Update – Zeng Jinyan: May the Almighty Buddha give me Faith

C.A. Yeung wrote another – and probably more accurate – translation of Zeng Jinyan’s blog entry of November 4. It is certainly more comprehensive than mine and includes the status of the letter exchange between Ms Zeng and Mr Hu. It is a good experience for me, still learning the Chinese language, to compare the differences between my translation, and C.A.’s.

And the original blog post by Ms Zeng is here.

China’s 4 trillion Yuan Stimulus – Big Money, Small Toolkit

The State Council offered some hints in October already, reacting to an apparent credit crunch in China. Now it is going to be a four-trillion stimulus package.

Commercial banks’ credit ceilings will be abolished to channel more lending to priority projects, rural areas, smaller enterprises, technical innovation and industrial rationalization through mergers and acquisitions. (Xinhua Net)

The equivalent of about 570 billion U.S. dollars will be spent during the coming two years, in 10 major areas, such as low-income housing, rural infrastructure, water, electricity, transportation, the environment, technological innovation and rebuilding from several disasters, most notably the May 12 earthquake.

Commercial banks’ credit ceilings will be abolished to channel more lending to priority projects, rural areas, smaller enterprises, technical innovation and industrial rationalization through mergers and acquisitions.

The credit expansion could become a lovefest between the Chinese central government’s “flexible and prudent macro-economic policies” and local officials and capitalists (I beg your pardon – socialist private enterprise) which would make Bush jr and his cronies flush – and a crapfest for those who should benefit if things went according to theory. As Zheng Yongnian of University of Nottingham points out in a somewhat different context, China has always been in a divided state where the central power in name while the local authority enjoys the real power.

The central power will provide the funding for the stimulus package. But the allocation tools are local.