Must-read China news by Danwei

China Digital Times translates a blog post by Guizhou-based blogger Deng Jian that recaps ten years of online life:

Over the past ten years of my Internet experience, I could hardly imagine that now I would be addicted to writing blog pieces and commenting on democracy and constitutional politics from time to time. It is not a transition that happened as my age increased, but rather it was brought on by the hard reality of life. I couldn't have done otherwise. When privileged groups and interest groups relentlessly trample on the miserable citizens and use leftover food to reward sycophants, who shamelessly thank their masters, it is natural for me to say something and it is reasonable for me to judge.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:12 PM | Permalink

From The Shanghaiist:

It didn't take long for Chinese netizens to get on the case of the brutal Virginia Tech murder. Almost immediately, forum members human flesh searched the killer, Zhu Haiyang, and sussed out his university scores, his QQ number and - most importantly - his blog.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:30 PM | Permalink

Following the closure of blog host Bullog, proprietor Luo Yonghao has re-opened his overseas website Bullogger: "Hosted on machines in an American imperialist server room, the exile website Bullog International is now open." Invited bloggers are present, but blogs from other registered users are unavailable at the moment, and comments have been turned off.

Update (2009.02.01): And, it's been harmonized.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:46 AM | Permalink

Froog posts a review of Ma Jian's Beijing Coma to the BookBook blog.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:12 PM | Permalink

Liang Yusheng got his start writing wuxia fiction in 1954, when a Hong Kong newspaper wanted to capitalize on the public's interest in an epic challenge between two martial arts masters.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:58 PM | Permalink

The Beijing Evening News finds that one city supermarket sold 2,500 kg of ground meat, for making jiaozi filling, in the space of two hours this morning.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:56 PM | Permalink

At Frog in a Well, Alan Baumler writes about Graham Peck's Two Kinds of Time, a book about one American's experience in China during the War of Resistance:

Peck is deeply critical of the American government's decision to bind themselves hand and foot to whatever Chiang Kai-shek's government wanted to do, and to our general and continuing ignorance about China. He is a bit more charitable about American attempts to explain themselves to the Chinese.

He also spends a lot of time talking about what might be called the American Green Zone in China, which he is much less impressed with, either in its old missionary form or its new military form.

Peck's analysis of the geopolitical situation in China is interesting, even if I don't always agree with it. What is striking me most at present, however, are his accounts of ordinary Americans encountering "China".

Robert A. Kapp wrote the forward for the reissue, and posted excerpt of it on The China Beat.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:05 PM | Permalink

Maureen Fan at the Washington Post writes about one solution to the college graduate employment problem:

Chinese officials, spurred by the global financial crisis that has slowed economic growth and nervous about the prospects of more than 1.5 million unemployed college graduates, have stepped up spending and bolstered programs to help graduates get jobs, including a two-year-old plan to send people like Liu to work as rural village officials.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:48 AM | Permalink

Samuel Y. Liang writes for the China Beat about "the building where an early meeting of the Communist Party was held in 1921, which stands near the recently built shopping and entertainment district known as Xintiandi":

Seeking to recreate the original form of the Congress venue, the restoration project in fact produced a monument free from any traces of the lively lilong neighborhood of mixed functions and inclusive spaces. It was a purification process against the locale's combined commercial and residential contents. The result was a uniform façade and dead (or monumental) space rather than the original unassuming neighborhood where the secret meeting took place.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:22 AM | Permalink

The New York Times reports on plans by Hong Kong-based Media Chinese International Limited to halt publication of the New York edition of Ming Pao:

According to several current and former Ming Pao staff members, the paper has always struggled to find a niche for itself in the rough-and-tumble market of Chinese-language dailies.

Ming Pao was founded in 1997 as an offshoot of a well-respected daily in Hong Kong that also publishes iterations in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. It has tried to cast itself as the most intellectual of the four Chinese-language dailies in New York, mirroring the reputation of the Hong Kong paper. But it has not been able to cut deeply enough into their market share, industry experts say.

The company will continue to publish the MP (NY) Free Daily, a six-day-a-week free newspaper launched more than a year ago that takes most of its content from the Ming Pao.

See also: Newspaper War, Waged a Character at a Time, a look at New York's four Chinese dailies in 2003:

Just as in any good newspaper war, each of the Chinese newspapers is dismissed by the others. The World Journal is called an apologist for Taiwan, The China Press a mouthpiece for mainland China, Sing Tao Daily a tabloid-like scandal sheet, and Ming Pao a small nonthreat.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Brendan O'Kane picks apart the a recent New York Times article on Chinese hip-hop.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:41 AM | Permalink

Rather than agonize about ways to get the Chinese government to enforce Western copyrights, China should really be considered a test lab for new media models. The West can learn a great deal from the way the Chinese media players make money.

