General Motors (and its JV partner, SAIC Motor Corp.) unveiled a new electric concept car today that's supposed to be great for cities like ours. Shown for the first time in Shanghai, it's called the EN-V a.k.a. "Electric Networked-Vehicle." more ›

• Ghosts of the Machines - OR - Just where do all of those Chinese PCs go to die, anyway? [Shanghai Scrap] On August 28, Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, ran a news item regarding ongoing studies of the health effects caused by environmentally unsound processing of e-waste (PCs, monitors, printers, etc) in south China… But there’s a problem with the Science story, and those like it: they insist on blaming China’s e-waste problems on foreigners, and thus deflect attention away from the fact that Chinese e-waste is the fastest growing and largest component of the waste stream arriving in South China (and, especially, into Guiyu, the notorious e-waste processing hub). And, in doing so, publications like Science provide cover to the Chinese government officials, and the Western and Chinese consumer electronics companies who have - collectively - failed to do much of anything about the problem."
• China's First Female Railroad Engineer [All-China Women's Federation] "Sitting in her airy and clean apartment, 80-year-old Tian Guiying, appears no different from any other retired senior citizen. But Tian has the distinction of being New China's first-ever woman locomotive engineer. Tian was the youngest of six daughters in a fisherman's family, resident in a poverty-stricken village near the coastal city of Dalian in northeastern Liaoning Province. To her parents, Tian's birth meant little more than a heavier burden."
• Party’s Agenda in China Seems to Fall Flat [New York Times] "China’s Communist Party elite had billed its four-day strategy session as an attack on “acute problems” that threatened the party’s political standing, like official corruption, China’s yawning gap between the rich and poor, and the lack of democracy within the party’s own ranks. But besides an anticorruption directive that would force officials and their families to disclose their property holdings and investments, initial reports from the meeting last week suggested that the Central Committee’s members either were reluctant to make major changes, or disagreed over how those changes might be made."

Not being content with constructing fine automobiles that are capable of outperforming a Ferrari F430 on Shanghai's Tianma circuit, Chery Automobile has announced a joint-venture with Uruguay-based armoured car company, Bognor Automotive Manufacture and Assembly, to produce a bullet-proof version of their mid-range Eastar sedan here in China. more ›

Not so long after General Motors Daewoo sued Chery for the imitation of its Spark minicar in its design of the QQ, Chrysler has announced it will jointly develop a new joint venture brand with Chery, one of China's top ten automakers. Interestingly, a report by the world's favourite news agency describes Chery as "one of the few Chinese companies that successfully produce their own models instead of manufacturing foreign brands under a licence". Oohlala! more ›