Rivalry between the top leaders?
Asia Sentinel looks at the relationship between Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao and their attitudes to political reform.
« July 2010 | Main | September 2010 »
August 31, 2010
First steps towards political reform
China Media Project translates an editorial by PKU professor He Weifang.
China and DPRK to restart nuclear talks
China Daily reports following Kim Jong-il's visit to China.
August 30, 2010
Echoes and the crunch of broken glass
Shanghai Street Stories asks, "What is the appeal of an abandoned building?"
State-owned enterprises seek foreign executives
The China Daily:
More than a dozen State-owned enterprises (SOEs) will hire new managers by the end of the year after a worldwide recruitment campaign, the centrally administered State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) announced last week.
Recruitment will begin Aug 30. The positions are open to all nationalities, the watchdog said.
Four general managers and eight assistant managers will come on board during the eighth and largest global hiring program by the SASAC.
Don't use Party newspapers as toilet paper!
At Language Log, Victor Mair comments on the grammar of a sign in a public toilet forbidding the use of Communist Party newspapers as toilet paper.
August 29, 2010
A shady adoption agency
Kim Mackrael at the Guelph Mercury takes a long look at Jim Garrow's "baby rescue" operation, which claims to smuggle out of China babies who would otherwise be abandoned:
As the organization’s reputation in China grew, he says it became easier to convince people in China to trust representatives of Pink Pagoda with their infants. Now, he says, he’s almost legendary in much of the country.
“You don’t see me walking on a street in China, you don’t see the reaction they have to me there,” he says. “It’s almost mystical.”
“People know something like what I do is going on, and they appreciate it.”
On March 11, 2009, the Pink Pagoda website welcomed a lawyer named Kenneth Xue as the organization’s legal adviser.
...
Reached by email at his office in Shenzhen, China, Xue said he never agreed to be a part of Pink Pagoda.“I have never been involved with Pink Pagoda and have no ... idea about this organization. I am really angry with this guy,” Xue wrote.
Via Research China, which adds additional information on Mr. Garrow, including the detail that he claims to enjoy the patronage of President Hu Jintao.
'Science cop' Fang Zhouzi injured in attack near home
Fang Zhouzi, who is known as a "science cop" for battling against pseudoscience and academic misconduct, was attacked Sunday evening near his residence in Beijing, according to his wife's posting on his microblog.
August 27, 2010
No coincidence, no story
David Bordwell muses on the use of coincidences in Hong Kong films, Hollywood, and cinema in general.
China's mobile Internet users to exceed PC users in 2012
The People's Daily:
With an increasing number of people choosing to access the Internet via mobile phone, it is expected that China's mobile Internet users will outnumber those using personal computers by around 2012, according to Wu Dan, a senior analyst from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).
The love bus on Beijing's Third Ring Road
The China Daily describes a new dating service for singles in Beijing:
...The journey, named "Love on the Third Ring Road", starts from the No 944 bus stop near Gongzhufen in Xicheng district at 5 pm between Monday and Friday and travels the Third Ring Road clockwise before terminating at the same stop. The whole journey takes about three hours.
The bus is free to persons still single. Seats are booked in advance on a website called nanbeituan.com. Tickets are designed just like a typical train ticket in China, but state: "No 520 bus goes from my heart to your heart" and are issued by Cupid, the god of love.
However, the free ride comes with particular rules. Female passengers should take separate seats, and male passengers need to change seats every seven minutes. The men are allowed a one-minute presentation in any form they can think of to show off their charms. Women decide whom they want to sit with by raising boards showing either a circle (accept) or a cross (refuse).
August 26, 2010
Fujian netizen case documentary - Herzog Days
Global Voices has posted a documentary film by He Yang with English subtitles about the "Fujian netizen case" in which several bloggers were arrested for publishing video and other materials that accused local police of hiding evidence of a gang rape and murder. The film is called Herzog Days.
Fan Yanqiong, the last of the Fujian netizens still in prison, was quietly released on Wednesday, just days after the release of the film.
Controversy over "Holding a Body for Ransom"
ESWN translates a raft of news reports and analysis of the controversy surrounding the award-winning photo of salvagers retrieving the body of a drowned college student from a river. The man portrayed in it is not negotiating a price, and his gesture could be interpreted in many different ways, so is the title "Holding a Body for Ransom" misleading, even if a ransom may have been sought by someone else?
August 25, 2010
Bikes on the sidewalks and other signs of civilization
Liuzhou Laowai comments on the city's clean-up efforts, which include clearing outdoor dining from the sidewalks so that electric bike traffic can be routed through:
his is all part of Liuzhou's latest propaganda stunt - a bid to be named a "National Civilised City" in 2011. "Civilised" has a strange meaning in Chinese. I have visited factories boasting signs declaring them to be "civilised work units" but they seemed just like any other factory and I have stayed in hotels proud that they are "civilised hotels". In the latter case, "civilised" seems to mean that the whores who ring you up and knock on your door all night long are under the personal control of the hotel's night manager rather than random independents.
Every building site (and we are not short of those!) and vacant lot has been boarded off with huge propaganda signs. The city streets have been festooned in propaganda signs such as the one on the left which is hanging from virtually every lamp post. It basically says that everyone is part of Liuzhou and everyone should strive to be a civilised citizen. Just last month they issued a set of guidelines on how to do this.
Part I is here. See also Newspapers make for an ugly city, Danwei's look at a clean city campaign in Guiyang.
Traffic jam tied to illegal coal trade?
NPR reports on the Christian Science Monitor's report on the 62-mile, 11-day traffic jam outside of Beijing.
Peter Ford reported for the Christian Science Monitor.
