China wants to crack down on press freedom and introduce a new training system that requires journalists to train in Marxist and communist theories of news.

Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and
Publication, told the South China Morning Post that some mainland reporters were giving Chinese journalism a bad name because they were not properly trained.

Under communist theories of journalism, media should support the leadership rather than operate as a watchdog.

The initiative seems to be aimed at mainland journalists only.

Chinese officials already routinely censor journalists, but Chinese media has become less restricted in recent years as they have gained more revenue from independent sources via advertising.

In 2008, Li Changqing was awarded the World Association of Newspapers Golden Pen of Press Freedom award after serving a three-year jail sentence imposed by Chinese authorities for reporting on an outbreak of dengue fever in Fuzhou province in 2004 before authorities had admitted it.

Sources: South China Morning Post (registration required)/ AP

News that wages are rising in China is greeted with dread by those who share Greenspan's unwarranted fear of rising inflation

Alan Greenspan had a dream, or rather a nightmare. Greenspan seems to have woken up in a cold sweat one morning in fear that the period of "disinflationary pressures" that had kept inflation low since the 1990s was about to end. This was 2007, when he published his autobiographical economic treatise, The Age of Turbulence. Despite his well-known love for economic data, and poring over the latest reports from every statistical agency, he did not realise that he was sitting on a housing bubble of epic proportions. Not seeing the bubble (he also missed the prior stock market bubble that accumulated and burst on his watch, causing the 2001 downturn), he could not know that it would soon collapse and cause a very ugly recession, in which inflation would be irrelevant.

This by itself should be enough to question the wisdom of central bankers, since the evidence for both of these world-historic asset bubbles was blindingly obvious once they had reached a certain size. But Greenspan's nightmare is scary for other reasons, some of which will become increasingly relevant as the world economy recovers.

As Greenspan details in his book, the reason for his nightmare is that the world was depleting its stock of hundreds of millions of unemployed people, including those of the former Soviet Union and also in rural China. In other words, "too many" of them had become employed, and this was allowing for wages of factory workers in China to rise. So long as China had a huge mass of unemployed, wages were held in check, and ? according to Greenspan ? competition from low-wage production there held down wages in the rest of the world, including even rich countries like the United States. All good! Until the nightmare started.

Is there something wrong with this picture, that one of the world's most powerful economic decision makers (at the time), dreads the decline of mass unemployment and rising wages among people making 80 cents an hour? What, then, is the purpose of economic development, if not to raise living standards for poor people? Some may dismiss Greenspan's values as unrepresentative ? he was, after all, a devotee of the extreme libertarian writer Ayn Rand. And his autobiographical narrative is rather unusual: although we learn about his love of baseball, music (he attended the Julliard School), and how he became interested in economics, there is something missing. Most public figures of his stature, and even most economists, would have offered at least a perfunctory paragraph about how his economic thinking was aimed at helping those at the bottom of the social ladder ? whether true or not. Greenspan didn't bother.

But unfortunately Greenspan is not an outlier but a moderate among central bankers. What is worse, their perverse world view has a hugely disproportionate influence on reporting and discussion of economic issues. As the press has recently reported, wages in China are again rising, due to the additive effect of the global economic recovery and the world's most effective economic stimulus programme, which enabled China to plough right through the world recession with 8.7% growth in 2009. The reports are somewhat less negative than they were a few years ago, but Greenspan's nightmare is everywhere: a dreaded "labour shortage" is forcing Chinese wages up and this will add to inflation. It is not clear what is wrong with a "labour shortage" being resolved in the way that markets resolve other shortages: ie the price of labour goes up until quantity supplied matches quantity demanded.

"China has drained its once vast reserves of unemployed workers in rural areas and is running out of fresh labourers for its factories," reports the New York Times. "Personnel managers here say they are also abandoning the informal tradition of not hiring anyone over 35 ? they say they are now hiring workers up to 40 years old, and sometimes older, despite concerns about whether they can keep up week after week with the rapid pace of Chinese assembly lines."

"Managers can no longer simply provide eight-to-a-room dorms and expect labourers to toil 12 hours a day, seven days a week," says Business Week.

There is more, but we wouldn't want to give Alan Greenspan a heart attack.

