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August 9, 2008

Stabbing at the Drum Tower

The New York Times reports on the stabbing of an American couple and their Chinese guide atop the Drum Tower:

A Chinese man wielding a knife attacked two American tourists related to an American Olympic coach on Saturday, killing one of the tourists and wounding the other and their Chinese tour guide while the three were visiting an ancient tower in central Beijing. The attacker then killed himself by leaping from the tower, Chinese officials said....The dead American was a man, and the injured American tourist and Chinese guide are both women, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:12 PM |

August 8, 2008

Bushes in Beijing to focus on ceremonials

Mary Hennock blogs for Newsweek about Bush's visit to the new US Embassy in Beijing and his foreign policy legacy:

Next year marks 30 years of US-China diplomatic relations since Washington switched its embassy from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Bush is leaving office with the US' reputation weaker than at any time since WWII, its soft power sapped by its adventures in Iraq, its economy in distress back home. His legacy for US-China relations may prove as lasting as his father's, but in a wholly different direction. China's rise may be over-hyped but it's real and there's more space for it than previously as the US depends on the partnership much too heavily to offend.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:26 PM |

Olympic Model Workers

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Danwei's choice of the best blogs about China in English and Chinese. The winners are chosen by Danwei's Central Committee; no voting or democracy of any kind is involved.

Posted by Lydia Wallace at 3:00 PM |

Blow your whistle when you see a terrorist

Information Times reported that whistle has become Guangzhou's taxi drivers' new weapon against terrorism.

Posted by Eric Mu at 2:44 PM |

Let the God Games Begin

Adam Minter looks at hurdles blocking foreign missionaries from proselytizing in China during the Olympics:

As recently as the spring of 2007, evangelical groups were planning an effort meant to include thousands of trained missionaries descending on China. However, in the course of the last year, several developments have damaged the prospects for the planned spiritual harvest.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:20 AM |

No booing. (Also, no locusts.)

Joyce Lau wonders whether Chinese spectators will boo at the Games:

But it's dangerous to toy with people's emotions -- to rouse anger by convincing them that spiteful foreigners are out to shame them, and then turn around and say they must be nice to those same foreigners. What if the people who were boycotting Carrefour or rallying against "the Western media" go to a hotly contested match between China and a country with which it has either current or historical grievances -- America, Britain, France, Japan, etc? Will they understand the difference between loving your own country, and not demonstrably hating others?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:10 AM |

Chinese newspapers on the Xinjiang attacks

At China Media Project, David Bandurski looks at the prominence given to news of the Xinjiang attacks in both official and commercial newspapers.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:09 AM |

Photos of Hu Jintao and 11 world leaders

World leaders are in town, and XInhua is covering their handshakes with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:46 AM |

August 7, 2008

The changing face of Chinese journalism

The China Beat has an interview with Judy Polumbaum, co-author with Xiong Lei of China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:19 AM |

Wussy U.S. cyclists in face masks

China Smack has translated some Chinese online reactions to photos being circulated of the U.S. cycling team arriving at Beijing's airport wearing face masks to filter the air. Some examples:

The Olympics are in Beijing, whether you foreigners like it or not. If you do not like the air, then just go home!

Chinese air quality really is inferior to foreign countries. We should face the truth and not deceive ourselves and others.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:04 AM |

Shenyang Evening News makes itself news

With the media's enthusiasm for the Olympic Games running high, a daily newspaper Shenyang Evening News created its own Olympic-related news to report on.

Posted by Eric Mu at 9:16 AM |

August 6, 2008

More foreign protesters

From AP:

Three Americans denouncing China's population control policies protested on Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Wednesday

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 3:40 PM |

Foreign protesters arrive in Beijing

From Peking Duck:

[T]oday somebody climbed a 100-foot electrical pole near the Olympic Green to fly a 'One World, One Dream, Free Tibet' flag for the length of time it took the Beijing Fire Department and PSB to arrive and take it down.

The protesters were all-unsurprisingly-foreigners.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 3:33 PM |

When there were only a billion

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A 1982 news story about China's first census after the Cultural Revolution, when the population officially topped one billion, with more than four million people in the armed forces.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:15 AM |

Bush to open new U.S. Embassy on Friday

Xinhua reports:

U.S. President George W. Bush will formally open the new U.S. Embassy here on Friday, the opening day of the Olympics...

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:58 AM |

August 5, 2008

Wen Jiabao shoots hoops

Is athletic prowess a requirement for China's leaders? A roundup of the recent reports showing the atheletic side of the country's leaders.

Posted by Eric Mu at 4:49 PM |

Grouchy Chinese bloggers on the Games

Jonathan Ansfield sums up the snarky comments from some Chinese bloggers about the Olympics in a Newsweek blog post:

'Achhhh, we've been spending half our days erasing posts,' groused the founder of one of China's edgier blog forums, reached by phone earlier this week.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:06 AM |

August 4, 2008

Competition to prove national strength

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In the 1980s, Beijing 'hooligan writer' Wang Shuo wrote a novel centered around a 'competition to prove national strength and restore wounded pride'. The story has particular relevance in the year of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 6:10 PM |

Hosting the Olympics in post-quake China

Zheng Yefu examines the implications of the Olympics in the wake of the Wenchuan earthquake.

Posted by Eric Mu at 6:03 PM |

16 die in Xinjiang grenade attack

Xinhua reports:

The raid of a border armed police division, which killed 16 policemen and injured 16 others, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Monday morning was suspected as a terrorist attack, according to the local police.

Two attackers drove a tip lorry to hit a team of policemen who were jogging outside the police division in a morning exercise in Kashi at about 8 a.m., police witnesses said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:23 PM |

China: Humiliation and the Olympics

China scholar Orville Schell uses the new movie Dark Matter as a platform to talk about contemporary psychological dynamics between China and the West. He references a number of non-fiction book to give historical background to his argument that the movie masterfully illuminates 'how any suggestion of foreign superiority, or even condescension, toward Chinese may intersect with their own sense of historical victimization and insecurity to create a volatile chemistry.'

Posted by Lydia Wallace at 10:59 AM |

Information not so open

David Bandurski has translated a China Newsweek article about Party leaders' reluctance to meet the requirements of the National Ordinance on Openness of Government Information (政府信息公开条例) that took effect on May 1.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:03 AM |

Human flesh search engine court case

ESWN has translated an article about a man who sued websites for allowing 'human flesh search engine' postings that attacked him and revealed his personal details online.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:00 AM |

Flypig: why podcasting isn't big in China

Flypig aka Steven Lin, on of the duo behind popular podcast site Antiwave.net explains why podcasting has not caught on in China.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:56 AM |

August 3, 2008

Successful Cat III films

Variety's Kaiju Shakedown presents a list of all of the Cat III films in Hong Kong to earn more than $10 million since the rating was first implemented in 1988 (reportedly to allow foreign arthouse flicks to play in the colony). Of note:

Seven of these movies star Simon Yam, and three of them were written by Joe Eszterhas.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:18 PM |

The Foreigner Card

Are you a foreigner? You might be eligible for free beer. Ben Ross explains.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:18 PM |