China's internal "war of information control"
At the China Media Project, David Bandurski summarizes the latest cases of Chinese citizens jailed for criticizing local officials, Wang Shuai and Wu Baoquan, and puts them into a context of wenziyu.
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April 30, 2009
My Tibetan Students and I
From Fool's Mountain, Nimrod translates a letter that originally appeared on Zaobao.com: a teacher from the Shanghai Administration School wrote about his experiences with his Tibetan students:
I love my Tibetan students very much. But my romantic vision at the beginning gradually disappeared. I feel that people everywhere are the same. If they have some special characteristics, these must be imprinted by their environment. Usually we believe Tibetan people are simple and warm, unmoved by materialism. But I think this is caused by living a long time in a closed and monotonous environment. In my observation, my Tibetan students all adjust to Shanghai very quickly. They go from nervous and shy to fashionable and confident quickly. In a matter of months, if they have the financial resources, they become no different from the young Shanghai boys and girls. They don't get assimilated into Han, but they get urbanized, modernized. This is certainly not the deliberate doing of the government.
I don't believe that Tibet was heaven fifty years ago, because my students showed me her family photos from the Fifties. They frightened me.
The original Chinese article from Zaobao.com.
Cross-border relations in the face of swine flu
NBC News Producer Adrienne Mong travels on a plane from Beijing to New York, and wonders if China will step up its border quarantine controls:
Among those lessons learned is greater surveillance of travelers' health - which happens even when there is no apparent threat. For instance, at the Beijing airport, departing and arriving international passengers must always walk through an infrared temperature scan - even when no pandemic threats are in the headlines.
And in recent days, the government has responded with alacrity by promising greater openness and vigilance in its monitoring of the H1N1 virus. It has also banned pig and pork imports from Mexico and the U.S. - although the World Health Organization (WHO) has stressed the virus is not transmitted through the handling or consumption of food.
$3.4 bln on energy saving and ecological projects
From Xinhua:
Of the 23 billion yuan spending, 13 billion went to improving urban water treatment facilities, 4 billion yuan to pollution prevention projects on the Huaihe and other big rivers, 3.5 billion yuan to forest planting projects and the other 2.5 billion yuan to key energy saving projects across the country.
Can you name your local Party official?
Peter Foster, stationed in Beijing for the Daily Telegraph, conducts a survey on the streets of Korla, Xinjiang:
Tellingly perhaps, the 55yr-old security guard said: "I used to remember the party secretary's name when he was a Uighur, but not any more."
Visa controls ahead of the Party's party
For The Age, John Garnaut reports on tightening visa controls ahead of the 60th anniversary:
"It is even more important than the Olympic Games -- this is the party's party," said Geremie Barme, professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University.
Wen and Aso chat about
wireless communication, friendly ties etc.
From The China Daily:
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao held official talks on Wednesday with his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso on bilateral ties, the global economic downturn and other major issues of common concern...
...Topics high on agenda in Aso's talks with the Chinese leaders include the global downturn, the environment, energy, personnel exchanges, wireless communication, regional security and measures to build "strategic mutually beneficial ties", said Kazuo Kodama, press secretary of the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
A veil of silence over the mahjong tables
Beijing Loafer writes about a trip home after a several-year absence:
The most awkward was with my two distant cousins whom I used to be close to. They might have lost their jobs from their work units. One married a truck driver, the other a railway employee. Both had kids who have no access to dancing rehearsals, piano classes or french lessons as my sister's kid. No one asked about my sister's or my work, unlike in the past when they would excitedly query us about our academic awards at school. I did not dare ask how they were doing, for fear of making it even more obvious how differently we had fared in life.
Another recent post reflects on how the experience of Chinese students studying in the US has changed over the years:
For some, research was an indifferent existence one had to maintain in order to stay in America and make the family back home proud. For some others, it was the pecking order to climb on top of, out of a lifelong habit.
In that regard, I could understand Lu Gang. Academia was his only way of climbing up in America. When he flopped, he exploded at his fellow Chinese student--his rivalry--at his advisor, at the ambiguous American environment that failed him.
April 29, 2009
China is its own planet
Chubb at Cold China has more fun stories from the road. This time: a petitioner in an Internet bar, a pimp in Sanlitun, and a group of drunks in Songyuan:
My mind flashed back to the taxi driver in Beijing the previous night, and it gave me an idea: rectify the situation by cravenly stoking regionalism. "I'm sorry," I said, taking the money off their table and stashing it in my wallet, "I owe you an apology. I've been out of the Northeast for too long and, well, people in the South are just not as polite and kind as you Northeasterners. Actually they're really very rude. They don't have your level of culture. Or quality."
"We'd heard that too," one of them replied. And all was well.
"A Japanese movie shot by Chinese director"
The WSJ China Journal translates comments about Lu Chuan's Nanking! Nanking! or City of Life and Death from Netease and other portals.
Swine flu spreading not impossible
From China Daily:
A meeting, presided over by Wen, heard reports from central government departments including the MOH on the global situation.
The State Council decided to set up a multi-sector mechanism involving the health and agriculture ministries, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), and other related departments.
The meeting did not exclude the possibility of the epidemic spreading to China as "the situation in some countries is developing, more suspected cases have been found and the epidemic-stricken area is expanding".
April 28, 2009
Double-digit growth for Chinese media this year
From China Daily:
Getting a boost from what experts call the "lipstick effect" - women turning from expensive purchases like jewelry to smaller feel-good items during a recession - the output of the industry hit 422 billion yuan ($62 billion) last year, an 11.3 percent increase from the previous year.
Red guards and brand fundamentalism
In the April issue of iLook, editor Hung Huang compares brand image control with Cultural Revolution-era dogmatism, and explains how this inspires shanzhai parody culture.
Students complain about spring break
High school students in Hangzhou have set up a website complaining about their schools' practice of scheduling mandatory review classes on vacation days.
Kristie Lu Stout on media and technology
Kristie Lu Stout, who presents the CNN Today program from Hong Kong, talks to Danwei about using Twitter live on her show, and her view of technology's use in the media.
"A case of adapt or die"
The Telegraph talks to law professor He Weifang, who was recently transferred from Beijing to Shihezi University in Xinjiang:
"When the head of Beijing University suggested Xinjiang, I said 'ah yes, what a good idea. I don't suppose I shall miss any dramatic legal or political reforms in the next two years," he recalls with a roar of laughter.
The modern breed of Chinese students Prof He now teaches have a far more conservative outlook than in the days when he was a young faculty member out demonstrating on the streets of Beijing in 1989.
Global Times webchat
Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times, will talk about the paper's new English-language edition in a webchat to be held on April 28 at 2pm.
What's up with Chinese people having English names?
At Slate, Huan Hsu writes about the craze for English names he encountered after moving to Shanghai last year:
"You don't have an English name?" the HR woman gasped. "You should really pick one." She then waited for me to do just that, as if I could make such an important existential decision on the spot; I told her I'd get back to her. People--Chinese people--had trouble recalling my name. One guy at work, a Shanghai-born VP, called me "Steve" for almost three months. At my workplace, which is 90 percent mainland Chinese, just about everyone I interacted with had an English name, usually selected or received in school.
April 27, 2009
Hackers: the China syndrome
Mara Hvistendahl writes for PopSci about hacker communities in China
On May 20, 2003, a man named Peng Yinan, then known only by the moniker coolswallow, logged into a public Shanghai Jiaotong University student forum and described how he formed a group at the university's Information Security Engineering School that coordinated with other hackers to bring down whitehouse.gov in 2001. "Javaphile was established by coolswallow (that's me)" and a partner, he wrote in Chinese. "At first we weren't a hacker organization. After the 2001 China-U.S. plane collision incident, Chinese hackers declared an anti-American Battle . . . and coolswallow joined in the DDoS White House attacks." Later, he bragged, his group defaced other sites it considered anti-Chinese, including that of the Taiwanese Internet company Lite-On.
via Shanghai Scrap, which has an interview with the author about recent developments and how the story was written:
In the GhostNet report, the people at Infowar Monitor were actually very careful not to blame the hacking web they uncovered on the Chinese government. They went out of their way to explain that as complex as it sounds, GhostNet could easily be the work of independent hackers. There are some great lines in there about how the Internet gives individuals to carry out the sort of intelligence operations that were once reserved for governments. They call it "do-it-yourself signals intelligence." But you wouldn't know it from reading some of the press on the report.
