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chinaSMACK translates from Mop a Chengdu nailhouse story:
November 13, early morning, a horrific “eviction and demolition” incident occurred on Tianhuizhen street in Jingniu district of Chengdu city. The female owner tried to use death to fight the go-vern-ment organized demolition crew, eventually “self-immolating” on the building’s roof, burnt beyond recognition, her life hanging by a thread.
A rundown of the top ten fastest growing Chinese cities this year, courtesy of People's Daily Online.
A short illustrated history of slogans extolling the People's Republic, the Central People's Government, the unity of the world's peoples, and a new order in East Asia.
Hefei introduces high standards for prospective urban enforcement officials. Will the squads' violent image be changed, or is the initiative just for show?
Inspired by the film, a Taobao seller has put up an auction for a 1 billion-euro ticket on one of the arks that will save humanity in 2012.
From The China Daily:
A fugitive accused of the fatal stabbing of six family members, including his wife and two sons, has been arrested in Hainan province, Beijing police said.
Li Lei, aged in his 30s, of Daxing district, was detained at a business center in Sanya on Saturday, just 26 hours after the bloody crime scene was uncovered in Beijing.
There is a photo of the accused on Sina.com.
A selection of quotes from bloggers about Twitter and the Great FireWall, in the , from a variety of people including Obama, someone named Xu, and disbarred lawyer Teng Biao:
Asked about Twitter and the Great Firewall of China, US President Obama told students at a town hall meeting recently that he was both a big believer in technology and the abolition of censorship...
...An amateur Twitter user surnamed Xu said the service is not that attractive, as it enabled rightists to disseminate propaganda, benefiting from instant circulation to create a buzz.
...Small actions online caused bigger impacts, according to Teng Biao, a lawyer.
“The trend of Internet is irreversible. We can expect deeper changes from the growth of civil society and separation of powers,” he said.
Chinahush has posted a translation of a migrant worker's description of his life on the construction site of a futuristic high-rise building, complete with photos and notes about working conditions, salaries and masturbation.
By Dan Levin in The New York Times:
Justin Franchi Solondz, an environmental activist from New Jersey who spent years evading charges of ecoterrorism in the United States by hiding out in China, was sentenced to three years in prison by a local court on Friday on charges of manufacturing drugs in this backpacker haven.
After serving his time, Mr. Solondz, 30, who is on the F.B.I.’s wanted list, will be deported to the United States, where he faces charges stemming from what the authorities say was his role in an arson rampage that destroyed buildings in three western states as a member of a group related to the environmental extremist organization Earth Liberation Front.
Boris at The NEXT WEB speaks with a Turkish script kiddie who attacked his personal Wordpress blog:
50,000 websites??? Amazing! So why do you do it?
Well, we are a hacking team so we do this to protest against somethings, for example the last month I think there was a genocide agains the Uygurs in the west of China and we just hacked around one thousand websites of the chinesse government.
Netizens including Woeser and Anti, discuss whether Tibet saves the world in the movie 2012. Woeser says:
I haven’t seen it yet, but I did see the trailer. That most classic scene where the old Lama rings the bell is really not that authentic. Tibetan temples don’t have the custom of striking bells, they play the copper trombone. They strike bells in Notre Dame, they strike bells in Hanshan temple and they also strike bells in Japanese temples but they don’t in Tibetan temples.
From CBS News / AP:
A Zimbabwe-registered cargo plane crashed when taking off at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport at 8:12am today, killing three foreign crew and injured four.
The MD11 aircraft, heading to Kyrgyzstan, overshot the runway and burned when departing. The fire was put out at 9am.
Four crew aboard were rescued by 10:53am and three others were confirmed dead in the crash.
Note: This post was updated; it previously cited reports that were no fatalities.
The New York Times has published a profile of artist Ai Weiwei, who is currently being subjected to increasing harassment by police in Beijing:
“He has never done anything illegal,” said his lawyer and friend, Liu Xiaoyuan. “But if he continues on his current path, getting involved in some very high-profile cases, I will get worried. Some government departments are already very annoyed about him.”
Mr. Ai says he is ready for whatever comes. “I came to art because I wanted to escape the other regulations of the society.
Blogger and activist Zhai Minglei's new book Bold Blogging (中国猛博) has been published in Hong Kong. The Global Times reviews the book and discusses freedom of expression.
The LA TImes' special correspondent Lauren Hilgers writes about Zhou Libo (周立波), the Shanghai comedian who uses his regional dialect in his shows:
In one of his most famous skits, the comedian does an impersonation of China's premier, Wen Jiabao, with arched eyebrows and slow, high-pitched speech. "Wen Jiabao is my favorite government leader," Zhou declares, just before launching into his routine -- an impression of Wen at the scene of a natural disaster.
"Premier Wen finds the dirtiest person available to shake hands with," Zhou says, and then turns to his audience, eyebrows high, face serene. He slowly mimes a handshake. "My friend," he says in his slow, reedy Wen Jiabao voice, "we have come too late."
