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Cary Academy looks at China
Why should you care about China? Well, it seems like a country worth studying. It has 1.3 billion people; it's hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing; and it has one of the world's fastest growing economies. I recently learned about Vietnam, China's neighbor to the South, when I worked on an [|educator's guide to Vietnam], and that made me even more fascinated with China.

I read about China's growth everywhere. This excerpt, //in italics below//, comes from the New York Times Magazine of May 21, 2006. I added a few pictures from other sites to help bring the new stadium to life...

//A visit to the construction site of the National Stadium in Beijing is as close as you get in the 21st century to seeing what it must have been like to put up the Great Wall of China.//



//**The stadium under construction** source: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=175118491&size=o//////



source: http://images.beijing-2008.org/80/85/Img211988580.jpg//
 * Artist's rendition**

At one point, 7,000 workers were toiling on the stadium, dispatched in six-month stints from the countryside and organized like an army into squadrons. When I visited at the end of March, their number had diminished to a couple of thousand: the concrete had already been poured for the huge bowl that will seat 91,000 spectators at the 2008 Olympic Games, and the raising and welding of the steel columns and beams -- tasks that require extra training and elbow room -- were well under way. Cranes more than 300 feet tall hovered above, hoisting metal pieces as heavy as 350 tons to form a lattice of interwoven steel. Knowing that the nickname bird's nest has clicked with the Chinese public, I could imagine the enormous cranes as Godzilla-fied birds and the dangling curves of steel as worms being lowered for the chicks.

The 24 main columns are gargantuan -- 1,000 tons each, far more than the weight of those in a conventional stadium and spaced in what appears to be a random pattern. Everyone thinks this is the most remarkable piece of architecture we have ever designed, the architect Jacques Herzog told me months before in Switzerland, where he lives. To realize that project there is amazing. It defies expectations to see this avant-garde building rising in China, and yet, Herzog had remarked, such a structure you couldn't do anywhere else.

For architects, China is the land of dreams. The construction statistics tantalize. The Chinese consume 54.7 percent of the concrete and 36.1 percent of the steel produced in the world, according to a 2004 report in Architectural Record.

//That's astounding. With about 20 percent of the world's population, you might expect China to build about 20 percent of new structures on the planet. But China is growing its infrastructure incredibly rapidly. The book// China, Inc. //notes that 300 million rural Chinese are expected to leave their farms to leave a lifestyle that is no longer economically viable and move to China's cities. That movement of 300 million people -- about the size of the entire U.S. population -- will be the largest migration in human history.

China should also be the largest economy in the world in the very near future. It's curretnly #3 or #4, depending on who's counting. The US is #1, Japan #2, and either China or Germany is #3. Every multinational business today needs a "China Plan" and a remarkable number of businesses are setting up a presence somewhere in China.

Great Britain has [|mandated] that some of its students learn Mandarin Chinese and [|many U.S. schools may soon follow that lead].

For all of these reasons, I'm excited to learn more about China.


 * Below are some links in serious need of organization** -- but there's some interesting stuff here...

The [|Three Gorges Dam] is probably both a positive and a negative, depending on your perspective.

Here's a chart showing [|China's population growth over time].

Columbia University has a [|wonderful collection of resources about Asia].

Here are some shots of the [|Olympic Stadium] (almost done!).

And some [|more shots of the stadium].

There's also a really cool [|water cube] next door for swimming and diving.

And here is a [|chronology showing US-Chinese relations from Mao to now].

POPULATION -- 1.3 Billion and growing...

Here's a [|picture of a billboard advertising the One Child Policy].

Population: China has the most people of any nation, with about 1.3 billion; but India is #2 with 1.1 billion and is gaining on China because its growth rate is more than twice as fast as China's.

According to the [|CIA World Fact Book], India's growth rate is 1.38% per year, while China's is .59% per year (as of 2006). By comparison, the US's growth rate is .91% per year.

Here's a graph showing [|relative growth rates of India and China]. By 2050, India should pass China, with both having more than 1.5 billion people. (Source of graph: [|http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/allfig.htm)]

Here's a neat [|Soundscape Map of China] from PBS. Steve just ordered the PBS show titled [|China From the Inside]. We will watch parts of this series in class.

