Must-read China news by Danwei

The Hummer is a type of car previously associated with General Motors, it was bought by China this week. From L.A. Times:

The news has propelled Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co. onto the radar screen of auto enthusiasts worldwide. And it underscores China's growing economic might at a time when U.S. industrial prowess is flagging.

China is already the U.S. government's largest creditor and the largest foreign provider of manufactured goods to the U.S. Now a Chinese firm is the first to salvage a piece of a fallen U.S. titan -- a point of no small pride for many in China.

The new owners are planning to push sales of the gargantuan vehicle here, where it is already a status symbol for China's newly rich.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:22 PM | Permalink

ChinaSMACK translates netizen comments about whether singer Gong Mi has had plastic surgery to make her look more like Cecilia Cheung.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:13 PM | Permalink

From the Financial Times:

Rio will pay a $195m break fee to Chinalco, the mining group's largest shareholder with close to a 10 per cent stake, for abandoning a deal for the Chinese aluminium group to buy $7.2bn in Rio's convertibles bonds and inject a further $12.3bn for stakes in a number of assets, including Rio's Western Australia iron ore operations.

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

Malcolm Moore writes at his Telegraph blog some ponderings about why the government won't address 6-4, and records the positions of Politburo members in 1989:

Although the student protests were much wider than just in Beijing, they were brief and neither the protests nor the subsequent suppression affected large numbers of Chinese.

And while it may seem to us that it would be politically advantageous to 'fess up to what happened, it could create tensions and accusations within the Communist Party about who did what and when.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:30 AM | Permalink

From The Economist:

The unrest in China 20 years ago was also fuelled by anger over corruption and other official misconduct. But the party has less to fear now. Discontent is mainly directed at the actions of local bureaucrats rather than national leaders. The Deng Yujiao case has not led to calls for an end to one-party rule, only for more enlightened government. To the extent that officials do sometimes cave in to online sentiment, change is already happening. The danger now, as an article on a Chinese legal website argued, is of trials by the media.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:14 AM | Permalink

The New York Times features a previously-unreleased photo of the Tank Man taken at street-level.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:48 AM | Permalink

Go Kunming wraps up the case of two girls arrested for prostitution in March, apparently on fabricated charges:

When police from the Wangjiaqiao police station were dispatched to the scene of the dispute, the Lius and the police reportedly experienced "friction", which the Lius believe offended the police station.

Afterward, police claim that a foot officer and two officers in training were propositioned by Liu Fangfang, who reportedly asked "Do you want to play?" ("要不要耍一下?"). While waiting for police from the Wangjiaqiao police station with the authority to arrest to arrive, the officer and cadets allegedly saw a man in his 30s enter an apartment with Liu.

Even the China Daily has weighed in on the case.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:50 PM | Permalink

James Fallows at The Atlantic blog writes about his experiences in the square last night, and warnings to those who are about to go:

There are more representatives in all categories -- soldiers, police, obvious plainclothesmen -- than I recall seeing even during the Tibet violence in early 2008 or through the Olympic games. Also many people whom you would normally classify as fruit vendors, tourists from the Chinese provinces, youngish white collar workers male and female, and skateboarder-looking characters wearing cargo shorts and with fauxhawk haircuts, were last night walking up and down the sidewalks with their eyes constantly on visitors and drifting up next to people who were holding conversations.

The way to avoid their attention is keep moving briskly along the sidewalk rather than stopping as if you think there is something particular to look at in the square today. The way to draw it is to stop and look around, to pay attention to the security forces themselves, or to have a camera in your hand. If the camera comes out, it may be pointed at one of the scenic highlights in the center of the square

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

At Six, Alec Ash discusses how PKU students engage with politics:

What strikes me in terms of students speaking out openly is the absence not only of the anti-authority voices which identified their predecessors twenty years ago, but the absence of any kind of open engagement with contemporary politics that you expect in a top university, and see in universities everywhere else in the world. Their silence over the Sun Dongdong incident on their own campus is a good example.
...
This all isn't to say, of course, that there's no kind of political discussion going on about the "incident" in Beida. There's a lot. It just isn't out in the open air for the world - and it's reporters - to witness. It's in quiet dorms and crowded canteens.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:22 PM | Permalink

At The China Beat, Robert Bickers presents the history of China's most famous beer:

Tsingtao Beer was never formally German (in fact, until 1915 it was not even Tsingtao Beer). The Anglo-German Brewery Co. Ltd was established in August 1903 as a British company, under Hong Kong ordinances, and was chaired at Shanghai by a Scotsman, with (by 1915) 60 per cent German, 40 per cent British and other share ownership (including 5 per cent owned by the French religious orders). Of course, the Manager and the Brewmaster were German, and the inability to run the brewery without a German brewmaster was why it failed to present it as entire free of German interests in 1915, and so fell into Japanese hands with the blessing of British diplomats.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:03 AM | Permalink