Reforms that may please nobody
CCTV may set up a critiquing system for its nightly news program. ESWN translates one blogger's critique of this idea:
I do not support any changes to Joint News Broadcast, but it is because I simply do not believe that they can come up with any content that is worth bothering with. Will they present international news first? then the Chinese people? and finally the leaders? Since this is Joint News Broadcast, what can they possibly broadcast except those contents? The hairstyle of the Joint News Broadcast announcers have not changed over the years. Could the reformatting consists of new hairstyles for the announcers?
Spa vs. temple in Chongqing
Xujun Eberlein summarizes a China Economic Times-Southern Metropolis Weekly report about the controversy surrounding a luxury spa that's being constructed next to a Buddhist temple in Chongqing:
From the monks' perspective, however, a modern spa center encircling the temple breaks the tranquil Buddhist environment and atmosphere, and the massive view of exposed bathers is unacceptable to worshippers. To date, the chaotic construction activities have already damaged some cultural relics and interrupted the temple's religious affairs. Since the construction began, worshipers have been prohibited from entering the temple, the joss sticks and candles stopped burning.
In negotiation, the temple has proposed that the developer to build a wall around the temple's property, in order to block the unsightly entertainment scene in the spa and leave the temple in peace. The managing abbot also wanted to block vehicles from passing through the temple. However the developer rejected those ideas,
China Digital Times has translated some reactions from netizens.
'Israeli oranges' faked in China
The BBC reports on a fruit that was sold between enemy states:
A twist has emerged in the story of Israeli citrus fruit reportedly sold in Iran in defiance of a ban on commercial dealings between the two enemy states.
It has now been revealed the fruit, a type of orange-grapefruit hybrid marketed as Jaffa Sweetie, were not Israeli in the first place.
The Sweeties were brought to Iran from China, where faking the origin of goods is a common practice.
Contrasts as stark today as they were twenty years ago
The China Beat speaks to Geremie R. Barmé about a lawsuit brought by Chаi Ling and her IT company Jenzabar against the Long Bow Group, which produced the documentary The Gаte of Heavenly Peace:
On the first page of their complaint, Chаi Ling, Maginn, and Jenzabar claimed that Long Bow was, "Motivated by ill-will, their sympathy for officials in the Communist government of China, and a desire to discredit Chai, a former student leader in the pro-democracy movement in China's Tiаnanmen Square..."
Specifically, the lawsuit cited the posting of mainstream news articles about Chаi Ling and Jenzabar on our website and the use of the term "Jenzabar" in the keywords or "metatags" used to index and describe the contents of certain pages of the site. With respect to their trademarks, they alleged that Long Bow intends to "confuse their [that is, Jenzabar's] customers" by luring them to our site in order to make money. They demand "a disgorgement to Jenzabar of Long Bow's ill-gotten gains."
April 26, 2009
Shanghainese stand-up comedian Zhou Libo
On the Sinosplice blog:
Shanghainese Stand-up Comedian Zhou Libo:
Shanghai comedian Zhou Libo (周立波) ... clearly deserves a bit more attention. His DVD, 笑侃三十年, has been selling like hotcakes in DVD shops across Shanghai for weeks, and I hear his upcoming live performances are selling out.
You could say his act is "comedy with Shanghainese characteristics" because 笑侃三十年 is Zhou's humorous take on the changes Shanghai has experienced in the past 30 years.
A century of cultural collisions in Shangri-la
Bruce Humes talks to Sichuan-based novelist Fan Wen, whose work deals with intersecting cultures in southwest China:
Fan Wen: ...In my opinion, first and foremost this is a book about Tibet, and secondly it describes the experiences of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris. More importantly, it's because this book revolves around the collision between Tibetan Buddhism and Catholicism, and the interaction between different cultures and civilizations as the West and the East approached one another. These are global motifs.
Chery planning car plant in Brazil
From China Bystander:
A Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo, reports that Chery Automobile is going to start making cars in the country within a couple of years. It says a new plant will have annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles, which would be sold locally and exported to other Latin American countries and the U.S.
April 25, 2009
Send Jackie Chan to North Korea
In protest against kung fu film star Jackie Chan's recent remarks that "Chinese people need to be controlled", someone has started a Facebook group called '100,000 for Sending Jackie Chan to North Korea!'
The book is dead. Long live the e-book!
The Daily Telegraph's Malcolm Moore blogs on books and e-books in China:
One thing I've noticed, in my short time in China, is that it's rare to see people reading books on the metro, buses or trains...
But the future looks electronic. It turns out the kids on public transport with their portable Playstations or mobile phones are using them to read.
A way out of Tibet's morass
The Guatamala Times (funnily enough) has published an article by Tibet scholar Robert Barnett. Well worth a read: Barnett is one of the few sober voices on China's most painful political problem.
April 24, 2009
Give Global Times a chance
David Wolf writes:
Frankly, I'm not interested in another paper that looks, sounds, and smells like China Daily. I reckon one is enough. I would love to see Global Times International build a bit of character and start adopting the attitude - if not the exact editorial line - of its sister Chinese publication. I may not agree with everything I read, but at least it will be entertainment.
Your caonima for a visa
Gady Epstein in Forbes reports:
If the e-mail had come from some other distant country, Wayne England might have dismissed it as a scam. But this one, an inquiry last November about buying his alpacas, was from China, so the 74-year-old Tennessee farmer went for it. "Since all the money's in China, I thought it wouldn't hurt," says England. Thus began an elaborate visa ploy that successfully gained two Chinese men entry into the U.S. last month.
"New Generation Artists" and Yin Jinan
Sinopop reviews Yin Jinan's Knocking on the door alone and posts a translation of one of the essays inside, "New Generation and Close Up Artists":
The cultural backdrop in the early Nineties directly constitutes an important condition for the emergence of New Generation. This is not in so much as to say that these artists choose the Nineties, rather, the Nineties chose them. Owing to the general spiritual fatigue caused by an overheated economy and culture, "conceptual things already make people weary, artists want to return to their own specifically unassuming lives" (to quote Wang Huaxiang). Particularly in their appreciation of ordinary states, quiet and refined experiences replaced these artists' patience for provocative turmoil. This kind of Close Up art and the reciprocal choice the painter shares with each specific subject is also expressed in the fact that New Generation artists objectively avoid the trends of new wave art.
The "petitioners' dilemma" and the way out
At China Elections and Governance, Jennifer Haskell translates a Window of the South article on the petition system by Yu Jianrong:
I call the origin of the systemic difficulties that China's current petition activities face the "petitioners dilemma," and I look at petition activities from many aspects to understand and elucidate the dilemma. In my opinion, whether it is in terms of goals or tactics, petitioners', petition office officials', grassroots governments', and the central government's understanding of and use of the petition system are not entirely the same. In many ways, petitioning means taking part in a game of using different aspects of state power and realizing interests. It is each party pursuing the maximization of his or her own interest on the system's platform.
A property giant takes on the Xinjiang media
A property manager in Urumqi blocks all Morning Post paper carriers from entering its communities. The newspaper retaliates with a three-page feature.
"Human rights" is no longer a sensitive term
Southern Weekly interviews Li Yunlong, who participated in drafting China's new Human Rights Action Plan.
A practical handbook for beating street vendors
In the ongoing debate over how to regulate city enforcement squads, chengguan () are often depicted as uneducated brutes who don't know any better. But a textbook that has surfaced online suggests that violence is policy.
Heilongjiang's secret list of polluters
Jocelyn at The Wu Way writes about a press conference held in Heilongjiang by environmental protection officials who refused to give journalists a list of polluting companies, in violation of transparency laws.
Deal may come for Coke and Huiyuan after all
Coca-Cola may buy a minority stake in Huiyuan after having its takeover bid blocked on anti-trust grounds earlier this year, Reuters reports, without going into much more detail.
A retrenchment of simplified characters
At Language Log, Victor Mair rounds up some of the recent arguments over character simplification, including an Economist piece, a recent article in China Heritage Quarterly, and an op-ed in the Shanghai Daily.
See also: Simple arguments for character standards on Danwei (2009.03.08)
Schools for scandal: another sports scam
At Newsweek's China Calling blog, Melinda Liu digs into the School World Cup scandal, in which a high-school girls' soccer team won a world championship using professional players:
The biggest surprise-surprise came when the media turned up to speak with the victors. For some reason, school security personnel were under strict instructions to bar entry to journalists. The Chongqing press were later issued with an edict: no reporting on the school's soccer story.
