UPDATE: Some relief for victims of KaiEn English fiasco as ChinesePod CEO downplays Ken Carroll's role more ›

UPDATE: Another day, another disgruntled KaiEn English teacher more ›

We've long known about the racist policies many Chinese schools have in place when choosing English teachers, but - for some reason - it comes as a surprise to find out they're ageist too. Maybe it's all those talks we had with our parents about how Chinese venerate the old. Yet, according to James Fallows, the country is not purging foreign teachers over the age of 60, refusing to let them renew their visas. more ›

• China and Argentina in currency swap [FT.com] "China, which is pushing to end the dominance of the dollar as a worldwide reserve, has agreed a Rmb70bn ($10.24bn, £7.18bn, €7.76bn) currency swap with Argentina that will allow it to receive renminbi instead of dollars for its exports to the Latin American country. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said the deal was signed on Sunday by Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, and Martín Redrado, Argentine central bank president, in Medellín, Colombia, where they are attending a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank."
• Nanotechnology: Tom Mackenzie on China's giant step into nanotech [The Guardian] "Nanotechnology is big business conducted on an atomic scale. China is a major player, using it for a speaker just 1mm thick - or super-strong armour."
• China's Far Too Rosy Self Image [Pomfret's China] "A new poll by researchers at the University of Maryland and Globescan sums it up in the starkest terms. A whopping 92 percent of Chinese surveyed believe that China has a mainly positive influence on the world; whereas a mere 39 percent of people polled in 20 other major countries agree. This is the largest perception gap among the countries' polled. (And it's getting worse. Views about China have declined markedly over the last year.)"