Earthquake prediction in China
ESWN translates a Southern Weekly feature that explains in great detail just why no one could possibly have predicted the Wenchuan earthquake.
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October 31, 2008
10,000 RMB lawsuit in Sprite-for-tax swap
A Beijing diner was given a bottle of Sprite in lieu of a receipt. She then sued the restaurant for 10,000 yuan for depriving her of her legal right to monitor national tax collection.
Microsoft's black screens
Shanghai checks fisheries for melamine use
The Shanghai Daily:
Shanghai will carry out full-scale checks on feed used in the fisheries industry due to fears that the widening melamine-tainted food scandal may spread to seafood.
Dangerous levels of the chemical have already been found in eggs and milk powder.
Shanghai's Livestock Office said yesterday that the checks would cover more than 100 feed producers in the city. Further inspections on seafood would start if any food given to fish was found to be contaminated with melamine.
MySpace China failing, looks for answers
From BusinessWeek by Bruce Einhorn:
MySpace China, a joint venture among News Corp., venture capital firm IDG-Accel (a partnership between Boston-based IDG and Accel Partners from Silicon Valley), and local investment firm China Broadband Capital Partners, doesn't have much to show for its effort. 'MySpace.cn has not become a Tier 1 SNS site in China,' said Beijing-based market researcher BDA China in an August report.
GoDaddy and SourceForge blocked in China again
From Moonlight Blog:
GoDaddy, the world's largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, and SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China again after Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed.
China Business Post sues govt. for censorship
By Mire Dickie in The Financial Times:
Backers of a shuttered Chinese business weekly have launched a highly unusual challenge to the country's media censors by filing a lawsuit against the regional government that ordered its suspension over reports critical of a major state bank.
The legal complaint filed on Wednesday in the name of a reporter for the China Business Post demands that the Inner Mongolia bureau of press and publications rescind the three month suspension order imposed on it over its reporting on alleged mishandling of loans at the Agricultural Bank of China...
...Bruno Wu, head of the privately invested Sun Media group which owns China Business Post's commercial and marketing operations through a UK-listed subsidiary, last month denounced the suspension and vowed not to re-open the weekly until it was revoked.
Stabbings in Beijing
A law professor was stabbed to death in his classroom by a student in Beijing. In a separate incident, two foreigners were stabbed by a man whose motive appeared to be robbery.
China adjusts to leaner times
At the New York Times, media mogul Hung Huang blogs about the economic downturn:
A friend of mine owns a textile manufacturing company. She has been hurting since the beginning of the year because of the new labor laws. However, I really admire her attitude: She said that in order for Chinese manufacturing to improve in quality, we must be able to improve our management system. Otherwise, all we are doing is selling our people and environment for the cheapest price in the world. "The Chinese must learn to compete for quality and brand," she said. I think she is right.
October 30, 2008
Linfen gag fees spark media ethics debate
China Media Project collects some responses to the China Youth Daily report about a coal mine buying reporters' silence.
Farmers have the right to keep land for themselves
CASS researcher Yu Jianrong speaks to Southern Metropolis Weekly about the new rural land policy.
Liu Zhihua appeals death sentence, pens novel
Former Beijing vice-mayor Liu Zhihua is appealing the suspended death sentence he was given in a corruption case:
[Liu's lawyer Mo Shaoping] said Liu "thought the sentence was too heavy because the court did not consider the fact that he confessed" to crimes investigators had not yet uncovered. Liu also complained that the court had "no humanitarian consideration for his family's life" by confiscating all his personal property.
...Liu spends his time reading historical and Buddhist books and is writing a novel, Mo said Tuesday.
China's climate change policies
Xinhua has published the full text of a government document called 'China's Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change'.
World of Warcraft in China and U.S.
On The China Beat: Q&A with UCI Professor of Informatics Bonnie Nardi about her comparative studies of World of Warcraft online game players in China and the U.S.