Now, in a country that goes totally overboard when any athlete is victorious against foreign opposition, this is really weird! By this time, reporters from around the country were also curious.
Full length PBS videos online
PBS has launched a video website containing hundreds of full length PBS documentaries an other video clips. This links to a list of videos about China.
April 23, 2009
Granite Studio blogger in English Global Times
Jeremiah Jenne, the blogger behind Granite Studio, has a column in the new English language paper Global Times. The first one is titled 'Logic behind foreign news coverage in China'.
Anti smoking laws for Shanghai in 2010
Could it be the beginning of the end for the People's Republic of Smoking? The Shanghai Daily reports:
The city's first smoking-control law is expected to be issued in January at the annual meeting of the Shanghai People's Congress, the director of Shanghai Smoking Control Office told a conference yesterday, banning smoking from public places in time for next year's Expo.
J.G. Ballard in Shanghai
James Fallows reflects on the death of novelist J.G. Ballard, who spent his boyhood in wartime Shanghai.
At the bottom of the blog post is a link to a great resource for Ballard fans and Shanghai history buffs.
April 22, 2009
New Chengdu website in English
Gochengdoo.com is a new website, a joint effort by the GoKunming.com team and the editors of CHENGDOO citylife print magazine.
Social unrest because of recession? Nah
Arthur Koreber and Tom Miller in The Financial Times:
A couple of months ago, a number of excitable reports predicted that mass job losses in China's export heartlands could spell social chaos. Twenty million angry migrant workers had lost their jobs and revolt was in the air, we were told.So just how bad is the labour situation? Not nearly as bad as many people feared.
Deciphering Xinjiang and the Uyghurs
Bruce Humes introduces a book on Xinjiang by Wang Lixiong and translates three sets of regulations that Wang reproduces in his text:
After a tough time in detention during which he almost killed himself, and at one point agreed to work as an informer in exchange for his freedom, Wang left jail and resolved to research Xinjiang and write a book about what he saw on the ground, as well as record his political discussions with Mokhtar, his former cellmate and an articulate spokesperson for Uyghur intellectuals.
The Chinese government's smart media move
The Telegraph's Malcolm Moore thinks the new English-language Global Times is pretty clever:
It is early days and these are small steps. But it is already clear that the Global Times English is playing a different game to the Chinese version, and an equally smart one.
20 new dams for the Yangtze
The AP reports that China will build twenty new hydroelectric dams on the Yangtze River in the next decade:
China plans to build more than 20 dams along the country's longest river by 2020 as part of a plan to further develop the Yangtze River's hydropower, an official said Tuesday.
The river already has the world's largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam. China is looking to hydropower as an important alternative to help it move away from coal, which provides more than 70 percent of the country's energy supply.
Crazy petitioners and a broken system
Aaron Jeske and Alyssa Farrelly at the China Elections and Governance sum up the issues surrounding the petition system.
April 21, 2009
Individual passions in China
Jennifer Ying Lan at The Beijinger interviews Atlantic correspondent James Fallows about reporting on China, living in Beijing, and working in politics and other fields.
Wu Baoquan vs. Ordos, Inner Mongolia
ESWN translates a Southern Metropolis Daily report about online discussion concerning Wu Baoquan, sentenced to two years in prison for libel against the government.
Wu Baoquan is not the first netizen to have been convicted of a crime for making comments on the Internet. But he is the first netizen who is reported to have his sentence increased after a re-trial. Significantly, the story about the Henan provincial government apologizing publicly to Wang Shuai had just been a hot news story just before this.
Global Voices Advocacy has a summary of the case as well.
On the impact of new media
Liu Jianqiang, Zhang Ping, and Wang Lixiong speak at a UC Berkeley roundtable. China Digital Times presents excerpts of their remarks:
Zhang Ping: About five years ago, newspaper editors often received notices from departments that certain Internet messages should not be published. However, that has changed.
Now, most of my commentary of current events can be published in newspapers but restricted on the Internet. The editor of mainstream websites are informed that they should not publish or reduce or comment on my articles.
Why is this the case? I attribute this to the breakthrough in the past five years of public opinion. The Internet can create a lot of topics that newspapers cannot.
Update (2009.04.24): CDT has posted a second roundtable involving Isaac Mao, Hu Yong, and Liu Xiaobiao.
China drives sales for global autosellers
From the China Daily:
The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers forecasts full-year vehicle sales to reach 10.2 million units, up almost 9 percent from last year.
Passenger car sales in the country will grow 7 percent to 6.1 million units, Yale Zhang, director of Greater China Vehicle Forecasts for US consultancy CSM Worldwide Corp, said on Monday.
His predictions are backed by auto majors.
"China's overall auto market may grow by 6 percent this year while the luxury segment will be double the growth," said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz.
China to start investigation of "unnatural" prisoner deaths
The Shanghaiist quotes the government's announcement of a 5-month investigation into prison deaths -- 15 this year alone:
Seven inmates have been beaten to death, three have committed suicide, two died in accidents, and three other deaths are still under investigation, according to Xinhua. The total number was confirmed by a Supreme People's Protectorate official on Monday. It was a surprisingly open move for the government authorities, who were reporting just five deaths a few weeks ago according to the BBC.
April 20, 2009
The Great Wall actually much longer
From the AFP:
The most comprehensive and technologically advanced survey of China's Great Wall has discovered the ancient monument is much longer than previously estimated, state media reported Monday.
However the project has also shown the World Heritage-listed site is in danger of disappearing in many places due to road construction and other forms of development, as well as extreme weather, the China Daily said.
The wall, built over centuries to keep foreigners out of China, stretches for 8,851.8 kilometres (5,488.1 miles), much further than common estimates of 5,000 kilometres, according to the findings of the survey.
Three ways to talk to strangers online
Gangsters in the government
C. Custer at ChinaGeeks translates an Ai Weiwei blog post which discusses the "laws" that officials make up on the spot to until confronted with facts, at which point they find other ways to justify their actions:
Seeking a living within the system is like seeking a living in the gangland world, you must always follow the orders of the "higher-ups" and "elders", the more you are obedient the more you are well-received; the more you are loyal the more you are favored. If you have independent thoughts and the sprit of a critical thinker, I fear it will be difficult for you to find a place. Even if you aren't thrown out, you can only feel wronged and seek to protect yourself through not working too hard. When I come in contact with them, I can often sense the rope that binds them, and the hand that's holding the rope on the other end.
For China's New Left, old values
Ariana Eunjung Cha writes for the Washington Post about Zuo Dapei, Wang Hui, Wang Xiaodong, and other leftist intellectuals who are dissatisfied with corruption and crony capitalism that has grown alongside economic reforms.
April 19, 2009
"The China I knew had all but disappeared"
Froog compares the China of today with what he experienced when he arrived 15 years ago.
The badlands of Panzhihua
Chubb at Cold China, has been posting fascinating entries about a March trip to various parts of China, writes about travelling from Lijiang to Panzhihua and on to Chengdu:
The next day the brushes with Chinese mass philosophy continued. When i arrived at Emei town it was raining any foggy and i very decisively abandoned the hiking idea in favour of a day on the internet. My next train, this time to Chengdu, was at 3am. Being just a 4-hour ride i was happy to go on a hard seat (25RMB, the equivalent of $5), and somehow i unwittingly set off a hardcore anti-Cultural Revolution, anti-Mao struggle session. These guys, two middle-aged and one quite old, were all of the opinion that Mao's only good point was that he united the country.
Jackie Chan on control and shoddy Chinese products
At a panel discussion on "Tapping into Asia's Creative Industry Potential," Jackie Chan spoke about stability and chaos:
"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," Chan said. "I'm really confused now. If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."
Chan added: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."
Quality control was on his mind, too:
Speaking fast with his voice rising, Chan said, "If I need to buy a TV, I'll definitely buy a Japanese TV. A Chinese TV might explode."
Update (2009.04.20): Sam Crane has an interesting discussion of how Jackie Chan is echoing the argument made about China by early 20th Century imperialists:
One more thing. Here is a test. When we encounter this kind of statement, let's ask ourselves: what would be the political implications had a foreigner said it? Would it be seen as an essentialist racist distorition? Or would it be welcome as a wise and deep understanding of "Chinese culture"?
Personally, I think Chan is wrong. I think the average Chinese person knows his or her own personal interests and, given the chance, would advocate for those interests in non-violent ways that could be productively channeled into new and less repressive political institutions. I have more faith in the average Chinese person than does Chan. But, then again, I am not trying to sell movies to the the Party leadership...
