One year after the bag ban
China Dialogue talks with various experts about China's restrictions on plastic bags, which went into effect on July 1, 2008.
« June 28, 2009 - July 4, 2009 | Main | July 12, 2009 - July 18, 2009 »
July 11, 2009
A US Expo 2010 pavilion, after all
Shanghai Scrap gives the latest updates behind the long-delayed US pavilion for Shanghai's World Expo in 2010:
The July 1 appointment of Jose Villarreal as Commissioner General to the US pavilion effort seems to have changed the equation. A lawyer with ties to the Clintons, Secretary of State Clinton empowered him to oversee the US effort. He didn’t waste any time, either, arriving in Shanghai on Monday, and managing to pull of the signing on Friday. One person familiar with Villarreal’s role described it as the arrival of an “adult” to a chaotic situation that badly needed one. Indeed, if there’s one telling detail to the handful of official and press accounts of yesterday’s signing, it’s the total absence of the Shanghai Expo, Inc. members from the official comments and photos
Ethnic breakdown for deaths in Urumqi riots
China's latest official figures say that 184 people died in the Urumqi riots, the New York Times reports:
Friday was the first time that the government had given an ethnic breakdown of the dead. According to Xinhua, the state news agency, 137 of those killed were Han, 46 were Uighur and 1 was from the Hui ethnic group.
For much of the past week, the official death toll from the initial rioting last Sunday was put at 156, and Uighurs and Han had both claimed that the toll was much higher, and that deaths from each of their groups predominated.
The Times also has a profile of Xinjiang party secretary Wang Lequan.
At the Xuri toy factory in Shaoguan
The Global Post reports on current conditions for Uighur workers at the Xuri toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong, where a brawl late last month set the stage for this month's violence in Xinjiang.
July 10, 2009
Murdering Murderer
The Golden Rock doesn't like the new Aaron Kwok horror film Murderer (杀人犯):
As a Chinese person, if I sat down in a movie theater and saw a movie with Caucasian actors taping their eyes to appear slanted speaking fake “ching-chong” Chinese and making each other eat “fried lice” for 120 minutes, I would only have half the anger and shock I did coming out of Roy Chow’s Murderer.
Kozo at LoveHKFilm has a longer review that largely concurs, but reveals little more of the plot. Guess we'll just all have to sit through it.
6.0 earthquake shakes Yunnan
Go Kunming reports on an earthquake:
A 6.0 magnitude tremor rattled Yao'an County (姚安) in Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture yesterday, with damage reports only just beginning to be released to local media. As of 12:00 am today, more than 620,000 people have been affected by the quake, with 56 seriously injured and 28 lightly injured.
More details at China Daily and Bloomberg.
A letter from Kashgar
The New Dominion posts a letter from a foreign traveller currently in Kashgar, Xinjiang.
July 9, 2009
A botany degree for Deng Yujiao
Fu Dezhi wants to recruit Deng Yujiao, the waitress who stabbed an official to death, to study for a degree in botany.
The hemp farmers of Jilin
Twelve families in rural Jilin Province were nabbed in a huge drug bust that involved a large-scale marijuana growing, processing, and distribution operation stretching from Jilin to Xinjiang.
Biased reporting about Xinjiang
Netizens in China are once again on the case of what they perceive as biased reporting from the Western media about ethnic incidents in China. From the China Daily via Xinhua:
"The whole news structure shows that CNN is like the propaganda machine for the World Uyghur Congress, other Chinese are completely silenced, and how can the world learn about the whole truth in this way?" a netizen said.
In using the videos provided by Chinese media, the Western media coupled them with biased commendatory that the Chinese government is suppressing ethnic minority groups and transferring huge numbers of Han Chinese into Xinjiang to dilute the Uyghur culture .
Cat snatching in Shanghai
The Shanghaiist reports on some wily cat-snatchers going around with cages and sparrows.
