Must-read China news by Danwei

From China Daily:

Death toll rose to 30 after five more bodies were recovered in a colliery gas burst Saturday in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, according to local coal mine safety authorities.

The accident happened around 11 a.m. at Tonghua Coal Mine in Anwen Town of Qijiang County, when 131 miners were working underground. One hundred and one miners were rescued.

Of the rescued, 59 miners were injured, including four in serious condition.

The cause of the accident is being investigated.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:47 AM | Permalink

The New York Times features an essay by Yu Hua on the 1989 demonstrations:

In China today, it seems only officials have "the people" on their lips. New vocabulary has sprouted up -- netizens, stock traders, fund holders, celebrity fans, migrant laborers and so on -- slicing into smaller pieces the already faded concept of "the people."

But in 1989, my 30th year, those words were not just an empty phrase.

Protests were spreading across the country, and in Beijing, where I was studying, the police suddenly disappeared from the streets. You could take the subway or a bus without paying, and everyone was smiling at one another. Hard-nosed street vendors handed out free refreshments to protesters. Retirees donated their meager savings to the hunger strikers in the square. As a show of support for the students, pickpockets called a moratorium.

The piece is translated by Alan Barr, who also translated Yu Hua's novel Cries in the Drizzle.

The feature also has pieces by Ha Jin, Lijia Zhang, and Yiyun Li.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:38 AM | Permalink

At CNReviews, Mollie Kirk translates a Beijing Times report about an escalator malfunction that sent three people to the hospital.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:49 PM | Permalink

At China Digital Times, David Kelly translates a presentation given by Yu Jianrong, a CASS researcher into rural issues, that addresses China's current social situation:

My view is: a number of social conflicts are going on in China today, but there has been no change in its overall political unity or effectiveness of social control; this stability of Chinese society is a rigid one, bearing very great social risks. To prevent greater social turmoil occurring in China, a series of changes needs to be made.

I want to discuss three issues related to this: (1) what is actually taking place; (2) how to understand China's current rigid stability; (3) what is to be done?

Part two is here.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:56 PM | Permalink

The New York Times reports that new government standards will improve fuel economy by an additional 18% by 2015:

The details of China's new fuel economy standards may favor domestic automakers at the expense of multinationals, several auto industry officials said. That is because the new rules call for the steepest increases in fuel economy -- as much as 26 percent -- for midsize and compact cars, market segments where multinationals are strong. Subcompacts, a market where domestic automakers are stronger, will be required to increase their gas mileage by as little as 9 percent compared with the existing standards, which took effect on Jan. 1.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:44 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

Chinese observers believe an invitation from Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to the Dalai Lama could derail Sino-French relations just as they were getting back on track.

Delanoe's spokesman, Laurent Fary, confirmed that the mayor has invited the Dalai Lama to the French capital in early June to collect the title of honorary citizen of the city, which he was awarded in 2008.

Earlier this month, Beijing urged Paris not to interfere in China's internal affairs by meeting the Dalai Lama.

The French foreign ministry played down the significance of the invitation, saying it was made independently by the city and "should have no impact on the caliber of our relations with China".

But Wu Baiyi, an expert on European studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Paris, as part of France, is obliged to coordinate its acts according to a communiqu agreed by the two foreign ministries on April 1 that stated that France fully recognized "the sensitivity of the Tibet issue" and that France would not support "Tibet independence" in any form.

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

The Guardian publishes an article by Zhenhua Xie, Hu Jintao's special representative on climate change and the vice-chairman of the national development and reform commission of China:

China is making huge efforts to combat climate change despite the fact that it remains a low-income developing country with a per-capita GDP of around $3,000 (£1,876). By United Nations standards, China still has 150 million people living in poverty. China has no other choice but to pursue sustainable development in order to meet the basic needs of its people and to eradicate poverty. In this process, the world is assured that China will make every effort to address climate change.

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

Michael Anti (安替) answers Danwei's questions about journalism, blogging, and Twitter - which he thinks will eventually suffer the "fate of Youtube".

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:37 PM | Permalink

Philip Cunningham doesn't see anything surprising about the lack of interest shown toward events of two decades ago on the part of today's youth:

If anything, it was precisely because they had little or no first-hand contact with the horror of Mao's social experiment gone awry that they could in good faith and unremitting optimism write provocative wall posters and take to the streets, naively hoping for positive results.

It seems student activism, to really get off the ground, and to have any integrity at all, requires forgetting the past, --or at least not being beholden to it-- as much as invoking it.

Referencing the past as a guide to one's actions, especially in a place where the past weighs as heavily as it does in China, is intimidating to the point of despair.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:47 PM | Permalink

Bruce Humes gives an overview of the upcoming biography Kim Jong Il's Godson Yang Bin: From Orphan to Sinuiju SAR Chief:

Many a historian would love to have the kind of privileged access Guan Shan had to research Kim Jong Il's Godson. As Yang Bin's designated biographer, he schmoozes with the billionaire's relatives, conducts uncensored interviews with top government officials in Dandong and North Korea, and takes part in the negotiations between Yang Bin's team and the official North Korean Delegation as they hammer out the Siniuju Basic Law. And there is Guan Shan again, frantically taking notes when Yang Bin is hauled up before a Shenyang court, accused of everything from bribing officials to forgery of financial documents and contract fraud--and sentenced to a stunning 18 years of prison.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:24 PM | Permalink

Bloomsberg reports that one of Hu Jintao's aides Xie Zhenhua said in an editorial that dealing with climate change is more pressing than the economic crisis.

Xie Zhenhua, also vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China is working on provincial climate change programs this year, and that the stimulus plan contains energy conservation and pollution components, according to the article in the South China Morning Post today.

"The global financial crisis has, no doubt, exacerbated the challenge of climate change," Xie wrote. "But since climate change is a more far-reaching and serious challenge, the world must not waver in its determination and commitment to address it."

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

Aimee Barnes speaks with Jenny Bai, founder and CEO of The Red Connect and managing editor of The World of Chinese:

In my opinion, there is already way too much traditional Chinese information out there, so I doubt if anyone wants to spend their leisure time reading yet another publication about the Great Wall. TWOC is also not a local rag like the Beijinger, City Weekend, or even Time Out. So, part of my intent in the re-brand was to introduce a business culture section, including useful information via case studies, market trends, biz tips, etc. But I really had to fight for my vision. Concepts like guanxi (relationships) and mianzi (face), topics widely covered by Western consultants everywhere, had a tough time making it through inter-office procedures. My Chinese bosses (and there are a slew of them, especially in the publishing industry) all felt that discussing guanxi in a useful light was too close to speaking on corruption, and talking about the ways mianzi play an integral part in Chinese behavior was in fact not humble enough.

