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Media regulation
Freedom of expression and government reformPosted by Joel Martinsen, May 9, 2008 5:00 PM
![]() The May issue of Yanhuang Chunqiu contains an essay by Zi Zhongjun (资中筠) on freedom of expression and institutional reform. Zi is a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is the former editor of American Studies Quarterly. Her references to the relatively open media in the south (read, Southern Metropolis Daily and its stable of newspapers and magazines) are particularly relevant following the recent controversy over Southern Metropolis Weekly editor Chang Ping. Realizing the Right of Expression Requires Institutional Guaranteesby Zi Zhongjun / YCI don't have much interest now in studying certain formulations in leaders' reports. I have only one attitude: look at how they are put into practice. Sometimes, some statements are not workable. I remember a few years ago, a newspaper organized a symposium, around the time that "scientific concept of development" and "people-centered" had just appeared. I spoke at the symposium and wrote up an article based on that speech, arguing that "people-centered" had to include human rights. And I said that good slogans and good formulations had to rely on the healthy power of society to be put into practice. When the healthy power of society is suppressed, even the best slogans cannot be carried out. Later, I was unable to publish this paper anywhere. Someone said that leaders' fine words were "promises" made to the people. I feel that the statements made in their speeches aren't promises that are made good simply by saying them. For example, they say they'll give the people the right of expression, but in practice, the right of expression is controlled as it always has been. To this day I have not found earnest action taken to allow and support the the right of expression. Even the most open newspapers in the south are frequently given yellow cards. Whether or not there is free speech is a touchstone; there's no point to further discussion of democracy. We talked about democracy in the past, but it's never been carried out. Continue reading "Freedom of expression and government reform" »
Front Page of the Day
Hu Jintao beats, hugs Japanese table tennis starPosted by Eric Mu, May 9, 2008 4:47 PM
Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web. Two big news items dominate today's newspaper front pages: Hu Jintao in Japan and the Olympic Torch on Mount Everest. South Metropolis Daily printed a big image today on the front page showing a (unusually) beaming Hu Jintao holding hands with Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara. Ai Fukuhara is renowned both in China and in Japan. She has visited China several times for training. In 2005, she joined the Liaoning provincial team, and later the Guangdong team, to participate in China's national table tennis contest. Last year, she began attending classes at Waseda University in Tokyo and is currently enrolled as a student there. Good-looking and speaking good Chinese with a northeastern accent, Ai Fukuhara has huge fan base both in China and Japan, though she has so far failed to win any medal in world level competitions. Yesterday Hu Jintao, during his visit to Waseda University, showcased his great table tennis skills by beating Ai Fukuhara, and Chinese Olympic champion Wang Nan, together, with the Japanese PM Fukuda standing aside transfixed. Unbelievable, but this is what the media are reporting. According to Japan Today, an English language website:
Links and Sources
Danwei Picks
Foreign tombs in ShanghaiPosted by Joel Martinsen, May 9, 2008 4:37 PM
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China). Song Qingling memorial: A video on Shanghaiist: Song Qing Ling Memorial (宋庆龄陵园), a little known cemetery in western Shanghai home to the remains of Song Qing Ling, numerous other Chinese personalities -- and scores of foreigners who came to Shanghai mostly during its early boom years in the mid-1800s and early 1900s, some identified by simple gravestones, and some anonymous.
