Must-read China news by Danwei

Wired.com reports:

China sought to contain tension with the United States over online censorship and hacking, saying Google’s dispute with Beijing should not be over-stated, ahead of a possible challenge from Washington on Internet freedom.

Comments by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei Thursday appeared to be part of an effort to downplay disputes and avoid further straining ties with Washington. Relations are already troubled by quarrels over trade, Taiwan and human rights.

In a speech in Washington Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not mention China specifically. But in what could be construed as reference to China and Google’s allegations, she said: “Countries or individuals that engage in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation.” In diplomatic fashion, Clinton did not even suggest what those consequences might be.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:31 AM | Permalink

100 days out from the 2010 World Expo, Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap notes widespread complaints about the United States' high-cost, unimpressive pavilion:

Finally, my third reason that US citizens should care about the 100 day mark: the US pavilion is still several million dollars short of its budget. Apologists for the pavilion cite a wide range of excuses for the failed fundraising drive: the Olympics, the 2008 US election, the recession, and Chinese efforts to raise money off US corporations. But what they never acknowledge, but which is undoubtedly true, is that an architecturally significant US pavilion could have been built for one-third the cost of the current monstrosity (see: US$28 million Dutch pavilion), with a significant percentage of the funds coming from the US business community in Shanghai. Alas, the State Department – which selected the current pavilion group in a non-competitive process – had no interest in this kind of option.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:54 AM | Permalink

Last week Beijing announced that by 2012, 70% of migrant workers' children will be admitted to public schools. Wen Tao reports for the Global Times:

Wang hopes the government will keep its promise to admit more migrant students, but he is also doubtful that new policies will make anything easier. "With migrant parents like Wang, they have to provide the so-called five certificates like an original hukou, temporary residence permit and work contracts. I know a great number of our migrant workers in Beijing who don't have all of those five certificates."

But many migrant students choose to go back to their hometown to continue their high-school education because without a Beijing hukou, or residency permit, students can only attend gaokao, college entrance exams, in their hometown, and in most cases, they cannot attend high schools in Beijing either. "That's a big problem," said Wang. Some parents have to send their children home when they get to grade five primary or in the second year of junior high.

BON Live network has a story on migrant workers' children.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:19 PM | Permalink

The Beijinger blog writes:

Disturbing news in the Chinese press has bar owners around Gulou (aka the Drum Tower) feeling nervous. Plans have been announced to “restore” the area around the tower to the style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and build an underground “Beijing Time Cultural City,” comprising restaurants, parking spaces, and a museum about timekeeping technology.

The development is bordered by Jiugulou Dajie to the west, Zhangwang Hutong (about half way down Jiugulou Dajie) to the north, Caochang Hutong to the east, and Gulou itself to the south. In other words, the entire zone between the Drum and Bell towers and all adjoining hutongs.

A China Daily article talks about the underground city between Lama Temple and Dongdan.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:45 PM | Permalink

Two excerpts from an essay titled 'China's Promise' by Geremie Barmé on Chinabeat:

The Chinese Party-state, with the support of many citizens nurtured by a guided education and media industry, is now investing massively in presenting what it calls the ‘Chinese story’ (Zhongguode gushi 中国的故事) to the rest of the world. However, in doing this, it constantly limits and censors the variety of stories and narratives that make up the rich skein of human possibility in China itself...

...Writing, thinking and creating in Chinese, not as merely passive receptors, not just to be told tirelessly what ‘We Chinese’ think, is, I would suggest, part of the way that a developing enmeshment with the Chinese world is already unfolding for many young people.

Read the whole thing.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 2:42 PM | Permalink

Kent Ewing writes about the spread of academic fraud in Asia Times Online:

This month, a prominent British medical journal, The Lancet, urged the Chinese government to take action against rampant cheating in scientific research. But that call is likely to go unheeded in a university system that has taken the maxim "publish or perish" to the extreme. For a Chinese lecturer aspiring

to be a professor, it is quantity, not quality, that counts; indeed, quality is often irrelevant as evaluation teams of bureaucrats, many of whom have no knowledge of the disciplines they have been assigned, tick off who has published the most papers.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:09 PM | Permalink

Xinhua reports from Guangdong province:

Southern Guangdong Province launched the pilot real-name train ticket system Thursday morning amid China's efforts to curb ticket hoarding by scalpers.