See also: Jenny Zhu interviews Edelman's Adam Schokora about China's creative community.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:31 AM | Permalink

CNReviews translates forum posts by Chinese professionals who have returned from abroad:

Shopping: The stuff in department stores or specialty retail stores make me think: "that much money for this sh*t? f**k it!" The only thing I have worn for a long time that was purchased from a department store was a pair of Erdos wool pants - can't help it, Shanghai winters are cold. I usually have the clothes I wear to work tailored made at Dong Jia Du, or I will go to small stores near my places to find quality imported clothes. Overall, if you search more, you can find some good stuff at cheap prices.

Opportunity: I truly think one the opportunities for making money in China are more than the United States (regardless of whether it is white, yellow, or grey income). I myself have started trying a few based upon my interests -- after all, if I am only working for foreign companies, the whole point of coming back would have been lost.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Arthur Kroeber on the Financial Times' website:

One baleful consequence of the global financial crisis has been a swarm of ill-informed commentary about the decline of the US and the dollar, and the rise of China and the renminbi. Such hyperbolic claims about a tectonic shift in global power relations are bunkum.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:47 PM | Permalink

Global Times' English edition reports on a rebranded, repositioned Anti-CNN:

"I still feel passionate," smiled Rao Jin, 24-year-old founder of Anti-CNN. com, "but not as spirited as that time."

Rao's been busy. After a round of meetings with business partners and media-savvy advisors, he's re-branding the whole website: gone is the "combative title" of "Anti-CNN". In its place is "ACCN", short for "Access China Communication Network."

Tsinghua graduate Rao, also the owner of IT company Cesky, said he wants "limited commercialization" and "modernization" of Anti-CNN into a "comprehensive community news website."

"The name 'Anti-CNN' was good to rally strength and fight biased reports at that time, but too easily lead to misunderstanding," said Rao.

"Life is about more than politics and debate. With these changes, I hope netizens on the website will chill out, be a bit more peaceful."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:50 PM | Permalink

From Chinese Box, a blog run by an editor at a Beijing-based English-language business magazine:

So our magazine is in the midst of going to print, and our cover story, on Chinese African trade, was rather heavily attacked by the censor (who usually leaves us alone). The biggest problem usually is reference to any issue which the foreign press has spoken negatively about (China can't be involved in mining in Africa, despite the fact I'm saying their involvement is a good thing), but also there's a general cluelessness that Western readers will take something very different from a piece of information than a Chinese reader who has been used to half-truths, and generally doesn't follow what happenings in say, Zimbabwe.

So while I wrote a rather positive article (I'm rather optimistic about Chinese-African trade, as I think is pretty much anyone who has done much research on the subject), the censor took out a lot of my positive points, and replaced them with things that sound almost sarcastic.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:29 PM | Permalink

From China Daily, which quotes extensively from the Washington Post about US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her green approach over the next eight days in China:

Fu Mengzi, researcher for American studies at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations said cooperation on global warming and improving energy efficiency was likely to "guide the future development of the two nations and the world".

"Any cooperation on such areas between the two global major economies is of instructional value for the rest of the world," Fu said, adding Pelosi's visit is "meaningful" on the legislative level.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:07 PM | Permalink

Deng Yujiao talks to Southern Metropolis Daily. ESWN translates:

Deng Guida then continued to curse: "What do you mean about working here or upstairs? Aren't you all the same? You are a prostitute but you still want to have a good reputation." He also said: "Don't you want money? You have never seen any money! How much money do you want? Just say so. Would you believe if I am going to beat you to death with money today" He took out a wad of money and used it to slap Deng Yujiao in the face and shoulder. At each slap, Deng Yujiao took one step backwards until she was at the edge of the sofa. She said: "Yes, I have never seen money. If you have the guts, you can beat me to death." Deng Guida said: "Indeed I'll beat you to death with money. I am going to summon a truckload of money and squash you to death."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:53 AM | Permalink

Black and White Cat compares all of the media attention toward China's anniversary with the largely forgotten episode in Venezuela:

But there was another massacre in 1989; one that few in the English-speaking world have even heard of. In February that year, Venezuelans rose up against a massive rise in fuel prices, part of a package of neoliberal reforms that were the straw that broke the camel's back. The poor protested, rioted and looted, seizing the food and goods that had been denied them and the complacent middle classes and rich took for granted. The uprising became known as the Caracazo and it would turn out to be one of the most significant events of the late 20th Century.

The Venezuelan government responded with extreme violence. It later said 300 people had been killed in the military crackdown, but estimates of the dead go as high as 3,000 - remarkably similar to the casualty range in Beijing. Some troops refused to open fire on their own people. Others were disgusted with what they had been ordered to do. And the poor, though crushed for the time being, remembered.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:50 AM | Permalink

From AFP / France 24:

Scanning the vast northern China steppe surrounding him, Delger leans on a wooden staff that is his herd's only protection against a lethal enemy that is out there, somewhere.

"They come at night, but you never hear them. When you do hear something, it is the sheep crying out, and by then it's too late," he said.

Delger, 44, has lost six of his 40 sheep in the past two years to stealthy attacks by the wolf packs that roam northern China's Inner Mongolia region.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:17 AM | Permalink

From state-owned news agency Xinhua:

China was resolutely opposed to the nuclear test by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the Foreign Ministry said here in a statement Monday...

..."The DPRK ignored universal opposition of the international community and once more conducted the nuclear test. The Chinese government is resolutely opposed to it," the statement said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:52 AM | Permalink

Yu Qiuyu responds to a screed printed in a Hong Kong newspaper that attacked his public statements on the Wenchuan Earthquake. ESWN translates:

Several writers in Hong Kong read that essay and told me that the writer must surely be a mainlander because the style can only come from the mainland. I was incensed, but not because it was directed at me. In the whole world, including all those countries which hold bad feelings towards China, nobody thinks that the May 12th earthquake was caused by humans and not by nature. Nobody thinks that the spirit of grand love shown by the Chinese people was just a non-existent "mind-numbing potion."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:47 PM | Permalink

Quincy at Lost Laowai describes encounters with sushi and anti-Japanese sentiment.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:43 PM | Permalink

A graph from BusinessInsider.com that compares Internet use in China and the U.S.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:11 PM | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal reports:

PetroChina Co. agreed Sunday to buy a US$1 billion stake in oil refiner Singapore
Petroleum Co. in a move expected to lead to an offer for the entire company.

The agreement signals China's continued interest in extending its reach into global natural resources at a time when many resources companies are desperate for cash.

