Behind the Li Gang case
ChinaGeeks has translated investigative reporter Wang Keqin's reporting into the My Dad is Li Gang case and its aftermath.
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December 31, 2010
450 million Internet users in China
Xinhua:
The number of Internet users in China reached 450 million by the end of November, up 20.3 percent year-on-year, a senior official said on Thursday.
Around 33.9 percent of the population are online, a ratio above the world average of 30 percent, Wang Chen, minister of the State Council Information Office, told a news conference in Beijing.
December 29, 2010
Melamine milk activist Zhao Lianhai freed, pressured to clam up?
From The Global Times:
A statement posted on the personal blog of convicted milk activist Zhao Lianhai says he is undergoing treatment at a hospital and wants to enjoy life as an ordinary citizen.
Zhao, 38, whose three-year-old child was sickened by melamine-tainted milk powder, was sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment on November 10 for inciting social disorder. He decided not to appeal, and instead applied for medical parole.
Some Hong Kong deputies to the National People's Congress said they were told Saturday that he had been granted medical parole, but there has been no official confirmation.
A statement bearing Zhao's name posted on his personal blog Tuesday said he did not want people to discuss his case any more.
"I hope the incident will go away. It will be beneficial to the country, society and my family," the statement said. "I agree with the criminal punishment imposed on me by judicial organizations. I hope other people can stop discussing the matter."
"I support and am grateful to the government. And I apologize for the radical comments made against the government in the past."
The mobile phone of Zhao's wife, Li Xuemei, was switched off. Reporters and Zhao's former lawyers lost contact with Zhao's family soon after the verdict was delivered.
One of the lawyers, Li Fangping, said he was not sure about the authenticity of the statement, and suspected that Zhao was put under pressure to downplay the incident.
Xinjiang investigative reporter dies after beating
From AP in Washington Post by Gillian Wong:
A Chinese journalist died Tuesday from injuries sustained in a gang beating that some say was linked to his investigative work, a colleague at his newspaper said.
Sun Hongjie, a senior reporter at the Northern Xinjiang Morning Post, died at a hospital in the city of Kuitun 10 days after he was beaten by six men at a construction site, said a man at the paper who identified himself as a supervisor but refused to give his name.
Police have said the attack was the result of a personal dispute, but many Chinese journalists believe otherwise.
December 28, 2010
Google maps to get lost in 2011?
On Mobinode:
31st March 2011 ... is the new deadline ... given by the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) to get the mapping license. If the mapping service operator continues its service without the licence, it will be punished after 1st July. And till now, Google has not submitted its application to the officials yet.
See also Google may face censor showdown.
Han Han's magazine dies
The Global Times:
Controversial blogger Han Han may have moved one step closer to becoming a full-time racecar driver again after staff at his magazine, Party, were let go Sunday, allowing him more time on the track.
Ma Yimu, the executive editor in chief of the magazine, announced the dismissal Monday on his microblog, saying, "I cannot believe it. I am confident we'll be back," the Xinhua News Agency reported...
...He is a professional racecar driver and author, best known for tackling sensitive issues in China without getting into serious trouble with the authorities. His magazine, whose Chinese name means "a chorus of solos," was first printed July 6, 15 months after Han started planning for the monthly publication.
Han's assistant told Xinhua that the maiden issue of the magazine sold nearly 1.5 million copies. According to ifeng. com, about 100,000 copies were sold on the magazine's debut, with 400,000 more story sold the day after...
...Citing unnamed sources, the Southern Metropolis Weekly (SMW) reported in July that the maiden copy dropped about 70 percent of Han's originally planned content in order to be approved by the publication watchdog.
Lu You vs Huang Jianxiang
From China Sports Review blog:
It’s my third time meeting Lu You this Monday at the gate of Beijing Second Intermediate People’s Court. The result of her second trial against Huang Jianxiang, her former colleague at CCTV, a football commentator, was to be announce that day. As the last two meetings with her, she seemed upbeat and spirited, like on the screen as a sports reporter.
December 27, 2010
Confucian scholars protest against planned church in sage's hometown
From Ap / Asian Correspondent:
China’s officially atheist government wants to build a Christian church in the hometown of Confucius to help foster a relationship between an ancient philosophy and the country’s fastest-growing religion. But suddenly, it’s not going so smoothly.
