Let’s say you were sitting outside a Sydney bistro enjoying a lunch of chilled heirloom tomato soup and hummus with pita bread. Your life is good, but you’ve also noticed some odd things: The weather’s always warm and sunny, Sydney somehow manages to hold one billion people, and it’s been the year 1999 for the past 50 years. Then suddenly Keanu Reeves walks up to you, and says your life is a lie; he implores you to seek truth and freedom, and follow him into a world where there’s neither sunlight nor 'Seinfield,' and you’ll have to live under the earth and fight against omnipotent machines in a war in which your only hope is Keanu Reeves.

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In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduces us to Chris Langan, an American with an exceptionally high IQ who dropped out of university because he couldn’t convince his professor to let him skip one class for work. Gladwell contrasts Langan with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who as a doctorate student at Cambridge once tried to poison his advisor. When he was caught, Oppenheimer convinced the university authorities to put him on probation instead of calling the police. Both men were decidedly brilliant, but whereas Chris Langan went on to become a nightclub bouncer J. Robert Oppenheimer went on to secure everlasting fame with the Manhattan Project.

The authors of Freakonomics explain that economists have long discovered that parents’ profession is a much better indicator of success for their child than either IQ or education. The existing data tells us that an individual neglected and abused by two divorced alcoholic doctors is likely to perform better economically in life than an individual raised in a loving household by two Wal-Mart clerks who read their child bedtime stories and who taketheir child to the opera.

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A good piece by writer and former Economist editor Bill Emmott today in the Times that makes a similar point to the one I did yesterday—that it’s time for China to step up and at least censure North Korea over the sinking of the Cheonan.

Indeed, Emmott takes the argument a step further and suggests that while international attention media is currently largely focused on the BP oil spill, that China’s current stance could ultimately precipitate a clash between the People’s Republic and the United States.

The scenario he lays out goes something like this: Kim Jong-il dies suddenly (and as Emmott notes, this isn’t an unreasonable proposition considering how frail Kim looked in footage of his recent trip to China), and there ensues a struggle over the secession. The US, concerned about the nuclear weapons that Pyongyang has falling into the wrong hands, sends in troops to secure said nukes. South Korea, meanwhile, presses for a Germany-style reunification.

What exactly would North Korea have to do to receive a public rebuke from China? This is the question that springs to mind after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo shied away from backing a call by Japan and South Korea to condemn Pyongyang over the March sinking of the South Korea vessel Cheonan.

The leaders of the three countries have just concluded a two-day summit that had originally been arranged to focus on trade issues, but unsurprisingly attention turned to whether Security Council veto-wielding China would join Japanese and South Korean efforts to have North Korea condemned or sanctioned by the UN. Instead, Wen reportedly stated that the ‘urgent task for the moment is to properly handle the serious impact caused by the Cheonan incident, gradually defuse tensions over it, and avoid possible conflicts.’

It’s been a busy week of hosting for the Chinese leadership. As I mentioned, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have been in town (with discussions on North Korea taking up much of their time), while yesterday, Indian President Pratibha Patil arrived in Beijing to meet with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao.

According to reports, a host of issues were raised, while bilateral agreements on civil administration, sports and visas were also signed. It was the issue of visas that stoked tensions between the two nations last year, when it was learned that China had begin issuing separate visas for Kashmiris. The provocative change was introduced last May, apparently because China sees Kashmir as disputed territory; the decision incensed India.

With media reports about Chinese incursions into the disputed border area of Ladakh, some analysts (and certainly the media) felt the situation had deteriorated enough to at least warrant discussion of whether some sort of conflict between the two was possible.

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Here’s an interesting experiment. Take a moment and see how many Chinese brands you can think of. Cars, electronics, food and beverage companies—anything at all. Stumped?

I admit this isn’t my question, but one posed this week by Washington Post writer John Pomfret. As Pomfret notes, China last year overtook Germany to become the world’s largest exporter (China’s exports totalled about $1.2 trillion). But he suggests the country’s lack of globally-recognized brands could hinder its rise to superpower status:

‘No big marquee brands means China is stuck doing the global grunt work in factory cities while designers and engineers overseas reap the profits. Much of Apple's iPhone, for example, is made in China. But if a high-end version costs $750, China is lucky to hold on to $25. For a pair of Nikes, it's four pennies on the dollar.’