Twitter and Flickr are inaccessible from the mainland.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:34 PM | Permalink

Dan Edwards writes for the New Matilda an article that uses his interviews with two survivors. One recounts the night of June the third:

When the massacre began at Muxidi, Liu was at the demonstrators' makeshift HQ on top of the Monument to the People's Heroes in the centre of Tiananmen Square. "The first news about shooting came around 10:00pm," he says. "We were really shocked. We couldn't believe they were really shooting -- there were rumours they were just rubber bullets -- until we saw people bleeding. The first wounded appeared on the square around 11.30pm. Around the same time there was battle around Jinshui Qiao [a small footbridge immediately in front of Tiananmen gate at the top of the Square]. They set fire to a military truck. But that vehicle had come from the east, not the west."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:45 PM | Permalink

The latest development in a peculiar online meme focused on Super Girl Li Yuchun casts her as a messiah.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:11 PM | Permalink

Chengdu-based Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company is the buyer for GM's Hummer, one of the units the bankrupt American auto-maker is selling off. The New York Times reports that should the deal go through, it will "make Tengzhong the first Chinese company to sell vehicles in North America":

"The Hummer brand is synonymous with adventure, freedom and exhilaration, and we plan to continue that heritage by investing in the business, allowing Hummer to innovate and grow in exciting new ways under the leadership and continuity of its current management team," Yang Yi, the chief executive of Tengzhong, said in a statement released by G.M. "We will be investing in the Hummer brand and its research and development capabilities, which will allow Hummer to better meet demand for new products such as more fuel-efficient vehicles in the U.S."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:54 AM | Permalink

The Financial Times reports on media blackouts in China leading up to tomorrow's anniversary:

BBC News broadcasts were blacked out in Beijing on Monday night. Last Saturday's edition of the Financial Times, which contained an interview with Bao Tong, the most prominent Tiananmen-era dissident still residing in China, was either not delivered to subscribers or censored. Mr Bao was an aide to Zhao Ziyang, the late party general secretary purged in May 1989 for opposing the violent crackdown. Copies of the International Herald Tribune and Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, which has dedicated extensive coverage to the anniversary, have been shredded. The government has censored Tiananmen-related stories on www.ftchinese.com, the FT's Chinese language website.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Jonna Wibelius at SHE in China gets stuck in a train station toilet stall.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:07 AM | Permalink

The Foreign Expert translates a Y Weekend article about the problem of people speaking something other than Mandarin in the workplace:

A woman who used to work at a Fortune 500 company was sought out by a Shanghai company to receive a high salary as a project manager; in just three days she just put in her resignation. Her reason was that two-thirds of the people in the office all like to use Shanghai dialect to talk to each other; lunch time is even more so, "everywhere a potpourri of bird languages" -- this is a language barrier that she never expected before coming to work for this company. She did not want to spend her after-business hours enrolled in Shanghai dialect classes, so she had no choice but to change her environment and start over again.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:41 AM | Permalink

Twitter, and a host of other foreign hosted websites went down today.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:00 PM | Permalink

Ma Jian writes for The Guardian (article blocked in China) a tale about his experiences in 1989 and when he went back to the square before the Olympics to interview some survivors. As well as the point-of-view of students, he also visited a soldier, who was 17 years-old at the time:

Chen Guang's flat in Tongxian is in an anonymous modern block. In the middle of his stark room was a plastic bucket filled with his cigarette stubs; the white walls were hung with green swirling paintings of tanks, helmeted soldiers and flattened tents.

He gave me a glass of water and confessed that in 1989 he had joined the army. He was just 17. Within a few months of conscription, his regiment - number 62 - was sent to Beijing to help quash the student movement. On 3 June his fellow soldiers received orders to disguise themselves as civilians, make their way independently to the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square, and await the signal to drive the students out.