Grief in China's ethnic strife
The New York Times Edward Wong interviews a family from Henan who lost their son during Sunday's riots in Xinjiang:
She cried for three hours until she dared go out to look for him.
“I thought, if I don't find a body, then maybe he’s in hiding and still alive,” she said. “But I quickly found the body.”
Mr. Lu's father identified his son on Wednesday from a photograph at a police station.
"After we cremate the body, we’ll go home with the ashes," Ms. Zhang said. The father stared at cigarette butts strewn across the floor. "We'll never come back," he said.
Liu Zaifu on Eileen Chang
A lengthy essay by critic Liu Zaifu on Eileen Chang's fiction, its appraisal by C.T. Hsia, and the distinction Hsia draws between communist and non-communist writers, appears in a translation by Yunzhong Shu at the MCLC Resource Center:
Isn't it a tragedy that a writer who had remained intent on writing about eternal human nature and achieved her success by resisting the dominant political trend of her time ended up using her fiction as political propaganda? It can be said that as she wrote Love in Redland Eileen Chang had lost her aesthetic, artistic direction, because what she wrote by order was precisely what she had been opposed to ten years earlier. So Love in Redland marks an unfortunate deviation in her career as a literary genius.
Four Rio Tinto employees detained for spying
Four employees of Australian mining company Rio Tinto, three Chinese and one Australian, have been detained on suspicion of espionage, CNN reports. This comes after the company broke off a proposed deal with Chinalco, but Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith played down suggestions of a connection:
Smith brushed aside speculation that the detentions are linked to the deal.
"I've seen no evidence and I have no basis for any such speculation," he said. "But I do underline that when our officials were advised of the reasons for the detention, that came as a surprise to us, as it came as a surprise to Rio Tinto, Mr. Hu's employer."
July 8, 2009
Two restraints + one leniency
DJ at Fool's Mountain translates an article by an ethnic Han who grew up in Xinjiang's Production and Construction Corps that describes how minority policy backfires.
Anger on the internet during Uighur clashes
Malcolm Moore of the Daily Telegraph writes about Chinese Internet reactions on the Xinjiang conflict.
Moore is also updating his Twitter feed with the latest from Xinjiang.
"Crack down upon mafia-like groups"
Public security minister Meng Jianzhu spoke about the need to prevent gangster groups from infiltrating the political sector, Xinhua reports:
Police authorities should target on major gangster groups and root out the "protective umbrella" behind them, the police chief said.
Police forces should prevent Communist Party and government officials from being corrupted by those underworld organizations, and also prevent those organizations from manipulating grassroots elections and other political issues by violence, threats and bribery, Meng said.
Iraqi oil goes to China
Forbes reports that Chinese oil companies are moving quickly for follow-up bids following a license granted to China to develop an oilfield in Iraq:
The consortium formed by CNPC and BP ( BP - news - people ) won a contract to develop the Rumaila oilfield in southeast Iraq, the largest known oilfield in Iraq, discovered in 1950s. According to CNPC’s announcement, the alliance was granted a 20-year technical service contract, with a possible 5-year extension thereafter.
Images from Tuesday Urumqi demonstrations
The New Dominion discusses the "woman vs. armed police" photograph from Urumqi.
July 7, 2009
Riots in Xinjiang and the price of omission
Imagethief looks at the narratives of the riots in Xinjiang:
...to summarize, in the broad Western media narrative, Uighurs ground down by decades of colonial oppression and incited by racism have erupted in rebellion. In the one told by Chinese media, "splittists" let by the Uighur exile Rebiyаh Kаdeer have engineered an outbreak of groundless violence (中) directed largely at innocent ethnic Han.
Condensing as they must a long and complicated history from different political points of view, both narratives are hobbled. The Western narrative is hobbled by a reflexive sympathy for any group arrayed in opposition to a Chinese state that is well established in the role of bogeyman.... The Chinese narrative is hobbled by a national myth-making apparatus that allows no room whatsoever for the acnowledgment of Uighur grievances.