April 18, 2009
Shanghai girl: 4 to 15
National Geographic has published a finely written tale of a middle class Shanghai girl's childhood by Factory Girls author Leslie T. Chang.
April 17, 2009
Tan Zuoren, the "good man of Sichuan"
China Media Project features an article by Ai Xiaoming on Tan Zuoren, the grass-roots earthquake investigator who was detained by police late last month.
He is not the kind of person who, when they consider expressing themselves freely, plays a game of "cat and mouse: (躲猫猫). This is no ordinary show of courage, but its demonstration and striving. It demonstrates that these are my rights, this is my commitment, my responsibility. This is my home, my nation, and these are my people. In his wife's own words, "He is the kind of person whose love for his own country is terrifying." Zuoren's love is about action, and about sacrifice. In this materially acquisitive world of ours, sacrifice long ago ceased to be a word that Chinese put into practice in their everyday living.
First half-African national volleyball player
Ding Hui (丁慧) is from Hangzhou and speaks fluent putonghua. Allegedly he will play for China in the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Anti-government t-shirts in Chongqing
Netizens in Chongqing wear t-shirts protesting a bus fare increase. Police say: "Raising bus fares is a government matter, so opposing fare hikes is opposing the government."
Dreaming of China as a knowledge producer
Hu Yong (胡泳), associate professor at PKU's School of Journalism and Communication, talks to Danwei about the news media, Internet culture, and how the development of Chinese culture ought to be observed.
New Hong Kong Catholic Head not as political
From the AFP:
Bishop John Tong said he would not take part in the annual June 4 vigil to commemorate those killed after pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago, a key issue for his predecessor Cardinal Joseph Zen.
Unhappy misunderstanding
The Beijing Review looks at the Unhappy China phenomenon:
Xu told Beijing Review that he does not believe in the rise of a new round of nationalism among Chinese youth, as was deduced by the Western media after the release of this book. "Mounting pressure from life and fierce competition in the labor market are not enough to spur a round of nationalism. I personally believe that 'rising nationalism' is only an illusion on the Internet," Xu said.
Shang Rong, a 20-year-old university photography student, gave the book a five-star rating on Douban.com. He told Beijing Review that although he dislikes the authors' paranoid tone and doubts the validity of their arguments, he believes such voices are necessary in any society.
The magazine also interviews Song Qiang, one of the book's authors.
Chinese ringers win World Middle School Soccer Tournament
Big Brother Chang at Seagull Reference summarizes a Netease Sports report on a victorious Chinese team in a world middle school tournament that happened to be made up of professional players.
Players participated the game 'individually', disguised themselves as students of the Chongqing Daping Middle School. Two real students of the Chongqing Daping Middle School indeed travelled with the team to Turkey, but they were never called on to play on the field.
The Netease post has since been taken down, but the article 中国足球靠造假得世界冠军 is still available elsewhere on the web. Also found in the Chinese Business Morning View and Modern Express.
Netizen jailed for 8 days for mocking local government
At Global Voices Advocacy, Oiwan Lam describes the case of Wang Shi, a 24-year-old who was jailed for eight days after posting photos clear-cut trees and other things he said were intended by the local government to be drought fighting techniques.
Update (2009.04.18): China Daily reports that following the outburst of online criticism, the local government dropped the case against Wang and apologized:
"One can only be charged for defamation when the accusation is completely made-up and is intended to harm the public," said Qin. "Wang's action doesn't match any of the criteria."
April 16, 2009
A crisis of superiority and inferiority complexes
At MCLC, Howard Choy discusses environmentalism, binary ethnic identity, and the choices involved in translation in an interesting review of Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem:
Indeed, Jiang Rong's extremism echoes Stalin's social Darwinist statement about "the jungle law of capitalism" in his 1931 speech to industrial managers: "You are backward, you are weak--therefore you are wrong; hence, you can be beaten and enslaved. You are mighty--therefore you are right; hence, we must be wary of you."[7] In the wolf's worldview, one either hunts or is hunted. Eulogizing European imperialism and Japanese militarism, Jiang Rong's radicalism reveals ironically his misunderstanding of democracy as mobocracy. His cruel fantasy of territorialization through terrorization has been labeled by Chinese and Western critics alike as "fascism."[8] If "crypto-fascist" still sounds too harsh, it is at least fair to contextualize Wolf Totem in the dominant discourse of new nationalism that searches for national pride and power.
单位网胡泳问答： 数码时代， 奥威尔的 "Newspeak" 和中国的媒体
2009年4月：
单位网胡泳问答： 数码时代， 奥威尔的 "Newspeak" 和中国的媒体
单位网：看您在中国媒体圈做了这么久，以前是《三联生活周刊》主笔、《环球管理》总编、中央电视台《经济信息联播》主编、《对话》总策划，对中国媒体一定有很深的了解。您是为什么从媒体转行到大学里教书的？有什么特殊的原因吗？
胡泳：我可能是中国少数的既经历过政治性媒体向商业性媒体转变、又见证过传统媒体被新媒体挤压的过程的媒体人。我念新闻的时候是在上个世纪80年代的《人民日报》，那是新闻改革最美好的一段时光，其实以后中国的新闻业在很多地方比起80年代来是大大地退步了。