To its credit, the Times recognises the positive aspect of rising wages for Chinese workers and also notes that the Obama administration, which has complained about the Chinese yuan being undervalued, should welcome this development. An increase in Chinese wages, to the extent that it raises the price of the country's exports, has the same impact as an appreciation of the yuan.

But the reality is that the Obama administration, as well as Congressional leaders, are not really serious about a more competitive dollar. If they were, they could push down the value of the dollar worldwide, rather than trying to blame the Chinese for our overvalued currency. But they don't do that because the Greenspan/Wall Street view prevails: anything that lowers inflation is good, whether it's an overvalued dollar, cheap imports from repressed overseas labour, or US workers' wages stagnating, as they have, for decades.

All this despite the fact that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects inflation over the next 10 years averaging less than 1.7% annually ? lower than any decade for more than half a century. Imaginary threats of inflation could turn out to be one of the more real threats to the United States' economic recovery.

? Spiritual leader repeats call for autonomy within China
? Annual address marks 51st anniversary of failed uprising

The Dalai Lama today lashed out at Chinese authorities, accusing them of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet as he commemorated a failed uprising against China's rule over the region.

The Tibetan spiritual leader's remarks showed his frustration over fruitless attempts to negotiate a compromise with China, and came amid reports that hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in the capital, Lhasa.

Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of fighting for independence for Tibet, which China says is part of its territory. The Dalai Lama says he wants some form of autonomy for Tibet within China that would allow his people to freely practise their culture, language and religion.

The dispute turned violent two years ago when anti-government protests erupted in Tibet, leaving around 20 dead. Now Chinese soldiers patrol the streets of Tibet.

In his annual address from exile in India, marking the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against China, the Dalai Lama said Chinese authorities were conducting a campaign of "patriotic re-education" in monasteries in Tibet.

"They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them the opportunity to study and practise in peace," he told about 3,000 Tibetans in Dharamsala, the northern Indian town where the he has lived for five decades. He accused Chinese authorities of working to "deliberately annihilate Buddhism".

"Whether the Chinese government acknowledges it or not, there is a serious problem in Tibet," he said, adding that attempts to talk to the Chinese leadership about granting limited autonomy to the Tibetan people had failed.

"Judging by the attitude of the present Chinese leadership there is little hope that a result will be achieved soon. Nevertheless our stand to continue with the dialogue remains unchanged."

A commentary by the official Xinhua news agency described the speech as "resentful, yet unsurprising", adding that it was full of "angry rhetoric".

It went on: "Regardless of his allegations of not separating China, the Dalai Lama's request for 'genuine autonomy' on one-quarter of the Chinese territory is anything but acceptable for the central government."

In January Beijing reopened talks with the Dalai Lama's envoys for the first time in 15 months, but in February the regime was incensed when he met Barack Obama in the US.

Thousands of Tibetan exiles, most of them dressed in traditional silk and wool robes, gathered in the compound of a Buddhist temple to hear the Dalai Lama and other senior leaders of the Tibetan government-in-exile. The crowds included hundreds of Tibetan nuns and monks in orange and maroon robes.

In Nepal about 1,000 Tibetan exiles chanted anti-China slogans and waved Tibetan flags at a temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Riot police kept protesters from marching in the streets and arrested about a dozen people as they tried to storm a Chinese consulate office. The protesters, who shouted "Free Tibet", were dragged away by riot police to waiting vans.

China and India formally endorse the last-minute climate agreement struck at the Copenhagen summit

China and India wrote to the UN's climate secretariat today agreeing to be "listed" as a parties to the Copenhagen accord, the last-minute agreement that emerged from the chaos of the UN's summit in Copenhagen.

The action falls short of full "association" and highlights the gulf between the US ? the strongest backer of the accord ? and the other key nations on how to deliver a global deal to combat climate change.

Since Copenhagen, there has been confusion over how a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved. All observers, including the UN's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, are now clear that no such deal will be signed in 2010, with a meeting in South Africa in December 2011 now seen as the earliest date.

At the heart of the disagreement is whether a new global treaty, like the existing Kyoto protocol, must be agreed unanimously by all 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and be a continuation of Kyoto, which enshrines bindings carbon cuts on industrialised nations but not on developing ones.

