Chinese language films from foreign literary sources
The Chinese Mirror presents a list of pre-revolutionary Chinese films adapted from foreign works.
« October 11, 2009 - October 17, 2009 | Main | October 25, 2009 - October 31, 2009 »
October 23, 2009
The Jewish community of Kaifeng
Portrait of an LBX talks to members of the Jewish community in Kaifeng, Henan Province:
We walked to the second floor where Li Bo unlocked and reeled up a rolling metal door, behind which was a treasure trove of surprises. Maybe 50 square meters in total, the little room contained some long tables, chairs, a menorah, a whiteboard full of Hebrew, several photos of old Kaifeng Jews, a bookshelf full of Hebrew books, and a big Israeli flag. It was in this, their community center, that Hebrew class was given on Fridays by an American Jewish study abroad student, Eric, and where holidays were collectively passed. The Hebrew on the board was lyrics to a song which Eric had recently taught his class. Li Bo informed us that between 10 to 20 Kaifeng Jewish students showed up for the weekly Hebrew classes, and around 30 show up for holidays. The price for the center? 3000 yuan annually, split among the community.
Chinese miner drops bid for Aussie rare earth
From Reuters:
China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co Ltd terminated its bid for Lynas Corp, owner of the world's largest undeveloped deposit of rare earths, citing stiff conditions imposed by Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board.
October 22, 2009
Chinese workers build Mecca monorail
From Miadhu.com:
More than 5,000 Chinese laborers, engineers and technicians are working around the clock to complete the SR6.5 billion monorail project that will link Makkah with the holy sites.
The project will be ready for use to 35 percent of its capacity by next year’s Haj season (1431-2010) and fully operational in two years time. When it reaches full capacity, the 18.1 km long railway will transport about 72,000 passengers every hour between Makkah, Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah...
...The China Railway Company has reinforced with concrete the foundations of the hanging bridge on which the train will be moving to avoid pedestrian crowds below...
"Illegal and pornographic" websites closed
From China Tech News:
China's National Working Group of Eliminating Pornography and Illegal Publications has announced achievements that it has made since campaigns were launched earlier this year against illegal online and mobile phone publications.
NWGEPIP stated on October 20 that since the special campaigns were launched to crack down on vulgar online and mobile phone content, China had seized 1414 illegal online literary works, closed 20 websites that were found spreading pornographic information, and deleted a total of more than 30,000 links to illegal web pages.
SMG to splits broadcast and production entities
From Marbridge Daily:
Chinese media provider Shanghai Media Group (SMG) has announced that, in accordance with broadcast industry restructuring plans laid out by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), SMG will split into two entities: Shanghai Radio & TV and Shanghai Oriental Media Group.
Shanghai Radio & TV will retain SMG's current operations structure, and be managed by the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film & TV under the guidance of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee's Propaganda Department. SMG's current broadcast assets and departments involved in "news production," including its program editing committee, station editor's office, broadcast frequencies, television channels, central broadcast control room, television news center, and broadcast news center, will become part of the station.
The newly established Shanghai Oriental Media Group will be a separate legal entity, with its shares held by Shanghai Radio & TV. The new company will continue to use the English acronym SMG, and will take control of all of SMG's non-news production related assets...
So they are split up, but not really.
Chongqing underworld on trial
Simon Elegant at Time Magazine has a piece on the recent Chongqing crackdown on gangs and official involvement:
Thousands of suspects were questioned, some 1,500 were arrested, bribes in the tens of millions of renminbi were revealed and nearly a quarter of the city's police force was devoted to the ongoing investigation. Even more astonishing — almost unprecedented — is the fact that so many senior police officers and government officials are on trial, virtually all of them stalwart members of the ruling Communist Party.
Amongst other media, The Guardian also reported on the gang crime and sentencing.
China's GDP grows 8.9% in third quarter
State news agency Xinhua reports:
The Chinese economy expanded 8.9 percent year on year in the third quarter of this year, and 7.7 percent year on year in the first nine months, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said here Thursday.
The growth rates for the first quarter and second quarter were 6.1 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively.
NBS spokesman Li Xiaochao told a press conference that China's gross domestic product (GDP) totaled 21.78 trillion yuan (about 3.18 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first nine months.
Lu Guang's photos of pollution
ChinaHush has posted a gallery of scenes of pollution in China taken by W. Eugene Smith grant winner Lu Gang.
October 21, 2009
News from Yanji
Adam Cathcart looks at the latest dispatches from North Korea:
Well, North Korea may be on fire, but the wise Chinese Communist Party has apparently decided that releasing the news in the PRC would disturb social harmony. Or otherwise interfere with its evolving master narrative on North Korea. As Professor Jonathan Pollack reminds us, the PRC narrative now includes sticks as well as carrots, and features some unprecedented public criticism of North Korea.