This [|map showing the Top 59 wonders of China] is a good resource we might want to explore.

And this [|website featuring student projects about China] might also give us some ideas.

This is a well done series of radio programs about the relationships between China five of its neighbors (Japan, Vietnam, India, South Korea, and Russia) produced by [|National Public Radio] in 2004. Follow the links below to listen to the programs. [|Part 1: Japan Feb. 16, 2004] We begin a series on how China is viewed by its neighbors: Japan sees both opportunity and threat in the rapidly growing Chinese economy. It's a huge market for Japanese goods, but it is also taking away Japanese jobs. For most of the Cold War, Japan could concentrate on its own economic development and ignore China, but no more. One analyst says some Japanese feel a kind of jealousy toward China and a desire to see the country fail. NPR's Rob Gifford reports. [|Part 2: Vietnam Feb. 17, 2004] Twenty-five years ago this week, China invaded Vietnam. The invasion came after months of tension between the two communist neighbors. The Chinese attack was prompted by Vietnam's decision to invade Cambodia and remove the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge. The 1979 border war between China and Vietnam was over quickly, with the Chinese retreating after heavy losses. But as NPR's Michael Sullivan reports in the second part of a series examining how China is viewed by its neighbors, relations between the two countries have improved significantly since then. The two countries are bound by culture -- and increasingly by economics. Trade is growing rapidly and Vietnam has become a popular vacation spot for Chinese tourists. And the Vietnamese Communist Party looks to the Chinese Communist Party as a model for opening up its economy while maintaining tight control over politics. [|Part 3: India Feb. 18, 2004] In October 1962, Americans were glued to their TVs and radios as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded, worried about the prospect of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But halfway across the world, high in the Himalayas, India and China were at war over a disputed border region. The war ended with a large swath of the area under China's control, and thousands of Indian troops dead. China's unexpected aggression had a profound psychological effect on the Indian political and military establishment for several decades, but today, the war is all but forgotten by many Indians. As the 21st century opens, tensions seem to be subsiding between the two Asian giants as both countries devote their energy to economic development. In the third part of a series examining China's relationship with its neighbors, NPR's Michael Sullivan reports on the view from India. [|Part 4: South Korea Feb. 19, 2004] South Korea's links with China go back centuries, but in the 1950s the two were on opposite sides in the Korean War. Today, China is starting to have increasingly more in common with South Korea than its communist neighbor in the North. In the fourth part of a series examining China's relationship with its neighbors, NPR's Rob Gifford reports on a China craze that's going on in Seoul. China's economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. And with that prosperity comes power. Some in Asia are calling China the new America. But others worry that South Korea's economic infatuation with China has blinded Koreans to Beijing's longterm strategic aims. [|Part 5: Russia Feb. 20, 2004] Russia, the world's biggest country, and China, the world's most populous, frequently clashed during the Cold War. The two giants spent decades engaged in an ideological rivalry and border skirmishes, but have since put much of that open hostility behind them. Russia and China now officially call their relationship a "strategic partnership." But many Russians retain a mistrust of China, especially in light of its increasing economic and political might. NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports from the Far Eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk.

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The Raleigh News and Observer had an article about [|high schools in Wake County teaching Chinese]. The article ends with this quote:


 * "It's probably a good idea to be able to speak the language of the next superpower"**

James Fallows, a famous writer, is the author of a piece in the March 2007 issue of// The Atlantic// titled "Mr. Zhang Builds His Dream Town". We will read and discuss this article over the next week or so. Here's a [|slideshow] that goes with the article.

And here's a story about how China is [|preparing for the 2008 Olympic games] in Beijing.

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This site from the BBC has a great summary of [|the Communist Party's rule of China] from 1949 to the present. Please read all of the summaries listed at the left, starting with "Mao Zedong" and going through "Jiang Zemin".

Also, here is a quick history of the [|Chinese New Year], the most celebrated holiday in China. This year, Chinese New Year begins on February 18, 2007. The high traffic load when Chinese from all over the world head home to be with their families is called [|Chunyun].

If you want more information about China, [|this BBC web site] is a great place to start.