A Point Of View: What kind of superpower could China be?

• Making sense of China (Martin Jacques)
• What is history's role in society? (Sarah Dunant)
• The strange allure of teeth (SD)
• Charity shop blues (SD)

China is on course to becoming a superpower - but not in the way many expect, writes economist Martin Jacques.

Beijing these days is positively throbbing with debate. It may not have the trappings of a western-style democracy, but it is now home to the most important and interesting discussions in the world.
When I addressed an audience of young Chinese diplomats at their foreign ministry a year ago, it was abundantly clear that a fascinating debate is under way about what kind of foreign policy might be appropriate for the global power China is in the process of becoming.
What will China be like as a superpower? You might think it is already - it is not.
Its military power is puny compared with that of the US. While America has 11 aircraft carriers, China only commissioned its first last month - based on, of all things, a Ukrainian hull.

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• Martin Jacques is an economist and author of When China Rules the World
• A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST

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And its global political influence is still extremely limited.

The only sense in which China is a superpower is economic - that is, its economy is already over half the size of the US economy and projected to overtake it around 2018, notwithstanding its reduced growth rate of 7%. But this is overwhelmingly a function of China's huge population. In terms of technology and living standards it lags far behind the US.
So when we speak of China as a superpower, we are talking about the future.
A common reaction to the idea of China as a superpower is that it will be like the US - except worse. Worse because it is not a democracy, it has a communist government and because its people are not like us. I guess that gives some the jitters.
In fact we should not expect China to behave in the manner of the US. It will be very different. And nor should we assume that it will necessarily be worse.
Why will it be different? Because its history is so different. Articles about China's growing involvement with Africa - in terms of trade and investment - often talk of the "new colonialism".
Beware historical ignorance. China has never colonised any overseas territories. Overseas empires were a European speciality, with Japan getting in on the act for a short while too.
China could have colonised South East Asia, for example, in the early 15th century. It had the resources, it had enormous ships, many times bigger than anything Europe possessed at the time. But it didn't.

China's first aircraft carrier is a former Soviet vessel, the Varyag

That is not to say China ignored its neighbours. On the contrary. For many, many centuries it dominated them - as a result of its sheer size and far more advanced level of development. China's relationship with them was based not on colonialism but what we now know as the tributary system. It neither ruled them nor occupied them. Rather, in return for access to the Chinese market and various forms of protection, the rulers of tribute states were required to give gifts - literally tribute - to the Emperor as a symbolic acknowledgement of China's superiority.
The tributary system comprised what we know today as East Asia, home to one-third of the world's population. It stretched from Japan and Korea to the Malay Peninsula and parts of Indonesia.
It proved remarkably stable, lasting for at least 2,000 years and only coming to an end around 1900.
The West and China share an important characteristic - they both believe they are universal, a model for all others. But the way they have interpreted this in practice has been entirely different. For Europe, and latterly the US, it meant projecting their power around the world, most spectacularly during the heyday of colonialism in the 19th and first half of the 20th Century, when a large part of the world found itself under European rule.
We governed from afar, exported our ways of doing things, imposed our languages, our education, our religion and much else besides.

Zheng He's statue looks across to the city of Nanjing

The Chinese, in contrast, preferred to stay at home. They believed the Middle Kingdom, the old name for China, literally meaning the centre of the world, was the highest form of civilisation. So why step outside into ever darkening shades of barbarianism?
The seven great voyages of Zheng He between 1405 and 1433 around the East and South China Seas and across the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa left no permanent mark - they were about demonstrating the glory of the Middle Kingdom rather than a desire to conquer. Those who left China to settle in South East Asia were seen as leaving civilisation and deserving of no support or protection by the Emperor.
Compare that with the way in which Britain and France celebrated the heroes of their colonial expansion. Our cities are littered with statues and street names in their memory.
There is another reason why the Chinese have tended to stay at home. The country is huge, diverse - and extremely difficult to govern. The overwhelming preoccupation of its rulers down the ages has been how to maintain order and stability and thereby retain power. It remains just as true today.
Rather than look outwards, China's leaders look inwards. The exception was China's own continental land mass. Its expansion, rather than to the four corners of the world, was confined to its own continent.
The most dramatic example was the westward march of the Qing dynasty from the mid-17th Century which, in a series of bloody and brutal wars, doubled the physical size of China.
So what, you might ask, does all this history tell us about how China might behave as a great global power? A great deal.

