Low water supply portends a global rise in grain costs

In China, a trickle down effect?
By David Lague
International Herald Tribune

Lu Zhenlu knew there was nowhere to go but down when the muddy stream that sustained this village in Hebei Province began to fill with silt in the mid-1970s and finally dried up.

First Lu and his neighbors dug shallow wells in their fields to find water for their homes and crops, but after a decade or so, these too were exhausted.

Then, like millions of other farmers on the vast North China Plain, they drilled into the deep aquifer that lies beneath the country's most important grain-growing region.

"Everybody in the village had the same problem," he said. "That's when we started to pump water."

The natural reservoir here is vital for farmers on the arid plain of 320,000 square kilometers, or about 123,500 square miles, which supplies more than half of China's wheat and one third of its corn. But after decades of overpumping, the underground water supply is heavily depleted and there are fears that grain output will suffer.

A sustained drop in grain production on the North China Plain would not only be a major blow to China's goal of remaining self-sufficient in producing food. It also could shake global markets.

Some experts said they believed that smaller harvests would force China to become a major grain importer in the decades ahead. Just as China's sudden emergence as a leading oil importer has sent crude prices soaring, demand for grain from the world's most populous country could lead to spiraling food costs around the world.

"The trend is already there," said Ricardo Leiman, chief operating officer of Noble Group, a Hong Kong- based commodity supply company. "I think over time China will be a considerable importer of agricultural commodities. It is already a big importer of soybeans, and I believe it will also import corn."

Studies show the water table is plunging across the North China Plain, a region that includes the key agricultural provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu.

"My guess is that all this will become unsustainable," said Stephen Beare, chief economist in Canberra at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and an authority on water resources in northern China. "In some areas this is an extreme problem, although that is not true everywhere."

Other Chinese and foreign specialists remain confident that a combination of conservation, improved farming and government policy could still head off a crisis in a region long regarded as the heartland of Chinese civilization. But even the most optimistic agree time is running out.

"We should concentrate on this at once," said Wang Jinxia, a water expert at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy in Beijing. "I think China can resolve this, but we can't wait until the problem becomes very serious."

China is easily the world's biggest producer and consumer of grain and its market's sheer size gives it the potential to influence the global food trade.

Total grain output in 2006 is expected to exceed 490 million metric tons, according to a forecast this month by the State Grain and Edible Oil Information Center.

Total grain output in the United States in 2006 is expected to reach 363 million metric tons, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts.

Even a relatively small, sustained drop in the Chinese harvest could have a major impact on prices. One indication of the sensitivity of global markets is that the price of wheat has spiked 50 percent this year to reach a 10- year high, largely on forecasts that drought will cause Australia's harvest to fall by about 15.5 million metric tons.

Despite the rapid drop in groundwater levels under the North China Plain, there are no immediate fears that the aquifer will be pumped dry. An enormous body of water has accumulated in the deep, porous sediment laid down by the Yellow River as it changed course over millions of years.

"It is not as if it is going to run out of water," said David Molden, a water resources expert at the International Water Management Institute in Battaramulla, Sri Lanka. "It is a question of bringing it economically to the surface."

Most analysts said it was difficult to predict when irrigation from ever deeper wells will become too costly. Energy prices and the government's willingness to subsidize pumping will have an important effect. Some researchers have estimated that extracting groundwater could become too expensive by 2030, or even earlier.

In a bid to avoid serious water shortages in a region that is home to 200 million people, China has begun a $60 billion project to divert water from the Yangtze River in the south, along three channels, to the North China Plain.

It is scheduled to be completed by 2050, although water should first reach the area by 2010. But agricultural experts believe that most of that water will be earmarked for major urban centers, including Beijing and the nearby port city of Tianjin.

Some Chinese researchers are pinning their hopes on improved technology and plant breeding to produce more grain with less water. Others have suggested that, to encourage conservation, users should be charged market rates for the water they pump, but there are fears this could harm many farmers.

In the end, China may have no choice but to scale back its crops and look to world markets, conserving water for household use and industry. Agriculture accounts for between 65 percent and 77 percent of water consumption in China, according to some estimates - a heavy burden for a country in which per capita water resources are less than one third of the global average.

There have been warnings for more than a decade that the world could face a grain crunch if yields from the North China Plain began to drop. Lester Brown, an American economist and head of the Earth Policy Institute based in Washington, was one of the first to sound the alarm with his 1995 book, "Who Will Feed China? Wake-up Call for a Small Planet."

Fears heightened after Chinese grain output peaked in 1998 and began to decline, forcing the authorities to import wheat in small amounts. Harvests are increasing again after the authorities, anxious to avoid further imports, increased incentives for farmers to plant grain.

For northern China, harvesting more frequently is a departure from a centuries-old pattern of farming. Traditionally, farmers on the North China Plain grew a single summer crop, usually corn, each year with an occasional crop of winter wheat in seasons with good rainfall. When plentiful underground water became available in the early 1960s they could sow winter wheat every year, substantially increasing output and farm incomes.

Now, in late autumn, winter wheat is germinating across the region in brilliant green strips between dry stands of corn stalks. In the villages, every available flat surface is stacked with bright yellow corn cobs drying in the sun.

China pays for these scenes of plenty with deeper wells, particularly in regions where almost all surface water has been diverted to cities and towns. Water uptake has been so dramatic in some places across the plain that the ground is collapsing underfoot.

The city of Cangzhou, just south of Lujiaqiao, is in one of the worst affected areas. Experts quoted in the official media calculated that, at the current water extraction rate, by 2010 the ground level of the city of one million will have fallen 3.7 meters, or 12 feet.

So far, there is no clear evidence that water shortages have begun to seriously limit yields, and some analysts note that irrigated land area has increased. But there is widespread agreement that the authorities cannot allow this to continue.

Said Molden: "They are on to the problem, they know about it and the capability is there to handle it, but something has got to change, something has got to give."

The Development of Environmental NGOs in China: A Road to Civil Society?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL NGOS IN CHINA: A ROAD TO CIVIL SOCIETY?

By Namju Lee

There has been an upsurge of environmental movements in China over the past several years. During the spring of 2005, environmentalists staged a series of protests that eventually halted a construction project in Yuanmingyuan. Just one year earlier, Green Peace China prevented the Asian Pulp & Paper Company from illegally deforesting the Yunnan Province. Yet perhaps the most notable of these demonstrations were those undertaken to protect the Nu River from the construction of mega dams, which activists claimed would threaten the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site in Yunnan Province. The State Development and Reform Commission had approved of the dam construction plans prepared by the Huadian Corporation and the local government in August 2003, in spite of the fact that just one month before, the area had been designated a World Natural Heritage Site. Under pressure from Chinese environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the international community, however, Premier Wen Jiabao suspended the original project in February 2004 with the instructions to “Study Carefully, Decide Scientifically.”

These movements distinguish themselves from other patterns of resistance in contemporary China in two ways. Unlike the “unauthorized” protests that have often been brutally suppressed by the government, many of these efforts have been relatively successful in influencing government policies. More importantly, the NGOs, which emerged after the mid-1990s, have played a pivotal role in leading and organizing these environmental movements. As a result, 2004 has been dubbed by the media as “Year One of the NGO Era” (NGO Yuannian). According to the Development Situation Report on China’s Civil Environmental Organizations (zhongguo huanbao minjia zuzhi fazhan zhuangkuang) released by the Government Organized Non-Governmental Organization (GONGO) All China Environmental Federation (zhonghua huanbao lianhehui) in April 2006, the total number of “Civil Environmental Organizations” amounted to 2,768. Of these organizations, government-initiated groups and student clubs accounted for 49.9% and 40.3%, respectively, while civil-initiated organizations and international NGOs, which are eligible to be categorized as NGOs, accounted for 7.2% and 2.6% [1]. Although civil-initiated organizations and international NGOs remain in the minority, they are nevertheless significant given that there were only a handful of NGOs just a decade before.

