Beijing - The $586 billion economic stimulus package that China announced Sunday may not be quite as large as it seemed at first sight, but it dramatizes just how seriously the authorities in Beijing take the threat of a slowdown in the wake of the international financial crisis.

On the face of it, the package of tax cuts, higher public spending, and easier credit constitutes the largest such stimulus in history. Some of the money, though, had already been budgeted and some may even already have been spent, analysts say.

The announcement, however, “is a very clear demonstration of political intent to lean heavily into the wind of pessimism that has gripped China in recent weeks,” says Daniel Rosen, an expert on the Chinese economy with the Rhodium Group in New York…

Beijing vows to continue Olympic measures to clear the air:

Wednesday was a “blue sky day” in the Chinese capital.

But whether that has anything at all to do with the new traffic restrictions that the Beijing government imposed this week seems highly doubtful. There may be less smoke, but there are just as many mirrors when it comes to presenting pollution statistics in China.

A “blue sky day” in official parlance means a day when the Air Pollution Index is below 100, indicating that the air quality is “excellent” or “good.” It doesn’t necessarily mean you can see the sky, or even the clouds; nor do Chinese definitions of “excellent” and “good” match international ones, but you can’t be picky when you live in Beijing.

Anyhow, the Chinese government went to enormous lengths to ensure breathable air during the Beijing Olympics, and foreign visitors were not the only ones impressed. Beijingers, too, were delighted to see how much brighter their city looked when it was not blanketed by smog.

They said so, too, to each other and to journalists and in Internet chat rooms, and the government paid attention….

Peter Ford discusses China’s unions, past and present:
“Once upon a time, when the Chinese Communist Party was fighting for a revolution, the trade unions that the party controlled were important pieces in the political chess game. Ever since 1949, however, the unions grouped in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the only federation allowed to exist, have simply been pawns of the government. Totally toothless, they were reduced to the role of organizing works outings and putting up large character banners proclaiming the government’s latest policies… But nowadays, the Chinese government is beginning to think twice about the social and economic costs of its headlong rush to development…”

China’s milk scandal is the tip of the iceberg in a crisis of ethics:

“BEIJING - As Chinese officials warned Tuesday that contaminated milk powder may have sickened more than the 1,200 babies already identified, the scandal revealed more than a recurrent regulatory problem, Chinese and foreign experts suggested.

Rather, they said, it pointed to a deeper malaise in Chinese society where private profit often trumps the public good as the country races to create a market economy that has outstripped government regulators.

‘China has the problems of any transitional economy,’ says Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. ‘But the deeper and more fundamental challenge China faces is a systematic lack of business ethics.’”