90年代早期非官方的商业媒体崛起，我参与创立《三联生活周刊》，立志三五年内把它办成中国的《时代》。今天中国的一些严肃媒体，比如《财经》和《三联生活周刊》，在商业上很成功。我至今认为商业化是中国媒体的一种解放性力量，因为当媒体更多地依赖广告和发行而不是国家财政支持的时候，它们就会更多地对读者和观众做出回应。当然，商业化最近几年的负面影响我们也需警惕。
到了90年代中期，新媒体来了，我自己就是一个鼓吹者之一。报纸、杂志业现在很辛苦，电视可能稍微好一点，因为电视还是当之无愧的老大，但从媒体从业者的角度来讲，如果今天你不知道新媒体的运作方式，你就很难在新闻行业里做。在可以预见的将来，或者也可以说就是眼下，如果你新媒体技能不够的话，会遇到非常严峻的挑战。
我经历了这些，从媒体转到大学里教书，原因首先在于我个人觉得媒体行业是一个年轻人的行业，不排除说有大量有经验的人在里面工作，但是总体来说它的基本构成是年轻人。当我说媒体是年轻人的行业的时候，我其实是说越是年轻人掌握这些新技术的能力就越强。
如果我们讨论媒体从业人员的职业生涯的话，我个人的观点是出路只有两个：一个出路就是由于你在媒体行业中积攒了足够多的经验，你可以试图去领导一个媒体或者是创办一个媒体，换句话说你指挥更年轻的人从事媒体工作，成为一个媒体的领袖、总编、制片人等等这样一些角色；另外一些人会走一条专业化的道路，他一定要成为某一领域的专家型记者，或者叫专家型的编辑也好，就是说他必须使自己的定位和自己的知识的专长集中在一些领域，在这种地方他也能获得很大的职业成就。我们知道专栏作家几乎都是从年轻的什么都做的阶段开始，最后找到自己的一个方向，某种程度上他完成了一个转变。这两条路对于好的记者都是非常好的归宿。除了这两条路之外，基本上媒体应该有一个更新换代的过程。
单位网： 在您的工作经历当中，可否想到一个让您得到启发的一个报道或是沮丧的一个案件？
胡泳： 我的新闻生涯中最沮丧的要算在央视做新闻的几年吧，我们常常接到很多的指令，有层出不穷、事无巨细的报道禁区，有的时候要抢在指令未下发之前先把新闻做出来，有的时候在边缘地带的艰苦尝试被轻易的一句话就毙掉了，或者是在抢新闻的过程中被各省的"公关"人士拦截掉，其中的甘苦是外人很难想象到的。
5·12地震后我在香港大学见到钱钢老师，他说，我们首先要肯定主流媒体有很多令人尊敬的亡命之徒，要向他们表示敬意，央视、新华社都有，你知道这个非常非常重要啊，主流媒体有这样的人，向着新闻的核心价值大大靠拢，尽管他们使用了垄断资源，但是这种大大的靠拢不是很好嘛。
在主流媒体中有亡命之徒，不仅勇敢，而且尽可能地用专业组织态度去做灾难报道。有多少人知道，央视"新闻调查"做的北川中学被毙掉？我和钱钢老师在一点上是一致的，有人说"做人不能太CCTV"，这话我们说不出来，因为CCTV里面的东西太不同了，CCTV的总的判断不能囊括所有的事情。
去年底在北大举行的《我所珍惜的----30位北大传媒人访谈录》新书发布会上，央视主持人也是北大校友张泉灵在最后的发言中略带激动地说，你要知道我们是在怎样高压的环境下求生存，一个送审的节目哪怕只要有一个老同志摇摇头就得被毙掉，我们送审的节目中，有三分之一的节目交上去就是为了被毙的。所以，我常为主流媒体里的一批优秀的新闻人感到悲哀，在特殊的环境下他们费了很大的努力，但在外人看来他们的努力却是轻飘飘的。
得寸进寸，得尺进尺，是胡适先生的名言。在看似铁板一块的现实面前，其实还存在很多向前掘进的方式。不奢望，不幻想，不抛弃，不放弃，一步一个脚印，进得一寸是一寸，这才是真正的中国媒体人的精神。
单位网： 对于中国文化的发展，您认为网络是一个好工具吗？会不会因为网络而丢失了大家对保留中国传统文化的意识？
胡泳： 在技术以外，互联网对中国有什么意义？互联网是新的科学技术，是新的生产力，但我们还应看到它更为深刻的内涵。推动互联网迅猛发展的一个因素，是它的基层结构。传统的计算机系统是分级的并且为人私有；这种金字塔型结构赋予高高在上的系统操作者以专制权力。与之相反，互联网是开放的、民主的，它没有所有者或控制者。同样的分权心态如今正逐渐弥漫于整个社会之中，传统的中央集权的生活观念势将成为明日黄花。
中国社会一向缺乏那些确立了某种独立地位的因子。儒家的经典学说要求人们"修身、齐家、治国、平天下"，从古至今，中国社会的组织体系在国家和家庭这两极之间没有强有力的组织因素。自主性的中间组织的发展受到抑制，这在计划经济时代达到了极致：在一种特殊的、强大的整合力量之下，几乎是每一个人和每一个合法组织都被纳入序列，在整个社会形成一种类似军队建制的同时，社会的中间层消失了。只是在实行市场经济以后，国家与社会才开始分离。从互联网的历史来看，它主要是在民间力量的推动下迅速崛起的，因此，毫无疑问，它必将在中国极大地激发起民间的创造性和组织能力，从而建设一个更为健康、宽容和成熟的社会。
就文化而言，可以相信，正如我们今天努力保存生物的多样性一样，有一天我们也许要决定保存文化的多样性。互联网应该被用来最大限度地显示人类文化的多样性。对中国这样一个文明古国来说，面对互联网，除了要最大可能地通过它借鉴利用他族文化，还应抓住机会，利用它发扬光大中华民族的文化。知识的生产，过去一直是西方流向东方，未来，它可能由东方流向西方。我梦想的中国将不仅是一个知识消费者， 还是一个知识生产者。有一天，每一个中国人都会认识到，文化属性比国民生产总值更重要。
单位网： 对于"山寨"这样的流行现象，您有什么看法？
胡泳： "山寨"作为一种技术现象，揭示了一种中国式创新，即企业的发展并不完全在于核心技术的掌握，更重要的在于对市场的感应和这种感应之后的反应速度。山寨机的兴盛，不是托福政府高高在上的计划，也非拜洋人的衮衮天威，而完完全全是市场选择的。
作为一种文化现象的"山寨"，其内涵则要沉重得多。中国的公共生活假面化盛行，导致了一种"公开的谎言"与"私下的真实"并行不悖的怪诞现象，"山寨"正是这种现象的典型体现。这当然是由于权力控制了公共领域，强权规定真理，同时以压力确保人们即使不相信它，也必须在公开场合做出相信的样子。后极权主义有一整套自己的"官话"，它如同奥威尔（George Orwell）笔下的"新话"（Newspeak）， 是一套自我指认的语言，它无所不在，但又令人奇怪地缺场。当人们想要表达人与人之间的真实感受的时候，没有人使用"官话"，而当他们欲求模糊性和混乱性的时候，"官话"就大行其道。"官话"由于与现实生活的脱节及矛盾极为明显， 成了民间公然嘲笑的对象，手机段子和网络小品的流行就是明证。
然而，政治与语言的这种结合对日常生活的影响并不能够小觑。奥威尔曾经精辟地指出，"新话"使我们损失的不仅仅是语言的典雅和清晰，而是把语言的混乱化作了政治控制的核心工具，使系统的统治得以合法化。它的恶果是犬儒主义，表现为对政治的冷漠和对现实的失望和无可奈何的接受；以及"双重思想"（doublethink），在表演的同时嘲笑表演，怀着轻蔑投入机会主义。"山寨文化"无疑是对主流话语的一种反抗，但仅有这种语言的反抗是不够的。
单位网： 您对中国媒体2009年发展的趋势是怎么看待？开放度以及新闻透明性质会如何演变（若有mass incident的话）？
胡泳： 2008年是中国互联网标志年：网民到一定规模后，紧急事件中网络力量爆发出来。艳照门登上八卦顶峰，西藏事件令网络民族主义达到新阶段，汶川地震废墟中才现出公民社会的曙光，瓮安事件又开始拷问政府与民众的互动能力。
就互联网对中国现实的影响来看,从2008年的情况来分析2009年，有三个变化是极其值得注意的:
第一,信息证实的危机越来越明显。网络发布的信息难以找到当事人或公正的第三方来加以证实,即便出现证实,证实的效果也取决于所证实之事的意涵,证实过程对模糊性的策略建构,以及信息接受者诠释这种证实的特定意愿。互联网舆论场成为各方利益必争之地,在中国,政治利益和商业利益对新闻和舆论的操控和冒充行为,已多到操纵方不加遮掩、接收者熟视无睹的地步。
第二,当不同的消息源散发彼此矛盾的信息时,整个社会的焦虑和恐惧会加深。这可以解释为什么在2008年的许多事件中,都游荡着谣言的身影。谣言不是别的, 是我们自身的回响,它反映的是一个社会的欲望、恐惧和痴迷。在这种情况下,建立民意表达机制,以及各种利益的博弈机制,就不仅仅是一种向善治的推进,也是在推动整个社会的健康与福祉。如果一个社会不允许甚至从未想到设立"出口",那么,民众的焦虑与不稳心态对整个社会的安定都会构成重大威胁。
第三,在一个高度媒介化和网络化的社会中,媒体呈现一种崭新的"融合文化",在这种文化之中的信息成为了"信息炸弹 "。在互联网上产生的信息能够影响以其他形式出现的媒介内容生产；新媒体技术及其背后的商业价值都强调速度第一,核实信息的时间大大缩减,进入信息传播网络的人数以倍数激增；新闻的娱乐化,公众对八卦新闻的追求,都在帮助制造着各类"新媒体事件"。毋需进行多少受众研究就可以知道,这种"信息炸弹"的影响是惊人的。在中国,当门户网站用可观的篇幅报道某个信息,当知名论坛对某一信息的评论盖起了宏伟的"高楼",当源于网络的谣言登上"旧媒体"的大雅之堂,当某个政界或商界要人被迫花费时间和精力修复被损害的形象和人格,当丑闻把一些人从高高的位置上掀翻下马,我们就可以懂得民众赋予这些信息炸弹以多大的重要性。
单位网： 能否推荐几本关于中国媒体您感觉重要的书？
胡泳： 推荐大家阅读我在2008年出版的《众声喧哗：网络时代的个人表达与公共讨论》（The Rising Cacophony: Personal Expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age）。
单位网： 对外媒在中国做的工作，您有什么看法呢：您觉得哪里做得可以更好一点？
胡泳： 外媒观察中国的起点必须是中国，而不是西方。所谓"观察的起点在中国"有三个涵义：第一，在观察中国时，把注意力集中在中国社会内部因素，而不是放在外部因素上；第二，产生历史变化的根源来自内部因素；第三，从置于中国语境（Chinese context）中的中国问题着手。尽管中国的情境日益受到西方影响，在网络的问题上则日益受到新技术的影响，但这个社会的内在历史自始至终依然是中国的。
我的意思并不是说，凡是中国以外的人就不可能了解真正的中国，局外的观察时常能够获得"内部研究"所不可能得到的洞见，正如黑格尔所说，熟知就难以真正了解。中国的诗人苏东坡也说，"不识庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中。"不论是记者还是学者，都需要培养一种良好的疏离感，能够"跳出画面看画"。而且，局内人和局外人也需要经常互相交流与砥砺，成为"局外的局内人"和"局内的局外人"。
单位网： 在北京大学教新闻，现在的学生是从哪里得到启发? 您又是怎样启发他们？
胡泳： 我和我的学生的区别，在我看来，是"数字化的土著"（digital natives）和"数字化的移民"（digital immigrants）的分别。我的学生根本就是与科技一起诞生的，也一起长大，通过同化过程，早就视科技为他们生活环境的环节之一，与周遭的其他事物融为一体。一个简单的事实是，对许多孩子而言，使用电脑就好像呼吸一样自然。而像我这样的数字化移民对科技却必须经历截然不同且较为艰难的学习过程，就好像现实世界中新到一地的人，必须想出各种办法来适应面前的崭新数字化环境。
所以，我从我的学生那里得到启发，我向他们学习。
单位网： 在您看来，在中国作为一名好记者，都需要什么特质？
胡泳： 中国有一个贬义的成语，但是这个成语用在记者身上是最合适的，就是"眼高手低"，你眼睛当中应该望到的是天上的星辰，但是你能够脚踏实地地在地上做事情。如果你能做到"眼高手低"的话，一定能成功。
我自己，作为一名老记者，有一段座右铭----
"布尔迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu）说：新闻业是惶惶不安的人、贪得无厌的人、叛逆造反的人或无耻屈服的人最多的行业之一。 经历十余年的新闻生涯，我希望自己丢弃惶恐，克服贪婪，保持叛逆，毫不趋附。智者不惑，勇者不惧，仁者有忧，此之谓也。"
A visit to Science Fiction World in Chengdu
Author Jay Lake visits the Chengdu headquarters of Science Fiction World and speaks to Li Keqin, the editor in charge of translated literature, about the agency's magazines and the state of science fiction in China.