People these days increasingly seem to want to actually be in the movies themselves, which is really what online role playing games are all about...The way forward once again is to recreate the live-movie experience but in cyberspace -- something the counterfeiters cannot replicate.

The Hollywood Reporter reports on analyst Jeffrey Lindsay's recommendations on how the US movie industry can combat the effects of piracy in China.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:29 AM | Permalink

China Daily has screen shots of the Gala debut of a model of Tiangong I, a "space laboratory module," to be launched in 2010 or 2011, that will form the basis of a space station.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:11 PM | Permalink

The Shanzhai Spring Festival Gala, a grass-roots competitor to CCTV's annual event, was only carried by the Macao Asia Satellite TV station and website, making it unwatchable by the vast majority of Chinese viewers, Xinhua reports:

Most families in the country cannot get satellite TV channels, and the MASTV website page could not be opened from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., when the show was on.

Lao Meng told Xinhua he did not know why, "maybe too many people were logging on to the website."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:34 AM | Permalink

Should carbon credits be available to trade from a dam that would have been built anyway? The AP reports on the case of the Xiaoxi Dam, near Changsha.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Victor Shih explains why the children of former Chinese leaders may be offering their New Year's greetings to the public:

Now all of these ties are bandied about casually and endorsed officially in the press as "red descendants." Even Bo Xicheng, Bo Xilai's elusive brother, makes an appearance. Look, this looks suspiciously like the princelings' play at building up more legitimacy for themselves in preparation of Xi Jinping's takeover.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:21 AM | Permalink

China's newspapers framed the 9% GDP growth in 2008 in various ways. The Global Times' perspective is always good for a laugh.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:06 PM | Permalink

Renmin University professor Zhou Xiaozheng offers his perspectives on Israel in an article that has sparked considerable controversy online.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:03 PM | Permalink

Pankaj Mishra writes about Yu Hua for the New York Times Magazine.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:55 PM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

Nine pirates armed with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns boarded the ship in the Gulf of Aden on Dec. 17. The crew locked themselves in cabins, using fire hoses and self-made firebombs to keep the attackers at bay for six hours.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:47 PM | Permalink

At The National, Alex Pasternak examines CCTV, its new building, and the controversy that surrounds them both.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:28 PM | Permalink

China Digital Times writes about the blog that was shut down and moved, translating one of the posts:

I have carefully gone through the signatures on Charter 08, from the first to the tenth batch, in the hope of finding more familiar names. They will make me feel close. I thought several good friends of mine would have signed their names, but I didn't see them. I was quite disappointed.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:50 PM | Permalink

The China Business Law Blog discusses recent IP rulings by courts in Zhejiang:

So, what do all these cases out of Zhejiang mean? Will the Zhejiang courts lead the way for large awards in IP infringement cases in China? So far, we know that three of the cases referred to above have not been reversed/remanded yet, and that means the Zhejiang courts will likely continue to hand out heavy fines for IP infringements. However, as suggested by the American Daily article, the large fines have so far been levied against foreign/Hong Kong defendants, which tends to lead one to conclude that the Zhejiang courts hold foreign IP infringers to a higher standard, thus subjecting them to harsher penalties. We don't know yet, if and when given an opportunity, if the Zhejiang courts will be willing to levy harsh fines against Chinese infringers where the circumstances require as such.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:21 PM | Permalink

Rebecca MacKinnon interviews Beijing-based artist Ai Weiwei:

Even people in the police, even people who make policy, they are all able to make choices. Otherwise my blog wouldn't survive. There are always people who insist. One person says, "this post has to be deleted," but another says "it's best not to delete it." I believe somebody must have worked to make it happen. So I believe the desire for justice and equality is something that people must have in their own hearts. This isn't something that one person can give to another. This is a right that must be exercised. If you don't exercise your right society will be in a difficult state.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:15 PM | Permalink

David Moser at the China Beat writes:

Legendary sinologist, linguist and educator John DeFrancis passed away on January 2, 2009 at the age of 97.

For any student of the Chinese language and writing system working in the latter part of the twentieth century, DeFrancis was simply a titan.

Brendan O'Kane also blogs in memory.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:26 AM | Permalink

Tania Branigan writes for The Guardian:

Growing competition for jobs in the Chinese civil service appears to have produced a boom in dishonesty, with about 1,000 cheats caught in the national entrance exams this year.