The China Daily reported that carbon intensity targets of 45% set out by China will be carried to Copenhagen by Wen Jiabao (note: carbon intensity means carbon relative to economic growth):
China said Thursday it was targeting a hefty 40-45 percent cut in carbon intensity by 2020 and Beijing also announced Premier Wen Jiabao would lead the nation's charge for real climate change progress at the Copenhagen summit.
The announcements came one day after the US declared it would cut carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level. Washington also said President Barack Obama would take part in the opening of the two-week UN climate change conference.
For the Wall Street Journal Real Time blog, Sue Feng writes about the TV series "Dwelling Narrowness" (蜗居):
Over the past month, the TV drama has drawn a great deal of attention from young Chinese who discuss the program online. Many argue that Shanghai’s rising property prices are at the root of the tragic events in the storyline, and the term “house slaves” ((房奴) has become a popular slang term to describe people like Haiping.
In a recent (unscientific) survey by Chinese Web portal Sina.com, more than 60% of 15,000 voters agreed with the statement that “the drama reflects the public’s sentiment on house slaves.” Another poll by Tencent drew more than 360,000 votes, with most agreeing with the statement that “happiness is closely related to owning a home.”
The AP reports:
A court in northern China has sentenced five leaders of an unauthorized Protestant church to prison terms of up to seven years on charges including illegal assembly, rights groups reported Thursday.
The sentences are among the harshest in recent years for members of so-called "house churches" — congregations that refuse to register and accept the authority of the government's Religious Affairs Bureau.
Michael Rank on North Korean Economy Watch:
China is planning a major new development zone along the North Korean border aimed at boosting trade with its reclusive neighbour and throughout northeast Asia, a Chinese-language website reports.
Noted translator, scholar of foreign literature, and poet Yang Xianyi passed away on November 23 at the age of 94.
Xinhua reports that porn crackdown will extend to mobile WAP sites:
Latest statistics showed 1,179 people have been detained and 6,972 websites and online columns have been shut down. Among them,586 were porn mobile WAP sites and columns.
During the campaign, authorities in Shanghai detained seven people for profiting from lewd items through mobile WAP sites. The authorities in neighboring Zhejiang Province busted a ring specializing in spreading porn content via more than 100 WAP sites and arrested 38 suspects.
Global Voices Online writes about child workers:
On November 12, several days before the International Children's Day, an explosion erupted in an illegal fire cracker factory in Guangxi which resulted in 2 children workers dead and 11 others injured.
According to the Southern Weekend's report, these children victims were left behind by their parents, who are migrant workers and have to work in cities all year long to earn money and support their families. They lived with their aging grandparents and struggled to work before and after school time to earn some pocket money for snacks.
From The China Daily:
The vice-foreign minister said the RMB rate's flexibility may widen, echoing the nation's central bank a month ago.
The announcement by Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Zhijun comes after the People's Bank of China, which has the power to oversee the yuan and financial institutions, said it was in the process of reforming the exchange rate system.
From the Smithsonian's Air & Space magazine
When your assignment is to drop a live nuclear bomb, you’d better not return to base with it. But that’s just what happened in 1971 to Yang Guoxiang, a pilot with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, who told his harrowing tale to Bob Bergin, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who writes about the aviation history of Southeast Asia and China.
From The People's Daily:
The rules about who can and cannot get permission for a sex change operation has been changed.
Only those 20 or above with documented psychological reasons will be allowed to become a transsexual. And only surgeons with at least 10 years of related experience in hospitals approved by health authorities may carry out such procedures, according to the new regulations unveiled by the Ministry of Health.
Xinhua reports that two people have been executed for the Sanlu melamine milk scandal:
Zhang was found guilty of producing more than 770 tonnes and selling more than 600 tonnes of melamine-laced protein powder from July 2007 to August 2008.
Geng was convicted of selling more than 900 tonnes of milk tainted with 434 kg of protein powder to the now-defunct Sanlu Group, which was at the heart of the scandal, from October 2007 to August 2008.
The Wall Street Journal Real Time blog translates an editorial written by Wang Boming, Caijing's long-time publisher, from the first issue after Hu Shuli's departure:
In nearly 12 years as editor-in-chief, I’ve never written any editorials, but now, sitting here in an empty office building, it’s necessary to pick up the heavy pen. I think back to the time when I was studying in the United States 20 years ago, when I was a reporter and an editor. I was inspired by the title of “uncrowned king” that the media held. I sought out social justice and journalistic truth, and I was excited by the progress of China’s reform and opening. Even now, all these old memories are still vivid in my mind, and the beliefs I’ve held have never changed.
For The Guardian, Jonathan Watts covers the incineration project in Panyu and the street protest yesterday in Guangzhou:
The frustrated crowd surged into the municipal government office and demanded to be heard. They then occupied the city square, where they staged a peaceful sit-in. Wen Yunchao, a blogger and rights activist at the scene, told the Guardian by telephone that the number of protesters had swelled to about 800 as word spread by mobile phone and internet. The authorities declared the gathering illegal after the participants demanded the resignation of the city's deputy general secretary, he said.