So instead of a story in regional news outlets in Yanbian on the North Korean fires which might stir sympathy (or open up a can of “indeed, why is the air so bad anyway, comrade?” whoopass), we get a story derived from the Huanqiu Shibao which is actually quite sympathetic to South Korea and the U.S. about the dangers of an “elite-level North Korean hacking unit.”
Somali pirates threaten to kill Chinese crew
From Xan Rice at The Guardian:
The De Xin Hai, carrying 76,000 tonnes of coal from South Africa to India, was captured 550 miles north-east of the Seychelles yesterday morning. Reuters quoted a gang associate in Haradheere, a noted piracy town on Somalia's east coast where the captured vessel may be headed, warning against any military operation to free the sailors.
"If they try that we will execute the whole crew … we tell them to change their mind regarding any rescue, otherwise they will regret it," said the man identified only as Hassan
China Daily also has a piece called China vows to save crew held by Somali pirates.
Kadeer lands in Japan, criticized by Chinese govt
China Daily reports Rebiya Kadeer's visit:
China strongly condemns Japan's issuing of a visa to Uygur separatist Rebiya Kadeer, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
"We have exchanged views with the Japan side on the issue and we express strong dissatisfaction that Japan has granted Kadeer the entry to facilitate her separatism activities despite China's severe objection," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters at a regular news briefing yesterday.
"Any separatism scheme to split China will not result in anything," Ma said.
The New York Times has another piece on Kadeer's landing in Japan.
Schizophrenia surrounding the Frankfurt Book Fair
Austin Ramzy at Time writes a piece about the Frankfurt Book Fair, where China is the Guest of Honor,
China's cultural ministries saw Frankfurt as a way to boost the country's clout overseas. The General Administration of Press and Publication sponsored the translation of more than 100 Chinese books into German and English to be sold at the fair, part of China's $7.5 million investment in the event. The writers who were approved for the official program in Frankfurt included Yu Hua, an author of earthy, sometimes profane novels of human struggle including To Live and Brothers. While Yu's sex- and drug-laden writing could have been banned as late as the 1980s, it now has an official stamp of approval because he avoids overt criticism of Communist Party rule.
There are various other reports from the fair and its exclusion of noted dissident writers Dai Qing and Bei Ling, for example a meeting with Dai written up in Der Spiegel.
Chinese authors vs. Google Books
The WSJ's China Journal looks at objections to the Google Books settlement from Chinese authors:
Google introduced its digital library to China in 2007, but most Chinese writers are still not familiar with the service. According to a critical report aired last week by state broadcaster CCTV, Google has converted to digital format and published nearly 18,000 books written by more than 570 Chinese writers, most of whom are unaware of the move.
Soon after the post appeared on the Web site of CWA, it caused a stir within the community of Chinese writers. Many are annoyed at the meager settlement amount offered by Google. Writer Chen Cun said that he would never accept the payment settlement. “Go scan Harry Potter and then pay J.K. Rowling $60, see whether she’ll take it!” Mr. Chen said in an interview with Chinese-language media.
October 20, 2009
'We are constantly in a good mood'
Der Speigel online interviews the Peggy Yu, founder of Dangdang.com:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you mean by that?
Yu: We are constantly in a good mood. Everything moves forward, upward, the stock exchange, the gross domestic product, even pensions. But there is not enough self-reflection, not enough criticism.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which is exactly what authors should do.
Yu: Correct, but they don't. China distributes many products to the world. But in comparison to other countries, we don't offer good literature that is influential internationally. That worries me. Indian, Mexican, Brazilian and Turkish writers have produced great works in the last couple of years, but not any Chinese writers.
China's punks
The Economist's More Intelligent Life magazine's blog reviews Sound Kapital:
Just as the 100 Club and CBGB fostered punk movements in London and New York City, Beijing's D-22 nightclub serves as the epicentre for its burgeoning alternative music scene. Michael Pettis, a Peking University professor who was once a fixture in New York's East Village, founded the dive bar three years ago. Though the idea of an "underground scene" is often associated with punk, D-22's small stage hosts a variety of acts, from glam rock to experimental electronic, classic rock 'n' roll and Mongolian folk music. Many bands have hard-rocking frontwomen in the vein of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; some sing in both Chinese and English. All eschew the country's mainstream affection for saccharine pop.
On India and China: both became thirstier for resources
Jonathan Watts writes in the Guardian about China and India:
Their influence expanded in other areas. After enormous growth over the past 30 years, China is now poised to overtake Japan as the world's second biggest economy; if current trends continue, it will replace the US at number one around 2035. India's GDP is just a third of China's, but its growth rate of more than 6% a year lifted average incomes over $1,000 for the first time.