The Development of NGOs

The tremendous growth in the number of NGOs can be accounted for primarily by the need to facilitate the interactions between the state and society. Up until recently, the state-centered approach (e.g. state corporatism), which placed a priority on the state’s ability to maintain control over society, possessed the upper hand in the ongoing debates regarding the relationship between state and society in China. Yet, beginning in the late 1990s, the society-centered approach gained currency, as it became clear that a number of the social problems and conflicts were often beyond the grasp of the state. Last year, for instance, Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang noted that the number of “mass incidents”—including protests, riots and mass petitions—had risen by 28% in 2004 to 74,000; only 10,000 such cases had been reported a decade before (South China Morning Post, February 8).

In light of the growing domestic turbulence, the state has begun to acknowledge its need to collaborate with “healthy” social forces to maintain stability. For example, “The Guideline for the Development of Charities (2006-2010)” emphasizes the potential for charitable civil organizations to plug gaps in the development of a state social welfare system (China Development Brief, December 2005/January 2006). Nevertheless, the state remains caught between contradictory views. On the one hand, there is the view that fostering a charitable sector within society could reduce the government’s burden. Yet, there is also a fear that the growth of independent environmental groups promoting an agenda separate from that of the government could eventually erode the political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and therefore should be suppressed.

While the development of NGOs in China has certainly been facilitated by the shift in the state’s attitude toward social organizations, much of the progress has largely been the result of the activists’ strategic decision to use NGOs as an instrument in promoting social and political progress while avoiding direct challenges to the state. Some NGO activists see the activities of NGOs as a platform for political and social progress. One NGO activist whom this author interviewed in 2003 pointed out the impact that the 1995 Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing had on the development of NGOs in China. Beijing had applied for this conference primarily to increase its influence in the international arena. Yet, during the conference, the criticism that the international NGOs lodged against the Chinese government’s policies, such as its coercive birth control program, drew far more attention than any of the conference’s other events. Many of the Chinese participants discovered the potential of using NGOs to develop and strengthen civil society, while avoiding an outright challenge to the government. It is, therefore, no accident that a number of the important NGOs emerged and developed after the 1995 UN Conference, such as Friends of Nature (1995), Green Village in Beijing (1996) and Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims (1998).

A number of changes in China’s environmental policy have particularly accelerated the development of environmental NGOs. Since 2003, new policies highlighting the necessity to harmonize economic development with the protection of the environment have been adopted by Wen and President Hu Jintao, such as “scientific development” and a “harmonious society,” which in turn have strengthened the legitimacy of the environmental movement. The State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) has also been a supporter of the environmental movement, and its vice director, Fanyue, was quoted more than once declaring that the SEPA and NGOs are natural friends. Moreover, a number of significant environmental laws have been enacted in recent years. For instance, the September 1, 2003 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law requires that comprehensive environmental reviews be undertaken during the planning stages of major public and private development projects. The Provisional Rule for Public Participation in Environmental Impact Assessment, enacted on March 17 requires the government to provide the public with open information and to hold public hearings over issues that may affect the people. Against this backdrop, the amount of collaboration between the government and NGOs has increased, particularly on the subject of environmental issues. The government-NGO cooperation peaked when 56 environmental NGOs published a letter supporting SEPA’s decision to suspend 30 construction projects on the charges of violating the EIA law in January 2005.

Promoting Civil Rights through the Environmental Movement

It is interesting to note that rather than dealing solely with ecological issues, the environmental movement in China has increasingly incorporated the issue of civil rights into its arguments. The aforementioned case of the Nu River movement demonstrates this point clearly. In the beginning, the opposition to the dam project was largely based on the necessity to conserve the natural environment around the Nu River and the fact that it was a part of the Three Parallel Rivers World Heritage Site. As debates proceeded, however, environmentalists realized that the rationale of natural conservation alone could not prevail against the argument of economic development, which implied improved conditions for the poor peasants residing near the Nu River. Those supporting the construction of the dam accused the environmentalists of ignoring the people’s needs for economic development and of focusing exclusively on nature.

The stalemate was broken when the environmentalists introduced the concerns of the local people. Citing examples of previous dam projects, the environmentalists argued that the construction of the dam would actually exacerbate the condition of the local residents. Professor Zhou Tianyong at the Central Party School, for instance, discovered that residents in China’s western Qinghai province had an average net income of 1,772 yuan (US$220) per head in 2004—about half the national average—despite the 50 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) project to build 13 hydropower dams along the Yellow River. In addition, he found that the loss of land and roads from the dams left many even poorer after the construction was completed (Jingjicankaobao, February 15).

In April 2004, Yu Xiaogang, a founder of the NGO Green Watershed in Yunnan Province, took peasants to the site of Manwan Dam where most of the rural residents were barely managing to make ends meet since the construction of the dam in 1993. The peasants were shocked by how the government had made promises, yet had not followed through (The New York Times, December 27, 2005). In October 2004, Yu led a small group of peasants to a Beijing hydropower conference jointly sponsored by the UN and China's National Development and Reform Commission. They held a press conference to claim their rights to information, participation and decision-making. Along with a riot in Hanyuan, Sichuan Province in October 2004 caused by the Baopu dam project, the environmentalists’ activities led the government to increase the amount of compensation provided in cases of expropriation. Environmental activists have also staunchly supported the right of the public to participate in governmental affairs. In the 2005 Yuanmingyuan case (see above), demand for “public participation in decision-making” became very salient and even forced a public hearing to be held in April 2005. On August 25, 2005, an open letter signed by 66 NGOs and 99 individuals was sent to the government, demanding that the environmental assessment report on Nu River dams be made public according to related laws.

The Future of NGOs in China

The prospects of the environmental movement and civil and political progress are not always promising in China, as many NGOs must selectively choose their battles in order to prevent themselves from being shut down. For instance, China’s environmental NGOs were not willing to involve themselves in the Songhua river debacle in November 2005. According to an editorial published in the China Development Brief, the primary reason for their refrain was their fear of a governmental backlash, similar to Beijing’s heightened scrutiny of NGOs in 2005 following the “color revolutions” in Central Asia and Eastern Europe (China Development Brief, March 2006). The Songhua incident reveals the true limits of autonomy for the “Green NGOs”.

In spite of these challenges, there are a number of promising signs for the development of NGOs and civil society. NGOs have demonstrated a willingness to oppose the local and even provincial governments, exploiting differences between state apparatuses. Moreover, NGOs have developed autonomous networks throughout China and continue to organize coordinated activities such as joint signature gatherings. Although these may not be purely collective actions, they would have been unthinkable only a few years before. These autonomous NGO networks have also increased the profile of other civil rights issues. NGOs, though nascent, are already having an impact on the Chinese society and are only likely to increase the dialogue and action on political, civil and environmental problems.

Notes

1. The Development Situation Report on China’s Civil Environmental Organization is available online at: http://www.acef.com.cn/ngo.asp?productSort=490.

Motoring madness puts spoke in China's wheel

Old news but it rings true:

Fintan O'Toole
Letter from Beijing: For the benefit of intending travellers, here are some Chinese rules of the road:

1. Driving is like making cloth or baskets - the skill is in the weaving. If there is more room on the far side of a three-lane highway, your duty is to get into it as fast as possible. Lanes are for bowling alleys.

2. Sound waves are a powerful form of energy. If you blow your horn loudly and continuously, obstacles in your way will disappear, clearing the road ahead.

3. Seatbelts restrict the flow of blood to the brain and may be dangerous. Drivers may buckle up if they are approaching a police checkpoint, but the belt should be removed as soon as the checkpoint is passed. Passengers should on no account wear seatbelts, as attempts to find the buckles which have been carefully stored under the seat covers may distract the driver from an important mobile phone conversation.

4. When approaching a junction with a major road, enter the flow of traffic immediately and decisively. The drivers on the main road will be well aware of your presence, even at night, and stopping to wait for a gap may be interpreted as an insult to their sixth sense.