43 dead in Heilongjiang plane crash
A passenger jet with 96 people on board crashed while trying to land on the airport in Yichuan, Heilongjiang Province yesterday at 9:35 p.m.
According to the newspaper, the airplane broke into two parts shortly before it touched down and burst into flames soon after it landed. 43 people have been confirmed dead.
August 24, 2010
A seed bank for the endangered plants of Southwestern China
From China Daily via China.org.cn:
Trekking into the wild unknown and scaling sheer cliff faces is probably not in the typical botanist's job description.
Then again, Cai Jie is not your typical botanist.
As collection coordinator for China's first national seed bank for wild plants, the 31-year-old spends much of his time searching for endangered plants in some of Southwest China's most challenging terrain...
"In Guizhou province and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, a lot of the terrain is limestone. You hang on with one hand and collect seeds with the other."
Although hazardous, the work done by Cai and his team is vital in efforts to protect China's more than 30,000 species of plant life, half of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world...
..."China has as much flowering plant diversity as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere put together," said David Paterson, the institute's honorary senior horticulturalist and former director of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland.
With at least 20 percent of the country's species already seriously threatened, the seed storage facility at the Germplasm Bank of Wild Species in Yunnan safeguards plants from habitat destruction, climate change and invasive alien species, and makes their valuable genetic information available to researchers.
The biggest city you've never heard of?
Christina Larson writes for Foreign Policy about Chongqing as megacity.
From behind bars:
Huang Guangyu battles for control of Gome
Laurie Burkitt on The Wall Street Journal website:
The founder of giant Chinese retailer GOME Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd. is waging a boardroom battle-- while in detention after a bribery conviction--to unseat an old friend who is now chairman.
The giant Chinese retailer said on Monday shareholders will vote on a resolution by founder Huang Guangyu, who is waging a campaign to unseat the company's chairman, Chen Xiao, who steered the company through a crisis after Mr. Huang was arrested by police early last year. Mr. Huang, once China's richest man, wants to install one of his sisters as chairman.
Wasserstrom: What everyone needs to read
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, reviews the recent crop of China books and comes out in favor or Richard McGegor's The Party and Jonathan Watt's When a Billion Chinese Jump.
The Goldman Sachs Conspiracy: a bestselling business book
On Bill Bishop's Sinocism blog:
Yesterday I bought a copy of Li Delin’s (李德林) latest book-“高盛阴谋” (Goldman Sachs Conspiracy). Li is a well-known financial journalist and author who has written several other books, including the November 2009 “干掉一切对手——看高盛如何算赢世界 (Eliminate All Competitors–How Goldman Sachs Wins Over the World”...
...In just a brief skim through the book I can tell it is ugly, driven by not just all the expected conspiracy theories, including an undercurrent of anti-Semitism, but also by a provocative nationalist theme. The first chapter, which declares that Goldman’s “ultimate goal is hunting and killing China” - sets the stage.
August 23, 2010
A profile of Ilham Tohti
Andrew Jacobs in The New York Times:
Ilham Tohti rarely worries about his personal safety here — at least not at the hands of would-be thieves.
That is because Mr. Tohti, an economics professor and unofficial spokesman for this country’s embattled Uighur minority, frequently has a police escort.
Mass evacuations: flooding in Northeast China and North Korea
from The China Daily:
Heavy rains triggered landslides and caused the Yalu River, which demarcates China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), to breach both banks, killing at least four people and forcing about 99,000 people to evacuate over the weekend, according to local authorities in Dandong, Liaoning province.
Though water levels at the river's worst-hit Dandong city section had dropped from Saturday noon's 7.03 meters to the normal level (4.57 meters) Sunday morning, a looming rainstorm measuring up to 250 millimeters is forecast to continue over the river basin till Monday.
August 22, 2010
Badges of Chairman Mao Zedong
Bill Bishop looks at the heyday of the Mao badge industry:
In 1991-92 I collected about 3,000 badges while living in Beijing. I stopped in 1993 when it became apparent that a lot of reproductions were hitting the market, and I don’t think I have bought one in 15 years. I thought they would be a good investment (so far not really; stamps or propaganda posters would have been better ones), but that was a secondary reason for collecting them. I thought that through these badges I could get a much better understanding of the insanity of the Cultural Revolution and of the people who participated in it and suffered from it.
I ended up writing a long paper in graduate school, under the guidance of my advisor Alice Miller, about Mao badges.
On dance and defection
The New York Times Arts Beat blog interviews Li Cunxin, the first Chinese defector of the performing arts world.
August 21, 2010
August in Chinese SF
The World Chinese-Language Science Fiction Research Workshop has released its August newsletter, which includes full results of the XINGYUN Prize, and news about several works of SF criticism:
Fantasy and Reality: A Cultural Study of Science Fiction Translation in Twentieth-Century China, published [in English] in June as part of the Fudan University College of Foreign Language and Literature Doctoral Thesis Series, examines how science fiction as a popular literary genre was translated and received. Author Jiang Qian has done innovative work on the history of science fiction translation, which has previously received little attention. She sums up the four waves of translation, performs case studies of five classic works, and explores the influence of translated science fiction on the development of China’s domestic science fiction.
The sexual dilemma of the Chinese woman
On Little Red Book, a series of photos by Han Junwei depicting the choices facing a Chinese women when it comes to choosing a man.
Riot police beat up Henan football fans
Photos and explanation of recent Chinese Internet reports of police beating up fans of the Henan Construction Football Club after their team lost yet another match at their home stadium.
