Another Earthquake Hits China!

China was hit today again by an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.9. 300 people are believed to have died and hundreds more hurt. The region is remote, which will make it difficult for aid and aiders to reach the people in need now. Poor souls.
BBC compiles a list of earthquakes in the last 100 years. Shocking, how many people died because of earth's tremors!! (Graph: Wikipedia)

World's Disasters

Mankind has seen many disasters, taking millions of lives. This is a true, sad, general fact. Putting faces and numbers to such an informations makes a catastrophy hard to grasp for everyone. Three of the most devastating and deadliest tragedies happened in the last 5 years:
1. 2004, December, Tsunami after earthquake , hitting Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, taking 250,000 lives.
2. 2008, May, earthquake, hitting China, costing 88,000 lives.
3. 2010, January, earthquake, hitting Haiti, costing 230,000 lives.
That is more than 1/2 million lives wiped out in just 5 years. As grim and ghoulish as it may sound, it seems as earth and nature reclaim whatever is theirs by these natural disasters...


Tsunami about to land.
(Photo by BBC)

Haiti's Port-au-Prince after the quake.
(Photo by CNN)






China, Sichuan province.
(Photo by BBC)

What China Bought

China is big, China is colourful, China is attractive, China is booming and China has been THE nation sought after by nations seeking economic stimulation themselves in the first decade of the 21st century.


How rich China has become during the new millenia shows the following list of purchases:
-2009: $770 million: Chinese steelmaker Hunan Valin bought 16.5% of the Australian iron-ore mining company Fortescue Metals.
-2007: $ 3 billion: China Investment Corp bought 10% of shares of a New York-based private equity firm.
-2007: $ 5 billion: China Investment Corp bought 9.9% of shares of Morgan Stanley.
-2009: $ 19.5 billion: Aluminium Corp of China bought 18% of Rio Tinto, one of the largest mining companies in the world.
-2009: $390 million: China National Petroleum Corp bought the Canadian company Verenex Energy.
-2009: $10 billion: China Development Bank and China Petroleum  & Oil Corp invested in Petrobras, Brazil's oil company.
-2009: $15 billion: China's loan to Russia's Rosneft, the oil magnate.
-2009: $10 billion: China's loan to Transneft, Russia's pipeline company.


Total: $ 59.16 billion