The last two days have been fractious ones for a swathe of Chinese institutions, and in most cases China has been on the losing side of the argument. First, the US Trade Representative’s office had itself a nice public gloat, announcing that China has knuckled under to its demands that it cease subsidizing domestic wind-power companies. This may be a loss of face in Beijing, but it’s way too late to make a difference: China’s wind sector is already at massive overcapacity and stimulus is mostly wound down. More seriously, China has said that it hopes for a major breakthrough in negotiations with Russia over natural gas deliveries – but Gazprom has already publicly said it’s not going to accept a lower profit margin from China than it earns in Europe. In another likely futile effort, Deer Consumer Products and Sino Clean Energy, reverse-merger companies that have been financially castrated by short-seller reports accusing them of fraud, are suing the messenger, in this case short-seller Alfred Little and the websites who consort with him. Interestingly enough, Alfred Little appears to be a group of researchers, as opposed to one extremely suspicious short white guy. Finally, Einstein is not coming to Shanghai. The Swiss museum that has been trundling its Einstein exhibit around Asia canceled his tour through Shanghai due to disagreements with the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum. One of the more amusing points of contention was the suggestion (on the Shanghai side) that the exhibit be merged with a display about famous Luddite Confucius. CER regrets Swiss stodginess and would have been first in queue to buy tickets – we loved Young Einstein! But wouldn’t this exhibit violate SARFT restrictions on time travel?