Hundreds of thousands of unemployed graduates seek safe berths in government offices, but their desperation to succeed has led to the highest level of cheating on record, according to the China Daily newspaper.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:23 AM | Permalink

China's National Bureau of Statistics revised its 2007 GDP growth rate from 11.9 to 13 percent. Xinhua's English-language article reports NBS director Ma Jiantang's statements under the headline "China's leading stats boffin defends revision of 2007 GDP figures."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:16 AM | Permalink

At China Dialogue, Jiang Gaoming describes how economic stimulus initiatives intended to help China weather the current financial crisis are threatening the ecology of southwest China:

A plan for a string of eight dams along Tiger Leaping Gorge was one of the first hydropower projects to attract media attention, and the scheme was abandoned as a result. However, new economic circumstances have led to the project being relaunched upriver under another name: the Longpan dam. The project is essentially the same, and exploratory drilling and infrastructure construction are now taking place.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:21 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

Tian Wenhua, the former chairwoman and general manager of Sanlu Group, the firm at the center of the tainted milk scandal, received life imprisonment on Thursday in north China's Hebei province.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:45 PM | Permalink

Crosstalk and comic sketches at the Spring Festival Gala are pretty lackluster. Pan Caifu explains that it's because they're expected to be uplifting, not satiric.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:21 PM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

Tian Wenhua, former board chairwoman of the Sanlu Group at the heart of China's tainted milks candal, was sentenced to life in prison by a local court Thursday.

Three other former executives of Sanlu were given between five years and 15 years by the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People's Court.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:07 PM | Permalink

In these lean economic times, it's the patriotic duty of every Chinese citizen to spend money.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:30 AM | Permalink

From Bloomberg:

China's economy expanded at the slowest pace in seven years as the global recession dragged down exports, increasing pressure for more government spending and lower interest rates to buoy growth.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:26 AM | Permalink

An interview with Bill Bishop, who has been in and out of China for two decades and has worked in interpretation, journalism, stock data, and Twitter-based financial information.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:24 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

"We will incorporate 'lewd' messages spread via mobile phones into the crackdown," said seven government departments...

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:20 AM | Permalink

The Chinese Mirror translates an interview that actress Michelle Yeoh did last year with The Bund magazine:

B: In recent years you've steadily sought ways of working again in China, how did you get the idea of starting a film company?
Y: Because we believed it was needed, and was very important. In the future, our movies will all require new actors, new directors, new producers, every link in the production chain will have to be replenished. To make good movies, we have to foster new talents, and that requires a platform, so we decided to do this. If you have a good movie concept, you can't always use Jacky Chan, Jet Li, Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung, just recycling a closed circle of a few people. Our film community needs some new friends we can have fun with.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:17 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

The 21 defendants went on trial between December 26 and 31 at the Shijiazhuang court.

The four executives included Tian Wenhua, Sanlu's former board chairwoman and general manager, two former deputy general managers Wang Yuliang and Hang Zhiqi, and a former executive in charge of the company's milk procurement division, Wu Jusheng.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:12 AM | Permalink

The Peking Order finds a questionable interpretation of Barack Obama's inaugural address in The Beijing News:

On one hand, Obama appealed to citizens to unite and stick to their beliefs. On the other hand, he also required that citizens lower their expectations. He pointed out that the next generation of Americans should lower their expectations.
...
Here, the newly-inaugurated president did not say that anyone should lower their sights. Many Chinese translators - this mistake can be been found all over the Internet - do not seem to grasp that the need to "lower sights" is part of the "nagging fear," something which Obama, given the context of the full speech, went on to explain away as a mistaken fear.

Also, at 51minus1, a mosaic of yesterday's newspaper front pages featuring Obama's inauguration.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:17 AM | Permalink

Clifford Coonan at Variety reports on a recent proposal by SARFT to implement a film ratings system:

Sarft has filed the final version of the Film Promotion Law that would introduce ratings to the State Council, state media reported, citing a joint seminar for helmers from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Sarft could not be reached to comment despite numerous calls.

The issue is a hot potato politically and emerges periodically on the agenda, with the ratings system proposal going down in flames weeks later.

Danwei has more on earlier ratings system proposals.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:58 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

The Information Office of China's State Council on Tuesday issued a white paper titled "China's National Defense in 2008". Following is the full text of the document...