It should be pointed out that the CCTV case has not been widely affirmed on the Internet, but instead has met with much suspicion. This is because CCTV, as a state media organization, is invested with government authority. [This raises the question of whether] the core of the case is about media reporting on matters of public interest, or about government authority in a standoff with private interests. More importantly, in many cases concerning government authority and incidents [or matters] of public interest, not even a drop of the spirit of the Sullivan decision is evident. In the April 28 railway disaster, for example, a Web user from Shandong province was detained by police for five days for posting inaccurate information (exaggerating the number of dead). Continue reading "Foreign tombs in Shanghai" »
Bureaucracy
Temporary residence permits hard to come byPosted by Joel Martinsen, May 9, 2008 4:21 PM
![]() Limited edition As China's foreign residents are complaining about visa problems, some Chinese citizens are facing difficulties obtaining the temporary residents permits they need to conduct business in cities where they do not have a hukou, or household registration. The Beijing News reports today on the case of Mr. Zhong, who recently tried to apply for a temporary residence permit. His first stop was the police station, which told him to take his forms to the local Migrant Population Management Office. He called the office at 11 am, and was told that he would have to wait until the next day, because the temporary residence permit department had already gone off work. The next day at 9 am, he arrived at the office only to be informed that the maximum 10 permits had already been issued. Mr. Zhong, who took two vacation days without anything to show for it, complained, "The migrant population is so large, if they only work at a speed of 10 a day, when will it end?" The newspaper visited the Management Office, located in the Beijing neighborhood of Balizhuang:
The Chaoyang branch of the Public Security Bureau said that it has never placed limitations on issuing temporary residence permits. Police computer systems aren't the most technologically sophisticated, so the Gaobeidian station's explanation makes some sense, at least. But in this case, it's the PSB itself that issues notices reminding non-residents that they ought to register, so you'd think that if they want to sign up everyone, they'd be able to handle more than ten records a day without crashing. Links and Sources
Jobs available
北京及上海:公关项目经理,高级公关项目主管以及公关项目主管Posted by Banyue, May 9, 2008 4:20 PM
This is a recruitment advertisement. Please contact the advertiser directly if you are interested. See all job ads or place a job ad. 招聘需求 坐落于美国硅谷的霍夫曼公关顾问有限公司, 是一致力于高科技产业并在亚太地区有主导地位的公关公司。作为支持专家团队,专业技术以及基础设施的杠杆动力,霍夫曼公关顾问有限公司亚太代表处分布多个国家并贯穿整个亚洲地区;对公司整体的全球化发展起到了不可取代的作用。 我们是战略管理的咨询专家,我们利用对公关和市场营销的专业知识,帮助客户们树立企业形象,打造良好名声。 Continue reading "北京及上海:公关项目经理,高级公关项目主管以及公关项目主管" »
Sports
Macquarie's tumbling Olympic fundPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 3:34 PM
This roundup of the week's sports news is by China Sports Today • The week in sports got off to a rough start for most people who tried to buy tickets in Phase 3 of Olympic ticketing. The BOCOG ticketing site didn't crash like last time, but seemed somewhat challenged by the traffic spike. And procedures at Bank of China outlets were a bit unusual. Tickets to all Beijing events were declared sold out two days later (full report). • A doping test confirmed that 11 Greek weightlifters have taken banned substances. The national team coach has resigned and maintains that a Shanghai lab sold him tainted supplements (report). • The Chinese diving team continues racking up medals at international events this spring. This Discovery Channel video attempts to explain why. • In November 2006, Australian bank / securities firm Macquarie Group created a basket of Olympic stocks, whose values Macquarie expected to get a boost from the Games. The basket is not doing so well. Many of the 23 stocks in the basket, including Air China and Beijing International Capital Airport Co., are tumbling and still overvalued, according to a Bloomberg article (report). • From mountain biking at Huangshan to football in Beijing and tennis in Shanghai, there are plenty of reasons to get off the couch this weekend if you want some exercise (report). • Finally, the Olympic Torch has reached Mainland China, and the flame has already made it to the summit of Everest (report). Foreign media on China
Singapore is coolPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 12:29 PM
![]() Can't touch this Journalism.sg has published the transcript of an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister and still serving 'Minister Mentor' of Singapore. Titled 'What China can learn from our handling of Western media', it is a thoughtful piece, introduced thusly:
Lee does also mention his tendency to sue Western media organizations for libel or apply other commercial pressures when they publish articles he does not like:
Neck wringing — that's a metaphor that will appeal to China's media regulators. And let's hope the Chinese government does not learn their sense of style from Singapore's elder statesman, who has this to say:
Reverse bungee! How cool is that. Links and Sources
2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Eye witness account of torch relay problemsPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 11:18 AM
