Learn English with Obama
John Pasden of Sinosplice finds two Obama-related English language textbooks.
« May 10, 2009 - May 16, 2009 | Main | May 24, 2009 - May 30, 2009 »
May 23, 2009
Child abandonment: rumors from the interior
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.
32 people freed in new brick kiln slave case
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.
May 22, 2009
Taiwan DPP leader in Beijing
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.
What to expect from the new US ambassador
Danwei talks to Hank Levine, formerly of the US State Department, about Jon Huntsman Jr., the incoming US ambassador to China.
Shantou earphone factory fire kills 13
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.
The Economist on CCTV's burned out tower
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.
China trains first batch of female copter pilots
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.
Propaganda chief to state-owned publishers: get a life
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.
China's global media push
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.
May 21, 2009
Old books recovered
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."
China ex-censor claims role in Zhao memoirs
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.
Fifth China H1N1 case is in Beijing
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.
How China's latest Internet hero will test the rule of law
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.
Maiden flight of China-assembled Airbus
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.
May 20, 2009
Super Girls returns, renamed and purified
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.
Should museums charge foreigners to enter?
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?
Singapore promotes Mandarin
"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.
A news weekly that believes in China
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.
China signs $10 bln loan-for-oil deal with Brazil
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.
Chinagrass: music by Mamer and Hanggai
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.
May 19, 2009
A chat with CDT's Sophie Beach
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.
Kashgar multiplied by five hundred
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.
The democracy movement since 1989
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).
TechCrunch's mutable story on Sequoia China
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.
Brazil and China to abandon dollar for two way trade?
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.
New U.S. Ambassador: the next McCain?
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.
Shanghai is not a good place to do astronomy
Micah Sittig introduces Shanghai's observatories and gives tips for watching the sky from the city.
May 18, 2009
Brazilian president Lula in Beijing to promote "new economic order"
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."
Support for waitress who stabbed Hunan official
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.
The culpability of those most culpable
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.
UK foreign minister calls China an indispensible power
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.
Striking workers file complaint against Baidu
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.
One year after the quake
Translations of three news articles on the one-year anniversary of the Wenchuan Earthquake.
Music and poetry from the streets and factories
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.
China's smallest hero, one year later
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.
Why can't the US find $61 million for an Expo 2010 pavilion?
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.
Expo to be a wake up call?
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."
May 17, 2009
Sex in China: just how much of a taboo is it?
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.