Jonathan Benson - 2,000-year old Chinese herbal remedy could be used to treat autoimmune disorders, Harvard scientists find

Chang shan is a root extract of a specific type of Himalayan hydrangea plant, also known as hortensia, that has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat malaria and other maladies. And a new investigation conducted by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM), and elsewhere has revealed that this powerful natural medicine is also useful in treating autoimmune disorders.

In an effort to better understand the therapeutic benefits of chang shan, the team evaluated its active components and observed that one component in particular, halofuginone (HF), blocks the development of T helper 17 (Th17) cells. Th17 cells are highly inflammatory cells that appear to play a primary role in the development of autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease.

Building upon previous research that identified how HF activates the body's amino acid response (AAR) pathway, the team was able to identify that HF specifically targets and blocks an enzyme known as tRNA synthetase EPRS, which is responsible for incorporating proline, an amino acid, into cells. This blockage essentially tells the AAR not to activate the inflammatory immune responses associated with autoimmune disorders.

"HF prevents the autoimmune response without dampening immunity altogether," said Malcolm Whitman, a professor of developmental biology at HSDM, and senior author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. "This compound could inspire novel therapeutic approaches to a variety of autoimmune disorders."

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/z035661_Chinese_medicine_autoimmune_disorders_herbs.html

Ron Unz - Chinese Melamine or American Vioxx: Half a million dead and no questions asked

In contrasting China and America, pundits often cite our free and independent media as one of our greatest strengths, together with the tremendous importance which our society places upon individual American lives. For us, a single wrongful death can sometimes provoke weeks of massive media coverage and galvanize the nation into corrective action, while life remains cheap in China, a far poorer land of over a billion people, ruled by a ruthless Communist Party eager to bury its mistakes. But an examination of two of the greatest public-health scandals of the last few years casts serious doubt on this widespread belief. 

What follows is an extraordinary report by Ron Unz, publisher of the American Conservative, part of his larger feature just published by the TAC,  “China’s Rise, America’s Fall. “ Ron makes the charge that perhaps 500,000 or more premature American deaths may have resulted from Vioxx, a figure substantially larger than the 3,468 deaths of named individuals acknowledged by Merck during the settlement of its lawsuit. And almost no one among our political or media elites seems to know or care about this possibility. 

Ron writes to us : “I remember back in 2005, I was reading my morning newspapers, as I always do, and noticed those tiny, buried items about the unprecedented drop in the American death rate.  Hmm I said, I wonder if that might have anything to do with all those other stories about that deadly drug recently taken off the market and all the resulting lawsuits.  I never got around to looking into it, and apparently nobody in the media did either.

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HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/04/20/CHINESE-MELAMINE-OR-AMERICAN-VIOXX-HALF-A-MILLION-DEAD-AND-NO-QUESTIONS-ASKED/

Conn Hallinan - China’s Economy: The Frog and the Scorpion

Behind the political crisis that saw the recent fall of powerful Communist Party leader Bo Xiali is an internal battle over how to handle China’s slowing economy and growing income disparity, while shifting from a cheap labor export driven model to one built around internal consumption. Since China is the second largest economy on the planet—and likely to become the first in the next 20 to 30 years—getting it wrong could have serious consequences, from Beijing to Brasilia, and from Washington to Mumbai.

China’s current major economic challenges include a dangerous housing bubble, indebted local governments, and a widening wealth gap, problems replicated in most of the major economies in the world. Worldwide capitalism—despite China’s self-description as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”—is in the most severe crisis since the great crash of the 1930s.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/06/chinas-economy/

A new report by UHRP- Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities

A new 89-page report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) documents the Chinese state’s top-down destruction of Uyghur communities in Kashgar and throughout East Turkestan, in a targeted and highly politicized push that Chinese officials have accelerated in the wake of turbulent unrest in the region in 2009. Living on the Margins: The Chinese State’s Demolition of Uyghur Communities reveals how the destruction of Uyghur neighborhoods has resulted in the loss of both physical structures, including Uyghur homes, shops and religious sites, and patterns of traditional Uyghur life that cannot be replicated in the new, heavily-monitored Chinese-style apartment blocks where many have been forcibly relocated.

This report does not discount the importance of providing modern structural amenities to Uyghurs. However, it asserts a failure on the part of Chinese authorities to engage in meaningful consultation with Uyghurs regarding how they wish to transform their own communities. The report details the international and domestic legal instruments to which the Chinese government is bound that are designed to protect residents from forcible eviction from their homes and ensure that indigenous populations, such as the Uyghurs, have the right to develop according to their own principles.   

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http://uyghuramerican.org/article/new-report-uhrp-living-margins-chinese-state%E2%80%99s-demolition-uyghur-communities.html

Martin Jacques - China's path to reform

Last week's dismissal of Bo Xilai, the party secretary of Chongqing province, casts this autumn's Chinese Communist party congress, with the anticipated replacement of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao by Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, in a dramatic new light.

Bo Xilai, son of a former Communist party leader and veteran of the Long March, has been exploiting his office for a thinly veiled campaign for a place on the party's nine-member standing committee that runs China. His fall was triggered when his righthand man in Chongqing, the police chief Wang Lijun, sought refuge in the American consulate in Chengdu, claiming that his life was under threat from Bo.

