February 2010 | By Jane Leung Larson
In "Currency Imbalance Should Not Become a Distribution," Huffington Post, February 1, Committee of 100 Chairman John Chen, the CEO of Sybase, argues that in our trading relationship with China, "fixing our attention on the currency issues is a distraction, and takes our eyes off the core issues that will keep our lead in our economic power." Instead we must focus on "how to drive long-term competitiveness with innovation, the factor that ultimately allows us to achieve a high-level of productivity, just as it has done so for us in the past." Chen feels that the U.S. must concentrate on creating more innovation-based jobs, in part because manufacturing jobs are not likely to return to the U.S. even with a more expensive RMB, but also because we are losing our lead in innovation industries, while China is making innovation a national strategy. "With a much smaller population than China and some other developing nations, it will for sure be a losing battle to fight if we shift the focus of our economy to compete in labor-intensive industries. Our innovativeness will continue to trend down."
Read the full article here.
Harvard University Professor of Chinese History, Philosophy and Confucian Studies Tu Weiming spoke about "The Return of Confucius" on National Public Radio's "On Point." Tu recently returned from six months in China, where he established the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. Tu was one of three scholars who discussed how Confuciansm is making a comeback in China, promoted by the government as well as embraced by ordinary Chinese seeking a moderating ethic in an increasingly materialistic society. Tu said that a modern Confucianism can provide China with a cultural identity and a cultural export, because Confucianism is a spiritual and cultural resource it can offer to the world. Listen to this hour-long conversation.
The family history of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is one of twelve remarkable Americans explored in Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a four-part series that premiered on PBS February 11. Gates has recruited a team of historians, genealogists and geneticists to delve deeply into family ties and discover long lost ancestors as well as distant family ties (Gates found that Ma is related to actress Eva Longoria Parker, for example). According to the Los Angeles Times, February 10:
[Gates] signed up his first subject at a dinner party at Harvard, where he was seated next to Ma, who said his family tree went back only to his great-grandfather.
Gates' team did much better than that. A Chinese professor who took on the challenge of researching Ma's heritage visited the musician's ancestral village and found the entire clan genealogy of Ma's family, which had been hidden in a wall of a house during the Cultural Revolution so it wouldn't be destroyed. After the bamboo papers were meticulously restored, researchers followed Ma's lineage back 18 generations, to the year 1217.
"That is the baddest genealogy story I've ever heard in my life," Gates said.
Read the full article here.
At Faces of America, you can read the biographies as well as download excerpts and full programs: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/.
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