and United Airlines have all sprung for spacious, lie-flat bed seats for their business-class customers. Even JetBlue, traditionally a budget carrier with a self-proclaimed “egalitarian” culture, gave in to class division when it announced an upcoming premium cabin with business-class seats and suites.
Ticket prices reflect that growing disparity. Whereas domestic first-class seats used to cost around four times more than economy fares, now they’re as much as 10 times the price of an economy ticket, analysts say. As both ends of the spectrum become more extreme, it’s all but impossible to find the middle ground we remember from years ago.
If this sounds a lot like the middle-class eulogies that flooded political speeches and media reports after the financial crisis, it’s because these trends are directly related to that wider economic reality.
After the economy crashed in 2008, airline passengers began to fall much more solidly into two distinct customer types, said Bijan Vasigh, a professor at the Business College at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “Some are price sensitive, mainly interested in lowest ticket price, and the other group is service sensitive — they’re not really looking at cheapest price, but for comfort and amenities,” he said.
Though the recession deepened that trend, it did not create it. “Over the past 10 years, income has not increased uniformly,” Vasigh noted. “We’re seeing more lower income people, but for the service-sensitive the level of income has increased more than the average family.”
Since the profit margin for airlines is low on seats sold to the former group — those in the economy class — airlines have begun to rely more heavily on their price-blind customers.
In that process, they’re not only building up elite amenities, but also more heavily branding them. Offering space and comfort alone won’t distinguish the airlines from their peers, so they are focusing on the specific design and style of their elite seats in order to invite more brand loyalty.
Working with specialized interior aircraft design firms, the companies craft their elite cabins with excruciating attention to detail, said Anita Gittelson, an executive vice president at Wessco International, who designs and sells brand-name airline amenities.
“Mood lighting has become a very big thing on board,” she said. So has the choice of brand-specific ambient music, and even details like the type of fabric used on seats and carpets.
The wood-paneled parts of American Airlines first-class cabins, for example, aim to create a warm and familiar environment, Gittelson said, ostensibly to make passengers feel “at home.” On the other hand, the trance music and purple mood lighting on Virgin America seems to attempt a vibe more edgy than cozy.
Whichever mood they’re chasing, first- and business-class sections will likely become even more stylized — and expensive — in coming years. “Competing based on price is destructive for the industry,” Vasigh said. “The most important thing for the airlines is to distinguish their service in order to gain more loyalty.”
Savers are sexy: Why thriftiness is attractive
Getty Images stock
Thrifty people are more attractive as potential mates, a researcher argues.
"You would think that spending would be more attractive, because things like flashy watches or purses are so visible," says Jenny Olson, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and co-author of the working paper, "A Penny Saved is a Partner Earned: The Romantic Appeal of Savers".
"Those things can also be perceived as wasteful and lacking in self-control," says Olson. "And self-control is a very desirable quality in a potential mate."
In fact, when Olson ran an experiment where participants had to evaluate dating profiles, savers were deemed the better catches. On a scale of 1-7, savers ranked roughly at 5 in terms of attractiveness, while spenders lagged behind at 4.
That jibes with similar findings elsewhere. New York Times money columnist Ron Lieber once asked the dating site eHarmony to dig through its 30 million matches made in July 2010, and found that users who labeled themselves as savers rather than spenders were contacted 25 percent more by potential mates.
So what is behind the allure of the Sexy Saver?
Allison Markin thinks she knows the answer. The wine-industry marketer from Penticton, British Columbia, has been dating a fine fellow for about nine months now.
He is a successful entrepreneur who has sold multiple businesses, and does not have to worry about money anymore. His inclination is still to save it - and that suits her just fine.
"I don't think anybody wants to be with someone who might blow through all their cash," says Markin, 41. "You don't have to constantly be worrying, 'What happens if they spent all their money?' So I would agree that savers are more attractive, when it comes to future planning."
And that is the critical distinction. Indeed, Olson's research has found that in the short term, savers do not have a big leg up over spenders in attractiveness. It is over the long term that the advantage really kicks in.
"If you are talking about a short-term fling, it does not really matter what your partner's spending habits are," says Olson. "But over the long term, it becomes a question of self-control: Can your potential partner take care of themselves and inhibit their bad impulses, in terms of money, of diet, of exercise? Those things matter."
Incidentally, the proof in the pudding is Olson herself. Her husband is a definite saver, she says.
"It is natural selection at play in choosing a mate," says Dr. Brad Klontz, co-author of Mind Over Money and a financial psychologist in Kauai, Hawaii. "Saving behaviors hint at the potential to create a more financially secure household unit. With that comes significant benefits to one's offspring and overall quality of life.
"Apparently, to our animal brain - which is focused on optimizing the chances of offspring survival and success - saving is sexy."
One caveat: Many people have to come to suspect this. And so they fudge the truth on their public profiles, making it difficult for daters to figure out what is true and what is not.
When Olson asked respondents to a private questionnaire whether they were savers or spenders, the split was an even 50/50. But when she asked those people to set up dating profiles, knowing the information would be public, a much higher percentage of people suddenly claimed they were savers.
"People have an intuition that saving is an attractive thing," she says. "Be careful that your potential partner might be lying about their financial attitudes - just like they might be lying about their height or weight."
Of course, do not go too far in the direction of saving, and become a maddening penny-pincher. While a general propensity for saving is an appealing thing to potential partners, being a tightwad definitely is not.
That is why Markin, the wine-industry marketer, would be okay if her partner surprised her with a trip to California's Napa Valley (hint, hint). "I like him to mix it up," she admits. "I do like that he is a saver. But the romantic side of me wishes he would splurge on me -- just a little bit."
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
How China Can Harness Its History & Overcome Its ‘Great Wall’ Slowdown
WUZHEN, China -- Weaving between motorbikes and makeshift carts
in an air-conditioned tour bus as we approached this town’s commercial
center, the memories of Shanghai's glittering skyscrapers quickly faded,
replaced by what a native friend called "the real China."
We had crossed over into one of the many other Chinas that coexist in
this vast, mysterious, sometimes contradictory country, whose sweep of
history, geography, culture and economics tends to confound the Western
mind.
China's economic narrative encompasses many centuries of booms and busts, and its singular distinction of having been the only empire in world history to reprise its previous role as an economic superpower. In the 18th century, China had the largest GDP in the world. Today, it is heading in that direction again. England, Greece, Rome -- no other empire has rebounded the way China has.
The story of China's many dynasties and epochs, reaching a modern low during the oppressive years of Chairman Mao Zedong, can be seen as the prelude to the boom of the last two decades. And now that China’s economy has begun to slow down, many Western prognosticators are writing off the recent growth as having run its course. But as has been the case since long before the days of Marco Polo, outside observers underestimate China’s ability to adapt, grow and prosper at their own peril.
One reason China has managed to continually reinvent itself can be seen in the tension between Wuzhen and Shanghai. The galloping commerce and futurism of Shanghai may be the picture China projects to the world, but a key counterpoint exists in dusty Wuzhen, where ancient culture and crass modernity exist side by side just 80 miles southwest of Shanghai.
Wuzhen is not what it is billed to be, nor what it appeared to be upon our arrival. Like China as a whole, it is a place that can be truly appreciated only through the lens of history. It can't be defined in a propaganda brochure, a snapshot, or an economist’s talking point.
Three Chinas
I was stunned when we arrived at Wuzhen, one of Southeast China’s ancient water towns, which we had been led to believe was a little Venice of quaint canals, stone bridges and centuries-old shops offering goods still made in the traditional manner.
What greeted us instead was a wide, pitted, half-paved road strewn with trash, rundown cement buildings that appeared to have been built in the 1970s, and damaged neon lights advertising all sorts of modern businesses.
This part of Wuzhen is where most of its 12,000 permanent residents live, but it’s also the part that Chinese authorities would prefer you never read about; it represents the downside of one of China’s best-preserved towns as well as its booming capitalism, where rugged strivers gather car parts and trash in hopes of hauling it to a junkyard and scraping together a living. In this depressed area, the only available hotels are little more than big rectangular dormitories with dribbling spigots for showerheads, and the stream that runs past the room windows is muddy-brown and cluttered with floating garbage.