In a letter to de Boer, Trigg Valley, the director of the US office of global climate change, did move back from earlier suggestions that the US wanted to ditch the UN process, seen as cumbersome by some, and negotiate climate change in a smaller group like the G20 or Major Economies Forum. But he has proposed to set aside some of the existing UN texts, which had been laboriously negotiated over several years, and replace them with passages from the Copenhagen accord.

In the letter from India, Rajani Ranjan Rashmi, environment and forests minister, states baldly the unacceptability of this approach: "The accord is not a new track of negotiations or a template for outcomes."

China's submissions are also unequivocal. The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, strongly backs the UN process and its consensus-based approach to reaching agreement. "It is neither viable nor acceptable to start a new negotiation process outside the [UNFCCC] and the [Kyoto] protocol", he said.

The US now appears isolated as China, India and many other countries, firmly support the idea of continuing with the two existing UN negotiating tracks to try to achieve a consensus.

The battle of the texts was fought for much of last year with the US backed by Britain and the rest of Europe. Today, the European Commission's first formal statement since Copenhagen offered some support for the US: "The political guidance in the Copenhagen Accord ? which was not formally adopted as a UN decision ? needs to be integrated into the UN negotiating texts that contain the basis of the future global climate agreement."

But some rich country governments now accept privately that they had "crossed a red line" and failed to recognise that developing countries had not been prepared to abandon the Kyoto protocol without a new legal agreement in place to ensure developed countries reduced emissions.

"The US wants to appear to be leading the world on climate change but it is in a very, very difficult position," said Tom Burke, founder of the consultancy E3G, citing the difficulty President Obama faces in getting a climate change bill through a reluctant senate.

In an recent interview with the Guardian, Yvo de Boer,, played down talk of radical change to the way to the UN process demands unanimous decisions, which some, including Gordon Brown, blamed for a lack of progress in climate talks. He said a major stumbling block to an agreement remained mistrust between the developing and developed countries over the finance needed to help countries adapt to the impacts of global warming.

Rich countries had offered "recycled contributions from the past" he said, while the build-up to the Copenhagen summit had focused too much on the issue of binding emission reduction targets. De Boer has announced he will step down from the UNFCCC in July. Yesterday, the South African tourism minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was nominated by President Jacob Zuma as a candidate. But other candidates, including from India and possibly Indonesia, are expected to make the private shortlist from which the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will make his choice.

Comments by the new US cyber tsar Howard Schmidt are a welcome antidote to hysterical claims about online attacks

Last week, the Obama administration's most senior official with responsibility for the internet and cyberspace made a significant intervention in the increasingly hysterical US debate over cyberwar.

Since Google announced in January that it had been the victim of a series of cyber attacks originating in China, the prospect of imminent threat from foreign states and terrorists has been repeated time and again by senior figures in the security establishment. Now, the man who is charged with shaping US policy in this field has shown that he at least will not be a vehicle for hyperbolic rhetoric and scaremongering.

On Wednesday, Howard Schmidt, appointed by President Obama in December 2009 to co-ordinate the development and delivery of national cybersecurity policy, stated baldly that the US is not in the midst of a cyberwar. This directly contradicts the statements last weekend of Mike McConnell, formerly director of national intelligence and currently vice-president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a major defence contractor.

In a national op-ed, McConnell claimed that the US is fighting a cyberwar today, one it is losing. Using a range of examples to make his case, including the recent Google China affair, McConnell proposed that the internet effectively be re-engineered to serve US national security interests. He went on to suggest that success in the Cold War would serve as a template for victory in the current cyberwar.

Schmidt debunked this flawed analogical reasoning, calling it both "a terrible metaphor" and "a terrible concept". Moreover, "there are no winners in that environment", he said.

In a media space in which the US public has consistently been told that cyberwar is an existential threat to American society, this marks a significant change in discourse. Schmidt's statement is one in the eye for vested interests in the US security community and a clear sign that he believes inflammatory rhetoric to be distinctly unhelpful, if not counterproductive.

Although this is a positive move, it does not mean that we can expect only fluffy bunnies and Lolcats from now on. Schmidt is not the only player in town and neither industry nor security agencies will roll over and play nice just because of his words. There are simply too many perceived security benefits to information technologies and billions in federal contracts to be made from them.

Also this week, Schmidt announced the declassification of parts of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a previously top-secret document that shows how actively the US is pursuing the deployment of "intrusion, detection and prevention systems".