Europe, I would argue, has historically been an extremely aggressive and expansionist continent. Its own history has been characterised by seemingly endless wars which were then transplanted onto a global stage during the era of colonial expansion and world war. Military might, the projection of power around the world, and the desire if necessary by force to impose our way of life on others, have been fundamental to the European story.
And it is not difficult to see how the US - itself the product of European overseas expansion and settlement - inherited these characteristics from us.
China won't be like this. It is not in its DNA. Its rulers will be far less interested in seeking to dominate the rest of the world and far more concerned with keeping themselves in power. That is what ruling a country containing a fifth of the world's population obliges. When Xi Jinping becomes Chinese leader next month, his in-tray, as with Hu Jintao before him, will be overwhelmingly filled with domestic rather than foreign issues.
In time China will certainly come to enjoy huge global power. It will be exercised, however, in a rather different way.
The iconic form of western power has been military. Extraordinarily, the US today accounts for around half of global defence expenditure. Before, European colonial expansion was only possible because its fighting capacity was massively superior to that of the rest of the world.

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See also in the Magazine

"Chinese history can be read as a series of peasant rebellions. One in the 19th Century, led by a man who thought he was Christ's brother, lasted 15 years and caused at least 10 million deaths."
Read more about Hong Xiuquan from Carrie Gracie and about great Chinese figures by following the links below

• The emperor: Qin Shi Huang
• The bureaucrat: Wang Anshi
• The warlord: Liu Bei

That kind of overweening military power has never really been a Chinese characteristic.

Instead the quintessential forms of Chinese power will be economic and cultural. Over time, China's economic strength - given the size of its population - will be gigantic, far greater than that of the US at its zenith. Already, even at its present low level of development, China is the main trading partner of a multitude of countries around the world. And with economic power will come commensurate political power and influence. China will, if it wishes, be able to bend many other countries to its will.
Cultural power will also be important to the Chinese. Theirs is a remarkable civilisation - having enjoyed a place in the sun not once but several times. During the Tang dynasty, for instance, from the 7th to the 10th Century, and most remarkably during the Song dynasty from the 10th to the 13th Century, with major advances in a host of fields from biology and hydraulic engineering to architecture, medicine, mathematics and cartography.
The Chinese are enormously proud of their historical achievements. They believe that theirs is the greatest civilisation there has ever been.
They have a strong sense of their own superiority rooted in history. They have long had a hierarchical view of the world, with China at the top. And the rise of China is likely to accentuate these views.
But don't expect the Chinese to be impatient about their rise. In 1972 Henry Kissinger is reputed to have asked Zhou En Lai, the former Chinese premier, what he thought of the French Revolution. Zhou En Lai's response: "It's too early to know".
The Chinese have a completely different conception of time to Westerners. Whereas Americans think very short, the Chinese think very long.
For them a century is nothing.

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Is Human Nature Fundamentally Selfish or Altruistic?

Human inclinations are not primarily selfish: kindness and altruism have been evolutionarily valued in mates, and even the youngest children often try to be helpful

By Maia Szalavitz | @maiasz | October 8, 2012 | 

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Did selfishness — or sharing — drive human evolution? Evolutionary theorists have traditionally focused on competition and the ruthlessness of natural selection, but often they have failed to consider a critical fact: that humans could not have survived in nature without the charity and social reciprocity of a group.
Last week on Slate, evolutionary anthropologist Eric Michael Johnson explored the question against the backdrop of two cultural events in 1957 — the consequences of the rogue, selfish activities of a pygmy hunter in a Congo forest, who used the group’s collective hunting efforts to benefit only himself, and in New York City, the publication of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, whose protagonist champions the author’s notion that human nature is fundamentally selfish and that each man “exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.”
Atlas Shrugged counts many politicians as admirers, perhaps most notably Republican vice presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who cites the book as one of his main inspirations for entering politics and is known to give Rand’s books frequently to his interns.
(MORE: ‘Paradise Built in Hell:’ How Disaster Brings Out the Best in People)
So, does Rand’s theory comport with current evolutionary theory? The data is not exactly kind to her position. For example, Johnson describes an anthropologist’s account of the pygmy tribesman, Cephu, in the Congo who lived by the Randian ideal that selfishness is the highest morality. Cephu was part of the Mbuti tribe for whom “hunts were collective efforts in which each hunter’s success belonged to everybody else,” Johnson writes, detailing how the tribe “employed long nets of twined liana bark to catch their prey, sometimes stretching the nets for 300 feet. Once the nets were hung, women and children began shouting, yelling, and beating the ground to frighten animals toward the trap.”
It was a group effort, for most:

But one man, a rugged individualist named Cephu, had other ideas. When no one was looking, Cephu slipped away to set up his own net in front of the others.