Yet just a few blocks away, tourists can pay a few dozen yuan to gain access through a towering wooden gate to one of two other versions of China. The first is the much-vaunted ancient section, about 80 percent of which has remained largely unchanged for a millennium, earning it a Unesco World Heritage Site designation. As they have for centuries, the residents of this district still dye silks, bang out copper sculptures by the water, and buy food from wooden gondolas that glide past the windows of traditional curved-eave homes.
And through another gate, visitors can pay about 100 more yuan to ride a rowboat ferry to the luxury version of Wuzhen. The architecture there has been revamped and upgraded over the past 10 years to make it less rundown and more Suzhou-chic, and high-end stores and restaurants sell faux antiques and gourmet cuisine in air-conditioned buildings along pristine streets and waterways.
In this Disneyland version of Wuzhen, the refurbished White Lotus Pagoda shines late into the night over outdoor bars full of revelers spending upwards of $10 on beers and cocktails -- some of the most expensive drinks we found in China.
These three visions of modern China, all within a few hundred yards of one another and separated by gates and admission charges, can be seen as representative of the state of the nation today. China is an unfinished, seemingly haphazard amalgam of wildly divergent zones, from the farms of the far western Uighurs in Xinjiang to the shopping centers, suburbs and slums of Shanghai to the commercialized, packaged history of the most pleasing districts of Beijing, Hangzhou and Nanjing.
In a way, these different sides of China reflect the different periods of China’s history, from the Mongol domination of Kublai Khan to the cultural vandalism and oppression of Mao Zedong to the uber-capitalism of today. And they all combine to paint a complicated picture of a people and empire that continue to evolve, now at a faster rate, perhaps, than any other in human history. It is against this backdrop that any assessment of modern China should be made if one hopes to reach a comprehensive conclusion or projection.
Bright lights, big money
When China began its most recent ascent, many predicted it was on its way to overtaking America as the lone economic superpower, as the nation built and sustained massive, often double-digit, growth. Get ready to learn Chinese, the commentators warned.
But since 2010, as China's spectacular expansion has rapidly decelerated, the narrative is being rewritten, and most economists now seem convinced that China is entering a long period of decline. Conversely, there is a growing, quieter school of thought that contends that the slowdown -- which was actually in large part orchestrated purposely by the government -- represents a maturing of the Chinese economy, and that the nation's leaders are acting swiftly to ensure that it enters a new paradigm of innovation, consumerism and sustainable growth.
In the first decade of the 21st century, as China’s government reported year after year of staggering GDP growth, most Western economists and industrialists accepted as a foregone conclusion that the country would be king of the mountain within a decade or two. The evidence of that rise is still found all across China. Walking the streets of Pudong -- the area of Shanghai east of the Huangpu River that has gone from farmland to gleaming financial hub in the 20 years since the Chinese government declared it a Special Economic Zone -- one gets a powerful sense that China is leading the world into the future.
The world’s 15th-tallest building stands in the shadow of the sixth-tallest, while nearby construction workers toil day and night on what will be the second-tallest. Meanwhile, throngs of consumers flock to snatch up Chanel, Tiffany and Dior goods at the six-floor, ultra-luxury IFC Pudong super-mall nearby, and Maseratis and Rolls Royces glide along eight-lane roadways, guided by fully-digital traffic displays. Shanghai's opulence, cosmopolitanism and energy are a testament to China’s economic rise since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
That feeling is still pronounced, though in the space of a few financial quarters the conversation about the economy of the People's Republic has been turned on its head. Now the script focuses on the stagnation that could result in the world's second-largest economy losing much of the ground it has so swiftly gained. The speed with which the conversation shifted has been remarkable, and has set the world’s thought leaders searching for ways to comprehend and explain the seeming end of the Chinese Century before it truly got under way. Nobel Prize-winning New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman breathlessly declared last month that “the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is just how bad the crash will be.”
Others say China's rise to dominance was not inexorable, and neither is the current trend toward economic stagnation. According to this line of thought, the slowdown was not entirely unexpected, and doesn’t spell the end of the Middle Kingdom's growth. On the contrary, these pundits say, China is charting a new kind of trajectory that will not be restrained by the old rules. The fact that China's annual GDP growth rate has fallen from 11.9 percent in early 2010 to just 7.5 percent late last year is actually "a good sign” in the view of one of those pundits, Peter Adriaens, a professor of environmental engineering and entrepreneurship strategy at the University of Michigan.
“You’re looking at a couple of percentage points, but a lot of the numbers that come from within the country are driven from building things, construction, whether or not anyone actually occupies these buildings, [tech] parks or malls or whatever,” Adriaens said. “We’ve finally gotten to the point where people building in China with artificially cheap loans and money are not doing that as much anymore, and that's reflected in slower GDP growth, and that’s a good thing.”
Fundamental shift
Many China observers see its history as one of constant change, and this as one of its watershed periods when the nation again takes stock of itself and finds a way to move forward. They point out that China is one of the oldest civilizations and for long periods the most dominant, that the country has been at the top before, and that this is not the first time it’s been reborn.
For decades after Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which eviscerated China’s culture, history, religious traditions and economy in the 1960s and '70s, the nation struggled to get back its bearings. Once the chairman died and his widow's Gang of Four were unseated, the path was cleared for new leaders to make the necessary changes to revive China's past vibrancy.
The country then played catch-up with the nations (Europe, America and Japan) that had surpassed its economic might for the previous 200 years and began reclaiming its position in the world, says author Allan Topol, who has published a number of heavily researched novels about China. Though his books are fictional, Topol's knowledge of the country is vast and nuanced, and he looks at the recent history of China as a resurgence rather than an emergence.
“China was a very powerful economic country in the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact the GDP in China was higher in about 1790 or so than it was in Western Europe, and consumption of luxury goods was higher than it was in Western Europe,” Topol pointed out. “It’s sort of mind-numbing that here they had this economic powerhouse by the end of the 1700s but they lost it.”
China’s history is fraught with turmoil, and in Topol's view, the events of recent years have shown the resiliency of an ancient nation to ride the ebbs and flows of fortune and time.
There is little disagreement that China has again come to a crossroads. The country has spent the past few decades building up its manufacturing industry, making giant leaps in state-sponsored infrastructure, rejuvenating its culture and establishing itself as a world power to be reckoned with. Yet it appears to have outgrown the limits of that economic model. Many observers believe China is entering another phase of transformation -- one centered on fostering innovation, moving into new industries and making the transition from a construction and export-centric economic model to one based on invention, research and devleopment and domestic consumption.
“The GDP growth that China has experienced historically has been as a low-cost producer," explained Selig Sacks, co-chairman of the U.S./Greater China Transactional Practice at the Milwaukee-headquartered international law firm Foley & Lardner. "Now China is finding the need and the imperative to go up the value chain and produce higher-value goods." He described "a re-shifting going on in China and a rethinking as to what fuels the GDP, and what do they need to do to produce higher-quality and higher-margin goods.”
It is important to recall that this is not China’s first time at the ball, as ancient China yielded some of the world’s most important discoveries, including such game-changers as paper, gunpowder and the compass.
China’s leaders are taking steps to help spur that kind of innovation once again, though their effectiveness remains to be seen, and even if they succeed, such a shift will take time. Some experts believe the combined effects of the government’s changing economic and social policies and the rise of a Chinese middle class will be instrumental in ushering in a new phase of more sustainable and inevitably slower growth.
Free exchange of ideas
China's leaders meanwhile face the crucial question of how best to adjust their governing approach to avoid hitting Krugman's “Great Wall.” There is no clear template for success, though most experts agree that the Communist Party needs to loosen some its oppressive policies if it hopes to spur innovation, attract outside investors and create a sustainable, business-friendly environment.
Innovation is clearly a major priority of the Chinese government, as its last and current five-year plans have focused largely on making changes that will help it transition to an innovation-driven economy. One of the biggest criticisms of China regards its policy of not granting its citizens a fundamental right to engage in free speech or to use the Internet freely. Political bloggers and artists are routinely arrested and Western websites such as Google, Twitter and the New York Times are blocked by government censors.