From that moment, Bo's career was in doubt. The coup de grace was delivered by Wen at a press conference at the annual National People's Congress, when he warned that China risked another "historical tragedy" like the cultural revolution and that the Chongqing party had to "seriously reflect on the Wang Lijun incident". Bo's dismissal followed almost immediately.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/18/china-path-to-reform-argument

Dr. Thorsten Pattberg - Diary of a Mad Imperialist: Why Countries Stay in Abusive Relationships

About 111 years ago, the German emperor Wilhelm II. farewelled the East-Asian Expedition Corps from Bremen's harbor to China in order to beat down China's resistance to European imperialism. His orders were unequivocal: bring civilization to China, show no mercy to reactionaries, and teach China a memorable lesson so that no Chinaman will ever dare to look askant at one of us. Things of course have changed since then.

Airplanes have been invented. Germany's Federal Minister of Education and Research and her delegation of top officials once again landed in Shanghai. China's Pearl River Delta's megalopolis is more populous than Germany's capital Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and the next ten biggest German cities combined. It's awesome.

The Federal Minister certainly prefers Beijing, China's capital and the center of politics and educational policy. Yet, most of the schaffenden Germans, those who actually produce material value since bilateral trade agreements began in 1979, have traditionally settled in Shanghai and farther down in the industrial south, Shenzhen and Guangdong, China's manufacturing bases. Over 5300 German companies are active in China, and 8000 German administrators are stationed in Shanghai alone.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29653

China's urbanization unlikely to lead to fast growth of middle class

The number of people living in China's cities, which last year for the first time surpassed 50 percent of the national population, is considered a boon for the consumer goods market. That is based on the assumption that there will be more families with more disposable income when poor farmers from China's countryside move to cities and become middle-class industrial and office workers.

But the assumption overlooks a policy from the era of Chinese leader Mao Zedong that restricts the upward mobility of its rural citizens, says a University of Washington geographer.

This calls into question China's strength in the global market and its ability to overtake the United States as a global superpower, according to Kam Wing Chan, a UW professor of geography.

His findings are published in the current issue of the journal Eurasian Geography and Economics.

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http://www.sinodaily.com/reports/China_urbanization_unlikely_to_lead_to_fast_growth_of_middle_class_999.html

S P Seth - Is US-China collision inevitable?

Even as Iran has come centre-stage of another likely military conflict in the Middle East with the US and its western allies determined to force it to forgo its nuclear programme, the Asia-Pacific region is emerging as another potential trouble spot pitting China against the US. With the US now disengaged from Iraq, and in the process of military withdrawal from Afghanistan by 2014, it has dawned on Washington that China has strengthened its role in the Asia-Pacific and is slowly, but steadily, working to push it out of the region. China regards the Asia-Pacific as its strategic space and the US as an external power. The US has decided to hit back by declaring that it is not going anywhere and, indeed, will beef up its military presence in the region. Straddling both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, the US considers itself a legitimate Pacific country.

US-China relations have never been easy. They are likely to become even more complicated after the recent announcement of a US defence review that prioritises the Asia-Pacific region. Even though the review seeks to make sizeable cuts of about $500 billion in the US’s defence budget over the next 10 years, it would not be at the cost of its engagement with the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, as President Obama told reporters, “We will be strengthening our presence in the Asia-Pacific...”

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29117

Christopher Sabatini - China’s Geostrategic Designs on Latin America

In the last 5 years China’s military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean have grown at an unprecedented rate.   Beijing now regularly hosts officers from Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay  in its military academies, has expanded arms sales and technology transfers to countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Venezuela, and in October last year even sent  a navy ship to the Caribbean.

Is China—now Brazil and Chile’s number-one trade partner—buttressing its economic interests in the Western Hemisphere with military ties and alliances?  Is this the Middle Kingdom’s equivalent of President Barack Obama’s Pacific pivot to balance China’s saber rattling in Asia? There’s no doubt that China’s torrid economic growth rate and its arrival as an emerging—if not already emerged—global economic superpower has shifted the international system and brought a more muscular Chinese foreign policy.  That policy—part of what the Chinese labeled its “Going Out” strategy—has come with a growing Chinese diplomatic, economic and even military presence in many of its closest trade partners.  Given China’s need for raw materials to feed its manufacturing growth and urbanization—gobbling up everything from iron, to oil, to soybeans and frozen chicken—the country’s rise has been felt most obviously (at times with alarm) in the developing world, including Latin America.

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http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/3311

John Cherian - New Military Doctrine: America is "Looking for Enemies": Threatening China

The new United States military doctrine “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defence”, officially unveiled in January, is a clear indication that Washington's focus has once again shifted to China and the Asia Pacific region. The U.S. had not really shifted its gaze away from the region as it fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly half of U.S. Air Force F-22 jet fighters have been based in the Asia Pacific region. Two U.S. aircraft carriers have always been around in the region. As many as 22,000 U.S. troops are permanently based in South Korea. In the 2006 Quadrennial Review, the Pentagon had allocated six aircraft carriers and 60 per cent of the U.S.' submarines to the Pacific. Washington had approved a $-6 billion arms deal with Taiwan despite strenuous objections from China. Before the new Pentagon strategy was announced, President Barack Obama announced the permanent stationing of U.S. troops in Australia.

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http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28943