Soon caught in this blatant attempt to steal meat, Cephu was brought in front of the whole tribe:

At an impromptu trial, Cephu defended himself with arguments for individual initiative and personal responsibility. “He felt he deserved a better place in the line of nets,” [the anthropologist Colin] Turnbull wrote. “After all, was he not an important man, a chief, in fact, of his own band?” But if that were the case, replied a respected member of the camp, Cephu should leave and never return. The Mbuti have no chiefs, they are a society of equals in which redistribution governs everyone’s livelihood. The rest of the camp sat in silent agreement.
Faced with banishment, a punishment nearly equivalent to a death sentence, Cephu relented.

He apologized, handed over his meat to the tribe and then, essentially, was sent to bed without dinner. As Johnson explains, selfishness is considered far from a virtue in such tribal groups, which still live in ways similar to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Indeed, every such group ever studied has been found to idealize altruism and punish selfishness, in everything from their mythologies to their mating practices.
(MORE: How Economic Inequality Is (Literally) Making Us Sick)
Although Rand accepted that early human life was a collective effort, she failed to realize how this shaped our brains. In most societies, for example, a man like Cephu would be seen as the opposite of a good catch for a woman wanting a partner. A good mate — and one whose genes were likely selected for and passed on in our earliest evolutionary history — would have been a cooperative hunter, one who didn’t put his own goals ahead of those of the tribe. He would have been altruistic in battle too, particularly when warring with other groups. A selfish soldier, after all, is known as a coward, not a hero.
The evidence for altruism as a critical part of human nature isn’t limited to anthropology. Studies of 18-month-old toddlers show that they will almost always try to help an adult who is visibly struggling with a task, without being asked to do so: if the adult is reaching for something, the toddler will try to hand it to them, or if they see an adult drop something accidentally, they will pick it up.
However, if the same adult forcefully throws something to the ground, toddlers won’t try to retrieve it: they understand that the action was deliberate and that the object is unwanted. These very young children will even assist (or refrain from helping) with a book-stacking task depending on what they perceive to be the adult’s intention. If the adult clumsily knocks the last book off the top of the stack, the toddler will try to put it back; if the adult deliberately takes the last book off, however, toddlers won’t intervene. Even before kids are taught to chip in — perhaps especially before they are told it’s an obligation — children are less selfish than often presumed.
Another study found that 3- to 5-year-olds tend to give a greater share of a reward (stickers, in this case) to a partner who has done more work on a task — again, without being asked — even if it means they get to keep less for themselves. And those cries of “That’s not fair!” that plague sibling relationships: they’re not only selfish; they reflect children’s apparently innate desire for equity.
(MORE: The Upside of Gossip: Social and Psychological Benefits)
Fundamental tendencies toward altruism aren’t only seen in children, either. Worldwide, the aftermath of natural disasters are typically characterized by heroism and a sharing of resources — within the affected community and in others farther way — not selfish panics. During the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for example, there were no accounts of people being trampled rushing out of the World Trade Center towers; rather, those who needed assistance descending were cared for, and calm mainly prevailed. The same occurred after the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011. The cases in which people stampede or look out only for themselves tend to be rare and involve very specific circumstances that mitigate against helpfulness.
Moreover, our stress systems themselves seem to be designed to connect us to others. They calm down when we are feeling close to people we care about — whether related to us or not — and spike during isolation and loneliness. Even short periods of solitary confinement can derange the mind and damage the body because of the stress they create. And having no social support can be as destructive to health as cigarette smoking.
Of course, none of this is to say that humans are never selfish or that we don’t have a grasping, greedy part of our nature. But to claim, as Rand does, that “altruistic morality” is a “disease” is to misrepresent reality.
(Share the love and read the rest of Johnson’s fascinating feature here.)
MORE: An Evolutionary Explanation for Altruism: Girls Find It Sexy

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Read other related stories about this:

• Ayn Rand vs. the Pygmies Slate

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Exhibition gives visitors power to control the rain

By Sabrina Sweeney Entertainment reporter, BBC News

 

  The Rain Room has been described as a "cocooning experience" by its creators.