5. Remember that Kung Fu movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are entirely realistic. Chinese people can sense at all times what is happening behind them, even without looking. They also have lightening-fast reflexes, so any momentary danger will inevitably be averted.

6. Overtaking is a spiritual quest, a homage to the gods of time, who do not like to see their precious gift wasted. The less time wasted and the more dangerous the manoeuvre (for example, overtaking on a hairpin bend on a mountain road with a ravine 5,000ft below) the greater the devotion demonstrated. You will get your reward in the next life, a destination which you may also reach sooner than everyone else.

7. Even the narrowest road has two sides - it is wasteful not to use both.

8. If you find yourself facing a head-on collision with another vehicle, it is vital to assume that the other driver will blink first and take the necessary evasive action. If everyone abides by this principle, then there can be no confusion. All drivers will understand their proper responses in this situation and there can be no danger of an accident.

I offer these rules as a cut-out-and-keep guide for anyone intending to travel to China, because, oddly, they are not published by the road safety authorities and can be learned only by observation. This might suggest that they are not rules at all, but they are universally observed in every part of China I've been to so far, and are presumably so well understood that they do not need to be made explicit.

So deeply entrenched are these rules, indeed, that they turn on their heads western perceptions of what is and is not good driving. In the West, for example, someone who swings out into the middle of the road while approaching a blind blend is a maniac who has no right to be on the road. In China, such a person is genuinely a good driver. If you assume that when you turn the corner, there may be cars bearing down on you (because they are overtaking on the other side of the bend), then it makes perfect sense to stay in the middle so that you have room, if necessary, to swerve to either side.

This kind of skill may explain one of two astonishing aspects of Chinese driving: the relatively low rate of accidents. It is not that the carnage on the roads in China is not appalling, even by Irish standards. It is. In China, injuries from road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people aged between 15 and 45. Every day, about 600 people are killed and 45,000 injured on the roads. But if you travel in buses and taxis for a while, these figures come to seem remarkably low.

I can hardly believe that I've seen only one bad crash in the last two months. (Though having my eyes closed most of the time may have had something to do with it.) The other amazing thing is the relative absence of road rage. In most other societies, driving would come to a halt because the roads would be filled with the bodies of drivers who had shot each other, or with the burnt-out wrecks of vehicles whose owners had spontaneously combusted. But I've only seen one episode of serious cursing, when a parked car suddenly and without any signal pulled out right in front of a taxi I was in, missing it by a centimetre. The taxi driver turned the air blue and the guilty party gave a sheepish smile and an apologetic wave, as if he had accidentally brushed up against an old lady's elbow.

When only the most egregious offences raise any objections, it seems clear that all the other offences are regarded as normality.

This all means that there's no point in asking Chinese people to explain the awful driving, since they don't regard it as awful at all. On long drives, when I've got tired of taking the holy name in vain, I try to calm myself by thinking up explanations. The most obvious is that mass driving is a new thing here and that China has gone from the ubiquitous bicycle to 130 million motor vehicles in the blink of an eye. But such an explanation would equally apply if Chinese drivers were slow and cautious.

I do think bicycles have something to do with it, though. Most drivers learned their road sense in the bicycle era, when weaving around obstacles made sense and the risks from a crash were small. Another, related, reason may be that the car is still a symbol of personal freedom, an escape from a communal rule-bound world into a private space where you can follow your own instincts. Or maybe it's just the peculiarly Chinese combination of fatalism ("If I'm going to die, there's nothing I can do about it") and optimism ("Sure haven't I survived worse?") that comes from a hard history.

China admits taking executed prisoners' organs

Demand is high, and supply is low -- except on death row; the nation leads worldwide in capital punishment.
By Mark Magnier and Alan Zarembo, Times Staff Writers
November 18, 2006

BEIJING — After years of denial, China has acknowledged that most of the human organs used in transplants here are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay hefty sums to avoid a long wait.

Speaking at a conference of surgeons in the southern city of Guangzhou, Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu called for a strict code of conduct and better record-keeping to stem China's thriving illegal organ trade, state media reported.

"Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners," Huang said Tuesday, according to a report Thursday in the English-language China Daily newspaper.

"The current big shortfall of organ donations can't meet demand," Huang said.

The acknowledgment of what had been an open secret online, in local magazines and among people awaiting transplants came about two weeks after China announced it would tighten oversight of capital cases, requiring that death sentences be approved by the country's highest court. Legal experts estimate that will reduce executions by a third.

Though China doesn't disclose the number of annual executions, Amnesty International says at least 1,770 people were put to death in 2005, based on a review of Chinese media reports. Some activists say the annual figure could be as high as 10,000.

The lower estimate represents more than 80% of at least 2,148 that Amnesty International says took place worldwide last year. The United States executed 60 prisoners.

In July, China ruled that all sales of organs were illegal. But enforcing its decrees can be a problem, especially when substantial profits are involved.

In September 2004, local media reported that well-known comedian Fu Biao spent more than $36,000 for a liver from an executed prisoner in Shandong province. And starting in June 2005, reports surfaced on the Internet of retinas and kidneys taken from executed gang members without their consent in Henan province near Beijing.

Americans are among the foreigners who have headed to China for transplants as the waiting time for kidneys and livers has grown in the United States. U.S. transplant doctors say the majority seem to be patients of Chinese ancestry who feel comfortable navigating the medical system here.

One of them was Mabel Wu, 69, of Northridge, who received a kidney in July at the Hemodialysis and Organ Transplantation Center of the Taiping People's Hospital in Dongguan, a city in Guangdong province.

Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, Wu's kidney specialist at UCLA, did not endorse her decision.

"I have concerns and suspicions about who those donors are and what consent might have been involved," he said, adding that he also had concerns about the quality of medical care.

The family paid about $40,000 for the surgery. It was told only that the donor was a 30-year-old male.

Dr. Lily Wu, who is the patient's daughter and a UCLA cancer researcher, said the surgeon had told her he was concerned about the future organ supply because the government was becoming more restrictive about the death penalty.

As a result, she suspected the kidney came from a prisoner. "I didn't want to know," she said.

Her mother said four other patients had been at the hospital recovering from kidney transplants, all of them from Taiwan, when she was there.

She flew back to California 12 days after the surgery.

"I am very happy with this transplant," she said Friday. "I got a good kidney."

A Chinese transplant doctor, Dr. Zhonghua Chen, said at a conference in Boston in July that Chinese doctors had transplanted 8,102 kidneys, 3,741 livers and 80 hearts in 2005.

Some experts estimate that well over 90% of all organs transplanted in China come from executed prisoners, given the limited supply of organs from other sources. China has no system of voluntary donor cards. Furthermore, experts say, because China defines death as a cessation in heart activity rather than brain-stem activity, there's little opportunity to recover organs from other sources.

A doctor at Beijing's prestigious Tongren Hospital, who gave only his family name of Wang, said Friday that until recently the hospital's bathrooms, tunnels and a nearby footbridge had numerous advertisements about buying and selling organs. Shortly after the new rules were announced, the hospital cleaned them up, he said.

On Friday, restrooms at Tongren boasted a new coat of light blue paint and newly installed plastic surfaces that could be easily washed or scraped clean.

Despite Beijing's record of denying the use of prisoners' organs, some Chinese defend the practice.

"It is understandable that China relies on organs of executed prisoners, given that voluntary organ donation is not well established in China," said the doctor at Tongren.

A patient agreed.

"There simply aren't enough organs to go around," said a woman in her 50s who declined to be identified. "Saving someone's life using executed prisoner's organs is worth it. While it would be better not to, that's the reality in China."

Rules adopted in 1984 state that executed prisoners' organs can be used if the prisoner's relatives are unwilling to take the corpse or if the prisoner or his family agrees. But relatively little is known about how such organs are distributed, how organ decisions are made and which patients get preference.