PetroChina will buy 45.5% of publicly listed Singapore Petroleum from Keppel Corp. for about 1.47 billion Singapore dollars, or US$1.02 billion.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:29 AM | Permalink

C. Custer at ChinaGeeks translates an article by Woeser on ethnic Tibetan political prisoners.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:10 AM | Permalink

The Financial Times in China reports about what is happening in terms of protests in recent weeks:

Traffic in Beijing's central business district came to a standstill last Monday. Police cordoned off a 200-metre stretch of busy Guanghua road, plainclothes officers swarmed the street filming bystanders and journalists and security guards in helmets stood in tight rows.

At the centre of the action were three elderly local residents who had taken their stools and sat down in the middle of the road outside their apartment block. The reason for their sit-in: the lift in their building was not working.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:48 AM | Permalink

LA Times reports on the Obama administration and their will to enlist Pakistan's allies in order to stabilize the militant country:

China traditionally has been reluctant to intervene in the affairs of other countries. However, Chinese officials are concerned about the militant threat to its west, fearing it could destabilize the region and threaten China's growing economic presence in Pakistan.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Beijing Parkour, a new city guide, borrows a trendy concept to describe a novel way of looking at the city that includes photos, maps, exploded diagrams, pull-out panoramas, floor-plans, graphs, and other visualizations.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:01 AM | Permalink

Using a mobile phone to send "yellow [pornographic] material" can possibly constitute as sexual harassment now.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:57 AM | Permalink

Superstar publisher Lu Jinbo declares his separation from the bigoted, hate-filled comments that attract attention online. In a separate blog post, he summarizes the changes he has brought to Chinese publishing.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:40 AM | Permalink

John Pasden of Sinosplice finds two Obama-related English language textbooks.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:33 AM | Permalink

At Shenzhen Noted, Mary Ann O'Donnell reports rumors she's come across in Shenzhen about the practice of sending children away from home:

I don't know how to think about this conversation. I don't know how to evaluate and confirm its truth content. I don't know if my interlocutor became more emphatic in order to make me believe what he was saying; possibly he was trying to shock me. I don't want to believe, for example, that he drove away and left a child in a box by the side of the road. Indeed, I suspect that if he had truly left an abandoned child on the side of the road, he would not have admitted so easily to having heard her cries.

I do, however, know of three other cases of children being sent away. Each story has different kinds of proof, but all point to how desired children are, despite poverty and despite the one-child policy.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:59 AM | Permalink

Xinhua reports on a redux of 2007's brick kiln slave scandal:

Police in east China's Anhui Province have arrested 10 suspects for allegedly beating and forcing 32 mentally-handicapped people working in brick kilns in slave-like conditions.

Gao Jie, director of the Jieshou Public Security Bureau, said Friday that 80 police raided the kilns in Jeishou City on April 28and freed the victims.

"All of them are mentally handicapped people aged between 25 and 45. Few of them can tell where they were from," said Gao.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:56 AM | Permalink

From the China Daily:

A senior figure in Taiwan's main opposition party began a landmark visit to the mainland Thursday, declaring "she was bringing a new voice".

Chen Chu, mayor of Kaohsiung, the island's second-biggest city, is the highest-ranking official from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to set foot on the mainland.

During her meeting with Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong Thursday, Chen listened to the city's experience in holding the widely-acclaimed 2008 Olympics, and said Kaohsiung would learn from it.

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

Danwei talks to Hank Levine, formerly of the US State Department, about Jon Huntsman Jr., the incoming US ambassador to China.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:41 PM | Permalink

From China Daily (with pictures that are a little gruesome):

Thirteen women were killed and four are fighting for their lives after they were trapped when a fire engulfed a factory in Gurao township early Thursday.

The women worked and lived in the five-story building, which housed an earphone factory and a dormitory and had anti-theft bars on the windows.

It is unknown if the women were asleep when the fire broke out on the ground floor at 7:30 am and then quickly destroyed about 202 square meters of the building.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:21 PM | Permalink

The Economist's enjoys a pun in a piece on the burned out CCTV building in Beijing titled The pathetic fallacy:

Its charred hulk looms over Beijing's central business district, a monument to recklessness. The building is part of a colossal, architecturally extravagant complex being built for the state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). A fire gutted it three months ago, creating an embarrassing eyesore, for which a senior head has now rolled.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:23 AM | Permalink

A photo gallery from The China Daily captioned:

Xie Xiyao and Ma Yang pose for a photo before flying a helicopter during a training class at the Civil Aviation Flight University of China in southwest China's Sichuan province May 20, 2009. They are trained to become China's first batch of female helicopter pilots, among others. Upon graduation, they need to finish one year's training and 105 hours' air flight at the university.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:18 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

China has started a reform on the publishing houses controlled by departments and organs of the central government, a senior official said Thursday.

Liu Yunshan, head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee [née Propaganda Dept.], made the remark at a meeting with bosses of those publishing houses held in Beijing.

The reform is aimed at transforming the publishing houses from government-like affiliating organs to independent publishing companies responsible for their own profit and loss.

But don't get too excited:

The official reminded that all the publishing houses should always prioritize social benefit and keep a right direction of advanced socialist culture for their publications.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:14 AM | Permalink

A radio piece NPR's Anthony Kuhn:

Dissatisfied with Western media coverage of China news, China is launching several new foreign-language media outlets aimed at international audiences.

The piece includes comments from the PekingDuck.org blogger Richard Burger.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:58 AM | Permalink

Evan Osnos at the New Yorker interviews Graham Earnshaw about his experiences as a journalist in China and his Earnshaw Books venture, which is reprinting old books that "illuminate their own era and also help us to understand China today."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:24 PM | Permalink

Reuters reports the May 10th meeting of around twenty intellectuals who discussed events twenty years ago, and the document by an ex-censor Du Daozheng saying that he had supported Zhao Ziyang's decision to record his memoirs:

Du Daozheng, reformist chief of the General Administration of Press and Publications in the late 1980s, said he was one of four retired officials who helped Zhao secretively record his memoirs before his death under house arrest in 2005...

Du has joined a small but bold undercurrent within China openly urging the government to renounce the 1989 crackdown, when hundreds of demonstrators and bystanders died as troops and tanks surged down Beijing streets on the night of June 3-4.

For more on the "undercurrent" meeting that was held on May 10, see Global Voices Online's translation China: The democracy movement since 1989.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:43 PM | Permalink

From the Economic Observer Online:

A second case of A/H1N1 swine influenza has been detected in Beijing on Wednesday, pushing the number of confirmed cases on the mainland up to five thus far.

