Robert Park in the Chinese press
Sinologistical Violincellist looks at reactions to the capture and release of an American missionary in the DPRK.
« January 24, 2010 - January 30, 2010 | Main | February 7, 2010 - February 13, 2010 »
February 6, 2010
Twenty-foot, illuminated characters
Imagethief has to stare at a massive countdown clock in CBD.
Did anyone learn anything from Nike?
All Roads Lead to China speaks to Pierig Vezin (Founder and CEO of WethicA) about Labor Compliance:
How much does it cost to do it right? What are the costs of doing it wrong?
It depends on what right and wrong means. Wrong is sometimes prison where labour cost close to zero. If right means compliant, then you’ll have not to produce in China. You can’t ask a factory to work 40 hours a week when all others are working 70 or 75. Actually if you ask it to strongly and refuse to see it is impossible, then you ask the factory to lie to you. Asking for better than the average is reachable. Asking for compliance is not.
February 5, 2010
The Dragon's Gift
Howard French reviews The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, a book by Deborah Brautigam that takes a very positive view of China's involvement in Africa.
Internet commentators and their work
The Global Times reports on the 50 cent army:
Gansu government recently announced that it was recruiting a team of 650 Internet "commentators" to "guide" public opinion through posts and replies to comments by Web users on Internet forums.
The recruits were soon being ridiculed by other netizens as the "5 mao army," or "5 mao dang," referring to those who are paid 50 Chinese cents to post comments favorable to the government.
Some critics say the term "5 mao army" is a product of prejudice under western influence. Zhang Shengjun, a professor of international politics at Beijing Normal University, recently wrote in the Chinese edition of the Global Times that the foreign media are crucial in spreading the term.
Salinger's almost-publisher interviewed by Southern Weekly
For Southern Weekly, Tim Hathaway interviews Roger Lathbury, editor-in-chief of Orchises Press, which nearly published a book by J.D. Salinger in the mid-1990s. Salinger's death was widely reported in book review and culture sections of Chinese newspapers. In its Chinese edition, the Southern Weekly article offers for Chinese readers a local version of the story broken by the Washington Post at the end of January.
Development through land confiscation
Pizhou became one of China's top 100 counties through aggressive land requisitions, shady construction practices, and strategies for tricking central government inspectors.
A huge and largely open frontier of opportunity
Howard French reviews The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa by Deborah Brautigam:
Brautigam handily disproves, however, the commonplace assertion that China concentrates its energies disproportionately on the continent’s mineral storehouses, with findings that show Chinese aid and investment are present nearly everywhere in Africa. What is even more interesting is the way that she illustrates how tightly the two are bound together.
Bus rampage in Tianjin
The Beijing News covers a bus hijacking in Tianjin that left ten people dead and a dozen more injured. More here.
On Chinese museums: a Q&A
Evan Osnos at the New Yorker blog talks museums with an author of China: Museums:
There are some odd ones in here. Which was the strangest?
Of course, this is culturally sensitive—what might seem strange to us may not be to a Chinese. In fact, we thought at first we might have the word “quirky” in our title—when we told this to a Chinese friend, he seemed insulted. “Strange” is only in the eye of the beholder! But, from our point of view, I guess two of our favorite “strange” ones would be the Eunuch Museum in Beijing and the Linzi Funerary Horse Pit Museum of the Eastern Zhou in Shandong. The Eunuch Museum is connected to a eunuch cemetery in western Beijing. It was built for a Ming dynasty eunuch, Tian Yi, who was a favorite of the Wanli Emperor. The cemetery itself is a quiet, soulful place—it’s really got atmosphere. At the gate is a small museum explaining “eunuch culture” with posters, photos of eunuchs at court, and an explanation of the surgery itself.
Danwei's entry on this book is here.
Fan Lixin's Last Train Home
A translation of a Southern Weekly interview in which the filmmaker discusses, among other things, shooting depressing documentaries with foreign money.
Panda Tai Shan travels from the US to China
The Washington Post reports:
A zebra brayed farewell. A wolf howled and mourning doves cooed. But from the solemn procession of humans that bore the National Zoo's giant panda Tai Shan to the truck that would take him to China on Thursday, there was scarcely a sound.
