Infographic: China versus US on Meeting Students’ Technology Needs
Very interesting infographic by www.braintrack.com featured in Tech in Asia: 
Chinese ‘Anchor Babies’ Landing in Canada
Even though it is legal, it is a very unsavory phenomenon with the potential of disrupting Canadian pregnancy care services. It is also happening in the US where the business is apparently thriving. In Hong Kong, companies catering to mainland parents bearing ‘anchor babies’ have taken advantage of policy loopholes that has generated much resentment among locals. ‘Birth tourism’ may change Canadian immigration rules, reported the CBC.
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A number of Chinese tourists are giving birth in Canada as a way to circumvent their country’s strict one-child policy and to get their child a coveted Canadian passport.
There are even companies in some Canadian cities that specialize in bringing over pregnant women from China.
Although the practice may seem deceptive, one lawyer says it is perfectly legal.
– CBC
China’s Urbanization at 52.6%
China’s urban population accounted for 52.57 per cent of the total population in 2012, up 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier, latest figures showed today.
Over 52.57 per cent of the 1.354 billion people live in urban areas, according to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
Last year, China’s population increased by 6.69 million more compared to 2011, according to the data.
Chinese leaders have been pushing for rapid urbanisation as they believe it is a better way to provide basic amenities and employment to people.
China’s urban population is expected to reach 70 per cent of the total population by 2030 and the country needs to handle its fast urbanisation in the right manner, as it could create difficulties, especially environmental problems, World Bank said last year.
“Each additional percentage-point increase in urbanisation means over 10 million more rural residents becoming city-dwellers”, Zheng Xinli, Vice-Chairman, China Centre for International Economic Exchange said.
Each city-dweller will spur at least 100,000 yuan ($15,873) in investment in infrastructure, he said.
According to leading international consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, China is expected to have 221 megacities – 10 out of which would have a population of more than 10 million each – and an urban population of about one billion by 2025.
China Invests Heavily in Human Capital
This NYT article is spot on. China’s heavy investment in university research and teaching and greatly expanding the undergraduate base is fundamentally changing global competition in traditional and high-tech sectors. The author likens it to the US GI bill but China’s current drive is on a scale unprecedented in world history.
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China is making a $250 billion-a-year investment in what economists call human capital. Just as the United States helped build a white-collar middle class in the late 1940s and early 1950s by using the G.I. Bill to help educate millions of World War II veterans, the Chinese government is using large subsidies to educate tens of millions of young people as they move from farms to cities.
The aim is to change the current system, in which a tiny, highly educated elite oversees vast armies of semi-trained factory workers and rural laborers. China wants to move up the development curve by fostering a much more broadly educated public, one that more closely resembles the multifaceted labor forces of the United States and Europe.
It is too early to know how well the effort will pay off.
While potentially enhancing China’s future as a global industrial power, an increasingly educated population poses daunting challenges for its leaders. With the Chinese economy downshifting in the past year to a slower growth rate, the country faces a glut of college graduates with high expectations and limited opportunities.
Much depends on whether China’s authoritarian political system can create an educational system that encourages the world-class creativity and innovation that modern economies require, and that can help generate enough quality jobs.
China also faces formidable difficulties in dealing with widespread corruption, a sclerotic political system, severe environmental damage, inefficient state-owned monopolies and other problems. But if these issues can be surmounted, a better educated labor force could help China become an ever more formidable rival to the West.
“It will move China forward in its economy, in scientific innovation and politically, but the new rising middle class will also put a lot of pressure on the government to change,” said Wang Huiyao, the director general of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based research group.
To the extent that China succeeds, its educational leap forward could have profound implications in a globalized economy in which a growing share of goods and services is traded across international borders. Increasingly, college graduates all over the world compete for similar work, and the boom in higher education in China is starting to put pressure on employment opportunities for college graduates elsewhere — including in the United States.
China’s current five-year plan, through 2015, focuses on seven national development priorities, many of them new industries that are in fashion among young college graduates in the West. They are alternative energy, energy efficiency, environmental protection, biotechnology, advanced information technologies, high-end equipment manufacturing and so-called new energy vehicles, like hybrid and all-electric cars.
China’s goal is to invest up to 10 trillion renminbi, or $1.6 trillion, to expand those industries to represent 8 percent of economic output by 2015, up from 3 percent in 2010. At the same time, many big universities are focusing on existing technologies in industries where China poses a growing challenge to the West.
– NYT on Yahoo Finance
For the entire article, visit: http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/next-made-china-boom-college-030958274.html
Official: China’s Wealth Gap “Relatively Large”
China’s statistics chief, admitting the country’s wealth gap is “relatively large”, released a recalculated indicator of economic inequality on Friday in the first time in several years that officialdom has addressed the sensitive issue head-on.
The Gini coefficient, a measure of income disparity widely used by economists, peaked in 2008 and has been narrowing since then, Ma Jiantang, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told reporters at a press conference on 2012 economic performance.
China’s Gini coefficient stood at 0.474 in 2012, down from 0.477 in 2011 and from a peak of 0.491 in 2008, Ma said.
“A Gini coefficient between 0.47-0.49 shows that the gap of income distribution is relatively large,” he explained.
China had not provided an official Gini coefficient since 2005, claiming that it was too difficult to calculate given rampant under-reporting of incomes, particularly by the wealthy.
The index ranges from 0 to 1, with the 0.4 mark viewed by analysts as the point at which social dissatisfaction may come to a head.
Ma said the World Bank put China’s Gini coefficient at 0.474 in 2008. The World Bank’s last published figure – 0.425 – was for 2005.
– Reuters