BEIJING – On the heels of her second gold medal performance, China’s state media have come to the defense of Chinese swimmer, Ye Shiwen, ending their relative silence on the doping allegations that have plagued the young female swimmer since her recording-breaking performance last weekend.

On Saturday night, the 16-year-old Ye demolished the world record in the 400 individual medley, coming from behind to win gold in 4:28.43. Besides swimming that race nearly seven seconds faster than her winning performance at the FINA World Championships in Shanghai last year, she also incredibly outpaced American gold medalist Ryan Lochte’s final 50 in the men’s race by a split-second.

(Watch the 400 IM race here) 

Lochte won the 400 medley with the second-fastest time in history.

Ye’s dominant performance raised eyebrows among some swimming experts, including John Leonard, the head of the American Swimming Coaches Association who openly questioned the legitimacy of Ye’s victory.

“History in our sport will tell you that every time we see something, and I put quotation marks around this, ‘unbelievable,’ history shows us that it turns out later on there was doping involved,” Leonard was quoted as saying.

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Questions were renewed Tuesday after Ye won again, this time breaking her own Olympic record in the 200 IM.  The win made Ye the first two-time gold medal winner in Chinese swimming history.

It also made her a target for pointed questions regarding her impressive performances so far.

By all accounts, Tuesday’s press conference for Ye Shiwen following her 200 IM victory was inundated with questions regarding doping and performance-enhancing drugs.

However, for the Chinese press corps yesterday, the story was not so much Ye’s answers – as the media’s questions.

Chinese outrage
One Chinese account of the press conference noted angrily that toward the end, one Western reporter directly asked Ye, “I’d like to ask you if you doped to win that gold medal. Please answer me directly with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”

According to the report, Ye looked the reporter directly in the eye and shot back, “Absolutely no! Why am I the only one who is suspected of cheating when other foreign athletes also win multiple gold medals?”

The tone of the reporter’s question led to complaints from the furious Chinese press, many of whom felt professional and etiquette boundaries were breached.

“A 16-year-old genius not only can't enjoy her victory, but also has to be subjected to this ‘interrogation,’” one Chinese journalist reportedly said. “As Chinese journalists, we have the right to protest."

One person who did protest was Ye’s father, Ye Qingsong, who told a local Chinese news website here that, "The Western media have always been arrogant, and suspicious of Chinese people."

State media: a ‘deep bias’ by Western media
China’s state media have largely stayed quiet on the subject of doping, only mentioning in passing in some reports the accusations and Ye’s dismissal of them.

But following the press conference, the media stepped up to defend Ye.

China’s reliably nationalist newspaper, Global Times, chimed in with an editorial Wednesday that said negative comments about Ye were rooted in a “deep bias and reluctance from the Western press to see Chinese people making breakthroughs.”

“If Ye were an American, the tone would be different in Western media,” continued the editorial. “Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in the 2008 Games. Nobody seems to question the authenticity of his results, most probably because he is American.”

Nobody that is, except for China’s former Olympic doctor who claimed Tuesday  he long suspected Michael Phelps as a doper, but remained silent because  he had no evidence. 

The Global Times acknowledged the country’s past doping incidents were an understandable source of suspicion towards Ye, but pointedly noted that she has passed doping tests conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

On China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, coverage of the Olympic Games included an on-air comment from host Zhou Yafei, who noted that Ye had passed her doping test and she hoped “the Western media will change their bias and jealousy.”

Meanwhile, on China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, the nearly 2.7 million comments about the embattled swimmer were overwhelming supportive and helped make her the biggest trending topic on the popular microfeed service as of Wednesday afternoon.

“Do they have to be so obvious with their envy?” wrote one poster of the West’s coverage of Ye’s victories.

“All medalists and other athletes are tested at the Games,” wrote another. “It’d be way better if everyone would shut the hell up unless the test finds anyone positive from doping.”

But for many netizens in China, solidarity with Ye has manifested itself in one simple play on her name that has spread around Weibo: “Ye Shiwen = Yes she wins.”

NBC News’ Tianzhou Ye and Joy Li contributed to this report

 

BEIJING – China's economy grew at its weakest pace in three years, the government reported Friday.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Gross Domestic Product grew at a 7.6 percent rate in the second quarter of 2012, down from a 8.1 percent pace in the first quarter and marking the sixth consecutive quarter of slowing growth on the mainland dating back to 2009.