Fresh protests in Xinjiang
From The Guardian, both in audio and text:
Chinese armed police and Uighurs clashed in extraordinary scenes in the capital of the north-western region of Xinjiang this morning – two days after at least 156 people were killed in vicious ethnic violence.
Uighur residents erupted into protests during an official media tour of the riot zone in the face of hundreds of officers. Thousands of riot and armed paramilitary police have flooded the southern part of the capital.
Women in the market place burst into wailing and chanting as foreign reporters arrived, complaining that police had taken away Uighur men. Authorities have arrested 1,434 people in connection with Sunday's unrest.
Also from The New York Times: New Protests in Western China After Deadly Clashes and Daily Telegraph: Han Chinese mob takes to the streets in Urumqi in hunt for Uighur Muslims.
Three years in China
The BBC's James Reynolds recaps the major stories he's covered during his three years reporting from China.
Buddhist protests and Muslim riots
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap compares two New York Times articles and their treatment of Uighurs and Tibetans.
July 6, 2009
Blockages
Danwei's blocked status in mainland China, and a look at the DDOS attack on Academic Criticism Online.
The new New York is Beijing
From Adrianne Mong, for MSNBC:
"There’s just more opportunity, not just to make a name for yourself, but to make a difference," said Edgar, another former New Yorker who enjoys teaching her staff about the fine wines they collect and serve to guests. "I can do so much more here in regards to being creative or training some other people."
The flip side to this desire for new things, however, is the erosion of old traditions.
"[Chinese] cooking is a big cultural identity that is on the brink of being lost," said Lillian Chou, a former writer for Gourmet magazine who moved to Beijing from New Jersey four months ago to study the language and the food.
Torrential rain leaves 20 dead
From AFP:
At least 20 people have died and more than 670,000 had to be evacuated in China after torrential rain and floods destroyed houses, damaged roads and caused rivers to overflow, state media said Sunday.
Instant bio of Michael Jackson
China Daily reports on a new biography of Michael Jackson, Moonwalk in Paradise, that was prepared in two days. What's even scarier:
More than 10 Chinese publishing houses are also planning to launch instant books about Jackson.
129 dead in Xinjiang riots
Update: Xinhua now reports 129 killed and 816 injured.
Both state and foreign media had been reporting that three Han civilians were killed in Sunday's riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang. The regional government said that "the unrest was masterminded by the World Uyghur Congress led by Rebiyа Kаdeer." Chairman Nur Bekri referred to recent ethnic violence in Guangdong:
Two Uygur workers were killed during the factory brawl, which was triggered by a sex assault by a Uygur worker toward a Han female worker. A total of 120 others of both Han and Uygur ethnic groups were injured.
Nur Bekri said the brawl was used by some overseas opposition forces to instigate Sunday's unrest and undermine the ethnic unity and social stability in the autonomous region, with an aim to split the country.
The Xinhua article neglects to mention that it previously reported that the "sex assault" that sparked the Guangdong riot was nothing but a rumor.
More news at the AFP.
The New York Times reports that the death toll as it stands on the afternoon of Monday July 6 is 140.
Also: Videos and photos at The New Dominion.
July 5, 2009
Mopping up in Liuzhou
Liuzhou Laowai has photos of the flooding in Liuzhou, which reached 7 meters above the danger level.
Earlier photos here.
Populism in China's courts
David Hechler at the Columbia Law School Magazine looks at Professor Benjamin L. Liebman's research into China's judiciary:
The fascination for Liebman is in watching Chinese courts advance—or lurch—in one direction or the other. Recently, he tracked the influence of the internet and the media on the judiciary. In some ways, he found, those entities further the rule of law; in others, they reinforce the primacy of the Party and popular opinion. “Part of the uniqueness of China,” he says, “is that it’s a single-party state in which the courts are playing a very important role. There are very few comparable examples.”