"There were 7,000 of us," he told me, lighting a new cigarette from the glowing stub of his last one, "and I was given the job of transporting our 4,000 assault rifles to the Great Hall. I dressed myself up as a student and loaded the guns on to a public bus the army had appropriated. As the driver edged through the packed crowds of students on Changan Avenue, I was terrified that they might jump up and spot the rifles stacked along the floor, so I leaned out and gave them a cheerful victory sign.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:52 PM | Permalink

The World Bank's China Director has been named by Timothy Geithner as "economic and financial emissary to China." David Dollar was formerly an Assistant Professor of Economics at UCLA and a Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and keeps a blog called East Asia & Pacific on the Rise. (via China Law Blog)

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

Aimee Barnes concludes a three-part series on dealing with the law in China as a foreigner:

Although I am sure that you are avoiding areas of protest and have resisted whipping out your camera to take pictures of ceremonial military drills, expect an increased security presence, more arrests, and tighter restrictions on expatriates between now and mid-October. While common sense is often the best guide to staying out of trouble, accidents do happen and legitimate crimes are committed by foreign passport holders, as outlined in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. If you happen to find yourself in hot water, what are your legal rights in China? What's the best way to escape a bad situation relatively unscathed? And, who can you reach out to for help? The conclusion of this series explores answers to these questions. Consider it a cheat sheet for making a potentially awful day just a little bit easier.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:57 AM | Permalink

Interviews with the editor-in-chief and publisher of the new magazine, which aims "bring China to the world," and is targeted at Chinese who are living abroad as well as an international audience.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:28 AM | Permalink

Rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan discusses Ai Weiwei's visit from the police.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:26 AM | Permalink

From The Age:

Businessman Ian Melrose will spend about $200,000 [USD 161,000] this week on a TV advertising campaign using images of the Tiаnanmen Squаre massacre to reinforce opposition to a Chinese company increasing its stake in Rio Tinto.

With the Government's decision on the Chinalco bid very close, the advertisement says it would be wrong to approve it.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:18 PM | Permalink

ChinaGeeks translates a sixteen-point list of historical observations that should get you on your way to becoming a government historian:

6. In China before 1949, everyone who broke the laws, every thief and murderer was a rebel opposing the wicked ruling party. After 1949, they were were all class enemies, counterrevolutionaries, and after 1976 they were criminals.

7. The collapse of every single dynasty was because of the corruption of the ruling class.

8. At the beginning of every dynasty new ruling measures were adopted that were a step forward and should be regarded as positive; whatever measures they adopted towards the end were reactionary and should be firmly condemned.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:55 PM | Permalink

From China Bystander, speculation about whether Kevin Rudd will take the Guantanamo Bay Uighurs:

The Gitmo Uighurs, captured in Afghanistan in 2001, were cleared for release in 2004 after being cleared of links to terrorism. Albania took five but U.S. appeals to other countries to take some have fallen on deaf ears - or at least been drowned out Chinese warnings not to.

Australia's foreign minister Stephen Smith has played a straight bat so far: "We will consider these individuals on a case-by-case basis in accordance with our immigration law, in accordance with our domestic and international immigration obligations," he said and added "where it is appropriate, take into account security advice and considerations."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:19 PM | Permalink

At Frog in a Well, Alan Baumler writes about Imperial University students during the reigns of Emperors Huan and Ling who protested against corruption and favoritism:

Of course the students lost, and many of them and many of those they supported in the regular bureaucracy were purged in 169. As became normal in Chinese politics the losers were accused of forming a faction (部黨). This was a serious accusation, since there was no tradition of loyal dissent in China. Just as there was little hope that Zhao Ziyang and the student protesters at Tiananmen would be able to work out a compromise that would preserve both the party and the students' principles there was not much possibility that that bureaucracy and the eunuchs were going to work out an accommodation. Both were competing to be the exemplars of virtue for the empire, and there could be only one of them.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:04 PM | Permalink

Reuters' Andrew Roche was detained whilst with activists in 1989: he recounts 14 hours of incarceration with the secret police who sliced open his shirt and made him write a self-criticism:

A knife sliced off every shirtbutton, right through the cloth. Years would pass before I understood why.

Things went downhill. The vehicle ploughed into a crowd, who guessed it was a secret police car. There were angry shouts of "They've got a prisoner!" and, I think, from my view under the blindfold, someone out there brandishing a petrol bomb.

Oh no, I thought, the mob's going to set fire to the car and, pinioned blind in the middle, I'll be last one out. Or rather, the last one left in. I'm only 28 and it's all over because of a pro-democracy pyromaniac. And Reuters owes me annual leave.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:36 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

Visiting US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to reassure China of the safety of its investments in the US and resist the temptation of trade protectionism -- crucial to woo further Chinese lending to the world's largest borrower.

Geithner, who arrived in Beijing Sunday on his first trip as Treasury chief, is expected to meet with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, as well as deliver a speech at Peking University.

Observers say Geithner's top priority would be to persuade Chinese policymakers to continue the purchase of US Treasuries, vital for Barack Obama's administration to finance its stimulus plan and pull the US economy out of recession.

However, Xinhua published the comments of professors who say that large holdings of US bonds might be detrimental to China, via People's Daily Online, who quotes the Global Times.

Also, Happy International Children's Day.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:27 AM | Permalink

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