Hush money for real and fake journalists
Zhongnanhai Blog translates two China Youth Daily stories about reporters lining up to accept payouts from a coal mine in return for not filing stories about it.
China launches Venezuelan satellite
Nasa Spaceflight reports on a successful launch via a Long March 3B rocket of Venezuela's first satellite:
Simon Bolivars launch was the 11th use of the CZ-3B, the seventh successful orbital launch for China this year and the 112th successful orbital launch overall.
The satellite is based on the DFH-4 bus and is the first time that China has launched a satellite for Latin America. The agreement for the development, construction and launch of Simon Bolivar was signed on November 1, 2005 - for what was originally a launch date target of July 2008.
October 29, 2008
Farmers' Olympics held in Quanzhou
The Sixth Farmers' Olympics, a national athletic competition for rural household registration holders, is taking place in Quanzhou, Fujian Province this week. Athletes compete in agriculture-related events as well as traditional sports competitions. Xinhua has a gallery.
Wal-Mart's new sustainability mandate in China
At Harvard Business (via BusinessWeek), Andrew Winston reports on the Wal-Mart Sustainability Summit, which was held in Beijing:
Suppliers must reveal the name and location of every factory they use to make a product, as early as November for apparel, then home goods, toys, and others by the end of 2009. As Duke said, "If you sell us tennis shoes, we expect you to know and tell us where it was made and which sub-contractors were involved...If you don't pose these questions, our customers will...in this age of YouTube there is no trust without transparency." (Wal-Mart will have more insight into what's going on at factories than ever before thanks to the work of Ma Jun who runs an NGO that has compiled compliance data on every factory.
No more re-imported comments from our leaders
ESWN translates an op-ed column by Xiong Peiyun in Southern Weekly that discusses the practice of Chinese politicians giving much more candid interviews to the foreign press than they do inside the country.
Uyghurs speak out on hotel restrictions
The New Dominion translates some online reactions from Uyghurs to regulations that require the police to be notified when they and ethnic Tibetans register at hotels.
October 28, 2008
China real estate market slump
Chinese hostages killed in Sudan
The BBC reports that five Chinese workers in Sudan, who were among nine Chinese oil workers taken hostage nine days ago, have been killed:
The kidnappers later released a local driver kidnapped with the Chinese with a note saying they wanted a share in the region's oil wealth.
The Chinese were employees of the China National Petroleum Corporation, part of a consortium making up the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC).
Of mayors, banquets, and a temple that wasn't
A recent hire at a state publisher goes on a 10-day press junket to Liaoning:
We went to many places, but an ever-recurring location was the conference room. We saw a lot of conference rooms. Some of the officials seemed like out-and-out gangsters. Others seemed quite straight. But could you really tell?
October 27, 2008
IT entrepreneur arrested for extortion
Liu Ren, head of DoNews, was arrested for threatening to post false, damaging stories about IT companies on his website unless they paid him protection money.
Two sets of Beijing heroes
The English and Chinese editions of Time Out Beijing each pick their own sets of heroes. Li Yuchun's fans go nuts in the comments section.
Foreign scrap trader kidnapped for ransom in Ningbo
Shanghai Scrap notes that the economic downturn has almost destroyed the lucrative trade in scrap metal from Europe and the U.S. to China, where the hunger for commodities ensured a market for almost any kind of scrap.
One of the traders affected got in more trouble than most as a result of the gloomy market: one of the companies he sold scrap too kidnapped him and demanded USD 350,000 for his release.
October 26, 2008
The best reporting on the Sichuan earthquake you'll never see
At The China Beat, Angilee Shah discusses documentary filmmaker Pan Jianlin's new movie, Who Killed Our Children:
Although only a few official media outlets were allowed to report on earthquake devastation at first, other media were not kicked out of devastated areas. Pan stayed in tents, like the locals, and parents were eager to talk. Local officials wanted media attention so that their neighborhoods would get help. In ten days, before being kicked out by soldiers, Pan filmed people on the ground - parents who were eager to find out the truth, teachers who narrated their experiences, and students whose classmates and siblings were lost. Almost all government officials refused to speak, but several school officials, a relief coordinator and an education official did go on camera.