Jurisdiction is a further complication. The ban on organ sales applies to hospitals answering to the Health Ministry. It is less clear whether hospitals run by the military or police — which presumably have the most access to organs given their prominent role in executions — will comply.

China in recent years has introduced mobile execution vans and lethal injection, supplanting the traditional method of a bullet to the back of the head. Beijing has touted these as more humane; critics say the changes facilitate rapid organ transfers.

Analysts said it wasn't exactly clear why China had become more willing to air its dirty laundry, but they noted that the increased openness of Chinese society was making denial of the practice more difficult.

"At some point, the skeleton in the cupboard can't be ignored anymore," said Robin Munro, a Hong Kong-based human rights activist and author of a report on the issue.

China has faced a growing call for change from many lawyers and academics. It also has been embarrassed by a chorus of overseas criticism, including a sustained campaign by Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China that Beijing condemns as an "evil cult."

In July, a report by Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas and former parliamentarian David Kilgour concluded that hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas had been taken from Falun Gong practitioners and sold for large sums. The movement claims its members are executed on trumped-up charges to supply the organ trade. Beijing has denied the accusations.

"Based on what we now know, we have come to the regrettable conclusion that the allegations are true," the report says.

China also acknowledged this week the widespread practice of transplanting organs to foreigners arriving on tourist visas, though the Communist Party's newspaper said Thursday that the nation forbade medical institutions "to lure foreign tourists" for the purpose. Many foreigners can afford to pay more and jump the long queue of those waiting for transplants.

Some 2 million Chinese need transplants each year, according to state media, but only 20,000 receive them.

Analysts said they hoped attention to a long-taboo subject would help spur reform.

"The reason we're seeing people sell organs illegally is because there's a lack of legal channels," said Zhu Gongwei, an attorney at the Beijing Zhongzhao law firm. "That's led to people cutting corners for quick profit…. We need enhanced oversight, special monitoring organizations and clear rules on what hospitals can perform these surgeries."

How Little Fatty made it big

The new cultural revolution: How Little Fatty made it big
An overweight teenage boy who found that his image had been superimposed onto movie stars and politicians by web users has become a cult figure in China. Clifford Coonan reports

Like a teenager anywhere in the world, Qian Zhijun was worried about his appearance, particularly his weight. So when, at the highly sensitive age of 16 years old, his portly features were posted online, he was terribly upset.

But despite his hurt feelings, Qian has become a sensation in China. Described by the China Daily as "the face that launched 1,000 clicks", the 100kg petrol station attendant now wants to make it as a heavyweight entertainer and has hired a manager to help him realise this dream.

Dubbed "Xiao Pang" or "Little Fatty", his pudgy face is everywhere as witty webizens superimpose his large head onto a host of stars. You can see his melon-sized head on the shoulders of Austin Powers, or as Jackie Chan, Marilyn Monroe - even the Mona Lisa. His personal favourite is his face on the body of Russell Crowe as the Roman general Maximus in Gladiator.

One hilarious image has him sitting beside President George W Bush, holding up two fingers behind his head. Xiao Pang is also portrayed as one of the presidential conks on Mount Rushmore. Or as a Brokeback Mountain gay cowboy. Or an unlikely porky Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean.

So what does Qian's story tell us about modern China? Well, it reflects two of the most remarkable themes. It shows how growing affluence has translated into a serious increase in the number of obese people. And it demonstrates how the internet is providing a platform for creative expression that the traditional, strictly controlled media can't even begin to match.

The first, fateful photograph was taken on a spring day in 2003, as Qian was attending a road-safety class. No one knows who took the initial picture, but it was his chemistry teacher at school who first tipped him off that he was rapidly becoming an online superstar. He went into a cyber café and found an array of images of his face on the body of some of the world's best-known celebrities. Something about the Shanghai boy's face had captured the imagination of China's netizens, prompting an amazing outbreak of creativity as they got busy with the photographic editing software Adobe Photoshop and started putting his features on all kinds of images.

Now a legend on the streets of Jinshan, the Shanghai satellite town that is his home, Qian's initial reaction was not positive. "When I saw that I was very angry and upset," he recalls. But then he realised that fame, however it manifests itself, has an upside. People started to stop him on the street wherever he went to ask him if he was indeed the legendary Xiao Pang.

His fans follow his every move. In one interview, Qian revealed that his idol is the American comedian Jim Carrey. Within hours of the interview being published, cyberspace was filled with postings of Qian's face on the body of Carrey in movies like Bruce Almighty and Dumb and Dumber (or Fat and Fatter as the tag line read). "I don't mind it if it's well-meant. But I hate it when they place me on the shoulder of naked women or when the touch-up job is terrible," he said. He also dislikes the photographs of his face on a porn star's body.

Qian's mother said he should take legal action but the family's problem is they don't know who to sue. And with the kind of pragmatism that is characteristic of the New China, Qian has decided to try to turn his web notoriety into hard cash.

With hundreds of fan clubs dedicated to his face, all registering tens of millions of clicks, Qian has not made a single yuan from the exposure. "It would be nice to work as an entertainer, even though it'll mean I'll have to give up some of the pleasure of being a regular guy. I can't sing and dance very well, but maybe there will be something I can do in commercials or in cartoons," he said in a recent interview.

Web designer Gao Feng, himself once overweight, discovered Xiao Pang when the boy contacted him on the website Gao set up to help obese people. At first he thought Qian's email was just another hoax - he'd already been sent a number of emails by people claiming to be Xiao Pang. However, Gao soon confirmed the internet legend was indeed trying to get in touch with him.

"I didn't believe him at first as I'd had a few people claiming to be him and none had been real. But then he supplied me with photos of himself and so we met, and it was him," said Gao.

He has now taken Qian on as a client and is using his website www.xiaopang.cn to help promote him. Gao says he knows how Qian feels and claims this is why he decided to manage the teenager, now 19. "Maybe this will improve his chances for the future," he says.

Qian's story is a classic tale of changing China, where the media is still tightly controlled. The Communist Party does not tolerate satire and there are precious few outlets for the humourist via official channels because the government keeps a close eye on the internet for signs of subversion. But the Chinese net nannies are mostly focused on political content, and the methods for tracking suspicious content rarely pick up on the weirder websites, leaving room for oddball phenomena such as Little Fatty.

Computer software such as Photoshop and other sound and image editing software are widely available in China as pirate copies - the vast majority of software is illegal. This provides an outlet for the satirist and there are thousands of online wits doing their own websites which poke fun at or highlight the weird stories in contemporary China.

It will be interesting to see if Xiao Pang's website falls foul of new regulations. The government's top media monitor says it wants to censor "vulgar content" such as extramarital sex, violence and porn. And municipal authorities in the city of Chongqing have announced fines of up to 5,000 yuan against "online defamation", a vague term that many say is a smokescreen for asserting control over content circulated online, especially satire.

Chinese people tend to be slim, and obesity is a rare sight on the streets. But all this is changing as the country's economy grows year by year, translating into a taste for Western fast food and poor dietary habits. A leading nutritionist recently pointed out that, while 24 million people in China live in abject poverty and suffer malnutrition, 60 million Chinese are obese.

China's favourite dishes traditionally come in small portions. A balanced mixture of meat, vegetables and carbohydrates, Chinese cuisine is generally seen as a healthy diet which provides plenty of protein and roughage. But Western fast-food restaurants are having a major impact on people's waistlines.

The One-Child Policy which restricts the number of offspring born to a family, has created a generation of spoilt children who gorge themselves on hamburgers, fried chicken and chips - foods that were unknown to their parents' generation. Eating in Western fast-food restaurants, which are relatively expensive in China, is also a way of letting people know that you have money to spend.

Pan Beilei, deputy director of the State Food and Nutrition Consultant Committee, told the media recently: "An increasing number of Chinese are eating more fat and junk food but less grains and vegetables, leading to a high number of cases of high blood pressure and diabetes."