The data were in line with official government projections for the quarter although they serve as another reminder that China's economy is slowing faster than the government had hoped.  

China is under enormous pressure from abroad and at home to maintain steady economic growth. Amid worrying economic numbers out of the European Union and the United States, China is increasingly viewed as one of the few motors strong enough to power the global economy through this financial turmoil.

Meanwhile, here on the mainland, the ruling Communist Party has seemingly staked its legitimacy to an unspoken pact with its citizens: give up some social freedoms for continued economic prosperity.

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“For the past 30 years, the Communist party derived a lot of its legitimacy from delivering the goods: better economy, better living standards,” says Patrick Chovanec, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, “If the perception is that's changed, then it introduces a real element of uncertainty.”

 

This relationship was probably best manifested at the end of 2008 when global trade ground to a halt and the country hemorrhaged nearly 20 million jobs. Beijing responded with a 4 trillion yuan ($635 billion) stimulus program that opened up lending from Chinese state banks.

The move helped kick off growth across the country as local governments went on a construction frenzy from new ports and airports to ambitious housing developments.

Internal problems
But the free-wheeling loan binge – often to state-owned enterprises with opaque accounting practices – may have helped foster the environment for today’s economic slowdown by providing a potential crush of bad loans that might very well brutalize the economy.  

“In 2008, the big problem was external, a slowdown in exports.”Chovanec told NBC News, “This year the problem is internal. It's bad debt, and the burden the bad debt is placing on the economy.”

With the government having to prepare to potentially step in and fill the holes in the national balance caused by bad debt, there is simply less money available in Beijing’s coffers to propel the economy out of its current doldrums.
 
“In many ways, they've pinned themselves to a corner,” says Chovanec, “They had this big stimulus over the past three years that kept China's GDP growth higher compared to the rest of the world, in the face of the global slowdown… But that caused twin problems of rising inflation and bad debt.”

“Particularly with bad debt right now - that problem's coming home.”

Believe the numbers
In addition, although the GDP shows a growth rate that would be the envy of any developed economy right now, there is growing cynicism over the veracity of the official economic figures being released by Beijing.
 
“There's a lot more skepticism today about Chinese official numbers, and I think it's reflective of the fact that you've got a very clear and very serious slowdown taking place in China,” says Chovanec, who noted that while figures show extraordinary high rates of private sector investment and profit gains this year, the numbers simply don’t jibe with what he’s seen in the field.

Nowhere is this disconnect more apparent than in China’s housing and construction industry.

A mere 75 miles away from Beijing resides the foundations for one of the grand-scale property developments that have been the hallmark of the boom times here in China. Conceived in 2004, Jing Jin City derived its name from the ambitions of its developers who envisioned constructing a city between the capital Beijing and the important nearby port town of Tianjin that would attract rich investors with business in both cities.

Touted by the developers as the biggest villa development in China, Jing Jin City was a $3 billion investment designed to eventually become home for half a million people. Really a satellite city of Tianjin, the city government there had aspirations of Jing Jin eventually becoming a new Manhattan.

However, as credit has dried up and speculators have now shown reluctance to sink money into risk property developments, Jing Jin City is effectively a ghost town, a surreal mixture of luxury homes that would look natural in any tony suburb in the United States and the ghostly skeletons of those only partly-built.

Surrounded by farmland, Jing Jin City’s wild underbrush and small lakes on the outskirts have become a popular place to water and feed the dairy cows from a nearby dairy.

“I haven’t seen many people around here,” said one farmer who was tending to his cows this week outside one unfinished construction phase, “I guess people think it's too far away from the cities.” 

With a primary Chinese engine of economic growth via construction in trouble, those economic woes spill over into the over 40 industries that are tied to the property industry.

As a result, local governments are said to be facing increased pressure to cook their books in order to offer a rosier view of the economic environment in their regions.

That this doctoring of economic figures may be occurring is not a surprise in China where economists and even senior Communist Party officials –mostly famously the expected future Prime Minister, Le Keqiang – have long believed that the provincial economic numbers are unreliable.