The National Security Agency is at the heart of these internet monitoring schemes and the offensive and reactive capabilities to which they aspire are likely to raise serious questions about their legal and ethical status.

Nevertheless, Schmidt's words are a welcome bulwark, temporarily at least, against an institutional tendency to portray the internet as a high-risk environment that demands immediate and drastic action. Schmidt is right to say that there are real issues of e-crime and cyber-espionage that need to be addressed, but claims that the US is on a war footing in cyberspace are overblown and inaccurate.

Given the global nature of the internet, we should all be glad that the US debate over cybersecurity has taken a more positive turn than it has done for some time.

Find out which countries are propping up the US economy

China has defended its investment in US Treasury bonds, amid concern that its position as the biggest investor in US debt may become political as well as economic.

Treasury bonds are how the US - and all governments for that matter - borrow money: they issue government securities, which other countries and institutions buy. So, the US national debt is owned predominantly by Asian economies. The US Treasury releases the figures on this - here they are in a more useable form.

Last year, China expressed concern over the security of its vast United States treasury holdings and premier Wen Jiabao has urged Washington to safeguard their value.

Take a look, download the spreadsheet and let us know what you can do with the data.

DATA: Foreign owners of US treasury securities

? Can you do something with this data? Please post us your visualisations and mash-ups below or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

See all our data at the Datastore directory
? Follow us on Twitter

? Can you do something with this data?
Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

? Get the A-Z of data
? More at the Datastore directory
? Follow us on Twitter

As China selects two women to train female potential astronauts, an expert from the country's airforce claims women will deal better with space travel than men, citing better communication skills and the ability to deal with loneliness. Do you agree?

It's simple: China is soon going to revalue its currency against the US dollar. Or it isn't. It just depends who you ask

Both these articles were published on Saturday. Which is right? Take your pick:

New York Times, 6 March 2010
China's central bank governor indicated Saturday that the government was unlikely to detach the value of China's currency from that of the dollar anytime soon, echoing Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's statement on Friday that exchange rates would remain "basically stable" for now.

Financial Times, 6 March 2010
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, gave the strongest hint yet from a senior official that China would abandon the unofficial dollar peg, in place since mid-2008. He said it was a "special" policy to weather the financial crisis.

One thing certain: one of these articles will be right. Of course, to really understand how international financial markets work one should refer to the Currency Cat.

The US and Japan are going through a rocky patch but mutual fear of China makes their relationship too precious to wreck

A long-running row about relocating a US Marine Corps base on Okinawa is threatening to boil over, with Yukio Hatoyama, Japan's prime minister, admitting at the weekend that failure to resolve the dispute could force his resignation. Given that his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to a watershed election victory only last August, such an outcome could be deeply embarrassing for the US and deeply resented in Japan.

Despite its stated intention to pay greater attention to Asia, the Obama administration is making a hash of relations with Japan. Its insistence that Tokyo's new centre-left leaders honour a 2006 deal on the Futenma base between George Bush and their long-entrenched conservative predecessors looks like an attempt to ride roughshod over Japan's democratic process.

Blame for rising bilateral strains also lies with Hatoyama, who seems to have promised more than he can deliver. Shigeru Ishiba, a senior Liberal Democrat party opposition leader, openly mocked the prime minister last week for supposedly making an election pledge he had "no idea" how to fulfil.

The Okinawa dispute reflects broader differences. Hatoyama's view that Japan needs a more "balanced" relationship with Washington after 65 years of polite subservience in the security sphere, and his related interest in developing an EEC-style east Asian economic community including China, have produced sharply critical reactions in Washington.

"The relationship between the US and Japan is in its worst state ever," said Hisahiko Okazaki, a former ambassador, in the daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun. "The Japan-US alliance is too valuable an asset to lose," he wrote.

Despite such dramatic huffing and puffing, the bottom-line reality, say senior foreign ministry officials, former and serving ministers, and leading commentators, is there is not the remotest chance that the security alliance will be "lost". It may be adapted or modified. It may evolve. And for its part, says former deputy foreign minister Hitoshi Tanaka, Japan "needs to think seriously about how it can better contribute to international security" and "to consider if it is still right to stick to the existing interpretation of the constitutional prohibition on the use of force".

