CCTV Olympic fiasco
A marital dispute erupts on to the stage, Jerry Springer style, at a ceremony to rename CCTV 5 as 'The Olympics Channel'.
« December 16, 2007 - December 22, 2007 | Main | December 30, 2007 - January 5, 2008 »
December 29, 2007
PXit strategy
For CDT, Jonathan Ansfield reveals the jockeying that's been going on by major players in the Xiamen PX project:
After the forum, one CCTV news magazine program requested clips including sound to use in its coverage of the story two weekends ago, one director of the program tells this reporter. But Xiamen propaganda officials told him the city never aired talkie footage itself and could not provide him any. "He said they didn't really care [about the project] at this point, as long as they don't have to decide."
Now, this reporter is told, the relevant central government departments are orchestrating a face-saving compromise along with company and local government bosses.
Green for the Olympics, gray for the long term
In this installment of the New York Times' series on China's pollution problem, Jim Yardley addresses how Beijing is trying to clean up its air:
Beijing officials say the Olympics will have a lasting and positive environmental legacy on the city. International Olympic Committee officials acknowledge that air quality remains a problem, but they say the air would be far worse without improvements made for the Games. "The general trend is improvement," said Simon Balderstone, an environmental adviser for the I.O.C.
But pollution is expected to remain a major, long-term challenge as Beijing's population may eventually exceed 20 million people. Scientists also say the city will never be able to clean itself up if surrounding industrial provinces are not cleaned up, too.
December 28, 2007
New regulations to send Chinese vid sharing down the tubes?
At Ogilvy's Digital Watch blog, Kaiser Kuo comments on what MII has in store for 2008, specifically, new regulations that may keep online video in the hands of state-owned or state-controlled companies:
I rang my friend Victor Koo, former president of Sohu.com and founder and CEO of one of the leading Chinese video sharing sites Youku.com, who told me that this doesn't actually represent a change in policy: "It's really just a formalization of the implementation and application process," he says. "We've already been submitting various information they've asked us for about our legal structure, and about how we operate. From an operational standpoint it doesn't make a difference, but from a regulatory perspective it's going to be similar to when the portals listed."
The Chinese report is from the Oriental Morning Post.Danone/Wahaha: both parties agree to truce
Managing the Dragon takes a look at the circumstances surrounding Wahaha's and Danone's return to the negotiating table:
What caused Danone's change in attitude? One of two events, or a combination of the two, was most likely behind Danone's decision.
First, when President Sarkozy of France brought up the Danone/Wahaha dispute with President Hu of China in their recent presidential dinner in Beijing, President Hu undoubtedly told him that there was little he or any Chinese official could do as long as the two parties are embroiled in legal proceedings....
Secondly, Danone may have been somewhat unsettled by the recent court decisions that went against the company in China. While Danone has claimed that it was winning in lawsuits outside China, that is not where the real issues lie. Danone's legal actions in the U.S. were designed to gain leverage on the Chinese partner by going after assets that Wahaha or Mr. Zong may have outside China, but they would have done nothing to settle the central causes of the dispute which are in China.
China Daily clarification
Yesterday, China Daily published a report on "mega departments" that included the following claim, ascribed to Zheng Xinli, deputy chief of the party's Central Policy Research Offic: "the regulatory commissions on securities, banking and insurance that make up the financial regulation system will be merged into one mega department." The story was the top headline on the paper's website yesterday, but it has since been removed (it's still available on Sina) and replaced with a "clarification":
The third paragraph of Thursday's page 1 report, "Mega departments to help improve efficiency", should have read: Zheng also said the government is considering setting up a mega department in the financial sector without giving any details.
Thanks to Reid Barrett for the tip. See also: A curious correction.Japanese PM in Beijing for the weekend
Xinhua reports that Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda arrived yesterday in Beijing for a four-day visit, which the State-owned news agency says us 'widely portrayed as a trip to warm up ties'.
Christmas Eve at Nankai
On the campus of Nankai University on 24 December, a Buick brushed up against a student riding a bike and received a scratch to the paint. The driver demanded that the bicyclist pay compensation, and began to berate her with increasing fervor as a crowd gathered. Then things got rough. Bob Chen at Global Voices Online describes what happened and presents photos of the scene taken by witnesses.
Also at ESWN.
Also at ESWN.
December 27, 2007
Today's air in Beijing: the most polluted this year
From the tbjblog:
According to the State Environmental Protection Administration, the brown haze that descended on our fair city hit a whopping 421 on the Air Pollution Index today. To put that in perspective, on a good day it hovers between 50-150. On a bad day, we're looking at 200 or so.
Today was far worse than the past two days (280 and 269), and beats out the previous high for the year, 5 January, by 100 points (data from Beijing Air blog). See also: What are we breathing?China's capitalist counter-revolution
At the Socialist Party Australia website, Vincent Kolo asks, "In China, which class is oppressor and which are oppressed?":
This is gangster capitalism, as brutal and lawless as that in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The top echelons of the Chinese state, including the central government in Beijing, are now fully integrated into the global capitalist system - through the open door policy that president Hu Jintao describes as the 'cornerstone' of China's economic development. As a result, China has been turned upside down, from one of the most equal societies to one of the most unequal - with a wealth gap greater than in the US, India and Russia. This 'fully capitalist' programme is central to any discussion on the class character of the CCP regime and state.
See also: Recognition of Private Property in China, Bárbara Areal's article for elmilitante.org last May.Pay-TV turns off China football fans
BBC News reports on the dismal performance of pay-per-view Premiership football broadcasts in China:
Top-flight English matches were previously available for free on television and had a potential audience of 30 million.
But that changed when broadcaster WinTV bought the rights to broadcast Premier League games in China for three seasons, starting this year. WinTV now admits it has managed to attract only 20,000 customers willing to pay the 588 yuan (£39; $80) annual fee.