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Most of us have been caught in a torrential downpour and wished we could make it stop, but how would it feel to have the power to control the weather?

Rain Room, a new 3D exhibition at London's Barbican Centre marries art, science and technology to do just that.
Despite standing in a space filled with drops of falling water, visitors remain dry, as the water halts above them.
Its creators have described it as "a social experiment" which "extracts behavioural experiences".
"We wanted to give people the cocooning experience of being immersed in a 3D rain room and watch their reaction," Hannes Koch told the BBC.
Koch met Florian Ortkrass and Briton Stuart Wood in 2005 while studying at the Royal College of Art in London and together they formed Random International.
As well as audience participation, science and technology play a big part in bringing their experimental exhibition to life.
Gravity effect With several 3D sensory cameras fixed to the ceiling of the Rain Room, every person who walks into the 100 square metre space is recognised.

Florian Ortkrass, Stuart Wood and Hannes Koch met at London's Royal College of Art.

As they move around "slowly", the rain stops overhead.
"If you run around you'll get wet because while the sensor picks up the movement, gravity limits the speed of the drops falling from the ceiling," explained Koch.
The artists said he and collaborators hoped the experience would give people a sense of "playful empowerment".
"By your sheer presence you can control the rain."
The installation has been designed to create an intimate atmosphere of contemplation.
"There's no distractive sound, you are very close [to the rain] and it is beautiful as it becomes hypnotic and the sound of the rain is extremely calming.
"Behavioural experiences" "It is very different to having an umbrella as you don't have the sound of the rain battering on the umbrella," said Koch."
This is not Random International's first experiment with visitor participation.
Its 2008 exhibition, Audience, used motorised mirrors to respond to the individual facing them with each viewer becoming the subject of the exhibition.
"It has been interesting and a lot of fun for us to watch people, as this kind of installation piece extracts behavioural experiences," said Koch.
"In the Rain Room, shy people may wait to see others' reaction and may act quite cautiously, while more excitable visitors will just rush in."
If the Rain Room is filled with participants, the "collective power of the crowd stops the rain", which Koch admits may limit the experience.
"We have recommended to our hosts that a little crowd control may be required to give people the full experience."
Rain Room at The Curve runs until March next year.

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Rationality in Action: Look at a Problem as an Outsider

Life created from eggs made from skin cells

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

 

  The resulting mice were fully fertile

Stem cells made from skin have become "grandparents" after generations of life were created in experiments by scientists in Japan.

The cells were used to create eggs, which were fertilised to produce baby mice. These later had their own babies.
If the technique could be adapted for people, it could help infertile couples have children and even allow women to overcome the menopause.
But experts say many scientific and ethical hurdles must be overcome.
Healthy and fertile Stem cells are able to become any other type of cell in the body from blood to bone, nerves to skin.
Last year the team at Kyoto University managed to make viable sperm from stem cells. Now they have performed a similar feat with eggs.
They used stem cells from two sources: those collected from an embryo and skin-like cells which were reprogrammed into becoming stem cells.

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“Start Quote

I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant”

Dr Evelyn Telfer University of Edinburgh

The first step, reported in the journal Science, was to turn the stem cells into early versions of eggs.