However, the New York Times last month reported that many of the economic indicators that economists and the Chinese government rely on to determine GDP growth – electricity usage, coal stocks, freight movement, etc. – may also be altered by local governments.

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PYONGYANG, North Korea – Quickly after the failed launch of the Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket, two things became abundantly clear: We, the foreign press corps brought in to cover the launch, knew far less about it than our colleagues outside of North Korea, and the only people we would be informing about anything today would be our government-assigned guides/minders.

Many of the foreign news crews – which have been in Pyongyang for about a week – had been assured multiple times by our minders that we would get the opportunity to witness the launch. Two large video screens installed in our little hotel newsroom late Thursday appeared to validate that belief.

Between scuttlebutt gleaned from our research and talks with North Korean space officials, many of us believed that our coverage would begin with an early wake-up call Friday morning from our minders whenever they got the word.

Instead, that wake-up call came not from any North Korean officials, but from NBC’s foreign news desk, prompting us to head down to the newsroom – the only place in the hotel where we can access the Internet – to confirm what was happening.

But what was there to report? Inside the newsroom, the video screens were blank, and local North Korean TV was not showing any rocket coverage. A section of the newsroom seemingly set-up as a post-launch podium for North Korean officials to answer questions was staffed by a disinterested minder.

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Meanwhile, on Twitter and foreign news websites, initial reports of a botched launch were being followed up with details about the failure: the location of the debris, what the rocket looked like before it exploded and initial reaction from foreign governments on the incident.

Yet the North Koreans minders were idly chatting among themselves, completely oblivious to the botched launch that just happened, and apparently planning for just another day of guiding us on another highly orchestrated visit through the city.

That sense was confirmed as I ran back and forth between the newsroom and the live shot positions outdoors. “Please be ready to go this morning for a music festival,” said one minder as he cornered me on a trip back to the newsroom.

“There is no way we’re going on that trip!” I replied. “You know the satellite launch failed today, right?”

My declaration was met with an incredulous stare before the minder slowly turned around and walked away. It was a scene replayed multiple times as minders, unsure what all the excitement was about, corralled journalists and had the news broken to them.

This led to a mass exodus of minders.

North Korea faces rocket reality: Failure is an option

Ironically though, at the one moment when we the press suddenly had the most freedom we’d had all trip, no one had the means to take advantage and begin covering the North Korean side of the launch.
  
As the pandemonium of the initial push to break news passed, many of us expected the North Koreans to call some sort of press conference to acknowledge the failure and explain what had gone wrong.

But the podium remained unused and the pokerfaced North Koreans in the room gave no hint that we would hear anything from the government about the launch failure. A terse statement on North Korean state television had acknowledged the rocket’s flop into the water to the public, but nothing else.

The lone statement was a great first step toward North Korea becoming a more open and possibly reflects a quiet confidence in the country’s new leader, Kim Jong-un.

Unlike his father, Kim Jong-il, who covered up past launch failures, the younger Kim has demonstrated a degree of assuredness in publicly acknowledging the rocket disaster to his people.

This certainly doesn’t mean that the country is turning over a new leaf – after all, the rocket test stunt itself shows that bad habits die hard, if at all. However, Kim’s concession suggests that this young, new leader may not strictly follow the game plan of his predecessors.

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PYONGYANG, North Korea – With just one day before North Korea’s expected controversial satellite launch to commemorate the 100th birthday of “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung, the government invited journalists to view its Mission Control – the nerve center where the rocket and satellite will be monitored and guided from.

Coming after a press conference the day before, this was likely our last preview of preparations before launch. It was important because it gave us a critical view of the real operators of the satellite. 

Following the visit, NBC News sat down with 22-year NASA Mission Control veteran and NBC space consultant James Oberg to discuss what he learned from this visit and his expectations for the launch.

First off, what were your impressions of the Control Center? Was it as you expected it to be?
It looked like a real control center – from the outside as well as the inside. First the communications links – two communications domes and a pretty hefty antenna farm on top of the hill – looked real, and inside the displays appeared logical and made sense to me.

One difference: There was a big sign outside the building here that I found out didn’t actually say Mission Control Center; instead, it said, “Everyone follow the leadership of the Great General.”