Schneider settles fight with CHINT
From Financial Times:
France's Schneider Electric has agreed to pay a Chinese company $23m to settle a patent lawsuit - the largest recorded settlement in an intellectual property case in China.
Chinese IP lawyers said the settlement was a "wake-up call" to foreign companies about the growing risk of lawsuits from China groups asserting IP rights.
Traditionally, damage awards in Chinese IP lawsuits have been small, and the plaintiffs have usually been foreigners suing Chinese companies claiming infringement of IP rights.
But the Schneider case caught the attention of foreign companies in China because it turned that paradigm on its head: the plaintiff was Chinese and the damages substantial.
The Chinese company in the case is Zhejiang-based CHINT, which claims to be CHINT is "leading player in the low-voltage electrical, power transmission and distribution industries in China" on it's own website.
Why do local governments interfere with village elections?
Jennifer Haskell at China Elections and Governance writes about research done by Guo Xianghuo in Punan, a region in Shanxi Province:
He found that interference by higher levels of government as well as vote-buying and other forms of corruption are some of the most detrimental forces affecting local elections. Of the villages he surveyed, 70% had experienced some type of interference by higher levels of government, with 30% saying that the higher levels decided the results of elections. Most candidates - especially those that want to be elected village head or village party secretary - need at least the approval of upper levels of government, otherwise it is difficult or impossible to be elected. It is a factor that cannot be ignored in village elections.
China building copper stockpiles?
From The Daily Telegraph:
A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
Hard money enthusiasts have long watched for signs that China is switching its foreign reserves from US Treasury bonds into gold bullion. They may have been eyeing the wrong metal.
Update (2009.04.17): Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap explains that the Telegraph article is misleading:
The metals stockpiling program - publicly announced and explained in December - was and is designed specifically to prop up China's ailing, employment-intensive metals industries. In late January, Caijing published an extensive (English language) article explaining that the central government was not directly buying the reserves, but was instead licensing and subsidizing the purchase of stockpiles by private and state-owned metal companies:
April 15, 2009
China looks to hemp for poverty alleviation
Gokunming alerts us to a new way for farmers to make money (note: hemp is cousin to the psychoactive marijuana):
China will build multiple hemp cultivation bases in Yunnan, Heilongjiang, Gansu and Anhui provinces as well as the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia by 2020, a project that is expected to bring three million people out of poverty, according to a Shanghai Daily report citing an official from the People's Liberation Army's General Logistics Department.
A fitting reflection of Xinjiang
At the Far West China blog, Josh Summers describes Kashgar's giant statue of Mao Zedong, which was completed in 1969:
I can't help but visit Kashgar and see embodied in this statue the signs of the times. Mao, with his back facing Kashgar's Old City and many of it's minority inhabitants, lifts his arm to the south towards the area where all the new Han Chinese have taken up residence. Less than 2 kilometers away is the Id Kah Mosque, the true heart of Kashgar that may be out of the statue's line of sight but not far from its peripheral vision.
Sino-Swiss sustainable water agreement
From Xinhua:
Switzerland and China will soon sign a formal agreement on enhancing their cooperation in the field of sustainable water management and hazard prevention, the Swiss government said on Tuesday.
Federal Councilor and Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger will make his first official visit to China on April 16 to sign this agreement, according to a government statement.
Boys who want to be girls
Little Red Book draws our attention to a Rednet.cn post about two men who held signs in public declaring their wish to have a sex-change.
What it's like to be a yuppie in the People's Republic
From John Pomfret's Washington Post blog, the factoids from McKinsey's recent report on China's rich:
The report notes that because China's rich are so young, firms have changed the way they market. Lancome, for example, has won the top spot in cosmetics by emphasizing the need to take early action to fight aging. Because there is less brand-awareness, firms emphasize their workmanship. When Zegna opens up a new store, for example, it gives demos on how its ties are made.
April 14, 2009
Some Chinese netizens react to online video regulations
From China.org.cn:
Xiao Jing, a 27-year-old translator, has been feeling closely connected to the characters of "Lost," the American TV series she has been following.
What bothers her so much is a regulation issued on March 31 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), China's top industry regulator.
It ordered that all domestic and foreign films, TV series, animation pictures and documentaries transmitted online must be licensed by the media regulator. For many young Chinese Internet users, this means they may lose their free lunch of foreign TV series.
Cracking a college murder case
Jeff Keller translates a report on the murder of two students at North China Electric Power University in Beijing. It's a tidy picture of police work that tracked the killers to an Internet cafe Haicheng, Liaoning, nine hours after the crime was committed.
First human rights plan announced and analyzed
The first human rights action plan was hailed by officials yesterday. The New York Times reports:
The civil liberties mentioned in the action plan are already guaranteed by Chinese laws or the Constitution. Human rights groups say many are nonetheless ignored or suppressed by the authorities at their own discretion, without any practicable grounds for appeal through the Communist Party-controlled judiciary.
April 13, 2009
American Expo pavilion could be made in China
Adam Minter writes about the 2010 Shanghai Expo for The Atlantic:
Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is assured: somebody is going to build a pavilion on that prime piece of riverbank real estate reserved for the U.S. The Chinese prefer that it be an American pavilion, and they'll likely extend the participation deadline in the hope of securing it. But if, for whatever reason, the State Department's authorized team can't raise the money, the U.S. will be faced with two unpalatable, and equally symbolic choices: a Chinese-funded pavilion, or no pavilion at all.
Bilingual teaching for a set amount of time
From Xinhua, which reports on the plan to introduce compulsory nine-year education to ethnic minorities:
The state will promote boarding education in the vast rural and pastoral areas, and establish Tibetan junior high schools and Xinjiang senior high classes in the hinterland.
PKU students react to Sun Dongdong
Alec Ash at Think Six talks to two Peking University students about Sun Dongdong's comments on mentally-disturbed petitioners and the protest they generated:
But there could be other incentives for Sun to say those stupid things. As soon as I heard the news, what directly came to my mind is Sun, just like many other PKU professors, was making use of the media and public debate to make himself famous (or notorious, as it turned out). chao zuo ...... these things DO happen around us. Many teachers in the university are respectable. But there are some professors who dream to be popular overnight. And the rising of mass media in China provides them with a great opportunity.
Chinese-run supermarkets in Argentina
Nancy H. Liu explains why Taiwanese author Zhang Zhen Rong would write a bilingual manual for running a supermarket.
China moves to modernize
For The Australian newspaper, Michael Sainsbury sums up the three signs of reform towards modernization: health care reform, internationalizing the currency and investment in its neighbors:
The new plan has promised to have basic healthcare services for 90 per cent of the population and $US814billion ($1.6trillion) has already been committed - although much more is needed....
