Google's social network Google+ hits 20 million visitors

Google+ has had 20 million unique visitors –- 5 million of them in the U.S. -- since it launched the social networking service three weeks ago, research firm ComScore reports.

"It is definitely the fastest ascent to 20 million visitors that I can think of," said Andrew Lipsman, ComScore's vice president of industry analysis.

The new data shows that explosive growth even though Google has not officially rolled out the service or marketed it to its more than 1 billion search engine users. It comes just a week after Google Chief Executive Larry Page said that Google+ had more than 10 million users and that they were sharing and receiving more than 1 billion items a day.

"We are really excited about our progress with Google+," he said.

Google+ is Google's most credible effort yet to counter the growing reach of Facebook, which, with more than 750 million users, is competing with the Internet search giant for eyeballs and advertising dollars.

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China feeling like No. 1 with a bullet train

A high-profile stretch of the high-speed rail system opens, an event meant to showcase national achievement as the Chinese Communist Party marks its 90th birthday. But there's been some controversial baggage to handle along the way.


Reporting from Beijing—
It's the fastest thing on land with a "Made in China" label — a bullet train that speeds past unfinished suburbs and broken farmhouses at nearly 200 mph between Beijing and Shanghai in a blur of national pride.

Opened to the public Thursday, the landmark line connects China's two biggest cities and is meant to showcase the country's innovative muscle and give the Chinese Communist Party a shot of legitimacy as it celebrates its 90th birthday.

In a nation obsessed with feats of engineering such as the Three Gorges Dam and the world's longest sea bridge (also unveiled Thursday), the national high-speed rail network is something akin to the U.S. space program.

"This has become a matter of national face," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a professor of sociology at People's University in Beijing. "We love building gigantic projects."

But it hasn't always been a smooth ride for the $32.5-billion project, which has become a controversial symbol in the country's growing divide between rich and poor.

Criticism abounds, mostly online, over the project's whopping price tag and the steep cost of tickets. The cheapest fare for the Beijing-Shanghai line is $86, equivalent to one-tenth of an average urbanite's monthly salary. And doubts have even been raised over that "Made in China" label.

But China's leaders say they've opened up a crucial artery that will expand the flow of people and commerce between the country's two most important engines — one its political center, the other its commercial heart.

China's overtaxed transportation system, namely rail, has long been cited as a barrier to economic growth. Although its efficiency can be debated, Beijing has demonstrated time and again that it's willing to spend massive amounts of money to ensure it has the infrastructure to move the country forward.

The Beijing-Shanghai line is now the crown jewel of a system that already stretches nearly 5,000 miles. The plan is to double the size of the network by 2020, taking riders everywhere from the southern factory hub of Guangzhou to the frosty northern outpost of Harbin to the western frontier city of Urumqi.

The sleek blue-and-white trains known as the Harmony Express take less than five hours to commute from Beijing South Railway Station to Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station, an 800-mile journey that crosses the same distance as a trip from Los Angeles to Albuquerque but takes more than three times as long on Amtrak.

"I want to know what it feels like to go 300 kilometers [186 miles] an hour," said Li Zhongxin, 40, who canceled his plans to fly to Shanghai when he learned the high-speed line was opening and bought a $165 one-way rail ticket instead. "Maybe I'll give up flying altogether."

Ninety trips in each direction are scheduled daily in a trip so steady that beverages on board barely register a ripple. China Central Television proved the point by standing a cigarette upright on a train's window ledge. (Although the most groundbreaking aspect of the train may actually be that it's all nonsmoking, a huge leap for a country where it's fine to puff away in a hospital.)

The mega-project was marred by a major corruption scandal in February that led to the dismissal of Railway Minister Liu Zhijun, a powerful apparatchik who boasted of how quickly the system was being built and how little the Chinese were relying on foreign expertise.

Liu was accused in local news reports of taking $125 million in kickbacks that allegedly led to shoddy construction and safety hazards, including on the Beijing-Shanghai corridor.

The controversy was heightened when Zhou Yimin, a former lieutenant of Liu's, said in media interviews last week that the former chief wanted to push the trains faster than they were capable of going.

Zhou, who has left the Rail Ministry, said the trains owed more to European and Japanese engineering than Chinese, and also worried the project was being constructed dangerously fast.

"Most of the high-speed trains in other countries need three to five years of testing before being operational commercially," he told the 21st Century Business Herald. "But what about our [trains]? The project was only 1 to 2 years old, and it already went into mass production."

