handbags blog,handbags weblog,handbags news

When Tian Li, a fashion design teacher, first bought second-hand clothes from Japan 20 years ago, she did it for both aesthetic and financial reasons.

“First of all, they were really cheap - you could get a woolen skirt for a couple of dozen kuai(yuan),” she recalls. “Another reason, perhaps the more important one, was that you couldn’t find such ‘trendy’ designs in shops back then.”

In 1980s China, the dominant fashion aesthetic - if there were any - was still heavily influenced by the era of “cultural revolution” (1966-76) that preceded it. The sudden availability of imported clothes offered a break from the despotic era of black and gray, she says, referring to the daring palette of orange, purple and green turquoise that was typical of clothes made in Japan.

In the late ’80s and ’90s, Tian tirelessly amassed more than 100 pieces of such clothing - including dresses, suits and overcoats - from local “night bazaars” in Shenyang, northeastern China’s Liaoning province, where she taught at a fashion school for two decades.

” I still wear some of these things today,” she says, sounding slightly nostalgic about the days she bent over piles of clothes heaped on the ground, sometimes for hours, searching for pieces that would suit her personal style.

Tian recalls that at its peak, an entire outdoor square in Shenyang was taken over by sellers of second-hand Japanese clothes, similar to what was happening in many other Chinese cities, including Dalian, Qingdao and even Beijing.

All that ended abruptly in the early ’90s, however, when the government decided that the deluge of such clothes, rumored to have been dumped in China by people who would actually have paid to get rid of the “unwanted rubbish”, posed a serious sanitary problem.

“There was a nationwide ‘anti-dumping’ if you like, and all those clothes disappeared almost overnight,” says Tian.

What she couldn’t have imagined back then was that the demand for them would stage a sneaky revival, albeit in a different guise.

Japanese clothes with the same bright colors and exaggerated outlines of the ’80s are no longer simply regarded as “second-hand”. In certain, albeit small, parts of the fashion community, they are proudly known as “vintage”.

Jiang Yi, an independent fashion designer based in Beijing, attributes the phenomenon to what he dubs “the discrepancy in fashion tenses”. “In terms of fashion, what is past in one time zone may be very happening in another,” he says.

He considers the trend to have nothing to do with one country recycling the “sartorial waste” of another. “To think in that way would be to miss the whole point of it,” he says. “In the 1980s, the majority of linen produced in China, where it was treated as inferior to other materials, such as silk and wool, was exported to Japan.

“These days, to wear pure linen and cotton represents the ultimate style and luxury. In fashion as in love affairs, people sometimes need others to remind them of what they’ve got.”

Jiang does, however, lament China’s lack of recent fashion heritage. “Because of this dramatic fault-line that exists in the country’s contemporary fashion scene, it’s unfair to compare vintage fashion here with that of America, Europe or even Japan,” he says. “To look back for our own legacy would be to look past the three decades from the ’50s and ’80s, and directly into the pre-PRC era.”

“But there’s not a lot there that can be borrowed for today.”

All that, according to Jiang, explains why young people rely overly on “borrowed fashion” when they seek to make a statement by reconnecting with the past. Most of them are blissfully unaware of China’s previous and not-so-sweet encounter with these clothes.

And it is in their determination to strike out stylistically that the designer sees a distinct difference between people who shop for second-hand clothes today and those who did 20 years ago. “Between then and now, China has experienced a fashion awakening that has imbued an old trend with new meaning,” he says. “Young people are looking for style, not necessarily bargains.”

As of the end of 2008, more than 190 companies in China, including some foreign-funded firms, have published their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports — compared with 19 in 2006, according to China Business Council for Sustainable Development (CBCSD) at its annual conference this week.

Wang Jiming, executive president of the CBCSD, attributed the gain to the advocacy of CSR reports among domestic companies since the founding of the organization in January 2004.

The CBCSD has held four special workshops on the writing of the CSR report as well as four workshops on the new trends of sustainable development over the past four years, said Wang at the annual conference of the Board of the CBCSD. In 2009, more domestic companies are expected to issue their annual CSR reports, he said.