October 24, 2008
Stopping a train for rushed Japanese passengers
A Chinese train made an unscheduled 1-minute stop to help Japanese passengers make their flight back home. The Zhongnanhai blog describes some of the online reaction to this unprecedented level of service on the part of a Chinese Railway Bureau.
FedEx fined for letter-carrying
Express carriers in China are not allowed to infringe on China Post's monopoly on letters. FedEx has been fined 3,000 yuan XFN reports. All Roads Lead To China provides some background on the situation:
In 2001, while I was interning at UPS, China was a region that my business unit was monitoring closely. The market was still closed to anything but joint ventures, and the law were strict in many categories of "logistics"
Over the course of several months, tensions were high because China Post was flexing its muscles a bit. FedEx, TNT, DHL, UPS, and Airborne were restricted from accepting or delivering letter pouches in China. That was the role of China Post then, and it is still their legal monopolitic right to this day.
But that didn't really stop anyone then... and it hasn't really stopped anyone now.
Art House Confidential
Philip at China Film Journal looks at how Chinese films have performed on the art-house circuit in the US.
Hu Jıа wins EU award, Xinhua calls him "Chinese criminal"
This is what Xinhua had to say about the EU giving the Sаkharοv Prize for Freedοm of Thought to jailed dissident Hu Jıа:
China voiced its strong dissatisfaction and stern opposition to an award from the European Union (EU) to a Chinese criminal.
'We express strong dissatisfaction and stern opposition (to the award),' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a written statement in response to the award on Thursday evening.
October 23, 2008
Sunday delights
Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer visits the One Way Bookstore near the Old Summer Palace and runs into a group of visiting Taiji instructors.
Male prostitution ring smashed in Zhejiang
From Forgotten Archipelagoes:
On August 10 2007, Zheng Shuyi registered the 'nannanboy.com' website ... With the help of Xu Guangming the website soon became a networking tool where, for a fee, male prostitutes could upload their pictures and contact details. Also, Zheng and Xu rented out two rooms where prostitutes could meet their clients.
Creative Commons and the Hong Kong starlet
Rebecca MacKinnon notes that Cantopop star Ella Koon (官恩娜) has released a gallery of photos under a Creative Commons "Non-Commercial Share Alike" license.
Agriculture Bank prepped for IPO
Reuters reports that the government is putting $19 billion into the Agriculture Bank of China Agricultural Bank of China as part of a restructuring program:
[AgBank Senior Executive Vice President Pan Gongsheng] said AgBank would carve out as much as 800 billion yuan ($117 billion) of bad loans and transfer them by the end of the year to a new asset management company that it will jointly manage with the Ministry of Finance. The "bad bank" is expected to take five years to dispose of the impaired assets....
Pan said AgBank hoped to sell shares in both Hong Kong and Shanghai; the bank would be technically ready for an initial public offering by the second half of next year, but market conditions might force a postponement until 2010.
October 22, 2008
30th anniversary of Shekou
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the China Merchants (招商局) Shekou Industrial Zone, writes Mary Ann O'Donnell:
Shekou was established one year before Shenzhen, which celebrates the city's thirtieth next year or the following year, depending on whether one counts from the year Guangdong approved the decision to establish Shenzhen (1979), or the Central government (1980). The SEZ border with the rest of the country wasn't fully in place until 1986...
Hu - Bush phone call about financial crisis
From The China Daily:
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday spoke over phone with his US counterpart George W. Bush about international cooperation to cope with the ongoing global financial turmoil.
Translating China's Internet chaos
October 21, 2008
Farewell to my "reporter" career
From China Digital Times:
For many years, blogger Shiniankancai (十年砍柴) has been quite well known for his sharp and sometimes cynical critiques of China's political institutions and policies. Few knew his real name, and the only detail he provided about his identity was that he worked as a reporter at a national newspaper in Beijing. On October 18, he published [a post titled 'Farewell to my 'reporter' career'] on his blog, excerpts translated by CDT's Linjun Fan.