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Thomas Crampton assembles newspaper front pages from various Asian countries showing Obama's inauguration as President.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:32 AM | Permalink

Kato Yoshikazu writes a column for Oriental Outlook about blogging's relationship with unique characteristics of Chinese society.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:20 PM | Permalink

Dozens of teens from Yuncheng, Shanxi Province, were lured away from home with the promise of lucrative jobs, but were instead held captive in Burma until their families paid 80,000 yuan to release them.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:00 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

"This is going to be the new centre of the world, not just the financial but the political world," he said at the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:18 PM | Permalink

RConversation analyzes and charts the discussion over the controversial charter.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:28 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

China has blocked another 244 porn websites in the last week, bringing the total number of blocked ones to 726 since Jan. 5.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:43 AM | Permalink

ESWN translates yWeekend's interview with the American gossip website X17online.com, and the photographer who took the photos.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:15 AM | Permalink

From chinaSMACK, images of Israeli girls with guns and Chinese netizens' reactions.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:54 AM | Permalink

The China Media Project looks at the possibility of a new international news channel that would "enjoy greater freedom of speech from the central authorities" in light of a speech by propaganda chief Li Changchun:

In his December speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of CCTV, Li Changchun outlined the party's strategy to enhance China's global influence, of which the 6.6 billion dollar initiative reported by the SCMP can be seen as an integral first step.

I believe the gist of Li's speech is a kind of global roll-out of what we have elsewhere called CONTROL 2.0 -- that is, a new conception of media control (a "new pattern of public opinion guidance") whereby the focus shifts from passive and reactive censorship to active influence of the agenda (of which censorship is just one component).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:30 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

More than 16,000 passengers were stranded in major airports in west China as thick fog blanketed Sichuan Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region at the weekend.

The Shuangliu International Airport in Chengdu City, capital of Sichuan, was closed Sunday for more than five hours, delaying 121 incoming and outgoing flights. Another four flights were canceled.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:08 PM | Permalink

From People's Daily Online:

A monk from the Nanjing-based Ling Gu Temple in Jiangsu Province is believed to have committed suicide after apparently murdering a fellow monk in a Taiwan hotel in Hsinchu last Wednesday.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:45 PM | Permalink

Asia-Pacific editor Rowan Callick writes for The Australian:

The 17 Guantanamo Bay inmates Washington wants to send Australia as it closes down its controversial camp for suspected terrorists are high on China's most-wanted list. They are Uyghurs, members of the nine-million-strong group of Turkic Muslims - some of them sandy-haired and blue-eyed - who live in the arid northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang, which is about the size of Queensland.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:47 PM | Permalink

At the New York Times, Andrew Jacobs talks to Li Songtang, who runs the Songtangzhai Folk Carving Museum:

Since the 1970s....Mr. Li has been salvaging architectural remnants and stowing them away, sometimes at considerable risk.

Manchu hitching posts. Ornate wooden doorways. A giant granite horse that graced an emperor's palace. These and thousands of other objects fill Mr. Li's warehouse and spill across the grounds of the hospice he runs in Beijing's western suburbs.

Every item has a tale. That Song Dynasty lintel etched with a frenzy of folk scenes? Pulled from a pig sty. The lacquered screen that tells the history of a clan of scholars? Fished from the burn pile.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:47 PM | Permalink

The AFP talks to publisher Han Manchun about the Chinese translation of Barack Obama's second book, now one of "at least ten books on Obama available for sale in China":

When Han devoured the book at the beginning of 2008, Obama was still a candidate in the Democratic Party's primaries, and many expected he would lose to a determined Hillary Clinton.

But the inspired graduate of Tsinghua University's law faculty, in Beijing, was so impressed by what he read that he was certain Obama would win, and that this presented an opportunity in China.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:36 AM | Permalink

Thomas Crampton writes on his blog about Mark Ndesandjo's piano performance.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 6:50 PM | Permalink

The Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Awards, initiated in 2001, were awarded on Friday, reports the Melbourne Herald Sun. Landscape of Farewell by Australian author Alex Miller was one of the winning books:

The People's Literature Publishing House and Chinese Association of Foreign Literature picked six books to be honoured this year, with the winners' books translated and published in China.

Among this year's other winners were Oe Kenzaburo from Japan for his novel Rotashi Annabel Lee Sokedachitsu Mimakaritsu, Spain's Luis Leante for Mira si yo te querre and Germany's Julia Franck for Die Mittagsfrau.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:37 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

According to a survey conducted by Kingfield Management (China), one of the leading headhunting service providers in the country, 65 percent of the enterprises, situated in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, have no plans to recruit fresh graduates or postgraduates this year.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:28 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

Landlocked Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China has announced plans to build its first expressway this year.

The 37.9-km expressway will have two lanes each side allowing vehicles to run at 80 to 120 km per hour, said Yao Bohua, an expert of Tibet's institute of road survey and design, the designer of the project.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:38 AM | Permalink

A man suspected of murdering eight people on January 5th in Suizhou, Hubei Province was seized in Wuhan, Hubei.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:13 PM | Permalink

The government of Ma'anshan (马鞍山), an industrial city in Anhui Province, is causing controversy with plans to rebrand the city as the capital of China's (non-seedy) "bathing industry".

