Must-read China news by Danwei

On Yale Global:

How do Africans see China after all? Based on 163 interviews and over a decade of living in Africa, I shall argue that both views are wrong and right, depending on to what region of Africa and to which group of Africans one is referring...

...From this small sample, hailing from Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Cape Verde and Zambia it becomes apparent that African elites clearly welcome the Chinese presence, while the people are growing increasing ambivalent.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:31 AM | Permalink

At The China Beat, Maura Cunningham reviews Obama's visit to China with links to the best coverage and commentary.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:27 AM | Permalink

In The China Daily:

China's anti-corruption chief He Guoqiang Thursday urged authorities to utilize the public's online comments and postings in the country's ongoing attempt to fight corruption.

He, secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said channels should be expanded to solicit public opinions and efforts be made to give full play to the positive role that the Internet has had in the fight against corruption...

..."The top officials of the CPC have realized that online opinion is a weapon to curb graft, but it is a tough decision for them to make as the Party had been very cautious about handling information against a Party member," Ye [Duchu, a senior professor with the Central Party School] said.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:59 AM | Permalink

From The Global Times

American Jews are known for their formidable lobbying power in the US. How is this accomplished? What can Chinese learn to launch an effective lobby within US politics? [This] is an interview by Global Times reporter Lu Jingxian with Jack Rosen, chairman of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and the American Council for World Jewry, on the issue.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:39 PM | Permalink

The Black China Hand gets called upon to provide the appearance of legal support for a Chinese company putting on the appearance of sophistication to score an international contract.

Part 2

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:43 PM | Permalink

From The China Daily:

A wealthy industrial boss and his family were rescued after a hostage taker was shot dead by police after a 24-hour standoff.

The hostage taker, identified as a migrant worker from Jiangxi province surnamed Lin, had demanded a ransom of 3 million yuan ($439,000).

Early Monday morning, armed with a pistol and two bags of self-made detonators, Lin barged into a private villa in Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

The villa's owner, Chen Anle, is the boss of Wenzhou Jinsheng Shoes Industry Co Ltd, a key enterprise of Wenzhou's shoe-making industry.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:01 PM | Permalink

For the Global Post, Jonathan Adams and Kathleen E. McLaughlin write about conditions in high-tech factories and explore solutions to the problem of sweatshops:

In our reporting, we heard sincere commitments to deal with these issues by frustrated executives who struggle with these complex economic realities. We also learned of a groundbreaking project to improve conditions at a Taiwan supplier for HP that appeared to have excellent results. Though limited in scope, the project offers some degree of hope that the big electronics brands can do more to fix the problem.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:55 PM | Permalink

The Financial Times writes about Feng Zhenghu (冯正虎), who has been denied admittance into China (on account of his activism):

Mr Feng, a Chinese human rights activist on behalf of individual Chinese complaining of illegal mistreatment at official hands, says Shanghai police, assisted by an ANA employee, physically forced him on to a flight back to Japan after he was barred from returning home for the eighth time.

“I refuse to enter Japan. For a Chinese to be kidnapped and taken to Japan like this is a humiliation for me and a humiliation for China,” he told the Financial Times during an interview in a Narita corridor.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:16 AM | Permalink

Andrew Galbraith in the China Economic Review, revealing what a farce the H1N1 panic has become:

The morning after arriving back in Shanghai from overseas, I felt distinctly unwell. Facing pressing deadlines and a worsening condition, I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with nothing other than H1N1 – swine flu...

...Officially ... I wasn't diagnosed with H1N1, and the doctor instructed me that – officially – I had never been to see him. He gave me a course of Tamiflu and sent me on my way, with instructions not to leave my apartment for a week. If I noticed no improvement, I would be required to go to a fever clinic, but I was not to say that I had been to see a doctor before. (I'm now out of self-imposed quarantine, and no longer suffering from H1N1.)

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:03 AM | Permalink

The director talks to Time Weekly about his latest film, The Warrior and the Wolf (狼灾记), and the role of the market in China's film industry.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:48 AM | Permalink

China Hearsay tries to figure out which government agency will take responsibility to approve the Sichuan Tengzhong acquisition of Hummer:

Since NDRC told Xinhua that they were not responsible based on the type of deal, I’m thinking it was indeed the NDRC that Tengzhong first talked to (apparently provincial level, which then consulted with the State-level NDRC). Apparently NDRC, if you will pardon the American football reference, has punted.

