英语新闻（English news about China）

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"I'm" fad among Chinese MSN users——fr. China Daily

It seems that almost all your friends' names on MSN have added a little green "i'm" symbol overnight. If you ask what is going on, someone will tell you it's a charity initiative and send you an intro link. Though this charity program has not yet officially launched for Chinese users, this little green symbol has proven popular among Chinese Windows Live Messenger users. Windows Live Messenger's official blog announced on March 1 that Microsoft was launching an "i'm"  program in United States. Every time someone starts a conversation using i'm, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with nine organizations dedicated to social causes. With every instant message a user sends, it helps address issues one feels most passionate about, including poverty, child protection, disease and environmental degradation. One only has to add certain code next to one's name for the organization one would like to support. "*red'u" is for the American Red Cross, "*bqca" is for Boys & Girls Clubs of America and "*unicef" stands for the American branch of UNICEF. After a Chinese blogger named "hung" introduced this program on his blog on March 2, "i'm" has invaded the Internet in China with no actual promotional campaign from Microsoft. Beijing-based Youth Weekend reported that famous IT blogger Keso regarded this program's rapid spread as a successful virus marketing case. He thinks that the success of the "i'm" program is because it's spread by users without being a bother to others. This answers why "i'm" has spread so rapidly across the Internet like a virus with almost no promotion. However, Feng Jinhu from the press center for Microsoft China told Youth Weekend that the "i'm" project is only eligible for Messenger users in United States. Instant messages sent by Chinese users would not count. This has not affected Chinese Messenger users' passion for the little green symbol. These users hope their instant messages will actually become donations to charitable organizations someday.




[ 本帖最后由 fussfun 于 2007-3-27 11:55 编辑 ]

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ ... ised-its-might.html
China earthquake: How China mobilised its mightBy Richard Spencer, Beijing Correspondent
                Last Updated: 6:38PM BST 28/05/2008


The soldiers came over the hilltop like something out of Chairman Mao’s   propaganda movies. They charged in perfect time towards me down the   rough-hewn path, faces earnest with the desire to serve the people,   following the platoon leader’s huge Red Flag fluttering high in the breeze.                                                        This troop was not alone. There is something almost historic in the army’s   mobilisation to create order from the Sichuan earthquake’s chaos.

Approaching 130,000 men and women were involved in clearing roads, rescuing   survivors and treating the injured in MASH-type field tents set out on river   banks just days after the earthquake struck.
The result was an unprecedented wave of positive coverage for the Chinese   government’s efforts both from the international media and from foreign   leaders, more used in this Olympic year to giving homilies to the politburo   on human rights and Tibet.
                                       