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:00 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

Twenty-three Chinese workers have been deported by Saudi Arabia after being arrested earlier this week for going on a strike in protest against "low pay", the Chinese embassy in Riyadh said Wednesday.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:53 PM | Permalink

At The Beijinger blog, Paul Pennay publishes photographs from the Beijing Evening News of a controlled explosion of confiscated illegal fireworks.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:46 PM | Permalink

James Fallows blogs about Chinese media's overseas expansion plans .

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:42 PM | Permalink

Global Voices Online translates Sohu's blogger dinner, "where a number of prominent bloggers took off from the official topic 'how blogging has changed our lives' to discuss the role of bloggers and public intellectuals in social and political transformation."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:29 PM | Permalink

People's Daily Online reports that there were 377 illegal working foreigners in China last year, according to the exit-entry administration:

Most of the people simply lacked understanding of China's laws and regulations but some had deliberately tried to get around the system, he said.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:20 PM | Permalink

China Media Outlook reports on a changeover that will begin after the Spring Festival:

"After the Spring Festival, the new Editor in Chief. Yang Ruichun from Southern Weekly, will step into power." Wang, an editor in China Newsweek said.

Just a month ago, Jin Liping, the former Editor of this 10-year-old magazine just quit, saying goodbye to her 4 years career as a woman who steered this news magazine fighting with the downward situations of print media industry.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:54 PM | Permalink

Guest Contributor Nancy H. Liu writes about the Chinese community of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:32 PM | Permalink

56minus1 translates some details of CNNIC's (China Internet Information Network Center) report about Chinese Internet users, which has now reached 298 million. In his summary we find out stats such as: "5.5% of netizens (not students) are unemployed, 2.3% are farmers, fisherman, laborers, 2% of netizens are retired..."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:25 PM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

... Hu visited the DPRK from Jan 9 to 12 and met with DPRK Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il.

"The visit is a normal exchange between the two foreign ministries," she said.

Jiang said the two sides agreed to use the "Year of China-DPRK Friendship" to expand exchanges, enhance friendship and deepen cooperation for a stronger relationship in this year.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:41 AM | Permalink

From the UP Post, published in Ulaanbaatar:

Following the July 1 riots a spate of repetitious graffiti began appearing on the walls of Ulaanbaatar's buildings. Graffiti, either as an art form or used as political slander, is relatively uncommon in Mongolia's capital city, yet this recent trend was spray-painted across buildings, on bus stations, on the walls of monasteries, over the windows of Chinese restaurants, even on national monuments.

The graffiti is the work of one of Mongolia's right-wing organisations, the M.Y.A. (Mongolian National Group). It depicts a swastika accompanied by the party's acronym...

An earlier article on the same topic appears in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Thanks to ZHDZ for the tip.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:22 AM | Permalink

After the South China Morning Post wrote about the expansion plans, the Zhongnanhai blog elaborates on its flaws.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:08 AM | Permalink

From the Associated Press:

China's fast-growing population of Internet users has risen to 298 million after passing the United States last year to become the world's largest, a government-sanctioned research group said.

The latest figure is a 41.9 percent increase over the same period last year, the China Internet Network Information Center said in a report Tuesday.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:59 AM | Permalink

Edgy Chinese blog host started by Lao Luo has been closed as part of the recent Internet 'cleanse' by the Net Nanny.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:31 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

The Yangtze River in South China is expected to provide 1 billion cubic meters of water every year to Beijing starting 2014, according to the municipal water authority.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:20 AM | Permalink

Chinasmack.com reviews a set of online poker cards detailing mainstream and quirky news, especially ones that spread through the Internet, in 2008.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:16 AM | Permalink

Isaac Stone Fish writes for The National: "Chinese authors today are raking in royalties by selling millions of books to an audience of teenagers and twentysomethings."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:43 AM | Permalink

ESWN translates Meng Xuan's article for Duowei Monthly Magazine, which discusses Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, on which the Chаrter 08 is based. Meng talks about the history of the two countries and the effect of their charters.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:38 AM | Permalink

From the China Beat, Claire Conceison lists the top ten things about an actor who was friends with Arthur Miller and who performed in Bertolucci's The Last Emperor.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Rebecca MacKinnon corrects some mistakes in a CNN Q&A:

This incident is instructive for the anti-CNN people out there who believe CNN is at the forefront of a vast Western media conspiracy against China. It's not.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:46 PM | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal's online China Journal writes about a new website started by Beijing Film Academy graduate Cheng Liang:

IwallChina is something of a virtual product pageant, where netizens vote for their favorite domestic brands to support and encourage the purchase of Chinese-made goods.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:08 PM | Permalink

