According to the New York Times:

[The] projected peak in China, 1.4 billion people, will be lower than previously estimated and . . . it will occur sooner. With the fertility rate declining to fewer than 1.6 births per woman in this decade from 2.2 in 1990, China's overall population growth rate has slowed to 0.5 percent annually.

In contrast, India's 1.4 percent growth rate is being driven by a fertility rate of 2.7 births per woman.

The bureau's International Data Base projects that China's labor force will peak at 831 million - 24 million more workers than today - in 2016. That is because the number of newcomers to the labor force in their early 20s is expected to start declining in 2011 after reaching 124 million.

In India, the number of new entrants to the labor force is expected to reach 116 million in 2024 before decreasing.

According to the same report, the world's population is growing, but its rate of growth is about to enter a steep decline. It may be that we will witness the world's peak human population in our lifetimes.

via New York Times and US Census Bureau

Top image via Premshree Pillai.

Fearing a nuclear or other attack from the Soviet Union, Mao commissioned the construction of Dixia Cheng, which was built to hold restaurants, clinics, facilities for underground agriculture, and even a roller skating rink. Although the claim was never tested, the Chinese government claimed that Dixia Cheng could have housed Beijing's entire six million person population. Although some of the rooms and tunnels have been used for various purposes — public meeting spaces, government storage, hostels, a tourist attraction — but many of the tunnels have been boarded up or neglected. Still, some people apparently live in the portions of the tunnels not maintained by the government. Viceland visited some of the more neglected portions of the Dixia Cheng tunnels, and you can see more of the photos here.

[via Reddit]

According to NASA, whose researchers first wrote about this lingering smog bank on Oct. 30:

A temperature inversion may be responsible for the build up of pollution over eastern China. Normally, air cools with altitude, but occasionally, a layer of cool air will be trapped beneath a layer of warm air. Since the cool air is more dense than the air above it, the two layers don't mix and pollutants build up in the cool air near Earth's surface.

Temperature inversions develop most often during the winter, when long, cool nights chill the ground. The cold land cools the air nearest the ground, leaving the air at higher altitudes warmer. The two layers of air do not easily mix, and the temperature inversion can last for days if winds are calm.

So far it has lasted for more than a week. Is this the future of weather?

via NASA

Earlier this month, Guang was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his series "Pollution in China." These images were taken in various factory towns around China and Mongolia, showing how the byproducts of industry have devastated the regions. Perhaps most remarkable is that these towns are still very much inhabited, with people living and suffering under these apocalyptic conditions.

More images at China Hush. [via Reddit]

One hundred candidates, both male and female, have reported to the No. 454 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in in the hopes of joining the burgeoning ranks of China's astronauts. Nanjing doctor Shi Bing Bing revealed to Chinese newspapers that, in addition to passing rigorous mental and physical tests, the candidates will have to fulfill a list of 100 mandatory standards before they'll be allowed to fly. One item on the list: absolutely no bad breath, as one's breath and other body odors can negatively affect colleagues in the confines of a space craft.

Other requirements include no cavities, no scars (they "might burst and bleed when spaceships are accelerating"), no drug allergies, no ringworm, no runny noses, and no serious family illness in the last three generations. Married aspirants must get permission from their spouses before they can leave the Earth. And candidates are expected to possess a generally "pleasant and adaptable disposition."

If the requirements sound nearly impossible to fulfill, that's more or less the point. Mere mortals, it seems, simply don't qualify to fly under the Chinese banner. Shi says it himself:

"These astronauts could be regarded as super human beings."

Astronauts wanted - no bad breath [BBC]

Although blogs like Pink Tentacle have been reporting the tadpole rains of Japan for over a week now, the news is finally hitting mainstream outlets. Apparently small fish as well as tadpoles are falling on various districts in Japan. Usually they're dead by the time they hit the ground. One man claimed he found 13 tiny carp had rained onto his car. Nobody has come forward with a good theory about how they have gotten into rain clouds, nor has anyone been able to explain what might have changed recently to make this happen.