Current officials have dismissed the concerns, but skepticism ran high in April when the ministry announced it would reduce the train speeds from as much as 236 mph to cut costs for passengers and increase safety. The reduction meant the trains would run no faster than their Japanese and European counterparts.

While critics joked that China was taking the speed out of high-speed rail, some scholars and economists maintained that the sprawling system would provide immediate benefits to the country.

For one, commerce will flow faster and more freely between nearby cities, especially urban centers in the isolated west. The high-speed trains would also free up space on traditional tracks, providing an additional 50 million tons of badly needed freight capacity each year. Adding more room for passengers is also welcome in a country that seizes up with congestion during its national holidays.

"This will be a boon for the economy," said Guo Xiucheng, a transportation expert at Southeast University in Nanjing. "The volume of capital moving across China will now be greatly improved."

At the Beijing South station Thursday afternoon, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivered a speech and boarded the first train for Shanghai, the "G1" that left at 3 p.m. Police and media swarmed the cavernous station. A local television team provided a live broadcast from inside the train.

Tao Yu, a computer technician from Shanghai waiting to board the train, was getting into the patriotic spirit.

"I'm very proud because it's our technology," said Tao, 37, dragging a suitcase on wheels. "Some say it's German or Japanese technology, but all these trains look the same. This one's ours."

National duty aside, Tao, a regular commuter between the two cities, said he had a very practical reason for taking the train.

"I'm so scared of flying," he said. "I hate turbulence. People are meant to be on the ground."

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China tries to put brakes on overheated economy

A woman walks past signs on a retail street in Beijing. China’s economy expanded at an annualized rate of 9.5% in the second quarter, slightly slower than the first quarter, thanks largely to efforts by authorities to cut bank lending and hike interest rates.

Reporting from Beijing—

While the Obama administration struggles to jump-start the stalled U.S. recovery, policymakers in Beijing have an opposite but equally formidable task: putting the brakes on China's speeding economy without triggering a slump.

How well they succeed holds enormous consequences for the world economy, where China has emerged as one of the few reliable engines of growth.

The government announced this week that China's economy expanded at an annualized rate of 9.5% in the second quarter from a year earlier. That's slightly slower than the first quarter, thanks largely to efforts by authorities to cut bank lending and hike interest rates. Their hope is to tame inflation that's angering the nation's consumers, and to let some air out of a worrisome real estate bubble that many fear could burst.

Although China's gross domestic product growth is the envy of slow-growing industrialized nations, cracks are emerging in its economic model. China leaned heavily on housing construction, public works — and billions in government borrowing — to power through the global slowdown. You can see it in empty highways paid for with public debt, in vacant new apartment blocks in Chinese cities and in the faces of grumpy shoppers in the produce aisles where prices for basics are soaring beyond the reach of average households.

The worry is that this kind of stimulus has artificially juiced China's economy, making it vulnerable to a hard landing. How severe the challenges are is open to debate. Many analysts are confident that China can slow growth without derailing its economy. But what's acknowledged by experts both inside and outside of China is that the nation's current path is unsustainable.

"They are at a crossroads, needing to shift to a new model," said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Visitors to China can't help but be amazed by the frenzy of construction taking place across the country, where shopping malls, office towers, apartment buildings, subways and bullet trains are being completed in record time. What isn't as visible is the ocean of debt that financed this binge — and growing concerns about how it will be paid back.

In a bid to insulate China's economy from the global financial crisis and weakened demand for China's exports, authorities encouraged banks to lend, particularly for real estate development and public works that create a lot of local jobs. Fixed asset investment — the construction of infrastructure and buildings — doubled between 2007 and 2010 as developers availed themselves of cheap financing.

The result: Some Chinese cities are awash in vacant commercial space and unsold apartment units. In the first half of this year, home sales dropped 20% in Beijing, 26% in the western boomtown of Chongqing and 61% in the speculative hotbed of Haikou on Hainan island, according to the China Index Academy, a property research firm.

Local government debt has also skyrocketed. The careers of many Chinese local officials depend on creating jobs and economic growth, but the central government prohibits cities from issuing their own bonds to finance public works. To sidestep that prohibition, municipalities across the country have created off-the-books entities to do the borrowing. A national audit released in June found that local governments had amassed $1.65 trillion in loans by the end of last year — a sum equal to nearly a third of China's GDP.