From China Sports Today: "Titan, China's leading sports newspaper, did a year-end roundup of the top 50 sports stories in 2008. Below are the first 20, with their original headlines and CST's translation."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:02 PM | Permalink

From People's Daily Online:

China is likely to lose 3.9 million jobs in 2009 compared with 2007 if GDP growth slows to 8 percent, said Cheng Siwei, a renowned economist in Beijing.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:45 AM | Permalink

From People's Daily Online:

China has shut down another 50 websites for containing porn and lewd content, bringing the total number of blocked ones to 91 since last Thursday.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:41 AM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

The largest movement of people in the world started in earnest over the weekend with big groups returning home for Spring Festival, which falls on Jan 26.

This Chinese Lunar New Year about 2.32 billion trips will be made in 40 days, or 3.5 percent more than in 2008, and put the public transport system to test till Feb 19, the National Development and Reform Commission said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:26 AM | Permalink

Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor talks to Danwei about trade unions, unemployment, and social unrest in China in the coming year.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:15 PM | Permalink

From chinaSMACK.com, pictures and comments from a Netease forum that details a charity which has provided trains tickets and money for migrant workers strapped for cash.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Global Voices Online's co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon writes in her blog RConversation:

I just heard from a Chinese friend who works in the web industry. He says the anti-smut crackdown announced on Monday has already taken three victims at the Guangzhou-based web portal, Netease (Wangyi). He says that this morning， "high ranking officials" were highly angered by some content featured in Netease's entertainment section. They demanded the resignation of three editors responsible.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:46 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

China continued its nationwide crackdown on Internet pornography Thursday by releasing a second list of web portals violating the country's Internet regulations.

China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC) said in a statement that all 14 portals named on the list contain content which either go against public morality or harm children's psychological health.

The new list included Microsoft's MSN China. The CIIRC said the portal's movie and community sections contain a large number of lewd pictures.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:38 AM | Permalink

From the China Daily:

Recent media reports said that 100-yuan notes, starting with numbers "HD90", are fake, but their quality is so high that even cash detectors cannot make them out. The central bank denied the reports yesterday.

On Jan 2, the Guangzhou-based Information Times reported that a convenience store owner in Dongguan, Guangdong province, received 15 100-yuan notes starting with figures "HD90" and all of them turned out to be fake.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:31 AM | Permalink

From the Black and White Cat blog, which translates Wang Xiaofeng's blog post on the headlines of the official newspaper for Jiangsu province, the Xinhua Daily before 1949, when the CCP were trying to oust the KMT. The headlines range from "Democracy is the essence of life" to "Freedom of the press is the foundation of democracy."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:45 PM | Permalink

The China Youth Daily reports on commercial development in the virgin forest of the Mt. Changbai Nature Reserve in Jilin Province. Translated/summarized by China.org.cn

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:48 PM | Permalink

Variety Asia Online's Kaiju Shakedown blog explains the long, involved process of finding a replacement for Edison Chen in the hip-hop movie Jump:

Re-editing and trimming some scenes wasn't enough, however. In October 2008 word popped up that Stephen Fung was going to have to edit Edison out of the movie entirely and the part would be re-cast with either Wu Zun of the band Fahrenheit or with Van Fan, the star of Taiwanese break-out hit flick CAPE NO. 7. However, both actors passed on Edison's leftover role, and even Daniel Wu turned down replacing Edison. With their film mostly shot and the costumes sitting in a warehouse, Star Overseas continued looking for a replacement - any replacement

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:03 PM | Permalink

Shanghai Eye reposts an article originally written for Art Newspaper that looks at how the financial downturn has affected China's art market:

China's art scene is heavily laced with gossip, exacerbated by art chat websites such as artbaba and heyshihui which spread rumours and facts intermittently. Some big name galleries in Beijing and Shanghai are allegedly closing, or their staff are looking for work elsewhere. Foreign buyers aren't buying, or even worse, have bought paintings and aren't paying their bills, partly due to the collapse of the Euro against China's currency the RMB, one gallerist from a major gallery said on condition of anonymity.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:02 PM | Permalink

ESWN translates Hecaitou's blog about Zhang Ziyi's naked beach photos, with animated pictures, also from Hecaitou's blog,

For the next few days, Zhang Ziyi will become the object of condemnation of all the Chinese guys who couldn't find a wife or who could only find an ugly hag. Although it is seldom mentioned among the media or at formal occasions, it is obvious that many people are upset at white men scoring Chinese women.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:49 AM | Permalink

CIIRC has warned nineteen major Chinese websites, including Google, Baidu, QQ, Sina, and Sohu, about vulgar content but did not mention the paparazzi shots of Zhang Ziyi circulating all over the Chinese Internet.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:44 AM | Permalink

Rebecca MacKinnon writes at her blog RConversation:

Wang Xiujun of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's remarks are a good illustration of how the Chinese government is putting an increasing amount of energy into trying to shape and guide the Chinese Internet's development in a "harmonious" direction. She spoke of how, in 2008, Chinese netizens provided support and comfort to disaster victims, and how they showed their patriotism.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:13 AM | Permalink

The Straits Times (via Asia Media) examines the warnings given to websites about offensive content:

But a senior manager of a leading website in China told The Straits Times yesterday on condition of anonymity that the instructions and warnings were vague.