Yesterday Danwei published a summary of an Asian Sentinel article saying that the Olympic torch had been extinguished in Shenzen, apparently in a act of protest. Long time Danwei commenter Spelunker has this to say about the torch's southern campaign (emphasis added): This is Spelunker reporting live from Guangzhou. I witnessed the torch relay twice in Guangzhou (Zhongshan Memorial Hall and Beijing Pedestrian Street) and saw local TV coverage of the Shenzhen relay. Allow me to present the facts: 1. No foreign media are allowed to accompany the torch route in China, as only local Chinese press are allowed in the media vehicles that travel along the torch relay route. I really doubt the Shenzhen torch extinguishings were due to any type of local protest, instead it is more likely due to overcrowding as was the actual case in Guangzhou. The police perimeter was changed in front of Zhongshan Memorial Hall. This occured just an hour before the torch relay was due and upset local residents who waited for 4 or 5 hours at this prime viewing location. There was a brief scuffle between police and some feisty elderly Chinese who refused to move, but I did not stay to see the end result of that battle. At Beijing Pedestrian Street I was able to enjoy a pleasant tug-of-war between police and an enthusiastic crowd that tightly sandwiched the narrow Olympic thoroughfare. This was definitely one of the best venues for getting a close-up view of the torch relay if you don't mind being a sardine for several minutes. I held up a big sign with 4 Chinese characters "You Er Ge Ge" as the torch relay runner and torch attendant brothers jogged by. Many photographers took pictures of me and my sign (I wore my "Lei Feng" T-shirt as well) but I haven't seen myself on TV, in newspapers or on the Internet yet. The Earnshaw Vault
Spiritual pollution in 1982Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 10:43 AM
Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he's been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today's resurrected item: Sexy Adverts Upset Chinese WorkmanBy Graham Earnshaw in Peking February 26, 1982An official Chinese newspaper yesterday published a letter from an irate railway worker complaining that too many advertisements featured attractive women with outstanding figures. Such “titillating illustrations” were very unsuitable, the worker said. He went on: “One paper carried an advert for a type of cloth material which included a curvaceous woman with flowing hair standing on one side intentionally emphasizing her prominent breasts. If all adverts were like this, the effect on public morals would certainly not be good.” Advertising returned to China three years ago after two decades of being banned as a bourgeois capitalist practice.
The Beijing News (新京报) has been running a series of articles about the last 30 years of reform, each one quoting an old People's Daily article, a little like this series of Graham Earnshaw's old pieces. Yesterday's article quoted a CPPCC member who in 1982 had this to say about the popularity of non revolutionary, non traditional pop music that was enchanting the masses in the early days of reform: "Now they are playing love songs by Teresa Teng (邓丽君) everywhere. It's not only students learning to sing them, even old ladies are singing them, it's really bad..." China and Africa
Chinese arm shipment arrived in Zimbabwe?Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 9:06 AM
From Zimbabwe news website SW Radio Africa:
The above mentioned Bright Matonga has been in the news for something else recently:
Links and Sources
Featured Video
Chongqing, city on steroidsPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 9, 2008 9:01 AM
Current TV has a new video about a city that causes superlatives to spring from journalists' mouths and pens. 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Chinese protesters extinguish Olympic torch in protest?Posted by Adam J. Schokora, May 8, 2008 6:08 PM
As reported by Asia Sentinel, the Olympic torch has apparently been extinguished by local Chinese protesters while making the rounds in Shenzhen earlier today. Despite efforts to find local sources collaborating details of the story, nothing has turned up on the Chinese Internet. Pictures, video, and text all seem to have been effectively harmonized. Asia Sentinel has told Danwei it has and is preparing video footage of the incident for release.
See the comment by Spelunker below for an eye witness account. Links and Sources
Front Page of the Day
Disclosing the "1984 secret"Posted by Eric Mu, May 8, 2008 5:46 PM
Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web. China's president Hu Jintao is currently on a state visit to Japan. The visit resumed top-level contacts after a decade long hiatus and is being hailed by the Chinese media as a “warm spring" trip with the implication being that the harsh winter of the two countries' tense relations is now over. An article on the front page of today's Beijing News reviewed a historical event: In 1984 China invited over 3,000 Japanese people to visit. The article is mainly based on an interview with Jia Di'e (贾棣锷), who was the Youth League International Coordination Department director at the time of the visit. Below is a translated summary of the article. On November 26, 1983, Hu Yaobang, then president of China made a state visit to Japan. He spoke to more than 4,000 people at the headquarters of NHK TV and first brought up the idea of inviting 3,000 young Japanese people to visit China. "The Japanese audience was very surprised. They were not sure if they had heard right, and thought the number he mentioned might be 30 or 300. They didn't expect China to take such a big move" said Jia Di'e, "Now in retrospect, China made the right decision. The surprise effect was just what we wanted. It embodied the Chinese people's resolution to build a strong and friendly relationship with the Japanese people." "We had thought about something even bigger, like 10,000 or 30,000 ... But comrade Hu Yaobang was being very practical, he told us to do research. And we found that it was impossible to accommodate 10,000 or 30,000 foreign visitors" Though the Japanese government responded positively to Hu's proposal, it