According to the UK Guardian:

One popular theory is that the creatures were sucked up by waterspouts but meteorologists say no strong winds have been reported in the areas where tadpoles were found. One expert said gusts too weak to be picked up by observatories might have sucked up small quantities of water, along with a few unfortunate tadpoles. Ornithologists said it was too early too rule out their feathered friends.

Kimimasa Tokikuni, head of the Ishikawa branch of the Japanese Society for the Preservation of Birds, told the Yomiuri Shimbun that bigger birds, such as herons and black-tailed gulls, might have dropped the tadpoles after being disturbed in mid-flight.

But the startled bird theory fails to answer a simple question: why haven't the "flying" tadpoles been noticed before?

Less unusual but no less alarming have been this spate of mega-hail storms in China recently. Giant hail stones, combined with winds up to 62 miles per hour, crushed thousands of houses and injured hundreds of people over the last week. Xenophilia reports:

Recovery efforts have begun in eastern China following a severe hail storm on Sunday that killed at least 14 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Hail stones and winds of more than 100km/h (62mph) lashed the province for nearly 90 minutes, uprooting trees and scattering debris across roads.

The Civil Affairs bureau in Anhui province says more than 10,000 people had to be taken to emergency shelters.

I suppose you could call this climate change, since in fact it does represent a change in the climate. Especially the tadpoles. But I have to admit it seems like something a lot weirder than that.

A new demographic study conducted by Chinese researchers reveals that China has 32.7 million more males than females under the age of 20. Of course, some regions have higher male to female ratios than others, partly due to differences in how China's "one child" policy is enforced. In many regions, couples who give birth to a girl are allowed to have a second child, and tend to abort fetuses until they have a male. In urban areas like Shanghai with more education and greater social parity between the sexes, people are allowed only one child no matter what the sex. While there are still more boys born, the ratio is less extreme. You can see a breakdown of China's demographics by region below.

The study included over 4 million participants from across China, and was based on data gathered during the 2005 year. The Chinese government has expressed concern over the looming population imbalance among young adults, which is going to become more extreme over the next ten years or so. Most experts agree that the imbalance has largely been caused by access to ultrasound tests that can determine the sex of a baby before birth. (It's worth noting that China's current population control policies were implemented before the availability of these tests.) Though sex-based abortion is illegal in China, it is widely practiced.

So the male generation coming of age now in China is mainly the result of population control policies that didn't take into account changes in technology.

All kinds of solutions have been proposed, though of course it's too late to stop the ball rolling on demographic changes that have already happened to people who are teens and toddlers right now. When the male generation comes of age, there will not be enough fertile women to replace the current population and it will decline.

Some commentators have suggested that China gradually relax its population control policies, allowing people to create families of any size they like within the next ten years. Others believe that there needs to be a tweak in the policies of regions that allow a second child only if the first is female - these are the regions that have the highest male-to-female sex ratios. And there have already been efforts made to educate citizens about the value of girls via the fairly successful "Care for Girls" campaign that has halted the runaway ratios in targeted regions.

The pressing question now, however, is what will happen to this male generation? Ian McDonald asks this same question about India in his short story "An Eligible Boy," published in his new anthology Cyberabad Days. He imagines a world where the lack of women has broken down the caste system: Women are so valuable that men compete for women of every caste. They spend all their cash on dressing up, paying exorbitant amounts to matchmaking services, and trying vainly to interest the few women who remain single. The disappointed bachelors turn to videogames, soaps, and marriage-like relationships with other men.

Margaret Atwood asks this same question in her novel The Handmaid's Tale, which imagines a post-apocalyptic future where only a few women are fertile. Those who are fertile are rounded up and turned into breeding slaves for wealthy men. Essentially, every powerful male gets to have a harem that includes his (infertile) wife and a "handmaid," his breeding woman.

While both of these scenarios are extreme, the question of what will happen to both sexes in the male generation is pressing. Will men have to take on the traditionally female role of hoping to be noticed by the opposite sex, wishing for that lucky moment when women choose them? Or will men treat women like valuable but powerless objects, best when they are kept locked up and constantly pregnant? Or perhaps there will be a social transformation where women get to have male harems so that those extra 32.7 million men all get to have wives. No matter what happens, the next two decades in China are likely to foment a strange new kind of sexual revolution.