                                                                                                                                       
                                Indeed it is hard not to be impressed. As I walked near the devastated town of   Yingxiu I watched as the troop unpacked their shovels and started digging a   pathway across the mountainside.
The previous evening when watching a similar scene I reflected on how   hopelessly inadequate this hands-to-the-tiller approach seemed to the task:   elsewhere huge boulders lay in piles several times my height.
I was reminded of the Chinese legend about the foolish (but heroic) old man   who promised to move a mountain by digging at it with his hands, saying that   if he failed, his children could finish the job for him. How useful was this   stretch of path, I thought, and how long would it take to complete when   thousands of survivors were in dire need of water and food in the villages   upstream?
But I saw the path taking shape, and, as I took a boat downstream, I saw   diggers and cranes previously held up by landslides miles away move slowly   up the broken road. Two army officers who offered me a lift up to a nearby   town said that work was progressing fast - Yingxiu might even be accessible   by nightfall, they said.
Could the world really be growing to love the People’s Liberation Army, the   massive force that swept Mao Tse-tung to power in 1949 - and had its   greatest moment of international fame 40 years later when it swept the   People themselves before it and liberated Tiananmen Square for the Communist   Party?
Well, when those army officers offered me the lift, a gesture that would have   been unheard of for a journalist a few years ago unless they were arresting   him, it was hard not to smile affectionately.
What has changed?
It is certainly easy to say that the Communist Party is slowly becoming more   receptive to the outside world and the way it does things, and that as a   result it is becoming more successful at home.
It is clearly better at disaster relief than, say Burma, another notionally   communist regime, and that should hardly surprise us. China is better at   most things than Burma, which is why its economy is so much more successful.
Although China has been reluctant to accept international rescue teams, this   does not mean it is not open to their ideas. It is striking how many Chinese   groups are now set up along the lines of those in the west, from which the   government is as happy as its hundreds of thousands of overseas students to   learn.
Yang Jie, a local government official and Party cadre from Mianzhu county,   told me how she had, on instructions, put together an emergency reaction   team four years ago. As with any such group, it consisted of local doctors,   firemen and officials who trained together regularly, most recently last   month, for just such an eventuality. The death rate in her area was   substantially lower as a result, she believed.
Others say that the internet and the government’s enforced co-operation with   the international media, along with its own energetic, sometimes   boundary-pushing journalists, are starting to make it realise the advantages   of accountability. Reform is coming through China’s 50 million bloggers,   runs the argument.
The SARS crisis five years ago was a telling moment: even though it was   followed by a tightening of the domestic press who had run critical accounts   of how the government covered up the crisis for too long, it was clear that   the Party was taken aback. It was a genuine humiliation that the West and   its media had accused it of lying, and been proved right.
Since then, as disaster has followed disaster - China is a big country where   many people live on the brink, and die in horrible numbers in mining   accidents, bus crashes, floods and landslides - the exhortations from the   top to be more honest get louder.
There is some truth to all of this, though it must be accompanied by a warning   that all change in China can be reversed rapidly, particularly if an   economic downturn or some new perceived injustice from abroad causes uproar.
But it is only partially true: even staunch anti-communists must admit that   China has notched up successes in recent decades that are not solely   attributable to economic liberalisation. Its literacy rates are deeply   impressive for a country still profoundly poor in places: I glanced through   an abandoned notebook at Yingxiu’s abandoned secondary school. It was packed   full of perfectly neat characters, in hand-writing that would put most   British schoolchildren’s to shame. And this is a small town in the poor   rural highlands.
Likewise, the strength of will that has driven serviceable roads into the   deepest parts of the country predate the showy transport feats of the last   few years: the railway to Tibet, the high-speed line, the world’s fastest,   in Shanghai - both, by the way, defiantly unprofitable and heavily   subsidised.
Could it be that some authoritarian regimes do indeed get the trains to run on   time, in defiance of all we have learned about the incompetence and economic   ill consequences of central state planning?
I don’t think so. Communism has been a disaster in China as elsewhere: no   recent triumphs, or rapid response teams, will compensate for the centrally   planned famine that killed 30 million people in the late 1950s. Command and   control built the dams in central China that collapsed in the 1970s, with   worrying contemporary echoes in recent weeks, disasters the full extent of   which took three decades to come to light.
I read one genuine answer to this conundrum in a fascinating article in the   China Economic Quarterly. It made the point that what communism has been   unable to replace - and has, in fact, built upon - is a long tradition that   is neither western-style democracy nor inspired by the Soviet Union. That   is, it has created a political system that is based on the paternalistic   mobilisation of an entrenched bureaucracy.
And this is what this disaster really reminded me of: records from the times   of the emperors - at least, the good ones - of officials being dispatched to   rebuild dikes on the Yellow River, or alleviate some disaster. What is   always clear is that the officials have to look both ways at once, to win   promotion from the emperor by doing his best to look after the people.
It is neither cynical nor unduly sycophantic to the system to say that   officials and officers in Sichuan know that an earthquake can only win   sympathy - and, if they handle it well, promotion. There is nothing to be   gained from trying to cover up the destruction of so many school buildings.   This terrible aspect of what has happened is surely the result of   institutional failure or corruption somewhere down the line, and is   therefore news worthy of suppression, but the grief of the parents of   China’s single children is containable by no Party censor.
But this still leaves the question of whether this bureaucratic approach,   where those in charge are accountable to those above but not below, is   really flexible enough in this modern, plural age. It can respond to   misfortunes, but can it act to avert future ones, to say nothing of   preventing the political disasters that have so often afflicted this country?
The investigation into this earthquake will be a test. Will officials who   built collapsible schools really be jailed? Will future plans be open to   advance inspection? In recent years we have seen promises to punish corrupt   officials turn into real punishments for their accusers.
To know what has really changed, we will have to wait and see how the state   reassures the bereaved parents of Sichuan that they have not suffered in   vain.

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BEIJING, China (AP) -- Chinese researchers say they have found a strange pyramid-shaped chamber while surveying the massive underground tomb of China's first emperor and theorize it was built as a passageway for his soul.
Thousands of terra cotta warriors were discovered more than 20 years ago near the ancient capital of Xi'an.