But the official consensus is firm that the US relationship will continue to form the "cornerstone" of Japan's defences, as foreign minister Katsuya Okada put it ? a position shared by Hatoyama.The main reason behind this confidence that, despite all the stresses and strains, the alliance will endure is not hard to discern: growing mutual fear of China.

If Obama has mismanaged ties with Japan, his problems with China are infinitely greater by comparison, ranging from security issues such as Iran, Taiwan, North Korea and Tibet to fair trade, currency valuations, human rights and climate change. Obama wants to befriend China and work with it. But if China chooses a diverging path, as it often appears inclined to do, the help and assistance of Japan in containing it will be indispensable to the US ? and vice versa.

Underscoring this point, last week's exchanges over Okinawa coincided with the latest, unsettling broadside from the People's Liberation Army that, according to some Japanese analysts, calls the shots in Beijing. "China's big goal in the 21st century is to become world number one, the top power," wrote PLA senior colonel Liu Mingfu. China, he said, was determined to become the "global champion" while conflict with the US over "who rises and [who] fails to dominate the world" was inevitable.

This may be bluster. But it is safer to assume it is not. With this unruly giant bellowing on the doorstep, Japan and the US need each other more than ever. What they lack is new thinking about how to make their relationship work better.

Officials concerned space flight might affect fertility of first Chinese women to go into orbit

They are, of course, in peak physical condition, with the flying skills required of any air force ace. But China's first female astronauts have faced an extra challenge: they had to be mothers to qualify for the country's prestigious space programme.

Two women and five men have been selected as the next generation to go into space, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today, citing an unnamed military source.

Xu Xianrong, an expert at the air force general hospital, said women had advantages as astronauts over men because they were more mentally stable, better able to bear loneliness and had better communication skills.

The insistence that they should also be wives and mothers does not relate to their multi-tasking abilities. Officials are concerned that space flight might affect their fertility.

"It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu told the state news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious. After all, it's unprecedented in China."

The authorities have yet to disclose the names of the would-be astronauts, but all are between 27 and 34. Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po newspaper identified five of the 15 women shortlisted, who it said were all from Shandong province.

Sun Jing is described as a "flying maniac", while Xing Lei was the only straight-A student in pilot school. Cao Yanyan comes from a high-flying family; both her husband and mother-in-law are said to be outstanding pilots.

Liu Lu is multi-talented and a lover of literature, while Wang Yaping helped with recovery efforts after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and seeded clouds to ensure clear skies for the Beijing Olympics.

Qi Faren, a delegate to the Chinese political advisory body currently meeting in Beijing, told state media that one or two women were currently receiving training for the space programme, but had no timetable for launch. They face up to five years of intensive training.

Last year Sui Guosheng, an officer in charge of recruitment with the air force, said he expected to see a woman in space by 2012 ? nine years after Yang Liwei became the first Chinese citizen to lift off.

Would-be astronauts are vetted so carefully that even bad breath can scupper their chances, a medical adviser revealed last year. Many of those who make the grade and undertake the gruelling training programme never actually make it into space.

Valentina Tereshkova, from the then USSR, became the first woman in space in 1963. Nasa barred women for years ? despite the fact female aspirants scored better on several medical tests than male counterparts ? and it was only in 1983 that Sally Ride became the first American woman to go into space.

Hundreds of courses are expected to be built and, despite extortionate fees, player numbers are expected to grow

Banned for decades by Mao Zedong because it was "too bourgeois", golf in China is now enjoying an explosion in popularity like nowhere else in the world. In accordance with the Chairman's diktat the construction of new courses is still technically illegal, but as foreignpolicy.com has pointed out: "While nothing is allowed [in China], everything is possible. So even during its supposed moratorium on golf-course construction, China has managed to emerge as the only country in the world in the midst of a golf boom."

It is a boom that comes with a price. Literally. The average joining fee at China's 500 golf clubs was more than £30,000 in 2008, when the most recent survey was carried out. Green fees are the highest of any country ? Chinese golfers pay £100 a round at the weekend, which is £5 more than the average price in Dubai and three to four times what it costs in most of Europe.

Despite the extortionate cost, the China Golf Association expect the number of players among the 1.3 billion population to keep growing. The CGA's president, Wang Liwei, tells the Asia Times: "The existing 500 courses are enough for the basic development of golf. We are also taking alternate measures, such as building driving ranges in public green spaces."