Read the full report on China's sex demographics here (it's a PDF). Or read a summary in the New York Times.

Chang'e-I was the first part of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, an orbital mission, which was designed to map the lunar surface in unprecedented detail with three-dimensional maps, providing valuable reference material for future lunar landings on the part of China's space program. The probe also gathered information about the Lunar surface, mapping elements and the composition of the lunar regolith as well as information on solar wind, all important information for upcoming missions to our nearest neighbor in space. The next part of their mission, Chang'e-2, is scheduled for launch in 2011, which has a similar mission to its sister Chang'e-I.

The ability to reach the moon is an important step for China, which recently conducted its first space walk with Shenzhou 7. Taikonauts Zhai Zhigang and Liu Boming left the spacecraft in September of 2008, before returning successfully to earth. Taken together, these two events show that China is well on its way towards the moon. Not only has China proved that they can put the proper hardware into orbit, they have the ability to put someone into space. NASA's own Gemini and early Apollo missions were designed to test each step that would be required to conduct lunar EVAs by showing that astronauts could reach orbit, but also walk outside.

In addition to lunar ambitions, China also recently announced plans to place a space station, Tiangong-1, in orbit, where orbital rendezvous and zero-gravity experiments can be undertaken. The ability to dock with another object in space is another important step towards lunar ambitions.

Getting to the moon is not an easy task - an aspiring lunar explorer must undertake a whole series of steps, each one requiring a lot of training and support. It took NASA almost a decade to go from orbit to landing on the moon, designing much of the hardware and testing it during that time, with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. China has the advantage in this regard, because many of the unknowns, such as basic medical questions have been answered already - we know that the lunar landing can be accomplished, and that humans can survive in zero-gravity for extended periods of time.

Upcoming missions for China include the Chang'e-2, which will be similar to Chang'e-1, Chang'e-3, which will attempt a 'soft' landing on the moon's surface, and will have rovers to explore the surface, with Chang'e-4 planned to land on the moon and return samples back to earth, expected in 2017.

This mission comes at a time when India and Iran have both launched satellites of their own, signaling future potential rivals in space, with North Korea also announcing that it plans to put a communications satellite into space in the near future. It would appear that there will be another space race within the next two decades, with the United States also intending to return to the moon within that time frame.

Read more from the BBC and Business Week. Photos from Xinhuanet and Cyber Space Orbit

I'm not sure if the woman in the first image is deliberately falling, or is trying to portray a failing video card. Either way, the fact that all the women in the line behind her are carrying shiny Vaios as fashion accessories is completely awesome. Handbags of the future!

Love the fuzzy digital background behind the 1960s-looking cheesecake poses.

Mortar boards? Circuit boards? Freakish brain implants? What exactly is on top of those models' heads?

Even futuristic fashion will always emphasize the ass. And crazy blue-green mermaid stripper shoes. Is that the message here?

Photo by China Photos via Getty.

Lau, pictured here with stars Sun Li and Hu Jun (center), has directed a number of other science fiction and fantasy movies, most recently A Chinese Tall Story. At a press conference in China last week, he said that he was motivated to work on the as-yet-untitled kung fu robot movie after seeing Transformers and realizing there were no robot movies that were distinctly Asian. (I'd nominate Giant Robot, but maybe he meant Chinese movies.)

The movie will be epic, with elements of humor and romance as well as robot-on-robot action. It takes place in a future world where robots are at war with each other. Hu Jun plays a police officer who becomes a cyborg, and his head can apparently turn into some kind of helicopter - which sounds completely awesome. Sun Li plays a woman in love with a cyborg, which she described as very moving, but more difficult than your standard romance role.

Hottie Wu Jing plays an android gone bad, who has amazing martial arts skills and wields a giant blade. Lau promises that Jing's character will be unlike anything you've seen before: An android who thinks like a human, has Chinese kung fu skills, and eventually struggles with a crisis of conscience. Several of the robots can change form, like Transformers, and this will be key to the final, epic fight scene - which apparently makes reference to Bruce Lee.