Moreover, from what I understand, Tengzhong is neither a listed company nor a State-owned Enterprise, so I’m thinking neither CSRC (securities regulator) nor SASAC (State-owned enterprises and assets) would be in the picture. So how to approach this deal?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:28 AM | Permalink

On the sidelines of the 2009 International Astronomy Year and Extraterrestrial Life Forum just concluded in Kunming, GoKunming.com filmed a video interview with organizer Zhang Yifang (张一方), founder of the Kunming UFO Research Association.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:53 AM | Permalink

The New York Times reports:

Suntech Power, China’s largest solar panel manufacturer, plans to open its first American plant near Phoenix, the company announced on Monday.

The plant is to begin production in the third quarter of 2010 and will initially employ 75 people, probably rising over time to 200, according to Roger Efird, a managing director of Suntech.

Mr. Efird said Suntech had been publicly considering a manufacturing site in the United States for several years. Solar panels are heavy, he said, so as the American market grows, the company decided to place a factory closer to its customers.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Evan Osnos interviews Shi Yinhong for the New Yorker blog, where he asked questions about the difference stances of the US and China towards Iran's nuclear weapons:

That sounds like China and the United States are not going to share much more than goodwill on this trip. Will China go further than that?
Sometimes expectations can have a gap, but both sides are used to this. I don’t think that President Obama will say, “If China does not agree, then I will be angry about everything else.” The Chinese are used to this, too; on some issues they will go a long way to meet Americans, but on some issues they will stay in the same place.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:24 AM | Permalink

The Global Times has a piece on the detainment of advocates surrounding the Sanlu milk scandal.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:55 PM | Permalink

"Obama" is transliterated in the Chinese press as 奥巴马 (àobāmǎ), but a promotional poster distributed yesterday by the US Embassy uses 欧巴马 (ōubāmǎ).

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:51 PM | Permalink

The Global Times reports that Zhao Lianhai, an organizer of victims of last year's melamine milk scandal, has been arrested for "provoking an incident":

The arrest occurred just two hours after Zhao and Wang Gang, the father of a baby stricken by Sanlu's poisoned milk powder, successfully received an official apology from Haidian police.

Zhao and Wang were invited by the Haidian police on Friday to address a previous dispute. Officers, who conducted the controversial detention of Wang, gave the father an apology and paid for Wang's physical examination.

"A police car followed us all the way from my home to the Haidian police headquarters," Zhao said. He even took a picture of the car that followed him.

Two hours after Zhao returned home, Daxing police arrested him.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Critiquing a poorly translated, poorly edited guidebook to subway safety.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:53 AM | Permalink

Obama is in Beijing today. From Xinhua:

At a joint press conference with Obama after the talks, Hu said he had "very good talks" with the U.S. president, and that they made a deep exchange of views on the China-U.S. relationship and major international and regional issues of common concern and reached consensus on many important issues.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:20 AM | Permalink

The Telegraph reports:

And while it is accepted that little more can be done to protest the raising of the vessel, there are hopes that China might be encouraged to conduct a new investigation into the remains of the crew, which experts believe would have been recovered.

After all, they point out, the CSS Hunley, one of the first submarines ever built and sunk in 1864 during the American Civil War, contained eight skeletons that had been almost perfectly preserved when it was recovered from Charleston harbour in April 2004.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 9:46 AM | Permalink

The Lede blog at the New York Times makes a call for Chinese netizens to send their videos containing messages to Obama.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 9:42 AM | Permalink

Rebecca MacKinnon has written up a review of this year's Chinese bloggers conference held in Lianzhou, Guangdong last weekend. Excerpt:

As Ran Yunfei ... put it: "As we use the Internet every day, it changes us - It has made me more tolerant and taught me to play by a set of rules... As we train ourselves we are also training the government.. hopefully one day they will understand that they don't need to be afraid of us, that we can all legally and rationally coexist."

Oiwan Lam has also written a review on Global Voices here.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:01 AM | Permalink

By Wen Tao in The Global Times:

An official from the state Supreme People's Court said that petitioners' rights will be safeguarded as many of them are camping out in the capital in temperatures as low as -4 C and are at constant risk of being carted out against their will by thugs sent by provincial authorities. Zhao Suocheng, 57, has been camping along the sidewalk of that alley for nine years, living in a tent with all of his belongings...

...An out-of-town officer punched the reporter in the chest. The officer swore to break the camera and warned:

"You know these petitioners are a violent mob, they'll beat you to death if you don't leave."

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 7:15 AM | Permalink

Uln at Chinayouren watches a thirty-episode patriotic drama.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:55 PM | Permalink

Charles Tan at SF Signal interviews Han Song, a Xinhua journalist and well-known Chinese SF author who has a story appearing in translation in The Apex Book of World SF.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:29 PM | Permalink

Global Times has a vox pop of Chinese people's opinions of Obama ahead of his visit:

I believe this visit is a positive action and that's why I support it. But it's still too early to anticipate the consequences of his visit because no one knows his purpose this time.