August 20, 2010
Xinhuanet.com.cn IPO approved
Caijing reports:
Chinese government yesterday has approved the initial public offering of Xinhuanet.com.cn, the state-run website, one of the ten official websites in Chinese mainland that have been mulling plans to tap into stock market, Caijing learned.
Sun Zhijun, Vice Minister of the Propaganda Department, told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference on culture reform that besides Xinhuanet, People’s daily online is now under review by the department, while other two official websites including CCTV.com are preparing filing documents.
Other seven official websites include qianlong.com, enorth.com.cn, eastday.com, dzwww.com, zjol.com.cn, voc.com.cn and scol.com.cn.
The separation of business assets and non-business assets is an important element of the ongoing reform of our cultural system, Sun said.
While during the process, the differences between public welfare and business industries should be noted, he added, describing it as an issue “in principle.”
Take the Guangzhou Daily for example, he further explained, its content belong to the public welfare sector, and should be strictly distinguished from operational assets such as advertising and publishing.
Regarding the ten official news websites, who are redoubling their efforts to prepare for the IPO launchings, the assets concerned with content would also be strictly regulated and that related to public welfare should not be allowed to go public, Sun added.
Was Xinhua wrong about the Aksu explosion?
A police spokeswoman in the city seems to think so, reports Ming Pao, translated by the autonomous region blog:
Immediately after the explosion had been released by the state-run Xinhua news agency and injuries confirmed by a local hospital in Aksu, journalists from Hong Kong called the Aksu Police Office (gong’an ju) for further details. The spokeswoman denied any explosion had taken place: “Stop! I know what you’re trying to ask! This is a total fabrication! No such thing happened!” Then the journalist called again and mentioned the Xinhua report. The spokeswoman replied impatiently: “Even what Xinhua said is not necessarily true. All should be accorded with the Police Office. And what you said (about the explosion) is liable to legal obligations!”
Rock Paper Tiger: A novel
Lisa Brackmann has authored a novel about the Iraq war and living in Beijing. She talks to Danwei and gives permission for an excerpt.
India and China: A Himalayan rivalry
The Economist has a long feature looking at the border disputes on the China India border, current tensions and outlook for the future.
Junk food bonds
From The Wall Street Journal:
McDonald’s Thursday became the first nonfinancial foreign company to launch a yuan-denominated bond in Hong Kong, according to Standard Chartered PLC, the Asia-focused U.K. bank that underwrote the deal. The bank said Thursday that the fast-food giant was raising 200 million yuan ($29.5 million) with a three-year bond that will pay 3% annual interest.
Caijing continues proud tradition, without Hu Shuli
A post on China Media Project titled 'Caijing shines with Gansu disaster coverage' looks at
Tricycle bomb explosion kills 7 in Aksu, Xinjiang
Lily Kuo in the Los Angeles Times:
A man drove an electric tricycle packed with explosives into a crowd in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang on Thursday. The blast, in a region that saw massive ethnic riots last summer, killed seven people and injured 14.
Xinjiang government spokeswoman Hou Hanmin said a man was apprehended at the site of the explosion, which occurred outside the city of Aksu in the west-central part of the province, near China's border with Kyrgyzstan.
See also: Analysis at The New Dominion.
China's troubled waters - a podcast
The latest Sinica podcast is up:
This week, the Sinica gang takes a lively look at Beijing and Washington's maneuverings in China's troubled coastal waters. Appearing with Kaiser are regulars Jeremy Goldkorn, Gady Epstein, and Bill Bishop. Joining us as well is special guest Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the North East Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. This is a podcast you do not want to miss.
SARFT: no ratings, censorship of 'low-taste products' to continue
Jonathan Landreth in The Hollywood Reporter:
Madame Zhao Shi, vice minister of the State Administration of Radio Film and Television, said at a news conference that China would not introduce film ratings despite industry pressure to allow a swelling middle class the right to choose its big screen entertainment...
...
“We will accelerate production of cultural products to contribute to a moderately comfortable society in keeping with the core values of our socialist society,” said Zhao......“Certain [Chinese] companies have created low-taste products to cater to and attract a greater share of the market,” Sun said. “This is because of the impact of external culture, and is something we need to focus on in the next stage of reform.”
Ho hum.
Perry Link's wishlist of leaks
Inspired by Wikileaks, China scholar Perry Link (now on Twitter @perrylink) has published a wish list of leaks from China's secret government archives
Chinese bloggers, both inside China and overseas, began listing key episodes in recent Chinese history that have remained shrouded in mystery and for which they would love to see archives opened...
August 19, 2010
Expulsion for one-night stands at Chongqing Normal University
ChinaHush translates news reports about morality clauses at two universities in southern China:
The phenomena of university students being mistresses of wealth men has becoming a growing social issue in China. Chongqing Normal University and Southwest Normal University are the first two Universities which started to include “being an escort (三陪 sex workers), a mistress (二奶 Ernai) and having one-night stands” into the school rules. Student with such bad behaviors are subject to expulsion. And South China Normal University also listed “messing around with opposite sex and having special relations with a married person (homewrecking)” into the new school rules as punishable behaviors.
China adds 15 new government departments
China Daily reports:
China on Tuesday reportedly added 15 government departments under the State Council's ministries into its latest offer to join the government procurement agreement (GPA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a move that may help push forward the country's ongoing negotiations with GPA members.
Hidden pictures
The China Daily runs a story on Eva Siao, the photographer:
This photograph, The Pigtail and the Open-backed Pants, captures the sharp contrasts of downtown Beijing in the early 1950s - the young and the old, the dark and the bright - opening a window on a China in transition.
But at that time, such a photo would never be approved by China's official Xinhua News Agency, where Eva Siao, a German Jewish photographer, worked on and off for a decade.