OK, so we've got kung fu, Bruce Lee, cyborgs, androids who can transform their shapes, human-robot love, and fight scenes. All this movie needs is a giant monster and I can die the happiest geek in the world. The movie is slated for a summer 2009 release in Asia, and hopefully us poor sods over in the States and Europe will get to see it sometime next year too.

Jeff Lau's Kung Fu Cyborg Attraction [via Wu-Jing.org]

Wu was invited to participate in this year’s Microwave International New Media Arts Festival in Hong Kong. Wu has through his own research and experimentation created over two dozen robots based on his curiosity concerning human movement:

I remember once when I was a teen, I was sitting at the doorway of my home, bored. Then someone walked past. So I wondered about the two legs that we humans have, and I wondered if I could build a machine that walked like a human. I didn’t know about robots, but it was then that I got the idea.

In 1986, Wu built his first robot, Old Wu One, which was 20 cm tall and walked very slowly. But, after two decades of experimenting, Wu has created an impressive array of vehicles and automata, including a spider-legged chaise and a large, man-shaped rickshaw that can easily accommodate a passenger and driver. In the video below, Wu shows off several of his mechanical creations and explains his interest in robotics.

Rural Robots by Wu Yulu from microwavefest on Vimeo.

[via Design Boom]

This airshow fan had planes on the brain - literally. Not only does he have awesome eye bling, but he actually stuck acupuncture needles into his forehead topped with planes. That's devotion for you.

Photos via China Photos/Getty Images.

Luckily, the bloggers at EastSouthWestNorth have translated her blog for people who don't read Chinese. The incident started quietly enough, with the student blogging about her friend Jiajia feeling sick and throwing up. But within hours, things started to get weird:

In class today, Yuanyuan said that Jiajia felt sick and has gone to the hospital. At noon, Jiajia came back. She was feeling good enough and she told us that the hospital is filled with Hainan University students with diarrhea. There were many people there waiting to see the doctors. The doctors were so busy that they had to arrange for queues.

Everybody laughed but then we realized that this is serious. I began to wonder whether I have cholera too. I went on the Internet and looked up all sorts of materials about cholera. Then I fell asleep. By around 5pm, I was awaken by several phone calls to say that I had to go down to the school office and get some medicine.

Then a series of events made me dizzy: the school was put under a quarantine; the three entrances were manned by police. Two persons from the School of Tourism were confirmed to have cholera. Many others people were placed under isolation. Jiajia was taken away!

What's interesting about this is how much this student and her friends are communicating about this online, especially using the popular Chinese social network QQ. She is constantly checking her friends' status on QQ, and writing down what they say. One of her friend's QQ signatures reads "TERRIFYING." Another says, "Socialism is good. Socialism cannot feed us."

It's hard not to see this event in the context of growing fears about a SARS-like pandemic breaking out in China and spreading worldwide. In fact, the student keeps talking about how she's terrified that this is going to be like SARS, even though she knows cholera can be treated with a three-day course of medicine. Apparently the authorities were treating this like a beta test for a more dangerous epidemic.

As things developed Monday, the student wrote more:

Cholera has become a part of our my life, along with taking medicine and eating instant noodles. The air smelled like disinfectant and instant noodles . . . I finally decided to go out. I left at 430pm in the hope of being able to get into one of the cafeteria. Today, another cafeteria opened up. There are now two small cafeterias plus the Muslim restaurant to keep the university going.

I read in the Intenet news that the university has been placed under quarantine. It is said that the teachers and students at Hainan University are living normally and remaining mentally stable. But nobody in the entire university campus has told me what the situation is. There are only people coming and going, spraying disinfectant and washing the walls.

Despite the visibility online of people writing about the frightening quarantine, few Western media sources have picked up the story. There was an item in the China Post yesterday, which made it sound as if the event was contained and over.