"They said that some pictures are low-brow and crude. But what is considered 'low-brow', they didn't elaborate," he said. "We are just feeling our way in the dark now and going by intuition, deleting whatever we think might not be deemed proper by the government."

The confusion is not surprising in a vast developing country where social mores differ across regions.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:24 AM | Permalink

From a small town in Xinjiang, the Far West China blog describes the drawn out process of buying a train ticket before the Chinese New Year.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:48 AM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

After successfully carrying out its first escort mission, the Chinese Navy prepares to cover another 11 domestic merchant vessels planning to travel around Somalia this week...

...For the first phase of the escort mission, the fleet will patrol the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters for about three months, followed by possible replacement warships as needed.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:28 AM | Permalink

At the English version of Caijing Magazine, an announcement about a woman in Beijing who washed duck entrails at the end of December, and died two weeks later with the H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:55 PM | Permalink

The Christian Science Monitor looks at a PLA-run Internet addiction treatment program:

As the song "If you're happy and you know it" plays, two web addicts at a time spin around until dizzy, then try to race each other across the room. Later, they line up in pairs to pop pink balloons by hugging each other tightly, amid raucous laughter.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:52 PM | Permalink

Shanghai Scrap observes a demolition:

I've witnessed my fair share of Chinese demolitions, and to me this looked like the gutting of any and all recyclable materials (scrap!) before the wrecking ball. I'll admit, my indignation was rising; my camera was snapping; and I was mentally preparing the accusatory blog post that this crime against history so richly deserves.

But then I backed up and noticed - hanging from the old gate to the Film Studio - was this blueprint...

Update: Shanghai Scrap later found out that the original building was going to be knocked down after all, and replaced with a facsimile:

The person who corrected my understanding of the real "preservation" effort underway at the convent went on to further explain that - all things considered - there's really no alternative. According to this person, there are only "two or three" restoration contractors in Shanghai, and they're simply too busy with residential projects (ie, restorations of historic homes for wealthy buyers) to be doing the convent. And anyway, "they'd probably just hire a - what you call it? - sub-contractor."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:27 PM | Permalink

From Bloomberg:

Groupe Danone SA, the world's biggest yogurt maker, and Chinese partner Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. began a hearing this week in Stockholm to decide who owns the $2.4 billion brand Wahaha, which means 'Laughing Child.'

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:03 PM | Permalink

The Shanghaiist links to a NBC video that '...is an otherwise regular report if not for the footage of the angry crowd pushing policemen back when they tried to stop the NBC crew from doing their work.'

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:09 AM | Permalink

Thomas Crampton gives an early peek at Obama's potential Asian team, courtesy of Chris Nelson at Samuels International.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:16 AM | Permalink

So Rock! magazine wishes its readers a Happy Fxxking New Year, snarks at Axl Rose and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mr. Bird Anus, profiles Zhao Lao Da, and throws in a bonus Spookycore album for good measure.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:34 PM | Permalink

People's Daily Online reports on the 3% year-on-year grown of Spring Festival travelers:

New Year's Day and Spring Festival this year are close to each other so the effects will be especially noticeable; the flow of students going home, migrant rural workers and people who returning home for family reunions will overlap, causing passenger flow peaks to appear earlier than in previous years.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:55 PM | Permalink

China Law Blog conducts a non-scientific poll of foreign businesses in China:

They said that China's downturn had made them look more carefully at their China expansion and hiring plans. They said they were going to be very "cautious" and "careful" in 2009 with respect to expansion and hiring. Many of them (5 or 6?) said they had an "official" hiring freeze in place for the first six months of 2009 or the entire year. Two said they were going to expand faster than anticipated in China because they saw now as the best time to get a jump on their less well-funded rivals. All of them said they had no concrete plans to get out of China, but one worried that the company's overall problems might force an ill-advised China exit. Many of them responded to my question about their leaving China by asking me "and go where?"