A "reconstituted ovary" was then built by surrounding the early eggs with other types of supporting cells which are normally found in an ovary. This was transplanted into female mice.
Surrounding the eggs in this environment helped them to mature.
IVF techniques were used to collect the eggs, fertilise them with sperm from a male mouse and implant the fertilised egg into a surrogate mother.
Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi, from Kyoto University, told the BBC: "They develop to be healthy and fertile offspring."
Those babies then had babies of their own, whose "grandmother" was a cell in a laboratory dish.
Devastating blow The ultimate aim of the research is to help infertile couples have children. If the same methods could be used in people then cells in skin could be turned into an egg. Any resulting child would be genetically related to the mother.
However, Dr Hayashi said that was still a distant prospect: "I must say that it is impossible to adapt immediately this system to human stem cells, due to a number of not only scientific reasons, but also ethical reasons."
He said that the level of understanding of human egg development was still too limited. There would also be questions about the long-term consequences on the health of any resulting child.
Dr Evelyn Telfer, from the University of Edinburgh, said: "It's an absolutely brilliant paper - they made oocytes [eggs] from scratch and get live offspring. I just thought wow! The science is quite brilliant."
However, she warned that this had "no clinical relevance" as there were still too many gaps in understanding about how human eggs developed.
"If you can show it works in human cells it is like the Holy Grail of reproductive biology," she added.
Prof Robert Norman, from the University of Adelaide, said: "For many infertile couples, finding they have no sperm or eggs is a devastating blow.
"This paper offers light to those who want a child, who is genetically related to them, by using personalised stem cells to create eggs that can produce an offspring that appears to be healthy.
"It also offers the potential for women to have their own children well past menopause raising even more ethical issues.
"Application to humans is still a long way off, but for the first time the goal appears to be in sight."
Dr Allan Pacey, from the British Fertility Society and the University of Sheffield, said: "What is remarkable about this work is the fact that, although the process is still quite inefficient, the offspring appeared healthy and were themselves fertile as adults."

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'50-hour genome' test for babies with genetic diseases

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

 

  Faster results mean sick babies can be given the correct medication

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• DNA race to unlock ageing secrets
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Doctors in the US say they have taken a big step forward in the speed of analysing the DNA of seriously ill babies with genetic diseases.

The whole of a baby's genetic code - genome - was sequenced, analysed and the results given to doctors within 50 hours in intensive care units at Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City.
The process would normally take at least a month, they said.
Experts in the UK said it was an "impressive" technical achievement.
US doctors say up to a third of babies admitted to neonatal intensive care units are there because of genetic diseases caused by mutations in their DNA. However, there are more than 3,500 different genetic diseases meaning many are rare and difficult to diagnose.
The first copy of the blueprint of human life - the Human Genome Project - took years to accomplish and an incredible amount of money. Since then both the time and the cost have fallen dramatically.
Children's Mercy Hospital has been testing a new way of reading the genetic code which takes 50 hours from the moment a blood sample is taken.
They were able to make a diagnosis in three out of the four babies they tested, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine.
Costly business Dr Stephen Kingsmore, director of the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at the hospital, said: "We can now consider whole genome sequencing to be relevant for hospital medicine.
"It is now feasible to decode an entire genome and provide interim results back to the physician in two days.
"We think this is going to transform the world of neonataology."
The results could help doctors provide the best treatment and counsel families. However, at a cost of about £8,400 ($13,500) it is still expensive.
Prof David Bonthron, from the University of Leeds, said: "It's pretty impressive technically, they're pushing the envelope of how fast you can turn this stuff around - two days is pretty fast."
He said speed was also vital in analysing the genes of a foetus still in the womb if abnormalities have been identified.
However, he added: "The speed issue is maybe a bit restricted in its applicability as other areas are not that time pressured. In outpatients a few days is not that important."

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Nato's exit strategy in Afghanistan

18 May 2012 Last updated at 00:47 ET Help

As Nato prepares to leave Afghanistan in 2014, questions on how this withdrawal will logistically take place have yet to be answered.
With the road route through Pakistan blocked, and instability and hostility from neighbouring countries making air and rail exits difficult, will it be possible to transport all the weapons and hardware of nearly 100,000 troops from this landlocked country?

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Liquid air 'offers energy storage hope'

By Roger Harrabin Environment analyst

 

  Renewable power generation, such as wind turbines, can produce electricity when it is not in demand

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Turning air into liquid may offer a solution to one of the great challenges in engineering - how to store energy.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers says liquid air can compete with batteries and hydrogen to store excess energy generated from renewables.
IMechE says "wrong-time" electricity generated by wind farms at night can be used to chill air to a cryogenic state at a distant location.
When demand increases, the air can be warmed to drive a turbine.
Engineers say the process to produce "right-time" electricity can achieve an efficiency of up to 70%.
IMechE is holding a conference today to discuss new ideas on how using "cryo-power" can benefit the low-carbon economy.
The technology was originally developed by Peter Dearman, a garage inventor in Hertfordshire, to power vehicles.
A new firm, Highview Power Storage, was created to transfer Mr Dearman's technology to a system that can store energy to be used on the power grid.
The process, part-funded by the government, has now been trialled for two years at the back of a power station in Slough, Buckinghamshire.
More than hot air The results have attracted the admiration of IMechE officials.