Remote sensing equipment has revealed what appears to be a 100-foot-high room above Emperor Qin Shihuang's tomb near the ancient capital of Xi'an in Shaanxi province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.
The room has not been excavated. Diagrams of the chamber are based on data gathered over five years, starting in 2002, using radar and other remote sensing technologies, the news agency said.
Archaeologist Liu Qingzhu of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was quoted as saying the room is unlike any ever found in a Chinese tomb.

"Qin himself was very unusual, so it's not unexpected that his tomb should also be unique," Liu told the news agency.
Archaeologists theorize that because the room was built on top of Qin's mausoleum and seems to have ladder-like steps leading up, it was intended as a passageway for his spirit, Xinhua said.

Qin, who ruled from 221-210 B.C., is credited with starting construction of the Great Wall and commissioning an army of terra cotta soldiers to guard his tomb.

Thousands of the terra cotta warriors were discovered more than 20 years ago by peasants from a local commune who were sinking wells

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HONG KONG, China (AP) -- Hong Kong's red flag was raised into a cloudy blue sky Sunday as the former British colony marked the 10th anniversary of its hand-over to China and bid farewell to a rocky decade of financial woes, disease outbreaks and economic recovery.
Children hold up Chinese and Hong Kong flags on Sunday at a parade in Hong Kong.


The next 10 years could be just as challenging for the bustling city on southern China's coast. Hong Kong will likely grapple with democratic reform and face growing competition from other Asian cities threatening its position as a global business capital.

"The competition ahead is fierce. We are not only competing with neighboring cities, but with cities around the world," said Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang, a bow tie-wearing veteran civil servant who was sworn in Sunday for a second term.

A few hundred people stood near Hong Kong's harbor to watch the ceremony attended by dignitaries. The crowd erupted with cheers when four helicopters carrying Hong Kong and Chinese flags flew over the area.

"We're here to celebrate Hong Kong's birthday," said 12-year-old Jenny Kwok.

An hour later, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang and his Cabinet were sworn in for a new term. Tsang, a bow tie-wearing veteran civil servant, got the blessings of Chinese leader Hu Jintao, making his first presidential trip to the city.

Tsang gave a speech that repeated his pledge to create a more democratic system. He said his administration would produce a green paper that would map out the "model for democratic elections."

The Chinese president spoke after Tsang and praised the city for meeting the past decade's challenges. He also said Hong Kong's "democracy is growing in an orderly way," but he didn't clearly state when he thought the city should have full democracy.


Hu planned to leave Hong Kong before pro-democracy groups hold an annual street protest in the afternoon. Although the city has one of Asia's most prosperous and well-educated societies, Hong Kongers still can't directly elect their leader and entire legislature.

Tsang was selected by an 800-seat election committee dominated by Beijing loyalists. Only half of the 60-seat legislature is directly elected, and the other members are picked by professional and special interest groups.

Although Beijing has promised that Hong Kong will eventually get full democracy, the Communist leadership has yet to say when it will happen. The British also denied the city full democracy during their 156 years of ruling the territory on China's southern coast.

Since Hong Kong returned to China, the city has been governed under a "one country, two systems" formula. The arrangement has allowed the territory to keep its capitalist economy, British-style legal system, free press and civil liberties.
For the most part, Beijing has honored its promise to let Hong Kong enjoy a wide-degree of autonomy. But critics say the media commonly practice self censorship, and Chinese officials indulge in behind-the-scenes meddling.

In many ways, Hong Kong has grown closer to the motherland -- which has been vital in helping the city recover from the Asian financial crisis that erupted one day after the 1997 hand-over.

Hong Kong has become tightly linked to the mainland's galloping economy and has positioned itself as a key entry point to the Chinese market. Hong Kong companies are heavily invested in southern China's booming Pearl River Delta region, employing more than 10 million factory workers.

China has also given Hong Kong's economy a big boost by allowing more mainlanders to visit the city. Hong Kong's hotels, shopping malls and restaurants have become addicted to the big-spending tourists. Last month, about 1.2 mainlanders visited, a 16 percent increase from the same period last year, the Tourism Board said.
The tourists helped pull the economy out of recession caused by the 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. The disease killed 299 people here and devastated the tourism industry.

Although the mainland makes a great partner in many ways, it's also a fierce competitor.