The latest patient is a 21-year-old Chinese Canadian male, a university student from Toronto, according to a statement posted on the website of China's Health Ministry on Wednesday night.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:13 PM | Permalink

At China Elections and Governance, Jennifer Haskell discusses the Deng Yujiao case:

Her implication in a case of "righteous murder" of a government officials as well as the following she has garnered online have led to comparisons between Deng Yujiao and last year's "people's hero" - Yang Jia, who was executed for killing six police officers in Shanghai. Yet, as the blogger Yang Hengjun explains, while Deng Yujiao and Yang Jia may have a similar spirit - presumably a willingness to stand up to authority - their cases are entirely different. As I wrote last year about Yang Jia, because his attack on the police station was premeditated - he had possibly been planning it for years - he entirely deserved to be punished. He knowingly sacrificed himself, so he was culpable for his actions, while Deng, on the other hand, instinctively fought back against attackers, a move that was entirely in self defense. In many ways, the comparisons between the two are counterproductive for people who support Miss Deng, as they make it easier to justify and accept a harsh conviction.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:25 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

The first China-assembled Airbus A320 plane has made a smooth landing on the second runway in Tianjin Binhai International Airport Monday afternoon, becoming the first Airbus A320 plane assembled outside the Europe made a successful test flight.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:33 AM | Permalink

At the WSJ's China Journal blog, Juliet Ye reports on the latest season of the Super Girls talent show, which is now known as Happy Girls (快乐女声). The new show may not resemble its wildly-popular former incarnation all that much, owing to the conditions SARFT imposed when it approved the broadcast:

These conditions include the following: the competition may last no more than two months (about half the length of an American Idol season); episodes may only air after 10:30 pm; judges must be appropriately dressed and use proper language; competitors are not allowed to hug each other or shed tears on stage; and there must not be any fan groups cheering for contestants in the studio audience. Meanwhile, all forms of public voting for contestants, including mobile text messaging and online polls, will be prohibited, as reported by the Chinese-language media.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:25 AM | Permalink

Museums in China have been experimenting with free admission policies. Should foreign tourists enjoy public collections on the tax-payers' dime, or should ticket prices be used as a diplomatic weapon?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:18 AM | Permalink

"Be Heard in Chinese": a TV spot from Singapore's Promote Mandarin Council, which is conducting a three-month campaign to educate the public about Chinese language and culture. A series of quizzes accompanies the ad.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:16 AM | Permalink

China Weekly, from the Communist Youth League, gets revamped as a Chinese-language news weekly whose motto is "Believe in China." The lead editorial tells us why.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:14 AM | Permalink

From Reuters:

* China to receive 200,000 barrels per day of oil

* Petrobras needs funds to develop costly sub-sea reserves

* Similar deal previously signed between China and Russia

China agreed to lend $10 billion to Brazil's Petrobras (PETR4.SA)(PBR.N) in return for guaranteed oil supply over the next decade, in a deal cemented on Tuesday as Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ended a state visit.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:56 AM | Permalink

A podcast of a radio show by Zoë Baxter with singer/songwriter Mamer from Xinjiang and producers Robin Haller and Matteo Scumaci as well as music by Hanggai.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:19 AM | Permalink

At CNReviews, Kai Pan talks to China Digital Times' Sophie Beach about blogging, journalism, and what it feels like to be blocked on the mainland.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:20 PM | Permalink

Dylan at the deerawn blog translates a chapter from a travelogue by Chinese author Zhang Chengzhi, who visited North Africa and Spain in search of traces of the Moors. In this excerpt, the author arrives in Morocco:

It's really not simple. Really, who's ever heard of Fez? Even Morocco itself is also kind of hazy to me. Chinese students might have heard their teacher make passing mention of it in geography class, or it might come up in a cross-talk joke. It's a desert, right? Are the people there black or white? We have no idea. All of our knowledge of it comes from an American movie, Casablanca. Some people might get the theme song stuck in their head but they couldn't tell you where Morocco is or anything about it, let alone a place like Fez.　

Also, Bruce Humes has a synopsis of the book in Chinese Muslim's Pilgrimage to al-Andalus.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:17 PM | Permalink

Oiwan Lam at Global Voices Online translates an anonymous piece via China in Perspective, an account of a meeting that took place over Mother's Day on May 10:

A number of intellectuals in Beijing organized a seminar discussing 20 years of the democracy movement in China. This is a very significant event in breaking the long silence among intellectuals on the June 4th student movement, as well as in countering the official position on the incident as a 'riot'...

There were about 19 participants in the seminar, including: Xu Youyu (徐友渔), Mo Zhixu (莫之许), Cui Weiping (崔卫平), Hao Jian (郝建), Xu Xiao (徐晓), Zhou Duo (周舵), Liang Xiaoyan (梁晓燕), Qin Hui (秦晖), Guo Yuhua (郭于华), Li Hai (李海), Liu Zili (刘自立), Qian Liqun (钱理群), Teng Biao (滕彪), Tian Xiaoqing (田晓青), Wang Junxiu (王俊秀), Xu Yinong (许医农), Yan Yusheng (殷玉生), Zhang Boshu (张博树) and Zhang Yaojie (张耀杰).

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:02 PM | Permalink

At CNReviews, Elliot Ng compares TechCrunch's original story on Sequoia China's woes, which contained serious allegations of corruption on the part of a founding partner, with a version "updated....based on conversations with additional sources," that excised the claims without publicly retracting them.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:50 AM | Permalink

By Jonathan Wheatley in The Financial Times:

Brazil and China will work towards using their own currencies in trade transactions rather than the US dollar, according to Brazil's central bank and aides to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president.

The move follows recent Chinese challenges to the status of the dollar as the world's leading international currency.

Mr Lula da Silva, who is visiting Beijing this week, and Hu Jintao, China's president, first discussed the idea of replacing the dollar with the renminbi and the real as trade currencies when they met at the G20 summit in London last month.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:02 AM | Permalink

Tina Brown's Daily Beast on Jon Huntsman, who has just been appointed U.S. Ambassador to China:

Jon Huntsman's decision to take the China ambassadorship follows a calculus that positions him as the Republicans' new maverick--and a presidential contender in 2016.

President Barack Obama pulled off an extraordinary political rendition this week--snatching one of his potential Republican rivals for the 2012 election and shipping him off to China.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:59 AM | Permalink

Micah Sittig introduces Shanghai's observatories and gives tips for watching the sky from the city.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:37 AM | Permalink

From Yahoo / AFP:

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Beijing with 240 business leaders for a visit aimed at boosting trade with China and promoting what he called a "new economic order."

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 4:24 PM | Permalink

Bob Chen at Global Voices Online translates:

Deng Yujiao, a waitress in Hubei Province stabbed an official to death and injured another in resisting their sexual advances. Comments on the internet showed no sympathy with the dead official and generally support the 21-year-old girl, acclaiming that she is another Yang Jia who acted in response to an injustice.

