Why should I know what China is doing?

If you are asking this question, there is a long way for you to go and realize what china means as a country and as demographic deluge. This blog is no way intended to demean the chinese population but is a curious study of the impact of this genre on the world. Because today, the early chinese concept of Chung hua (Zhongua; Middle Country), meaning that China was in the middle of the world, is indeed becoming true. China is coming into the middle of every country's world and is difficult to miss.

The key reason why china is an interesting country to study are mainly its huge size, huge population, its really old history and more importantly its impact on the world economy. So while the size and population are having impact on the world now, chinese history and immigrants are nothing new to a lot of parts of the world.

China, the official name of which is Chung-hua-Jen-min Kung-ho-kuo, (Zhongua Renmin Gongheguo), or the People's Republic of China, is important because with 14 neighbouring countries and a total of 22,000 kilometres of land boundaries, China is a country with the longest land borderlines and the largest number of neighbours in the world. And with almost every country along its border, china has a border or sovereignty dispute - important ones being with India, Russia, Tibet and Taiwan.

And in terms of population, you know from your early social studies textbooks that China is the world's most populated country. And today,

"US Census Bureau 2000 puts Chinese population as a percentage of Total Asians in the US at 23%"
"October 2002 Census in Russia: Russia's Chinese population has grown from just over 5,000 in the late 1980s to 3.26 million today."
"Chinese population in UK is around 400,000 - UK 2001 Census"

So when a country of this magnitude and reach starts to rise, you should take notice. Its in your interest :)

Idea behind this blog!

I started observing how my interests have been changing from reading religion to history to the current socio-economic and political world order. I began to realize that all these are so strongly braided to each other that reading only one is like appreciating a thread and missing the fabric.

Over the last couple of years, I have observed china grabbing my attention, admiration, apprehension and disapprobation – a feeling probably not so different across various sections of the world. The world’s most popular magazines express mixed feelings celebrating and decrying the ‘Rise of the Dragon’, all at the same time. Probably because a lot of people are confused as to what it would mean to them. Whatever it might mean to different sections of the world community, I certainly believe that this rise would not leave anyone untouched. As they say, it’s a rising tide – either you are riding it or disappearing under it.

As a part of my reading, I started consolidating information I have about China. I thought I would write one consolidated blog of my impressions about Chinese invasion of economic and academic mind space world-wide. That is when I realized the enormity of impact china is having on the world and the difficulty in summarizing all into one blog. So I created this new blog spot and thought of consolidating my readings/opinions and sources into various categories.

Economic Expansion
Military Expansion
Political Expansion
Environmental Impacts
History & Culture

This blog is envisaged to be a collector’s site for articles on china with occasional posts written by me. So I would like to apologize beforehand that if by mistake, I forget to mention the source and use it in my blog ever.