And more practically speaking, I hope he will bring solutions to some substantial issues such as the Taiwan issue. We're looking forward to witnessing a positive stance from the US. I hope he can sit down and have a good talk with President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders concerning those problems, because they are what Chinese really care about.

PC World also has an article on netizens volunteering questions for Obama.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:05 PM | Permalink

The AFP reports on the hurdler:

China's former world record holder Liu Xiang has easily won his third Asian 110 metre hurdle championship, posting a time of 13.50 seconds in a driving rain in the southern city of Guangzhou.

The 2004 Athens Olympic champion led from the start late Thursday to win his second competition since returning from surgery on an Achilles tendon injury that kept him out of the 2008 Beijing Games.

"I had hoped to run faster, but due to today's weather, it was better to be steady," Liu told journalists in a post-race interview.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:59 PM | Permalink

The New York Times blog has a podcast about Beijing bands Carsick Cars and PK14: Shouwang and Yang Haisong, despite being from different generations, are interviewed.

The Washington Post has also published an article about the "nascent rock scene" in Beijing (now in New York).

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:53 PM | Permalink

Ahead of Obama's visit, Ai Weiwei writes an op-ed in Newsweek about his injuries in Sichuan.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:44 PM | Permalink

New York Times has a piece on black jails in China, from a report released by Human Rights Watch.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:34 PM | Permalink

Q&A with Julia Lovell, translator of a new English edition of Lu Xun's fiction: The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China, published by Penguin.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:02 AM | Permalink

Economic Observer Online reports, via Sina:

Yesterday, He Li, the former editor in chief of China Business Weekly and one of the founding editors of The Economic Observer, confirmed that he had quit his current job but refused to provide further details to reporters from Sina Finance.

However, despite his reticence, Sina is reporting that he will indeed take up the position of editor in chief at Caijing.

The 47 year-old He once worked alongside Hu Shuli at China Business Times, the first privately-invested newspaper to be published in the People's Republic of China. He worked there from 1989 to 2000, while Hu headed up the paper's international department from 1992 to 1998.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:18 PM | Permalink

At the China Media Project David Bandurski writes about Li Changchun's speech on tightening media controls on Journalist Day:

Li Changchun’s speech on Sunday also placed a great deal of emphasis on the idea of “discourse power” (话语权) — the CCP’s “discourse power,” that is. This underscores in particular an interest in strengthening the party’s capacity to make its voice heard both domestically and internationally.

This is also an important reason why the term “public opinion channeling,” or yulun yindao (舆论引导), rises in the ranks of Li’s speech this year. This further drives home what we have been arguing here at CMP for months — that the party is reworking its media control system to allow traditional controls and active agenda-setting (”grabbing the megaphone“) to work hand-in-hand.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:52 PM | Permalink

ChinaGeeks interviews Ole Shell, the filmmaker behind the documentary Win in China, focusing on the CCTV2 program that seems to have stopped broadcasting:

ChinaGeeks: How is the film being received? Presumably, you’ve read some reviews, but are you also hearing from regular people and perhaps schools? What do they think of it?

Ole Schell: People almost universally say they had no idea of the extent of the pace over there. They expect something much dryer-something more business related. That was a challenge I took head on and tried to incorporate as much of the outrageous landscape of Beijing Shanghai, and some of the smoky second tier cities like Weifang and Hefei that we visited to get to know several of the contestants. My favorite contestant was an aspiring lingerie baron nicknamed “The Wolf” for his predatory business style.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:36 PM | Permalink

Wen Tao at the Global Times reports on the reopening of wounds over the Sanlu milk scandal:

Father of a Sanlu Group milk powder victim claims that he experienced unwarranted police brutality which he believes is associated with his ongoing court case with Sanlu Group.

Wang Gang, 36, is currently struggling to take legal action against the Sanlu Group and receive compensation for his 2-year-old son, Wang Ziyuan, who suffered from kidney stone and still suffers from anemia as a result of drinking the tainted milk powder. The family was forced to sell their house to cover the medical expenses.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:29 PM | Permalink

Dan Washburn writes for Golf World:

Chen's rise from farmer to head waiter to obscure pro golfer -- now, slightly less obscure -- mirrors the random trajectories followed by the majority of the Chinese men who toil on their country's domestic golf circuit. Most of them stumbled into the sport accidentally and relatively late, bringing personal histories almost unheard of in the Western world of contemporary professional golf.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:14 PM | Permalink

Jonathan Ansfield at the New York Timeshas an in-depth look at the situation that led to Hu's departure from Caijing magazine:

The split reflects the divergence of interests in a media market still governed by party cadres, said Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Languages University.