But yesterday, our student blogger wrote:

I did not think about going down to the cafeteria at all. Perhaps I was scared off by what I saw when I walked past the cafeterias after class. There were crowds out the entrance and the university workers were yelling: "Do not enter. Please do not push. It is already full inside. Even if you get in, you won't get any food." There were many students dressed in camouflage uniforms trying to maintain order. They chased waves and waves of students back out. Even the temporary stands outside the cafeteria for instant noodles were mobbed. There was a notice which said that the cafeteria which re-opened yesterday is closed today because of water stoppage. The workers watched the people from the second floor. As I walked past this cafeteria, I heard a male student yell from the second floor: "I want to eat food, I want to drink water."

When I got back to the dormitory, there were more notices downstairs. Two notices were new: water was stopped and the Internet will be down tomorrow. Everybody howled in collective agony again. I don't think cholera is scary. But the lack of supply of the various essential things in daily life is the true terror.

She's right. And in fact her ongoing coverage of this quarantine reads like a near-future science fiction story because what she's going through is just a small-scale version of what many of us would deal with if a pandemic did break out. In such circumstances it's possible that if a disease doesn't kill you, the quarantine conditions will.

Life in the Time of Cholera [via EastSouthWestNorth]

Instead of working rice paddies, Chinese farmers today care for solar cells that feed energy-hungry cities. Below, you can see smog-shrouded Xining looming over its new power station. The solar farm will expand considerably before it's complete.

Photo by China Photos/Getty Images.

Between Chandrayaan-1 and NASA's forthcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we'll finally get decent maps of the Moon's surface. "We don't really have really good modern maps of the moon with modern instrument," said Georgetown space policy researcher Scott Pace. "The quality of the Martian maps, I would make a general argument, is superior to what we have of the Moon."

Images by AP. [AP and New York Times]

The facts are so staggering, you'll want to read them while sitting down. You know where:

Eighty percent of the world's illness is caused by fecal matter. A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs. Bacteria can be beneficial: the human body needs bacteria to function, and only 10 percent of cells in our body are actually human. Plenty are not. Small fecal particles can then contaminate water, food, cutlery, and shoes—and be ingested, drunk, or unwittingly eaten. One sanitation specialist has estimated that people who live in areas with inadequate sanitation ingest 10 grams of fecal matter every day.

As with the space race, China is on the forefront of advances in human excrement, George says. It's not just innovation in toilet technology like the ping pong john below: the energy that comes from the fermenting of feces is called biogas, and pig feces and human feces are the primary source to fuel stoves for cooking.

Can biogas fuel my PSP? Because that would be the only capitalist application of this process I can currently think of. We highly recommend George's book, which you can find here.

Excerpts from the book [Slate]

The Transformers of Zhejiang Province [via Neatorama]

The Busan, South Korea film festival featured a retrospective on Asian superheros that included Super Inframan, a 1975 feature from China. Today it plays like Power Rangers, but the set design is tremendous:

In the eighties, the Asian superhero in cinema included a superheroine for the first time, Darna, and Mr. India did the Invisible Man trick.

Superheroes increasingly came from working class backgrounds, surpassing whatever caste system kept them in place, and soaring above. (This year's Phillippines series Captain Barbell has that market cornered.) The 1980s also gave us the legendary double agent, magician/crossbow crimefighter, Toofan (right). Somewhere along the way Asian writers began to look back to older characters, including Kamen Rider, who made it the big screen in 2005 as the Masked Rider:

2006's Mercury Man was a more Western take, with a hero overtly modeled after Spiderman. Mercury Man is a Thai fighting Afghan terrorists for America, a concept that continues to make our brain explode. The Mumbai-born director Rakesh Roshan's Krrish project brought Bollywood and Superman together this year. Krrish is already the second sequel in the series, after Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai and the E.T.-inspired Koi… Mil Gaya. It's doubtful this Superman-ripoff would have much crossover appeal, but perhaps the world is ready for a non-white The Tick who sings?

While 2006's Krrish was something of an artistic success and definitely scored with audiences, 2008's Drona (which opened wide at the beginning of October), is by all accounts a dreadful superhero "epic," one described as Harry Potter meets Indiana Jones. Yikes. Better films are in sight, starting with the Cicak Man sequel, Cicakman 2: Planet Hitam, where the heroine's lizard powers will battle the Ginger Boys in a film with the original's comedic tone.

