« October 4, 2009 - October 10, 2009 | Main | October 18, 2009 - October 24, 2009 »
Believe it or not, Beijing's air is getting cleaner, reports the New York Times:
China may have a hard-earned reputation for long-neglected and fearsome environmental problems, from poisoned rivers to chemical-belching smelters. But the nation’s capital, Beijing, is trying hard to clean up its dirty air.
The results show up not only in recent pitch-perfect October days, but in the data that for years have presented a bleak picture of pollution here.
For the Chicago issue of Granta, Bei Dao writes about two artists who came to the city 25 years ago:
Most modern success stories are the same except for a few details: the usual mixture of packaging and self-promotion. I’ve seen several of my friends sink and decay into wealth and fame, but not the Zhou brothers. Wearing their flat, sharp leather shoes, they’ve ridden the wave of success with astonishing skill. Actually, what surprises me the most is how two destitute boys managed to make their way out of China’s interior into the rest of the world. Chance has certainly played its part, but one thing that’s certain is their inner compulsion – and the stronger the compulsion, the further one goes.
In the same issue, Jeffrey Yang, who translated the piece, discusses Bei Dao's language and his own difficulties with simplified characters.
ChinaSmack has translated a post from Mop.com by a woman claiming to be prostitute who is HIV positive. Her post includes a list of mobile phone numbers of her clients whom she says she has infected with the virus.
Note that Mop.com is notorious for publishing information of questionable origins in order to drive traffic.
UPDATE According to a police source quoted by The China Daily, the post was "sick hoax by an angry ex-boyfriend".
Peter Foster blogs about the 56 pillars that were installed around Tiananmen Square for the National Day festivities:
I’ve canvassed a few Chinese acquaintances who say they find the place not so much beautiful, but rather ‘solemn’ and ‘impressive’. A symbol of national pride and strength and I can quite easily empathise with this view, even if I don’t share it.
Perhaps this faintly sacred regard for Tiananmen Square is the reason behind a growing row about plans to make 56 giant columns – erected during the 60th Anniversary to celebrate China’s ethnic diversity and harmony – a permanent fixture of the square.
The Wall Street Journal has a piece about the publishing industry and Penguin China, led by Jo Lusby:
Penguin wants to take advantage of signs of buoyancy and change in China's 6.5 billion yuan ($950 million) publishing market, long strangled by censorship and a bewildering mass of regulatory controls. Things gathered pace in April when Liu Binjie, minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), announced de facto legalization of the country's 10,000 private publishers...
For Ms. Lusby, it's a step away from Penguin's parent company in London, a process of devolution she believes will grow as publishers globally increasingly respond to local demand. "Rather than us sitting halfway round the world asking for other people to please publish this book for us because we actually believe it will work, it's us being able to take the ball and run with it," said Ms. Lusby in an interview last week.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the case of Mike Yu, who has been charged with stealing trade secrets from Ford Motor Company:
According to the indictment brought by Terrence Berg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Mr. Yu, a Chinese national, worked for Ford from 1997 to 2007 and had access to Ford trade secrets, including the auto maker's design documents.
In December 2006, Mr. Yu accepted a job at the China branch of Foxconn, PCE Industry Inc. The indictment alleges that on the eve of his departure from Ford in January 2007 and before he told Ford of his new job, Mr. Yu copied some 4,000 Ford documents onto an external hard drive, including sensitive Ford design documents.
Rose Luqiu Luwei of Phoenix TV summarizes her trip to Pyongyang covering Premier Wen's talks with Kim Jong-il (pictured). She compares her experiences with those growing up in China and makes a commentary on her media chaperoning.
At Degenerate Films, Shelley Kraicer talks about his job selecting films for the Vancouver International Film Festival and China's indie film scene:
There exists, down some dusty grey hutong alleyway of Beijing, a Chinese Indie Director’s Discount Emporium. You want to make a film? Step right in and assemble your movie at bargain prices. The shelving on the left is stocked with cast members: long-haired village boys, out of school, drifting aimlessly. At the back is a set of grainy, dusty, brown-grey village-scapes, ready to be populated by said drifters. To the right, useful equipment.
The Law Professors blog has a write-up on the minors law that was proposed in Hubei:
There has recently been a minor tempest over regulations passed by the Hubei Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee on July 31, 2009. The provincial regulations implement the national Law on the Protection of Minors.