The fat lady sings in China's opera of reform
Rosemary Righter in The Times:
Land ownership was the last Maoist taboo. It has fallen because Beijing needs rural areas to fuel continuing growth.
Hatamen old Peking station house
Paul French stumbles upon the old Peking railway station house of Hatamen, just outside the remaining bits of old city wall at Dongbianmen.
How should party leaders handle Internet gossip?
From David Bandurski of the China Media Project:
The internet is growing rapidly in China, and it is set increasingly on a collision course with entrenched local party officials who fear the greater scrutiny it brings...
In yesterday's edition of Southern Metropolis Daily, blogger Ten Years Chopping Timber analyzed two separate 2008 cases in which local officials handled cases of online 'rumor' in different ways with markedly different results...
New National Art Museum next to Bird's Nest
From The Art Newspaper as seen on Shanghai Eye:
The National Art Museum of China is to construct a major new building next to the famous Bird's Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, The Art Newspaper has learned. According to Fan Di'An, the director of the museum, the government has approved plans for the 80,000 sq. m building, which will be built over the next three years. The project has not yet been officially announced. 'We will keep our existing building [founded in 1958 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China],' Fan says. 'But the government's leaders want a new art museum, and they want it done quickly.' The new museum has an initial budget of RMB 1.2 billion.
Govt. raises price for wheat to boost rural income and output
The China Daily reports:
China's top economic planning agency on Monday said it would raise the minimum purchasing price for wheat by as much as 15.3 percent starting next year.
The move by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) aims to boost rural income and grain output...
...By hiking grain purchasing prices the NDRC hopes to motivate farmers to increase agricultural production.
Dongtan quagmire: the 'eco-city' that isn't
Malcolm Moore in The Daily Telegraph:
Chongming Island--This was supposed to be the site of Dongtan, the world's first eco-city, a paradise of sustainable living that would house half-a-million people and set an example to the world...
...However an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed that Dongtan is still nothing but a pipe dream. ...[P]lanning permission won by the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC), the property developer which commissioned Arup to design and build the city, has now lapsed...
... However, after years of milking the glory of designing 'the world's first eco-city', Mr [Roger] Wood [the project manager at Arup] began to distance Arup from Dongtan. 'We are simply the engineers of a project and work to the programme given to us by our client,' he said.
October 20, 2008
Click To See beats pirates?
By Clifford Coonan in Variety:
Click To See (CTS) Media, an online video advertizing group that has backing from Disney's venture capital fund Steamboat Ventures, is offering a successful legal alternative to pirated online video by offering movie downloads through sponsored portals that generate advertising revenue from online video.
...In one month, CTS Media had over two million downloads of the blockbuster 'Red Cliff' - and they were all legal. The sponsorship model allows free legal downloads of movies, but users have to watch the sponsor's advertising message before they can view the pic.
But how does that beat free, advertisement-free Bit Torrent downloads?October 17, 2008
12 Israelis held for ransom in Caribbean by Chinese workers
YNet News reports:
Twelve Israelis are being held in the Turks and Caicos Island chain in the Caribbean by 300 Chinese workers, Ynet learned Thursday.
The Israelis, who are being held on West Caicos, were on the islands working for Ashtrom Engineering and Construction, an Israeli building company responsible for a large tourist project.
An Israeli working in the area told Ynet that the Israelis were taken hostage after the project was canceled, due to bank collapse.
October 14, 2008
A Chinese village 1972 - 2008
By Wang Zhuoqiong in The China Daily:
Once a village of open farmland in Linxian county, Henan province, it has, like many parts of rural China, been transformed in the past three decades into a modern suburb with factories and multi-story housing. Only a few acres of wheat and vegetables at the entrance to the village sit as a reminder of the village's past.