Figures show that around 160 million Chinese have high blood pressure and 20 million have diabetes and there are growing calls on the government to issue dietary guidance. Pan said he believed that narrowing the growing income gap between rich and poor will help improve the diet of citizens in poverty-stricken areas and make them more healthy.

Boys, more treasured than girls, are often those who suffer most from being overweight, as the older generation stuffs them with sweets, cake and meat in the hope that a fat boy will turn into a big man.

Fast-food chains are targeting Chinese schools as a growth market, offering to supply meals, and in many primary schools, where children standing in line are graded according to size with the smallest in front and the biggest at the back, the boys' lines invariably end with a handful of seriously overweight boys. Overweight girls are less common.

Meanwhile, for the first time, Chinese airlines are having to deal with bigger passengers. China Eastern Airlines said that this has not been a problem so far, because the company buys its aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, which both have seat sizes built for bigger Western passengers. But now it is considering reducing the number of seats on the new Airbus 321 by about 20 to create more room.

Which hopefully means that if Qian's newfound superstardom requires him to travel a lot, he should find it a bit more comfortable.

Chinese Migrant Children Face Educational Hurdles

STEVE INSKEEP, host: Every year in China about one percent of the population moves from the countryside to the cities in search of work. In China, one percent of the population is 13 million people. Two new cities the size of New York have to be provided for in China every year in effect. You can sense the strain in this report from NPR's Anthony Kuhn on newcomers seeking schools.

ANTHONY KUHN: On the western outskirts of Beijing, children are romping around the schoolyard of the Fenghua Love and Hope Elementary School. The school is one of the few survivors of a recent clampdown.

This summer local education officials shut down many of Beijing's 300-odd private schools catering to the children of migrant laborers. The officials say the schools were unlicensed and substandard. At the Fenghua school, fourth graders crowd into a simple brick classroom to learn English.

Unidentified Woman: I saw. I saw. I love you.

Unidentified Group: I saw. I saw. I love you.

KUHN: School principal Liang Sau Fang(ph) is stoical about the prospect of being shut down.

Ms. LIANG SAU FANG (Principal, Fenghua Love and Hope Elementary School): (Through translator) We don't want to quit the education profession. We've sacrificed so much. But if the authorities can address the social problem so that parents are satisfied and kids can go to school, then I'll have no regrets.

KUHN: Beijing's closure of the migrant schools has stalled. Students from the closed schools were supposed to be channeled into local public schools, but most of these are already full. Principal Liang's school charges the equivalent of $100 annual tuition, which is about all most migrant families can afford. Most don't' have the residence and work permits that the public schools require either. Liang's husband, Sun Chu Chiang(ph), also a teacher, says that migrant's kids who do manage to get into public schools are often looked down upon by the locals.

Mr. SUN CHU CHIANG (Teacher): (Speaking foreign language)

KUHN: There is some discrimination, he says. The teachers may ignore you or they may not let you complain if there's a problem. They may just think you're a nuisance.

(Soundbite of traffic)

It's noon and 13-year-old student Ying Len Yu(ph) leaves the Fenghua school and heads home for lunch. She walks past farmers' vegetable patches in a new and spacious public school where the local kids go. Ying stops at a tiny hole-in- the-wall restaurant that her parents run. Ying says she likes living in Beijing but she prefers the public schools back in her hometown in eastern Anhui province to the private school she attends here.

Ms. YING LEN YU (Student): (Through translator) I feel that the character of some of the kids in the private schools is really awful. The big ones bully the little ones. They curse at them. The teachers tell the kids not to, but they don't listen.

(Soundbite of crowd noise)

KUHN: Despite all the youthful vigor at the Fenghua school, there's a feeling of transience and impermanence here. Each semester 30 percent of the school's students leave as their parents move on in search of new jobs. The school itself has moved five times in the past decade, unable to find a stable lease. Teachers say this all hurts the kid's academic performance.

The issue of schools for migrants has Chinese education experts worried. Speaking at a café at the Beijing Institute of Technology, Professor Hu Xingdou says that the more schools China builds for migrant's kids now, the fewer jails it'll have to build later.

Professor HU XINGDOU (Professor, Beijing Institute of Technology): (Through translator) If the government takes these migrants' children out of school, they may be left to society and put out on the street. They may come to hate society and hate their cities.

KUHN: Hu says that government policies that classify citizens and the benefits they receive according to their urban or rural status are unfair. Rural migrants are left in limbo, somewhere between the cities and the countryside. Yet the migrants keep on migrating. They may be scorned by city folk, but for most of them it still beats life down on the farm.

二奶

Wife sentence
China’s economic boom has turned the ancient role of the concubine into a lucrative career option. Rachel DeWoskin meets the Prada-clad ‘second wives’ aiming to get rich before they hit 30

The master primarily wants the second wife to provide him with sex and face. The second wife primarily wants the master to provide her with a luxurious lifestyle. Both sides have an obligation to behave with decorum toward each other in public places, so as to win the respect of other people.

Sometimes the ernai's clothing should be extremely provocative sexually, and sometimes it should be refined and elegant, in order to make other men jealous of the master. The ernai must wear high-class, well-known designer clothing and shoes. She is not permitted to use fake luxury goods.

The ernai will provide the master all varieties of sex. The ernai agrees to have intercourse three times a day, or two hours of enjoyment in bed. Whether they kiss is up to the ernai. No ernai should ever employ any behaviour that would damage a man's self-esteem, such as suggesting he 'does not cut it'.
An online Chinese second-wife 'contract'

At a dinner in Beijing this summer, my old friend Tang brought along a pale wisp of a girl in designer jeans and stiletto heels, whom he introduced as his girlfriend. None of the six of us already seated around a table in Beijing’s stylish Three Guizhou Men restaurant batted a single lash, even though Tang is married with two children – and we all know his wife. Bringing a mistress to dinner in China is not cause for comment, especially in a hip, expensive outfit like this, where patrons have to be rich to afford the food. Our table was covered with gorgeous dishes: translucent noodles draped with spring onions and hot peppers, spicy fish in a ginger broth and racks of tender ribs. Tang’s girlfriend reached her chopsticks out and a small piece of meat slipped off the bone.

I lived in China for six years in the 1990s, and was on a biannual visit there this summer. When I asked Tang’s girlfriend, “What do you do?” I knew it was too direct a question. But I asked it warmly and in Chinese, hoping
not to embarrass but to include her. She didn’t appear to mind.

“She’s a TV hostess,” Tang responded, “very successful.” He put his arm around her, and she smiled in a way that suggested she was both smitten with and amused by Tang.

“Why bother working at all?” one of our male friends joked. “Tang can’t afford an apartment for you?”

“Wouldn’t that make you an ernai?” I asked, hoping for the “foreigner doesn’t get it” forgiveness exclusion. The men all looked at me, horrified. Tang’s girlfriend grinned. “Good Chinese,” she said, as if surprised I knew the word.

But everyone who has ever lived in China knows the expression for “second wife”. And most people know at least one ernai personally. Ernai are a modern version of concubines, as common as colds. They are women kept in luxury apartments and goods by married lovers – mostly overseas businessmen and officials but, increasingly, by men at every level of society. The most successful kept women represent entrepreneurs of a sort, floating in a sink-or-swim economy and providing enticing models for what the new China can offer: genuine Prada stilettos, diamonds, iPods and sprawling villas. They work out in the swankiest health clubs, drive Minis, BMWs and Audis, and carry lapdogs in Gucci handbags. They have role models more glamorous than those of most aspiring careerists: from Mao Zedong’s fourth wife, Madame Jiang Qing, to the actress Gong Li’s gorgeous fourth-wife character in Zhang Yimou’s movie Raise the Red Lantern.

And yet, like women everywhere who trade sex for money, ernai are vulnerable to abuse, unprotected by degrees, careers, or backup plans, and often deserted in their thirties. An increasing number of notable ernai now lead lives complicated by corruption and scandal. They are forbidden by law but flaunted in practice, socially both celebrated and condemned, just as concubines have always been.