"China has developed a huge debt burden in the past two years due to the fiscal stimulus in the wake of the global financial crisis, on top of a post-crisis property bubble," wrote Vincent Chan, an analyst for Credit Suisse, in a report released last month.

Although much of that investment will no doubt boost China's competitiveness in the long run, billions have also flowed to make-work, vanity projects of dubious quality. Case in point: a portion of a twisting mountain road in the southern province of Yunnan collapsed a day after opening last month.

Analysts said China's banks probably would have to restructure billions in loans. Authorities have been tightening credit standards and hiking interest rates.

But that's making it tough for many small and medium-size private companies to get the financing they need to thrive.

"It's very tough to get loans now," said Huang Fajing, a cigarette lighter manufacturer in the southern city of Wenzhou who was recently told by his bank that his credit line was being trimmed. "I've had to scale back stockpiling raw materials."

Meanwhile, Huang said, costs of supplies, wages and energy have been rising, cutting into his profits as China struggles with rising inflation.

Consumers too are getting socked by rising prices, a major cause of concern for Chinese authorities who are worried about the potential for social unrest.

Last month the price of pork, a staple of the Chinese diet, was up 57% from a year earlier. To minimize sticker shock, grocers have resorted to displaying the price per half kilogram rather than the usual 1 kilogram, hoping that customers won't notice.

Lao Li, a 67-year-old retiree, was in disbelief as he carefully inspected the pork selection recently at a Beijing supermarket.

"It's so expensive. What is this?" he asked his wife.

"Gold," she replied.

The couple left with the cheapest thing they could find: half a kilogram of ground pork for about $2.

China's leaders say they will have food prices under control soon. But economists said the country would have to wean itself from its dependence on public works and construction to ensure sustainable, long-term growth.

"The longer investment-led growth continues, the greater the risk that capital is misallocated and that overcapacity becomes a serious issue," said Mark Williams, an analyst for Capital Economics. "In other words, while near-term risks have abated, the challenge of sustaining rapid growth over the long term has increased."

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China's high-speed rail glitches: Racing to make errors?

Problems with China's new high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai have added to suspicions that the government had rushed several big projects in order to have them open in time for the Communist Party's 90th anniversary celebration.


A high-speed train arrives at Nanjing South Railway Station during a test run. (ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images / June 23, 2011)
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times

July 16, 2011
Reporting from Beijing—

China's high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai has been beset by glitches in the two weeks since it opened to great fanfare on the eve of the Chinese Communist Party's 90th anniversary celebration.

In the first incident, a short-circuit delayed 19 trains in Shandong province on Sunday, knocking out air-conditioning and leaving passengers sweltering inside the luxury cars for hours.

On Tuesday, another power outage brought 30 trains to a temporary halt. And on Wednesday, a transformer malfunction slowed a train to half its top speed, forcing passengers onto a backup train.

Though officials blamed thunderstorms and wind for the problems, the delays add to the suspicion that so-called face projects had been rushed in China to open in time for the party's anniversary on July 1.

The projects include the world's longest sea bridge, which opened June 30 in the northeastern city of Qingdao without lights and guardrails in some sections. A China Central Television reporter inspecting the 26-mile Jiaozhou Bay Bridge found nut caps loosely fastened into existing guardrails. Construction workers told the state broadcaster that they still needed two months to complete the span.

In another controversy, workers rushed to install temporary granite flooring in the newly built Nanjing South Railway Station to meet the anniversary deadline. Ten days later, they were seen tearing up the tiles in the state-of-the-art station, said to be the biggest in the world at nearly 5 million square feet.

The renovations will cost about $1.5 million, a fraction of the super-structure's total $1-billion price tag.

Cities and ministries often present gifts on important dates to bestow respect and legitimacy to leaders. The tradition dates to imperial times and has not been lost under communism. It is not unusual for China to unveil its latest weapons on Oct. 1, the country's National Day.

The party's 90th anniversary was a particularly significant event that has been marked by large galas, a spike in travel to communist battle sites and the revival of revolutionary music known as red songs. It made for a unique set of pressures for construction workers who had to meet the deadline.

"Other countries don't have these political issues," said Zhao Jian, a professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and a longtime critic of China's high-speed rail program. "But a lot of other projects are rushed too so they can make profits."

The string of incidents in recent days has generated no shortage of ridicule online.

"The Jiaozhou bridge started operating when it's still incomplete; Nanjing South Railway Station continued construction after it was opened; what are we rushing for? Are our hormones still normal in these days of red songs?" wrote Fan Jisheng on Sina Weibo, the country's wildly popular micro-blogging service.