was still a huge challenge for China — still relatively closed, and recovering from the economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution — to receive foreign visitors on such an unprecedented scale: 217 delegations, totaling 3,017 people, including 63 were journalists. "The most difficult part of receiving the foreign visitors was transportation and accommodation. Beijing didn't have enough buses, so we asked Tianjin to send over some of their buses. There were only few hotels that foreigners could live in, Beijing Hotel, Xinqiao Hotel, Minzu Hotel, that's all. So we had to use the Zhongnanhai State Guest House, and the guest houses of the PLA." Moreover, there was also a shortage of interpreters, but the organizers finally managed to find more than 300 interpreters from foreign language schools all around the country. Jia said: "The Japanese government wanted send a policeman with each delegation. We agreed. They wanted the policemen because they were worried that the visitors would be brainwashed." "In order to avoid arguments, we talked very little about communism or socialism. We asked for instructions from the top about how to deal with sensitive issues like Anti-Japanese War. We postponed the visit to late September to skip sensitive dates like July 7 [the day of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, marking the beginning of the Anti_Japanese War], and September 18 [the Manchurian Incident when Japanese forces blew up a railway and blamed it on a Chinese warlord]. Comrade Hu Yaobang also said we should not completely avoid history, so we arranged four delegations to visit Nanjing Massacre relics. [The Japanese visitors] responded strongly, saying that now they know more about history." The Japanese also visited Chinese schools, factories, and Zhongnanhai, though "the route was pre-arranged". "The Japanese had meals at farmers' homes, in factory and school canteens. They didn't have any problems with Chinese food." The 1984 National Day celebration was the first such celebration after the Cultural Revolution [mass spectacle with a military parade etc.]. The Japanese visitors were also invited to Tian'anmen to view the celebration and the military parade. That night, a dancing party was held for both Chinese and Japanese young people. It lasted until 2 am. "These Japanese youth didn't say anything bad about us after they went back." said Jia Di'e. Also according to Jia, about one third of the people in the 1984 group of visitors are now heading Japanese-Chinese Friendship Associations at different levels in Japan. Links and Sources
Announcements
Jobs available on Danwei nowPosted by Banyue, May 8, 2008 10:46 AM
A small reminder—Danwei currently has a number of good job opportunities in media, research, advertising and marketing in both Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou.
If you want to place a job ad on Danwei, please go to to this page. Go here for all current job listings. Video
Google Video working in BeijingPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 8, 2008 9:34 AM
Popular blog host Blogspot is blocked again in China (see this Danwei post for chronology of Blogspot's availability in China). On the other hand, Google Video seems to be working in China for the first time ever since it's launch. So you can, for example, watch this discussion from 2006 hosted by James Goodale with Rebecca MacKinnon and Timothy Wu titled: Did Google Sell Out in China? Update: The embedding function still does not work in China. As readers have pointed out by email, Google Video's availability may be a result of Google policies, not the Net Nanny's interference. 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
SCMP Olympic sitePosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 8, 2008 9:30 AM
The South China Morning Post whose moribund website is behind a paywall has a new section. Subtitled Your Passport to the Beijing Olympics, it's all about the Games and is all accessible without a subscription. Books
Lupine lactose intolerantPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 8, 2008 7:56 AM
![]() Below is a review by Linda Jaivin of the recently published English translation of Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize. The review was first published in The Australian Literary Review, on May 7, 2008, and is republished here with their permission, together with an introduction written for this website by Geremie R. Barmé. Milking Wolves’ Totem —reading Linda Jaivin on Jiang Rong’s lupine love storyby Geremie R. BarméLinda Jaivin’s review of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem is a timely intervention on a subject that has been a hot China topic in the international media. Again, it is one that touches on the issues of non-Han ethnic cultures, this time dealing with a novel the author of which finds succour in what writers like Rae Yang (see her memoir Spider Eaters) and Yuan Weishi (the Zhongshan University historian attacked in early 2006) have called “wolves’ milk” (langnai). That is, the atavistic politics of passion and rhetorical violence fostered by ideologues, media carpet-baggers and the “engineers of human souls” in the guise of supporting righteous patriotic fervour. Wolves in chic clothing have been around for most of the “open door and reform period”, an era that marks its thirtieth anniversary this year. Indeed, contemporary Chinese cultural producers have been making a meal of borderland themes and peoples to express cutting-edge artistic and ideological views since the 1980s. Some writers and artists have sought in various borderland ethnic Others an invigorating tonic replete with the essence of the masculine, the swarthy and the heroic, one they hope can infuse the peoples of the Central Plains (Zhong Yuan) with greater vigour and militancy (and make them a buck and a name in the process). Continue reading "Lupine lactose intolerant" »