In the US, a mistress should be a well-kept secret. In most of Europe, she should be kept with discretion. In China, the keepers of ernai get not only the service but also the face (maintaining face, or an unchallenged public persona, is seen as hugely significant). In a second wife’s lifestyle is a reflection of her master’s capacity to spend. Her beauty is a testament to his taste, her role both public and private.

It was 20 years ago that Deng Xiaoping, the former de-facto leader of the People’s Republic of China, uttered his fabled “to get rich is glorious”; globalisation has since made China’s cities and citizens some of the richest and showiest in the world. Yet most of China’s population remains poor and, as in any country on the fast track to First World status, there have been costs associated with China’s breakneck economic, social and ideological change. The critically widening income gap is one such cost; and like many of globalisation’s side effects, one that puts women in particularly vulnerable positions. Just as China’s citizens are among the world’s poorest and richest, so the women who populate China’s growing sex industry represent the entire spectrum from dazzling opulence to Third World poverty. The country’s curious two-class urban population system denies housing, health and education benefits to migrants, leaving a whole population of women from the countryside limited options for food and shelter. At the same time, millions of Chinese entrepreneurs aspire to be the country’s next millionaire, singers to be its next idol, Chinese beauties to be international movie stars. So it’s no surprise that the sex industry should flaunt the position of pampered second wives as its own glorious pinnacle.

According to Yingying Huang, the deputy director of the People’s University-based Institute of Sexuality and Gender, China’s sex industry is a complex hierarchy – one that borrows from tradition but also mirrors modern Chinese society – with its own class system.

“There are the street workers, at the bottom,” says Huang, “and then the factory girls, who have other jobs, but sometimes act as prostitutes to make some extra money. Then there are the low-level massage-parlour hostesses, then karaoke ones, big, fancy bar hostesses, and at the very top are the ernai. Ernai are the pinnacle. Sometimes their work is a little bit related to love, but they also get gifts and get paid.”

In other words, ernai are both the objects of free-choice attraction, and yet are still engaged in a transactional relationship. If a woman gets only gifts, she may just be a mistress, but if those gifts are given immediately after service, she’s halfway to being an ernai. If actual cash changes hands, she’s formally an ernai. Perhaps predictably, the lines are not always clearly drawn. Some women, Huang says, do it just for money, others for love, and most for a combination of the two.

Our dinner at Three Guizhou Men ended early when Tang left, explaining that he had “other business”, and abandoning his TV-hostess girlfriend with us. She came with me to have our nails done at an all-night manicure and pedicure salon, where she had blue artificial nails glued on, and we discussed ernai. The numerous varieties include average ernai, student ernai, Russian ernai, prima-donna ernai and cheap ernai. A western man in the luxury-goods business also mentioned this last distinction to me, elaborating that ernai from Shanghai (like Tang’s girlfriend, no doubt) are “expensive” and “high maintenance”. Girls from the countryside, he explained, could be “had cheap”, holed up in flophouses by Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek for 100 yuan a week (£6) – exactly the cost of a manicure and pedicure.

In fact, some contemporary Chinese second wives satisfy elements of practicality in addition to luxury, depending on the master’s income level. Many of Greater China’s male business travellers keep more modest ernai in cities like Guangzhou or Shenzhen, in part because being hosted and serviced by an ernai is cheaper than living in hotels, or renting an apartment and hiring help. In Chinese cities, where cash is king, ernai can provide arms and legs for simple daily chores, like paying mobile-phone bills, buying airline tickets or buying business gifts.

I once asked a Chinese friend of mine why he stayed married when he admitted to preferring his mistress to his wife. “For the sake of convenience,” he said kindly and without rancour. Their parents were made happy by the marriage; he and his wife both found security and comfort in it. They just sought romance elsewhere.

Marriage in China has historically been a family matter, and there have been many variations on successful matrimony, some more contractual than emotional. China has a rich history and literature of multiple wives – the most formidable examples those of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, a small sample of whose harem quarters are displayed in the Forbidden City, and whose “wives” are said to have numbered 20,000. The concubine bedrooms in the Forbidden City are visible through glass walls; they feature rosewood beds carved to perfection, and lovely antique dressing tables at which women readied themselves for the great honour of imperial conjugal visits.

China’s pre-modern and seminal novel of manners, The Story of the Stone (also known popularly as The Dream of the Red Chamber), relates the estimable advantages of being an ernai. In the novel, more than three generations of the prosperous Jia family are supported by one relative who is a favoured consort of the emperor. There was no higher form of repayment by a daughter to her family.

For centuries, concubines were the ultimate status symbols and playthings of the wealthy. Then, in 1949, the communists recast the practice of keeping ernai as a decadent and corrupt vice. Good party cadres were not supposed to indulge in feudal frivolities. Yet even while slamming old mores and paying lip service to a policy of gender equality, the still-married Chairman Mao chased his fourth wife, Jiang Qing, now among the world’s most famous, villainous mistresses, for her aggressive leadership of the “great proletariat cultural revolution”. Mao was also believed to have a harem of girls from the countryside, well into his – but not their – old age.

During the cultural revolution, marriage was part of an individual’s – or couple’s – service to the state; units of two were better able to serve, and marriage in general increases social stability. The consideration of one’s own romantic leanings was a shallow, selfish matter compared with patriotism. Some argue that this mentality has given way to a commercial, capitalist kind of marriage, one that allows for ernai, one still not about love. Others claim that all such logic is a thinly veiled justification for cheating, one that holds no water with legitimate wives.

The return of ernai has occasioned a new society of righteous legitimate wives, who now can and increasingly do sue philandering husbands. Divorce rates have skyrocketed in the past decade. According to the China civil-administration department, 341,000 married couples divorced in 1980, 800,000 in 1990, 1,210,000 in 2000, and 1,331,000 in 2005. Even though it is widely acknowledged that Chinese officialdom is well provided with ernai, the government has criticised adultery, suggesting connections between infidelity, corruption and divorce. Ernai are costly. The government even passed new marriage laws in the early 2000s, ostensibly trying to eradicate adultery. Under those laws, the existing rule that prohibited bigamy was expanded to include a ban on “cohabitation outside of marriage”, and adulterers could serve up to two-year jail sentences. Legitimate first wives were entitled to the fortunes of husbands convicted of keeping ernai.

This new path of recourse inspired an industry of mistress-hunting detectives, funded by suspicious wives. Detectives prospered in heavily ernai-concentrated cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai. Mistresses and their masters became the central figures in corruption scandals, with plots and characters worthy of soap operas. There was the capture of Cheng Kejie, the former vice-chairman of China’s parliament, who was executed six years ago for bribery. His “evil mistress”, Li Ping, remains in jail, serving a life sentence for being his co-conspirator. In a recent case, a provincial official, his wife, and his ernai were all convicted in a bribery scandal and sentenced to death or long prison terms. One bank official was caught embezzling in an effort to support eight ernai. Last year, after a fight with her master, Shanghai’s “richest mistress”, Da Beini, took her fury public and auctioned off their most valuable belongings (including cars and apartments) online. Her master sued, and in response to the embarrassing public drama that grew out of the private one, the government said it would henceforth require all men to “register” their ernai. It was left vague how or with whom to declare one’s ernai, perhaps since many of the officials proposing such legislation also had reason not to want to see it enacted. In China, having an ernai is part and parcel of being a corrupt official – the same way that having sex with your secretary is a cliché of corrupt politicians in the West. There’s a Chinese saying that works anywhere: men only go bad once they’re rich; women have to go bad to get rich.

In Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen (the city near the border with Hong Kong that Deng Xiaoping touted as a model for all developing Chinese cities), ernai cun or “second-wife villages” have risen in the past decade. These neighbourhoods, often close to airports, are lined with karaoke bars, beauty salons, and apartment compounds in which ernai primp, work out, play mahjong and occasionally dabble entrepreneurially in beauty, real estate or interior decorating.

