« February 24, 2008 - March 1, 2008 | Main | March 9, 2008 - March 15, 2008 »

March 7, 2008

Xinhua: China to probe Bjork concert

Xinhua has published an official response to Bjork's 'Tibet!' cry at the end of the song 'Independence' at her recent Shanghai concert:

China's Ministry of Culture said Friday it will investigate into Icelandic singer Bjork's Shanghai concert during which she shouted 'Tibet' at the end of an unapproved song, 'Declare Independence'.

Bjork's 'political show has not only broken Chinese laws and regulations and hurt the feeling of Chinese people, but also went against the professional code of an artist,' the ministry said on its website.

...It said it will tighten the scrutiny of foreign artistic groups coming for performance in China to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:35 PM |

The dark side of China

Tiger Temple, a Chinese blogger who has been documenting a group of homeless people being ruthlessly displaced by urban renewal in Qianmen, comments on the tension between journalists eager to report on society's dark side and officials who would rather sweep it under the carpet.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:00 PM |

"We have to get the television ratings!"

A Hunan TV program secretly followed Zhang Chen, a Changsha civil servant, and edited footage to suggest that she was a home-wrecker. Zhang ultimately forced the program to apologize and pay compensation. ESWN translates the Southern Weekly investigation:

"Wang Yan said that there was no time to do any more interviews, because the show had already been edited. It is now in the production process and there was no way to withdraw it. She also said that if your department leader had not come, you people would not even be allowed to step inside the Hunan Broadcasting office building!" Zhang Chen told the Southern Weekend reporter.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:38 PM |

No forbidden zone in reading?

At the New Left Review, Zhang Yongle reviews a six-volume collection of articles from Duzhu magazine:

From 1996, however, when Wang Hui and then Huang Ping were invited to join the journal—initially on a temporary basis—after Shen’s retirement, Dushu was orientated along more critical and scholarly lines. The pair strengthened the social-science coverage of the journal and encouraged an open engagement with contemporary political and economic issues. They were also more interested in interacting with the international intellectual community than their predecessors had been. It was under Wang and Huang that Dushu emerged as a socially critical journal; uncongenial to some, but nevertheless posing questions that indubitably had a wider resonance.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:32 PM |

NIMBY protests stop Shanghai maglev

Geoff Dyer of The Financial Times reports:

Shanghai’s local government has backed off construction work on an electromagnetic train line until at least next year after the plan triggered mass protests.

Han Zheng, Shanghai’s mayor, said on Thursday the new line, which has prompted protests from residents whose flats are near the planned track, was not on the list of major projects that would be started this year.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:30 AM |

Central Bank: strong yuan not way to fight inflation

From an article by Andrew Batson and Jason Leow in The Wall Street Journal:

China's central bank governor said a stronger currency isn't the best or only way to fight inflation, in statements that appear to counter widespread market expectations that the yuan's gains will accelerate as the nation's prices rise at their fastest pace in a decade.

'Faster currency appreciation helps to rein in inflation, but not a lot,' Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, told reporters Thursday. 'To curb inflation, we will rely more on domestic policies. … There is no need to use exchange-rate reforms as a way to fight inflation.'

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:28 AM |

March 6, 2008

If at first you don’t succeed … get subsidized

At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter discusses the implications of future rules that will regulate the scrap collection sector:

In other words - licensed e-scrap recyclers are going to be armed with subsidies in the battle for China’s growing supply of domestic e-scrap. Though bad for the peddlers (and I have a serious soft spot for them), this is unabashedly good news for China’s environment. And, in the end, it may be good for the peddlers, too: according to sources close to the drafting of the directive, it will include provisions that encourage - and subsidize - the employment of scrap peddlers and former illegal e-scrap workshops.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:15 PM |

Movie ratings will put China on the express train to pornoville

GAPP chief Liu Binjie explains how a film ratings system will lead to unbridled debauchery. Imagethief snarks:

And while I'm on that, how are film ratings "too sensitive" for the general public? The same general public that stampeded out for pirate copies of the uncensored version of Lust, Caution? If I walk down the street talking about film ratings, will women faint and strong men weep? Will grannies cover their children's ears? Will people's heads explode like in Scanners? Cool! How is it that the same general public that isn't ready for a discussion of film ratings somehow survives unfettered access to the entire tawdry Hollywood oeuvre via the pirate DVD market completely unscathed? Somebody should look into that.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:52 AM |

Tibet: Transformation and tradition

Peter Firstbrook, producer of the BBC special A Year In Tibet, writes about the clashes between traditions and modern life in Tibet's towns and cities.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:06 AM |

Police kill man who hijacked Australian tourists

From an article by Lydia Chen in The Shanghai Daily:

Police in the capital city of Shaanxi Province shot a man dead after he allegedly hijacked a travel bus with explosives and took a foreign tourist and an interpreter hostage today, Xinhua news agency reported.