In his speech, the CBCSD president looked back at the past year, when China met rare, historic challenges in 2008, referring to catastrophic May 12 Earthquake in Sichuan and its neighboring provinces and the Beijing Olympic Games.

CBCSD members have made more than 91 million yuan (13.3 million U.S. dollars) worth of donations, in cash or kind, to the earthquake-affected areas, Wang said.

According to CBCSD president, in 2008 CBCSD members carried out a number of programs in the fields of environmental protection and industrial safety.

Thanks to the efforts made by the CBCSD, China had more cooperation and exchanges with foreign countries and international organizations in the promotion of the CSR concept worldwide, according to the CBCSD leader.

Four years ago when his wife died, Wang Zhende, 88, decided to rent out his apartment and moved into the Quyang Neighborhood Retirement Home in the north of Shanghai.

Wang has been living with his 77-year-old roommate, Ren Zeru, in a 15-sq-m room on the third floor of the home. The monthly rent rose from 800 yuan ($117) to 950 yuan this year.

Every day, Wang gets up at about 5 am and practices tai chi.

“Daytime passes quickly and I go to bed at about 6 pm,” Wang said.

With an aging population and rising demand for retirement homes in the city, many will consider Wang lucky.

Shanghai, one of the first places in the country that is seeing negative population growth, is aging fast and trying to address the problems that go with the worrying trend.

By the end of last year, there were about 70,000 beds at Shanghai’s 560 retirement homes. At the same time, more than 20 percent of Shanghai’s permanent residents, or 2.86 million, were aged above 60, official figures showed. That percentage is considered to be one of the highest in the country. By 2030, it is expected to increase to more than 33 percent.

Senior citizens in the city have an average life span of 81, according to official statistics.

Meanwhile, the number of people of working age - 15 to 59 - has been in decline, as a result of the one-child policy. That figure is expected to keep declining in the next decade.

Younger generations seeking more independence and freedom have also tended to live with their own family, instead of staying with an extended family with their parents or even grandparents.

Similarly, both Wang Zhende and Ren Zeru think that with societal development and an aging population, living in a retirement home is no longer considered the worst way to spend the remaining years of one’s life.

The four-story Quyang Neighborhood Retirement Home is situated in the middle of a block of old residential buildings built in the 1980s. It is home to 62 residents aged 60 to 100, with two or three of them sharing one room. In Wang’s room, there are two beds, two tables, a TV, an electric fan and an air-conditioner.

“I feel happy to live here with no need to worry about meals,” Wang said.

The Quyang neighborhood committee decided to turn an old house into the retirement home a decade ago, in response to the government’s request to build more facilities to accommodate the increasing number of aging people in Shanghai. The home has 24 bedrooms, two shared bathrooms on each floor, a game room, a playground, kitchen and office.

However, it is far from being able to meet the demand.

Zhu Hangmei, director of the retirement home, said people always ask her when a bed will be available.

“I have to disappoint them very often,” she said.

Gui Shixun, vice-president of the Shanghai Association of Gerontology, said that most seniors’ homes, except luxury and expensive ones, are full. “The percentage of beds that can accommodate old people that needs intensive care is also low,” he said.

“It is often the situation that there will be a bed available only when someone dies.”

Zhu admitted that her retirement home does not accept people that are in poor health - considered a common practice in most retirement homes in the city.

“To solve the problems of an aging population, we still have to depend on families and communities,” Gui said.

“I would suggest old people who are able to take care of themselves stay at their own homes, leaving beds at retirement homes for those who are most in need of them.”

To plug the gaps from rising demand, the city government has been building more neighborhood facilities and community services.

From 2005, several neighborhoods in downtown Xuhui, Putuo and Jing’an districts began providing meals to senior residents at affordable prices. About 135,000 senior citizens in Shanghai’s 210 neighborhoods can currently have such meals at neighborhood canteens.