The people in the picture do not look happy. They do not exemplify the glory of New China that Xinhua wanted to promote.
August 18, 2010
China's economy: the Charlie Rose show with James Fallows and Stephen Roach
Charlie Rose discusses China's economy with James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly and Stephen Roach, senior executive with Morgan Stanley.
Pffft: China discovers World Expo is no Olympics
Maura Cunningham and Jeffrey Wasserstrom:
[F]or all the razzle-dazzle, the Chinese government must feel some disappointment that this “second Olympics” is barely registering in world opinion.
China tests first space station
China Daily / Xinhua:
China has finished construction of its first module of unmanned space station, Tiangong-1, and it is testing its electronic, mechanical and thermal properties, a military source said Tuesday.
The 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1 will be put into preset orbit in 2011, the source added.
The space module is expected to carry out China's first space docking, with the Shenzhou-8 spacecraft, which will be launched in the second half of 2011 after Tiangong-1.
August 17, 2010
The fight against single-use chopsticks
At the LA Times, Daniel K. Gardner discusses a recent Ministry of Commerce directive to cut down on the use of disposable chopsticks:
First, while we in the West don't give much thought to a chopstick "industry," in China, where 100,000 people in more than 300 plants are employed in the manufacture of the wooden utensils, it's most definitely a flourishing enterprise. And just as jobs trump environmental issues in the West (think the coal, oil and logging industries), the argument that 100,000 jobs are at stake is a refrain that carries considerable weight. As Lian Guang, president of the Wooden Chopsticks Trade Assn., told the China Daily in 2009, "The chopstick industry is making a great contribution by creating jobs for poor people in the forestry regions," adding that melamine-resin chopsticks are hardly a sanitary substitute with their "high formaldehyde content." His mention of melamine resin is an effective touch, I admit.
Privileged refugees
The Telegraph's Peter Foster on bringing a family to Beijing:
It was at a typically chaotic breakfast time a few weeks back when I found myself asking, not for the first time: why on earth we had moved to China? Anyone with young children – we have a litter of three aged between two and five – will be familiar with the farmyard scene: the smallest, ignored as ever, was yelling for her “mulk”, while her elder sister was throwing a magnificently pointless tantrum over the colour of the plastic spoon she’d been allocated for her Weetabix.
Is China developing its military?
From CNN:
The Chinese military continues to expand its reach and capabilities beyond its immediate geographical area, a new report from the U.S. Department of Defense concludes.
The report, an annual assessment sent to Congress, notes that some of those capabilities have been positive, like humanitarian and anti-piracy efforts, but others are meant to give China "extended-range power projection."
19 killed in fireworks factory explosion in Heilongjiang
From Xinhua:
The death toll from Monday's explosion at a fireworks factory in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has climbed to 19, with five missing and another 153 injured, local authorities said Tuesday.
China is world's second largest economy
Bloomberg reports:
China surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy last quarter, capping the nation’s three- decade rise from Communist isolation to emerging superpower.
Japan’s nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled $1.288 trillion, less than China’s $1.337 trillion, the Japanese Cabinet Office said today. Japan remained bigger in the first half of 2010, the government agency said. Japan’s annual GDP is $5.07 trillion, while China’s is more than $4.9 trillion.
August 16, 2010
State Security asks Yu Jie about his Twitter followers
China Media Project translates some of an article by Chinese dissident writer Yu Jie (余杰) that describes a recent encounter with State Security police.Yu Jie's book China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao has just been published in Hong Kong. Excerpt:
State Security Zhu said, so lately you’ve been quite active on Twitter, but it seems that you’re not listed too high up in terms of followers.
Is mercy coming to China?
In The Washington Post by John Kamm, director of the Dui Hua Foundation (no panda hugger):
In a surprising response to public protests, the Chinese government recently prohibited police from publicly shaming criminal suspects through such devices as parades, used most controversially for parades of prostitutes. This is the latest in a series of developments that portend a more humane justice system, most notably in the area of capital punishment.
The Guo Degang affair, and foreign apologists - a podcast
The latest Sinica podcast with Kaiser Kuo hosting a discussion with Gady Epstein, Will Moss, David Moser and Danwei's Jeremy Goldkorn about join Kaiser to talk about two topics: The Guo Degang affair and foreign apologists for China.
Even the editor of The Beijing News has no Beijing residence permit
Keith B. Richburg in The Washington Post on the intractable problem of residence permits or "hukou" problem:
Wang Aijun is the editor of The Beijing News, one of China's most influential private daily newspapers. Yet here in the capital, Wang said, he often feels like a second-class citizen.
He pays Beijing taxes, but his teenage son is not allowed to attend a Beijing public high school. To install a telephone or an Internet line, he must pay in advance. He is charged more for a ticket to some city parks. He doesn't qualify for a subsidized apartment. He cannot enroll his family in the city's public health-insurance program.
The reason for the discrimination? Despite having lived and worked in Beijing for seven years, Wang still does not have that most sought-after of commodities: a Beijing "hukou."
August 13, 2010
Self-censoring the used book market
Kongfz tells its vendors to take down listings for contraband publications, but doesn't provide them with a list of what's been banned.
A people's war against Guo Degang
The Beijing media takes aim at the famous crosstalk artist over a sarcastic apology for his student's attack on a reporter. There's also a rap parody of the incident.
Death toll for Zhouqu mudslides rise to 1,144
Xinhua reports.