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The director of the center made a short speech and then specifically called for you to come to the front of the press scrum to witness everything. What was that like for you?
It was certainly flattering, but clearly also an attempt at manipulation because he asked me to endorse his claim that the satellite launch was peaceful. Still, I recognized it as a gesture of respect for the American space program, for which I am the only representative to have ever visited the North Korean space program, though completely unauthorized officially by NASA.

For a while there, it seemed like there were as many North Korean cameras focused on you as foreign ones. Did you expect all that attention today?
No, I didn’t. But when you think about it and realize how desperate the North Koreans are for the appearance of Western approval, they’re bound to look for it wherever they can get it. Just the presence of this press corps, not just me, is interpreted as a sign of foreign respect for the program.

Some might view your presence at the launch center as a convenient propaganda prop for their claims. How do you respond to that?
They certainly felt it was. But I was able to use the visibility to raise some questions they had not yet answered to my satisfaction. I stressed that the boasted transparency of the North Koreans was nowhere near complete and that we didn’t have reliable insight into what was under the nose cone of that rocket.

The director joked about letting one journalist ride on the rocket. I told him that photographs of the installation of the satellite would be enough to dispel lingering suspicions, including in my own mind. He promised to provide them, but I’m not holding my breath.

One of your primary questions over the last couple of days has been how soon after launch would we start to receive radio signals from the satellite to confirm its success. Do you feel you got an adequate answer on that?
Absolutely. The director gave an answer that was totally consistent with my own calculations that it might be up to 12 hours before they get a good solid communications link with the satellite.

In the meantime, he enthusiastically agreed that amateur radio listeners around the world should try to pick up the signal, which he assured us would be broadcast continuously. Of course, it’s to their advantage that a foreign expert confirm the first proof of the satellite’s successful launch since controversy remains over the success of their [previous] satellite launch, which they still insist was successful against all other evidence.

At one point you asked where the equivalent of your old console would be in the control room and he pointed to the orbital information station in the room, a station you manned for many years. That was pretty impressive.
Yeah, I got a kick out of that. But it’s too bad I couldn’t talk to the actual operator. Because there are still interesting – to me, at least – questions about some third-stage rocket steering maneuvers they seem to need during launch to get into their target orbit. We could have had a real geek-level conversation that would have blown the interpreter’s mind.

NBC’s Richard Engel, as well as other Western journalists, continued to ask North Korean officials about the military application of these rockets, but the answers were at times exasperated and sometimes sarcastic. What do you make of it?
We’re really engaged in dual disconnected monologues here, not a real conversation. The North Koreans don’t seem to understand foreign objections and act as if their pure ideological correctness deserves worldwide obedience. They’ve dug themselves deep into the true-believer’s self-delusion that disagreement is caused by stupidity and malice, a bad habit that isn’t restricted to this corner of the world. In the West we have a hard time understanding how genuinely crazy so many North Korean projects – such as this satellite – really may be. 

But isn’t political single-mindedness a plus for advancing a difficult effort such as space exploration?
It might seem so at first, but I’m beginning to worry that the opposite is more likely to turn out to be true.  An effective safety culture in space, or any other high-tech field, demands disobedience and independent thinking from people who detect real problems that require real solutions.

But the official North Korean reaction to difficulties looks like resorting to appeals for divine inspiration from their infallible leadership so they can bully reality to “fit” their intentions. I can’t detect any indications of the necessary kind of critical problem-solving and that’s a bad sign.

Space programs infected by such a pathological culture, whether Soviet-era or NASA pre-Challenger [and pre-Columbia] era, or today’s North Korea, are doomed to encounter major setbacks.  As the bumper sticker warns, when it comes to human fallibility, “Man forgives, God forgives, Nature – never.”

This visit was likely the last satellite-related site we’ll visit before the launch itself. Any final thoughts before we begin the wait for launch time?
Opening these facilities to outside observers still strikes me as a bold and risky tactic, which I welcome. We may be able to utilize it for the good.

As the old song wisely observes, the North Koreans may not get what they WANT from this gambit – foreign approval. But they may get what they NEED – better foreign insight into their motives and decision-making. And that could make it all worthwhile.

Also for radio enthusiasts around the world, this could be your day to shine. The first people who will get a crack at catching the North Korean hymns the satellite will play to honor Kim Il-sung will be those in Western Australia 20 minutes after launch. About an hour after launch, the Eastern seaboard of the United States will be able to listen in.