Such policies may not have been major inhibitors of economic growth as it went through its recent period of rapid industrialization, because building widgets, subways and highways is not particularly dependent upon free discourse. But now that China's construction and residential markets have become saturated, its infrastructure is mostly in place, and it has begun to price itself out of the international manufacturing market as costs and wages have risen, innovation must play a greater role, and it will be limited by such government censorship.
“The lack of total and complete political freedom is actually an inhibitor in China to free thinking, and that’s going to ultimately be the one thing that really inhibits them from realizing their full potential,” said Shan Nair, co-founder of Nair & Co., a firm that provides outsourced services across the world. “There's a reluctance to engage in free exchanges of ideas. Add to that the fact that they’ve put up a wall to free Internet communication. Those things will have to change if they're really going to have a Silicon Valley.”
Nair and other experts are pessimistic about the prospect of China embracing freedom of expression, though it does appear that the leadership is becoming more aware of the importance of free communication, especially when it affects its economic interests. “They're building a massive technology park that is kind of self-contained, where people can talk about anything under the sun as long as it doesn’t pertain to politics, so in that sense they almost have freedom of speech there,” Nair pointed out. “They're allowing a lot more freedom of speech within that technology park.”
If the project -- a sort of “Sichuan Valley” -- turns out to be a smashing success, with major companies and technologies emerging from within its bounds, it could signal to the Chinese government that loosening its restrictions on free discourse would yield real benefits for the nation's economic future.
And China has overcome mighty systems of oppression in the past. Machiavelli may be the best known philosopher of cynical tyranny and ruthless power-hunger, but his predecessor Han Fei, who lived nearly two millennium before “The Prince” was written, was even more Machiavellian than Niccolò himself.
And when Fei’s ideas were adopted by the tyrants of his day and used to harmful effect against their subjects, one key result was an opening for China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang -- still a vicious man himself, as China was only in its Iron Age -- to come in and give birth to the resilient, unified entity we now know as China. In other words, the Chinese have been here before.
Structural reforms
Yet even if the chains on free speech were thrown off today, it would take time for the effects to fully manifest themselves, as long-paranoid citizens slowly came to believe that they could truly speak without fear. More important at this crucial moment, many economists say, is the need for China to make the transition from a state-controlled economy to something closer to a free-market economy.
It's not clear that China will ever truly open itself up entirely to the whims of laissez-faire economic policies, or even that it should. But as the country passes the point in time when government-backed construction and infrastructure projects can sustain meaningful GDP growth, economists and business leaders say the state will need to take a lighter-handed approach to managing its changing economy. And some leading China observers say recent events suggest China is already making concrete moves toward such a less intrusive role in economic affairs.
Tracy Chen, a senior research analyst and portfolio manager for mortgage-backed securities at Brandywine Global Investment Management who earned a naster's degree at Sichuan University in Chengdu, told IBTimes she is “cautiously optimistic” that China will succeed in making the economic and fiscal policy changes needed to rejuvenate the economy and put it on a sustainable path.
“Without true structural reform, I don’t think that in fact true economic growth is sustainable,” Chen said. “So I think the new government is willing to sacrifice some quantity for quality of growth speed, so in their structural reform, their reform agenda includes financial reforms and that will focus on liberalization of interest rates, and the second item would be to open their capital market, and the most important thing will be to reduce the role of government in the economy to make it more market-driven.”
She and other experts emphasize that the shift to a market-driven model needs to take place gradually if China hopes to fill many of the tech parks, commercial centers and new residential buildings it has built in hopes of bringing people to its chosen economic hubs.
“You see China transitioning from the central planning, command and control structure to one that’s more based on free market metrics, and that’s what capitalism is all about,” said Said E. Dawlabani, an economist at Memenomics Group in La Jolla, Calif. “I don’t see full free market forces being a benefit to China right now. There will be a transition to free-market economics. It is needed, but you can't just immediately drop the central planning economy, so perhaps a decade of transition will be needed."
The next decade will be a critical one for the future of China, and opinions on what needs to be done for the country to mature into a fully-modern economy differ widely. But as evidenced by their growing Shanghai's skyline out of the forgotten Huangpu River marshland over the course of just 20 years, the Chinese have surprised the world before, and may very well do it again.
China's economic narrative encompasses many centuries of booms and busts, and its singular distinction of having been the only empire in world history to reprise its previous role as an economic superpower. In the 18th century, China had the largest GDP in the world. Today, it is heading in that direction again. England, Greece, Rome -- no other empire has rebounded the way China has.
The story of China's many dynasties and epochs, reaching a modern low during the oppressive years of Chairman Mao Zedong, can be seen as the prelude to the boom of the last two decades. And now that China’s economy has begun to slow down, many Western prognosticators are writing off the recent growth as having run its course. But as has been the case since long before the days of Marco Polo, outside observers underestimate China’s ability to adapt, grow and prosper at their own peril.
One reason China has managed to continually reinvent itself can be seen in the tension between Wuzhen and Shanghai. The galloping commerce and futurism of Shanghai may be the picture China projects to the world, but a key counterpoint exists in dusty Wuzhen, where ancient culture and crass modernity exist side by side just 80 miles southwest of Shanghai.
Wuzhen is not what it is billed to be, nor what it appeared to be upon our arrival. Like China as a whole, it is a place that can be truly appreciated only through the lens of history. It can't be defined in a propaganda brochure, a snapshot, or an economist’s talking point.
Three Chinas
I was stunned when we arrived at Wuzhen, one of Southeast China’s ancient water towns, which we had been led to believe was a little Venice of quaint canals, stone bridges and centuries-old shops offering goods still made in the traditional manner.
What greeted us instead was a wide, pitted, half-paved road strewn with trash, rundown cement buildings that appeared to have been built in the 1970s, and damaged neon lights advertising all sorts of modern businesses.
This part of Wuzhen is where most of its 12,000 permanent residents live, but it’s also the part that Chinese authorities would prefer you never read about; it represents the downside of one of China’s best-preserved towns as well as its booming capitalism, where rugged strivers gather car parts and trash in hopes of hauling it to a junkyard and scraping together a living. In this depressed area, the only available hotels are little more than big rectangular dormitories with dribbling spigots for showerheads, and the stream that runs past the room windows is muddy-brown and cluttered with floating garbage.
Yet just a few blocks away, tourists can pay a few dozen yuan to gain access through a towering wooden gate to one of two other versions of China. The first is the much-vaunted ancient section, about 80 percent of which has remained largely unchanged for a millennium, earning it a Unesco World Heritage Site designation. As they have for centuries, the residents of this district still dye silks, bang out copper sculptures by the water, and buy food from wooden gondolas that glide past the windows of traditional curved-eave homes.
And through another gate, visitors can pay about 100 more yuan to ride a rowboat ferry to the luxury version of Wuzhen. The architecture there has been revamped and upgraded over the past 10 years to make it less rundown and more Suzhou-chic, and high-end stores and restaurants sell faux antiques and gourmet cuisine in air-conditioned buildings along pristine streets and waterways.
In this Disneyland version of Wuzhen, the refurbished White Lotus Pagoda shines late into the night over outdoor bars full of revelers spending upwards of $10 on beers and cocktails -- some of the most expensive drinks we found in China.
These three visions of modern China, all within a few hundred yards of one another and separated by gates and admission charges, can be seen as representative of the state of the nation today. China is an unfinished, seemingly haphazard amalgam of wildly divergent zones, from the farms of the far western Uighurs in Xinjiang to the shopping centers, suburbs and slums of Shanghai to the commercialized, packaged history of the most pleasing districts of Beijing, Hangzhou and Nanjing.
In a way, these different sides of China reflect the different periods of China’s history, from the Mongol domination of Kublai Khan to the cultural vandalism and oppression of Mao Zedong to the uber-capitalism of today. And they all combine to paint a complicated picture of a people and empire that continue to evolve, now at a faster rate, perhaps, than any other in human history. It is against this backdrop that any assessment of modern China should be made if one hopes to reach a comprehensive conclusion or projection.