Shanghai’s Gubei district, near Hongqiao airport, features a horizon of sky-rise apartments with aspirational names like Vienna Plaza. Most have plaques declaring them “model compounds”, wrought-iron gates, glittering fountains, and an average of three beauty parlours and one massage spa per block. On a short walk near the giant Carrefour Gubei shopping centre, I passed six beauty parlours, a two-storey Starbucks and four massage parlours. It was afternoon, and in Starbucks seven groups of women sat separately, sipping from green-tea frappuccinos, gossiping and giggling about men, apartments and travel. In the Carrefour mall’s Sephora make-up store, two dazzling twenty-something girls picked through a rack of whitening lotions. One was wearing shorts and stiletto heels, carrying an umbrella to protect her already whitened skin from the sun. The other was clutching a Coach Signature purse and clump of shopping bags.

“This one makes your skin especially white,” the salesgirl told them, holding out a glass bottle. They made their way to the checkout counter
to pay for the lotion and dozens more bottles of cosmetics, their bills exceeding the average monthly salary in Shanghai: 1,838 yuan (£125).

A 29-year-old American woman who dated a married Chinese man while living in Shanghai explained to me the logic of the ernai lifestyle:
“If he buys you one Louis Vuitton bag, that’s worth more money than you can make in a month. If you’re young and pretty and you can go out with an older guy, he can help with your business ideas, even fund them. There’s no economic reason to be moral.”

Gubei is just one of many neighbourhoods ripe for service and promotion. Women begin by working in the shops, and then, depending on their ability to find high-paying, full-time boyfriends, get served in the shops instead. In one of the salons, a manager who doubles as a stylist told me that she’s 34, can’t find a husband, and is desperately looking for one. Ernai are partially responsible for her predicament.

“I’m not from Shanghai originally,” she said. “I’m from Zhejiang. I have a different work ethic than Shanghai girls have.”

How’s that?

She gestured to the apartments behind us. “They don’t work. They find rich guys, and then the guys support them while they play mahjong, drink, chat, you know.”

But is that true of most women in Shanghai, or just the ones in this compound?

“It’s true of the rich ones,” she said. “To be rich you have to be this kind of woman.”

When I asked her if she had ever considered finding a patron herself, she responded that she preferred to work because of her “personality”, and because of the difficulty faced by ernai as they age. The forced retirement of old ernai is a recurring theme in conversations with and about ernai, second only to the one about women who do it for love versus those who do it for money.

One of the most famous ernai stories in Shanghai suggests a cheerful synthesis of the two themes: a Chinese woman in her early twenties was the mistress of a married French diplomat. She remained his ernai for the duration of his three-year stint in Shanghai, and then he “passed” her to his replacement. When that replacement left, he too afforded a new agent the same courtesy, and so the woman became Shanghai’s “French embassy ernai”, a personal position turned institutional. She worked successfully for the embassy for more than 11 years this way, until her late thirties. When the fourth replacement arrived, he wasn’t interested. So, according to local lore, still beautiful, she found an online mail-order-bride website, and ended up marrying an Australian farmer. She now lives in the outback, a startling if successful arrangement for an urban ernai.

But I heard other, less happy variations of this same story, including one by Xiao Lin, a 26-year-old international tour guide from Beijing, who considers herself an expert on ernai. She demurred when I asked how she acquired her expertise, smiling to suggest she’d perhaps come by it first-hand and suggesting that we talk about her ernai friends and their experiences. Xiao Lin herself leads a wild single life, replete with foreign boyfriends, English and Spanish chatter, and a giant circle of female friends. She lives in her own apartment, a situation difficult to manage without some kind of outside funding. Every facet of her life, including her job (leading retired businessmen on trips to Korea, Australia and the US), is evidence of how Beijing has changed in the past 10 years. She talks with utter practicality and directness about sex, love and the lives of kept women. Her parents, who Xiao Lin swears harbour no illusions about her life, apparently accept “all of it”.

When we met at a Starbucks in Beijing, Xiao Lin was wearing a miniskirt and several tank tops, boho-style. She was carefully made up with lip gloss and a collage of eye shadows. She set her Dior sunglasses, big, white Jackie O affairs, on the table next to a double-skim latte, and laughed. “I mean,” she said of her elderly parents, “what choice do they have but to accept my lifestyle?”

Most of her friends’ parents, she explained, understand that their daughters are “supporting themselves” and doing well. But by supporting themselves she means serving as ernai, and she has recently taken to advising her friends to secure backup arrangements.

“My best friend was an ernai for a Hong Kong businessman for seven years,” Xiao Lin told me. “She had no education, no job, and no prospects. When she turned 30, her lover left her for a 19-year-old new ernai.”

It’s an interesting variation on the second-wife tradition, since older ernai used to stack up and live together in increasing numbers. China’s polygamous society allowed wives to live together, if not in harmony at least in relative security. But the pace of modern life, and the cost of keeping an ernai in an urban setting, require them to be discarded. Xiao Lin’s friend is a good example, since even though her lover did end up divorcing his first wife, he still chose not to marry her. This seemed to me to have been a sound, if unsavoury choice.

If he had married her, I proposed, wouldn’t he still have found a new ernai?

“At least she’d have a baby, though,” Xiao Lin said, to my surprise.

A fatherless one, though, right?

“Maybe he would have taken care of them for ever if she’d had a baby. She loved him. I think she would have liked to keep him in her life – maybe with a baby. There are two kinds of ernai,” she said, summing it up, “the ones who do it solely for money – they’re like, ‘You can use my body for sex and I’ll use your money and apartment and car for a luxurious life.’ Then there’s the other kind, who love the money but also love the man. They get left with nothing.”

By the time an ernai turns 30, she needs to have secured either a lot of love or a lot of money. At Xiao Lin’s urging, her friend, heartbroken and broke, set about earning a degree at “pet beauty school”. She is now single, panicked, and employed grooming the poodles of China’s elite, including other ernai.

Perhaps most revealing are the numerous online “contracts” that come up with a simple Chinese internet search for ernai. I showed samples of these to dozens of Chinese friends this summer, and nobody could agree whether they are intended to be legitimate or satirical. In addition to the contracts, there are also online application forms that require full disclosure by would-be ernai on matters ranging from breast augmentation to disabilities. There are also hundreds of newspaper reports about local court cases where various ernai-related disputes were adjudicated; generally the courts hold that ernai contracts, written or verbal, are not binding.

Yet the contracts make certain facts clear. Even darlings of the sex industry lead precarious lives. And their history, glamorous though some of it may be, bears this up. Concubines had low social status, even if they lived luxuriously. Considered the chattel of their masters, they were often given as gifts, bought and traded. Well-known tales range from those of concubines murdered by the jealous offspring of first wives, to those of second wives buried alive to keep their masters company in otherwise lonely tombs. Warring states gifted beautiful women to ingratiate powerful rivals.

China is not alone in its efforts to face the challenge of reconciling mating traditions with the demands of modern life. In the US, conservative Mormons still reject the laws prohibiting polygamy and juvenile marriage. In China, new laws often confront old traditions. The ernai case is one such example – of a practice kept under wraps for an era, now re-blooming and raising the question: have old habits modernised? The name brands and context are new, but much of the original concubine content remains unchanged. Take the gender balance. As far back as the Qing dynasty, scholars worked to justify why Chinese men were allowed to have multiple wives but Chinese women were not permitted to have more than one husband. One popular explanation went: “One teapot is always set with four cups. But have you ever seen a cup with four teapots?” Needless to say, although there are women who confessed to me to having affairs, and men who said their wives are also allowed “their own business”, married women do not bring lovers to dinner parties. There are no contracts, legitimate or satirical, that forbid a man to imply that a woman “just doesn’t cut it”; no stories of female diplomats passing a hottie from old woman to old woman until he’s too old to perform.