“Some people still stick to their ideals,” he said. “But management has become increasingly concerned with profits, and increasingly conservative.”

See also: The Guardian, a Wall Street Journal follow-up, Foreign Policy, the AP, the mainland newspaper The Economic Observer and, for contrast, Xinhua.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:22 AM | Permalink

ChinaSMACK presents the latest recruitment posters, which feature images from the National Day parade.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:53 PM | Permalink

Hu Shuli, editor of the influential business magazine Caijing, is resigning following the walkout of a number of senior staff. She's said to have accepted a position as dean of the School of Mass Communication and Design at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:27 PM | Permalink

Roland Soong at ESWN writes about civil online dialogue and the dim prospects for HK-mainland blogger interaction:

Hong Kong bloggers look inwards. What are they interested in recently? 'Bowtie' and energy-saving light bulbs; 'Bowtie' and Hong Kong apartment prices; Michael Rowse’s book; etc. An possible victim of Internet bullying named A Xuan is on the front page of the newspaper Ming Pao today. Amazingly, more than 30,000 people have signed up for the Facebook page against this person. Mainland bloggers are unlikely to be aware of these stories; even if they know, they wouldn’t care much because these matters are far removed from their own daily lives.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:56 PM | Permalink

Tim translates an op-ed by Shi Zhe that appeared in last week's Southern Weekly.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:47 PM | Permalink

Taipei Times reports. The museum will be open for memorials in 2010.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:10 PM | Permalink

The New York Times reports:

The bank now expects the Chinese economy to grow 8.4 percent this year, according to its latest quarterly review of the country, up from the 7.2 percent it forecast in June. It predicts growth of 8.7 percent next year.

The new 2009 estimate is just shy of the 8.5 percent being projected by the International Monetary Fund, which likewise raised its forecast for China and the rest of Asia last week, and also echoes recent upward revisions by economists at several private banks.

AFP also has a report, via The Telegraph.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:52 AM | Permalink

ChinaSMACK has a translation of a story about a man in Kunming beaten to death by the Chengguan.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:46 AM | Permalink

Biographer Hannah Pakula has written an biography of Soong Mei-ling. The New York Times has an extract about her religious upbringing:

Religion had made Charlie Soong's life. The Methodist Church had educated him and given him a place in the world. This was not necessarily the case with his third daughter. Required to live up to the behavior of her three older siblings, May-ling found daily prayers "tiresome" and "hated the long sermons" in church on Sunday. Family prayers were little better, and she often pled thirst in order to slip out of the room. "I used to think Faith, Belief, Immortality were more or less imaginary," she wrote in 1934. "I believed in the world seen, not the world unseen. I could not accept things just because they had always been accepted. In other words, a religion good enough for my fathers did not necessarily appeal to me."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:23 AM | Permalink

David at Randomwire posts on his visit and witnessing of cocoons boiled and silk extracted, with photos.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:13 AM | Permalink

ESWN presents reports and videos featuring xiangsheng actor Hou Yaohua, who has promoted dodgy medicines in ten television commercials.

At the China Daily as well.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Adam Cathcart rounds up some reactions to various episodes of the Premier's recent visit to Pyongyang, including this classic, noisy Arriflex camera one North Korean journalist used to film the proceedings.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:06 AM | Permalink

This report from Reuters does not say where the novel will be published.

U.S. President Barack Obama's half-brother made a rare appearance on Wednesday in southern China, his home for seven years, to launch a novel he says draws on his painful childhood under an abusive father.

Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo -- who had the same, late, father as the U.S. President -- has kept a low public profile since reports surfaced last year that he was living and working in the southern Chinese capitalist and manufacturing haven of Shenzhen...

... After repeatedly shunning media attention, Ndesandjo's first major public appearance to launch his debut novel comes less than two weeks before the U.S. president travels to China for the first time.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 2:52 PM | Permalink

TIME's Simon Elegant interviews Han Han:

"It's stupid to try to evaluate one's own works," he says, lacing his answer with frequent expletives. "If you are too humble, people won't take you seriously; and if you think too highly of yourself, it's not good for you either." As for other writers, Han flaps a manicured hand: "I don't do this kind of comparison. And frankly, I don't think your readers will be interested in Chinese literature at all."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:39 AM | Permalink

From The New York Times:

After a courtship of about 20 years, the Walt Disney Company has won approval from the central government of China to build a Disneyland-style theme park in Shanghai, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said Tuesday...