August 12, 2010
The roots of an urban tragedy
Shanghai Scrap talks to Amy L. Sommers about the future of Shanghai's historic neighborhoods:
I hoped to be able to relocate to Shanghai to live full-time and when I was able to in the spring of 2004, I persuaded (relentlessly, I should disclose) my husband that we ought to buy a place. As we started to go round to places with realtors, we kept stumbling upon single-family houses and apartments that had multiple electricity meters, mailboxes and kitchens rigged up one way or another and when we asked about the reason for this state of affairs, the universal answer (which was consistent with what the FEER had reported when I first heard about Shanghai’s old residences) was “the Cultural Revolution.”
As a lawyer, this raised up all sorts of questions as to how this had occurred (had a government order been promulgated? if so was it at the national level or was this a Shanghai-only phenomenon? and as a buyer, how would you know who owned the house and had the rights to sell it to you?).
The first part of this fascinating interview is here.
Fat China and the advertising industry
Paul French and Matthew Crabbe, authors of the book Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines Are Changing A Nation, writing in AdAge:
Urban China is fat and getting fatter...fast. In 1982, just 7% of Chinese were overweight. A decade later, that figure grew to 15%, with an extra 30 million Chinese labeled technically obese. Skip another decade to 2002, and 23% of urban China was overweight. That's 200 million people, of whom 7% (or 60 million) are considered obese.
Amusingly for an article published in the industry rag for advertising and marketing people, the authors note that one of the causes of the obesity outbreak is advertising of junk food targeted at children:
[T]he relationship between advertising and obesity is a long and documented one internationally, though to date, the discussion of the link between the advertising of fat-inducing foods and drinks and obesity has been muted in China.
This lack of discussion has not been due to any particular government clampdown or censorship, but rather to the rapid growth in advertising and fast-changing lifestyles that have meant that no time has yet been found for such discussions. Yet they will have to happen soon.
How much longer?
For ArtInfo, Wang Ge follow post-punk band Killing Joke to the Zhangbei InMusic Festival.
General Liu Yazhou: China must reform or die
John Garnaut in The Sydney Morning Herald:
[In an article in Phoenix Weekly, a] Chinese two-star general has warned his conservative Communist Party masters and firebrand People's Liberation Army colleagues that China must either embrace US-style democracy or accept Soviet-style collapse...
...''A bad system makes a good person behave badly while a good system makes a bad person behave well. Democracy is the most urgent thing, without it there can be no sustainable rise.''
General Liu was promoted recently from deputy political commissar of the PLA Air Force to political commissar of the National Defence University. His father was a senior military officer and his father-in-law was Li Xiannian, one of Chinese communism's ''Eight Immortals'' - and a one-time president of China.
Tencent net income April to June: 1.92 billion yuan
From Bloomberg:
Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest Internet company by market value, said second-quarter profit rose 61 percent, after adding users for its social networking services and increasing advertising sales.
Net income climbed to 1.92 billion yuan ($283 million) from 1.19 billion yuan a year earlier, Tencent said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange today. That compares with the 1.89 billion yuan average of eight analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Tencent, whose QQ Internet-chat software is 18 times more popular than Microsoft Corp.’s MSN in China, introduced messaging and games services to extend its lead in China. That helped boost its number of active QQ accounts to above 600 million.
August 11, 2010
"Property Rights Issues in Shanghai Historic Residences"
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap interviews Amy L. Sommers, an American lawyer who has looked into owning a pre-War home in Shanghai.
700 dead in Zhouqu mudslides as rescuing continue
Al Jazeera reports:
Rescuers are racing to pull survivors from the rubble after some of China's deadliest landslides earlier in the week as engineers try to stabilise and drain a newly-created lake.
More than 700 people are reported dead in a remote area of northwestern Gansu province, and at least 1,000 people are still missing.
An open letter to Xinhua from a foreign correspondent whose calls they won't take
By Tom Lasseter, Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers:
Dear Xinhua News Agency,
It’s becoming clear that you’re not going to respond to my interview request, so I thought I might post a note on my blog. I suspect these words will at some point be reviewed by a person connected to the government, and perhaps that reader will pass along my correspondence.
Last week I saw a feature on your website titled "If hot stars were blackened." It displayed pictures of white American movie stars and entertainers – including Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart -- whose faces had been darkened, and their noses and lips enlarged considerably. In addition, Brad Pitt received buck teeth.
Synutra's shares plunge on baby formula premature breast scare
Bruce Einhorn in BusinessWeek:
[H]ow nervous are Chinese consumers and investors about food safety? Look at what happened Monday to the stock price of Synutra International, a mid-tier manufacturer of infant formula that has offices in Qingdao, China and Rockville, Maryland. The company’s Nasdaq-listed shares plunged 27 percent on Monday following reports in the Chinese media linking Synutra’s formula to premature breast development in three baby girls in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Real estate developer to recreate Salvador Dali's hometown, near Xiamen
Giles Tremlett in the Guardian filing from Madrid:
As home to the painter Salvador Dalí and inspiration for some of his greatest and strangest artistic endeavours, the Costa Brava fishing port of Cadaqués is used to the surreal.
But the latest project involving the north-eastern Spanish town has astonished even the cosmopolitan inhabitants of a place that boasts more art galleries per square kilometre than anywhere else in the country.
A Chinese developer has decided to build a replica of the town half-way across the globe in Xiamen Bay, where mainland China looks out towards Taiwan.
Architects from developers China Merchants Zhangzhou visited Cadaqués in June, taking measurements, photographing buildings and worrying about whether Chinese fire engines would fit down its tiny streets.
Business lessons from China's sex industry
On Forbes, Shaun Rein examines China's prostitution industry and what it can teach multinational companies about doing business in China.