The China Daily, China’s biggest English-language newspaper, reported this August that a new “anger release” bar had opened in eastern China, at which clients can take out their aggression by punching and kicking male servers. It noted, without analysis of why this might be, that the clients are mostly karaoke and massage parlour hostesses, mostly angry women.

See my reaction to Rachel DeWoskin's Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China

Dogs in China

Once shunned by communist ideologues as capitalist vermin, dogs have become a firm favorite among China's fast-growing middle class and a status symbol among the well-heeled. A generation raised in one-child families is eager to bond with household pets. In Beijing, the number of registered dogs is up 16 percent this year, to 530,000, but the true dog population is likely far higher, as many animals are unregistered.

The reason is not only to avoid paying a $75 to $125 registration fee. Big dogs - those with a shoulder height of more than 35 centimeters (about 13 inches) - are banned in central Beijing. If you want to own a Labrador or Husky, two popular breeds in China, you run the risk of your prized pet being detained as an illegal breed. But regulations being what they are, some dog owners were prepared to flout them, betting that law enforcers had bigger fish to fry.

All that changed in September, when Beijing declared it was stepping up the fight against rabies, a disease that officials say killed more than 2,500 people last year in China. In July, officials in a rural county in Yunnan Province slaughtered 50,000 dogs to contain an outbreak of rabies. Pet dogs were snatched off the street and clubbed to death or hung. Jining City in Shandong Province followed suit after reported deaths from rabies.

Suddenly, nocturnal walks are all the rage in Beijing. So are extended stays at private kennels and training schools, as owners wait for the canine crackdown to run its course. But even registered dogs that have had rabies shots are said to be at risk, as police stations need to fill their weekly quotas for dog exterminations...

Dogs are often abandoned by owners that tire of looking after them or decide they prefer the latest in-vogue breed. "People buy dogs so they can show off. Whichever dog is the most popular, that's what people will go for," says Zhang Luping, who runs a private animal rescue center outside Beijing.

At a dog market in Liyuan, a suburb of Beijing.... Not all are destined to become household pets, however. In the back of a red pickup truck, a pack of mottled brown dogs are roped together inside a cage. Three men pick one, and agree upon a price with the owners. The dog is leashed and led to a waiting car to be taken to a restaurant and slaughtered for its meat, a common practice in parts of China.

Check out these pictures

China might relax its three-decades-old one-child policy

Nowadays, quite a number of economists, inside China and outside, are keen on making headlines by predicting when China's economy will overtake the United States, but they may simply ignore the demographic dynamics between the two countries.

From 2000 through to 2050, China, India and the US will be the three most populous countries in the world, which will largely define the geo-economy in the 21st century. Of the three countries, China's major challenge lies in its preparedness for an aging society and its ability to build an army of skilled workers.

China is getting older faster than it's getting richer compared with the US. According to a UN projection, by 2040, the proportion of elderly people in Chinese population will rise to 28%, which is higher than what it predicts for the United States. Also, in the long run, India's population structure will become better than China's in that in 15 years India will have a labor force that is both bigger and younger than China's.

China's internal dynamics will change too. If it fails to put in place an adequate system of old-age support by then, it will be unable to manage the demographic transition without widespread economic hardship - which will jeopardize President Hu Jintao's strategy of building up a "harmonious society".

"China needs to act soon and decisively," said Richard Jackson, the director of Washington, DC-based Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China, along with India, has been the biggest exporter of talent for decades. Now China is sucking back the students studying and working overseas, mainly in the US and Europe. But repatriating overseas talent is not enough. China needs to enhance fundamentally the quality of its domestic labor force, half of whom are migrant workers from the countryside.

China's economic miracle can largely be attributed to the "demographic premium", meaning that a huge pool of low-cost labor has fueled an unprecedented manufacturing boom, while rising numbers of young, middle-class urban couples have spent generously on housing, automobiles, consumer goods and other products and services.

But the "premium" can't last long. In 15 years, China will move from having an "unlimited labor supply" to facing a shrinking labor army. Thus China has to start right away to build up a legion of skilled workers. In an aging society, sustaining high economic growth and maintaining high living standards hinge largely on high productivity, which is the derivative of quality human capital.

By now, nearly half of Chinese citizens were born under the one-child policy. But a discrepancy of this policy is that it gives certain leeway to farmers for them to give birth to more than one child. But in the countryside both the health-care and education systems are far poorer than in cities. The overwhelming majority of children born and raised in poor health and education systems in rural areas are creating a seriously flawed population structure.

While the government is giving priority to rebuilding and strengthening the health-care and education systems in rural areas by pouring in tens of billions of yuan, it remains a huge challenge to tackle the problem given the fact that the country's rural population amounts to about 80% of the more than 1.3 billion people in China.

The article quotes an official as saying "A major principle of the new policy would shift the emphasis from quantity control to focus on quality improvement". Does he mean eugenics?

The Archbishop of Canterbury visits China

The Archbishop of Canterbury is Dr Rowan Williams - the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion

Chinese people are joining churches at an unprecedented rate.

Rural living standards have not improved as they have in many cities, but the all-embracing welfare of the communist era has eroded.

There are many people seeking the support, hope and a sense of redemption that Christianity can provide.

Even where there is wealth, traditional Chinese values and social codes have been undermined.

Christianity is providing many of the newly rich with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.

"People are so busy making money, that they've lost sight of the most important things in life," said one churchgoer in Wuhan.

"They don't notice that they've neglected their families, until they suddenly find they need loving support and it's not there."...

[The] government-approved Three Self Patriotic Association claims about 16 million members, but an estimated two, three or even four times that number are in unregistered house churches, meeting in people's homes beyond government supervision.

They are the Christians the official church is keen to bring within the fold...

[The] government itself - anxious about the growth of uncontrolled Christianity, and its potential to become an alternative centre of moral authority, but in need of some set of guiding principles to maintain the harmonious society it wants in the absence of communist dogma.

The archbishop's visit to Dongzhou Children's Village near Xian neatly demonstrated the dilemma.

Dongzhou - partly funded by a Christian charity - cares for children whose parents have been either imprisoned or executed, and who would otherwise be on the streets.

Dr Williams crouched down to talk to several of the blue-uniformed pupils, and discovered happy, educated, well-adjusted children.

As Dr Williams put it, "Dongzhou recruits volunteers in a society not used to volunteering."

The charity also applies a Christian moral view to what Dr Williams described as "one of the most unreconstructed bits of Chinese society".

He said: "When you see a photograph of a child in tears, bidding farewell to a father, also in tears, about to be hanged, well."

Modern faith

But there is one final group that valued the chance to meet one of Christianity's leading theologians - the growing number of influential intellectuals and academics who see in Christianity part of the blueprint for China's modernisation.

Some of them believe indigenous religions, such as Taoism and Buddhism, with their pragmatism and assumption of human goodness, do not have the same ability as Christianity to produce the realistic, self-critical and long-term strategies that China needs in a globalised world.

Dr Williams said that for China to modernise effectively, it would have to relax censorship, and allow public discussion of issues as sensitive even as the death penalty.

"It's the next step which Chinese political culture is more or less going to have to take," he said.

"There are kinds of limitations on discussion that are not going to be enforceable in two, 10, 20 years' time. Chinese society is poised for great changes and those changes are going to have to involve a more robust civil society."

It used to be said by Chinese politicians of this Western faith, "one more Christian - one fewer Chinese". Now, they are more likely to say "one more Christian - one fewer criminal".

Being moral and having good values

A 2004 poll indicates that 51 percent of Americans believe that "[i]t is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values."
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There are numerous ethical theories, including Kantianism, Confucianism, and utilitarianism, that do not require belief in God. Studies show that atheists have lower crime rates and lower rates of social pathologies such as teen pregnancy than theists do, and that atheists are on average less likely to hold racist views.