Featured Video
Sorta not smoking BeijingPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 8, 2008 6:44 AM
This is an Al Jazeera segment on Beijing's new and not particularly effective no smoking rules. And here is a video of Beijing band Carsick Cars singing 'Zhongnanhai' — the name of the capital's favorite brand of cigarettes. The Earnshaw Vault
1981 anti foreign demonstrations in ChinaPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, May 8, 2008 6:36 AM
Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he's been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today's resurrected item: Author's note: From today’s much more open perspective, it is interesting to get a feel for Chinese-foreigner relationships all those years ago. Confucius and Chairman Mao between them had left the Chinese people looking at the world in a hierarchical and combative way. But this report indicates much progress in the past 27 years. Racial attitudes have largely softened as Chinese people have gained greater awareness of the world. And while then, just a sports victory could result in aggressive pushing and shoving of foreigners, now even the purposeful official incitement of anti-French sentiment results in no violence, and only a postponement by a few days of a shopping trip. Chinese retain their ancient dislike of foreignersBy Graham Earnshaw in Peking November 20, 1981The xenophobia of China today has come to the fore once more in recent weeks during demonstrations after sports victories and over the vexed question of marriage between foreigners and Chinese people. For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, the Chinese automatically considered anyone from outside their country to be a barbarian, and remnants of the extreme racial concept still exists today. China's successes in the recent women's volleyball championships in Tokyo were the occasion for unprecedented marches by thousands of youths through the streets of Peking and other major Chinese cities. Some foreigners who mingled with the crowds were roughly jostled and even beaten, and on the day China beat the United States volleyball team, a crowd of several hundred gathered outside the American Embassy to shout "Long Live China." The demonstrations were mostly innocent fun by young people glad of an excuse to make some noise. But to foreigners who were also in Peking in the late 1960s they brought back terrible memories of Chinese mobs which turned on foreigners without a thought. The average Chinese has a not-quote subconscious belief in the innate superiority of his race which has been battered but not extinguished by the indignities suffered at the hands of foreigners over the past 200 years. Ordinary Chinese people still seem to rank the races of the world in their minds, although unlike the old days, they are not so sure about who is number one. One African student reported being told by a Chinese university intellectual: "We have to be frank. White people are better than us, but we are better than you." Front Page of the Day
CCTV beats libel chargesPosted by Eric Mu, May 7, 2008 4:41 PM
Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web. Today's Shenyang Evening News ran an editorial on its front page about CCTV defeating a lawsuit in which a towel factory sued the state-owned broadcaster for libel. The news was first broken by The Beijing Times on May 6 with the headline 'CCTV exempted from apologizing for its untruthful reporting'. CCTV's Weekly Quality Report is a weekly program that exposes defective and low-quality products. On March 27, 2007, the program reported that towels manufactured by a company in Jinzhou (晋州), Hebei Province, contained cancer-inducing chemicals. According to an official test report released after the broadcast of the program, though the towels were of low-quality and failed to meet the standards, there was no evidence that the towels contained carcinogenic substances. The towel factory subsequently sued CCTV, claiming that their report had hurt its reputation and caused business losses. They also demanded a public apology. The Beijing First Intermediate Court dismissed the charges, saying that "manufacturers should tolerate sharp criticism from the public and the media." The Shengyang Evening News editorial celebrated the court's decision as a The article also mentions the public's concern that the case may undermine media ethics by giving it more leverage to get away with untruthful reporting. Another editorial in Beijing Youth Daily compares this case with the 1960 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case, which extended the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech to libel cases brought by public officials, and reshaped the American libel law. The rationale behind the Supreme Court's judgement was that "debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." (Justice William J. Brennan Jr.) The Beijing News also ran an article about the case today. The article argues that in this duel between the media and company, the media side — CCTV — is overwhelmingly more powerful than the other side, which is a small, unknown towel factory. The article says that the result would have been different if the plaintiff was one of the prominent, large state-owned companies, if the defendent was a less influential media organization, or if a local court had presided over the case instead of a Beijing court. Different from the United States, case law is not in China's law system, which means judges don't need to follow precedents. So even though CCTV won its case, it doesn't mean any other media will be immune from similar charges. The big question of how much more reporting latitude China's media will get is still far from being settled. Links and Sources
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