- One of China's manufacturing hubs, Shenzhen, is also becoming the centre of Chinese creativity.
- Cheng Li of Brookings is optimistic about economic reforms, and the reformers themselves:
If you look at the Politburo Standing Committee, and especially those people who are close with him (Xi), they all have the very solid leadership experience in coastal regions – these are the economically well-developed regions. And also, they are further surrounded by a group of very talented financial or economic technocrats. If they cannot present a sophisticated economic policy, you probably cannot expect anyone else can.
- Less optimistically, Chinese shipyards are leaving banks with default bills.
- James Fallows: the Chinese anti-corruption drive is important and potentially destabilising. So much so that former leaders have told Xi Jinping to halt the campaign.
- Raja Mohan laments India's comparative lack of rail development: 'If China has quadrupled its rail network since 1949, India has added barely 11,000 km to the rail network of nearly 54,000 km it had inherited from the British Raj.'
- So, are China's high speed trains all that they are made out to be? (Thanks Danielle)
- Sinica Podcast on the relatively unknown First World War Chinese Labour Corps.
- An in-depth interview on Northeast Asian relations with Evan Medeiros, senior director for Asian affairs of the US National Security Council.
- The Wall Street Journal has produced a gritty documentary on the fascinating Kowloon Walled City, which at one stage had a population density of 1.2 million people per square kilometre: