EoW July 2008

T ransat lant ic Cable

The rating service Nielsen Online estimates the American online population at 221 million, as well; but it counts only the great majority of Internet users in the US with access at home or at work, while one-third of Chinese users gain access in cybercafes. The Xinhua report of 24 th April drew upon data for February from the government’s China Internet Network Information Center. The United States, with less than 5% of the world’s people, ❈ ❈ has almost 25% of its prison population. According to data from the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College (London), the US has 2.3 million convicts behind bars, more than any other nation. China, four times as populous as the US, places a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. The Chinese total excludes hundreds of thousands of non-criminals, such as political activists, held in so-called administrative detention. The United States also ranks first in rate of incarceration. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 of the population (one of every 100 American adults is locked up) Russia places second among major industrialised nations, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. The incarceration rate in England is 151 per 100,000; in Germany, 88; in Japan, sixty-three.

Moreover, if orders pick up, and jobs are saved, factories working down inventory are likely to cut back on production and, with it, working hours and purchases of raw materials. Paltry as it was, the first-quarter growth would appear to counter the view that the US economy is in recession – defined by the government as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.” Even so, many economists and other specialists consider the recession/ no recession question a purely academic exercise at this point. They expect the economy to slip into negative around mid-year, given the spread of joblessness and the steady erosion of consumer spending power. Even those American workers with steady paychecks are losing ground. Also on 30 th April, the Labor Department reported that wages and benefits dipped by 0.6% from the first three months of 2007 through March of this year in inflation-adjusted terms. In brief . . . China claims to have tied the United States in the number ❈ ❈ of its citizens using the Internet: some 221 million people, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. This represents a 61% increase over the 137 million Chinese Internet users reported at the start of 2007. But a comparison based on the raw numbers may be misleading.

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EuroWire – January 2006 EuroWire – J ly 2008