Getting it off your chest

IN A country as fiercely patriotic as Vietnam, you would expect the government to cheer a plan by citizens to distribute T-shirts bearing nationalistic slogans. However, the T-shirts in question carried messages of hostility towards China, Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. Worse, their pedlars were popular and sometimes critical bloggers.

Two well-known bloggers and an online reporter have been detained after the police uncovered an apparent attempt to print T-shirts opposing Chinese investment in a controversial new bauxite-mining project in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and casting doubt on China’s claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea.

The trio, who had all written critically about Vietnam-China relations on the internet, were detained on suspicion of “abusing democratic freedoms” to undermine the state. By the middle of this week Bui Thanh Hieu, a blogger who used the pen name Nguoi Buon Gio (“Wind Trader”), and Pham Doan Trang, a journalist who works for VietnamNet, a news site, had been freed without charge after several days in detention. Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who blogged as Me Nam (“Mother Mushroom”), was still in custody.

These are the latest arrests in a continuing crackdown against bloggers and journalists. Ahead of a congress of the ruling Communist Party in 2011, when the country’s top three political posts will be up for grabs, the government is keen to rein in more outspoken commentators. Last December it imposed new restrictions on bloggers, making it illegal for them to publish under a pseudonym or to write about politics. Policing these rules will be hard.

More than 21m people, a quarter of the population, use the internet, according to government figures. Estimates of the number producing blogs range from a low of 1m to as many as 4m. The vast majority are personal diarists, not sociopolitical activists, but the spectacular growth of blogs and the difficulty of regulating them make the government, used to exercising total control of the media, twitchy.

Bloggers who have found themselves in the dock include some who have exposed government corruption or made negative remarks about the former Soviet Union. But the government seems particularly anxious about criticism of China.

Many Vietnamese remain hostile to their northern neighbour, after 1,000 years of imperial domination and a bloody border war in 1979. But the country runs a large trade deficit with China and needs its investment more than ever. This explains the government’s eagerness to push ahead with the Chinese bauxite-mining project, despite widespread criticism from scientists and generals (as well as bloggers). They have questioned Chinese companies’ environmental records and expressed their fears for national security.

International press-freedom groups, which often rank Vietnam alongside China and Myanmar as among the riskiest countries for bloggers, have condemned the latest arrests. Foreign diplomats fear that the clampdown will harm the fight against corruption. The new rules may cow bloggers, and journalists may be too scared to cover anything even vaguely risky—the law is unclear about what they can and cannot report.

But not everyone is deterred. “They only ever go after the big fish,” says one young Hanoi blogger, who has also openly criticised China many times. Besides, he adds, the government may be shooting itself in the foot. When bloggers are arrested, their readership usually takes off.

www.economist.com

Growth in UK retail sales stalls

UK retail sales were unchanged in August compared with the previous month, casting doubt on the strength of the recovery in consumer spending.

Sales growth in July was also revised down, from 0.4% to 0.2%, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

Food sales growth was more than offset by falls in clothing and footwear.

To add to the retail gloom, department store John Lewis announced a fall in profits and predicted tough trading conditions in the coming months.

Big falls

Retail sales rose by 1.3% in June, and analysts had been expecting a third straight month of growth to reinforce hopes that the UK was emerging from recession - as hinted by other data.

There were signs of growth in some sectors. August food sales rose by 0.7%, while non-store retailing - which includes internet, telephone and mail order shopping - and repair shops saw sales grow by 1.1%.

But this was not enough to offset bigger falls in other areas.

All non-food sectors, apart from household goods, suffered declines in sales. The worst hit were textile, clothing and footwear shops, where sales dipped 1.3%.

Department store John Lewis added to the downbeat retail outlook when it announced a 20% fall in profits for the first half of the year, and said it expected the coming months to be tough.

"We expect trading conditions for the remainder of 2009 , and into 2010, to continue to be difficult," said chairman Charlie Mayfield.

He forecast a "slow, drawn-out economic recovery."

Reflecting the growth the overall growth in food sales, however, the group did see stronger performance in its supermarket chain Waitrose.

'Cautious spending'

Earlier this month, figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) suggested that like-for-like retail sales - which do not include new stores - fell in August, by 0.1%.

"The official data confirms our own findings that the strong retail sales in June and July were not sustained," said BRC director general Stephen Robertson.

Analysts had been expecting sales to rise

"With unemployment rates at 14-year highs and predicted to increase into next year, most people are still very cautious about spending on expensive items - unless there are sufficient discounts."

Separately, a survey from business group, the CBI, found that orders for UK manufactured goods remained weak.

Of the 555 manufacturers surveyed, 8% said orders were above normal levels, while 56% said they were below normal.

Export orders were particularly low, despite the relative weakness of the pound, the CBI said.

news.bbc.co.uk

China and US in new trade dispute

China has launched an "anti-dumping and anti-subsidy" probe into imports of some US car products and chicken meat.

The Commerce Ministry said there were concerns the US imports had "dealt a blow to domestic industries".

It comes a day after the US imposed tariffs on Chinese tyre imports in order "to remedy a market disruption caused by a surge in tyre imports".

The case is the latest in a series of recent trade disputes between China and the US.

"In line with national laws and World Trade Organisation rules, the commerce ministry has started an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy examination of some imported US car products and chicken meat," the Chinese authorities said in a statement.

The US has a ccused China of keeping the yuan artificially high

China has called the tyre move by US President Barack Obama "protectionist".

The White House announced duties of an additional 35% on Chinese-made tyres for one year, followed by tariffs of 30% and 25% in the following two years.