At the Jing’an Temple neighborhood, senior citizens pay 300 yuan a month to cover all their meals and 100 yuan more for services such as laundry, bathing and massaging. Those who are too weak to leave their homes can get home-care services.

More than 120 day-care centers and 5,000 game rooms have also been built for the elderly.

A plan by the authorities aims to have 90 percent of the city’s permanent residents aged above 60 living at home, 7 percent staying at home and going to neighborhood day-care centers and 3 percent of the group living in retirement homes, by 2010.

By that time, the number of beds in the city’s retirement homes is also expected to hit 100,000.

With such day-care services by then, old citizens like Wang Zhende and Ren Zeru, who go to retirement homes because they are unable to arrange meals on their own, will probably choose to stay home instead, Zhu Hangmei said.

Bangladesh’s new national Parliament began its journey on Sunday.

The Parliament, ninth in the series since the country’s independence in 1971, was elected through Dec. 29 general elections.

The last parliament was dissolved in October 2006 and the election was slated for Jan. 22, 2007. But serious political clashes between two major parties — Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led to the postponement of the election and promulgation of the state of emergency.

Awami League President Sheikh Hasina was elected Leader of the Parliament and became prime minister as her party won landslide victory in the election on Dec. 29 securing 230 seats out of 300 in Parliament.

Her rival BNP led by chairperson Khaleda Zia, who was immediate past prime minister, suffered a miserable defeat bagging only 30 seats. Khaleda is now the Leader of the Opposition in present Parliament.

The Parliament Sunday elected Abdul Hamid as new Speaker and Shawkat Ali as Deputy Speaker.

With the Chinese government pinning its hopes for economic resurgence on stronger rural demand, the swelling ranks of jobless migrant workers are making it a much tougher task.

Chen Zhiwei is leaving home in southwest China’s countryside for his ninth year of city laboring, but he has no clear destination this year.

He quit his job at a timber plant in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province, at the end of 2008 after seeing his monthly pay shrink to 800 yuan (117.6 U.S. dollars) from 2,000 yuan.

“It was bad times — 800 yuan was not even enough for basic spending there. I had no choice but to come home,” said Chen.

Growing joblessness will slow income rises for rural residents and compound the economic troubles China faces in its attempt to boost rural consumption, a key part of domestic demand.

With less cash back for Chen’s family in rural Manjing Township, Sichuan Province, this year’s Spring Festival celebration will be subdued.

“I don’t think it will be easier (to find a job) after the lunar New Year,” he said.

The government estimates about 20 million rural migrants, or 15.3 percent of all rural workers employed outside their hometowns, have returned home without jobs.

The number reflects a harder-than-expected blow from the global financial crisis, says Tang Min, deputy secretary of the China Development Research Foundation.

Slumping foreign demand has forced China’s coastal industries to close or scale back production, claiming the jobs of millions of migrants.

“Large scale layoffs of migrant workers will take a heavy toll on rural incomes and consumption,” Tang says. Official figures show migrant wages account for about 40 percent of the average net income of rural Chinese.

Moreover, income changes affect farmers’ spending more obviously than they do for urbanites, said Wen Tiejun, head of the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China.

“Research shows if a farmer earns more, he will spend 70 percent of the increase, compared with 50 percent for an urbanite. When less money is made, rural people will cut spending more drastically than city dwellers.”

That’s bad news for Chinese authorities, who are focusing on domestic demand as the bases for faltering economic growth.

“The countryside holds the biggest potential for boosting domestic demand,” said the State Council and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in the first document of the year issued Sunday.

The document outlines policies to raise rural subsidies, improve infrastructure and better tap the vast rural market.

China should “especially place priority on tapping the rural market and developing the countryside” to alleviate the effects of the global financial crisis, said Vice Premier Wang Qishan last month.

RURAL SETBACK?

The spending potential of more than 700 million rural people, about 55 percent of China’s population, should not be underestimated, says Tang. “Rural demand is still key to China’s long term economic future.”

The average per capita net income of Chinese rural residents reached 4,761 yuan last year, a real annual growth of 8 percent.

