Must-read China news by Danwei

The Economic Observer has an in-depth report on the project, which brought a loss of 4.15 billion RMB to China Railway Construction:

The CRC has said that the Mecca Light Rail is a commercial project and the company will voice the interest of its shareholders.

But the Mecca light railway has been an important concern of leaders from both Saudi Arabia and China. The Ministry of Railways, the Ministry of Commerce and the State-owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) have all given tremendous support to the project. The high executives of CRC have stated many times within the company that the Mecca Light Railway is a “political project” and it has to be constructed with high standards of quality.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:50 PM | Permalink

The new Sinica podcast featuring Will Moss, Jeremy Goldkorn, Gady Epstein, David Moser. For relevant links to source materials, see the post on Imagethief.com.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:57 AM | Permalink

Michael Wines in The New York Times:

A phalanx of Beijing police officers confined the prominent artist and activist Ai Weiwei to his north Beijing home on Friday, apparently at the behest of unnamed but powerful political figures in Shanghai who feared that he was about to embarrass them.

They were correct. In telephone interviews this week, Mr. Ai detailed a bizarre and mysterious chain of events in which Shanghai officials first implored him to burnish the city’s cultural credentials by building a million-dollar art studio, then ordered the finished building demolished at the command of anonymous higher-ups.

Mr. Ai had planned to fly to Shanghai on Friday to prepare a Sunday goodbye party at the studio, to be attended by eight rock bands and up to a thousand supporters from around China. But on Thursday night, he said, Beijing police officers came to his home and asked him not to make the trip.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:20 AM | Permalink

Chuck Kraus looks "nearly 150 pages of memos sent back and forth between offices in the State Department concerning the immigration of twenty-four 'White Russians' from Xinjiang."

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:38 PM | Permalink

The Economic Observer summarizes its November book review in English.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:02 PM | Permalink

China Media Project looks at recent Chinese speculation about the recent spate of conservative official Party editorials in People’s Daily, with the mysterious byline “Zheng Qingyuan”, probably not a person but a "writing task group".

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:12 PM | Permalink

Are the expatriates who run Hong Kong's financial industry all jumped up on cocaine? Tessa Thorniley reports from the Pearl of Asia.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:39 AM | Permalink

On African Boots:

China is rolling out a training package for Ghanaian journalists, to broaden their horizon on the culture of the Asian giant and sharpen their skills.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Elizabeth C. Economy, on the blog of the Council on Foreign Relations:

Just four months after launching their 24-hour global news network, CNC, Chinese media officials are in the midst of a strategic rethink. Selling China “Chinese-style” hasn’t quite worked out. The problem is less about getting the news—CNC has access to 130 news bureaus globally—than it is about getting people to watch. While they haven’t publicized their global viewership, total daily viewers in Hong Kong, China’s most globalized hometown, average only 5,000.

After promising that CNC would provide “international and China news with a Chinese perspective to global audiences,” CNC President Wu Jincai has changed his tune. He has decided that CNC needs to rid itself of typical Chinese sloganeering, insisting that CNC is a “news channel and not a propaganda station.” He is now telling his editors, “Do not watch CCTV [Chinese state television] and watch Phoenix [Hong Kong television] even less, but watch more of CNN and BBC.” He has even suggested that they watch Taiwanese news.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:48 AM | Permalink

The Global Times:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy greeted his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, at Orly airport, south of Paris, Thursday with a rare reception that analysts considered a change in tone by France, which angered Beijing two years ago for threatening to boycott the Olympic Games.

Military honors were presented, as was the offer of a horseback escort. And the two leaders have scheduled several one-on-one meetings during President Hu's three-day trip.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:40 AM | Permalink

The China Daily:

More than half of Chinese netizens are willing to turn their backs on China's dominant instant messenger, QQ, after its owner Tencent Holdings Ltd pushed people to choose either QQ or a popular anti-virus program by Qihoo 360.

When asked "which program will you desert between QQ and 360 if you have to", more than 57 percent of 1.5 million participants voted to get rid of QQ, while 23 percent chose to sweep out 360, according to a poll on sina.com by 8:30 pm on Thursday. Another 19 percent were undecided.

But:

"My brothers and sisters use QQ, my colleagues and classmates use QQ, even my clients do business with us through QQ. I don't like QQ's threat but I just can't stop using it," said 32-year-old Fan Qicheng, salesman at a State-owned company that has installed 360's free anti-virus software.

The article also has information about other recent corporate spats, such as Mengniu vs Yili and Nongfu vs Master Kong.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:31 AM | Permalink

On the Sinocentric blog, a look at the People’s Daily's response to the following media-political affair in Taiwan:

[I]t’s about a pair of twins who wanted to contribute to the campaign of Taichung Mayor Jason Hu and shot a video with the aim of promoting his cause.

As the Taipei Times explains, however, things took an unexpected turn with the development of a parody, ‘Kuso’, video ... portrayed the girls as ‘young women as working as hostesses at a nightclub in Taichung…

In the altered version, footage of the twins is played alongside video of the club and hostesses, with voiceovers claiming the women offer sex services to customers.’

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:10 AM | Permalink

The China Daily reports on the side-effects of a push to transition to centralized schools in the countryside:

Because their homes are far from the centralized schools, village students usually have to board in the county seat during the week. Most of the expenses are borne by the family, though they will receive some subsidy from the government.