Bright lights, big money
When China began its most recent ascent, many predicted it was on its way to overtaking America as the lone economic superpower, as the nation built and sustained massive, often double-digit, growth. Get ready to learn Chinese, the commentators warned.
But since 2010, as China's spectacular expansion has rapidly decelerated, the narrative is being rewritten, and most economists now seem convinced that China is entering a long period of decline. Conversely, there is a growing, quieter school of thought that contends that the slowdown -- which was actually in large part orchestrated purposely by the government -- represents a maturing of the Chinese economy, and that the nation's leaders are acting swiftly to ensure that it enters a new paradigm of innovation, consumerism and sustainable growth.
In the first decade of the 21st century, as China’s government reported year after year of staggering GDP growth, most Western economists and industrialists accepted as a foregone conclusion that the country would be king of the mountain within a decade or two. The evidence of that rise is still found all across China. Walking the streets of Pudong -- the area of Shanghai east of the Huangpu River that has gone from farmland to gleaming financial hub in the 20 years since the Chinese government declared it a Special Economic Zone -- one gets a powerful sense that China is leading the world into the future.
The world’s 15th-tallest building stands in the shadow of the sixth-tallest, while nearby construction workers toil day and night on what will be the second-tallest. Meanwhile, throngs of consumers flock to snatch up Chanel, Tiffany and Dior goods at the six-floor, ultra-luxury IFC Pudong super-mall nearby, and Maseratis and Rolls Royces glide along eight-lane roadways, guided by fully-digital traffic displays. Shanghai's opulence, cosmopolitanism and energy are a testament to China’s economic rise since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
That feeling is still pronounced, though in the space of a few financial quarters the conversation about the economy of the People's Republic has been turned on its head. Now the script focuses on the stagnation that could result in the world's second-largest economy losing much of the ground it has so swiftly gained. The speed with which the conversation shifted has been remarkable, and has set the world’s thought leaders searching for ways to comprehend and explain the seeming end of the Chinese Century before it truly got under way. Nobel Prize-winning New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman breathlessly declared last month that “the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is just how bad the crash will be.”
Others say China's rise to dominance was not inexorable, and neither is the current trend toward economic stagnation. According to this line of thought, the slowdown was not entirely unexpected, and doesn’t spell the end of the Middle Kingdom's growth. On the contrary, these pundits say, China is charting a new kind of trajectory that will not be restrained by the old rules. The fact that China's annual GDP growth rate has fallen from 11.9 percent in early 2010 to just 7.5 percent late last year is actually "a good sign” in the view of one of those pundits, Peter Adriaens, a professor of environmental engineering and entrepreneurship strategy at the University of Michigan.
“You’re looking at a couple of percentage points, but a lot of the numbers that come from within the country are driven from building things, construction, whether or not anyone actually occupies these buildings, [tech] parks or malls or whatever,” Adriaens said. “We’ve finally gotten to the point where people building in China with artificially cheap loans and money are not doing that as much anymore, and that's reflected in slower GDP growth, and that’s a good thing.”
Fundamental shift
Many China observers see its history as one of constant change, and this as one of its watershed periods when the nation again takes stock of itself and finds a way to move forward. They point out that China is one of the oldest civilizations and for long periods the most dominant, that the country has been at the top before, and that this is not the first time it’s been reborn.
For decades after Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which eviscerated China’s culture, history, religious traditions and economy in the 1960s and '70s, the nation struggled to get back its bearings. Once the chairman died and his widow's Gang of Four were unseated, the path was cleared for new leaders to make the necessary changes to revive China's past vibrancy.
The country then played catch-up with the nations (Europe, America and Japan) that had surpassed its economic might for the previous 200 years and began reclaiming its position in the world, says author Allan Topol, who has published a number of heavily researched novels about China. Though his books are fictional, Topol's knowledge of the country is vast and nuanced, and he looks at the recent history of China as a resurgence rather than an emergence.
“China was a very powerful economic country in the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact the GDP in China was higher in about 1790 or so than it was in Western Europe, and consumption of luxury goods was higher than it was in Western Europe,” Topol pointed out. “It’s sort of mind-numbing that here they had this economic powerhouse by the end of the 1700s but they lost it.”
China’s history is fraught with turmoil, and in Topol's view, the events of recent years have shown the resiliency of an ancient nation to ride the ebbs and flows of fortune and time.
There is little disagreement that China has again come to a crossroads. The country has spent the past few decades building up its manufacturing industry, making giant leaps in state-sponsored infrastructure, rejuvenating its culture and establishing itself as a world power to be reckoned with. Yet it appears to have outgrown the limits of that economic model. Many observers believe China is entering another phase of transformation -- one centered on fostering innovation, moving into new industries and making the transition from a construction and export-centric economic model to one based on invention, research and devleopment and domestic consumption.
“The GDP growth that China has experienced historically has been as a low-cost producer," explained Selig Sacks, co-chairman of the U.S./Greater China Transactional Practice at the Milwaukee-headquartered international law firm Foley & Lardner. "Now China is finding the need and the imperative to go up the value chain and produce higher-value goods." He described "a re-shifting going on in China and a rethinking as to what fuels the GDP, and what do they need to do to produce higher-quality and higher-margin goods.”
It is important to recall that this is not China’s first time at the ball, as ancient China yielded some of the world’s most important discoveries, including such game-changers as paper, gunpowder and the compass.
China’s leaders are taking steps to help spur that kind of innovation once again, though their effectiveness remains to be seen, and even if they succeed, such a shift will take time. Some experts believe the combined effects of the government’s changing economic and social policies and the rise of a Chinese middle class will be instrumental in ushering in a new phase of more sustainable and inevitably slower growth.
Free exchange of ideas
China's leaders meanwhile face the crucial question of how best to adjust their governing approach to avoid hitting Krugman's “Great Wall.” There is no clear template for success, though most experts agree that the Communist Party needs to loosen some its oppressive policies if it hopes to spur innovation, attract outside investors and create a sustainable, business-friendly environment.
Innovation is clearly a major priority of the Chinese government, as its last and current five-year plans have focused largely on making changes that will help it transition to an innovation-driven economy. One of the biggest criticisms of China regards its policy of not granting its citizens a fundamental right to engage in free speech or to use the Internet freely. Political bloggers and artists are routinely arrested and Western websites such as Google, Twitter and the New York Times are blocked by government censors.
Such policies may not have been major inhibitors of economic growth as it went through its recent period of rapid industrialization, because building widgets, subways and highways is not particularly dependent upon free discourse. But now that China's construction and residential markets have become saturated, its infrastructure is mostly in place, and it has begun to price itself out of the international manufacturing market as costs and wages have risen, innovation must play a greater role, and it will be limited by such government censorship.
“The lack of total and complete political freedom is actually an inhibitor in China to free thinking, and that’s going to ultimately be the one thing that really inhibits them from realizing their full potential,” said Shan Nair, co-founder of Nair & Co., a firm that provides outsourced services across the world. “There's a reluctance to engage in free exchanges of ideas. Add to that the fact that they’ve put up a wall to free Internet communication. Those things will have to change if they're really going to have a Silicon Valley.”
Nair and other experts are pessimistic about the prospect of China embracing freedom of expression, though it does appear that the leadership is becoming more aware of the importance of free communication, especially when it affects its economic interests. “They're building a massive technology park that is kind of self-contained, where people can talk about anything under the sun as long as it doesn’t pertain to politics, so in that sense they almost have freedom of speech there,” Nair pointed out. “They're allowing a lot more freedom of speech within that technology park.”
If the project -- a sort of “Sichuan Valley” -- turns out to be a smashing success, with major companies and technologies emerging from within its bounds, it could signal to the Chinese government that loosening its restrictions on free discourse would yield real benefits for the nation's economic future.
And China has overcome mighty systems of oppression in the past. Machiavelli may be the best known philosopher of cynical tyranny and ruthless power-hunger, but his predecessor Han Fei, who lived nearly two millennium before “The Prince” was written, was even more Machiavellian than Niccolò himself.
And when Fei’s ideas were adopted by the tyrants of his day and used to harmful effect against their subjects, one key result was an opening for China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang -- still a vicious man himself, as China was only in its Iron Age -- to come in and give birth to the resilient, unified entity we now know as China. In other words, the Chinese have been here before.