Police pulled the trigger after negotiations failed, the report said.

But The Associated Press said the man took 10 Australians as hostages. The hostages were not hurt during the process, the Xinhua report added.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:33 AM |

Do you believe in God?

This links to an Internet poll with that simple question.

Internet polls are notoriously unreliable, nonetheless it's interesting that the current ratio for the U.S., a notoriously religious country, is 58% atheist vs. 42% theist. China's numbers are currently 50% vs. 50%

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:20 AM |

March 5, 2008

Ramadan in China

As part of Slate's "Dispatches" series, Joshua Kucera writes about his trip to Xinjiang:

After lunch, Ali and I went to a government-run factory where Uighurs mass-produced their traditional hats, clothes, and musical instruments to sell to tourists. We stopped in the rug showroom, where the friendly Chinese assistants offered us chrysanthemum tea. I had some, but Ali declined. They insisted, and he had to explain that he couldn't drink anything until sundown. Although they lived in a city that was 90 percent Muslim, they didn't know that Ramadan had started.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:56 PM |

45 Years of Lei Feng

Jeremiah at the Granite Studio is not a believer.

Anyway, in case you missed it, Lei Feng was a young soldier in the PLA whose selfless devotion to his brother troops, to the people, and especially to Mao Zedong and his country made him a role model for young Chinese. If you want to think of him as a cross between a boy scout, GI Joe, and "Opie" from the old Andy Griffith Show, go ahead I won’t stop you.

Also: previous stories about Lei Feng on Danwei.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:40 PM |

ICBC seals deal with South African bank

South Africa's Business Day has details of ICBC's $5,6bn in Standard Bank. The deal has been completed, giving ICBC a 20% stake in Africa’s largest lender.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:50 AM |

Protests against new PX factory location

From Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

Violent protests erupted in several southern Chinese fishing towns after residents heard that a chemical factory rejected as environmentally dangerous by the nearby city of Xiamen would be built in their area instead, witnesses and other residents said Monday.

The protesters, who began their uprising peacefully Thursday, clashed repeatedly with baton-wielding police Friday and Saturday in several towns near the Gulei Peninsula, about 50 miles southwest of Xiamen on the Taiwan Strait, they said. A dozen people were injured and carried away for treatment in local hospitals, and about 15 were arrested, according to demonstrators and their family members.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:45 AM |

Super ministries!

In the The Financial Times Richard McGregor, who probably has the best Party sources of any Western journalist currently working in Beijing, reports:

China to launch revamp with merged ministries

China will launch a shake-up of government at the annual session of its top legislative body, with the formation of 'super-ministries' intended to streamline administration and reduce meddling by minor bureaucrats in state businesses.

The long-term structural reform of government will be discussed alongside more urgent tasks facing China’s leadership – in particular, the battle against inflation, now at an 11-year high.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:34 AM |

Journal wins, then denied, media award

ESWN translates an account of Publicity Department intereference in an award that the newspaper Southern Weekly was to have presented to Yanhuang Chunqiu, a journal of history and politics:

Since the summer of 1989, when certain leaders of the Central Publicity Department went after certain units, they never issue official documents. They only make a notice by telephone. When you ask him who he is, he never says so. He gives the impression of stealthiness (maybe he is afraid, but what is he afraid of?). Usually, he only says that he is from a certain department within the Central Publicity Department.

Should Yanhuang Chunqiu have received this particular award? When this writer called Du Daozheng, he said that he did not care because the people know the truth and he does not want to argue over this. This particular award was based upon a popular vote with at least half of the official media persons voting for Yanhuang Chunqiu. Should public opinion be ignored and overridden so easily?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:42 AM |

March 4, 2008

Can Chinese thinkers change the world?

Prospect magazine has published an article by Mark Leonard described thusly:

Despite the global interest in the rise of China, no one is paying much attention to its ideas and who produces them. Yet China has a surprisingly lively intellectual class whose ideas may prove a serious challenge to western liberal hegemony

An excerpt:

Chinese thinkers argue that all developed democracies are facing a political crisis: turnout in elections is falling, faith in political leaders has declined, parties are losing members and populism is on the rise. They study the ways that western leaders are going over the heads of political parties and pioneering new techniques to reach the people such as referendums, opinion surveys or 'citizens' juries.' The west still has multi-party elections as a central part of the political process, but has supplemented them with new types of deliberation. China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:16 PM |

Star athlete skips out on political duties

Richard Spencer of The Daily Telegraph has a post on his blog about China's star hurdler Liu Xiang. Along with actress Gong Li and director Zhang Yimou, Liu is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference or CPPCC, the government body often compared to the House of Lords. Liu is missing this year's CPPCC meetings because of an athletic meet in Spain, and some people are displeased.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:57 PM |

Nigeria should copy, not beg from China

Issa Aremu of the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust has published an opinion piece about Sino-Nigerian relations and what Nigeria can learn from China. He has an interesting perspective but also a few illusions about China.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:39 PM |

News agency restrictions: US and EU file suit

From The Times:

Concerns about Chinese restrictions on foreign financial news providers escalated into a trade dispute yesterday when the European Union and the United States filed a joint formal complaint at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The row centres on Beijing's decision two years ago to require companies such as Reuters, Dow Jones and Bloomberg to distribute their information through a branch of Xinhua, the state news agency, rather than deal directly with their clients, such as banks.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:27 PM |

Would you dare to take a photo of this man?