Three decades after the Sino-Vietnamese War
Phoenix Weekly describes the experiences of soldiers and civilians from both sides of the border in the 1979 conflict, the following decade of skirmishes, and reconstruction in the 1990s.
China establishes $10 billion aid fun for ASEAN
From The China Daily:
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi Sunday unveiled a multi-billion-dollar package of aid and credit to enhance China-ASEAN cooperation.
Yang met with envoys of the 10 ASEAN countries in Beijing Sunday, fresh from his return from Thailand late Saturday where scheduled Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings were postponed due to unrest in Thailand.
April 10, 2009
Protesters demand professor be sacked
From the China Daily, which some are calling more like a "real newspaper" for publishing articles like this one:
More than 200 protesters have been holding an angry vigil at Peking University since Wednesday to protest a professor's controversial remarks on mentally-ill petitioners. Police have taken away more than 50, a university official said yesterday.
Guangzhou scenic park suffers harpoon attack
On the morning of April 7th, 40 assailants attacked the Guangzhou Grand World Scenic Park early, Caijing reports.
Watchdog system to prevent abuse of prisoners
From China Daily:
Southwest China's Yunnan Province plans to invest 45 million yuan (about $6.6 million) to improve prison monitoring systems after an inmate was beaten to death in February, local authorities said Thursday.
Tibetan death sentences get little attention in China
On The Christian Science Monitor correspondent Peter Ford's blog, a shrewd analysis about how news of the sentencing in Tibet did not reach the Chinese media:
Curiously, the first mainland site to post the BBC's story was "Anti-CNN," a nationalist website that decries the alleged bias of the Western media, but does not appear to appreciate the irony that the only way they can find out what is really happening in their country is to read the Western media surreptitiously.
April 9, 2009
A day in the life at Youku.com
Kaiser Kuo puts up some fascinating viewership numbers at the Youku Buzz blog.
Publishing reform can't be another act of state control
A translation of a Southern Weekly opinion piece by Dai Zhiyong on GAPP's reforms for the publishing sector:
As several state publishers are made to grow stronger and take the lead, space needs to be made for smaller entities to grow.
It is exactly on this point that private publishers are deeply concerned. These state publishers have an absolute advantage. So the question is after restructuring and appearing on the market, will they use their economic and political resources to incorporate the private publishing industry and assert state control [国进民退] once again?
More death sentences, executions
Reuters reports not about Tibetan riots but Xinjiang, and that the men who had driven a truck into a police station last August, killing 17 people, were executed today:
China executed two men in restive far-west Xinjiang on Thursday after a court convicted them over a deadly attack on police in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Abdurahman Azat, 34, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 29, were found guilty of a "terrorist attack on a frontier city's border police that left 17 dead."
Yuan trade settlement to start in 5 Chinese cities
From China Daily today, another step towards using the yuan in overseas trade settlement:
Shanghai and four cities in the Pearl River Delta - Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhuhai - have been designated for the purpose, said a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday.
Larry Yung quits over massive CITIC Pacific losses
Larry Yung, son of "Red Capitalist" Rong Yiren, has resigned from his position as chairman of CITIC Pacific. From Reuters:
The Beijing-backed conglomerate shocked the market last October by warning of a multi-billion dollar potential loss from unauthorized foreign exchange trading, which was recently confirmed at $1.9 billion...
...But a raid on his firm by police from Hong Kong's Commercial Crime Bureau last week amid deepening fraud investigations left Yung's powerful benefactors in Beijing with no choice but to let him go.
Two sentenced to death for riots in Tibet last year
From the Associated Press:
A Chinese court on Wednesday handed down death sentences to two Tibetans accused of starting deadly fires in last year's anti-government riots in Tibet, state media and a court officer said.
It was the first report of death sentences given out for the March 14 violence in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, that Chinese officials say killed 22 people.
When architecture encounters fire
Abitare prints a discussion between architect Liang Jingyu and architecture critic Fang Zhenning about the TVCC fire, translated by the magazine:
Mr.Liang: I'd like to make some complements on the meaning of this topic. In the western society, the CCTV emerges as a continuous topic all the time, and the debate mainly focuses on questioning the moral standard of Koolhass' accepting the project, which is hardly mentioned in the architecture field and mainstream media in China. It was surely because for political reasons. However, architecture itself is part of politics and a symbol of power. Thus in my opinion, whatever the project is, as long as it refers to architectural design, the practice is contaminated already, if you judge according to western moral standard. Only when you live in the present Chinese political system can you understand one point: you always have to keep in touch with the government to a certain degree, thus comes the "experiment"
Via Fang Zhenning's blog on Mindmeters, which also has page scans of the article in the Chinese edition of the magazine.
Uproar over satire
Linjun Fan at China Digital Times looks at some of the mainland responses to Hong Kong writer Chip Tao's poorly-received column about the Spratly Islands and Filipino maids:
While Tsao received very different reactions from Chinese readers, his message was also misinterpreted. Tsao was trying to ridicule fanatic patriotism in the article. But tens of thousands Chinese thought he was defending China's territory and are lauding him as a patriotic hero....
The Chinese reporter who wrote the story didn't bother to contact Tsao for comment, and he probably didn't read Tsao's original article. Instead, Fang Xiao at Dongfang Daily described the incident as follows:
...Tsao said in the article that as a patriot, he could not stand the Filipino government's claim of sovereignty over Spratly Islands,
More from Alice Poon: Satire Lost In A Foreign Language.
April 8, 2009
Tattoos on Chinese young people
Tim Johnson at McClatchy Newspapers does a story on tattoos in China.
Cemetary attack on Tomb Sweeping Day
The New York Times, like other big major media, are reporting about the graveyard attack:
Last Saturday was tomb-sweeping day, when the Chinese traditionally honor the dead. Sun Wenguang, a 75-year-old retired professor, was one of many to visit the cemetery.
Apparently, though, he chose the wrong death to commemorate. He came to remember Zhao Ziyang, a former prime minister and Communist Party general secretary who lost his party position and his freedom after sympathizing with student-led, pro-democracy protests...
Mid-year rebound forecast
From China Daily: the World Bank's semi-annual report said that China's economy is likely to recover by mid-2009, and fully next year:
Fueled largely by the huge economic stimulus package, a recovery in China is likely to begin this year and take full hold in 2010, contributing to the region's stabilization," the bank said in its latest semi-annual report on the economic health of East Asia and the Pacific region.
Insatiable longings: Wang Gang's English
Josh Summers reviews the English translation of Wang Gang's English, a coming-of-age story that's set in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution.
Eighteen killed in Henan foot-and-mouth
From the China Daily, which has the misleading title "Child disease outbreak kills 18 in Henan", but which actually reports on cases of foot-and-mouth disease:
Eighteen children have died in a hand-foot-mouth disease outbreak in central China's Henan Province as of Monday with another 195 in severe conditions, health authorities said Tuesday.
The dead were among the 19,922 cases reported in Henan, where 5,965 children have been hospitalized, said Zhou Yong, a spokesman for Henan Provincial Health Administration.
April 7, 2009
Case of the stranded student pilots
Tim Johnson posts a story about Chinese students at a Florida flight school:
No matter the nationality, it's always pitiable when foreigners get taken advantage of in a major way while traveling abroad.
Here's one case involving Chinese in the U.S.: Some 130 Chinese student pilots were stranded for weeks in Florida when the flight training school they attended closed up shop even though the Chinese had paid upward of $70,000 each to attend the school.
China to build 7,000 clinics and hospitals by 2011
From The China Daily:
Road map charted for universal healthcare
A master plan for healthcare over the next decade was unveiled Monday, the first step in a highly anticipated reform of the medical system that aims to provide fair and affordable services for all citizens...
...By 2020, the country will have a basic healthcare system providing "safe, effective, convenient and affordable" health services for urban and rural residents...
April 6, 2009
Gay Pride Day for Shangai, but not on the streets
From Shanghaiist:
Shanghai will finally have its first, real Gay Pride day on June13, 2009...
...Unfortunately, LGBTers and fag hags will not be taking to the streets to celebrate Shanghai's fabulous gay community. However, there will be an outdoors party hosted at an, as of yet, undisclosed French Concession venue. Think street festival/block party-style Gay Pride - still outrageous, but on private property.
Old men doing dirty things
ChinaSMACK is at it again with a post about some photos of naughty old men and a naughty old lady that are circulating on Chinese Internet forums.