Radio enthusiasts hoping to listen to catch the sounds from the satellite can tune into 479MHz. North Korean officials say they will play music continuously on that frequency.

 

 

PYONGYANG – Officials from North Korea’s Space Technology Committee held a special press conference for journalists today in the capital, Pyongyang. Among the topics discussed: Ongoing questions regarding the possible arming of North Korea’s rockets and the country’s new five-year plan for space.

NBC News sat down after with 22-year NASA veteran and NBC Space Consultant James Oberg to talk about what we learned from this press conference and what questions remain.

Q: What questions did you have coming into this press conference with the North Korea Space Technology Committee?
A: Perhaps the most interesting one for me was how soon after launch they’ll have success or failure in the form of a radio signal from the satellite. The North Koreans said they couldn’t answer that one.

That puzzled me because the primary responsibility of flight control is knowing when to expect indicators of success or failure like receiving a radio signal. Maybe they were just officials and not workers who care about the details.

The other burning question for me was when the satellite was actually going to be loaded onto the rocket and what else might be underneath the payload shroud [nose cone of the rocket]. What they’ve told us about the payload is only about 25 percent of what we think a rocket can actually carry.

They’ve pulled back so much of the secrecy – which is nice – that leaving this one area of secrecy almost underscores the mystery: Is there anything else under that nose cone.

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Q: Did you have these questions answered?
A: They gave me answers, but the easy proof for their answers, which would be pictures of them loading the satellite, we haven’t seen. I didn’t ask today, but I want to ask for the drawings of the satellite in orbit to see how the solar panels on the satellite unfold or if they do at all.

In regards to the timing of the radio signal and how other radio amateurs around the planet could help detect these signals, they said they would answer tomorrow [North Korean officials told journalists they would be able to visit the Payload Control Center in Pyongyang Wednesday].

I didn’t expect any usable answers, so I didn’t bother to ask about the possible military value of the rocket, but many journalists did.

The only thing we found out from the North Korean answers was how sloppy and unconvincing their protestations of innocence were. It doesn’t make them guilty of having a weapons-related intent, but they missed the opportunity to convincingly refute that global concern.

NBC's Richard Engel answers reader questions from North Korea

Q: If you were a North Korean official today, how would you have handled the outside suspicion of this satellite launch actually being a ballistic test?
A: I would have anticipated exactly that question and prepared an answer that was credible to skeptical experts instead of to their obedient public. For me credible is not just 90 percent transparency, but 100 percent.

The persistence of non-transparent aspects of this launch process seems unnecessary if there is nothing to hide. All it does is fan suspicions rather than soothing them.

Q: Anything surprising or big revelations for you from this press conference?
A: No technical surprises for me. But I was dismayed that when confronted with questions regarding previous satellite launch failures, their officials loyally proclaimed they were successful despite all independent evidence to the contrary. The officials had a chance to walk away from the question, but instead twice confronted it with assertions that the rest of the world’s space experts consider false.

In my mind this is no way to encourage trust. As someone who is here to judge the credibility of the North Korean’s statements, I was ready to look forward and not back at previously discredited propaganda claims. But they just couldn’t let them go and so it weighed heavily in my own assessment of their credibility and in any future statements they make without strong evidence. 

The other big revelation for me was that the North Koreans said they are planning to work on a more sharp-eyed earth observation satellite next.

Q: Let’s talk about that. The North Koreans announced a new five-year plan that included, as you said, an improved observation satellite and also a stunning declaration that they were actually developing a larger rocket. What did you make of these new announcements and how important are they?
A: They gave a plausible explanation for their focus on earth observation satellites, which was due to a series of environmental disasters beginning in the mid-1990s. But this first satellite seems almost too little, too late to be of much help when one considers you can get the same data this satellite could provide for cheaper and sooner from commercial services.

The larger rocket is also consistent with their announced intention to launch satellites for other countries. Rocket launch services are one of the few things North Korea can export that the rest of the world wants. Unfortunately, the Russians already dominate that portion of the space market and they won’t likely yield customers easily.

As for the military threat of any of North Korea’s rockets, including this hypothetical new one, you have to realize that even having only a handful of weaponized versions of these rockets would be intolerable to other countries like the United States.

