Exploding vehicles

During the summer months there have been a series of incidents where Chinese buses burst into flame. I first noticed this in a story from Beijing last month and saw another story from Tianjin today. Last year, a burning bus killed 24 people and injured 19 in Chengdu. A goole search shows reports of incidents all over the country, including a video of one in Shanghai. One article explains that overloaded buses can overheat in the summer.

Bus that caught on fire in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province, July 14

The problem is not confined to buses. Last month I saw a photo of a passenger car that had burst into flame in Beijing. The news article gave few details (such as what happened to the people in the car) and advised readers to keep their cars maintained in the summer months.

This has nothing to do with the topic of this blog but it's a reminder of potential quality problems as China gears up to export vehicles to the world.

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Xi Jinping's Doctoral Thesis

Xi Jinping is the vice president and presumed next president of China but little is known about him. In this post the dimsums blog offers its contribution to the genre of Xi Jinping-ology by conveying Xi's decade-old views on agricultural markets. Ten years ago Xi Jinping wrote a thesis, "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization" (中国农村市场化研究) for a Doctor of Law degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a top breeding-ground for Chinese officials. The dimsums blogger has spent several hours poring over the 200-plus page tome to see what it reveals about Dr. Xi. The thesis is remarkably close to what China has been doing lately in agricultural policy, suggesting that Xi (or the person who actually wrote the thesis) has a major say in policy or is at least in agreement with what's being done. There is nothing adventurous, controversial (or insightful) in the thesis. It seems to be the work of a wonkish technocrat who is not prone to talk out of turn or wander from...

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Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

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