China's first real-name ticket was booked at 7:03 a.m. Thursday by phone, confirmed sources with the ticket booking system of Guangzhou Railway Group (GRG), operator of the province's railways.

The ticket, priced at 423 yuan (61.96 U.S. dollars), was for a hard berth on a train coded K446 scheduled for Jan. 30, running from south China's Shenzhen City to northwestern Xi'an City.

The real-name system covers tickets of trains in nine stations in Guangdong scheduled between Jan. 30 and Feb. 4, the travel peak of the Spring Festival holiday season. These tickets are now available as travellers can book 10 days in advance by phone.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:55 AM | Permalink

Josh at the Far West China blog wonders how Xinjiang's Internet can be called "restored" when he can only access four web portals, which have been altered from their pre-block configuration:

It’s a completely different website hosting the exact same material. I notice a couple things right off the bat:

• There are no ads
• There is no place to “sign in”
• There is no Search capability
• The option for different languages is absent in Xinjiang

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:53 AM | Permalink

Global Voices Online translates an account of Gao Zhiqiang's loss of kidney:

28 year-old Gao Zhiqiang, father of three, had his right kidney removed after a subcontractor from whom he had requested seventy yuan in withheld pay, ordered his stabbing, reports the Yangcheng Evening News. A doctor has estimated Gao’s medical bills at around fifty-thousand Yuan ($7,300).

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Sharon LaFraniere reports on text message censorship for the New York Times:

China Mobile, one of the nation’s largest cellular providers, reported that text messages would automatically be scanned for “key words” provided by the police, according to the English-language China Daily newspaper. Messages will be deemed “unhealthy” if they violate undisclosed criteria established by the central government, the newspaper said.

The increased surveillance of text messages is the latest in a series of government initiatives to tighten control of the Internet and other forms of communication. Since November, the government has closed hundreds of Web sites in the name of rooting out pornography and piracy.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:23 PM | Permalink

The Financial Times reports via CNN:

Google's standoff with the Chinese government over hacking has claimed its first casualties outside the U.S. Internet company itself, with the delay to the launches of two Android-based mobile handsets in the country.

The launch of the two handsets, developed with Samsung and Motorola for China Unicom, the country's second-largest mobile operator, had been postponed, Google China said.

The move indicates that the Android-based platform -- the open source mobile operating system designed by Google to allow developers to build customized handsets -- is likely to suffer from the company's warning to pull out of China.

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

ESWN translates a press conference held by the Anshun police department on the shooting of two villagers. Reporters were not pleased with the PSB's attempt to stonewall them:

Chongqing Morning News: Can you give us a time for the results of the investigation?
Ran Taiyou: This ... we can ... after this is over, we can set up a time together ... oh ... this ... exchange ... exchange together.

Xinmin Weekly: Is the press conference today a progress report on the investigation? Or is it definitive? Please answer directly!
Ran Taiyou: This is ... the situation of our investigation ... this is not the final state ...

Host: The Q&A is over.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:04 PM | Permalink

Hung Huang on the films Avatar, Confucius and what China's Ministry of Publicity (nee Propaganda) can learn from Pandora:

Bravo to the Pandora Ministry of Propaganda for capturing the hearts and minds of the Chinese. Unfortunately for its Chinese counterpart, Avatar is a tough act to follow. On Saturday, the epic Chinese film Confucius (孔子) will be released. As everyone knows, promoting Chinese values across the planet is synonymous with promoting Confucius...

...To start with, the premiere of the film was a ceremony during which the stars actually got on their knees and kowtowed to the descendents of Confucius. I don't know, would you rather fly on the back of a dragon or kowtow to strangers named Kong? It's really a no-brainer, isn't it?