Nancy Jervis has been tracking these momentous changes in Linxian county for more than three decades. A New York anthropologist and one of the first American academics to study social and rural life in China, Jervis first visited the village in 1972, and has been coming back since.
Don't give up on media freedom
From the China Media Project:
In yet another strong editorial, this one for Shanghai's Oriental Daily, which seems to be ramping up the strength of its editorial page, columnist Chang Ping (长平) argues that 'going to the heart of the problem' in cases like the Lifan mudslide and the milk powder scandal requires more attention to the question of media freedom.
Print magazine from blogs
Record trade surplus for China
From Bloomberg in The Tapei Times:
China's trade surplus widened to a record last month as exports withstood the global economic slowdown and falling commodity prices reduced the import bill.
Exports rose 21.5 percent from a year earlier to US$136.4 billion after gaining 21.1 percent in August, the customs bureau said on its Web site. The trade surplus climbed to US$29.3 billion, a figure derived by deducting the value of imports from the number for exports.
China has stimulated the world's fourth-biggest economy by cutting interest rates twice in a month to counter the financial crisis. The surplus swelled a record US$1.8 trillion in foreign-currency reserves, which may help the nation maintain growth of more than 9 percent as a global recession looms.
It's not a bad thing to have a relatively large trade surplus when there's a global financial crisis,' said Wang Qian (王黔), an economist at J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong.
You don't say.October 13, 2008
Poisonous dairy products still for sale in China?
David Bandurski at the China Media Project:
[F]acts lurking in reports from a handful of Chinese newspapers in recent days beg serious questions about the government's handling of a scandal China's leaders want very much to put behind them.
Specifically, there are indications that dairy companies and retailers are now employing aggressive sales promotion campaigns to offload products manufactured in the months before the scandal came to light -- products that could be harmful despite government reassurances.
A black jail in a Beijing hotel
Black and White Cat translates blog posts by Xu Zhiyong about a 'black jail' in a Beijing hotel where petitioners are held against their will, with photos of the hotel.
Relaxed rules for foreign journalists to stay?
The Kyodo News is reporting a story that no one else has published:
China has decided to continue allowing foreign reporters to interview anyone who consents after the current relaxed media rules expire next Friday, a Chinese source knowledgeable about the situation has said.
China implemented temporary media rules in January 2007 as part of its Olympics pledge to give international media complete freedom during the Summer Games, which were held in August.
October 10, 2008
China and Japan get ivory from South Africa
Under a special exemption for a one-off deal, South Africa will sell 51 tons of ivory to China and Japan:
Ivory trade was banned globally in 1989, but reviving elephant populations allowed African countries to make a one-time sale a decade later to Japan, the only country which had previously won the right to import. In July, the convention said that China should also be allowed to bid for the ivory at auction later this year as it had dramatically improved its enforcement of ivory rules....
Five years ago, the Chinese government confessed to the convention that it had lost track of 121 tons of ivory -- the equivalent to the tusks from 11,000 dead elephants -- between 1991 and 2002 and indicated that it probably was sold on illegal markets.
But since then Beijing has tightened its surveillance. Chinese law provides for capital punishment and life imprisonment for smugglers.
An appetite for Florida turtles
There are no restrictions on turtle harvesting in the state of Florida, reports the St. Petersburg Times, and local populations are being ravaged by over-harvesting:
A rising demand in China for turtles for food and medicine has led to the round-up of thousands of turtles from Florida's lakes, ponds and canals.
Exporters are shipping up to 3,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week out of Tampa International Airport, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A Fort Lauderdale seafood company is buying about 5,000 pounds of softshell turtles a week. They're worth about $2 a pound to the harvesters.
October 9, 2008
Screw the elderly, I'm keeping my bus seat
A young woman who belongs to an online group dedicated to keeping their seats even when the elderly ask them to get up is the subject of an unfavorable news report.
Parents journey to Beijing to petition about their lost children
Forty parents of missing children traveled to Beijing to petition the goverment for help. At Global Voices Online, Oiwan Lam translates a first-person account of the obstacles they faced during their encounters with CCTV, the Beijing police, and officials from their hometowns sent to take them back home.