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:49 AM | Permalink

Singapore's Strait Times reports on the supposed government tightening on 'cyber hunts.' China Digital Times first linked to the piece.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 7:36 PM | Permalink

James Reynolds writes in his BBC blog about the text message that apologized on behalf of the 22 dairy companies, and the parents of affected babies who invited foreign media to a press conference:

I went with a colleague to the parents' news conference. Things began badly - the parents we met told us that the police had stopped five of their group from attending.

The Time China blog also reported on the 'milk powder mass mailing.'

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:53 PM | Permalink

Chinayouren analyzes SMS spam for high-interest loans, noting that, much like email spam, the text is broken up with punctuation to evade keyword filters.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:25 PM | Permalink

The AP reports via the International Herald Tribune about a fireworks accident three weeks before Spring Festival:

An explosion at an illegal fireworks factory in eastern China killed 13 people, state media reported Sunday.

The blast occurred Saturday in an abandoned kiln being used illegally to produce fireworks in the city of Weifang in Shandong province.

Accidents such as this one are common in China, here is a similar fireworks incident that occurred in 2004 in Hunan province.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:30 PM | Permalink

Translated by Black and White Cat, originally from the Netease forum:

What is happiness?
Happiness was 2008
You didn't go to Urumqi for the New Year
You didn't go to Chenzhou in February
You didn't visit Lhasa in March
You didn't go to Shandong in April...

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:23 AM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

Troubled dairy producer Sanlu Group and 21 other dairy firms implicated in the tainted milk scandal, which sickened nearly 300,000 children in the country, apologized to the public via text messages on the first day of 2009.

'We are deeply sorry for the harm we have brought to children and to society,' the message read. 'We offer our sincere apology and plead for forgiveness.'

See also: Apology by text message by the BBC's James Reynolds, and Milk powder mass mailing by Simon Elegant at the Time China Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:00 AM | Permalink

In the New York Times, Joyce Hor-Chung Lau reports on Chan Yan-tak, a chef in Hong Kong whose restaurant has been awarded a three-star ranking by Michelin:

it was only through an odd stroke of luck that Mr. Chan, a stout, plain-spoken man his late 50s, was in contention at all: He had already quit the industry to be a stay-at-home dad when in 2002 the Four Seasons began looking for a master Cantonese chef for its new hotel here and coaxed him out of retirement. He began his career as an under-age kitchen hand but won his stars -- not without a dollop of local controversy in this city that takes its food very seriously -- on the strength of his delicately flavored Cantonese seafood creations, with a touch of French fusion, truffles and foie gras.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:35 PM | Permalink

From Inside-Out China, which notes the anniversary of Today magazine:

American readers probably know nothing about Today, the once extremely influential 'underground' literary magazine in China. Nobel nominee Bei Dao was one of the founding editors of the magazine

China Digital Times also linked to the Inside-Out China post.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 6:31 PM | Permalink

China Daily rounds up the faces that captures 2008. The list includes Zhou Zhenglong, who 'faked' photos of the South china tiger, the mainland's richest man Huang Guangyu, and Wen Jiabao.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 6:20 PM | Permalink

From People's Daily online (with pictures):

An old-fashioned trolley car is seen at Qianmen Street on Thursday. Two old-fashioned trolley cars began operating again on the 600-year-old Qianmen Street on Thursday after a nearly 50 year hiatus.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 6:18 PM | Permalink

The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Angry Monk: Reflections on Tibet, the story of Gendun Choephel, "a liquor-imbibing, sex-talking Tibetan rebel who seems the antithesis of the calm and rational Dalai Lama."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:09 AM | Permalink

The Yangtse Evening Post picks the top ten stories that suckered the domestic press last year.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:47 AM | Permalink

What does 不折腾 mean? State Council Information Office Minister Wang Chen explains. Our commenters offer their own thoughts.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:45 AM | Permalink

China Daily has an account of four former Sanlu executives' day-long session before a three-judge panel. Tian Wenhua, former company chairman, explained how she learned of the melamine contamination and why the company continued to sell contaminated milk for months after problems were first reported.

Elsewhere, journalist Teng Yun quotes Tian as saying, "The Sanlu milk powder affair involved thinking about its influence on the Olympics."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:13 AM | Permalink

At Paper Republic, Bruce Humes interviews Martin Merz and Jane Weizhen Pan, translators of Wang Gang's novel English (英格力士):

As translators, we did our best in the translation to preserve the local colour wherever it appears.

As a reader, I think "remoteness" rather than "exoticness" is the important part of the story. The story could have taken place in other remote locations. Because it was very common in those days for educated people to be sent, or lured to backwaters. Xinjiang was just one of these places. There might be thousands of "Love Lius" in other parts of China.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:43 AM | Permalink