The energy storage technology has been tested for two years at a power station

"I get half a dozen people a week trying to persuade me they have a brilliant invention," head of energy Tim Fox told BBC News.
"In this case, it is a very clever application that really does look like a potential solution to a really great challenge that faces us as we increase the amount of intermittent power from renewables."
Dr Fox urged the government to provide incentives in its forthcoming electricity legislation for firms to store energy on a commercial scale with this and other technologies.
IMechE says the simplicity and elegance of the Highview process is appealing, especially as it addresses not just the problem of storage but also the separate problem of waste industrial heat.
The process follows a number of stages:

1. "Wrong-time electricity" is used to take in air, remove the CO2 and water vapour (these would freeze otherwise)
2. the remaining air, mostly nitrogen, is chilled to -190C (-310F) and turns to liquid (changing the state of the air from gas to liquid is what stores the energy)
3. the liquid air is held in a giant vacuum flask until it is needed
4. when demand for power rises, the liquid is warmed to ambient temperature. As it vaporizes, it drives a turbine to produce electricity - no combustion is involved

IMechE says this process is only 25% efficient but it is massively improved by co-siting the cryo-generator next to an industrial plant or power station producing low-grade heat that is currently vented and being released into the atmosphere.
The heat can be used to boost the thermal expansion of the liquid air.
More energy is saved by taking the waste cool air when the air has finished chilling, and passing it through three tanks containing gravel.
The chilled gravel stores the coolness until it is needed to restart the air-chilling process.
Delivering durability Highview believes that, produced at scale, their kits could be up to 70% efficient, and IMechE agrees this figure is realistic.
"Batteries can get 80% efficiency so this isn't as good in that respect," explains Dr Fox.
"But we do not have a battery industry in the UK and we do have plenty of respected engineers to produce a technology like this.
"What's more, it uses standard industrial components - which reduces commercial risk; it will last for decades and it can be fixed with a spanner."
In the future, it is expected that batteries currently used in electric cars may play a part in household energy storage.
But Richard Smith, head of energy strategy for National Grid, told BBC News that other sorts of storage would be increasingly important in coming decades and should be incentivised to commercial scale by government.
He said: "Storage is one of four tools we have to balance supply and demand, including thermal flexing (switching on and off gas-fired power stations); interconnections, and demand-side management. Ultimately it will be down to economics."
Mr Dearman, who also invented the MicroVent resuscitation device used in ambulances, told BBC News he was delighted at the success of his ideas.
He said he believed his liquid air engine would prevail against other storage technologies because it did not rely on potentially scarce materials for batteries. "I have been working on this off and on for close on 50 years," he told BBC News.
"I started when I was a teenager because I thought there wouldn't be enough raw materials in the world for everyone to have a car. There had to be a different way. Then somehow I came up with the idea of storing energy in cold.
"It's hard to put into words to see what's happening with my ideas today."
John Scott, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), added: "At present, pumped-hydro storage is the only practical bulk storage medium in the British grid.
"However, locations are very restricted," he told BBC News. "In the future, if new storage technologies can be deployed at a lower cost than alternatives, it would benefit the power system."
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said it would shortly launch a scheme to incentivise innovation in energy storage. Other grants are available from Ofgem.
Follow Roger Harrabin on Twitter: @RogerHarrabin

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Tehrangeles: How Iranians made part of LA their own

By Shoku Amirani BBC Radio 4

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In today's Magazine

• 'Gambling on growth' in Las Vegas
• How durable is a fingerprint?
• News tweets: Polls, Apple, football
• The strange allure of teeth

Google maps recently recognised "Tehrangeles" as a neighbourhood of central Los Angeles. How did this upmarket part of LA become home to the largest community of Iranians outside Iran?

"We're on the map, I mean why shouldn't we be on the map?" says a girl at a hip Los Angeles cafe where young Iranians hang out.
"There's Koreatown, and Chinatown. Why shouldn't we have an area?"
Now they do.
Estimates show anywhere from 300,000 to over half a million Iranians in Southern California, with many living in Tehrangeles.
"Do not engage in any Iranian gossiping if you're not prepared to defend it," says Mahdis Keshavarz, who runs an LA PR agency. "Because everyone here speaks Farsi."

