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Rebecca MacKinnon summarizes some of the issues under discussion at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers of interest to China: ICANN's relationship with the US government, generic top level domains, and "internationalized" TLDs written in extended character sets.
Chris at cdrum sells his motorbike at the Beijing Vehicle Management Center.
The Taipei Times (via AsiaMedia) reports that the China Daily has appealed General Information Office's recovation of its publication license. The GIO felt that the paper was part of a "united front tactic" against the island:
The newspaper's agent, CF Books Co, received permission from the GIO on July 1 last year to introduce the Hong Kong edition to Taiwan for a year, and sent an average of 1,000 newspapers free of charge to colleges, academic institutions, local officials and government institutions. The permission was revoked by the commission on May 19 after a review.
...
Among the reasons used to revoke the permission was that reports continually referred to President Ma Ying-jeou as "Taiwan leader," put in brackets the terminologies representing Taiwan's sovereignty, place news about Taiwan and Hong Kong on the same page, and its weather information showed Taiwan was part of China, Cheng said.
ESWN translates an essay that ran in the China Youth Daily that reads the Transformer movies as tools to burnish the image of the American military:
At the beginning of the movie, the American military and the Autobots were fighting the Decepticons in the streets of Shanghai. The Egyptian air force and the American military attacked the Decepticons on the pyramid together. Actually, we observe the typical thinking of the American military: no matter whether it is the yet-to-happen alien invasion of Earth, or the regional conflicts or human wars on Earth, the best guarantee for world security and defending human civilization is to unite politically with America at the core and to have the American military as the command center.
From AP:
Air China will begin offering direct flights from Beijing to Tibet this month, shaving two hours off the current travel time in a bid to boost tourism, state media said Wednesday.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the new service to Tibet's capital of Lhasa will depart Beijing daily from July 10. Currently, all flights to Lhasa are routed through Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern China's Sichuan province.
Xinhua said the new service was designed to boost tourism in the Himalayan region. The industry took a major hit following the riots in March 2008 when Tibetans protesting Beijing's rule attacked Chinese migrants and torched much of Lhasa's commercial district.
Quake fears, anxiety over ethnic unrest, and a hunger for development have spurred authorities in Kashgar to launch plans to demolish and redevelop 85% of the Old City. Phoenix Weekly takes a look back.
Danwei interviews Li Xin, an editor at the English and international desk of Caijing magazine.
If you've got a grievance against local officials, here's another reason not to take your case to the national petition system: you may end up derailing your child's dreams of studying law enforcement in college.
Hong Kong University asks applicants for their views on the Green Dam controversy.
A student in Sichuan answered the essay question on the college entrance exam in ancient characters. Another student wrote a long classical poem. A middle school student wrote in English.
With Yao Ming's career on the brink, Austin Ramzy at Time gives his career and his fans a once-over:
Granted, Yao's star has faded slightly in China, his jersey being outsold in recent years by other NBA stars like Kobe Bryant. But he is still closely followed. "I'm so bummed out about his injury," says Yan Xin, 27, a Yao fan who never misses a Rockets game when they are televised in China. "In hindsight, he should have just focused on the NBA, and not be forced to play for the Chinese national team. I can't imagine how anyone can deal with such overwhelming pressure and intense schedules."
The Shanghaiist aggregates news about Hong Kong's protest today:
"Through this event, we hope to encourage the people of Hong Kong to commemorate the 12 years since reunification and at the same time look forward to the future," Cheng said.
Asked if the July 1 pro-democracy march would counteract the spirit of unity generated by the parade, Cheng said: "Hong Kong is a city of free expression...it is normal for people to express their opinions and differences."
The New York Times reports that Morgan Tsvangirai, prime minister of Zimbabwe and political rival to president Robert Mugabe, has obtained a package of loans worth US$950 million from China:
Mr. Tsvangirai said Tuesday that the finance minister he had appointed, Tendai Biti, had negotiated the loan package with China. Details of the deal were scant, and Chinese officials could not be reached to confirm the deal or to comment on it.
Officials close to Mr. Tsvangirai said they believed that at least some of the financing would be provided on the condition that the money was spent on Chinese goods, like fertilizer.
bezdomny ex patria looks at a post by blogger Yang Hengjun that describes a car accident in Xi'an:
A very weak-looking local woman, a clearly visible white BMW from another province, a group of locals looking on, the situation did not look very favourable for that BMW driver. But what surprised me was most of the onlookers stayed silent and the few locals who did speak were not speaking up for the woman.
Despite its complete confidence in the product, a claimed 90% filter rate against porn, total respect for intellectual property, dismissal of WTO concerns, and discussions with computer manufacturers stretching back to March, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has declared that today's deadline for installation of the Green Dam-Youth Escort content filter is postponed, with no new deadline given. Reuters reports.
China Daily has more.
China Law Blog says I told you so.
Te-Ping Chen writes for Slate about the counterfeit cigarette industry in Yunxiao, Fujian Province.
The Atlantic's James Fallows has left China － in this blog post he misses not tipping and hopes that the people on top of the Beijing U.S. embassy will predict some positive weather for Beijing on Twitter soon.
The Financial Times is reporting that computer retailers in Beijing aren't expecting PCs equipped with the Green Dam-Youth Escort software until several weeks after the official deadline of July 1:
Staff selling Lenovo, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Acer, Asustek and Founder computers at a branch of Suning, a big electronics retailer in northern Beijing, all said Green Dam-equipped PCs would not be available for about another two months.
An information technology ministry spokesman declined to comment on whether the government would penalise PC makers who failed to comply with the July 1 deadline.
Some retail staff said they did not expect the government to enforce its order strictly.
