Stern Hu and the unpleasant truth about Rio Tinto
An opinion piece from Australian politics and media website Crikey examining Rio Tinto's unsavory record.
« July 12, 2009 - July 18, 2009 | Main | July 26, 2009 - August 1, 2009 »
July 24, 2009
China Fund hopes to expand Africa ties
Relations between Africa and China are warming still. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The China-Africa Development Fund, which was founded by state-owned lender China Development Bank Corp., plans to raise $2 billion by November to help expand business links between Africa and China, CDB Vice Governor Li Jiping said.
The trial of Hu Bin
Hu Bin was the race-car driver who knocked down and killed a pedestrian in Hangzhou. On July 20 he was sentenced to three years in prison. Below ESWN translates a post by Xiao Chuan at the My1510 blog talking about fears that the defendant wasn't actually Hu himself:
As expected, the Internet broiled with discussion about the identity of the defendant at the trial. First of all, I believe that most netizens saw the photo of Hu Bin in the form of the one where he sat in the far with his hand over the face. He does not seem to have any other photo. At the trial, the defendant was a small chubby man. Therefore, the doubts are reasonable. Secondly, for a long certain period of time, Baidu and Google had many other photos of Hu Bin. But if you look now, there is only the one in the car and the one in the courtroom.
The soulful society vs the net spirit
Sinopop reports that Fan Meizhong, the teacher infamous for running outside ahead of his class when the earthquake struck Sichuan, and Wu Ping, the Chongqing nail-house owner, will be featured at the 798 Biennale in August and September.
Baidu's profit up 44.6%
From the Associated Press:
Baidu Inc., which operates China's leading Internet search engine, said Friday its quarterly profit rose 44.6 percent from a year earlier on strong growth in revenue and numbers of advertisers.
Net income for the three months ending June 30 was 383.3 million yuan ($56.1 million), or 11.02 yuan ($1.61) per share, the Beijing-based company said. Revenue rose 36.7 percent from a year earlier to just under 1.1 billion yuan ($160.7 million).
Small mice cloned from skin cells
The Times has a report on 27 small mice cloned from adult mice's skin cells:
The results demonstrate for the first time that it is possible for adult tissue to develop into the full range of the body’s different cell types, in a manner similar to embryonic stem cells.
If the technique were to be repeated in humans, it could offer the prospect of a limitless supply of an individual’s own stem cells and be used to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, paralysis and diabetes.
The first mouse pup born in the study, conducted by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been named Tiny, or “Xiao Xiao” in Mandarin.
July 23, 2009
WSJ on Foxconn, Hon Hai and Apple
From The Wall Street Journal:
Police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen are investigating the suicide of an employee of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which assembles the popular iPhone for Apple Inc., in an episode that has put the Taiwanese company under a spotlight...
..The attention underscores the secrecy and speculation that surrounds Apple's development of its newest products, particularly the bestselling iPhone and its iPod digital music player.
I would not trust anyone if I were you
In the New York Times, Andrew Jacobs describes visiting Kashgar, which has been less welcoming to foreign journalists than Urumqi.
The men continued on for a while, speaking animatedly as the tour guide’s face registered a kaleidoscope of troubled expressions. Their ranting done, the guide, a graduate student best left unidentified, paused before declining to render their words into English.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’s better for everyone if I just pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Concept art for costume dramas
cfensi presents some of the character designs for two new historical dramas currently in production. They're a nice change from the usual production stills.
Eclipse at Sheshan Hill
Adam Minter describes watching the July 22 solar eclipse from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in Sheshan for the Atlantic:
Despite the rain clouds and ominous portents, roughly a hundred tourists crowded atop a balcony that wraps around one of the Observatory’s old telescopes. With their backs to the basilica, they turned toward the East, and a rising sun which, at 8:30 AM, broke through the clouds to reveal the moon’s disc just beginning to cross the sun’s. Most in the crowd rushed to put on the disposable eye-protecting “eclipse glasses” of the sort that had been on sale in Shanghai for weeks.
July 22, 2009
The wildcat mines of Hengshan County
Petitions, education, wildcat coal mines, and government malfeasance: ingredients for a hard-hitting piece of muckracking journalism.
Microblog competition shrinks
Digu, Zuosa, and now Jiwai follow Fanfou and Twitter onto the black list.