Structural reforms
Yet even if the chains on free speech were thrown off today, it would take time for the effects to fully manifest themselves, as long-paranoid citizens slowly came to believe that they could truly speak without fear. More important at this crucial moment, many economists say, is the need for China to make the transition from a state-controlled economy to something closer to a free-market economy.
It's not clear that China will ever truly open itself up entirely to the whims of laissez-faire economic policies, or even that it should. But as the country passes the point in time when government-backed construction and infrastructure projects can sustain meaningful GDP growth, economists and business leaders say the state will need to take a lighter-handed approach to managing its changing economy. And some leading China observers say recent events suggest China is already making concrete moves toward such a less intrusive role in economic affairs.
Tracy Chen, a senior research analyst and portfolio manager for mortgage-backed securities at Brandywine Global Investment Management who earned a naster's degree at Sichuan University in Chengdu, told IBTimes she is “cautiously optimistic” that China will succeed in making the economic and fiscal policy changes needed to rejuvenate the economy and put it on a sustainable path.
“Without true structural reform, I don’t think that in fact true economic growth is sustainable,” Chen said. “So I think the new government is willing to sacrifice some quantity for quality of growth speed, so in their structural reform, their reform agenda includes financial reforms and that will focus on liberalization of interest rates, and the second item would be to open their capital market, and the most important thing will be to reduce the role of government in the economy to make it more market-driven.”
She and other experts emphasize that the shift to a market-driven model needs to take place gradually if China hopes to fill many of the tech parks, commercial centers and new residential buildings it has built in hopes of bringing people to its chosen economic hubs.
“You see China transitioning from the central planning, command and control structure to one that’s more based on free market metrics, and that’s what capitalism is all about,” said Said E. Dawlabani, an economist at Memenomics Group in La Jolla, Calif. “I don’t see full free market forces being a benefit to China right now. There will be a transition to free-market economics. It is needed, but you can't just immediately drop the central planning economy, so perhaps a decade of transition will be needed."
The next decade will be a critical one for the future of China, and opinions on what needs to be done for the country to mature into a fully-modern economy differ widely. But as evidenced by their growing Shanghai's skyline out of the forgotten Huangpu River marshland over the course of just 20 years, the Chinese have surprised the world before, and may very well do it again.
Gold Demand: China And India In Close Competition, But Other Investors Flee
China and India battled to become the world’s largest consumer of gold, just as gold outflows from European and U.S. investment funds hit record lows this past quarter, according to global gold statistics released Thursday.
The World Gold Council, an industry group backed by gold producers,
said that quarterly gold demand fell 12 percent from last year, to about
850 tonnes, even as demand for gold jewelry stayed strong.
The value of gold in demand worldwide fell 23 percent, as consumers, investors and central banks sought only $39 billion worth of gold. That’s the lowest value assigned to global gold demand in more than three years.
Outflows from exchange traded funds totaled about 400 tonnes this quarter, in the worst quarter for such outflows ever, as investors abandoned gold for equity markets.
The second-worst quarter for ETF outflows was at 177 tonnes, in the first quarter of 2013.
“The big fall in price in April during this quarter led to a big division in the market,” council managing director Marcus Grubb told International Business Times. “We saw investment down 63 percent, driven largely by the ETFs.”
But, he added: “You had huge increases in physical demand, basically soaking up tonnage coming onto the market from ETFs, led largely by India and China.”
China and India are also locked in a dead-heat race over whether China will eclipse India as the world’s largest gold consumer by the end of the year, Grubb said.
Although demand in India just barely beat out Chinese demand this quarter, Chinese gold demand slightly exceeded Indian demand for the first six months of the year.
China could also set a record for itself this year if it reaches 1000 tonnes of annual demand, surpassing its previous record of 776 tonnes, said Grubb.
“It’s very close,” he said, of the demand duel between the two Asian giants, where physical demand has traditionally been high. “It’s too close to call, given that they’re so close at the half year, and also given the changes underway in India.”
HSBC Holdings plc (LON:HSBA) gold analyst James Steel said in a research note earlier this week that Chinese gold demand will likely exceed 1,000 tonnes this year, becoming the best year on record for the country.
India has already crossed that 1,000-tonne threshold in the past, so the deadlock between the two for the title of the world’s biggest gold consumer is likely to be ongoing.
Trade data from earlier this week also showed that China hit a record quarterly high for gold demand from April to June 2013.
Recent regulatory restrictions in India seem to have had little impact on gold appetite so far, too, as demand rose by about 55 tonnes quarter-over-quarter.
“It affects the markets temporarily and forces up the local premium, now $57/oz in Mumbai, but it isn’t really having that much effect on demand,” said Grubb of the measures, citing a 48 percent increase in Indian demand from last year.
The measures also boost the amount of "unofficial" gold smuggled into India, which the council estimates at 200 tonnes for 2013. That’s a significant increase in so-called ‘grey market’ gold, said Grubb.
But according to an Indian gems and jewellery trade group, wrote Steel, Indian gold imports could come to less than a meager 150 tonnes over the next six months.
Slightly less central bank buying of gold was evidenced in the quarter, along with a tightening of gold supplies led by the lowest level of recycled gold since 2007.
The value of gold in demand worldwide fell 23 percent, as consumers, investors and central banks sought only $39 billion worth of gold. That’s the lowest value assigned to global gold demand in more than three years.
Outflows from exchange traded funds totaled about 400 tonnes this quarter, in the worst quarter for such outflows ever, as investors abandoned gold for equity markets.
The second-worst quarter for ETF outflows was at 177 tonnes, in the first quarter of 2013.
“The big fall in price in April during this quarter led to a big division in the market,” council managing director Marcus Grubb told International Business Times. “We saw investment down 63 percent, driven largely by the ETFs.”
But, he added: “You had huge increases in physical demand, basically soaking up tonnage coming onto the market from ETFs, led largely by India and China.”
China and India are also locked in a dead-heat race over whether China will eclipse India as the world’s largest gold consumer by the end of the year, Grubb said.
Although demand in India just barely beat out Chinese demand this quarter, Chinese gold demand slightly exceeded Indian demand for the first six months of the year.
China could also set a record for itself this year if it reaches 1000 tonnes of annual demand, surpassing its previous record of 776 tonnes, said Grubb.
“It’s very close,” he said, of the demand duel between the two Asian giants, where physical demand has traditionally been high. “It’s too close to call, given that they’re so close at the half year, and also given the changes underway in India.”
HSBC Holdings plc (LON:HSBA) gold analyst James Steel said in a research note earlier this week that Chinese gold demand will likely exceed 1,000 tonnes this year, becoming the best year on record for the country.
India has already crossed that 1,000-tonne threshold in the past, so the deadlock between the two for the title of the world’s biggest gold consumer is likely to be ongoing.
Trade data from earlier this week also showed that China hit a record quarterly high for gold demand from April to June 2013.
Recent regulatory restrictions in India seem to have had little impact on gold appetite so far, too, as demand rose by about 55 tonnes quarter-over-quarter.
“It affects the markets temporarily and forces up the local premium, now $57/oz in Mumbai, but it isn’t really having that much effect on demand,” said Grubb of the measures, citing a 48 percent increase in Indian demand from last year.
The measures also boost the amount of "unofficial" gold smuggled into India, which the council estimates at 200 tonnes for 2013. That’s a significant increase in so-called ‘grey market’ gold, said Grubb.
But according to an Indian gems and jewellery trade group, wrote Steel, Indian gold imports could come to less than a meager 150 tonnes over the next six months.
Slightly less central bank buying of gold was evidenced in the quarter, along with a tightening of gold supplies led by the lowest level of recycled gold since 2007.
Moeller-Maersk, World's Largest Container Ship Company, Hikes Full-Year Income Outlook On Expectation Of Stronger Demand
Danish conglomerate AP Moeller-Maersk A/S (CPH:MAERSK-B), parent company of the world's largest container shipper, Maersk Line, on Friday hiked its profit guidance to $3.3 billion for the full year from $2.9 billion previously on prospects of higher demand. Shares soared more than 9 percent on the upward revision.
