Must-read China news by Danwei

Reuters reports:

China urged the United States on Friday to scrap plans for President Barack Obama to meet the Dalai Lama next week, the latest source of friction in already strained Sino-U.S. relations.

The White House had said on Thursday that Obama would meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader on February 18, despite China's repeated warnings that such talks would hurt ties.

"China firmly opposes the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and U.S. leaders' contacting with him," a report from the official Xinhua news agency cited foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu as saying.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:49 AM | Permalink

The Chinese Law Prof Blog examines the charges against Stern Hu and others for commercial bribery:

As can be seen, they are charged not with giving bribes, which seems to have been the original charge, but with soliciting and taking bribes. The Xinhua report [Chinese] then puzzlingly goes on to say that “they lured the Chinese enterprises' heads with promises, or through other illegal means, to obtain the steel companies' commercial secrets on multiple occasions, causing ‘extremely serious consequence’ for the companies.” If obtaining the commercial secrets is linked with the bribery, this doesn’t make sense. You offer bribes to people to get their secrets; people don’t give you secrets and money. The money and the secrets are supposed to go in opposite directions.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:12 PM | Permalink

AP reports about the detainment of a Shanghai dissident:

A Shanghai-based dissident was taken from his home by officials who left a notice accusing him of disturbing public order, his wife said Tuesday.

Tong Guojing was detained Monday by four plainclothes police officers. A detention notice said he was being held for "interfering with social management and public order," said his wife, Zhang Fangxian.

The detention comes as China's largest city ramps up security ahead of the World Expo, which begins May 1 and runs for six months.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:01 PM | Permalink

Reuters reports via the Washington Post:

A Chinese court on Thursday upheld an 11-year prison sentence for prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo for writings that called for multi-party democracy -- perceived threats to the Communist Party's monopoly on power.

Liu's lawyer, Shang Baojun, told reporters his client's appeal to the High Court had been rejected with no change in his sentence, which was meted out in December by the Beijing Intermediate People's Court.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Sky Canaves at the Wall Street Journal reports:

Seventy-one people have been found responsible for the fireworks-fueled blaze that engulfed a building in the new headquarters of state broadcaster China Central Television last year, the official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday...

The State Council report appears to place some of the blame at the top levels of CCTV management. It said Zhao Huayong, former head of the broadcaster who stepped down in May, which Xinhua reported was because he had passed the retirement age of 60, would receive an administrative demotion and a "severe warning" from the Communist Party, while Mr. Zhao's deputy, Li Xiaoming, was dismissed from his post. The State Council also ordered CCTV to pay a fine of three million yuan ($438,820).

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:42 PM | Permalink

AP reports via the New York Times:

China's inflation rate eased in January, reducing pressure on Beijing to raise interest rates to control price increases as it tries to keep an economic recovery on track.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Alex Hofford has gathered photos from the factories around China on his photography blog. Series 6 shows the assembly of electric motorcycle wheels, lamp shades, parking meters, auto parts, aircon compressors, and plasma TV brackets.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Urbanatomy (that's Shanghai) is currently running a series of question and answers on China writers. This one is with Peter Hessler, where reporting also comes into it (links on the right to see other writers):

Do you write every day? If so, how many hours?

If I’m working on a book or a long article, I write every day. I’ll take a day off if I have to run errands or something, but I don’t take weekends off or anything. I like the writing; it doesn’t wear me out. I find reporting more demanding, and I generally prefer not to have day after day of interviews. I’ll be more careful to schedule breaks in that routine. But for writing I can work every day, and I usually do best in the mornings. I’ll write until lunch, then take a nap, and then work for another hour or two. In the afternoon I’ll go for a long run.

I try to pace myself. When I was younger I’d write for hours and hours; I wrote the first draft of River Town in less than four months. It wasn’t healthy and I found myself very depressed afterwards. Nowadays I work more slowly, and I think I enjoy it more.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:55 PM | Permalink

Hung Huang writes about Zhang Ziyi and schadenfreude for China Daily (republished on her blog):

I have always been a fan of Zhang Ziyi. She is beautiful, hardworking and talented. However, her reputation has been tarnished by a series of scandals which has unraveled in the public eye in the past six weeks. What we see is a real life drama of power, greed and sex that is in everyway as tantalizing as Dallas, and better.

I have always been curious about the German word schadenfreude which is such a perfect translation of a Chinese proverb - xing zai le huo (幸灾乐祸). Kind of funny how only the Germans and Chinese have been able to nail down that nasty sentiment in their respective languages. The fall of Zhang is nothing less than a schadenfreude fest for the press, the public and whoever it is that wants to see her fall.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:34 AM | Permalink

China Daily reports:

The country might see its pollution levels peak at an earlier stage of economic growth than expected, a senior environmental official said on Tuesday.

"China has taken a different growth path from developed countries so it is very likely that our pollution peak will come earlier," Zhang Lijun, vice-environmental minister, told a news conference in Beijing during a release of the first national pollution census.

The Guardian, Financial Times also have reports on pollution here and here, respectively.

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

The New York Times reports:

Disappointed but not surprised, Germany lost its status as the world’s leading exporter, as China’s surging economy pushed it into first place last year, according to official German data published Tuesday.

Chinese exports amounted to $1.2 trillion in 2009, while German exports totaled $1.1 trillion, or €797 billion, the German Federal Statistical Office said. Germany became the top world exporter in 2003, surpassing the United States.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Reuters reports (via The New York Times):

A Chinese activist who sought to document shoddy construction that he contended had contributed to deaths in China’s devastating 2008 earthquake has been sentenced to five years in prison for subversion, his lawyer said Tuesday.