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

Writing in the Bangkok Post, Philip J. Cunningham explains the importance of Zhao Ziyang memoirs, which have just been released:

This revelation serves to balance the public discussion about Tiananmen, a debate long hampered by the paucity of verifiable information from the government side and rather too much information from the student side. The student side of the equation, rich in its tabloid complexity, faults, foibles and all, is well documented, thanks in part to the unblinking glare of the media, and the general accessibility of key personalities, most of whom escaped to the United States.

To a lesser extent, the street-level story of what happened in Beijing in the spring of 1989 can be understood in general terms; multitudinous facets of it have been captured in texts, photos, music, memoir, drama and video footage, with enough over-lapping documentation and corroborative detail to map out a basic chronology, even though interpretations differ and divisive views are not entirely settled.
...
But if our knowledge of what went on in the streets and behind the closed doors of student strategy sessions is incomplete, it is meticulously documented in comparison to what we know of the government's position. This uneven access has led to a media tendency to put undue emphasis on student agency, both in terms of heroics and assigning guilt.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:41 PM | Permalink

As part of the "China at the crossroads" series, diplomatic editor of The Guardian Julian Borger writes about David Miliband's comments about China. The article is also available in Chinese through The Guardian's new Chinese page:

At the G20 summit, some commentators argued that the most important axis was a "G2" of the US and China. Whether that could be expanded to a "G3", Milband argued, would be up to Europe.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Baidu is squeezing its staff in the south of China, reports Loretta Chao at the Wall Street Journal:

Baidu executives declined to comment. Several striking workers, who spoke to The Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity, said that on May 1 Baidu cut the base salaries of sales agents, which averaged about 4,000 yuan ($590), by about 30%. At the same time it raised sales targets and threatened to withhold commissions and dismiss sales agents who failed to meet them.

The company "wants us to feel uncomfortable and choose to leave the company voluntarily," said one of the strikers in Shenzhen, adding that he didn't think negotiations would be easy.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Translations of three news articles on the one-year anniversary of the Wenchuan Earthquake.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:39 AM | Permalink

Zhang Shouwang, lead singer of Beijing rock outfit Carsick Cars and experimental band White, is possibly the most famous musician in the so-called "Beijing underground music scene." Michael Pettis interviews him for the Chinese Esquire.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:38 AM | Permalink

At Newsweek's China Calling blog, Lauren Hilgers writes about a visit to Lin Hao, the young earthquake survivor who's had a rough year dealing with his newfound celebrity status:

The media has been very nice to him, Lin insisted. But they can sometimes bother him. He told me his favorite school subjects were math and athletics, and that in the future he hoped to be an architect. His father, he explained, worked outside of the city on a construction site. "I'm just a normal person," he said, when I asked about all the attention he had gotten over the last year. The child ended the interview on his own, when he asked politely if we could be done so he could go buy a snack.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:31 AM | Permalink

At the moment, there's almost no reason to believe that the United State will occupy a stand-alone pavilion when Expo 2010 opens in Shanghai on May 1, 2010. And though this doesn't seem to be a matter of much concern in the United States, it is a matter of intense concern in Shanghai, and in Beijing, with powerful voices beginning to suggest that the US will suffer real and lasting commercial consequences in China if it doesn't use the next 348 days to rescue its floundering pavilion effort.

Don't miss this post at Shanghai Scrap, in which Adam Minter explains in detail why ground has yet to be broken on the US Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:26 AM | Permalink

Historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom argues in the Christian Science Monitor that the 2010 although "World Expos have been a snooze in the West for decades ... China's first one ever next year will be a wake-up call."

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:53 AM | Permalink

The Guardian reported on a new sex theme park due to open in Chongqing in October. Cankao Xiaoxi published an edited translation. Bruce Humes compares the two versions.

Update (2009.05.18): Too much of a taboo, apparently. Reuters reports that the park was torn down over the weekend.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:50 PM | Permalink

LA Times' Top of the Ticket blog reports that US President Obama will pick Jon M. Huntsman Jr, the Republican governor of the state of Utah, to be the new ambassador to China. Huntsman reportedly learned to speak Mandarin during a stint in Taiwan.

Also in the Salt Lake Tribune, and on James Fallows' blog.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:10 PM | Permalink

C. Custer at the blurb-worthy ChinaGeeks blog translates an excerpt from a post on Ai Weiwei's blog that stresses why the free exchange of ideas and information is so important:

Without your own voice and the free interchange of information, the people, the working class does not exist, the common interests of humanity do not exist, you do not exist. We'll never have real social change, the first step of real social change must be the right to freedom of speech. A society without freedom of speech is a dark society whose underbelly cannot be seen, so dark that everything actually appears bright.

Ai's post has since been removed, but the text can still be found here: How have we fallen to today's state of affairs? (proxy required on the mainland).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:59 PM | Permalink

At Shenzhen Noted, Mary Ann O'Donnell talks to a Shenzhen cabbie about why traffic accidents often remain on the roadway for hours until the police show up:

His discourse lasted about thirty minutes, or the time it took us to crawl from the Mangrove Station offramp to another accident at the entry to Xiasha New Village. Like most populist worldviews, his was a fascinating mix of fact and fiction, liberalism and conservatism. It was also much more entertaining that the traffic report.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:33 PM | Permalink

The New York Times has published an opinion piece by economist Nouriel Roubini, widely credited with predicting the current global financial crisis:

THE 19th century was dominated by the British Empire, the 20th century by the United States. We may now be entering the Asian century, dominated by a rising China and its currency. While the dollar's status as the major reserve currency will not vanish overnight, we can no longer take it for granted. Sooner than we think, the dollar may be challenged by other currencies, most likely the Chinese renminbi.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:34 PM | Permalink

David Bandurski at the China Media Project explains why Chinese government publicity efforts still count as propaganda by translating part of a front-page report from the "May 10 edition of the official Beijing Daily...laying out 'propaganda' guidelines for coverage of the 60th anniversary of the CCP"

The post is a response to Patrick Whiteley's op-ed in the China Daily: Who is really spinning the propaganda?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:50 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

Naked human sculptures, giant replica genitals, a photo exhibition about sex history and sex technique workshops.

China's first sex-themed park has not even opened yet, but the controversial project has already got some people hot under the collar.

Love Land will open in October in the entertainment zone near the Yangtze River in Chongqing.

Lu Xiaoqing, park manager, said Love Land would be useful for sex education and help adults "enjoy a harmonious sex life".

