- Black Future: The coal bosses of Shanxi are tired of being the government's whipping boys [Forbes] "One of the most reviled and reclusive villains in the Chinese economy has been the coal mine boss. The archetypal robber baron of the Chinese Gilded Age, he has been caricatured as ruthless, greedy, corrupt and uncivilized. Now the coal mine boss is casting himself as a human rights case. The government of China's coal-rich Shanxi Province, southwest of Beijing, is trying to drive almost all private mine owners out of business, forcing more than 1,500 mines to shut down or sell out to state-owned enterprises at prices so low, coal bosses say, that some may go bankrupt."
- Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years [Read Write Web] "Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time."
- The French Connection’s China Connection [WSJ] "A French court Tuesday sentenced two businessmen convicted in the arms-for-oil “Angolagate” scandal that implicated 42 defendants including top politicians, civil servants and even the son of late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. One of the two, and a chief defendant in the case, is Pierre Falcone, who’s now in jail pending an appeal on the charges he helped arrange shipments of $790 million worth of weapons to Angola in the mid-1990s."
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