Reporting from Xinjiang
Bruce Lui (Lui Ping-Kuen) is Hong Kong Cable TV's China correspondent and was on the scene at the early July ethnic clash in Xinjiang. Danwei asks him about the reaction of Hong Kong media as well as other views.
Cultural heritage and backyard iron smelting
More than 150 steel furnaces from the Great Leap Forward have been discovered on a hillside in Gansu. They'll be protected as cultural relics. Wu Zuolai explains why.
Somalia deports Chinese cyclist
From the BBC:
A Chinese cyclist has been forced to put the brakes on a 12-year world tour, after officials in Somalia deported him for not having the right documents.
Lee Yuezhong, who says he has visited 114 countries since setting off on his tour in 1997, arrived in the semi-autonomous Puntland region last week.
But he had no visa and Somali police arrested him before deporting him to neighbouring Djibouti.
Eclipse
Xinhua has published an album of photos and articles about the July 22 solar eclipse observable in many parts of China.
July 21, 2009
HIV infection in the 1990s
For the World Vision Report, Paul Mooney talks HIV and blood banks in rural Henan, where the Aids cases caused by blood transfusions happened. There is also an article on the topic by Mooney in The National.
Lies and misleading videos
At Youku buzz, Steven Lin dissects pop band The Flowers' downfall, as well as some disturbing interview behavior.
July 20, 2009
China Strong
The Onion gets bought out by a Chinese industrial conglomerate and has a slate of spot-on state media spoofs, and other related mischief.
Wide reach in Africa
The New York Times Business takes a look at China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa by Serge Michel and Michel Beuret:
The authors contend that China’s ambitions in Africa are grandly geopolitical as well as economic. As Jacob Wood, a Shanghai-born housing developer based in Africa for more than 30 years, tells them: “I’m going to be honest with you, China is using Africa to get wherethe United States is now, and surpass it.”
According to one report cited by the authors, there are now about 750,000 Chinese living and working in Africa, in countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Zambia, Sudan, Algeria, Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola, Gabon, Guinea, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Egypt and Chad.
So far, China’s ventures in Africa have produced decidedly bittersweet results.
British and American teenagers quarantined in Beijing for H1N1
MSNBC reports that 65 American and 52 British students visiting have been put in quarantine after some tested positive for H1N1. And the BBC describes the British students in detail:
"What was quite worrying was how the Chinese team collected the children. They turned up armed in contamination suits, put them on an ambulance and took them away.
"The children were very frightened at the beginning. Now they're fine and they're being well looked after in the hotel, although they're having swabs taken every day.
This holiday of a lifetime has just been destroyed.
The MSNBC report highlighted a student from Oregon who tested positive.
Drinking culture killing off officials
China Daily reports the decease of boozy officials after one died from a banquet in Wuhan last week:
They added some officials even hire secretaries who are heavy drinkers so they can be their "drinking assistant" and help consume the necessary alcohol.
"To ganbei each other, or make a toast, is a Chinese way of communication, it is a part of the culture," explained Li. "Officials are used to sealing deals and making decisions at dinner tables."
The culture is also wasting taxpayers' money, he said, adding that on average officials spend about 500 billion yuan ($73 billion) a year in public funds on banquets, almost a third of the nation's spending on dining out.
"It will be extremely difficult to change the drinking culture among Chinese officials unless the government clearly legislates against such behavior," said Li.
Ulan Bator postcard
Mitch Moxley for Time:
In the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, "Shoot the Chinese" is spray-painted on a brick wall near a movie theater. A pair of swastikas and the words "Killer Boys ...! Danger!" can be read on a fence in an outlying neighborhood of yurt dwellings. Graffiti like this, which can be found all over the city, is the work of Mongolia's neo-Nazis, an admittedly implausible but often intimidating, and occasionally violent, movement.
Why the Chinese-reading world still flocks to Hong Kong
At the WSJ, Jonathan Cheng examines the market for sensitive political books in Hong Kong:
"My bookstore could only thrive in a place like Hong Kong," says Paul Tang, founder of People's Recreation Community, a bookstore cafe in downtown Hong Kong with a Mao-themed decor and a focus on political books, including a wealth of titles published in the simplified Chinese script of mainland China -- but banned there. Mr. Tang, a 34-year-old former Starbucks shop manager who started his business -- then mainly a cafe -- in 2002, says mainland Chinese visitors account for 70% of his sales.
See also: Publishing a "PRC historical library" in Hong Kong, an interview with Mirror Books publisher Ho Pin from Phoenix Weekly, August 2008.