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:02 AM | Permalink

For The China Beat, Thomas S. Mullaney writes about the first Chinese typewriters, and how the west dismissed them:

Despite this long history of technological achievement equal to, if not more impressive than its Roman alphabet counterpart, the Chinese typewriter has remained an icon of backwardness in the West. When it is not openly ridiculed, at most the machine has served as a medium through which artists have explored the comical, the strange, and the ironic, as in the short-lived mystery series "The Chinese Typewriter" starring eighties hearththrob Tom Selleck, the similarly titled film by experimental artist Daniel Barnett, and the carnivalesque ditty "Her Chinese Typewriter" by indie rocker Matthew Friedberger.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Alex W at The Wang Way In reads the ads in the Nanchang Evening News.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:27 AM | Permalink

Many big news organizations are reporting on the publishing of the memoirs, the Chinese version currently available in Hong Kong. From The Guardian:

"People thought Zhao was probably broken and bitter and at the very least had so much surveillance there was no way he could have offered his final word on Tiananmen. But he had - and nobody knew," Adi Ignatius, one of the editors of the English language edition, told the Guardian.

"It will remind people that Tiananmen did not have to end up as it did; it was a power struggle at the top level - nothing to do with putting down a violent rebellion."

The New York Times report is entitled Secret Memoir Offers Look Inside China's Politics, and from John Pomfret's Washington Post blog: Are Zhao's Memoirs Real? Seems So.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:23 AM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

China's efforts to streamline approval procedures for foreign exchange business applications under the capital account category are expected to boost foreign investment into the country, experts said.

The State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) on Wednesday issued a circular giving more power to its local bureaus in approving as many as 10 foreign exchange categories under the capital account.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:12 AM | Permalink

From James Fallows' blog. James Fallows of The Atlantic has been posting about the Chinese education system and today he posts on what the students actually want, taken from a letter from a teacher:

- more of a connection to the real world. They want to have the chance to do community service near their schools, such as tutoring and helping to take care of their elderly, and they also want to take their classes outside of their schools. One of the most impressive examples a student gave me was for an environmental science class being built around an effort to clean up a river, stream, or forest near the school.

- the chance for social development. They want clubs and sports, but they also want things like more free time to spend with their friends, school dances, and for dating to be allowed on campuses. I even had a student say, in full seriousness, that he thought there should be a class teaching students how to interact with the opposite sex.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:11 PM | Permalink

From the Three Cents section of the University of Rochester's website, a repost of Liao's essay about his book, The Big Earthquake, and his tribute to the earthquake victims:

The doctor said that every festival or anniversary has the potential to cause an insurmountable amount of stress for survivors. That reminds me of two lines from a well-known Chinese poem: "A stranger in a foreign land I cast, I miss my family on festival days."

Each time a disaster hits China, we all become refugees and strangers in our own land. The famines of 1959 and 1962 left thirty million dead. The Cultural Revolution caused the deaths of between two and seven million people. The devastating earthquake in Tangshan claimed the lives of 240,000 . . . We survivors struggle on, living meaningless lives like pigs and dogs.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:00 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

The Chinese man flew from Canada, where he was studying, on May 8 and then took a train from Beijing to Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. He was immediately isolated and sent for treatment after reporting flu-like symptoms on the train.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:43 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

... exports dropped 22.6 percent from a year earlier to $91.94 billion in April, the Customs said Tuesday. This was steeper than March's 17.1 percent decline. Imports slumped 23 percent in April, compared with a 25.1 percent decline in March.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:09 PM | Permalink

A spontaneous group mourning took place at Tianfu Square in Chengdu at 2:28 p.m. on May 12 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake: photos and reporting on GoChengdoo.com.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:15 AM | Permalink

From Reuters (via The Washington Post):

"Today is so sad, so heart-breaking. I didn't want to come back here because the place brings back so many bad memories," said Zhou Caigui, a Beichuan native who said he lost over 30 relatives in the disaster.

There are also reports about the one year anniversary from CNN, related report from the BBC, and China Daily.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:23 PM | Permalink

RPC at The Studio of Exhausted Diligence explains Spock's connection to the Chinese National Space Administration.

Also, from Strange Tales from a Modern Chinese Studio, China vs. Star Trek, a comparison of various space agency logos.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:20 PM | Permalink

Recession, shmecession, the champagne life does not stop in Shanghai.

A board game themed on the historical Shanghai Race Club is launching on Sunday with the party presided over by Danny Du, great grandson of famous Shanghai mobster Du Yueshang aka Big Ears Du.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:09 AM | Permalink

Bloggers respond to City of Life and Death and John Rabe, two new movies dealing with the Nanjing Massacre.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:13 PM | Permalink

In Dekisugi Taro's adaptation of Lu Xun's famous essay "In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen," the 22-year-old college student is part of an attempt to assassinate Duan Qirui.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:04 PM | Permalink

Danwei speaks to Richard Burger, the blogger behind The Peking Duck and now an editor at the new English-language Global Times newspaper.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:00 PM | Permalink

Alec Ash at 6 asks a friend of his who's studying at the Foreign Affairs University about the 1999 Belgrade bombing:

3. What might happen now if something similar happened again?

First of all, I think the probability of similar incident is very low at present given the higher recognition of China by the west and broader engagement with the west by China. This is a period of transition, from one that China was criticized on many fronts to one that China is expected to take more responsibility as a "responsible stakeholder". It is vital for China to manage the transitional process by reducing misunderstandings, concerns, or even fears in the west, and it is equally significant for the west to adjust their attitude towards China and "see China in light of its development".

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:08 AM | Permalink

James Kynge in The Financial Times:

China is going continental. Just as the US during the 19th century underwent a transition from export-oriented growth to a greater reliance on inner dynamism, so China is looking inwards for the engine to drive its economy.

In China's case it is still early days, but evidence suggests the conventional view of an export-dependent, river delta-driven economy no longer matches the reality. The argument here is not that trade has somehow become unimportant to China, but rather that the energy generating the world's fastest economic growth rate this year is increasingly coming from within.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:04 AM | Permalink

The Associated Press reports that Mexico has pulled out of the Shanghai trade fair:

Mexico had been planning to showcase its pork products at the Shanghai fair, and China's withdrawal of its guest of honor status fed a growing sense of grievance at anti-flu measures aimed at the Latin American nation, especially flight bans, quarantines and trade bans against its pork products.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:57 AM | Permalink

Peter Ford of The Christian Science Monitor writes about NGOs in light of the earthquake's one year anniversary:

"You have to be strategic in highlighting sensitive issues without irritating government officials," explains Wen Bo, a rising young environmental activist. "If you are seen as a troublemaker ... they will shut your mouth and shut you down," he warns. "NGOs working to improve Chinese society should not work as if they are in the United States."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:42 AM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

The Chinese mainland reported its first suspected case of A(H1N1) Sunday and health authorities quarantined seven people who flew in from North America, raising fears of a possible outbreak.

A 30-year-old man surnamed Bao has tested positive for the H1N1 virus in Sichuan province but the Ministry of Health (MOH) has not confirmed the case. That may be because MOH is conducting further tests, an expert said.