But in defense of the North Korean’s current rocket, they have spelled out characteristics that a non-threatening rocket should have. Now they have to live up to those standards that they themselves have set. 

Q: Is this particular mission a logical step for a first satellite? 
A: I’ve come to realize that it is. The North Koreans have given a reasonable justification for the kind of mission they say this satellite is performing. They are still building a rocket that seems bigger than they need and are spending more time and effort than if they had sought outside help, but their governmental ideology has once again trumped practicality.

We’re still not sure if this launch isn’t doing other undisclosed experiments, including those associated with future weaponization and they have not provided enough transparency to eliminate that possibility.

Q: In our previous discussion after you visited the Sohae launch site, you expressed reservations about the authenticity of the satellite. Does this press conference change any of your views on the matter?
A: The press conference not so much, but I’ve done some online research and consultations with associates around the world and I’m now satisfied that what they showed us is within the realm of possibility of a plausible design.

My other concern about the late installment of the satellite onto the rocket was directly addressed with an entirely plausible answer: They didn’t even realize they were out of step with standard practice. They simply did not how other space agencies schedule that type of installation. When the North Koreans say they didn’t realize how other countries did it, I can believe it.

Q: Have the North Korean’s explanation about the peaceful application of the satellite changed your view about the potential weaponization of this missile?
A: No, just carrying a peaceful satellite does not negate the weaponization potential of the carrier rocket. They seem to think that having a peaceful satellite makes them immune to all charges of weaponization, but it doesn’t. The rocket science says this booster design retains weapons potential regardless of what you put on top of it.

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BEIJING – Apple’s recent market valuation of over $500 billion has invited countless comparisons, even inspiring a website that gleefully chronicles the places and things the tech giant is now valued more than.

Among other things, Apple is now worth more than the entire GDP of Poland, all the gold in the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York and America’s entire aircraft carrier fleet.

But is that enough to take the sting out of the $1.6 billion in compensation Proview Technology (Shenzhen) is rumored to be demanding in exchange for settling the thorny dispute over ownership of the iPad trademark in China? 

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Last Wednesday, Guangdong’s Higher People’s Court heard an appeal from Apple after a lower court ruled in favor of Proview and declared them the actual owner of the iPad name in China. 

The significance of the case has not been lost in Chinese. Both local and foreign media were said to be staked outside the courtroom. In response to greater calls for transparency from the government, Wednesday’s legal proceedings before the three-judge panel were actually live-blogged by the court on a twitter-like service called Tencent Weibo.

The court now has almost 80,000 followers – but their decision has not been announced yet. According to Chinese law, the time limit for ruling on an appeal is three months. 

The stakes are high for everyone involved: Apple, Proview, the Chinese government and other Western investors.

High stakes
China is Apple’s second largest market behind the United States. It is also where most of its products are made –  including the highly anticipated iPad 3 which some tech-watchers are speculating may be released as soon as tomorrow. 
 
This court is typically the final word on legal proceedings in China, although Apple could still appeal to the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing. A loss would leave two undesirable options: An appeal to a Supreme Court that is not known for overturning many decisions of its lower court; or settling with the cash-strapped Proview. 

For Proview, a company that at one time was an industry leader in the manufacturing of computer displays before falling on hard times, a win or an out-of-court settlement could set the stage for a dramatic revitalization of a company that now counts the Bank of China and China Banking Corp. as creditors. 

According to a Chinese-language report out last Friday, Proview’s consortium of creditors are said to be seeking $400 million from the cash-strapped company.

A settlement with Proview may be anathema to Apple; effectively inviting similar copycat suits against them in other jurisdictions, but the alternative of changing the name of a product they’ve already sold 32 million of worldwide is an equally bitter pill to swallow.

A warning for Western investors?
The need to legally resolve this issue is also uncomfortable for the Chinese government, which stands to lose politically regardless of who wins the case. 

Should Proview prevail and receive control of the trademark in China, it would stir up a certain crisis-of-faith among the foreign business community, whose concerns about intellectual property have become louder in recent years.

Sixty-six percent of respondents to the American Chamber of Commerce’s 2011 China Business Climate Survey said intellectual property rights protection is “very” or “critically” important to their business.