University of Toulon president and aides suspended over Chinese bribes
The Washington Post reports:
The president of the University of Toulon and two top aides were suspended Monday over charges of irregularities in the admission and graduation of Chinese students allegedly ready to pay bribes for the prestige of a French diploma.
The suspension, decided by Higher Education Minister Valerie Pecresse, was an unusual public stain on France's cherished tradition of opening its largely free education system to students from around the world. It underlined some of the pressures created by a skyrocketing number of Chinese students who go abroad, sometimes unprepared, to win the honor of a foreign diploma in China's increasingly competitive job market.
Pirates hijack Chinese ship in Indian Ocean
From The China Daily:
The name of the Chinese bulk carrier hijacked in the Indian Ocean earlier on Monday has been identified as DE XIN HAI, a spokesperson of the EU naval force said, adding there are 25 Chinese aboard the ship...
...The ship was hijacked in the Indian Ocean, 350 nautical miles northeast of the Seychelles and 700 nautical miles off the east coast of Somalia, the EU naval force said in a statement from its headquarters in Britain.
The state on the rise
In The Sydney Morning Herald, John Garnaut looks at the rise of red rhetoric, a new push for state domination of pillar industries, and some of the voices against it.
October 19, 2009
Web cafés shut down in Guanxian, Shandong
Were they closed "for the children," or to quash the spread of an anti-government rumor? ESWN translates.
How old is the motherland?
Was National Day on October 1 the 60th birthday of the PRC, of China, or of the "motherland"?
A mob lawyer speaks
Zhou Litai explains to The Beijing News why he has chosen to defend accused gang members swept up in Bo Xilai's campaign against organized crime in Chongqing.
Premier Wen Jiabao apologizes
Wen Jiabao sits in on a geology class and gets confused over the three types of rocks. Xinhua prints his elegant apology.
Uneasy engagement
In The New York Times, Jonathan Ansfield and Steven Erlanger review reactions to China's official and unofficial participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Alternative food networks in China
China Study Group takes a look at an agriculture project in Anlong, a village within Chengdu, Sichuan Province:
This project was first initiated by the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association – an NGO spun off of the Chengdu government’s 10 year project to clean up the rivers in 2003. CURA discovered that 60% of the remaining pollution was coming from agro-chemicals, so it embarked on a project to promote organic farming in the villages upstream from Chengdu, starting with Anlong village in Pi County as a pilot site. In 2005 CURA met with the villagers and began to work out a project, starting with 20 volunteer households. Originally they didn’t focus on marketing or certification, since these households farmed mainly for use, relying on migrant labor and business for cash income. But several households decided to use their organic-ness as a selling point for marketing their produce, and after a couple years of experimentation, worked out an arrangement that cosmopolitan NGO supporters likened to the North American “CSA” system, but seems to me more like European experiments with “social agriculture,” in that the farmers – especially the Gao family – are trying to make their relations with consumers more than one-dimensional buyer-seller relations by developing friendships with consumers and periodically organizing open-house events in the village, where the farmers teach the city-slickers how to farm.
'Chinese Nasdaq' called GEM to launch this week
For at least a decade, there has been talk of China launching a Nasdaq style stock exchange to list new and hi tech companies. According to media reports, the new board will at last launch this week. From The Financial Times:
China will this week launch its long-awaited Nasdaq-style stock market with 28 companies lined up to list on the new exchange, including China's first listed film company.
Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, on Saturday said the new market would open on October 23, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Investors have not demonstrated overwhelming appetite for the first companies to conduct IPOs ahead of listing on China's new Growth Enterprise Market. The Shenzhen-based market is aimed at funding technology and innovation-driven start-up companies...
The capital of graft
In The Daily Telegraph, Malcom Moore covers the fall out from the recent gangster trials:
A mafia trial in Chongqing, the world's largest city, has stirred up Chinese anger at the infiltration of the Communist party by gangsters.
Life in Xinjiang after the riots
Josh at Far West China has a list of how things have changed in Xinjiang since July:
Long distance calling has been shut down even tighter. While previously I could use a specific phone card to call home or at least receive incoming calls late at night, it seems that this "loophole" has been discovered and fixed. Communication with my family is virtually nil right now.
Dunhuang has become Xinjiang's most important city. And it's not even located within Xinjiang...it's in Gansu! Pretty much the first city outside of Xinjiang with internet access, Dunhuang has become the place for all businessmen and foreigners to go to regain access to email and business contacts. Hotels and coffee shops tell me they've seen a noticable increase in Xinjiang traffic.