August 10, 2010
Israelis teach martial arts to Chinese
Boaz Arad in Ynet News:
A group of former combat IDF soldiers, Krav Maga and martial arts experts are giving security training courses to employees of major Chinese companies operating in danger zones around the world, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported on Monday...
...Alpha Angel is an Israeli-Chinese partnership run by Adi Talmor, formely of the Paratroopers Brigade in the IDF who has worked as a security guard in Israeli embassies around the world and in various El Al branches overseas. He has been residing in Beijing for the past seven years. His Chinese partner is a businessman who has many contacts with the Chinese army and police. The company employs eight instructors.
Hu Shi on "Tolerance and freedom"
Hu Shi published "Tolerance and freedom" in 1959, the year in which the KMT began persecuting ideological dissidents and suppressing criticism of the government. According to Professor Chou Chih-p'ing of Princeton University, the essay was meant to encourage the government and intellectuals to tolerate dissenting views.
A people's war against crosstalker Guo Degang
Is Guo Degang banned for lashing out at the media after one of his students struck a nosy reporter?
Chen Daoming on contemporary filmmaking
Southern Weekly talks to Chen Daoming, star of Aftershock, about how the business has changed over the past decades.
Internet cafés respond to ID checks on users
On China Hearsay:
The Information Times sent reporters to investigate how Guangzhou’s Internet cafes are implementing new rules, in effect since July 1, that mandate ID checks on customers. Although they found that some Net cafes are sidestepping the law, the bigger news is the dramatic drop in business...
...Feedback from cafe proprietors was mixed. Some of them grudgingly admitted that since they were already responsible for refusing service to minors, the new ID systems made that task much easier. On the other hand, cafe operators saw a dramatic fall off in business, with customer volume at 30% of normal levels. One cafe owner reported business at 5% of normal levels.
Net users assemble evidence of human causes of Zhouqu disaster
On Global Voices:
On August 8, a landslide happened in Zhouqu in Gansu province. According to official Xinhua news, the disaster has so far taken away 127 people's lives and 1,294 people reported missing.
Since there is very limited information from official media outlets, Woeser's coordinated a collaborative investigation via Twitter soon after the disaster happened. Twitterers made phone calls, dug out past news report and data and they found out that the landslide is a result of 1. the construction of hydro-electric power plants; 2. mining; 3. deforestation. In a nutshell, it is a man-made disaster.
China to close energy wasting factories
Leslie Hook in The Financial Times:
China plans to close outdated factories owned by more than 2,000 companies in heavy industries in the clearest sign yet of Beijing’s determination to meet its low energy targets even at the expense of economic growth...
...Some observers remain sceptical that the latest crackdown on heavy industries will result in permanent capacity closures, suggesting that production facilities might be closed this year only to reopen in the spring.
Hillary Clinton's South Sea trap for Beijing
In The Financial Times, Geoff Dyer examines the military and diplomatic implications of the "trap" Hillary Clinton. "laid ... for Beijing in the South China Sea."
Murdoch to sell controlling stakes in Chinese TV stations
From Reuters / Yahoo:
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said on Monday it will sell control of its three Chinese TV channels to a fund backed by China's No.2 media company, in a pullback from the market after years of difficulty.
The decision to sell the controlling stake to China Media Capital is being seen as a clear sign Murdoch's interest in China is cooling as various restrictions and limitations on trade in the country make profitable growth less likely...
...This latest News Corp deal would see China Media Capital acquire a controlling stake in News Corp's Xing Kong, Xing Kong International and Channel Mainland China channels, along with its Fortune Star Chinese movie library, News Corp said in a statement.
Established in 2009, China Media Capital is a private equity fund with 5 billion yuan ($739 million) in assets under management and a focus on investments in the media industry.
It is backed by Shanghai Media Group (SMG), China's No. 2 media company and the dominant player in Shanghai, as well as China Development Bank and China Broadband Capital.
August 9, 2010
German architecture in Qingdao
A video from Tom Spender.
Landslides in Zhouqu County kill 127
From CNN:
Massive landslides in northwest China have left at least 127 people dead, with Premier Wen Jiabao urging rescuers Sunday to move quickly to find survivors among the nearly 1,300 still missing from the disaster.
"For those who were buried under the debris, now it's the most crucial time to save their lives," Wen said at meeting held near the site of the rain triggered mudslides, Xinhua news agency reported.
Empty apartments and China's property overhang
Michael Kurtz, head of China research for Macquarie Securities has a piece in the Wall Street Journal that explains in clear language certain peculiarities of China's property market such as why home-owners are often content to leave apartments empty rather than rent them out, and why the Chinese property market is not a bubble but is nonetheless a very serious problem.
China's culture of denial: Tang Jun and fake academic credentials
China Media Project has translated an essay by Zhang Ming about a recent scandal involving Tang Jun (唐骏), the CEO of New Huadu Industrial Group and former chairman of Microsoft China and other leading business figures who allegedly falsified academic credentials. It turned out that Tang's degree was from America’s Pacific Western University, a “wild chicken university” (野鸡大学) that sells diplomas.
August 6, 2010
Social commentary in Chinese SF
Twelve Hours Later, Joel Martinsen's personal blog about Chinese science fiction, looks at Age of Prosperity (盛世, aka The Fat Years or The Gilded Age), the political fantasy by John Chan Koon-Chung (陈冠中) that's been receiving a lot of attention lately, and discusses other examples of recent SF that deals with social and political themes.
Recent reviews of Age of Prosperity include:
- Xujun Eberlein at Foreign Policy;
- Linda Jaivin at China Heritage Quarterly;
- Zhansui Yu at The China Beat, with a look at the novel's critique of the "Chinese model of development";
- and a roundup at io9.