One provision that excited a lot of comment was the rule supposedly forbidding parents from seeing the text messages of their children. (The headline of this report, for example, is "Hubei legislation forbidding parents from checking their children's text messages is criticized as not conforming to China's situation." And the English-language Global Times reports, "Parents barred from peeking at kids' emails." ) But a look at the actual text suggests that this is a misreading.
The Wall Street Journal publishes an appraisal of Wen Jiabao's latest visit to Pyongyang:
After a visit last week by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to Pyongyang, where he held extensive talks with leader Kim Jong Il, North Korea said it was willing to return to the six-party talks -- which also include South Korea, Japan, and Russia -- but indicated that it wanted separate talks with the U.S. first. That raised questions about whether
Xinhua reports via AP hosted on Google:
The official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday that six new defendants were sentenced to death and three other people were given life sentences by the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court.
The New York Times' LENS blog reports that Lu Guang, a Chinese freelance photographer, has won the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his project, “Pollution in China.”
It is not just Mr. Smith’s work that comes to mind when looking at Mr. Lu’s depiction of the dark social and environmental consequences of China’s modern industrial revolution. There is a bit of Charles Sheeler and Edward Burtynsky. And Hieronymus Bosch.
“Because China’s economy is moving so fast, the pollution is incredibly severe,” he told us Wednesday through a translation by Orville Schell at the Asia Society. “As I became aware of the pollution as China opened up the western area, I felt that people needed to know about this.”
Included is a small gallery of some of Lu's photos.
The New York Times reports:
A Chinese official said Tuesday that a recent visit by the Indian prime minister to a Himalayan territory in northeastern India that China claims as its own land has jeopardized China-India relations.
The official, Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was criticizing a visit on Oct. 3 to the state of Arunachal Pradesh by Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister.
China Sports Review looks at the upcoming 11th National Games, to be held in Shandong from October 16 to 28:
Unlike other sports events in the rest of the World, I dare say that China’s National Games ranks the first in sending out medals before it officially kicks off. Up until now, still two days to the Opening Ceremony in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong, there’re 24 teams that won 238 gold medals already. Why so many? Partly because if a team member won a gold in the Beijing Games last summer, it counts for two golds for them in the National Game’s medal tally. If a player won in group sports in the Olympics, then it’s one gold for his or her team in the National Games. Another reason, according to the organizing committee, is that certain teams need to compete in some upcoming World champs.
Then there's the judging scandal, translated at China Sports Today.
On The China Beat, China's most wanted fugitive visits a fourth-year Chinese history class at Simon Fraser University:
In his responses to student questions, Lai alternated between innocent charm and aggrieved combativeness. He denied giving officials cash-filled briefcases and providing them with modern-day concubines. But he admitted that he actively sought out and took advantage of loopholes. In order to avoid customs duties when importing oil and luxury cars to China, Lai said that he had his oil tankers unload when nobody was watching. His overarching goal was to make more money, he said, so he was constantly looking for opportunities. When local officials announced that new businesses would be exempt from taxes for three years, Lai opened a series of ventures, and then shut them down and changed their names before they hit the three year mark, managing to perpetually avoid taxes.
Shanghai Scrap visits East Seward Road in Hongkou, Shanghai:
Brick by brick, Shanghai loses its history, its buildings, and its traditional ways of life. In many cases, the bricks in the buildings now crumbling on East Seward Road are the bricks that built the buildings that preceded them (and were destroyed by fighting with the Japanese). They will not get a third chance – at least, they won’t get that chance in Hongkou. Instead, they’re being carted away, perhaps to be landfilled, or perhaps to become anonymous contributors to projects elsewhere in Shanghai. The workers who will lay them for the third time won’t know that they survived the Japanese invasion, and just like that, the remarkable history of modern Hongkou will disappear into a city too busy, and too rich, to care, anymore.
Calum MacLeod reports for USA Today:
It's what's called the "big plane" project here. It symbolizes the country's stepped-up efforts to get into the commercial passenger jet business in a big way and challenge U.S. plane-making giant Boeing and European rival Airbus, which dominate the global jetliner market. And it will be a showcase for China's ambition to be more than a low-tech producer of consumer goods for the world.
"To develop the large-scale airliner is a strategic decision of the Chinese government and one of the major programs for building up an innovation-oriented country," Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang said last month, according to the Xinhua state news agency.
China Daily reports:
Tropical storm Parma has caused heavy economic losses in south China's Hainan Province since it landed Monday, the provincial government said Tuesday.