Last year's decision to add golf to the Olympic programme from 2014 means more money for golf from the state-run sport system. "Entering the Olympics will greatly push forward the development of golf in China," Wang says. "A platform will be built through the provincial sports authorities to popularise the sport among the youth. Golf in China will enjoy explosive growth."

Indeed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of brand new courses are still expected to open in the next several years. At least 100 of them are expected to be built in the tropical island province of Hainan, a seemingly unlikely venue that until recently was a lawless place with an economy built largely on smuggling, prostitution and dodgy property deals. Hardly the 19th hole.

But the government wants Hainan to become a tourist paradise, to attract wealthy visitors from Japan, Korea and further afield, and the locals have dubbed Hainan a "special golf development zone" where mainland restrictions do not apply. The biggest project is the latest development by the Mission Hills Group ? its Hainan club, when completed, will be the world's largest, with a breathtakingly bourgeois 22 courses.

Wen Jiabao outlines increased spending on welfare and rural areas but warns global economic outlook remains uncertain

The Chinese premier Wen Jiabao today promised increased spending on welfare and rural areas, aiming to halt the growth of the gap between rich and poor, maintain stability and spur domestic demand.

His annual policy speech set a steady course for the country ? with a growth target of 8%, as in previous years ? but left the government room for flexibility as he cautioned that the global economic outlook remained uncertain.

China is reining back spending after last year's massive stimulus package, while seeking to maintain confidence at home and abroad. The 11.4% increase will take total spending to 8.45tn yuan (£800bn), but is less than half of last year's 24% rise.

The country is on course to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy, after double-digit growth in the final quarter of last year took growth in 2009 to 8.7%, the highest of any major economy.

But addressing the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament, Wen warned: "We must not interpret the economic turnaround as a fundamental improvement in the economic situation.

"There are insufficient internal drivers of economic growth."

Making the case for increased social spending, as he has done in recent years, he added: "We can ensure that there is sustained impetus for economic development, a solid foundation for social progress, and lasting stability for the country only by working hard to ensure and improve people's well-being."

The premier pledged: "We will not only make the pie of social wealth bigger by developing the economy, but also distribute it well."

In an online chat on Saturday he said that a society was "doomed to instability" if wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few.

Today's two-hour speech announced increases of 8.8% on social spending and 12.8% on rural programmes ? well above the unexpectedly low 7.5% rise in the military budget, announced yesterday.

He also pledged reform of the hukou (household registration) system, which means that tens of millions of migrant workers do not enjoy the same rights to basic services as urban dwellers. But critics say the pace and scale of government changes are inadequate to ensure that China's rural and urban citizens are treated equally.

Wen's yearly work report, delivered in the Great Hall of the People to almost 3,000 deputies, is the equivalent of the state of the union or Queen's speech, laying out the government's priorities for the coming 12 months.

He reiterated Beijing's pledge to keep its currency basically steady, despite increasing pressure from the US for the yuan to appreciate.

Wen also said Beijing would maintain an appropriately easy monetary stance and an active fiscal policy. He set the inflation target at around 3% and said the deficit would be kept below 3% of national income.

He pledged to curb the "precipitous rises in housing prices" in some cities ? which have been of increasing concern to both homebuyers and economists. The government will boost funding for low income housing by 14.8%.

The premier made no explicit reference to the violence and unrest seen in Xinjiang and Tibet in the last two years, but said a special effort would be made to raise living standards of minority ethnic communities.

The annual meetings of the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference ? an advisory body ? take place amid intense security. Associated Press reported that more than two dozen people who hoped to petition officials for redress of grievances or who raised suspicion were bundled into a police bus and driven away from the area.

Peer accompanied the William Hague on a formal visit to meet China's leaders and used the same trip to discuss Belize with Chinese officials

Lord Ashcroft accompanied the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, on a formal visit to meet China's leaders and used the same trip to discuss Belize with Chinese officials, the Guardian has learned.

British embassy officials say that the Belize-based peer "called upon" China's ministry for foreign affairs' Latin American department to discuss his adopted country within 24 hours of accompanying Hague to meetings with senior government officials.

The disclosure will prompt demands for the Conservatives to explain whether Lord Ashcroft used an official opposition trip to further his own interests. Until now, it was not known that Ashcroft had attended formal talks with Chinese government officials or then held meetings to discuss Belize.