The red-hot stock market in Shanghai is competing with Hong Kong for Chinese companies seeking new stock listings. And Shanghai's port surpassed Hong Kong's this year as the world's second busiest behind Singapore. Another port in Shenzhen is expected to overtake Hong Kong next year.

Still, Hong Kong is famous for reinventing itself and meeting challenges. It may have to rely on those talents more than ever in the next 10 years.

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Chen Jing was one of the lucky ones. The 56-year-old retiree, who lives in Shanghai, dabbles a bit in local stocks, exchanging investment tips with what she calls her "mah-jongg friends," a group that gets together each week to play and chat. Just before the Chinese New Year holiday last month, one of her friends spoke ominously of rumors that China's government was planning a crackdown on stock speculation, including a possible tax on capital gains. Over the past 18 months, Chen's small portfolio had almost doubled in value as the Shanghai market shot straight up. So she decided to pull the plug, suddenly afraid it would all go sour. "I sold everything just before the holiday," she says, and was blithely unaware that the Shanghai stock index plunged 8.8% on Feb. 27, its biggest one-day drop in a decade. Roller-coaster rides are not unusual for China's stock markets, which sometimes resemble a casino in Macau. What happened next, however, was decidedly unusual. Investors in New York's equity markets woke up, saw that Shanghai had tanked, and had a collective heart attack: they sent the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 400 points, its biggest single-day drop since Sept. 17, 2001—the first trading session after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The drop in New York, in turn, fueled fear in markets across Asia the following day, and suddenly investors were seized by visions of a rerun of 1997's "Asian contagion," when a financial crisis in Thailand triggered stock crashes from Jakarta to Moscow to New York. On Feb. 28, as this new outbreak of investor gloom spread, India's main stock index tumbled 4%, Singapore's dropped 3.7%, Japan's fell 2.9%, South Korea's lost 2.6%, and Hong Kong's slipped 2.5%. This chain reaction plainly demonstrated the increasingly prominent place China now occupies in the minds of global investors. Its extraordinary economic rise has been a key reason for soaring demand for everything from copper to oil to cars, much to the benefit of multinational and Chinese companies alike. But while investors are right about China's economic importance to the world, they're clearly still confused about how to interpret a decline in Chinese stocks. There's little question that the reaction to China's market swoon was overwrought, and that this is not a replay of 1997. Rarely, if ever, has the global economy been stronger than it is now—one reason why so many stock markets have been so healthy for so long. If anything, what the Shanghai shock provided was a reason for investors—finally—to get real: relentlessly rising stock prices virtually everywhere had dulled their sense of risk to the point where "anything—somebody sneezing—could have triggered this," says Sean Darby, head of regional strategy at Nomura International in Hong Kong. "We've ignored risk globally for a long time." Indeed, before this sudden attack of fear, China's market had risen 11% in just six trading sessions, having already soared an astonishing 130% last year. It was about time for a sharp reminder that what goes up occasionally comes down. That said, many China bulls were soon back in the game: on Feb. 28, much to the doomsayers' surprise, Shanghai's main stock index jumped nearly 4%. In any case, given a day or two of reflection, global investors should begin to realize that what happens to China's stock markets actually has little bearing on the nation's white-hot economy, let alone on other countries' economies. In China, "the stock market is really, really small compared to the overall economy," says Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University and an expert on China's markets. "Participation is limited. You're not going to see a wealth effect"—a decline in consumption because people feel poorer when stocks fall—"and companies don't use the market as a major tool of financing." Investors who thus savaged the stock of, say, Caterpillar Inc., a heavy-equipment maker in Peoria, Illinois, because they feared the company's booming China business was suddenly going to fall off the cliff should probably rethink that a bit. As Jun Ma, the chief economist for greater China at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, says, "We do not see any significant impact of this market correction on China's real economy. We remain bullish on the fundamentals of the economy," which is still steaming ahead this year at a growth rate of nearly 10%. A more sensible explanation for the panicked reaction in other markets to the tailspin in Shanghai is that it was simply an excuse to take some money off the table. The Dow Jones industrial average, for example, had recently hit all-time highs, having gone up for five straight years as American corporate profits soared. There hadn't been a single day in nearly four years in which U.S. stocks had fallen even 2%, an unusually long absence of volatility. Likewise, global markets from India to Singapore to Russia had been on a historic tear. Against this backdrop, China's sudden return to earth was a reminder that risk still exists and that widespread euphoria may have led investors to lose sight of economic reality. It was certainly no coincidence that this week's outbreak of market jitters came on the heels of some disquieting economic data. On the same day that Shanghai stumbled, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that orders of durable goods in America—a key indicator of economic health—had fallen sharply in January. That followed an unnerving speech by someone many consider the great economic forecaster of our era, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. On Feb. 26, he warned in a speech that investors couldn't rule out the possibility of a U.S. recession in 2007, noting that corporate profit margins "have begun to stabilize, which is an early sign we are in the later stages of a cycle." Most economists had figured the U.S. was downshifting from a growth rate of 3.5% to about 2%, but few had predicted a recession. Greenspan's warning was particularly chilling because the truth is, the health of the massive U.S. economy—not the performance of Chinese stocks—is the single most critical variable that global equity investors confront. That helps to explain why, for example, Japan's stock index took such a hit on Feb. 28 after approaching a seven-year high earlier in the week. Toyota, Sony et al would surely feel it if a slowdown in the U.S. proves sharper than expected. But will it? On the same day that the dismal durable-goods number came out, a monthly survey of U.S. consumer confidence rose unexpectedly, and so did the latest figures for existing U.S. home sales. In other words, a painful U.S. slowdown is not, by any means, a given. And for those who are suddenly taking their cues from China, there is also this heartening thought: the Chinese have just welcomed in the Year of the Pig on the lunar calendar, which means investors in the U.S., at least, should be delighted. According to an investing website called the Kirk Report, in all but one Year of the Pig since 1935, both the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 have gone up—usually sharply. Of course, it's true that the past doesn't necessarily predict the future; then again, neither does the Shanghai stock market.