Bao flew from St Louis in the US to Tokyo on Friday. He landed in Beijing from Tokyo on flight number NW029 on Saturday, and took the U8882 flight to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, the same day.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:26 AM | Permalink

Since the incident on May 7th, the killing of Tan Zhuo in Hangzhou has been all over the Internet. From Hecaitou's blog (via ESWN):

Citizens of Hangzhou went to the scene to pay tribute to Tan Zhuo. Clearly, they are unhappy with the car racing that has been going on in this city. For them, the matter is not just pity for a deceased young man. His death symbolizes a certain chronic illness that threatens the lives of everybody in this city. Tan Zhuo is dead, and he could be any citizen. Everybody can face his fate － to walk in your own city, get hit by a young car racer, tossed into the air, spun around, dropped into the ground and then be dead.

There is also a summary on chinaSMACK and in Chinese, on 70km.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:19 AM | Permalink

At The New Yorker blog, Evan Osnos translates from a "new multimedia project" that documents the real lives of the earthquake victims. Amongst the projects, diaries unearthed from the rubble, and an exhibition on May 12:

The most powerful memorial to the children killed last year in collapsing schools in the Sichuan earthquake is the testament they, themselves, produced.

"Ruins--The Memory of Youth" is a chilling new multimedia project that showcases writing recovered from the rubble of the Beichuan Middle School. Scheduled to open, in Beijing, on Sunday, May 12th, the one-year anniversary of the quake, it includes over a thousand photo-booth headshots, class notebooks, and, most affecting, diary entries.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:04 AM | Permalink

From the James Fallows blog, three recommended articles on Chinese education, two of which are "edgy" ones from China Daily.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:44 PM | Permalink

Financial Times journalist Jamil Anderlini was recently in Sichuan, covering post-earthquake Mianzhu. This video shows how an interview with a parent was stopped.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:29 PM | Permalink

Qin Gang, who authored the authoritative book on the Tangshan earthquake of '76, writes at the China Media Project about reporting on collapsed schools almost one year ago.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:28 PM | Permalink

The Economist reviews Jay Taylor of Harvard University's new biography of Chiang Kai-shek:

In imperial China, overthrown rulers were ill-treated in the official histories written by the dynasty that succeeded them. They were blamed for all the evils that justified the transfer of the mandate of heaven. Today, not all Chinese history is written by its latest winners, the Chinese Communist Party. But its victory certainly colours views of the Republican period that preceded the revolution.

One casualty of this has been the reputation of the Republic's leader, Chiang Kai-shek.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:12 PM | Permalink

Gady Epstein at Forbes discusses Gao Zhisheng, rights lawyer who disappeared in February.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:01 PM | Permalink

At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter examines the precarious situation of the United States' disorganized, non-funded expo planning group:

Late yesterday afternoon Expo 2010 organizers announced that all national pavilion construction work must begin by June 30. Those who miss the deadline will not be allowed to build their own pavilions, and must instead seek space in a "standardized" pavilion or use a common pavilion. The statement didn't single out any particular country, but the target of this ultimatum is unmistakably the United States which, along with Andorra and Columbia, is the only country with Chinese diplomatic relations that has not confirmed for the Expo - and perhaps the only nation to have missed multiple fundraising and construction deadlines (set by itself, no less).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:48 PM | Permalink

The Associated Press via Msnbc:

China said Thursday that 5,335 students died or remain missing from last year's Sichuan earthquake, the first official tally for students in what became a politically charged issue because of allegations of shoddy school construction.

No reason was given for the release of the number now, just days before the one-year anniversary of the disaster that launched an outpouring of grief around China and united the country in a massive rescue effort.

You can find a Chinese report on this from Sichuan Online, via QQ. Also, the official China Daily report.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:01 PM | Permalink

The Economic Observer examines whether China Unicom's acquisition of China Netcom last October may have violated the country's new antitrust law:

However, an official from the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), the main agency in-charged of anti-monopoly review, told the Economic Observer that the above companies had yet to submit pre-consolidation filings to the Ministry.

Thus, the merger of the two telecommunication giants was suspected to have breached the Antitrust Law, which came into effect since last August, two months before the consolidation took place.
...
When asked if state-owned companies were exempted from antitrust review, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau under the MOC responded in writing that the Law was applicable to all companies in China, and that both domestic and foreign firms were subjected to the same review procedure under similar standard.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:18 AM | Permalink

Meizhong Guanxi presents an introduction to outspoken economist Mao Yushi and translates an article written for FTChinese that looks back at 1978:

As for considering something as it stands, I didn't feel that I needed to be rehabilitated. Everybody said, 'so-and-so was falsely labeled a rightist.' But I felt that I was correctly labeled a rightist, and it was not at all an injustice. This is because at that time I really did want to take the capitalist road, which could also be called the 'primary stage of socialism' road. Even if I didn't really understand what capitalism or primary stages were at that time, my rightist expressions really did include calling for an increase in prices in response to not being able to buy pork, and other examples. If you say that I wasn't wrong at the time, and there is to be some redress, then it was the Communist party who was wrong. However, up to now, no one has said that the Communist party was wrong at that time. Thus, to say you will rehabilitate me, there is a problem with this logic that has still not been clearly resolved.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:12 AM | Permalink

Mary Ann O'Donnell at Shenzhen Noted introduces a government SMS contest in Shenzhen:

One of the events being promoted by the Shenzhen Bureau of Taxation is citizen participation in the 3rd National Tax Collection Text Message Publicity Contest (第三届全国税收宣传短信大赛). I hadn't realized that the first and second contests had come and gone, but the current contest is open until June 30, 2009. The particularly ambitious can also compete in the ring-tone competition and the multi-media message competition (basically flash for phone), examples here and here, respectively.
...
There are no restrictions on the subject matter of competition text messages, they should be related to tax collection, have less than 70 characters, and share the defining features of a text message, such as brevity (few characters and carefully done), exquisitness (with definite expressive creativity), and humor (interesting and easy to disseminate).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:08 AM | Permalink

Cao Yong, spokesman for pharmaceutical giant Roche in Shanghai, told The China Daily yesterday that "Governments worldwide have already ordered about 220 million doses of" Tamilflu, the anti-viral drug used to treat swine and bird flu:

[Cao] said Roche is also increasing its stocks of the raw materials used in Tamiflu, including the star aniseed spice that produces shikimic acid - the major ingredient in the antiviral drug...

...The ingredient is already the subject of rising prices in a number of Chinese markets, with retailers reporting prices going up from about 9 yuan ($1.3) a kilogram for the spice to as much as 14 yuan a kilogram in places including Shanghai.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:34 PM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has started preparations for a massive military drill in the second half of this year that involves as many as 50,000 troops, sources from the Headquarters of General Staff said here Tuesday.