From The China Daily:
The municipal government of Hangzhou, in east China's Zhejiang Province, stopped all natural gas supplies to entertainment businesses at the weekend to guarantee supplies to the city's 410,000 households.
The city government also cut gas supplies to hotels, office buildings and shopping malls by 20 percent.
Chinese cities are grappling for a second week with shortages of natural gas triggered by the unusually early winter weather.
Scott Kennedy on The China Beat writes about the departure of editor Hu Shuli from Caijing magazine:
Caijing’s decade-plus run of investigative reporting and the starry lights of the annual meeting left me as surprised as anyone when I heard that an era had come to an end...
... Nevertheless, after some reflection, it is important not to misread what has happened. Caijing was not shuttered; its reporters were not arrested. Its editors left of their own accord before any crackdown occurred. Hu Shuli did not go into hiding. Her staff remained loyal and left with her, and investors have helped her finance a new media organization.
From Beijing or Bust:
A tall Scandinavian-looking guy came and sat in the couch next to me. We stroke up a conversation about the newspaper story I was reading. Then he asked,
“Are you Chinese Chinese?”
Reflexively I explained that I had lived and worked in the US for many years. The Scandinavian guy then nodded, seemingly satisfied. “You don’t look very Chinese to me,” he said...
...Then what is this “Chinese Chinese”-ness that I am so obviously poor at grasping?
Big Brother Chang at Seagull Reference explores how subtle cues and codewords were overlooked by a mainland-based professor who received a lukewarm letter of recommendation from UIUC:
However, this is typical example of lost in translation (between eastern and western cultures). Had Professor had college experience in the west, he would be able to smell the clues. It's so stale that he did not even need to sniff. Actually the simple fact that the adviser did not voluntarily provide a letter was an obvious sign that was hard to miss. Not to say the wordings are so obvious that one should kick himself for failed to read the meaning/mood of the letter.
The professor has since taken down his original blog post complaining about the letter
From GoKunming.com:
Hundreds of angry shop owners brought traffic on Huancheng Nan Lu to a standstill Saturday morning to protest the pending demolition of Luosiwan market, according to a ChinaNews.com.cn report.
From The China Daily:
The death toll from the deadly coal mine blast in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has risen to 104, said local authorities early Monday morning. Another four are still trapped in the shaft.
The blast happened at around 2:30 a.m. Saturday at the Xinxing Coal Mine under the state-owned Heilongjiang Longmei Mining Holding Group's subsidiary in Hegang City. A total of 528 miners were working underground when the blast happened.
At Variety, Clifford Coonan reports that Disney and Huayi Brothers are partnering to produce a mainland version of the smash hit High School Musical:
Reed said there were some similarities with the original "High School Musical," "but we wrote an original screenplay from the ground up. This is inspired by the spirit of the first one."
The localization process threw up some interesting developments -- when the Disney treatment swapped basketball for kung fu training in the school, the local Chinese pointed out that basketball was a much bigger deal in China's schools than kung fu. The basketball stayed, Reed said. "We made it more local by making it more American," he added.
Cfensi has some comments on casting:
Hua Yi president, Wang Zhonglei was at the production start ceremony held on Nov. 22nd. He said that despite the lack of many successful musicals in China (poor Le Huo Nan Hai!), he expects this to have a big box office when it arrives in theaters next summer. Usually I have more faith in his statements, because Hua Yi’s well managed and their success rate is high, but the casting of Zhang Junning perplexes me, and brings me even more apprehension than just the baseline idea of “Chinese HSM remake”. He’s hot, and can sing and dance pretty decently, but less charismatic of actor than either Zac Efron or Jing Boran from BOBO. Maybe charisma wasn’t necessary for the character?
The Disney press release is here.
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.
At The China Beat, Maura Cunningham reviews Obama's visit to China with links to the best coverage and commentary.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The Global Times has a piece on the detainment of advocates surrounding the Sanlu milk scandal.
"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).
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.
Critiquing a poorly translated, poorly edited guidebook to subway safety.
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.
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.
The Lede blog at the New York Times makes a call for Chinese netizens to send their videos containing messages to Obama.
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.
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."
Uln at Chinayouren watches a thirty-episode patriotic drama.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Ahead of Obama's visit, Ai Weiwei writes an op-ed in Newsweek about his injuries in Sichuan.
New York Times has a piece on black jails in China, from a report released by Human Rights Watch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ChinaSMACK presents the latest recruitment posters, which feature images from the National Day parade.
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.
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.
Tim translates an op-ed by Shi Zhe that appeared in last week's Southern Weekly.
Taipei Times reports. The museum will be open for memorials in 2010.
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.
ChinaSMACK has a translation of a story about a man in Kunming beaten to death by the Chengguan.
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."
David at Randomwire posts on his visit and witnessing of cocoons boiled and silk extracted, with photos.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.