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“Start Quote

They settled in LA because so much of it reminds them of Iran - the landscape, the car culture, the mountains”

Dr Reza Aslan California University

"The first time I came to LA as a student I was on campus and I heard Persian and I turned with that knee-jerk reaction, of 'Wow, cool, another Iranian,'" says Amy Malek, a PhD graduate at UCLA, who studies the Iranian diaspora.

"And the girl looked me up and down as if to say, 'Why are you staring at me, what's the big deal?'
"And that's when I realised, OK, you've got a lot of Iranians here."
The largest concentration of Iranians is around Westwood Boulevard, where most of the shop signs are in Persian and most of the voices you hear are speaking Farsi.

It is adjacent to the affluent Beverly Hills district where 22% of the population is of Iranian descent, and where Iranian "Jimmy" Jamshid Delshad was mayor in 2007 and 2010.
With almost 40% of the students at the renowned Beverly Hills High School said to be Iranian, studies show that Iranians are one of the best-educated immigrant groups in the US, and they are flourishing as entrepreneurs.

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Tehrangeles facts

• Also known as Little Persia
• Located between Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles
• Centred on the Westwood neighbourhood
• A fifth of the population of Beverly Hills is of Iranian descent

Entrepreneurs, for example, like Farhad Mohit, who set up comparison-shopping website bizrate.com while he was still in business school and later sold it for millions of dollars.

Online giant e-Bay was founded by an Iranian and the current YouTube CEO is also Iranian.
In fact, plenty of non-Iranian residents of LA are signing up for Farsi lessons to make themselves attractive as potential employees to Iranian businessmen.
The first immigrants arrived in LA as students in the 1960s and prospered in the early 1970s, but the biggest wave came as people fled from the 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah and ushered in an Islamic Republic.
Many never expected to stay long.
"We had a saying in our community, don't unpack your suitcase, we thought any day things would change and we would go back," says writer and broadcaster Homa Sarshar.
"But it's been 32 years and we are still here."

A tour of the Bijan shop in Tehrangeles, central LA

Many more followed to join families, to escape the Iran-Iraq war of the early 1980s, or simply in search of better opportunities.

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If you say, 'I'm Iranian,' people think you're enriching uranium in your garage!”

Sara Second-generation Iranian

The climate was also a factor.

"They settled in LA because so much of it reminds them of Iran - the landscape, the car culture, the mountains," says Dr Reza Aslan of California University.
But it has not all been plain sailing.
Iran-US relations sharply deteriorated in 1979, when 52 American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran, and this had implications for Iranians newly arrived in LA.
"We would be playing on the drive way and neighbours would drive up to scare us and then drive away," says Sara, a child of Iranian immigrants.
Farhad Mohit, who arrived at the height of the hostage crisis, was called names at school.

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Find out more

• Listen to Iranian comedian Maz Jobrani's tour of Tehrangeles on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 29th September at 10.30 BST
• Or catch up here on BBC iPlayer (UK only)

Demonstrations by Americans against Iranians telling them to go back home were common.

"It wasn't a great time to be an Iranian, so when I went to university I changed my name to Fred," he says.
Iranians in the US have struggled to shake off the terrorist-fanatic image ever since.
"As a result of the prejudice Iranians would say they are Italian or Greek," says Amy Malek.
"Or they would refer to themselves as Persian rather than Iranian, as the identity that comes to mind with Persia is cats and rugs, but with Iran, the images are all negative."
"It's like if you say you're Persian, you're more cultured or posh," says Sara.
"But if you say, 'I'm Iranian,' people think you're enriching uranium in your garage!"
Every time new tensions arise between the two governments, the community fears the return of old prejudices.
"Americans are good people, they are just very uncomfortable with what they don't understand," says one young Iranian American who came to the US in the 1980s.
"You always realise that when you get out of California, but LA is like our safe haven."
But a generation on from the turmoil of 1979, most Tehrangeles residents feel completely comfortable with their dual identity.
Now in her thirties, Mahdis Kehsavarz says she no longer feels she has to choose between being Iranian or American.
"We're not going to be fully Iranian and we're not fully American, so let's keep out names and not change them and be proud of who we are."

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Why male Japanese wage-earners have only 'pocket money'

 By Mariko Oi BBC News, Tokyo

Mariko Oi reports on the 74% of Japanese household budgets that are controlled by women

The 15th of each month is a big day for 36-year-old Yoshihiro Nozawa: it is the day he gets paid.