The charges against the activist, Tan Zuoren, had nothing directly to do with his efforts on behalf of those killed in the earthquake. Instead he was accused of inciting subversion of state power because of comments he made in e-mail messages about the crackdown on June 4, 1989, on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:26 PM | Permalink

John Garnaut writes for The Age, via Sydney Morning Herald:

China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are more competitive with each other and less beholden to central command than outsiders often think. But there's another web of incentives that can override those corporate interests: the private interests of officials who control them.

Here's a real life micro-example of how it can work. You can imagine larger mutations of this story as Chinese government enterprises go out into the world.

A close contact of mine has been getting into business with someone who I'll call Lee. Lee has two money-generating assets. The first is his father, who is a key executive at one of China's biggest shipping companies, which is state-owned. The second asset is his friendship with a key executive at the resources-buying arm of a large Shanghai Government-owned conglomerate.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:09 PM | Permalink

George Chen and Melanie Lee report at Reuters:

Google Inc, the world's No.1 Internet search company, which threatened to quit China last month over censorship and hacking concerns, was among investors in the Disney-led consortium, the sources said on Monday.

The consortium planned to buy a stake of between 30 and 40 percent in Bus Online for more than $100 million via a purchase of old and new shares to be issued by the company in private placements, said the sources.

"Disney wants to be a strategic partner not just a financial investor in Bus Online as Disney is going to do many things in China -- for example, the theme park to be opened in Shanghai," said one of the sources.

"To Disney, the deal is not just about sharing in the growth of China's advertising market but more about the promotion of Disney, the brand itself, and this is strategically important to Disney in China."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:20 PM | Permalink

Jonathan Watts at The Guardian writes about saving the Amur tiger:

The Wildlife Conservation Society is also trying to foster tiger eco-tourism in the region, partly through the launch last November of an annual Hunchun tiger festival. It will be expanded this year with a conservation marathon, exhibitions, forums, screenings and tiger-themed essay and art competitions.

"We want to appeal to nature lovers by showing that the tiger habitat is an ideal environment," said Sun Quanhai, the local director of the society. ­"Hunchun's forest coverage exceeds 80%. The local government have realised the importance of conservation and decided to make Hunchun the 'tiger town' of China."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:14 PM | Permalink

China Music Radar covers the rise and fall of Ticketmaster China and its ambitious founder, Jon Krane:

...an apt metaphor for Ticketmaster China. A company run into the ground by those that created it (an unnamed Ticketmaster source claims that during an internal meeting it was said that Krane lost the Ticketmaster inc. “enough money to keep all its employees comfortably for the rest of their collective lives”). Krane put China on the touring map, but in such a way that will take it years to recover from. He was audacious and brave, but should possibly have taken more from the playbook that discretion is the better part of valor.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:48 PM | Permalink

Shang-Jin Wei, director of the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School etc, writes a study that is published in Forbes:

In our study we compared savings data across regions and in households with sons versus those with daughters. We found that not only did households with sons save more than households with daughters on average but also that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.

Even those not competing in the marriage market must compete to buy housing and make other significant purchases, pushing up the savings rate for all households.

The extended version of the article is at Vox.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:05 PM | Permalink

The China Daily reports on the 10 day nationwide crackdown:

More than 170 tons of milk powder have been recalled amid a 10-day nationwide crackdown on melamine-tainted dairy products, authorities have said.

The recall is the latest of dairy products to resurface from a 2008 contamination scandal that hit the country.

Two dairy companies in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region were closed for selling tainted milk powder on Saturday, while candies made with tainted milk powder were found in Jilin province yesterday.

The two affected companies are the Ningxia Tiantian Dairy Co Ltd and Ningxia Panda Dairy Co Ltd, Ningxia's regional government said in a press conference on Saturday.

Ningxia police also found that another company outside the region paid the Ningxia Tiantian Dairy Co Ltd last July about 170 tons of milk powder - melamine-tainted products left over from the 2008 scandal that should have been destroyed - as debt payment.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:56 AM | Permalink

For The New York Times, Dan Levin reports on antique markets and TV shows:

Contestant No. 3, a portly man in suspenders named Cui Xiaosong, clutched a golden mallet and gulped like an executioner having second thoughts. As a guest on China’s wildly popular antiques reality show “Collection World,” Mr. Cui knew he might have to get violent before the next commercial break. The victim? A delicately painted vase he had brought to the show, which he believed to be from the Qing dynasty and worth about $30,000.

“If it’s a fake, will you smash it?” asked the program’s white-gloved host, Wang Gang, as Mr. Cui faced the studio audience and three guest judges.

Mr. Cui nodded. The audience quieted down and Mr. Wang used the final minute to impart a bit of wisdom about collecting antiques in modern-day China: “Just as China opened up, so too is collecting about opening the mind to understand the outside world.”

Danwei previously translated an introduction to Collection World shortly after the program's premiere.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:28 PM | Permalink

Far West China rounds up the latest websites to become available in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which has been almost totally cut off from the world Internet since last July:

Right now the difference between internet in Xinjiang and the rest of China is determined by the way we describe the censorship. Throughout most of China people explain the Great Firewall by the number of sites which have been blocked; in Xinjiang we count how many sites have been unblocked. That's a huge difference.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:58 PM | Permalink

The Three Percent blog takes a look at the English translation of There's Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night (到黑夜想你没办法) by Cao Naiqian (曹乃谦), a book that has made the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist for 2010.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:53 PM | Permalink