It comes as Hague comes under increasing pressure to explain why Ashcroft, the party's biggest donor and deputy chairman, is allowed to accompany him on trips to meet foreign dignitaries across the world.

Ashcroft owns Belize's biggest bank, has extensive business interests and owns at least one home in the impoverished Central American state.

Caroline Flint, the former Europe minister, demanded to know why Ashcroft is allowed to attend meetings with overseas government officials and whether he used any of these contacts to further his own private interests.

"Tory foreign policy is for sale, and Ashcroft is buying it. As he is not a member of the Conservative foreign affairs team, why on earth is he in these foreign policy meetings with foreign governments? Why is a man who hasn't paid tax on his foreign holdings being granted a seat at the Tory top table for foreign affairs?

"The Tories should immediately clarify Lord Ashcroft's role in the Tory party. If he is a de facto lead on their foreign policy, the public have a right to know, especially if he is seeking to further his own money-making," she said.

The official visit to China took place in September 2006 when Ashcroft used his private jet to fly himself and Hague to China and Kazakhstan. (The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, flew separately and met the others in China.)

During their stay in Beijing, they met a number of Chinese government officials including the national people's congress vice chairman Litie Ying.

A note made by an embassy official states that Ashcroft then held separate talks with the Chinese government's ministry for foreign affairs Latin American department "to discuss Belize".

Ashcroft and Hague also went on a separate tour of the Shanghai urban planning exhibition centre, according to the document.

Whitehall sources said that the note was made by an official who helped to organise and then log meetings held by political figures figures.

This is the fifth official opposition visit where William Hague has been accompanied by Ashcroft after he has paid for the flights.

The pair flew into Havana for meetings with Cuban government officials last March on Ashcroft's private jet and spent the night on one of Ashcroft's two luxury yachts in the Hemingway Marina; they flew to Washington to meet members of Barack Obama's administration last October; they met Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian leader, in Cairo in May 2008; and flew to Belize, Brazil, the Falkland Islands, Iceland, Panama, and the Turks and Caicos Islands in March 2007.

A spokesman for Ashcroft declined to comment.

? This article was amended on 5 March 2010. In the original, Liam Fox was said to have travelled to China on Lord Ashcroft's private plane. This has been corrected.

The west's moral didacticism now grates more than the realpolitik of China and the east

There were chuckles and sniggers in Qatar last month when Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned that a military dictatorship was imminent in Iran. Threatening America's most intransigent adversary, Clinton seems to have been oblivious to her audience: educated Arabs in the Middle East where America's military presence has long propped up several dictators, including such stalwart allies in rendition and torture as Hosni Mubarak.

Of course, by her own standards, Clinton was being remarkably nuanced and sober: during the presidential campaign in 2008 she promised to "obliterate" Iran. An over-eager cheerleader of the Bush administration's serial bellicosity, Clinton exemplifies Barack Obama's essential continuity with previous US foreign policymakers ? despite the president's many emollient words to the contrary. Clinton has also "warned" China with an officiousness redolent of the 1990s when her husband, with some encouragement from Tony Blair, tried to sort out the New World Order.

But the illusions of western power that proliferated in the 90s now lie shattered. No longer as introverted as before, China contemptuously dismissed Clinton's warnings. The Iranians did not fail to highlight American skulduggery in their oil-rich neighbourhood. But then Clinton is not alone among Anglo-American leaders in failing to recognise how absurdly hollow their quasi-imperial rhetoric sounds in the post-9/11 political climate.

Visiting India last year David Miliband decided to hector Indian politicians on the causes of terrorism, and was roundly rebuffed. Summing up the general outrage among Indian elites, a leading English language daily editorialised that the British foreign secretary had "yet to be house-trained". The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, provoked howls of laughter in his Chinese audience when he assured them that China's assets tied up in US dollars were safe.

As foreign secretary of a nation complicit in two recent terrorist-recruiting wars, Miliband could have been a bit more modest. Resigned to financing America's massive deficits with Chinese-held dollars, Geithner could have been a bit less strident.

But no: old reflexes, born of the victories of 1945 and 1989, linger among Britain and America's political elites, which seem almost incapable of shaking off habits bred of the long Anglo-American imperium ? what the American diplomat and writer George Kennan in his last years denounced as an "unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable" tendency "to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world".