Danwei posted an interview with the author in June.
Gome sues former chairman Huang Guangyu
China Daily reports:
Hong Kong-listed Chinese electronics retailer Gome Electrical Appliances said it filed a writ of summons against former chairman Huang Guangyu at HK's High Court on Thursday for Huang's alleged breach of fiduciary duties in early 2008 as a former board director.
In a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange, the Beijing-based company said the board of directors had decided to institute legal proceedings against Huang and to "seek compensation in connection with, among other things, his alleged breach of fiduciary duties as a director of the Company relating to the repurchases of the Company's own shares in or about January and February 2008, and breach of trust".
"Microblogs are crucial in China"
At The China Media Project, Hu Yong, associate professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication, writes about the importance of Twitter type microblogs in China.
Chinese missile could shift Pacific power balance
AP / Yahoo:
U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).
August 5, 2010
Shenzhen's powerful Expo film
At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter describes Shenzhen's Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, which features Dafen artists and a peculiar film that begins with a caesarean and goes on to show some fairly ordinary scenes of working life in the city:
From there, the film moves to the OCT LOFT market where young designers exhibit their works for sale, and then – in a subversive shift – lingers on the famous downtown billboard image of Shenzhen’s free market architect, Deng Xiaoping. From Deng, the film cuts to a yacht club, where several affluent-looking men are getting ready to launch their Hong Kong-flagged sail boat. Then the film cuts back to Deng. Then the film cuts back to the sailboat full of wealthy men. Then back to Deng. Then the sailboat of affluent men en route to Hong Kong. No text or words are spoken, but the effect of the back-and-forth is powerful: Deng, to a yacht, Deng, to a yacht, Deng, to a yacht. This isn’t subtle stuff.
Oil spill in Dalian may be larger than claimed
The New York Times reports that anonymous sources have corroborated a Greenpeace report charging that the explosion at an oil storage facility in Dalian spilled far more than the 1,500 metric tons claimed by China National Petroleum Co.:
Those experts, who asked for anonymity out of fear of government retaliation, said that emergency workers deliberately opened release valves on one huge oil tank, fearing the fire could cause it to explode and crack open the tank of toxic gas. They said the workers decided to empty the tank in part because pumping the oil out would take too long, and because the explosion and fire had in any case disabled a pipeline. The released oil flowed downhill into the sea.
The emptied tank most likely was filled with 50,000 metric tons, or between 315,000 and 365,000 barrels, of crude. Greenpeace experts said that much of that could have burned off in the fire that night. But other experts said in interviews that they were skeptical that much of the released oil had burned off, because heavy crude of the sort involved in the Dalian spill is less flammable than lighter oil.
A day touring Dalian’s cleaned-up coast reveals not only strong indications of a public relations makeover, but also widespread skepticism among residents that the government was telling the whole story on the size of the spill.
“It couldn’t possibly have been 1,500 tons,” one Dalian business owner whose workers joined in the cleanup said Tuesday.
Another kindergarten attack: this time in Zibo
From the LA Times:
The brutal killing of at least three children and a teacher at a school in northeastern China had residents confounded and authorities tight-lipped Wednesday.
A man identified by state media as Fang Jiantang, 26, reportedly attacked kindergarten students and teachers with a knife Tuesday in a suburb of Zibo, killing four and injuring 20 staff and children.
A brief role as a Chinese reality star
Benjamin Hass is victorious on If You Are the One, a Chinese dating show, but his segment is cut from the broadcast. At Foreign Policy:
When I arrived at the station, I entered the meeting room and was greeted with familiar signs of China, despite the modern-looking building: A group of men gathered in the corner were chain-smoking, another group of playing games on their cell phones. The director's first words to me were a reminder of what I couldn't say. "You can't talk about religion on TV," she said. "China is an officially atheist country, so there is no mention of religion on TV or radio." She also told me I couldn't mention television shows that had been banned, or other potentially controversial topics.
If North Korea collapses...
Zhu Feng, a professor at the School of International Studies at Peking University, speaks about China's relationship with North Korea, translated by Adam Cathcart:
"In the event that North Korea collapses, China will basically intervene/get involved [介入] via the UN Security Council…China’s position is that South Korea can only independently intervene in the event that North Korea has attacked them first…Those who emptily say that China would send troops to the DPRK in the event of a North Korean collapse with the wish to absorb the so-called ‘fourth Northeastern province reveal their ignorance of China’s strategic interests.”
August 4, 2010
Culture in Guangzhou
Joyce Hor-Chung Lau for the New York Times:
This southern Chinese city surrounded by factory towns opened its new Guangdong Museum and Guangzhou Opera this spring. On tap are a public library and a children’s art center.
China is world's biggest energy consumer
Jonathan Watts reports for the Guardian:
Zhao Xiuxia received her husband's giant love message while working as a waitress at a nearby juice bar – one of two jobs that together give her a 14-hour working day and a monthly income of just 3,000 yuan (£300) a month.
Along with her husband's salary, this allows the couple – who have recently migrated from a poor farming village in the Hebei countryside – to afford a computer, freezer, air conditioner and motorbike. Their parents have none of these commodities.
"My village is still very dark. We only turn on the road lamps once or twice a year at festival times," Zhao said, contrasting this with her current place of work. "When I first saw the giant screen at The Place, I was astonished. It was so big and beautiful."
TV anchor in banned face sucking commercial
On Little Red Book:
[A] commercial banned by China Central Television (CCTV) once posted online received 2M views in only 8 days.