The conglomerate also reported an 11 percent drop in second-quarter profit, but analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a 30 percent drop.
Moeller-Maersk attributed its losses in part to lower profits from its Maersk oil business, as oil prices declined and the company spent substantially on exploring for new oil sources.
The conglomerate's Maersk Line subsidiary posted a $439 million profit for the second quarter, up from $227 million last year, despite sharply lower shipping rates.
The company said the profit boost came chiefly from cutting costs in light of its falling revenues, for one by improving the efficiency of its fleets.
The shipping line, often seen to measure the health of international trade, also revised its projections for the year to “significantly above” what it earned in 2012, based on the robust performance in the first half of this year.
“Global demand for seaborne containers is expected to increase 2-3% in 2013, lower on the Asia-Europe trades but supported by higher growth for imports to high growth markets,” said the company.
“The second quarter has been quite tough in terms of [freight] rates and volumes but we’ve been successful in improving our competitiveness,” company CEO Nils Andersen told CNBC Europe.
“When you look at the average results for the industry in the second quarter, the industry is not making any money,” he said. “Low rates are hurting the industry too much.”
Average freight rates fell by 13 percent, said the company.
Maersk Line's strong profits contrasts with the fortunes of smaller maritime shippers, like Thailand's Regional Container Lines PCL (BKK:RCL), which reported a net loss of $4.2 million on Thursday, after making a small profit in the same quarter last year.
RCL operates throughout Asia and the Middle East, with 41 container vessels travelling to more than 70 destinations.
Moeller-Maersk’s other businesses include operating ports, oil and drilling and running tankers. The group also announced the creation of a fifth unit, focused on services and shipping, which seeks to earn $500 million by 2016.
Danish conglomerate AP Moeller-Maersk A/S (CPH:MAERSK-B), parent company of the world's largest container shipper, Maersk Line, on Friday hiked its profit guidance to $3.3 billion for the full year from $2.9 billion previously on prospects of higher demand. Shares soared more than 9 percent on the upward revision.
The conglomerate also reported an 11 percent drop in second-quarter profit, but analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a 30 percent drop.
Moeller-Maersk attributed its losses in part to lower profits from its Maersk oil business, as oil prices declined and the company spent substantially on exploring for new oil sources.
The conglomerate's Maersk Line subsidiary posted a $439 million profit for the second quarter, up from $227 million last year, despite sharply lower shipping rates.
The company said the profit boost came chiefly from cutting costs in light of its falling revenues, for one by improving the efficiency of its fleets.
The shipping line, often seen to measure the health of international trade, also revised its projections for the year to “significantly above” what it earned in 2012, based on the robust performance in the first half of this year.
“Global demand for seaborne containers is expected to increase 2-3% in 2013, lower on the Asia-Europe trades but supported by higher growth for imports to high growth markets,” said the company.
“The second quarter has been quite tough in terms of [freight] rates and volumes but we’ve been successful in improving our competitiveness,” company CEO Nils Andersen told CNBC Europe.
“When you look at the average results for the industry in the second quarter, the industry is not making any money,” he said. “Low rates are hurting the industry too much.”
Average freight rates fell by 13 percent, said the company.
Maersk Line's strong profits contrasts with the fortunes of smaller maritime shippers, like Thailand's Regional Container Lines PCL (BKK:RCL), which reported a net loss of $4.2 million on Thursday, after making a small profit in the same quarter last year.
RCL operates throughout Asia and the Middle East, with 41 container vessels travelling to more than 70 destinations.
Moeller-Maersk’s other businesses include operating ports, oil and drilling and running tankers. The group also announced the creation of a fifth unit, focused on services and shipping, which seeks to earn $500 million by 2016.
Danish conglomerate AP Moeller-Maersk A/S (CPH:MAERSK-B), parent company of the world's largest container shipper, Maersk Line, on Friday hiked its profit guidance to $3.3 billion for the full year from $2.9 billion previously on prospects of higher demand. Shares soared more than 9 percent on the upward revision.
Michelle Obama Hip-Hop Album: First Lady Releasing Music For 'Let's Move' Campaign To Fight Child Obesity
“This album is about more than just a great message and it’s about
more than great music. It’s about making the healthy choice the easy
choice,” said Partnership for a Healthier America’s Drew Nannis. The
album is a collaborative effort between Obama, PHA, and Hip-Hop Public
Health. The tracklist is as follows:
1. “U R What You Eat” (Salad Bar: Matisyahu, Ariana Grande, Travis Barker)
2. “Everybody” (Jordin Sparks, Doug E. Fresh, Dr Oz, Ryan Beatty, Hip Hop MD)
3. “Let’s Move” (Doug E. Fresh, Artie Green, Chauncey Hawkins)
4. “Just Believe” (Ashanti, Gerry Gunn, Artie Green, Robbie Nova)
5. “Veggie Luv” (Monifah and J Rome)
6. “Hip Hop FEET” (DMC and Artie Green)
7. “Stronger” (Shayna Steele, Jeremy Jordan, Our Time Theater kids, and E-Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren)
8. “Give Myself A Try” (Ryan Beatty)
9. ”Jump Up” (Brady Rymer and the Little band that Could)
10. “Hip Hop LEAN” (Artie Green)
11. “Pass the Rock” (Iman Schumpert and Artie Green)
12. “Good Living” (Ashton Jones)
13. “Beautiful” (Daisy Grant and Artie Green)
14. “Change The Game” (The Happiness Club, featuring Naledge)
15. “Wanna Jump (Let’s Move)” (Paul Burch)
16. “Mother May I” (Amelia Robinson)
17. “We Like Vegetables” (Los Barkers!)
18. “Get Up Sit Up” (Babi Floyd)
19. “One Step Forward” (Samite)
Obama has been a health advocate during her time in the White House with her husband, President Barack Obama. In 2009, she started the "Let's Move Campaign," an "ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight and unveiled a nationwide campaign," according to a White House press release.
Superstar Beyonce even teamed up with Michelle Obama in 2011 to promote the campaign's mission to fight childhood obesity. She made a new music video to support the movement, dancing in a school cafeteria with a group of children as a form of working out. Notable celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Scarlett Johansson have also lent a hand to help solve the problem of obesity in America.
1. “U R What You Eat” (Salad Bar: Matisyahu, Ariana Grande, Travis Barker)
2. “Everybody” (Jordin Sparks, Doug E. Fresh, Dr Oz, Ryan Beatty, Hip Hop MD)
3. “Let’s Move” (Doug E. Fresh, Artie Green, Chauncey Hawkins)
4. “Just Believe” (Ashanti, Gerry Gunn, Artie Green, Robbie Nova)
5. “Veggie Luv” (Monifah and J Rome)
6. “Hip Hop FEET” (DMC and Artie Green)
7. “Stronger” (Shayna Steele, Jeremy Jordan, Our Time Theater kids, and E-Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren)
8. “Give Myself A Try” (Ryan Beatty)
9. ”Jump Up” (Brady Rymer and the Little band that Could)
10. “Hip Hop LEAN” (Artie Green)
11. “Pass the Rock” (Iman Schumpert and Artie Green)
12. “Good Living” (Ashton Jones)
13. “Beautiful” (Daisy Grant and Artie Green)
14. “Change The Game” (The Happiness Club, featuring Naledge)
15. “Wanna Jump (Let’s Move)” (Paul Burch)
16. “Mother May I” (Amelia Robinson)
17. “We Like Vegetables” (Los Barkers!)
18. “Get Up Sit Up” (Babi Floyd)
19. “One Step Forward” (Samite)
Obama has been a health advocate during her time in the White House with her husband, President Barack Obama. In 2009, she started the "Let's Move Campaign," an "ambitious national goal of solving the challenge of childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight and unveiled a nationwide campaign," according to a White House press release.
Superstar Beyonce even teamed up with Michelle Obama in 2011 to promote the campaign's mission to fight childhood obesity. She made a new music video to support the movement, dancing in a school cafeteria with a group of children as a form of working out. Notable celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres and Scarlett Johansson have also lent a hand to help solve the problem of obesity in America.
