One of the most Rennaisance people I ever met now works at Google. That makes two Techers I know of who work there. --Randall Peerenboom has published a book called China's Long March toward Rule of Law. He has also written a set of essays on the topic for the journal of the Overseas Young Chinese Forum, Perspectives. --Peter N-H, recently, on reliable local tour guides in China. China is somewhere it's not hard to get around by yourself, and where guides are generally best avoided, or used with great caution, and here's why... ##Show Me The Money In the article "To Be Rich, Chinese and in Trouble: 3 Tales", the NY Times says: China's nouveaux riches are not going to jail for arrogance, exactly. But as top officials prepare to formally welcome some private entrepreneurs to join the Communist Party next month, they are also insisting that at least some rich people start playing by the rules. Imagine this standard applied to the United States: the US government forces rich people to pay their taxes through the IRS and forms organizations like the SEC to investigate securities fraud, often the playground of the rich. China should be applauded for cracking down on the rich for flaunting their power. Their motives may be questionable, but this is an unquestionably honorable effect. However, a few paragraphs later the article takes this as a chance to jab at the Chinese government: The crackdown on industry titans shows how China's economy — however robust and Westernized it appears on the surface — still answers to an ossified political system. Does the Chinese economy appear Westernized on the surface? Hardly. China is still debating with the WTO whether it counts as a developing nation. And how does this demonstrate that the political system in China is ossified? Rather, it shows that the officials are putting new market safeguards into practice and actively pursuing those who blow off what they thought was an inattentive and sluggish bureaucracy. [ Link ]