Did North Korea put a song-transmitting satellite into orbit?
From The China Daily:
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Sunday it launched a satellite into orbit which was circling the Earth transmitting songs - but the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) said it had failed to enter orbit.
The "Taepodong-2" rocket was launched at 11:20 am local time (0220 GMT) from the East Sea Launch Ground in the east coast of the country, the DPRK's Korean Central News Agency said.
April 3, 2009
New rules imposed on Internet video content
SARFT issues a notice warning video hosts about certain types of user-generated content and requiring them to apply for permission to host foreign TV shows.
Banks face big losses from bets on Chinese realty
For The New York Times, David Barboza writes about more losers in the financial crisis. This time it's the Evergrande Real Estate Group, and its investors:
Back in the good old days -- early 2007 -- bankers from Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and other financial giants placed their bets on a 48-year-old property tycoon who was supposed to be China's next billionaire.
They lent his company $400 million, encouraged him to acquire large tracts of land and in early 2008 promoted a proposed $2.1 billion public stock offering by the company, the Evergrande Real Estate Group, in Hong Kong.
Writing the history of the Gang of Four
Ye Yonglie describes how he was inspired to write The Rise and Fall of the Gang of Four, and what obstacles he faced during the more than two decades before publication this January.
"I didn't want to be among the crowd"
Peter Micic interviews actor, singer, and TV personality Chelsey Mark, who came to China from Canada in 2000:
So when did you begin your road to celebrity?
Chelsey: I was browsing through the school job ads and I stumbled across an ad for a singer-guitarist in a cover band. I had sung and played guitar back in Canada so I called a number listed in the ad. Several hours later a rather pudgy and ugly Chinese dude by the name of Fisher showed up at my dorm. The group started me on lead vocals and guitar with Fisher on keyboards and supporting vocals. Our first gig was at a bar across from the Business University. We played three sets and each received 80 yuan for the night. Back then I could not sing any Chinese songs.
Stop taking the China Kool-Aid
Richard Spencer is leaving Beijing, some final thoughts about currency and President Hu's English.
China's yuan to warm up
From the Economic Observer Online:
A ministry-backed research institute recently submitted a report on the RMB's internationalization to the State Council, the country's cabinet, advising a gradual loosening of currency exchange under China's capital account.
Sohu to Focus on Online, Search Ads
Bloomberg reports on Sohu's plans to "build up its online and search advertising businesses after spinning off its games unit in the first U.S. initial share sale by a Chinese company since August":
We will focus on monetizing our business such as online advertising, search advertising, video and may even charge for content," Chief Executive Officer Charles Zhang said in an interview in New York. "Growth will also come from Pinyin messaging based on search-engine technology."
April 2, 2009
Unhappy China, and why it is cause for unhappiness
David Bandurski at China Media Project writes about the book Unhappy China 中国不高兴:
Some Chinese scholars and journalists have expressed concern about Unhappy China's pugnacious and even jingoistic tone.
Beijing and Paris to resume relations
From China Daily today, which said that France made a statement yesterday:
Based on this spirit and the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs, France refuses to support any form of "Tibet independence", it said.
"Both sides are willing to strengthen communication and coordination to jointly deal with the global challenge of the international financial crisis," it added.
An account of life and death in jail
Tim translates at Southern Weekend a witness account from a series of reports aimed to reduce the ground on which prison tyrants exist:
I was taken to a detention center by the police at little after nine in the morning on March 9, 2001. After they finished checking my person, they had to take my belt because of the rules.
Managing global media with state media tools
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap wraps up the Ningbo scrap kidnapping case by comparing two documents issued by Guanghe, the Chinese scrap company that allegedly had police hold Goldarrow representative Anil Srivastav until he signed over $350,000 worth of scrap:
So, to summarize: Back in November, during the initial backlash against [James] Xu and Guanghe, Guanghe decided to claim that Xu was never an employee, but only a friendly "introducer." When that didn't improve their image, the company shifted gears and announced that the whole Goldarrow deal was actually Xu's doing, without authorization, and thus, he's fired.
Background here.
April 1, 2009
No one wants to take on the coal bosses
Linfen, Shanxi province, can't fill its vacant party secretary slot, China Daily reports:
"We're indeed looking for a new Party secretary," an official from the organization department of the city's committee of Communist Party of China (CPC), who refused to be named, told China Daily yesterday on the phone.
He said the position has been vacant since former incumbent Xia Zhengui was suspended on Sept 20 last year on account of a mine accident that killed at least 270 people.
via Citizens of Oxus
Environmentalist Tan Zuoren detained by Sichuan police
David Bandurski at the China Media Project translates a letter detailing the arrest of Tan Zuoren, who had been investigating the deaths of schoolchildren in last year's Wenchuan earthquake:
On March 28, Chengdu-based environmentalist, writer and former editor of Literati magazine (文化人) magazine Tan Zuoren (谭作人) was taken into custody under charges of "inciting subversion of state power" (涉嫌颠覆国家政权). [NOTE: This is the same charge that was leveled against Hu Jia (胡佳) in January 2008]. Prior to this Mr. Tan was working on an investigation into the death of children in shoddy school buildings during the Sichuan Earthquake, and was verifying a list of students who died. On the morning of the 28th, police barged into his home and took away all computer disks, handwritten notes and other materials. Only his children were home at the time, as the police proceeded to photograph the scene.
The Nanjing Massacres and the Wenchuan Earthquake
C. Custer at chinageeks translates an article by media professor Hu Yong about numbers and memory:
Yes, 300,000 looks startling but actually through abstraction and generalization, it's like Vera Schwarcz said: it's easy to use a kind of "advocating distance and, moreover, aloofness" to sum up history. Only by recovering memories one by one, looking for people one by one, can we show the meaning of 'massacre' and make it clear to future generations how this suffering cannot be repeated. If one wishes for "China cannot die", first one must have "China cannot forget."** This not forgetting must be not forgetting and losing the specifics of even a single life, and nothing else.
The "huge potential" in China-Latin American trade
From the blog about Latin America and China relations, Double Handshake:
Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China's central bank, has been one of the headline-grabbers from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) summit, which is wrapping up today in Medellin, Colombia. Zhou was the new guy at the meeting; China only became a member of the IDB in January, shelling out a US$350 million loan to join.
Chinese explorer preparing to cross Sahara
From Chris at Gokunming:
Today another Yunnan native - Jin Feibao (金飞豹) - is attempting to resurrect Chinese exploration of the world, which was stifled during centuries of dynastic government, wars and the political climate of the Cold War.
In 2007, Jin trekked to both the North and South Poles and summited the highest peaks on all seven continents. Last year he became the first Chinese to trek across Greenland.
On April 6, he will leave Beijing for Africa, where he will attempt to cross the Sahara desert from west to east - a first for Chinese explorers.
Fake pandas in the Taipei Times
The Taipei Times issues a timely report on counterfeit pandas at the Taipei Zoo:
Zookeepers discovered at feeding time yesterday that the two pandas are in fact Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed to create the panda's distinctive black-and-white appearance.
The Taipei Zoo's head of ursidae ex-procyonidae care, Connie Liu (劉長春), said she became suspicious when the pandas, Tuan Tuan (團團) and Yuan Yuan (圓圓), began to spend almost all of their waking hours having sex. Pandas are notorious for their low libidos, which make them difficult to breed in captivity.
via Paul Midler, who says "Seriously, folks, you just can't make up stuff like this."
Yes you can.
Visible and invisible walls
Alice Poon at Asia Sentinel translates a blog post by Yang Hengjun:
Every time I cross over the 'visible wall' of Lowu Bridge to go to Hong Kong, I would usually leave a friends' gathering around 11:00 pm to go back to my hotel, because I want to surf the internet. My friends would question why. I would tell them that it is because there aren't any GFWs in Hong Kong and so I could enjoy my net-surfing freedom (in the mainland there are all sorts of firewalls and the downloading process is often full of obstacles). Therefore I would use every opportunity while on a 'freedom tour' to Hong Kong to surf freely on the internet and download a mass of things onto my computer.
Chinese govt. shopping delegation headed for USA with $$$
The China Daily reports:
The Ministry of Commerce is sending a delegation to the United States this month to explore trade and investment opportunities - close on the heels of a similar mission to Europe - according to sources...
...The buying trip comes only two months after a commerce minister-led trade mission to Europe, where Chinese enterprises signed deals worth more than $13 billion in four countries.