While Washington has long accused China of trade protectionism, the US is also unhappy at the high volume of Chinese exports to America, accusing Beijing of deliberately keeping the yuan undervalued to make its exports artificially cheap.

The US trade deficit with China totalled $103bn (£63bn) in the first half of 2009, down 13% from the same period last year.

news.bbc.co.uk

Crisis 'cost us $10,000 each'

The world's largest economies have spent $10,000 for every person in a bid to fix the financial meltdown of the past year.

New calculations by the BBC, based on IMF data given to G20 finance ministers, shows these countries have spent a total of $10 trillion (£6tn).

The UK and US spent the most, with the UK spending far more, 94% of its GDP compared to 25% in the US. That equates to £30,000 per person in the UK and $10,000 in the US.

Of course, most of this bail-out money was in the form of guarantees to the banking system, and as that system pulls out of the crisis, governments stand to recover most but not all of that money.

However, there are several other ways to measure the severity of the crisis which has led to the world falling into recession for the first time in 60 years.

They all show the extent of the damage and illustrate the point that the damage has been most severe for the rich countries - especially the US and the UK with their large financial sectors - who were at the heart of the crisis.

Private write offs

The private financial sector is estimated to have write-offs amounting to $4tn, of which two-thirds are losses suffered by the big international banks such as Citigroup or RBS.

And although about half of these losses ($1.8tn) are write-offs of securities backed by sub-prime mortgages, the damage caused by the crisis has spread much wider to other banking assets, with big write-offs of commercial mortgages and company loans as well.

These big write-offs, which have wiped out about 10 years of banking sector profits, have also made it hard for the banks to rebuild capital in order to give themselves the security to resume lending.

Many experts think it will take years, if not decades, before lending returns to pre-crisis levels, and reduced lending was one of the key causes of the economic slowdown, along with a massive collapse of confidence in financial markets.

World economy shrinks

The world economy is projected to shrink by 2.3% this year, or nearly $1tn, a loss of output shared by all citizens, but particularly affecting the rising numbers of the unemployed.

If you take into account the fact that the world economy normally grows by more than 2% per year, then the loss of output caused by the recession is almost $2tn - although some of that may be made up in future years.

However, in order to try to boost growth, governments have borrowed billions of dollars in stimulus funds.

Over the next five years, UK government debt is expected to rise from £600bn to £1.4tn, while the US national debt could double to $10tn.

This extra government debt will have to be paid by future taxpayers, whose ability to spend money on government services like health and education will be constrained. The interest on the UK government's debt in 2014 could be bigger than its entire education budget.

Wealth effect

Finally, individuals are also feeling less wealthy as a result of the drop in the value of their assets. Not only are their homes worth less, but their financial assets, such as stocks and shares, have also declined in value in the last 12 months.

The BBC, in conjunction with the Halifax, estimates that in the UK national wealth held by individuals has dropped by £815bn in the past year (comparing end 2007 with end 2008), with a 15% drop in the value of people's homes and a 9% drop in the value of their other financial assets. These figures do subtract the value of debts, such as mortgages, from the overall valuation.

Of course, wealth is distributed very unevenly, and those who are not homeowners and do not have a pension will not be feeling the effects as much - unless they are finding it hard to get a job.

But there is no doubt that it is curbing people's overall spending plans, and thus exacerbating the recession (the so-called "wealth effect").

It may be some time before we return to an era where people were borrowing against the notional value of the increase in the value of their home to buy holidays and big-screen televisions.

And, as these figures make clear, we will all be paying the price of the collapse of Lehman Brothers for some time to come.

The BBC

Low self-esteem leads to obesity

Children with self-esteem problems are more likely to be obese as adults, a research team has found.

A study of 6,500 participants in the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study found that 10-year-olds with lower self esteem tended to be fatter as adults.

The affect was particularly true for girls, researchers from King's College London reported.

One obesity expert said the results highlighted that early intervention was key to tackling obesity.

This is not about people with deep psychological problems, all the anxiety and low self-esteem were within the normal range Professor David Collier, King's College London

The children had their weight and height measured by a nurse at the age of 10 and they self-reported when they were 30.

Their emotional states were also noted, the researchers reported in the journal BMC Medicine.

Children with a lower self-esteem, those who felt less in control of their lives, and those who worried often were more likely to gain weight over the next 20 years, the results showed.

Professor David Collier, who led the research, said: "What's novel about this study is that obesity has been regarded as a medical metabolic disorder - what we've found is that emotional problems are a risk factor for obesity.

"This is not about people with deep psychological problems, all the anxiety and low self-esteem were within the normal range."

Strategies

Another researcher, Andrew Ternouth, said: "While we cannot say that childhood emotional problems cause obesity in later life, we can certainly say they play a role, along with factors such as parental weight, diet and exercise.

"Strategies to promote the social and emotional aspects of learning, including the promotion of self-esteem, are central to a number of recent policy initiatives.

"Our findings suggest that approaches of this kind may carry positive benefits for physical health as well as for other aspects of children's development."

Dr Ian Campbell, of the charity, Weight Concern, said: "This study presents some disturbing evidence that, as we suspected, childhood psychological issues have an influence on future weight gain and health.

"Many of the adults we work with have identifiable underlying emotional and self esteem issues and are often resistant to treatment.

"The message here is that early intervention, in childhood, can be the key to combating adult obesity.

"That requires much more than health practitioners can deliver alone and needs greater alertness from parents, teachers, and anyone involved in the welfare of children."

The BBC