That was down from 9.5 percent in 2007, when farm produce prices ran high, but still higher than the annual rates of 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Retail sales in towns and villages outpaced urban growth for the first time in November, rising 20.9 percent year-on-year to 210 billion yuan, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. That was 0.6 percentage points faster than the rate in cities.

However, the growing trend would suffer a setback this year as more labor-intensive enterprises fell victim to the economic downturn, says Wen Tiejun.

He says it’s still too early to say if the economic slump will go so deep as to reduce the average net income of rural families.

Chinese farmers have experienced two periods of continuous earning decreases since the market-oriented reforms were launched 30 years ago. The first came as a result of runaway inflation in late 1980s and the second was due to the Asian Financial Crisis in1997.

The first decline lasted three years and the second four years, and both were caused by sharply lower demand for farm produce, says Wen.

“This time, the non-farming revenues are affected and the crisis is global,” he says. “What we face now could be more serious.”

LONG WAY TO GO

China’s rural consumption has been accelerating since 2003, but still lags behind urban growth, even during the good times.

In 2007, retail sales of consumer goods in the country’s counties, towns and villages rose 15.8 percent to 2.88 trillion yuan, 1.4 percentage points lower than in the cities.

National economic output grew 13 percent that year, the highest annual rate since 1994. It slowed to 9 percent in 2008.

Many companies were too reliant on exports and neglected the rural market, says Tang.

He wants manufacturers to adjust product design to rural demand and expand maintenance networks in the countryside.

Chen must do his sums before he spends.

When times were good, he would send almost half his wages, about 10,000 yuan a year, back to his wife, child and parents, who subsist off just 3 mu — a fifth of a hectare — of farmland, he says.

A majority of the remittance was saved for Chen’s old age, as China’s pension insurance system does not allow fully transferring pension funds between provinces.

That left Chen with just enough to pay his rent and basic living costs.

He had wanted to buy some “big items” — better home appliances or furniture for this year’s Spring Festival — but found he could just afford new clothes for his child.

China rolled out a nationwide scheme on Sunday to offer farmers a 13-percent rebate on home appliances such as color TVs, refrigerators, mobile phones and washing machines.

The government’s efforts will be hampered further by an inevitable economic trend toward less labor-dependent capital and technology-intensive industries, says Wen.

“That is the key problem,” he says, noting the most effective solution is to sharply increase rural subsidies and investment.

The government spent 595.6 billion yuan in boosting rural development and incomes in 2008, up 37.9 percent from 2007, but Wen says there remains “a large scope” considering the proportion of rural population.

Tang suggests speeding up reforms to give migrant workers the same welfare as urban residents and improve the rural social security net as ways to ease their financial burdens.

The most urgent task, however, is to tackle unemployment. The government is urging companies to avoid layoffs if at all possible and employ more migrants in public works projects.

Authorities in Guangdong, Sichuan and Henan have offered subsidized or free skills training to unemployed migrants since December. Cheap loans and tax breaks are promised to migrants who start their own businesses.

It brings some hope to Wang Xiaodong, who was laid off in Shanghai last year and received cullinary training at home in Anhui Province.

Waiting for a train back to Shanghai after the New Year, he says he plans to open a small restaurant on the city’s outskirts with some friends, but still feels uncertain when talking about the future.

“I have to turn to others for help in almost all matters, such as applying for licenses. If I can eke out a living in the first year, I’ll be content,” he said. (Xinhua local reporter Jiang Yi also contributed to the story)

Homebuyers in Beijing will have their contract tax halved if the price is below a certain level from Nov. 24.

The Beijing municipal construction committee issued a circular on Saturday to this effect as part of its effort to encourage spending to boost the housing market and tackle the economic downturn.

For example, if a person buys a 120-sq-m apartment in the Wangjing area at the existing average price of 13,000 yuan per sq m, he/she has to pay a contract tax at the rate of 1.5 percent, instead of 3 percent because the total cost would be 1.56 million yuan.