The biggest project in Korea is Jeon Woo Chi. Director Dong-hun Choi helms this sci-fi fantasy epic that includes wizards. The film takes advantage of its setting's rich history — the story stretches all the way back to 1509. We were sold when we heard the protagonist referred to as "an undisciplined womanizing Taoist." A Harry Potter that does wire-fighting probably isn't the worst idea if you're a fan of making money.

The Deepak Chopra superhero is coming as well: Ramayan 3392 A.D. is in development from Master and Commander scribe and 300 producer Mark Canton.

Liquid, Mandalay team for 'Ramayan' [Hollywood Reporter]

We're not just being conspiracy theorists. Chinese-American scientist Quan-Sheng Shu, 68, was recently arrested by the FBI — the probable charge was funneling information to the Chinese space program. So prepare yourselves for a future of eternal space war, with spies and counter-spies and counter-counter-spies.

According to the Times, the Chinese 'naut diet includes "shredded pork sauteed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce." Add to that spicy sauce the news that some Chinese papers were reporting details and quotes from the spacewalk before the astronauts had even taken off, and we're left with even more questions.

We must remind ourselves that the stated reason for the Shenzhou-7 spaceship is research, but a dark future may well await.

There's a history of SF imagery in the Chinese space program, as Stefan Landsberger's dramatic recapturing of posters from the period proves. According to Lansberger, these kinds of posters were used to "capture the popular imagination."

All the evidence suggests we need to put these pieces together. Are they The Pattern, or the Order, or do they perhaps point to a third sequel in the National Treasure franchise?

If anything, it's probably the latter, as actual footage of underwater spacewalk trials is practically begging for Nicholas Cage's take-charge, can do attitude.

The clues may well be hidden in the science fiction literature of the period. Translations of Jules Verne started the diffusion of Western science fiction into China. You can find versions of Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace and most major SF authors in Chinese bookstores now.

As Mara Hvistendahl put it in Seed in 2006:

In the early 90s, China launched an ambitious scientific development program and seized sci-fi as a means of spurring enthusiasm for science. In 1995, State Science and Technology Commission Minister Song Jian proposed, in a widely circulated article, that science-themed literature would reflect well on the state of Chinese science.

The above is from a simulation. Is this a Skrull invasion or the dividing of the launch booster?

If you fear an impending space race with China, the counterpoint to our coming destruction may well be the growth of Chinese science fiction. We can hope this small step for China inspires the best the continent of Asia has to offer, such as the Taiwanese City Trilogy.

And if the impeccable plotting of Chang Hsi-Kuo doesn't do it for you, feel free to refer to this alternate history.

An Alternate History of Chinese Science Fiction [No Fear of the Future]

50 Science Fiction Books That Socialists Should Read [Fantastic Metropolis]

British scientist Roger Shayer caused a stir when New Scientist highlighted his claims that an em drive could violate strict Newtonian physics, thanks to an effect of Einsteinian relativity. The drive works by filling a "tapering resonant cavity" with microwaves. Critics have dismissed Shayer's idea as another perpetual motion machine, and the British government cut off his funding. But his assocation with China's Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an paid off, and the NPU team has been able to confirm Shayer's work independently. They also claim they're building a a thruster based on Shayer's theories.

If it works the emdrive could create almost as much thrust as the ion thruster NASA currently uses, but using a quarter of the power, Shayer tells Wired. Says Wired:

The possibilities are phenomenal: Instead of going out of service when they run out of fuel, satellites would have greatly extended endurance and be able to move around at will. (We wouldn't have to shoot them down because of the risk from toxic fuel either.) Deep space probes could go further, faster –- and stop when they arrive. Shawyer calculates that a solar-powered Emdrive could take a manned mission to Mars in 41 days. Provided it works, of course.

If this actually pans out, and the Chinese government reaps the benefits, it'll be an object lesson in the dangers of dismissing new scientific ideas out of hand. It could have been Britain building the next-generation fleet of super-fast Mars explorers, after all. Mostly, though, a Chinese breakthrough in the "impossible drive" could spark a new space race — especially if, as Wired hints, the emdrive stands to give China a decisive military advantage in space. [Wired]