A company spokeswoman said it was proving difficult to persuade Chinese football fans to pay to watch matches that were previously free. "We're just trying to promote this concept, the idea that people should pay for this kind of service. It will take some time," she said.
Man-made consequences for the Xiang River
From The Economic Observer:
Stricken by drought, abuse by industry, and neglect by local government, the once-majestic Xiang River in Hunan province has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. Since November, its water level has dropped to a record low.
Now, some sections of the river in Changsha, Hunan's capital, are nothing more than scattered, turbid puddles. And underneath one Changsha bridge, exposed pillars caked with silt stand awkwardly on a baked riverbed, while a muddy stream oozes lifelessly beneath.
December 26, 2007
Gamble your life away in ZT Online
China book roundup: 2007
Past catches up to former red guard leader
Xujun Eberlein at New America Media describes what Sun Binbin, aka Sun Yaowu, is doing today:
A month before the 114th birthday of Chairman Mao Zedong on December 26, a long forgotten photo of Mao with a young girl resurfaced on the Chinese Internet. It generated an instant furor around the girl.
It has been 41 years since then. She was 18 or 19 at the time, a senior student at the girls' school that was attached to Beijing Normal University. On August 18, 1966, she went to Tiananmen, as part of a delegation of Red Guards to be received by Mao. She was given the special honor of placing a Red Guard armband on Mao’s sleeve. As she did this, Mao asked her her name and she told him: Song Binbin. Loosely translated it means "gentle and refined." Mao had told her in a joking way, according to the photographer, that gentle was out, and "Yaowu" was in. "Yaowu" means "seeking armed conflict."
The Intel approach to toilet habits
The Peking Duck blog has a posted a photo of an amusing, well-drawn sign next to a urinal. In the comments sections of the post, someone has identified the location of the sign: inside an Intel factory in China.
Death and negligence on Christmas Eve
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap writes about a signal tower that fell off the roof of his building, carrying a worker with it:
At roughly 3:20 PM, Christmas Eve, I left my apartment at GaoAn Road apartment to go to the post office. But, as I completed the first of seven flights of stairs to the lobby and entrance of my building, I realized that I had forgotten the envelope that I needed to mail. So I backtracked, grabbed the envelope, and began descending, again when, suddenly, just above the fourth floor (I think), I heard a tremendous crash come through the walls of the stairwell. It sounded metallic and fierce, as if scaffolding had fallen.
Seconds later I turned the corner out of the stairwell and saw this wreckage in the front doorway of my building:
New oil refineries for Weihai and Kunming
Xinhua reports:
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the nation's largest oil producer, plans to build two refineries in Shandong and Yunnan to boost its capacity.
CNPC will build the Shandong project in the coastal city of Weihai, near the Qingdao refinery of the nation's largest refiner Sinopec, a company source told China Daily.
The Yunnan project will be located in Kunming, capital of the province, said the source, who declined to be named.
Each plant will have the capacity to process over 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day, he said.
Weihai has a port; Kunming is in the early stages of becoming the hub of China's land link with Southeast Asia, Burma and India.The livelihood of Chinese scriptwriters
ESWN translates a Phoenix Weekly profile of Shi Kang (石康), a scriptwriter and author whose most recent project is the popular youth soap Struggle (奋斗) and its accompanying two-volume novelization:
Following the development of the film/television industry in mainland China, more and more scriptwriters came along. Scriptwriting became an extremely cheap form of labor. Shi Kong also saw that no matter how well he wrote the script and how well the drama series was received, he never got anything more from it. By this time, Shi Kong's fame came from his novels, and the book revenues became his principal source of income.
According to a mainland Chinese media study, the mainland Chinese scriptwriters earn about 5% to 10% of the total budget of a drama series. In Beijing, which is the major center of television and film production in the country, the typical payment to a scriptwriter is around 240,000 yuan. This figure includes certain big productions with tens of millions of yuan in investment. Many scriptwriters are also in this for the fame and not the money.
But more often, the rights of the mainland Chinese scriptwriters are not protected. Sometimes, they do not receive even their most basic payment. For a "veteran scriptwriter" such as Shi Kong, "it was not bad to receive 800,000 yuan." But for the lesser scriptwriters, their livelihoods are worse.
Scrap the death penalty?
John Kennedy at Global Voices Online translates some voices from recent netizen discussions on the death penalty.
December 24, 2007
Colorful magazines for modern youth
Danone and Wahaha smoke peace pipe
Mure Dickie of the Financial Times reports:
Danone, the French food group, and Wahaha Group of China have agreed a legal ceasefire and return to 'peace talks' for the resolution of one of the most high-profile disputes between a foreign company and a Chinese partner.
The two had exchanged accusations and lawsuits for many months, with the French company accusing its Chinese partner of setting up copycat operations outside the venture, selling soft drinks and other products under the Wahaha brand, which is named after the sound of a laughing child.
The standoff was discussed at the highest political levels last month during a visit by French president Nicolas Sarkozy to China and raised during a dinner hosted by President Hu Jintao. Franck Riboud, Danone chairman, also attended the dinner.
December 23, 2007
China's emerging land rights movement
China Digital Times summarizes four land rights cases. According to Chen Yongmiao:
Chinese farmers are finally showing their power, standing up to the sky. Hundreds of thousands of farmers from three different regions publicly announced to the whole nation that they have the right to own their land. Looking back at villagers in Xiaogang (小岗村) who divided their land in the early reform period, that could still be considered kneeling on the ground, an improvement from their previous totally supine position. This time farmers have really stood up, despite the potential high pressure from the government.
Coming soon, five-star serviced cave apartments
Laowiseass compares cave homes on the mainland with those in Taiwan.