The municipal government has made that possible by raising the tax benefit threshold to 1.65 million yuan.

Last month, the Ministry of Finance, too, cut the contract tax rate for apartments smaller than 90 sq m from 3 percent to 1 percent.

According to a 2006 municipal government rule, only people buying apartments smaller than 120 sq m for less than 9,300 yuan per sq m (in the Wangjing area), for example, were eligible to pay 1.5 percent contract tax.

But property prices have risen dramatically in Beijing in the past two years. It has become almost impossible for homebuyers to get a preferential tax treatment.

The move is aimed at rescuing the property market, said Li Wenjie, general manager of property agency Centaline China (North China region). But it may not be enough to make more people buy houses because the contract tax is only a small part of the cost.

“Especially when many developers are offering more than 10 percent discount, the tax reduction would hardly help,” he said.

Xie Yiming, an advertising company employee, has been looking for an apartment. He plans to get married next year but would still prefer to watch the market for a while.

“The price trend is important for me and friends have told me the downward trend could continue for some time,” he said.

The Beijing municipal bureau of statistics said on Saturday that the average price of apartments in October fell by 0.2 percent month-on-month, the first time since 2005. And investment in apartments in the first three quarters of this year dropped 15.7 percent year-on-year.

Chinese experts plan to take the semen of giant panda Chuang Chuang to China next year for breeding after the successful artificial insemination of partner Lin Hui, which resulted in the birth of a cub, the Bangkok Post’s website reported Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning, May 27, Lin Hui, the female panda in the Chiang Mai Zoo in the Thailand’s northern province of Chiang Mai, delivered her first baby, which has become the first panda born in Thailand and the world for 2009.

More experts from China would come to Thailand next year to take some of Chuang Chuang’s sperm to the panda research center in China for use in future artificial insemination programs, said Wei Ming, Chinese panda expert, the Bangkok Post reported.

Ming arrived at the Chiang Mai Zoo shortly after the birth of the cub to supervise Thai staff to take care of the new panda cub.

“It is good semen,” as the successful impregnation in Thailand showed Chuang Chuang’s sperm is strong and adequate for use in artificial insemination outside the breeding season, Prasertsak Boontrakulpoonthawee, chief of the panda research project at the Chiang Mai Zoo, quoted Wei Ming as saying.

“We plan to let them mate naturally and carry out artificial insemination again during 2011 and 2012,” Prasertsak said.

It is discovered that the newly-born baby panda has superb physical development, Wei Ming said earlier.

The eight-day-old baby panda is now increasingly getting black hair around its ears, front and back legs.

Also, the black patches are forming around its eyes. With an 18-centimeter-physical length, it weighted 290 grams on Tuesday.

Lin Hui and Chuang Chuang, the father of the newly-born baby panda, have been on loan from China to the Chiang Mai Zoo since 2003, as part of a panda research program.

The loan agreement will see the two pandas returned to China after 10 years, while any cub will be returned to China after two years of its birth.

On Feb. 18, 2009, Lin Hui was impregnated with artificial insemination after all efforts to arouse male Chuang Chuang’s interest in mating had failed.

Even with hit shows such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” ABC is tightening its belt as it weathers the U.S. economic downturn and tries to remain relevant in an industry challenged by digital entertainment.

“We are in one of worst economies in 70 years. We are looking at everything we can possibly do to be more efficient and more effective,” ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson told reporters on Friday.

“We have to look at everything across the board from cost cutting to (using) other platforms for smart ways to broker our efforts. It is an ongoing process. It is not a one time thing.”

McPherson, attending the networks’ semi-annual presentation to critics, said last year’s five month strike by Hollywood screenwriters had “really hurt everybody” in the traditional television industry, and he acknowledged the networks had lost viewers to other forms of entertainment.

“The world has shifted under these businesses and we need to be incredibly diligent and bold in what we do, otherwise we will be left by the wayside.” he said. “Tomorrow is here, now, and we really need to figure it out now and move forward.”

ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co, has lost about 9.7 percent of its prime time audience in the 2008-9 season compared with the same stage last year.