The panda's main keeper, Nicole Meese, said "It's okay, it's okay" to the bear as she walked beside the forklift carrying Tai Shan in his transportation crate from the panda house where he was born to the waiting tractor-trailer.
February 4, 2010
Cases of naked marriage
China Daily reports:
Zhang Yi, a 28-year-old editor at the fashion magazine Sunshine, imagined her boyfriend's proposal like this: In a nice restaurant, he gets down on his knees, flourishes a diamond ring and asks: "Will you marry me?"
She would then scream, and with tears of joy in her eyes, throw herself into his arms.
But the reality was totally different. One night at the end of 2008, her boyfriend simply said: "My mother has asked us to register for the marriage certificate as soon as possible."
Zhang agreed - and that was it.
"My husband is two years younger than me. I understand he has little money. Besides, I love things to be simple. So I agreed," Zhang says.
Never short a country with $2 trillion in reserves?
Why China's huge foreign reserves don't mean what Thomas Friedman thinks they mean:
A blog post by Michael Pettis.
New milk scares
AFP reports (via Google):
Police have arrested four people in northern China amid a new crackdown on milk products tainted with melamine, the same chemical responsible for six deaths in 2008, state media reported Wednesday.
The four were involved in the dairy industry in the city of Weinan in Shaanxi province and will face charges of "manufacturing and selling food that does not meet hygiene standards," China National Radio said on its website.
The arrests come amid reports that tainted products supposed to have been destroyed after the 2008 scandal had found their way back on to the market.
Britain and China strengthen military ties
Xinhua reports:
A top British military official met on Wednesday with visiting Deputy Chief of General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Ma Xiaotian, pledging to strengthen bilateral military ties.
Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff, said during the meeting that the British military "attaches great importance to the friendly relationship" with the Chinese military and expects more efforts to be made to improve mutual understanding and trust and to step up pragmatic cooperation.
February 3, 2010
"We came from the farms and so we understand the villagers the best"
The cross-country bicyclists at Portrait of an LBX get entertained by a local official when they check into a government building in Gaoqiao:
We rolled on again until around 4:30 to the town of Gaoqiao (高桥镇), where we realized there wasn’t enough sunlight left to continue. The only hotel in town, much to our dismay, had no vacancies, and we scrambled to ask locals where we could stay, half-way hoping one might invite us in. “If you have your own sleeping bags, you could sleep in the government center,” said one man selling raw pork in the central market. Well well well, a government center! That’s just ridiculous enough an idea to make for a good story, I thought. I was not to be disappointed.
Monitoring Beijing's air pollution: longing for blue skies
The Asia Society has a slide-show on monitoring Beijing's air pollution, a diary that was kept over days.
A video, featuring Center on US-China Relations' Orville Schell, is called Longing for Blue Skies.
Soft power approach continues
David Bandurski writes at China Media Project:
...in an editorial in yesterday’s Chengdu Commercial Daily, Chen Jibing (陈季冰), a professional journalist and blogger, suggested that China was placing too great an emphasis on the technical aspects of its so-called “communication capacity.”
Chen argued that China would have to surge ahead in terms of the basic quality and credibility of its information as well — an area where he says Western media have traditionally excelled — if it wished to raise its international influence.
Han Han talks about culture and censorship
ESWN translates a speech that blogger and author Han Han delivered to Xiamen University:
But when I write, I cannot help but think: I can't write about the police, I can't write about the leaders, I can't write about government policies, I can't write about the system, I can't write about the judiciary, I can't write about many pieces of history, I cannot write about Tibet, I cannot write about Xinjiang, I cannot write about assemblies, I cannot write about demonstration marches, I cannot write about pornography, I cannot write about censorship, I cannot write about art. I am unable to write anything elegant. I am really incapable of writing anything elegant because I am not Yu Qiuyu.
Talking about race in China
China Geeks talks with popular blogger Hecaitou about racism:
In China, you can obviously tell from physical characteristics that Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Han people aren’t part of the same racial group [人种]. In the past two thousand years the mixing of different ethnicities is very obvious, so nearly all Han people also carry a little bit of the blood of other ethnicities. I understand that instances of refusal of employment, marriage, or school entrance on account of differing ethnicities are extremely rare.
Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama
The BBC reports:
US President Barack Obama intends to go ahead with plans to meet the Dalai Lama despite warnings from China not to, a White House spokesman has said.
Mr Obama told China's leaders last year in Beijing that he would meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
China has warned that ties with the US would be undermined if the meeting takes place.
No date has been set but it is expected to take place later this month.
"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.
Nina Wang's estate goes to charity
Tania Branigan at the Guardian reports:
A feng shui master today lost his battle for the multibillion-dollar fortune of his late lover Nina Wang, with a Hong Kong court dismissing her will as a forgery.
A judge ruled that her estate should go to charity, ending a lawsuit that has gripped the territory – long fascinated by "Little Sweetie", a property magnate who sported pigtails, ankle socks and miniskirts until her death at 69.
The extraordinary case saw intimate details of the couple's affair, explanations of esoteric feng shui rituals and even Wang's pigtails submitted in evidence; her lover said she left the latter to him as a token of her affection.
Chongqing senior officials in corruption probe
Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief writes:
Wen Qiang, Chongqing’s former police and justice chief, is the most senior official to be charged in the corruption probe. He is accused of taking more than $2.4 million in bribes to protect criminal gangs, a large chunk of which was recovered in cash buried in a fish pond. He also owned eight luxury villas across the city. His wife, Zhou Xiaoya, is also on trial for abusing her position as the spouse of a government official to gain more than $1 million.
Wen is also accused of raping a university student several times.
Earlier in the anti-corruption campaign, his sister-in-law Xie Caiping, dubbed the "godmother of Chongqing’s underworld," was sentenced to 18 years for running gambling dens and drug trafficking. A former tax bureau official, Xie brazenly ran a casino and brothel just opposite Chongqing’s People’s Court.
"Only death penalty can appease the people!" was the dominant sentiment in China’s Internet chat rooms today. "Could it be that all the bad people are just in Chongqing?" was another typical comment.
February 2, 2010
1970s art and the cultural revolution
Xujun Eberlein at Inside-Out China blog translates an essay on the topic by Chen Dehong.
Warning against a changed status for Tibet
The Associated Press reports:
Chinese negotiator Du Qinglin said Monday he told the Dalai Lama's representatives that Beijing was only willing to address the future of the exiled spiritual leader — not any greater autonomy for Tibet.
Du, head of the United Front Department of the Communist Party, the government department that handles the talks, said China's national interest was inviolable, and "there can be no room for discussion, no room for compromise" on territorial issues.
February 1, 2010
Big dogs banned in Guangzhou
Waffles and Steel, a blog by a cycling-obsessed man "trying to ride like a Belgian hardman in China" has the list of large dogs banned as pets by Guangzhou city authorities from Pit Bull Terriers to Tibetan Mastiffs.
Historical Tsingtao commercials
The Qingdaonese blog has a translation of a historical video about the beer.
US arms sales to Taiwan go ahead, Beijing protests
Xinhua has the official reaction:
Ignoring repeated solemn representations made by China, the U.S. government on Friday notified Congress of its nearly 6.4 billion-U.S.-dollar arms sale package to Taiwan.
The sale is a wrong decision, which not only undermines China's national security interests and her national unification cause, but also once again hurts the national feelings of the Chinese people.
January 31, 2010
"Happy sendoff": a Fujian Daoist funeral
Portrait of an LBX drops in on a funeral: "No, no, you don’t understand! The livelier the funeral, the more successful; so the more people, the better!"
The Great Firewall 13 years on
In an essay on The China Beat, Geremie Barmé looks back back to the article he co-authored with Sang Ye 13 years ago that coined the phrase "Great Firewall" and to the foreign policy of John Foster Dulles, the U.S. secretary of state who articulated the theory of "peaceful evolution".
Viewed through the lens of history, the American impulse to change China, the sentiments expressed by Google executives and Hillary Clinton, and the Chinese state response are all thoroughly predictable.