Claptrap written purely to titillate
Paper Republic translates a Xinmin Weekly article on Yan Lianke's newest novel, Elegy and Academe, which made a splash upon publication because of a portrayal of Tsinghua and Peking Universities that some scholars have accused of being slanderous.
Melamine standards set
The Chinese Health Ministry has announced standards for the amount of melamine that is acceptable in dairy products, reports Edward Wong at the IHT:
When asked what the previous standards were, the officials declined to give an answer and implied that there had been no limits before the milk scandal erupted last month.
Wang Xuening, the deputy chief of the ministry's health inspection and supervision department, said the new limits act as guidance for how much unintentional seepage of melamine into food can be permitted by inspectors.
People who purposefully add melamine to food will be prosecuted, he said.
October 8, 2008
An action star meditates on violence
Mine explosion cover-up blown open
A Xinhua report exploring the cover-up of a July mine accident has hit web portals throughout China, the China Media Project says:
According to the Xinhua release, officials and local mine bosses in Hebei's Yu County worked together to suppress news of the explosion, and secretly buried the bodies of the dead in a neighboring county.
The news is the second national embarrassment for officials in Hebei this fall, after reports last month revealed that local officials in the province covered up problems in July with milk powder manufactured by Shijiazhuang-based Sanlu Group, the company at the center of China's ongoing dairy scandal.
No such thing as 'made in China'
Alice Xin Liu writes for the Guardian's "Comment is free" section about the "gawk factor" of Chinese youth culture.
Life inside China's pop echo-chamber
At Outdustry, Ed Peto examines the online music phenomenon in China:
What has resulted is a kind of echo-chamber effect, in which only low common denominator, crowd approved pop music is fed back into the network through these curated bottlenecks. The priority for the Chinese labels is to please the network and make it into these bottlenecks, not push musical boundaries forward, as failure to make it into these top strata of recognition brings with it a hefty price. As one of the only other major sources of music industry income, brands focus the bulk of their sponsorship monies on the highly visible hit artists, compounding the relatively anonymous non-chartees to further suffering.
White Rabbit resumes production
The famous candy, which was pulled from shelves during the melamine milk scandal, is back in action after securing a safe supply of milk powder, the Guardian reports.
New magazines optimistic about the economy
October 7, 2008
Liuzhou photos
Photos from Liuzhou by Michael of the blog ExpatriateGames.wordpress.com.
Dealers, pimps and outdoor dining in Beijing
Eye of Modok lists the top ten signs that the Beijing Olympics are really over.
Tourism plan for Beichuan quake zone
From The China Daily:
Beichuan, one of the counties in Sichuan province most devastated by the May 12 earthquake, has formulated an ambitious 19.7 billion yuan ($2.89 billion) tourism restoration plan, local officials said.
A death on train 1291
A disruptive passenger is taped to his seat and later dies. ESWN translates a news article that reports some eyewitness accounts.
China cancels military contact with U.S.
In reaction to the announcement of a US$6.5 billion arms deal with Taiwan, China has notified the US it will not be participating in certain military and diplomatic activities. From the AP:
The Chinese action will not stop the country's participation with the United States in international efforts over Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs, U.S. officials said.
But it does include the cancellation of an upcoming U.S. visit by a senior Chinese general, other similar visits, port calls by naval vessels and the indefinite postponement of meetings on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the officials said.
China mulls land privatization
China Worker discusses the implications of a proposal by Hu Jintao to allow farmers to transfer land rights:
Advised by liberal economic theorists, the leadership are portraying the new policy of 'transfer' rights (privatisation) as a means to empower the lowly peasant and end the above named abuses. Initially, it is quite possible that many peasants will welcome this policy, as the (good) reception for Hu Jintao in Xiaogang village would suggest. This is more likely if the government package their policy to appear as if they are giving the land to those who farm it. In reality, however, this policy would be an unmitigated disaster for the majority of the rural population, who are the biggest losers also under the present situation.