...Analysts estimate the initial park — not including hotels and resort infrastructure — will cost $3.5 billion, making it one of the largest-ever foreign investments in China.

The initial resort, with a mix of shopping areas, hotels and a Magic Kingdom-style theme park, will sprawl across 1,000 acres of the city’s Pudong district — with the theme park occupying about 100 of those acres ... It is expected to open in five or six years.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:03 AM | Permalink

On The China Beat:

[A]n excerpt from the introduction of Julia Lovell’s forthcoming translation of Lu Xun’s fiction. Lovell examines the uses (and abuses) of Lu Xun’s writings by Mao Zedong in the decades after the author’s death, pointing out the ways in which the CCP smoothed over rough edges and ignored inconvenient truths as it disseminated Lu Xun’s work for the Chinese public to study.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:30 AM | Permalink

A video set to music with no narration of a bunch of Chinese children playing football in Beijing, by China-Files.com (link to Italian language website with Vimeo video player).

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:58 AM | Permalink

GAPP has suspended approval for World of Warcraft, Blizzard's wildly popular online game whose Chinese operation Netease recently took over from The9. Reuters reports:

Citing "gross violations" of regulations, the General Administration of Press and Publication said it had halted and returned NetEase's application to operate "Burning Crusades" -- the latest version of the game licensed from Activision.

The regulatory body posted a statement on its Web site that demanded the NetEase affiliate company that operates World of Warcraft to suspend charging users to play the game, and disallow new account registrations.

This is turning into a major inter-ministry spat: the Ministry of Culture, which previously approved Netease's application, now says that GAPP exceeded its authority by interfering into the operation of World of Warcraft.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:46 AM | Permalink

China Geeks has a scan of a letter from Ai Weiwei's German doctors about his brain damage and threat to life, although with the conclusion that he will fully recover.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:42 AM | Permalink

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Danwei asks Ramzy questions about his reporting background, the stories that he has written from Beijing, and why TIME closed down the TIME China blog.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:43 PM | Permalink

Why doesn't the General Administration of Customs publicize a list of books that are banned from entering the mainland? One professor is suing to find out.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:36 PM | Permalink

and replaced by Yuan Guiren, vice-minister of education and former president of Beijing Normal University. China Daily uses an AP story in conjunction with their own:

The removal also comes just weeks after two senior administrators at Wuhan University in Hubei province were arrested over allegations of bribery.

Zhou has never been linked publicly with the matter, but he has spent the majority of his career in Wuhan's education sector and served as city mayor for two years before being promoted to vice-minister of education in 2002.

The alleged corruption at the university sums up the challenges facing China's college system, say analysts.

Global Times also reports that Zhou Ji has been appointed deputy Party Secretary of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:10 AM | Permalink

From AP on New York Times:

China will set the future direction of its burgeoning ties with Africa at a multinational forum in Egypt this month, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Premier Wen Jiabao plans to attend the Nov. 8-9 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Yang said in an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 9:47 AM | Permalink

Gady Epstein of Forbes writes in his online column about interviewing a corrupt coal mine boss in Shanxi:

"The inspection teams who went to check the coal mines, they asked for money. If you didn't give them money, they would close down the mine," Lian says. "How much you paid depended on the title. The bureau chief and the office director and the staff all have different prices."

Epstein's piece on the subject in the magazine is called Black Future.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 9:19 AM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

The death of China's legendary scientist Qian Xuesen has plunged many Chinese into deep sorrow and people across the country mourned the scientist, known as China's "father of space program," in different ways.

Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died of illness in Beijing Saturday morning at the age of 98. He led the country's missile and aviation programs and played a significant role in developing China's first man-made earth satellite.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 6:06 PM | Permalink

From Xinhua:

Biting cold and strong wind gripped Chinese provinces on Sunday as Beijing embraced its first snowfall this winter...

...In Beijing, a snow, which started in the wee hours and got heavier in the morning, covered most of the city proper, capping roofs and lawn in every neighborhood.

Beijing Weather Modification Office said they had used artificial means to increase the snow to ease the lingering drought.

"We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought," said Zhang Qiang, who is in charge of the office.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:49 PM | Permalink

China auto industry veteran Jack Perkowski looks at the rise of privately-owned Geely from a producer of low-end motorbikes to its position today, where it's set to acquire Volvo.

If Geely can bootstrap its way to the top of the auto industry, one of the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the world, it can happen in any industry–and it will.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 5:00 PM | Permalink

Chinese websites are reporting that Chongqing-born pop star Chen Lin (陈琳) committed suicide last night by jumping from her high rise apartment in Beijing.

This links to Youku's page of videos about her.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:31 AM | Permalink