The Tibet Fund, which raises money to support Tibet's art, culture, and humanitarian programs, has launched a new website at www.TibetFund.org. It's worth a visit. There are links that let you explore ways to help Tibetans by donating, as well as informative and educational links. Don't miss the link to the story of the accomplishments of Tibet's people during the fifty years of exile -- it's an excellent chronicle. If you  are looking for ways to become involved in the Tibetan cause, this website will help you choose a path. 

An intriguing article in the Far East Economic Review by Professor David Lynch suggests China's economy may not be growing at the 9% rate its official statistics proclaim. You can read the article here: http://www.feer.com/economics/2009/september53/The-Next-Chinese-Revolution
Lynch contends that China's statistics don't add up. For instance, energy use has only gone up 1-2% during the same period with GDP growth is supposedly running at 7-9% annually. That is a reversal of past Chinese growth patterns, when energy consumption and GDP have grown in tandem. Then there is the disconnect between prices and reputed growth. Prices are declining, when the strong pace of growth suggests they should be holding steady or rising. Lynch concludes that China's growth is spread very unevenly, with the elite benefitting from the government's $580 billion in stimulus spending and record bank loans, but the middle class and poor aren't benefitting. So as they cut back their spending, prices drop. The lack of even growth is also why energy consumption is down so much. The upshot, Lynch argues, is that unlike the picture portrayed by the official statistics, (and gullible international media) China is not in fact weathering the recession well. Instead, its statisticians are cooking the books. This like Enron, using accounting tricks to paper over losses. But as time passes, China can't disguise its problems with accounting games. The International Monetary Fund reported this week that international trade has dropped 11.9% this year, a record drop not seen since the Great Depression. The global trading system that China manipulated to its advantage between 2001 and 2007 isn't coming back -- and that spells bad news for export-dependent China. But it could be good news for freedom in China, it the resulting unrest breaks its stranglehold on the Chinese people.     

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a columnist for the New York Times. In today's newspaper, Krugman calls for change in China's currency manipulation. China, Krugman says, "is hurting growth almost everywhere." As the Obama Administration searches for ways to increase jobs in our economy, they should heed Krugman's call for pressure on China to change its currency policy. Krugman openly says he thinks not only that China's policies caused the global economic crisis, but that China's policies now are taking jobs away from other countries, and that includes the U.S. This is quite a tough column from Krugman, who normally is an unabashed advocate of free trade and globalism. I think it represents something that is inevitable -- as economists watch world leaders try all the usual formulas to recover from the crisis, they come to the inevitable conclusion that global free trade is unsustainable so long as China keeps manipulating the system. Federal  Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech on Monday at the San Francisco "Conference on Asia and the Global Financial Crisis" set the tone and acted as a catalyst for Krugman's New York Times piece today. You can be certain that their views are echoing inside the White House as President Obama struggles with a 9.8% unemployment rate, 15 million out of work, and a stimulus program that White House economist Cristina Romer says won't create many more jobs this year. The problem is China, and policymakers are beginning to realize it. You can read Krugman's column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1&hp and Chairman Bernanke's speech is available at www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20091019a.htm.
Read them -- and write back to us here and let us know what you think. If we can persuade our political leaders to stop allowing China to destroy the global economy, the pressure on the Beijing regime will be enormous. The global economic crisis creates the conditions for undermining China's ruling party, fostering democracy in China, and creating the conditions for Tibet to achieve autonomy. Finally, our authorities and the mainstream media seem to be waking up.
 

There's an excellent article in RealClearPolitics today by Robert Borosage, head of the Institute for America's Future. The title is "Where will the Jobs Come From?." Borosage makes the case that unfair trade with China has done deep damage to the American middle class, and he calls for a tough response. You can read it here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/21/where_will_the_jobs_come_from_98811.html

This was heartening in a week in which the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany degenerated into such a farce. The name of the game in Frankfurt was appeasing China, which demanded that no dissident writers be allowed to participate in public forums at the annual event. There was a good piece in this week's New York Review of Books featuring Chinese dissident authors urging greater freedom in China, and pointedly describing the lack of intellectual freedom in China's publishing industry today. Yet the Germans who organized the Frankfurt Book Fair felt compelled to acquiesce to the demands of Chinese state publishing and foreign ministry officials. Why? Whatever happened to intellectual freedom in Germany?