There’s a bit of celebrity power behind this one though; the ad features Yan Liu, a famous, beautiful TV anchor for Hunan TV getting her faced sucked by a sweaty fat man…
The Dandong Cop Killer
ESWN has translated a blog post and compiled photos and an Apple Daily news animation about a man in Dandong who stabbed a cop and then sat on a beer crate confronting a group of policemen, cheered on by a crowd of onlookers.
August 3, 2010
Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa
There are very few reports on the growing numbers of Chinese entrepreneurs and small private companies seeking opportunities in Africa. Here, Tessa Thorniley looks at how they are faring.
Next-generation migrant workers need love
A Jiangsu TV executive explains why it produced a special episode of If You Are the One devoted to migrant workers
On joining the e-bike revolution
Beijing Daze has a piece about his Yamaha Metis Max:
I posted last week about the complexities and steps required to procure a driver’s license and motorcycle license plate in Beijing which can be quite a process if you wanna do it all legally… which i did! After a few weeks of trying really hard to procure myself a gas-powered two-wheeler, I finally gave up and went the “greener” route with an e-bike.
The idea has been floating around my brain for almost a year, after reading Kaiser Kuo’s musings about owning an e-bike and how it had put [him] back in touch with Beijing .
Rising wages difficult for small manufacturers
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The effects of China's rising wages and stronger currency are rippling through the close-knit group of textile and garment makers in the eastern town of Zhili, and challenging the future of small-business success stories like it around the nation.
"We have to raise prices to cope with higher costs," says Fu Weimin, who runs one of the hundreds of small garment workshops in Zhili, where it seems nearly every business specializes in some part of the production of children's clothing. "Every year salaries go up."
Drunk man on tractor kills 11
BBC News reports:
Driver Li Xianliang, 38, was arrested after running amok for an hour around a coal depot in Hebei province on Sunday.
The driver ploughed into pedestrians, cars and shops as he drove away from the depot before coming to a stop in a field where he was arrested.
The incident began with an argument between Mr Li and a customer.
Mr Li killed the man at the Hongyuan coal depot and then set off down the street on a powerful tractor with a shovel on the front, officials said in a statement.
August 2, 2010
Soft power fail: NY Times reporter on state-run Tibet tour
Edward Wong of The New York Times describes a rather painful state-run tour of Tibet for foreign journalists. At least there was skinny dipping.
Beijing cops detain suspects in fatal stabbing of multi-millionaire
In The China Daily:
Police are questioning the alleged killers of a multi-millionaire who was stabbed to death in an apparent botched kidnapping.
Haidian district police said four men killed the entrepreneur, who had a net worth of 100 million yuan, on Thursday afternoon. Investigators believe the men were trying to kidnap him from the parking lot of a Haidian shopping mall at the time.
One suspect is believed to have killed himself on the spot when the bid failed. Three other men were arrested within 24 hours of the murder.
The victim was a 41-year-old entrepreneur named Hu Zhong who was chairman of Paper Tiger, a comprehensive cultural company founded in 1999.
State-owned groups fuel China's real estate boom
At the New York Times, David Barboza writes about the state-owned enterprises that are dominating the real estate industry in China:
A recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass., found that land prices in Beijing had jumped by about 750 percent since 2003, and that half of that gain came in the last two years. Housing prices have also skyrocketed, doubling in many cities over the last few years.
The report pegged a big part of the increase to state-owned enterprises that have “paid 27 percent more than other bidders for an otherwise equivalent piece of land.”
Critics say the central government in Beijing unwittingly propelled the land frenzy by pushing a huge $586 billion economic stimulus package last year and encouraging state-owned banks to lend more aggressively.
4 dead in Hunan tax office blast
From AFP:
Four people were killed and 19 injured Friday in a blast at a tax office in central China that police said appeared to be a deliberate attack, state media reported.
The explosion went off at about 4:15 pm on the third floor of a district tax office in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, Xinhua news agency said, quoting a police statement.
AIDS risk grows for university students
Caixin reports on homosexual university students contracting AIDS:
More than 30 percent of those surveyed said they had not used a condom during anal sex during the previous six months, and only 20 percent claimed they would use a condom every time they had sex.
Liu said he decided he was homosexual during his second year at university. "Truly, I like only boys," he said.
He met his first boyfriend through a Hangzhou website for homosexuals. They communicated online for a long time. Since Liu didn't know how two men could make love, he was anxious to meet in person.
Flood and toxic waste:
Barrels leak into Songhua river
On Xinhua:
Chemicals have been detected in a river in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province four days after floods swept 3,000 chemical-filled barrels into a major river, local officials said Sunday.
Chemical-tainted water was found at Guqia Port, Zhaoyuan City, on the Songhua River near the Heilongjiang-Jilin border, said Du Jiahao, executive vice governor of Heilongjiang, adding that the tainted water first flowed into the province at about 7 p.m. Saturday.
But the water in the Songhua River, a major drinking water source for millions, is still safe, officials said, citing results of water quality tests.
Tests have found trimethylsilanol in the river water, indicating the tainted water has arrived in Heilongjiang, said Li Ping, director of the provincial environmental protection department...
..Tests conducted in Jilin have shown "a very small quantity" of hexamethyl disiloxane in the water.
Prostitutes take to Wuhan streets to demand legalization
John Kennedy in Global Voices:
Sex workers and their supporters in south central China's Wuhan took to the streets with red umbrellas last Wednesday to collect signatures calling for the legalization of prostitution.
Among them was Hooligan Sparrow, who several years ago made a name for herself by posting nude pictures of herself online, and today runs a women's rights organization; her Twitter profile describes her as a “feminist, member of the prostitution movement and sex worker”. Just before noon on Sunday, Hooligan Sparrow reported on Twitter that she had been taken away by police.