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KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to narrow rifts with Japan shifted away from summitry and pomp Friday, as he arrived in Japan's ancient capital for a tea ceremony, chats with students and baseball.

The trip to Kyoto came a day after Wen -- the first Chinese leader to visit Japan since 2000 -- addressed Japan's parliament with a message of friendship, tempered with a warning not to forget the wartime history that has long dogged bilateral ties.

A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said he did not know whether Wen would pitch or bat in his cameo baseball performance, but he said there was a larger purpose to the spectacle -- to court Japan's public.

"Baseball is a very popular sport among Japanese people, especially young people," spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters late on Thursday. "I hope that if he's batting, it's a home run."

In a sign that tensions remain, members of Japanese right-wing groups, in dozens of trucks with loudspeakers blaring anti-Chinese slogans, cruised the streets near the former Imperial Palace where Wen was to arrive for a welcoming ceremony.

"China is stealing Japan's resources," shouted one, referring to a dispute over oil and gas reserves in the East China Sea.

The combination of summitry and common touch is intended by both sides to build on a fragile detente that began with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's October trip to Beijing.

Japanese media welcomed Wen's trip, which has been marked more by symbolism than concrete breakthroughs, although caution over the future remained.

"Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's speech to Parliament shows the Chinese stance toward Japan is undergoing a transformation," said the conservative Yomiuri newspaper.

Japanese media also applauded the fact that Wen acknowledged Tokyo's past apologies for its wartime acts and expressed gratitude for massive foreign aid Tokyo has given China.
Improving ties 'irreversible'China's official media were cautiously optimistic.

"The two sides have drafted concrete actions to take to improve ties, and this demonstrates that the efforts are not hollow talk," said a commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily.

The paper said pressure on Abe from "rightist forces" in Japan was still a worry, but added: "Although it takes more than one day to melt the thick ice, the trend of improving bilateral ties is irreversible."

Wen has sought to use his human touch as a diplomatic tool -- chatting with Tokyo residents during a morning jog and telling guests at a reception that his mother had praised his speech to the Japanese parliament when they chatted by phone.

Between smiles and handshakes, however, Wen has made pointed reminders that China remains wary of Japan's handling of the legacies from its bloody occupation of much of Asia, including China, up to 1945.

"The Chinese people suffered calamity during the war of invasion launched by Japan," Wen told the parliament, noting apologies offered in past years by Japan's leaders.

"We sincerely hope that Japan will manifest this stance and promise in practical actions."

Wen's speech was the first by a Chinese leader to Japan's parliament in 22 years, another milestone in the diplomatic thaw between the two Asian giants, whose economies are deeply linked.