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On Monday, I introduced Principal Wang Zheng, who took over at Shenzhen Middle School in April 2002. Underlying all of Principal Wang’s reforms were several assumptions that would seem correct to Westerners but too visionary to Chinese. First and foremost, Principal Wang believed that the national examination was a test that students could cram for in one year instead of three years. In other words, preparation for the national examination was a distinct and separate project from education. That’s why he instituted a system whereby students would for the first two years learn to understand choice and responsibility in order to become productive citizens; for their final year they would be isolated in the school’s western campus so that they could cram for the national examination.

This was in itself controversial, but what truly outraged parents, teachers, and government officials was that Principal Wang recognized his limitations as an educator. Having been an educator all his life he understood that there were going to be intelligent students who wouldn’t need to study that much,much less intelligent students who were going to flunk the national examination no matter how hard they studied, students obsessed with testing for Peking,students who wanted to work for Goldman Sachs and students who were happy being bartenders. His greatest achievement, his legacy, and ultimately his undoing was that he accepted the individuality and diversity of the student pool, and permitted students to decide their own destiny.

Unsurprisingly, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to China has so far been dominated by talks with Chinese officials over the sinking of a South Korean warship, an act presumed to have been carried out by North Korea.

Assuming conspiracy theories such as those outlined by Japanese writer Tanaka Sakai, who suggested that the Cheonan may have been sunk by ‘friendly’ US fire rather than a North Korean torpedo, are wide of the mark (and this version of events was itself seemingly torpedoed when a US submarine Sakai said may also have been sunk turned up in Hawaii) China won’t be amused by its Communist brethren’s actions.

China is generally seen as the only country with anything approaching influence over the Hermit Kingdom, and it will (or certainly should have) been thankful for South Korea’s measured response—South Korean officials were restrained following the March 26 sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, downplaying speculation Pyongyang was responsible and initially suggesting it was a North Korean mine left over from the two countries’ conflict.

But after a joint, multi-country investigation found what it described as ‘overwhelming’ evidence that North Korea was indeed responsible, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had little choice but to announce a tough response, suspending trade and demanding an apology. Lee also said that South Korea would refer the matter to the UN Security Council, a move that puts permanent member China in the spotlight.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is scheduled to visit Seoul on Friday for talks with Lee, but Chinese Foreign Ministry officials have reportedly urged ‘calmness and restraint’. Presumably they’d acknowledge that the South’s response has, until now, demonstrated exactly that (although it has now resumed ‘psychological warfare’ in the form of loudspeaker broadcasts that have been on hold for the past six years).

Beijing has no interest in conflict or a North Korean collapse, so its caution is understandable. But Wen will also need to ask himself how Beijing would respond to the inevitable domestic pressure that would follow in the event of a similar incident occurring with a Chinese vessel.

The pressure to respond would be enormous, as the reaction to the accidental bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 demonstrates. Back then, China's ambassador to the United Nations described ‘NATO's barbarian act’ as ‘a gross violation of the United Nations charter, international law and the norms governing international relations’ and tens of thousands of Chinese took to the streets in sometimes violent protests. Meanwhile, apologies by Bill Clinton and US officials were initially not allowed to be broadcast by state media.

Not exactly in the interests of calmness or restraint.
 

Shenzhen municipality in south China’s Guangdong Province formally announced the appointment of Wang Zheng as principal of its flagship public high school in April, 2002. Shenzhen’s mayor himself flew to Beijing to invite Peking University High School’s vice principal to take up this position, and Wang Zheng’s appointment was seen as a triumph and coup d’état for a booming metropolis less renowned for its schools and culture than for its sweatshop factories and foot massage parlours.

Wang Zheng and Shenzhen at first seemed like an odd couple: the former was the scion of a distinguished Beijing family of educators, and the latter a fishing village plucked from obscurity by Deng Xiaoping’s decision in the late 1970s to test the free market in four special economic zones. But both shared an irrepressible and irreversible belief in reform.　

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Another week and, sadly it seems, another multiple stabbing in China. The latest incident came in southern China, where a number of knife-wielding men reportedly broke into a vocational school dormitory and started slashing at students.

In this latest case, the attack seems to have been prompted by something specific (an earlier dispute at a barbecue stall). But it comes after a string of attacks since March on educational facilities that have claimed, according to Reuters, 27 lives, while dozens more have been injured.

One of the most immediate concerns for the government has been how much media coverage to allow of the attacks, with the Propaganda Department ordering that coverage be kept off the front pages of domestic newspapers, with reports to follow the official Xinhua News Agency’s lead. The government defends the restrictions by arguing that allowing front page coverage only inspires copycat crimes (and the earlier attacks were certainly eerily similar, with everyday household objects such as kitchen knives and cleavers being used on small children).

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