China Drops Tens of Billions on the World Expo

Meanwhile, they can't or won't build infrastructure to survive an earthquake. Schools crumbled by the dozens both in Sichuan and in Yushu:

"If every year half the money spent on cars, eating, drinking and traveling overseas were saved and spent on strengthening rural buildings, in a single year the buildings of millions of people could be made more earthquake-proof," a former top engineer for the China Earthquake Administration, Wang Zifa, wrote (recently)1

The stark divide between the goals of the Shanghai and coastal cliques, and the interior populations they exploit grows wider. China's Gini is larger than the United States, with a per capta income that is far lower.

I'm not sure where the bizarre and disturbing string of knife attacks fit in, but it is not part of the 'harmonious society' Hu bullshits about all the time. There are clearly some deep fissures forming in mainland Chinese society.