Tokyo and Beijing fell out during the five-year term of Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who paid his respects each year to Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine, seen across much of the region as a symbol of past militarism.

Wen did not explicitly mention the shrine in his speech, but in an interview before his visit he pressed Abe not to go. Abe has paid his respects before at Yasukuni, but has declined to say if he will do so as prime minister.

Wen also had tough words about Taiwan, the former Japanese colony that has been divided since 1949 from mainland China, which says the island must accept eventual reunification.

China has criticized Japan for being too sympathetic to forces favoring Taiwan's full independence from Beijing.

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BEIJING, China (AP) -- More than 12 million Chinese are short of drinking water because of a widespread and long drought over many parts of the country, state media reported.

Xinhua News Agency said the drought had hit the north, northwest and southwest of China, and had also affected 14 million hectares of arable land.

It quoted the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters as saying late Thursday that the three-month long drought had affected crop plantings in the southwestern city of Chongqing and in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces.

Tian Yitang, deputy chief of the office, said the situation would get worse in China's northern areas as little rain is forecast and temperatures are rising.
He said 11 million head of livestock were also suffering from drinking water shortages.

The drought comes after one last summer in the southwest that was the worst in 50 years. It caused more than $1.1 billion in economic losses, according to state media, leaving 18 million people without adequate drinking water in Chongqing and neighboring Sichuan province.

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SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- Wen Jiabao flies to Japan this week on the first visit by a Chinese premier in almost seven years, evidence that ties are on the mend after nearly collapsing over long-festering disputes tied to the legacy of Japan's World War II aggression.
Expectations for the visit are mixed, yet the mere fact that Wen is going reflects a stark turnaround in ties that began with an icebreaking visit to Beijing by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last September.

"I feel strongly that my trip has a real mission," Wen told Japanese reporters in Beijing ahead of the three-day visit starting Wednesday. "Sino-Japanese relations are at a critical stage, and both countries should make an effort to push forward ties."

Wen plans to address lawmakers and issue a joint statement with Abe expressing their "aspirations to build a strategic and mutually beneficial relationship." Military cooperation, economic dialogue, and collaboration on energy conservation, environmental protection and finance are also on the agenda.

"Both sides, but particularly China, want to put a 'floor' beneath relations," said David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Since Abe's visit last autumn, the two sides have tried to set aside rancorous issues dating back to World War II that erupted into sometimes violent anti-Japanese protests in 2005, including a brief siege of the Japanese consulate in Shanghai by a mob of thousands.

China has long accused Japan of trying to whitewash history, both in comments by politicians and in school history textbooks.

Visits by Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine that honors dead soldiers -- including executed war criminals -- were the direct cause behind the break in contacts, which extended even to one-on-one meetings at multinational forums.
Territorial disputes and conflicting claims to gas deposits in the East China Sea added to the friction, threatening to disrupt thriving economic ties and unnerving neighbors, who urged the two to resolve the impasse.

As Koizumi left office, Beijing and Tokyo moved swiftly to get relations back on track. Abe visited just two weeks after taking up his post.
Hardened relationship"Both sides felt the relationship had hardened too much," said Dali Yang, chair of the political science department at the University of Chicago.

Chinese leaders and the state-controlled media have toned down their anti-Japanese rhetoric, responding only mildly to Abe's push to reform Japan's pacifist constitution to give the military a bigger profile. Provocative moves such as Abe's comments downplaying Japan's responsibility for consigning sex slaves to military brothels have drawn an unusually calm response.

Abe, whose popularity at home has slumped, has also stayed away from Yasukuni, although he hasn't said whether he would forgo such visits altogether.

Abe is "trying not to act churlish and looking at the long term," Yang said.

Yet, given the serious ane nearly intractable conflicts between Beijing and Tokyo, mere goodwill may have little impact. Wen's mission is more about managing the disagreements than putting them to rest.

Recent efforts by Chinese and Japanese historians to forge a consensus on sensitive wartime events broke down. There is no sign of progress on conflicts over offshore gas drilling and Japan's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- a key grievance in 2005, remains a nonstarter for China, which holds veto-power as one of five permanent members.

Yet, backsliding into antagonism would suit neither.

"Abe wants to boost domestic support by handling of China relations well. China wants stability through improving ties," said Guo Dingping, a Japan scholar at Shanghai's Fudan University.