With the exception of current ratings leader CBS, the other two major U.S. networks Fox and NBC have also lost similar percentages since the 2008-9 season started last September.

McPherson said he hoped ABC would continue to “take chances” on shows such as “Lost” and “Dancing with the Stars” that were seen as daring when they premiered. But recent new entries, such as “Pushing Daisies,” “Eli Stone” and “Dirty Sexy Money,” failed to resonate with viewers and were canceled.

Despite the growing trend of watching television on iPods, on the Internet and on mobile phones, McPherson said ABC’s main focus remained on broadcast.

“We are still a broadcast network and that is where our revenues come from. The other platforms are important. But people ask would we do a show that would be successful on the Internet as opposed to on broadcast? … and those are always secondary thoughts,” he added.

The collision between a Russian satellite and a U.S. satellite highlights the growing importance of making international laws to monitor human activities in space,a Russian military expert told Xinhua in an interview on Friday.

The root cause of the Russia-U.S. satellite collision is the lack of international rules on space activities, said Leonid Ivashov, the president of Russia’s Academy on Geopolitical Affairs.

No matter whether Tuesday’s collision is intentional or not, it would further strain the tensions in the space situation, and even lead to the use of force, whose consequences will be very grave, Ivashov said.

He expressed concern over new challenges faced by the international security system as a result of the first-ever crash of two intact spacecrafts in orbit.

In fact, such challenges have long existed, Ivashov said, noting that a spy satellite destroyed by the United States last year might have been carrying radioactive substances. In his view, there is a trend of militarization in space activities nowadays.

It is of great urgency to take comprehensive measures, including the establishment of space management networks, so that human activities in space will be supervised and coordinated properly, he said.

The Russian expert also called on the countries which have sent spacecraft into orbit to take due responsibility.

Ivashov described Russia and China’s proposal to enact international laws on space as “necessary” and “pressing,” suggesting the two countries continue to make efforts in this regard to facilitate the formation of international agreements.

A framework document should be approved in the first place, embodying the guidelines for human activities in space and restricting the liftoff of satellites with nuclear reactors, he said.

Satellites powered by nuclear energy can be traced back to a long time ago and they generally serve military purposes, he explained.

As solar batteries cannot provide satellites with enough momentum, nuclear reactors are used to supply reliable and durable energy, he said.

But the problem is that it would be very hard to figure out if there are satellites equipped with nuclear reactors in space from Earth, Ivashov said. Both Russia and the United States now have such kind of satellites, he said.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) — The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) on Friday called all member states and international organizations to fully implement measures to curb space debris.

The appeal came after the collision of an inactive Russian satellite with an operational one from the United States.

China’s efforts to boost consumer spending to stimulate the economy amid the financial crisis should be made a long-term strategy to achieve sustained economic growth, a political advisor has proposed.

China’s consumer spending has been declining over the past ten years, when the economy is either overheating or contracting, Xu Shanda, former vice director of the State Administration of Taxation, told a plenary meeting of the country’s top political advisory body.

“There is more than the economic cycle behind the falling consumer spending,” said Xu, also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

He said the market economy would lead to an income gap that suppresses spending, as high-income people tend to invest than consume while low-income people don’t have much purchase power to spend more.

The decline in new jobs and consumer spending, which was coupled with increases in the society’s wealth in China over the past 10 years, is another testimony to the trend, he explained.

He urged the country to address such imbalances under the market-oriented economy.

China should narrow the country’s income gap to stimulate consumer spending, he said.

He advised the government to compile income statistics of different groups and routinely announce these figures, making such figures as important as targeted GDP growth and energy efficiency in evaluation of local governments.

He also suggested changing the strategy of “keeping prices of farm produce stable” into “working to moderately increase prices of farm produce in the long run” to enhance farmers’ income and narrow income gap.

He said the country should elevate the proportion of social security taxes to GDP up to more than 10 percent; as such taxes are collected to be exclusively dedicated to the social security fund. He did not give the current proportion.