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October 12, 2007

Beijing police brawl over pastor

AP reports on a scuffle between two groups of police over where to hold Hua Huiqi, the pastor of a house church in Beijing and an activist against demolition:

Chongwen police moved Hua out of their jurisdiction on Monday to Fengtai on the city's southwestern edge, but the Fengtai police brought him back to his home yesterday, said Hua's friend Zhou Li.

A fight broke out between the eight Fengtai police and a greater number of Chongwen police and men hired by the developer, New World China Land, Zhou said.

via Travellers Tales.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:54 PM |

RMB From FLG

Jonathan Ansfield calls up a long-distance number printed on the back of a 1-yuan note and talks to a representative from the Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:57 AM |

October 11, 2007

New gas field in Xinjiang

The China Daily reports:

PetroChina has discovered another major gasfield in western Xinjiang, a source from the company's Tarim unit confirmed Wednesday.

'The gasfield, known as Dabei III, boasts an estimated reserve of as much as 130 billion cubic meters, and will serve as an important backup supply source for the west-east gas pipelines,' he said on condition of anonymity.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:16 AM |

October 10, 2007

The Knot chosen as China's Oscar entry

For Variety, Clifford Coonan looks at the Oscar submissions from China's various regions:

For awhile, it looked as if China was going to nominate Lust, Caution instead of Taiwan—a territory Beijing sees as a renegade province, not a sovereign nation. Lee's stock is rising in the People's Republic of China—his Shanghai-set film was surprisingly given a mainland release with some snipping, and he also is involved in Olympics coordination next year.

The Knot was very carefully constructed to have a multiterritory Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwanese production pedigree and a theme of healthy and happy pan-Chinese cross-strait relations.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:12 PM |

Chinese pills for American ills

The Wall Street Journal reports:

—Linhai, China When a small drug maker here got Food and Drug Administration approval for an AIDS drug this past summer, the Chinese pharmaceutical industry quietly passed an important milestone. As far as the agency can tell, it is the first time a Chinese company has won permission to export finished pills to the U.S.

Expect a lot more pharmaceutical makers here to get the green light over the next few years.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:23 PM |

October 9, 2007

CultRev+40: The Grand Tour

FEER's Traveller's Tales blog introduces "One of the few amusing books to emerge out of the Cultural Revolution":

Twenty Snobs and Mao: Travelling de luxe in Communist China (Readers Union, 1969) by Colette Modiano—the memoir of a French writer shepherding a group of rich French, Italian and Swiss epicureans around the Middle Kingdom. Here is one of those rare occasions when Gallic snideness is used to perfect effect.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:05 PM |

The Dazhai Spirit gets religion

JDM071009dazhai.jpg
What does it mean for Chinese society when Dazhai, formerly a collectivist agricultural utopia, finds itself home to a large, privately-financed Buddhist temple?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:37 PM |

Is ad-blocking a criminal offense?

The author of Coral QQ, a popular ad-blocking patch for Tencent's messaging software, was arrested in Shenzhen for IP infringement.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:22 PM |

Nonsense reporting about China

The October Golden week holiday seems to have stopped certain Western commentators from checking their facts about China. Slate's latest Dispatch from China contains factual errors and misleading interpretations, and Ars Technica spreads a rumor about China blocking all RSS feeds.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:16 PM |

Translation and its discontents

Poor-quality translation is hardly the only problem plaguing China's bottom-line-driven publishing industry, but it's certainly one of the more entertaining.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:02 PM |

"Shenzhen Speed" - then what?

Michael Zhao at CDT translates an article from Xiaokang magazine on Shenzhen:

As some look at redefining Shenzhen's role down the road as an example of China's larger economic shift to come, its significance cannot be overstated. There are two schools of theory, one maintains that Shenzhen should still emphasize its "special economic zone" status, the other suggesting it redefine itself and focus on its geographical advantage, expanding cooperation with Hong Kong and developing along with Hong Kong.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:07 PM |

17th National Congress: Who should you interview?

Qian Gang writes for CMP:

Top party leaders will of course be at the top of your interview wish list this month. But no one, least of all officials in the upper echelons, will agree to an interview ahead of this key political session. It's possible Hu Jintao will choose to visit with some particular foreign news icon, as Deng Xiaoping did with Oriana Fallaci and Jiang Zemin with Mike Wallace.

But most foreign journalists will have to settle for Chinese academics, political experts and historians. Here are a few at the top of our list:

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:03 PM |

Mean Streets

Jonathan Ansfield writes about the recent residency crackdown for Spot-On:

If Chinese don't care about their own laws, how can you be expected to? That's the attitude some foreigners take. Don't ask, don't tell. As opaque as this environment can be, you can always feign ignorance. And often, just when the public security organ starts to look like Stasi, it turns into Keystone Cops.

See also: PSB Harrassment at China Expat's Daily Tea Leaves.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:02 PM |

When will China produce political genius?

At CDT, David Kelly translates a piece by Liang Jing on the genius of Zeng Qinghong:

Everyone who has dealt with Zeng Qinghong is aware that he is no mediocrity, so what kind of talent is he actually? In my opinion, he is an eccentric or perverse genius of the behind-the-scenes power game. What is in fact intriguing about him is that rather than being outstanding in the presence of others, he is the most adept at pulling strings behind the scenes. He lacks high principles, nor pursues success in some cause, but is an exotic flower nurtured in the China's distorted political ecology.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:57 PM |

Foreign companies make money in China

The Wall Street Journal has published a report by Jason Dean and Andrew Batson noting that 'foreign firms are cashing in after years of anticipation' listing Sun Microsystems, Caterpillar, Nokia, Motorola, Intel, AstraZeneca and and KFC parent Yum Brands as companies that make or expect to soon make significant chunks of their global profits in China.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:40 PM |

Removing the blocked RSS rumor

At the Global Voices Advocacy blog, John Kennedy traces the spread of the 'China's blocking RSS feeds!!!' rumor and presents some work-arounds. See also.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:27 PM |

October 8, 2007

Beiing subway wiki

David Feng has started a wiki about the Beijing subway, including station by station information for the newly opened line number 5.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:46 PM |

Red - the new black

Arts Council England presents an analysis of Sino-British publishing trends:

[W]e commissioned this report...to provide an understanding of how the Chinese literary publishing industry works:

  • what are its trends and who are its key players
  • what government support can be anticipated, particularly for translations
  • what are the mechanisms for the export and reception of literature from China to the UK and vice versa
  • what are the barriers and opportunities associated with this transaction
PDF and Word versions are available.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:45 PM |

What Michael Corleone and Yongzheng taught me about succession struggles

The Granite Studio presents two views of possible party succession at the upcoming 17th Party Congress, one from Li Datong and another inspired by the Kangxi Emperor:

...nobody is going to lose their head over this, that time has passed. Certainly the CCP leadership has shown itself capable of orderly transitions of power. But a situation where three or four likely candidates have five years to jockey for position ahead of the next party congress is one fraught with possibilities. New cliques will certainly form as officials circle around one of several centers of power. Control over different media outlets and for screen time on CCTV will put pressure on the propaganda bureau to either choose sides or get out of the way. Patronage will be the name of the game. The possibilities for corruption or, at the very least, policy gridlock would be high.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:48 PM |

New Beijing subway line opens

Yesterday afternoon Beijing's new number 5 subway line opened. There were long queues of passengers hoping to get souvenir tickets. The new line bisects the eastern half of Beijing from north to south. Ticket prices for all subway lines were also cut to two yuan (USD 0.25) for a one way journey anywhere on the subway network.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:09 AM |