Quotes from around China this week

"If Deng Xiaoping was the chief architect for China's reform and opening, then Hu Yaobang deserves to be called its chief engineer." 
- Zhou Ruijin, former editor-in-chief of the Liberation Daily and the People's Daily, in a commentary the 24^th anniversary of Hu’s death. South China Morning Post

"They called and said they no longer had the support of their families."
- Kirk Cordill, CEO of BMW Group Financial Services China, on the candidates for midlevel expatriate jobs who withdrew their applications after January’s record Beijing air pollution. Wall Street Journal

“In Beijing and Shanghai there is going to be demand for all the prime office space that is being built. If you take markets like Tianjin or Shenyang or Chongqing, they’ve created these new commercial zones and the demand is not going to be deep enough to keep up with that level of supply in the short term. Tianjin has not just one central business district but three.”
- Chris Brooke, head of real estate services firm CBRE in China. Wall Street Journal

"We had many customers even during the [March] two sessions, many of them are department directors."
- An employee of a high-end Beijing club. A government crackdown has driven officials from conspicuous high-end restaurants to more subtle private clubs. Global Times

“For more than two thousand years, successive Chinese dynasties have seen Korea as a tributary to be protected, a prize to be coveted, or as a dangerous land bridge which might convey ‘outer barbarians’ into China.”
- Jeremiah Jenne, director of IES Abroad Beijing Center at Beijing Foreign Studies University, on China’s interest in North Korea. The Economist

“Our position towards this issue is very clear. We believe the relevant report by the New York Times reporter is with ulterior motives.”
- Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize. AFP

“Sina Weibo activity has gone down, but the gloomy predictions are greatly exaggerated: 1) the fact that Weibo is being so tightly controlled shows that it has vitality; 2) with regard to private interactions moving elsewhere, Sina Weibo was never really the place for that in the first place, so that’s not much of a loss; 3) to deal with user opposition to advertising, Sina can try user behavioral analysis along with targeted ads and e-commerce integration. Of course whether or not that will work depends on how it’s implemented.”
- Kaifu Lee, responding to internet analyst Qian Hao, who said Weibo may be very overvalued. Tech in Asia