JDM080304tongzhou.jpg
Wang Lili, a photographer for the Tongzhou Newsletter, snapped a photo of district mayor Deng Naiping with his head bent and eyes half-closed. This grave infraction, a "political incident," got Wang fired.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:55 PM |

Björk: Raise your flag? "Tibet...Tibet"

At a concert in Shanghai, the Icelandic art-rock star closes the song "Declare Independence" with the word "Tibet". Netizens react.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:47 PM |

"He is unsatisfied with China"

Josh at Cup of Cha gets appraised by the PSB.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:06 AM |

Rob Gifford on The Daily Show

A video: Long time China correspondent and author of The China Road Rob Gifford faces Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:03 AM |

March 3, 2008

Hack into Freedom City

A blogger infiltrates the residential complex where Zeng Jinyan is under house arrest to deliver milk powder for her baby. John Kennedy translates the gripping tale of "A Professionally Executed Milk Powder Delivery".

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:47 PM |

Next stop on Line 10: Guanghua Lu...I mean Jintaixizhao

The tbjblog investigates a strangely-named subway stop:

Let’s say you’re opening a subway station smack dab in the middle of the CBD, within the shadow of the iconic CCTV Tower and the soon-to-be-tallest building in Beijing. Next door is the well-known Kerry Centre and the nearest intersection is Guanghua Road and the Third Ring Road.

What would you name it?

How about Jintaixizhao, rehashing a reference to a centuries-old scenic vista long lost to the sands of time that few modern day residents have any clue about?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:25 PM |

Annual legislature meetings begin in Beijing

Jason Leow in The Wall Street Journal reports:

China's legislature starts its annual session this week and is expected to focus on a slate of senior cabinet appointments and proposals for what could become the biggest government restructuring in at least a decade.

The meetings, currently called 'NPC and CPPCC Annual Session' in government literature, will last for the next 11 days. The China Daily has a large special section on the meetings.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 2:26 PM |

All about the new airport

David Feng has posted a huge gallery of captioned images of Beijing's massive new airport.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:48 PM |

March 2, 2008

Re:中国当代油画 虚云大师

您好！

感谢您及贵网对《虚云大师 Meditation》在第一时间的关注，同时我们也注意到贵网属.org而非.com。

“Chinese art has seen some explosive increases in price in recent years”确系事实，而由此滋生泡沫亦系事实。拍卖是艺术品成交的传统路径，而广告路径更为传统、平实，明码标价会在很大程度上规避“恶意炒作”之嫌。我们的广告路径并非从《虚云大师 Meditation》开始，您可以查阅一下《凤凰周刊》2007年1月5日、4月5日相同版位广告，那里有我们另外两幅“私人藏品”——油画《逝 Gone With The Wind》、《先锋 Pioneer》，相信您会有更深的感受。

关于“1840”，从表像理解，这一年既是虚云大师的生年，又是每一位有良知的中国人铭心刻骨的年份，即中国近代史的开端，古老的中国从此走进了迄今仍风云激荡的岁月。而从深层理解，该画向人们传递的是一种“Meditation（冥想）”的观念和境界，而这种观念和境界是当代中国绝然不可或缺之物！国家和民族已站在迈向未来的十字路口，必须回答“我是谁？我从哪里来？要往何处去？”

至于“still seems overvalued”，我们始终秉承“重在展示，聆听共鸣，货卖识家”的心态，需求才是硬道理。

感谢您所提的问题，面对这位禅门领袖的“冥想”精神，我们共在禅境！

中国•沈阳•YuBin 2008.3.1 Sat.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:10 PM |

Pre-Olympics Xinjiang terrorism media blitz

Dave at the Mutant Palm blog gives a run-down of the various angles the state media has brought to the issue of Xinjiang security:

The third week of February was awfully busy for Xinjiang terrorism news.

First, there were reports of a Uyghur terrorist cell being raided by the police in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. The initial report appears to have been in Singtao Daily, the Hong Kong-based international Chinese language newspaper chain, on February 14th. It said that 18 were killed on February 4th in a huge police assault on an apartment in the Happy Gardens (幸福花园) complex, and two security officers were also killed in the full-scale gun battle. The report was subsequently carried over in smaller web publications on the Mainland like Zaobao, but officials would only confirm that there was an incident, nothing more.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:58 AM |