Wen's visit, which will follow a stop in South Korea, will emphasize the positive aspects of relations, including shared interests in trying to resolve tensions over North Korea's nuclear program.

Economic ties will also feature highly: Japan is China's third biggest trading partner and second largest source of foreign investment, with bilateral trade hitting $207.4 billion last year.

Balancing the need for pragmatism while upholding nationalist sentiments will be a key test of Wen's leadership, said Yu Maochun, a history professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

"In all of China's dealings with its neighbors, Japan remains the toughest nut to crack," Yu said.

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The challenge of supplying China is already showing signs of strain. A soybean boom has turned to a bust in the last two years for many farmers here in Mato Grosso, a state in western Brazil the size of Texas and Kansas that produces more than a third of the country’s beans.

Near Rondonópolis, Rogerio Salles watched recently as a handful of combines harvested the last soybeans on his 17,500-acre farm ringed by eucalyptus and rubber trees. “Just because we’re producing a lot of beans here doesn’t mean we’re making money,” he said.

The strong Brazilian currency and a transportation bottleneck are conspiring against many Mato Grosso farmers. Most of the beans are trucked south more than a thousand miles along highways riddled with potholes. At the ports, some ships wait at anchor up to a month before finding a dock to load the beans.

“If major investments are not made in transport infrastructure, China cannot count on this region being a stable supplier to its market,” Mr. Salles said. “There’s a lot riding on this.”

Moving soybeans from Mato Grosso to ports in Brazil costs more than four times what American farmers spend to get beans from the Midwest to New Orleans and the Pacific Northwest. As a result, Brazilian farms realize far less for their crops than their American counterparts.

Brazil’s agricultural sector has been dominated by large investors who bought huge tracts at cheap prices, and by multinational grain traders — like Minneapolis-based Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, based in Decatur, Ill. — that have built storage, provided financing and lined up the overseas buyers.

Through his Maggi Group, Blairo Maggi, the governor of Mato Grosso, is the largest soybean grower in the world, and a major financier, with 400,000 acres of his own under production.

”It has been all about a land grab in Brazil,” said Daniel W. Basse, president of AgResource, an agricultural research consultancy.

For the farmers in Mato Grosso, prosperity has been elusive lately. Growers in the state amassed $14.5 billion in debt in the last two years. Farmers say they can no longer afford storage space, forcing them to sell their crops as soon as harvested, rather than wait for higher prices.

“You do all the work, you plant the right crops,” Mr. Salles, the local farmer, said. “But even when you do everything right, you still lose.”

The growers’ desperation has allowed the major grain traders to tighten their grip. Brazilian farmers say they are paying up to 25 percent more for supplies like fertilizers provided by the traders, who are paid back with the crop. “We are becoming slaves of the big trading companies,” said Ricardo Tomczyk, another farmer in Rondonópolis.

José Luiz Glaser, the general manager for grains and oilseeds at Cargill Brazil, said that Cargill stopped financing several farmers in Mato Grosso last year after they failed to pay their bills.

Such orphaned farmers could soon find new Chinese benefactors, who are looking to make inroads in the clubby world of Brazilian agriculture, said Charles Tang, president of the Brazil-China Chamber of Commerce. Brazilian farmers say they would welcome Chinese money. But they worry about China’s growing clout as a soybean buyer. Memories are still fresh of the 2004 “red beans” incident, when China rejected shipments of Brazilian soybeans after claiming they were contaminated.

To try to counter Chinese influence, Brazilian producers are working with American growers to diversify their buyers. American soybean producers organized a joint trade mission with Mato Grosso farmers in December to India, another huge potential growth market.

The Chinese want to connect directly with Brazilian farmers, bypassing the multinational grain merchants. While they have yet to make a major purchase of cropland in Brazil, they are looking to invest in improved facilities and upgrade the antiquated rail system.

China began looking overseas for more soybean supplies in the mid-1990s, when the scope of its land and water problems became clearer. Beijing has also chosen to use more of its arable farmland to grow fruits and vegetables, crops that make better use of China’s cheap labor and scarcer water supplies to generate higher returns on the export market.

In northern China, where soybeans traditionally have been grown, water tables are dropping at a rate of 3 to 10 feet a year, according to Wu Aimin, a researcher with the China Groundwater Information Center in Beijing.
“It takes a thousand tons of water to produce one ton of grain,” said Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental research and advocacy group. “So the most efficient way to import water is in the form of grain.”