In Afghanistan, the Anglo-American alliance hopes to bomb the Taliban to the negotiating table, baffling Afghans who, like most people, believe that the end of war ? not more war ? is a necessary prelude to dialogue. Culturally blind, tough-guy tactics also tend to be strategically dumb. Western sanctions on Burma have pushed its despotic rulers into China's sphere of influence. Relentless threats against Iran's nuclear programme force the "dissident" Mir Hossein Moussavi to accuse Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of "selling out" to the west, hardening the bipartisan Iranian consensus on an issue of national prestige.

Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. In proposing cash bribes for the "moderate" Taliban, the Obama administration reminds one of FDR's bright idea about the original inhabitants of Palestine: "What about the Arabs?" he once asked the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. "Can't that be settled with a little baksheesh?"

This was undoubtedly a more subtle approach to the Middle East than the one proposed by Winston Churchill, who once threatened to "set the Jews on them [Egyptians] and drive them into the gutter". But as the cold war intensified, the American secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, assaulted new postcolonial leaders with you're-either-with-us-or-against-us ultimatums. "Dulles flies around," Thomas Mann noted in his diary, "soliciting clients for American irresponsibility." However, refusing to shake hands with Zhou Enlai, and denouncing Jawaharlal Nehru's policy of non-alignment as "immoral", Dulles alienated one major country after another in Asia and Africa.

The peremptory manner of officials like Dulles was likely shaped by a war-ravaged and politically supine Europe and Asia, where the US occupied two major countries, Germany and Japan, and subsidised several others. But many postcolonial leaders, who had just seen off European empires after a protracted and bitter struggle, were unlikely to bend the knee before a new hegemony.

In the 1950s and 60s geopolitical intrigues did not much engage masses in Asia and Africa; it was something for elites to sort out. But a new generation ? highly politicised by television and the internet ? now vigorously amplifies its opinions even in countries perceived as friendly to western interests. Turkey's leaders respond to public sentiment as they radically downgrade their country's longstanding and beneficial relationship with Israel. China's cyber nationalists, who have been nurtured on a history studded with instances of western iniquity, retaliate faster than their government to perceived insults from the west. Droning on about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, Clinton in Qatar appeared to treat her Arab interlocutors as though they were children; but most children above a certain age in the Middle East know about the blatant contradiction in US policy of punishing Iran while mollycoddling the only country with undeclared nuclear weapons in the region.

What form will this political awakening take as power shifts, along with its rhetorical advantages, from the west to the east? In VS Naipaul's prophetic novel A Bend in the River, Salim, the Indian-African narrator, laments his community's political immaturity, envying Africa's European conquerors: "an intelligent and energetic people", who "wanted gold and slaves, like everybody else," but who also "wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves". Salim believes that the Europeans "could do one thing and say something quite different because they had an idea of what they owed to their civilisation"; and "they got both the slaves and statues".

The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. Unredeemed by any higher idea, this new scramble for resources is of course an ignoble spectacle: after all, as a French sage put it, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Certainly, the new ruthless realpolitik of the east does not pretend to realise a universal good; but it may prove to be much less obfuscating, and maybe even less aggravating, than the moral didacticism of the west.

Spiritual leader tweets that he loves China despite 'suppression'

He may wear simple robes and live in the hills of northern India, but never let it be said that the Dalai Lama doesn't have his finger on the pulse when it comes to technology.

After appearing in an Apple advert ? he's surely too cool to ever advertise a PC ? the Tibetan spiritual leader has now joined Twitter.

He joined the microblogging site on 22 February and has already got about 140,000 followers. His tweets have been uncontroversial so far, providing links to news stories, videos and other articles about his Holiness.

On his second day on Twitter, the 75-year-old tweeted: "Dalai Lama says loves China despite 'suppression'." He joins the Vatican and a number of twitterers purporting to be Jesus Christ on the social networking site.

The Dalai Lama was apparently inspired to go on Twitter after meeting the site's founder, Evan Williams, in LA, although Williams said the Dalai Lama laughed when he suggested the idea to him.

As he is the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and the temporal and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, it is probably only right that he is not following anyone else (on Twitter). Perhaps he will stretch out a hand to Chinese president Hu Jintao, who is also on Twitter ? but only in the same way Jesus is.