Many villagers have even abandoned their farmland and rented rooms in the county, where they work, live and take care of their children.

See also: Boom and bust for "hope schools", an exposé on abandoned school buildings in Hubei Province, from December 2008.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:34 PM | Permalink

The Just Recently blog compares a Global Times (Chinese) report on sinologist Helmolt Vittinghoff with a full interview with the retired professor as printed in the southern German newspaper Fürther Nachrichten.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:29 PM | Permalink

In The China Daily:

As China prepares to outline its national economic and social development plan for the next five years, a public opinion campaign is being launched in which foreigners are being invited to submit their recommendations, officials said on Tuesday...

...Over the next two months, individuals and agencies can send e-mails to 125@ndrc.gov.cn, preferably in either Chinese or English.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:00 PM | Permalink

In The China Daily:

Hebei province plans to build three new cities in the east, north and south of Beijing, China National Radio reported.

Jingdong (which means east of Beijing) will contain three counties of Langfang, Hebei province; Jingnan (south of Beijing) will contain Baoding and Zhuozhou; Jingbei (north of Beijing), will contain Zhangjiakou and Huailai.

Building the new cities is an important part of the urbanization plan of Hebei province.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:42 AM | Permalink

The Economic Observer reports on the suspension of the popular forum's domain name service:

As users of Movie Time or Mtime (时光网 shíguāng wǎng) often uploaded critical reviews of domestically-produced films to the site, some web users speculated that perhaps the take down of the site was connected to the policy of protecting the domestic film industry.

But according to the Southern Metropolis, the website's domain provider HiChina (中国万网) stopped parsing the website's domain and thus forced the closure of the site. If you search the status of the mtime.com domain name, it is currently displayed as clientHold.

A representative from HiChina told a Souther Metropolis journalist that the company acted in accordance with a notice issued by the Beijing Communications Administration, which said that Movie Time had been "disseminating pornography and obscenity," and it was for this reason that they stopped providing parsing for the domain.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 6:46 PM | Permalink

From Chengdu Living, an insider's account of exploitation and labor organizing among the volunteers and staff of the United States pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.

Nowhere were these disparities clearer than in the V.I.P. Suite, an exclusive upstairs lounge named “1776 suite,” devoted solely to entertaining and hosting functions of top-level sponsors. A membership card system was enacted for employees and friends of USAP sponsors. Initial scheduling preference was given to “global sponsors,” companies that donated over $5 million. The USAP expected high volume attendance in the 1776 suite, so it had a rotating schedule of 15 well-qualified SAs.

But attendance at the suite was incredibly low, and much of the SAs’ 8.5-hour shifts were spent waiting by the door for visitors like concierges, or competing with secretaries for access to the reception computers. During the overlap between morning and afternoon shifts, it was common to have five or six SAs standing around in the upstairs and downstairs lobbies with absolutely nothing to do, merely waiting out the final hours of their shifts. So while VIP SAs joked away the hours and played online games, the rest of the staff were outside dealing with the myriad problems that arise with crowds of over 30,000 visitors a day.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:08 PM | Permalink

On the China Media Project:

Yesterday, a hard-line article in the Party journal Seeking Truth fought back against the idea of relaxed restrictions on China’s press, saying this would lead inevitably to “national collapse.”

A translation of the article follows.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:39 AM | Permalink

ChinaHush has long post that explains some of the arcane details behind the dirty war between the behemoth Internet company Tencent (who operate the QQ instant messaging service and associated websites) and 360, makers of China's most popular, free anti-virus software.

There's more on ESWN.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:28 AM | Permalink

This weeks Sinica podcast, hosted this week by Gady Epstein, with Tania Branigan, Will Moss and Danwei's Jeremy Goldkorn:

This week on Sinica, we find out what happens when the media attacks, and China is caught in the crossfire. Specifically, recent weeks have brought us two prominent cases of bad press for China as the country gets caught in loaded battles fought by unrelated parties. In the first, an American political advertisement raises the spectre of an US economic collapse. The second is more homegrown, as two giants in the dairy industry are caught spreading lies to promote short-term sales.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 11:11 AM | Permalink

China Daily reports on the official start of the census:

One in 10,000 households will be visited again from Nov 11 to 30, with the NBS sorting and filing the data through December. In April 2011, the main census data will be made public.

Around 700 million yuan ($103 million) of central government funds will be spent on the census, according to official figures.

And, if the previous household visits are anything to go by, the census takers will not have an easy job, because many people worry about their privacy, not to mention the rapidly swelling migrant population in major cities.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:03 PM | Permalink

At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter beings to wrap up the Shanghai Expo with a defense of its significance:

If you believe the official figures, Expo 2010 was visited by more than 70 million people, many millions of whom waited in long ticket lines, outside of the gates, in the heat of July and August (to be sure, quite a few visitors also received their tickets for free), for the chance to wait in long lines within the Expo grounds. The obvious question is: what was the appeal? The less obvious question is: why didn’t the foreign media probe this question? More precisely, rather than ignore the phenomenon, why didn’t anyone pause to ask what was it about contemporary China that drove so many people to do something that most foreigners – especially foreign reporters who are lock-step disdainful of crowds and mass events enjoyed by Chinese – had no interest in doing?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:24 AM | Permalink