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:39 AM | Permalink

Chinese cinemas say that they are being required to pull the 2D version of Avatar ahead of its scheduled mid-Feburary closing date so that the domestic film Confucius can take its place.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:55 PM | Permalink

Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Dragonomics Research, in The Financial Times, excerpt:

But as long as a paranoid party insists on controlling what Chinese internet users can see and read and write, revenues and profits will be far lower than they would be in a free environment, and they will accrue exclusively to the companies that best navigate treacherous political waters.

Meanwhile, the opportunities for true profit from innovation in the unfettered global internet are staggering.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 3:23 PM | Permalink

From China Daily:

If local conditions become too difficult and no country can offer shelter to the Chinese living in Haiti, the government is prepared to evacuate all nationals, Wei Wei, director of the ministry's consular department, said.

Apart from the Chinese in Haiti on governmental or other business, Wei said he believed there are about 10 other nationals in Haiti - mainly working for mainland companies or at local Chinese restaurants - as well as about 20 illegal immigrants.

Amid the ongoing relief efforts following the 7.0-magnitude quake, the capital Port-au-Prince has been hit by sporadic violence and looting. However, Wei said that all Chinese nationals there have been safely accommodated.

The article also revisits Yunnan and Sichuan to get the reactions of people affected by the Wenchuan earthquake.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:17 PM | Permalink

China Daily reports:

China held a homecoming ceremony for eight peacekeeping police officers, who were killed in the Haiti earthquake last week, at the Beijing Capital International Airport on Tuesday morning.

State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu presided over the ceremony...

Their bodies were found in the debris of the UN mission headquarters in Port-au-Prince on Saturday and Sunday.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:08 PM | Permalink

Wang Lei at the Economic Observer Online writes about the Google fiasco:

It appears obvious that Google's announcement echoes a new proposal that Hillary Clinton is reported to be announcing some time in the near future that is said to be aimed at assisting citizens of other countries gain access to uncensored Internet resources.

We think that despite their standpoints conflicting with each other, speaking from the respective logic of both the Chinese government's and Google's positions, they're both rational.

The influence of the Internet in China has grown rapidly over the past few years, and the Chinese government has taken steps to bring this newly expanding domain under its regulatory control, which has been in line with the strengthening of the usual way in which it supervises public opinion.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:02 PM | Permalink

AFP reports:

China further eased restrictions on communications in its troubled Xinjiang region, restoring text messaging services six months after deadly ethnic unrest, state media said Monday.

The move followed similar recent moves to reintroduce Internet access, with residents now able to access the websites of two state media outlets as well as two popular web portals, sina.com.cn and sohu.com.

Xinhua news agency quoted a regional government official as saying text messaging services were "gradually" restored on Sunday. Some online banking services are now also available, the report said.

The New York Times also has a report.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:22 AM | Permalink

Reuters reports on the growth of Chinese netizens in 2009:

Throughout 2009, the number of Chinese Internet users grew by 86 million -- more than the total population of Germany -- or a rise of 28.9 percent compared to the end of 2008.

The survey, based on a count of residents who said they used the Internet in the past six months, found 29 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are now net users.

The numbers establish China's position as the world's largest online community, more than the entire population of the United States.

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

ESWN translates from Han Han's latest blog posting on predictions for the future:

2011: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter announce that they are re-entering China and opening up registration. At the same time, the aforementioned websites announce from the United States that they are not developing any businesses in China. But their announcements are instantly censored, so that nobody in China knows.

2011: All those who register at the aforementioned websites are systematically tracked down by the Great Wall system. Their computers are re-installed. Afterwards, if the users want to visit a general-purpose website, they can only reach People.com.cn and Xinhua; if they want to visit a forum, they can only go to Strong Nation Forum and Tiexue Forum; if they want to visit a video site, they can only go to CCTV 1. Once the system is re-installed this way, there is no way to undo the settings.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:02 AM | Permalink