The drill, dubbed Kuayue-2009, will be undertaken by troops from four military command areas, namely, Shenyang, Lanzhou, Jinan and Guangzhou...

...The drill is aimed at assessing and improving the PLA's overall combat capacity in the context of information warfare, the sources said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:24 AM | Permalink

Author and race-car driver Han Han has a phenomenally popular blog, on which he has just announced his intention to launch a high-paying magazine. Uln at Chinayouren discusses Han Han's popularity and the ideas that are going into the magazine project.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:40 PM | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal writes about guests being quarantined in a hotel in Hong Kong:

David Mahiet, a 32-year-old Frenchman and guest of the Metropark, is more resigned. He was out of the hotel when the quarantine was imposed Friday night. He checked into another hotel. But after talking to staff at the French consulate, Mr. Mahiet decided Saturday to return to the Metropark to do his time.

"It's better for my health and better for Hong Kong city for me to go directly in the hotel, to check if I have the swine flu," he said Saturday after returning to his room, where he has been spending his days smoking cigarettes, watching TV, surfing the Internet and waiting.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:15 PM | Permalink

Imagethief responds to an article in The Australian about Hubei's stimulus plan: ordering officials to smoke more local cigarettes:

It scarce needs be pointed out that ordering local government officials to smoke more is kind of like ordering frat boys to drink more beer － redundant at the best of times. In fact, speaking of drinking, the only thing possibly more ridiculous than ordering local government officials to smoke more would be ordering local government officials to, well, drink more.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:46 AM | Permalink

From China Daily:

China rejected the charge, saying it was not discriminating against Mexicans and called for Mexico to be "objective and calm".

"The measures are not targeted at Mexican citizens, and are not discriminatory. This is purely a question of health inspection and quarantine," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said yesterday.

"China understands the Mexican side's concern for the rights and interests of its citizens in China, and hopes to jointly address the epidemic situation," he said.

Also, from the Double Handshake blog, on how detainees were treated:

Families were paraded out of airplanes as fellow passengers openly gawked. Business men were woken up with flashlights from their hotel beds. The conditions of the hotels used for quarantines have been described as "fairly rundown," serving such appetizing meals as this. John Pomfret of The Washington Post wonders whether or not China would have treated people from developed countries in the same way.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Special Chinese media features on the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement: a new La Jeunesse in Life, a retrospective in The Beijing News, and nine decades of new youth in Esquire.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:13 AM | Permalink

James Fallows posted a comment from a reader who had strong words about the way the Western media reports on Chinese official statements. Xiaoxiao Huang at 3rd Possibility responds:

I am always suspicious of the whole concept of a united "Western Media" against China as if Fox News, Le Monde, and Süddeutsche Zeitung were controlled by a multi-national Central Propaganda Department. As a Communications major, my understanding of the news media is that they should truthfully report and inform to the best of their knowledge. It is not the job of the Western media (or media of any origin) to "encourage" and babysit a foreign country. Maybe it's time that the Chinese try getting used to the fact that every Western country is "unique" as well, some of them believe in things that we do not believe, and it's OK.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:54 AM | Permalink

Holiday Fu has photos from this year's Midi festival, held in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, over the weekend.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:48 AM | Permalink

CNReviews has compiled a directory of 48 female bloggers who write about China in English.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 3:29 PM | Permalink

O'ZINE, a new graphic arts magazine, has some interesting special features in its third issue.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:12 PM | Permalink

The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television handed down a notice in mid-April ordering television stations not to sensationalize celebrity scandals.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:11 PM | Permalink

An introduction to the social satire of graphic novelist CMJ.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:10 PM | Permalink

From AFP:

Mexican diplomats complained bitterly to China on Sunday saying about 70 of their countrymen had been placed under quarantine despite showing no signs of swine flu.

See also: The Wall St. Journal and James Fallows.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:54 AM | Permalink

Isabel Hilton, of Chinadialogue and The Guardian， introduces interviews with student leaders for a big piece before the Tiananmen anniversary:

Last week I listened to a man in his 40s unburden himself of a secret he had carried for two decades. He was a student leader in a major provincial city, and although he was arrested in mid-June 1989, he was released after a month of enforced confessions.

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

C. Custer at China Geeks writes about the 1919 student demonstrations:

On its own, this incident might have simply been one of a great number of incidents sparked by the frustration of Chinese intellectuals and the failures of the national government to prevent imperialist encroachments and warlordism. However, in the days that followed May 4, strikes and rallies in support of the students occurred in cities across China. This prompted the Beijing government to implement a ban on public mass meetings, and the students responded by going on strike. This led to strikes in other cities of both students and workers. In the end, the government bowed to the demands of the demonstrators, Cao Rulin and Zhang Zongxiang were dismissed, and Chinese representatives refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles . Although China's refusal to sign the treaty had no effect on the actual outcome--Shandong was indeed given to Japan--the May 4 demonstration has endured in history as a pivotal moment because it was this event, more than any other, that sparked nationwide organization of the "new intellectuals".

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:29 PM | Permalink

Sinopop reviews a CCTV documentary on 798, the showpiece "cultural production zone" in Beijing:

The documentary is a rather sobering look at the quickly vanishing former life of "798″--Factory 718. In the 1950s it was a state of the art center of production, a place of national pride, and a household name that symbolized a better future. Workers were hand-picked for their class background, plucked from the fields and clad in blue to make radio electronics, among other classified military gear; they worked with some of the most "avant-garde" technologies of the day. Military components aside, none of this sounds unfamiliar with the tourist "cultural production zone" we know as 798.

In the same post, a translation of a history of the factory by Li Yang, translated by Lee Ambrozy.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:04 AM | Permalink

The Spring 2009 issue of the China Left Review features Chinese and English articles on the global financial crisis and its effect on China, China's role in the Middle East, and a variety of other topics.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:57 PM | Permalink

From Taiwan's China Post comes a story that no other sources (including Xinhua) seem to be reporting:

Beijing announced rules that ease controls on foreign financial information providers Thursday under an agreement with the United States, Europe and Canada but said those already operating in China must apply for permission to continue.

If this story is correct, it's the second victory in a struggle that the foreign wire services have been waging for over a decade.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:37 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

With a case of influenza A/H1N1 confirmed in a flight coming from Mexico, the Chinese government has decided to suspend flights from Mexico to Shanghai in east China, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

For detail and commentary on the cause of the flight suspension, see Adam Minter: Fever (even) When You Hold Me Tight: Shanghai's unmistakable H1N1-related PR mistake?

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:55 AM | Permalink