A video shot by a passenger of a weeping attendant on one of the bullet trains stranded on Sunday has gone viral. The rail employee was shown being surrounded by angry travelers, one of whom was berating her for crying. "You can't try to solve the problems with your tears," the passenger said.

The rail mishaps are particularly embarrassing because the $32.5-billion project was considered the crown jewel in China's ambitious high-speed network. The Ministry of Rail had already come under fire for a massive corruption scandal this year over alleged safety flaws and high-priced tickets.

It did not help that a spokesman for the ministry boasted last week that China's new trains were superior to Japan's. The comment was in response to threats by Japanese companies to sue if China patented high-speed rail technology they believe originated in Japan.

The breakdowns this week no doubt elicited a level of schadenfreude in the Japanese media, something that wasn't lost on rail ministry spokesman Wang Yongping in an online chat with the public Thursday.

"We welcome foreign media's good-natured criticism and reasonable suggestions, but are sad that some media outlets are gloating," Wang said. "They should make sure they are taking care of their own business before they make these sorts of comments."

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North Korea flouts ban on luxury goods, South Korea charges

North Korea spent $10 million on items such as fine whiskey and American cigarettes, imported via China, in the first half of the year, South Korean officials say. The allegations come as North Korea is seeking international aid to feed its people.



Cleaners rappel down the front of a shopping mall displaying the logo of Italian fashion label Giorgio Armani in central Beijing. (Reuters)
By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

July 22, 2011
Reporting from Seoul—
The news reports detail such conspicuous consumption as imported top-shelf whiskey and designer brands such as Gucci, Armani and Rolex, not to mention Big Macs flown in daily from China.

As North Koreans are said to be facing debilitating food shortages, the government continues its shopping spree for the pampered elites of Pyongyang flouting international sanctions against the authoritarian regime, South Korean government officials say.

North Korea's importing of luxury goods from China nearly doubled in the first five months of this year, compared with the same time period for 2010, according to a report by Beijing customs officials obtained by the South Korean Unification Ministry.

The communist regime spent $46 million on imported corn, rice and other food staples, but it also spent $10 million on luxury items from January through May of this year. Imported through China, the items reportedly include Marlboro cigarettes, Hennessy cognac, whiskey and Japanese beer, South Korean officials said this week, quoting the Chinese customs report.

The imports included about $500,000 worth of high-grade beef, apparently for luxury meals, which North Korean leader Kim Jong Il uses to maintain the support of the power elite, Seoul officials said.

The imports come despite United Nations Security Council sanctions on North Korea that were imposed after the regime conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Though the sanctions bar Pyongyang from exporting conventional weapons and importing luxury goods, China, North Korea's main trading partner, appears willing to overlook the measure, Unification Ministry officials told South Korean news media.

Since reports of famine in the 1990s, North Korea has relied on global food aid to feed its population of 24 million. This year, the regime again requested food aid, citing reduced crop yields. Though the European Union plans to send $14.5 million in food aid, the United States and South Korea have been reticent to supply such aid.

Some scholars believe that North Korea has exaggerated its need for food, alleging that the aid is turned over to the military or stored for future use, such as a planned celebration next year to mark the anniversary of the regime.

"I do not believe these claims about mass starvation," said Andrei N. Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and the author of several books on North Korean history and politics.

He called the move by Pyongyang "a deliberate campaign to get free food, which will then be distributed to the privileged groups as government gifts. This will allow them to increase their legitimacy and win some popular support at the expense of the Western and South Korean taxpayers."

Meanwhile, the regime continues its spending spree. Pyongyang elites reportedly have McDonald's hamburgers delivered to their homes from China via Air Koryo, North Korea's flagship airline.

"This is the dilemma Western policymakers face, whether to overlook excesses and concentrate on the poor," said Daniel Pinkston, deputy project manager of the Northeast Asia Program for the nonprofit International Crisis Group.

"North Korea isn't the only place with a two-tiered system, but it is an extreme example," he said. "And the inequality seems only to be increasing."

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In India, 'cheer queens' opt for saris

The cheerleading squad for the Indian cricket team Pune Warriors takes a traditional-culture, fully clothed approach to motivate players and fans. It calls for complex hand waves and traditional dance steps in saris.



Cheerleaders perform during the Pune Warriors' match against Kings XI Punjab in Mumbai, India. The Warriors introduced their traditional-culture, fully clothed "cheer queens" this year. (Rajanish Kakade / Associated Press / April 10, 2011)

Reporting from New Delhi—

Can sari-clad "cheer queens" stand up to short-skirted pom-pom girls?