One U.S. businessman, who declined to be named for this piece, noted that while Apple’s spat with Proview is over the sale of a trademark and not the legal standing of the trademark itself, he would nevertheless be concerned about the strength of his company’s own trademarks in China should Apple lose. 

“Remember that line from the movie, ‘The Social Network,’ ‘You better lawyer up!’? You bet we have our lawyers looking closely now at all our company’s legal arrangements.”

It’s an example of corporate skepticism of the legal system here and a growing sentiment among the foreign business community of economic inequality between foreign and domestic companies.

That’s a sentiment that China’s ruling Communist Party wishes to avoid at all cost. In recent years the government has worked hard to improve intellectual property rights law in the country. They touted them as the Guangdong Higher People’s Court did on its Weibo feed of the court proceedings, inviting China’s web sphere to “witness the progress of intellectual property right protection in China.”

Ironically, the enforcement of those laws could potentially unravel the goodwill they were intended to build with foreign companies and investors.

Best for all? Out-of-court settlement
An Apple victory may mollify Western companies. It will also likely draw the ire of a more nationalist section of the population here that may view it as an example of China serving foreign interests before those of its own companies.

As unlikely as it may seem that a decision in Apple’s favor could lead to any mass resentment towards the government, in this sensitive time leading up to China’s leadership transition later this year, the Party is hyper-attuned to perceived public discontent.

So in the meantime, China’s government is quietly pushing through the court’s judges their dream solution to this dispute: out-of-court settlement. At the end of the hearing on Wednesday, the judge apparently gently urged Apple and Proview to consider a private settlement.

The financial motivations are there for both parties to come to the bargaining table, but Apple’s participation will either require a dramatic change of heart by the company which has refused to come to the table so far or a more pessimistic analysis of their chances in court.

Either way, you can bet the Apple CEO Tim Cook is thinking twice about his bold earlier statement last month that the company “has more money than it needs.”

BEIJING – Retired NBA star, Yao Ming, carved out an eight-year career protecting the hoop in the NBA. His next defensive assignment though may be a considerably taller task for the 7’6” all-star, if not a lot cuter and fuzzier than his former basketball opponents.

Yao was in the central Chinese province of Sichuan on Wednesday, where he presided over the opening of a new phase in the giant panda-breeding program that some experts hope will help pandas born in captivity eventually assimilate back into the wild through a regimen of acclimation and survival training. 

“I think it is most important to keep a balance between modern living and nature,” said Yao to reporters in Sichuan. “We have been talking about it for many years but it is never an easy thing to do.”

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Chinese experts constructed a $4.75 million habitat called “Panda Valley” in the area around the town of Dujiangyan – a place heavily hit by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The 50-acre park will serve as a large, open-area school where researchers will be able to slowly teach the pandas the art of survival in the harsh, elevated mountain wilderness that pandas thrive in.

Over time, organizers plan to expand the panda habitat to eventually allow for up to 30 pandas to live there. It is hoped that eventually 100 pandas from this facility will be released back into the wild over the next 50 years.

Panda researchers in China screened the 108 pandas in captivity at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Sichuan over the period of a year and whittled the list down to six final candidates. The roster included such panda celebrities as twin brothers, Xingrong and Xingya, and one panda named Gongzai, who was the inspiration for “Po” the rotund, fighting panda featured in the “Kung Fu Panda” movies.

These pandas were selected for this pilot project based on criteria that encompassed age, health and genetic background. 

It is hoped that the pandas selected will demonstrate the best combination of strength to defend themselves from wild pandas, while being young enough to allow them the opportunity to grow up and adapt to their wild surroundings.

The ultimate goal is for these pandas to grow up, assimilate into the wild and give birth to new pandas ready to survive in the wild.

The preserve’s opening comes as China is in the midst of a nationwide panda census that is conducted every ten years. There are an estimated 1,600 pandas living in the wild and an additional 300 living in captivity.

Despite China being at the forefront of panda research and the masters of a highly successful breeding program, some experts feel that the park is simply too expensive and that previous attempts to create similar preserves for other species have come with mixed results.

A similar attempt to reintroduce pandas back into the wild in China ended in failure in 2007 when Xiang Xiang, a five-year-old male panda trained for three years by researchers was found dead after he was killed by wild pandas.

Related link: Six pandas amble toward freedom in China preserve