In Wenchang City alone, more than 7,600 people were relocated and the direct economic loss, mainly in the agriculture and fishing sectors, stood at 24.6 million yuan ($3.6 million).
Evan Osnos presents some highlights from a speech made by Sidney Rittenberg:
If you had a second party alternative in China now, I think it would be an anti-foreign party. What else could you see as a platform to challenge the Communist Party, but to oppose the foreigners who are “buying up Chinese resources”?… There has to be a period of generally unfolding democracy. Not bang, all at once. And I think that will happen. I think it’s happening much too slowly.
The China Daily reports:
China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), the country's leading offshore oil producer, is seeking to invest in a giant oilfield in Ghana to enhance its overseas development plans...
...The Jubilee field is said to hold 1.8 billion barrels of oil and would produce 120,000 barrels of crude a day. It is one of the largest oil discoveries in recent years and holds a type of light, sweet crude oil.
With nearby discoveries in Sierra Leone, the region in which Jubilee is located is emerging as a major new oil region and Ghana is expected to be an oil exporter by the end of next year.
Xujun Eberlein remembers her own family's involvement with Zhang Shenfu, the Chinese engineer killed by the Soviet Red Army (or perhaps by local thugs) in 1946. Zhang Shenfu was the grandfather of Leslie Chang, author of the book Factory Girls, in which she recounts her family's version of the story.
China Economic Review summarizes a South China Morning Post report:
Over two-thirds of mainland financial magazine Caijing's business staff have resigned, the South China Morning Post reported. General Manager Daphne Wu Chuanhui and eight of her nine business directors resigned, and a Caijing staff member said that 70% of the 100-person business department have resigned or will do so soon. The exodus has caused speculation that charismatic founder and managing editor Hu Shuli may also be preparing to leave.
China Daily reports:
Russian firms plan to sign over $5.5 billion worth of deals with their Chinese partners during the visit of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Beijing next week, Putin's deputy said during an interview with Reuters.
The 34 deals will range from a $500 million loan agreement between China's Development Bank and its Russian equivalent VEB to joint projects in transport, infrastructure, construction and mineral extraction, a draft list obtained by Reuters showed.
Russia's trade with China soared to $56 billion in 2008 from $9.3 billion in 2002. The share of oil in Russia's exports stands at 56 percent, metals at 5 percent while the share of machinery stands at 4.4 percent.
From Reuters:
A court in southern China has handed out a death sentence to a man involved in a brawl in July blamed for being the trigger to deadly riots in the restive far western region of Xinjiang.
State media said the fight erupted between a group of Han Chinese and ethnic Uighur workers from Xinjiang at a factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, after a rumour spread that some Uighurs had raped two women.
Adam Cathcart translates an interview with Rainier Schwartz, German translator of Dream of the Red Chamber:
When I went to middle school, the first time I saw Franz Kuhn’s translation of it, the earliest version. From 1958 to 1963, I was at Berlin’s Humboldt University East Asian Studies and History period, I got my first impression via Kuhn’s translation along with the original Chinese, and noticed that the two were not completely the same. In 1966, at Moscow International Bookstore I bought four books of the Chinese version (Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1963). This was my first encounter with the complete Chinese text. From spring 1971- autumn 1975, I was a translator for the German Democratic Republic embassy , frequently in Beijing. At this time I began to earnestly read 红楼梦. In 1978, a publisher made a suggestion that I translate it and in 1980, I got a contract to do that. From this point I began the work of translating it, using ten years. In 1990 I basically finished it.
Other recent posts of interest:
Blood & Treasure relays and comments on an Observer article about Akmal Shaikh, a British man facing execution in China for drug smuggling:
Shaikh, who is said to be severely mentally ill, will become the first British citizen to be executed in China; his lawyers warn that he could be killed imminently by a gunshot to the back of his head. Foreign Office officials said there were reports last week that his second appeal had failed, but had yet to receive "official confirmation" or any news from the Chinese authorities.
Emails seen by the Observer reveal that Shaikh was recruited in a sting operation involving criminal figures in Poland, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. His defence was that he was duped by the gang and had no knowledge of the drugs.
Shaikh, who is married to an Englishwoman and has five children, genuinely believed the gang were his friends and were grooming him for pop stardom. In fact, say lawyers and friends, he was, and is, suffering from delusional psychosis.
Blogstar.TV, a new bilingual web-based video series set in Shanghai, posts its first episode, Window to the West.
Creator Oli also blogs at Oli's Shanghai Blog.