But every month, he hands over his entire salary to his wife Masami.
She controls the household budget and gives him a monthly pocket money of 30,000 yen ($381; £243). Despite being the breadwinner, that is all the money he can spend on himself over the next 30 days.
"The last five days from the 10th of each month are usually the toughest," says Yoshihiro.
To put the amount of his pocket money into context, the Nozawa family of four could easily spend 30,000 yen at Tokyo Disneyland in a day.
Yoshihiro and Masami have two children, Rino aged 6 and Ren aged 8, and they are the reason his wife decided to put him on a fixed allowance.

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She draws a pie chart of our household budget to explain why I cannot get more pocket money.”

Taisaku Kubo Businessman

"I started controlling the household budget when I became a housewife after having children," says Masami.

"Suddenly, there was only one income and their educations and private lessons cost a lot."
Under the thumb Yoshihiro nods but he says 30,000 yen doesn't go far in the world's most expensive city, Tokyo.
"She makes me a lunch box every morning so that helps a lot," he says as he eats his lunch alone in a nearby park from his office.
His only luxury is cigarettes, which he spends one third of his monthly allowance on.
"I think I may have to quit if the price goes up again," he says.
Yoshihiro may be eating his lunch alone but he is not unique.
According to a survey conducted by research firm Softbrain Field, 74% of Japanese household budgets are controlled by women and it is not just couples with young children.

Yoshihiro Nozawa: "Even if I get a pay rise, I'm not too hopeful that my pocket money will go up as well"

47-year-old Taisaku Kubo has been getting 50,000 yen a month from his wife Yuriko for the past 15 years.
He has tried to negotiate a pay rise each year but his wife makes a presentation to explain why it cannot be done.
"She draws a pie chart of our household budget to explain why I cannot get more pocket money," says Taisaku.
On the hand drawn chart, his pocket money is stated as 8.8% of the monthly budget.
"The biggest expenditures are home loan and taxes," says his wife Yuriko. "We don't have children so I want to make sure that we'll have enough money after his retirement."
Just like that, Taisaku loses his argument for a pay rise.
"I've given up my car, motorbike and many expensive hobbies," he laughs.
Shrinking budget But his monthly allowance of 50,000 yen is in fact higher than the national average.
According to Shinsei Bank which has been researching the trend since 1979, the average monthly pocket money was 39,600 yen last year.
And to make things harder for the men, that compares with 76,000 yen in 1990 when people thought that Japan's economy was at its peak. That was two years after the nation's benchmark stock index, the Nikkei 225, reached a record high of 38,916.
But share prices fell sharply in the 1990s and have never since come close to that level.

A study shows that 74% of Japanese household budgets are controlled by women

And just as the performance of Japanese companies deteriorated, businessmen's pocket money fell with it.
So today, those whose wives don't make lunch boxes try to cap their daily lunch budget to one coin: 500 yen - about $6.50.
As in most cities, prices vary wildly according to location, decor and the standard of food and drink on offer.
But in many places 500 yen would barely be enough for a bowl of noodles or a McDonald's burger.
Their drinking budget has also shrunk to a record low.
On average, they only spend 2,860 yen on a night of drinking which is almost half of what they used to spend just three years ago.
That does not allow for a great many half litre bottles of Asahi - the average price is around 700 yen.
Double income So why don't men start controlling the household budgets themselves?
"I don't think many men hand over their entire salaries happily," says career consultant Takao Maekawa of FeelWorks.
"But they feel it's their obligation to earn money for the family even if it means they have to suffer themselves."
Traditionally, it was a combination of hardworking salarymen, as white-collar businessmen are called in Japan, and stay-at-home mothers or housewives which supported Japan's economic growth after World War II.
"He actually tried to handle the household budget once," says Masami Nozawa whose husband Yoshihiro lives on 30,000 yen a month.
"But he said it was too time consuming so returned the task back to me," she says.
Yoshihiro agrees: "I know how much I make and I now understand how difficult it is to allocate the money".
"Even if I get a pay rise at work, I am not too hopeful that my pocket money will go up."
Today, more families are seeking out a double income simply because they cannot afford not to.
But for now, Yoshihiro and Taisaku look for cheap enough bars where they can still have some drinks without blowing all of their monthly pocket money at once.

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