MIT report on China's energy sector
An investigation written up in the paper Greener Plants, Grayer Skies? A report from the front lines of China's energy sector suggests that outmoded technology and poor government regulation are not to blame for China's air pollution woes:
After detailed survey and field research involving dozens of managers at 85 power plants across 14 Chinese provinces, Steinfeld and his co-authors, Richard Lester and Edward Cunningham, found that in fact most of the new plants have been built to very high technical standards, using some of the most modern technologies available. The problem has to do with the way that energy infrastructure is being operated and the types of coals being burned.
Bid to save world's rarest turtles fails
An attempt to mate two of the last remaining Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles has failed, reports the Telegraph:
The pair of geriatric turtles are the only remaining Yangtze giant soft-shell turtles, or Rafetus Swinhoei. The existence of another male in Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi is thought to be merely a legend, while a fourth turtle, found in the wilds of North Vietnam in 2007, is now dead.
Pangong Lake is border flashpoint between India and China
From the Indian Express:
While the frequency of incursions by Chinese troops on Indian territory in and around the lake has not increased over the past few years -- three to four incidents of transgression on both land and water are reported every week -- the calm is still very much only on the surface.
On the lake itself, 45 km of which is in India while the remaining 90 km lies in China, both sides carry out regular patrols. While the standard drill when two boats from opposite sides come face to face is holding up flags saying "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" by soldiers from both countries, the subdued aggression sometimes surfaces.
October 6, 2008
What have I done for my country?
ESWN translates part of a Southern Weekly feature in commemoration of this year's National Day. Also: What has my country done for me?.
Tax invoice spam
114 spam messages send to a China Mobile number from July 22 through September 20.
To die poor is a sin
Jesse James of the Xi'an ad industry
Iacob Koch-Weser looks at a report on advertising copywriters who sing the praises of New Development Zones near Xi'an, Shaanxi Province.
China authorizes short selling, margin trading
Reuters reports that China's stock market regulators have opened up new techniques for investors:
The changes, which have been approved by the cabinet, will initially be made on a trial basis by a small number of brokerage businesses and gradually expanded to other securities companies, the China Securities Regulatory Commission said.
The introduction of short-selling in China would contrast with recent regulatory moves in much of the rest of the world. In response to the global crisis, U.S., British, French, Italian and German regulators in recent weeks temporarily banned short-selling of financial stocks, while Australia, Singapore and Taiwan restricted the practice.
October 5, 2008
Selling out patient privacy to the milk industry
A sales manager for a milk powder producer describes how his company spends several million yuan every year to obtain the personal information of pregnant women and millions more to curry favor with hospital administration and staff.
Joseph Needham and Chinese science
A review by John Keay of Simon Winchester's Bomb, Book and Compass, and Donald B. Wagner's Science and Civilization in China.
October 4, 2008
Celebrating National Day, 1984
Interviews with one of the creators of the famous "Hello, Xiaoping" banner from the 1984 National Day parade, and the photographer who snapped the iconic picture.
October 3, 2008
Marks & Spencer's opens in Shanghai
By Tania Branigan in The Guardian:
Hundreds of Shanghai shoppers flooded to the opening of Marks & Spencer's first store in mainland China, as the UK high street retailer tries to shrug off problems at home.
At one point the store had to briefly close its doors as crowds poured in to inspect the 40,000 square foot store, which includes three floors of clothing, a large food section and a small range of homewares and a cafe. Many left with bulging bags.
October 2, 2008
Tom-branded Skype stores copies of 'sensitive' messages
Researchers have discovered that the version of the Skype messaging program provided to the Chinese mainland by the Tom Group does not keep users' private conversations private. From the New York Times:
By observing the data generated by the program, he determined that each time he typed a particular swear word into the text messaging program an encrypted message was sent to an unidentified Internet address.
To his surprise, the coded messages were being stored on Tom Online computers. When he examined the machines over the Internet, he discovered