That's a question Indian cricket fans are pondering after a team here introduced a cheerleading squad wrapped head to toe in traditional garb, its members eschewing high kicks and splits for complex hand waves and traditional dance steps.

"The concept of cheer queens is an extraordinary way of showcasing our national artistic heritage to the world," says Abhijit Sarkar, director of the Pune Warriors.

Others say it's a nice idea, done somewhere else.

"If you want fine arts, go to a hall," said cricket columnist Ayaz Memon.

Cheerleading arrived in India three years ago with the inception of a shorter, more TV-friendly form of cricket, a three-hour version of a game that, in its purest form, lasts five days with breaks for tea.

To attract audiences to the glitzy new Indian Premier League, organizers drew on an age-old principle — sex sells — and introduced U.S.-style cheerleaders in bikinis, miniskirts and high boots.

Many male fans welcomed the idea. But right-wing, religious and feminist groups quickly condemned it as "vulgar," "walking porn" and "frivolous eye candy" in a nation where, Kama Sutra aside, sensuality is not frequently discussed or displayed in public.

The fact that at least half the cheerleaders were foreigners, including several members of the Washington Redskins cheerleading squad with short skirts and what the Hindustan Times described as "teeny-weeny blouses," only fueled the kerfuffle.

They're "worse than bar dancers," complained Maharashtra state minister Siddharam Mhetre. "Mothers and daughters watch these matches and it does not look nice."

In a bid to appeal to the high-brow side of the sports-fan brain, the Warriors, an expansion team based in Pune, this year introduced its traditional-culture, fully clothed approach to crowd excitement.

A few hours before the last Pune Warriors match of the season, cheer queen Jennifer Cray, 27, donned a maroon and white sari, waterproof makeup, hair extensions and intricate forehead jewelry. She and her colleagues juggle seven traditional dance forms and multiple costumes in a bid to encapsulate India's 5,000-year diversity before spectators of the 450-year-old game, all in heat that can reach 120 degrees.

On the opposite side of the field, Delhi Daredevils' cheerleaders leap and gyrate in blue tank tops, miniskirts and three-quarter Lycra shorts.

"It's really difficult sometimes," Cray said. "Compared to other cheerleaders, who look so comfortably dressed, it can be quite hot and uncomfortable. But the appreciation from Pune Warriors supporters makes up for it."

Nets, security guards, even moat-like barriers separate cheerleaders from occasionally rude, catcalling fans, which "brings the cricket arena uncomfortably close to a zoo," in the words of one critic.

Pune's path along the moral high road has received mixed reviews. Some welcome this Indian imprint on the glitzy foreign concept. "CheerQueens are much hotter in [saris] than bottle blondes in knickers," wrote socialite Shobhaa De on Twitter.

But even some dance purists aren't sold. Although young viewers may be exposed to traditional culture, the approach, they say, risks cheapening the ancient art.

"To just thoughtlessly put together styles with a fast-forward button is disrespectful," said Aditi Mangaldas, head of the Drishtikon Dance Foundation.

Sociologists say the debate reflects the gap between an increasingly sophisticated, brash and cosmopolitan India and a largely uneducated and conservative rural population left behind.

League efforts to bridge this morality gap weren't helped by a scandal that saw Mumbai Indians cheerleader Gabriella Pasqualotto, a South African, fired after blogging about the after-game parties involving some of cricket's biggest names. "The guys treated us like pieces of meat," she told the South African Witness newspaper.

As cheerleading takes hold, many teams have found a middle ground, scaling back some of the most revealing outfits in favor of fuller clothes and tights beneath short skirts. With time, more foreign exposure and India's increasingly outrageous reality shows, the original shock value is also wearing off.

"At first it seemed cheeky and bawdy," said columnist Memon. "Now, it's become more naturalized and acceptable."

Even as the Pune Warriors vow to keep the candle lighted for tradition, few other teams in the league seem eager to follow suit. If anything, the Western cheerleader concept has spread to hockey and boxing events, TV programs and advertising, as well as Internet sites that allow you to direct how avatar cheerleaders leap and gyrate.

"It's Indian hypocrisy at its best," said Suhel Seth, head of Counselage India, a consulting firm. "This is a country of temples carved with erotica, that invented the Kama Sutra. Pretending to be squeamish about women is absurd."

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