අනුරාධපුර පූජා භූමියේ සමලිංගික වැඩමුළුවක්
අනුරාධපුර වැනි පූජා භූමියක් තෝරාගෙන සමලිංගිකත්වය ප්රචලිත කිරීම
සඳහා වැඩමුළු පැවැත්වීම කනගාටුවට කරුණක් බව සමලිංගික ක්රියාවලියට විරෝධය
දක්වන ආයතනයක උසස් නිලධාරියෙකු පැවැසීය.අනුරාධපුර අටමස්ථාන පූජා භූමිය ආසන්නයේ හෝටලයක පසුගිය 12 වැනිදා මේ සම්බන්ධයෙන් නේවාසික පුහුණු වැඩමුළුවක් පැවැත්වීමට කටයුතු කිරීම පිළිබඳව අප්රසාදය පළ කරන බවද ඔහු පැවසීය. ලෝකයේ බොහෝ රටවල සමලිංගිකත්වය ප්රසිද්ධ කරුණක් වුවත්, බෞද්ධ රටක් වන ශ්රී ලංකාවේ පූජනීය ස්ථානයක ප්රසිද්ධියේ වැඩමුළු පැවැත්වීම කිසිසේත්ම අනුමත කළ නොහැකි බවත් එය නරක පූර්වාදර්ශයක් බවත් ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. අනුරාධපුර දිස්ත්රික්කයේ සමලිංගික සේවනයේ යෙදෙන්නන් 700 ක ප්රමාණයක් සිටින බව පැවැසූවත් එතරම් විශාල පිරිසක් නොමැති බව ද ඔහු අවධාරණය කර සිටියේය.
විජාතීය බලවේගයන් අපේ රටේ තරුණ තරුණියන් සමලිංගිකත්වයට ඇද දැමීම සඳහා රුපියල් කෝටි ගණනින් වියදම් කරන බවත්, සමලිංගික නොවන තරුණ තරුණියන්ද ඔවුන්ගේ මුදල් පෙන්වා මෙම ක්රියාවලියට එක්කරගන්නා බවද ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය.
අනුරාධපුර නගරයේ පාසල් සිසුන් හා විවිධ වෘත්තීය පාඨමාලාවල යෙදෙන තරුණ තරුණියන් මේ සඳහා පොළඹවා ගැනීමට අනුරාධපුර ප්රදේශයේ විශේෂ කණ්ඩායමක් කටයුතු කරන බවත්, තරුණ තරුණියන්ට මුදල් හා පහසුකම් ලබාදෙමින් ඔවුන් මෙම පිළිකුල් සහගත ක්රියාවලියට පොළඹවා ගන්නා බවද ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. මෙම ක්රියාවලියේ ඇති භයානක තත්ත්වය නම් විරුද්ධ ලිංගිකයන්ට (ස්ත්රී – පුරුෂ) වඩා සමලිංගිකයන් තුළින් භයානක සුවකළ නොහැකි ලිංගාශ්රිත රෝග වැළඳීමේ ප්රවණතාවය වැඩි වීම බව ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. සමලිංගික සේවනය සම්බන්ධයෙන් වෛද්යවරයෙකුගෙන් කළ විමසීමකදී ඔහු කියා සිටියේ ඇමෙරිකාවෙන් හමුවූ ලෝකයේ ප්රථම ඩ් ආසාදිතයා සමලිංගිකයෙකු බවත්ය.
1983 හෝ 1984 කාලයේදී ශ්රී ලංකාවෙන් ඩ් ආසාදිතයෙක් හමුවූ බවත් ඔහු ද විදේශීය රටක සමලිංගික ඇසුර පැවැත්වූ පුද්ගලයෙක් බවද වෛද්යවරයා කියා සිටියේය. ඊට අමතරව 1983 අගභාගයේ හෝ 1984 මුල් භාගයේදී දේශීය ඩ් ආසාදිතයෙකු හමුවූ අතර ඔහුද සමලිංගික ඇසුරක් පැවැත්වූ අයකු බවද වෛද්යවරයා පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. ඊට අමතරව සමලිංගික ඇසුර තුළින් නිට්ටාවට සුව කළ නොහැකි ගොනෝරියා, ලිංගික ඉන්නන්, ලිංගික හර්පිස්, හෙපටයිටිස් ඕ, උපදංශය වැනි භයානක රෝග වැළඳිය හැකි බවද ඔහු පෙන්වා දුන්නේය. විවිධ පුද්ගලයින් පෙන්වා දෙන තරමේ සුන්දර ලෝකයක් සමලිංගික සේවනයන්ට පුරුදු වූවන්ට නොමැති බව වෛද්යවරයා වැඩිදුරටත් සඳහන් කළේය.
අනුරාධපුර නගරයේ හෝටලයක පැවති සමලිංගිකත්වය ප්රචලිත වැඩසටහන සඳහා විවිධ වයස් කාණ්ඩවල 20 දෙනෙකු පමණ සහභාගි වී සිටින බව වාර්තා වූ අතර ඔවුන්ට අවශ්ය සියලු පහසුකම් සපයාදී තිබූ බවද අනාවරණය විය.
SriLankan Airlines to break even by March 2017
State-run carrier SriLankan Airlines is planning to break even by March 2017, after running about 335 million US dollars of losses in the intervening years, an official said.
The national carrier is buying 13 new aircraft from Airbus which will be more fuel efficient saving costs and will also upgrade the product allowing better prices and yield, chief executive of the airline, Kapila Chandrasena said.
The first of six A330-600s will arrive in October 2014 resulting in 6-8 percent in fuel savings. From 2017, the first of A350-900s will arrive with more fuel savings of 12 to 15 percent, he said. The firm was keeping fuel prices forecasted at 337 US cents a gallon.
Chandrasena said it was a worst-case scenario as projections were for fuel prices to ease. Global commodity prices including oil, base metals, precious metals and food rose sharply until 2008 due to Federal Reserve money printing which debased the US dollar, and fell when credit collapsed and the monetary policy-fired bubble lost traction.
Floating away? The luxury holiday home that’s really a RAFT
From shepherd’s huts to tree houses, the UK has no shortage of
unusual places to stay. But now glamping experts Canopy & Stars have
gone one step further and have added a raft, complete with a luxury
two-bedroom cabin on top, to their offering.
Luckily for nervous sleepers, the raft is tethered to the bottom of a private lake and comes complete with solar-powered amenities and a calor-gas powered shower. Other luxe touches include teak recliners, a Lloyd Loom chair, squishy bean bags for the deck and a glass viewing hatch with underwater lights.
Located near Maldon in Essex, the quirky holiday home, which sleeps up to four people, also comes with its own trout tutor and is surrounded by spectacularly pretty countryside.
A stay at the Raft at Chigborough starts at £149 per night. For more information, see canopyandstars.co.uk/raft or call 01275 395 447
Luckily for nervous sleepers, the raft is tethered to the bottom of a private lake and comes complete with solar-powered amenities and a calor-gas powered shower. Other luxe touches include teak recliners, a Lloyd Loom chair, squishy bean bags for the deck and a glass viewing hatch with underwater lights.
Located near Maldon in Essex, the quirky holiday home, which sleeps up to four people, also comes with its own trout tutor and is surrounded by spectacularly pretty countryside.
A stay at the Raft at Chigborough starts at £149 per night. For more information, see canopyandstars.co.uk/raft or call 01275 395 447
"Did you eat the food? You're not supposed to eat the food!" Spoof United Airlines Twitter feed fools complaining passengers
Furious airline passengers complaining
to United Airlines on Twitter have been receiving some rather
unexpected tongue-in-cheek replies after mistaking a parody account for
the company's official feed.
The @unitedairlanes Twitter account was first set up more than a year ago but had been dormant until the person behind it discovered dozens of irate messages from United passengers who had mixed the account up with official @unitedairlines (now just @United) Twitter account.
A Tmblr user called LeonsBuddyDave is believed to be behind the spoof account and when he realised what was happening, began to have some fun by posting some unusual responses.