Rebecca MacKinnon writes about more documents to do with the Green Dam: from Sony, who has gone ahead with including the software in their products, and a letter composed in protest to Premier Wen:
So it appears that Sony has gone ahead with distribution of Green Dam on at least some of its computers sold in China, providing the program on the hard disk for the user to install if they want, with major disclaimers.
Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that a broad coalition of international business associations, including most of the world's major technology companies have issued an appeal directly to Premier Wen Jiabao.
From AFP:
China boosted state-set gasoline and diesel prices Tuesday to reflect rising global crude costs.
The retail price of gasoline rose by 8.6 percent and that of diesel by 9.6 percent, the country's planning agency announced. It said the step, the fourth change in prices this year, was meant to allow prices to fluctuate as crude costs change.
The WSJ's China Journal reports on new rules prohibiting the use of virtual currency to buy actual goods:
Among the other highlights: The regulations state that online currency issuers should refund the unused virtual money of their users if their products or services are terminated for some reason. Virtual currency is to be used only to purchase other goods or services from the company that issued the virtual money and it may not be used to buy virtual items from any other company other than the original issuer. Companies already involved in virtual currency trading are required to register with the local cultural affairs bureau within three months.
The Global Times writes about the King of Pop and his fans in China:
"If you were young and sensitive to rhythm, you would surely fall in love with his music," said 41-year-old Wang Xiaofeng, a well-known music critic, while describing the heat Jackson created at his heyday.
In the summer of 1986, Wang got a copy of Jackson's songs from his schoolmate who had managed to buy the album from an exhibition of audio and video products.
"In the first few minutes, his music got me," said Wang, "I had no idea about rock'n'roll until that moment."
Guo Jian, professor of English and Chinese at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and co-editor of Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, has posted a number of papers to the TECN academic website.
Others include:
The Global Times reports on allegations concerning the connection between industrial pollution and thyroid tumors in Dongming County, Shandong Province. The local government had dismissed online discussion last week as rumors, but the case has attracted high-level attention:
According to a report yesterday by the Southern Metropolis Daily, the petition was started by a few retired teachers. The deputy county mayor of Dongming talked to them three times to no avail. The local petitioners don’t believe the statistics of the local environment watchdog because, they said, the authorities are on the side of the chemical plants.
Yu Guoming, deputy dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that the official feedback to the public opinion “is not at all timely, allowing negative reports to grow and losing the best opportunities to guide public opinion.”
“The feedback is general and does not address specific public concerns,” Yu said.
China Sports Review describes the process a CFA player must go through to be transferred to another team:
Different from FIFA’s current Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, it stipulates a player needs to wait 30 months after his contract runs out at a club to become a free agent, a period of time spanning across three seasons....If a player hands in a transfer request to his club and the club wants to keep him. Chances are he can still be transfer listed, but the sky-high price tag will only keep interested buyers away.
Xinhua reports that Han-Uighur violence in Shaoguan was predicated on a rumor:
The brawl left two Xinjiang workers dead and another 118 injured.
A post on a local website that said "Six Xinjiang boys raped two innocent girls at the Xuri Toy Factory" caused the brawl, a municipal government spokesman said.
Police found that the former worker of Xuri, surnamed Zhu, faked the information to express his discontent as Zhu failed to get re-employed after quitting the job.
Police found no rape cases at the Xuri Toy Factory.
ESWN has earlier reports and photos.
FEER's Traveller's Tales blog finds a restaurant sign in Vienna that's in very poor taste.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair blog, Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, relates some experiences during a "journey of literary discovery" to Beijing, including:
On Sunday night, our group met with four Chinese writers discusses the Chinese concept of culture. While the conversation ranged over a wide variety of topics, from Mao and communism, to the capitalist economic explosion that’s embracing China and diverting young people away from literature, the panelists unselfconsciously referred to themselves as “intellectuals.”
· The “C” Word:
If the Chinese delegation that’s going to attend Frankfurt is smart, they will host at least one panel that addresses the topic head on. “Is there Censorship in China?” sounds perfect. If they don’t, they risk making it the only topic that gets written about their stint as Guest of Honor at the Fair.
My impression of the Chinese publishing scene is that it’s a bit like like sitting down to a Chinese banquet : It’s all a bit foreign, a bit familiiar, and everything is so appetizing that it’s hard to know where to start. There are some 225,000 books published in China each year — about the same number as in the US, provided you discount self-published titles — and some 6,000 publishers. So, a few impressions….
Adam Cathcart at the Sinologistical Violoncellist blog muses on the development of contemporary French attitudes toward China (and Chinese attitudes toward France):
I think that one unintended consequence of China's massive rise as an economic powerhouse is that sympathy for China among the French left has eroded completely. Does any self-respecting French communist, much less a reader of the (quite-well written) leftist daily papers like L'Humanite or Liberation really have hope for socialism in China? In the 1950s and 1960s, some French saw China as a major source of revoutionary theory and socialist creativity. (On the other hand, French correspondent Robert Guillain coined the decidedly unfriendly term "army of blue ants" to describe how Mao was organizing society.) During the Cultural Revolution, a French film studio even produced "Red Guards Occupy Paris" in a type of praise for student activism. Today, in the aftermath of Tiananmen's disappointing fussilades, the French left appears to have divested itself permanently from association from a People's Republic with whose agenda it has little in common. To them, the combination of economic growth with political repression is, simply, repugnant.
A mosaic of Chinese newspaper covers marking the death of the international pop star.
Martial arts novelist Jin Yong is joining the China Writers' Association and is rumored to be in line for a vice-chairmanship. Good news? Or one last bid for relevance by a dying organization?
Analyzing Tu Yuangao's suicide note in the context of the Shishou riots.