Computer Solutions

Recently a new Internet witch hunt has been underway, to rid the Forbidden City in Beijing of its Starbucks. Not that the Shanghai Eye particularly cares for Starbucks. But in an interesting twist the China Daily, the government’s English language mouthpiece writes
Starbucks should be verboten in Forbidden City, say netizens.

And ‘Starbucks makes joke out of forbidden city.’

What is interesting is the use of the word ‘verboten.’ It also appears on the front page of the newspaper. So essentially the paper is saying that ‘Chinese Netizens’ are actually ‘Chinese nazis’? Why use the German word ‘verboten?’ German words such as ‘verboten,’ or ‘achtung,’ ‘raus,’ ’schnell,’ ‘Englander schweinhund’ and such are only used in the English language to refer to some sort of WW2 action by the nazis, usually in old comic books. These are probably the only German words familiar to most English speaking males who haven’t learnt German. Refer to the earlier Shanghai Eye piece here.
We can only assume that this is a bit of sub editor tomfoolery, sneaked in on a whim, and somehow passed the eagle eyed gaze of whoever is chief copy editor at the ever glowing China Daily. “Starbucks should be forbidden in Forbidden city, say Netnazis” was probably the other option.

In other news China Daily has a photo of some Beijing girls doing a belly dance.

And in more other news, they have an interesting piece on the new capital gains tax on land bought for real-estate development.
In the online version, it says:
“The value-added tax on land was written into a national regulation in 1993, but was not widely collected due to a subsequent recession in the real estate sector. The tax was resumed for the first time in Shenzhen at the end of last year. At present, some regions in China are collecting the tax at a rate of one to two percent on sales of newly developed houses, while other areas have yet to start collection.”

Whereas in today’s print edition it says a capital gains tax will be introduced of 30-60%. “The tax was first introduced in 1993 and has never been collected.” No explanation about recession, or what have you, or the remarkable jump in the amount charged.

So the logic is the government sells land to real estate developers for a lot of money. The developers sit on the land for as long as it takes for them to see a huge healthy profit developing, being capitalist roaders. So the government says they are driving prices up by sitting on the land. So they now have to pay, by February 1, up to 60% capital gains tax on the land- which we can assume will lead them to develop the land quick. But they are not likely to sell any property developed on this land at a loss- the up to 60% fee will obviously be passed on to consumers, thus inflating prices. Hmm. And to cap it all who decides on the value of the land? The government of course, they have a special department. I blame foreigners personally. Some ‘experts’ told Shanghai Eye it wasn’t a capital gains tax anyway, it is a value added tax, so now I really am confused.