Twitter user Bruna Payne ranted: "The @unitedairlanes staff at Gate C8 in @Dulles_Airport are a complete disrespect #news"
The account replied: "Count your blessings. At JFK they throw knives."
Still unaware she was messaging a parody account, Ms Payne responded: "@unitedairlanes is that supposed to be funny? @JetBlue for one takes tweets regarding their company serious. Might want to take some tips..."
But United Airlanes had the last laugh, saying: "@BruPayne @JetBlue No, it's a very serious warning. We accidentally hired bounty hunters to run that desk and now we can't stop them."
It is just one of many mix-ups which LeonsBuddyDave has created in recent months.
On his Tumblr page, he
admitted: "Found out last night that for months, angry customers have
been tweeting at my fake parody airline account, United Airlanes, to
b***h about their experiences with United Airlines.
"God has given me a great, beautiful funnel through which angry people flow in the worst possible mood."
While some of the unusual Twitter arguments leave passengers none-the-wiser about the account, United Airlanes does sometimes come clean about its identity.
The @unitedairlanes Twitter account was first set up more than a year ago but had been dormant until the person behind it discovered dozens of irate messages from United passengers who had mixed the account up with official @unitedairlines (now just @United) Twitter account.
A Tmblr user called LeonsBuddyDave is believed to be behind the spoof account and when he realised what was happening, began to have some fun by posting some unusual responses.
Twitter victim: United Airlines has had a spoof account set up with a very similar name
Spoof account: The United Airlanes Twitter feed has fooled many United Airlines customers
The account replied: "Count your blessings. At JFK they throw knives."
Still unaware she was messaging a parody account, Ms Payne responded: "@unitedairlanes is that supposed to be funny? @JetBlue for one takes tweets regarding their company serious. Might want to take some tips..."
But United Airlanes had the last laugh, saying: "@BruPayne @JetBlue No, it's a very serious warning. We accidentally hired bounty hunters to run that desk and now we can't stop them."
It is just one of many mix-ups which LeonsBuddyDave has created in recent months.
Quick wit: Some users realise the account is a parody sooner than others
"God has given me a great, beautiful funnel through which angry people flow in the worst possible mood."
While some of the unusual Twitter arguments leave passengers none-the-wiser about the account, United Airlanes does sometimes come clean about its identity.
Parody: The Twitter account has been active for a year
Absolutely amazing! How did they build and carve on a mountain face ?
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Absolutely amazing! How did they build and carve on a mountain face ? Maytszishan Caves — China
Buddhist complex Maytszishan little known. It is located in Gansu Province in northwest China. This is a striking architectural complex, carved out of the rock. Maytszishan has 7,000 Buddhist sculptures and nearly 1,000 square meters of murals. 11 more images ...
Maytszishan is just a few miles south of the Great Silk Road. Many of the monks chose to stay in these caves and work there.
One of the earliest written records about this are found in the biographies of the two monks Tanhonga and Huanggang, who meditated there with his disciples.
Huge Buddha is almost parallel to the side of the mountain - the highest is more than 16 meters in height. Stairs that lead up and around the caves were originally made of wood, but after been fitted with metal supports, for security purposes. __._,_.___ .  __,_._,___ | |||||
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Tempted to climb on board? Top tips to help decide if cruising really is for you
There are so many different ocean cruises these days, the choice can seem quite daunting. And if you’ve never been on one before, you need to do your homework to avoid making an expensive mistake.
On the upside, there has never been such a variety of ships, cruise styles and itineraries, meaning there is a cruise for everyone. What is more, cruise holidays can be excellent value for money when you consider meals and lots of entertainments are included in the price. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Setting sail for fun: The Carnival Sunshine includes a water park
Try before you buy
Before you book that world cruise you’ve been dreaming of, dip a toe in the water with a ‘taster’ cruise. American line Royal Caribbean (0844 493 2061, www.royalcaribbean.co.uk) offers lively two- and three-night cruises from Southampton. On October 26, Independence of the Seas sails to Zeebrugge, the port for Bruges in Belgium, and then to Le Havre – handy for an excursion to Paris. Or stay on board enjoying the many bars and spa, or get active on the rockclimbing wall, ice-rink, zipline and Flowrider surfing pool. The three-night cruise costs from £399pp.Find family fun
If your family loves the idea of an action-packed voyage, the revamped Carnival Sunshine will be sailing across the Mediterranean this summer. The ship has a water park boasting slides and a 300-gallon bucket to drench riders, a ropes course and zipwire, and Hasbro, The Games Show, a giant interactive team game played in front of a live audience. A 12-night cruise from Venice to Barcelona, departing July 28, costs from £1,189pp including flights. To book, visit www.carnival.co.uk.
Special nights: A cruise is a great excuse to dress up for a formal night
Exercise in restraint
Going on a cruise doesn’t have to mean eating around the clock and piling on the pounds. This year Celebrity Cruises (0845 456 0523, www.celebritycruises. co.uk) is offering free Zumba classes, including Aqua Zumba in the pool and ZumbaGold for older passengers. A ten-night cruise of the eastern Med aboard Celebrity Reflection departs Rome on August 30 and calls at the Greek islands of Rhodes, Santorini and Mykonos. It costs from £1,338pp for a balcony cabin including return flights to Rome.Plenty of ports
Cruises are often the perfect way to see lots of different places in one holiday. Crown Princess (www.princess.com) sails from Southampton on September 30 for a two-week trip around the Med, meaning you could be strolling around Barcelona one day and having a flutter at a casino in Monte Carlo the next, before exploring Rome’s treasures and then heading to Ajaccio, Napoleon’s birthplace in Corsica. The break costs from £999pp.
Laid back: Relaxing on a Celebrity cruise - perhaps after an exercise class
An end to the cruise crimewave? Operators to release data on onboard incidents
From mysterious disappearances to rape allegations and even murder, cruise ships are no stranger to crime.
But until recently, operators have been reluctant to reveal details of incidents for fear that the revelations will damage their standing among travellers.
Now three of the largest US-based cruise lines have come clean on crime at sea and released data that reveal the extent and nature of onboard incidents in full.
While crime levels at sea
remain low, the data released by Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian
Cruise Line show that more onboard incidents have happened than
previously believed.
Although the US Coastguard, to whom serious crimes at sea are reported, has logged just 31 allegations since January 2011, figures released by Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line reveal a total of 114 alleged incidents since October 2010.
Most of the complaints focused on allegations of rape and sexual assault, followed by thefts.
"We are doing this voluntarily to remove all doubt about the relatively low level of crime on cruise ships, especially when compared with comparable land-based crimes," Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell told CBS News.
"The majority of these are never substantiated as actual crimes after the initial investigation."
Crimes at sea are unusual, although there have been a spate of disappearances in recent years. Among them was John Halford, 63, who vanished during a Red Sea cruise in 2011 and Rebecca Coriam, 24, who went missing during a cruise from Mexico to Los Angeles the same year.
But until recently, operators have been reluctant to reveal details of incidents for fear that the revelations will damage their standing among travellers.
Now three of the largest US-based cruise lines have come clean on crime at sea and released data that reveal the extent and nature of onboard incidents in full.
Coming clean: Royal Caribbean is one of the three cruise lines to have released data on incidents onboard
Although the US Coastguard, to whom serious crimes at sea are reported, has logged just 31 allegations since January 2011, figures released by Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line reveal a total of 114 alleged incidents since October 2010.
Most of the complaints focused on allegations of rape and sexual assault, followed by thefts.
"We are doing this voluntarily to remove all doubt about the relatively low level of crime on cruise ships, especially when compared with comparable land-based crimes," Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell told CBS News.
"The majority of these are never substantiated as actual crimes after the initial investigation."
Crimes at sea are unusual, although there have been a spate of disappearances in recent years. Among them was John Halford, 63, who vanished during a Red Sea cruise in 2011 and Rebecca Coriam, 24, who went missing during a cruise from Mexico to Los Angeles the same year.
Tragic: Rebecca Coriam was 24 when she disappeared while holidaying on a Disney cruise ship in March 2011
Full disclosure: Carnival will reveal details of incidents in the hope that it will erase doubts about crime at sea
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