Confucian groups and 10 well-known scholars are demanding that the Gothic-style church not be built in Qufu, saying its size threatens to overshadow the world’s most famous Confucian temple and represents a foreign invasion of a sacred place.
“If a super-large Confucius temple were built in Jerusalem, Mecca or the Vatican, overshadowing the religious buildings there, how would the people feel about it? Would the government and the people accept it?” says an open letter from the protesters that was dated Wednesday and posted on blogs.
Caught in the debate is the church’s pastor, a 75th-generation descendant of Confucius.
Tainted wine pulled from shelves: avoid Jiahua, Yeli and Genghao wines
The Global Times reports:
In the latest food scandal to rock China, six people were detained, more than a dozen corporate accounts were frozen and tainted wine bottles were pulled off shelves after red wine made in Changli county, Hebei Province, was found to have been both chemically altered and falsely labeled as a superior product.
The Jiahua, Yeli and Genghao wineries have been accused of forgery and of adulterating their wine, during investigations by the local government that shut down their operations, the Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday, adding that sixteen corporate accounts involving 2.83 million yuan ($427,000) were frozen.
Crossbow and bomb toting petioner arrested after gas station drama
The Global Times:
A 35-year old man wielding a crossbow and carrying two bombs was stopped by police in Beijing Saturday morning, after threatening gas station and toll booth staff on the Beijing-Tianjin highway.
Staff members at a Sinopec gas station in Xin'anzhen Service Area on the highway called police at 9:57 am on Saturday morning, reporting that a man in a white pick-up truck had fled after firing a crossbow at members of staff and threatening them with explosives, according to the police report.
One gas station employee told the Beijing News that he confiscated the keys to the truck after the man, a Liaoning native surnamed Hou, refused to pay 290 yuan ($43.76) for his gas.
"He said he was a petitioner and had no money," the employee was quoted as saying. After removing his keys, staff members proceeded to block his exit. It was at this point Hou reached in to his truck, removed a crossbow and fired. The gas station workers were forced to drop the keys and take cover in a nearby convenience store.
December 25, 2010
A cocktail of conspiracies delivered daily
John Garnaut of Sydney Morning Herald interviews Hu Xijin, editor in chief of Global Times, a Chinese state-backed newspaper:
''What you portray is a distorted China, a totalitarian, uncivilised country,'' he says, from beneath forward-brushed hair, as we drink tea from paper cups in his office inside the vast People's Daily compound. He says the Global Times ''represents the true heart of the ordinary Chinese people'', to which I ventured that Chinese people did not seem remotely as aggressively paranoid as his newspaper. He told me I was ''naive'', I lacked ''education and experience'' and I was ''not qualified as a journalist''.
December 23, 2010
Authorities ban mixed English words in publications
People's Daily:
Arbitrary use of English words and acronyms is now prohibited and coined terms that are not intelligible to everyone are not allowed to be used, according to a notice released by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) recently.
China Blog Networks launches
Ryan McLaughlin, the blogger behind The Humanaught and Lost Laowai, has launched his new project: The China Blog Network.
Forced demolitions in a Teresa Teng musical
Nick Frisch in the Wall Street Journal:
Teresa Teng (邓丽君), the first empress of Chinese pop, is beloved by one-fifth of mankind, and virtually unknown by the rest. But that may be about to change. A Chinese-produced, Broadway-style musical about the late Taiwanese singer's impact on mainland China opens in Hong Kong next week. And this is a show that could travel—not just full of the bittersweet songs her fans expect, it also packs some eye-opening social commentary about today's China.
CITIC to build 500 meter skyscraper in Beijing
On the Sinocism blog:
CITIC bid 6.3 Billion RMB and won the rights to develop a plot of land (中服地块) directly east of the China World Complex in Beijing’s CBD.
According to CITIC’s bidding documents they plan to build a 500m tall skyscraper, which would dwarf Beijing’s current tallest building -- China World Phase III -- by 170m or so.
820 million mobile phone accounts in China
Marbridge Daily reports that "China's three main telecom operators have announced their subscriber totals for November 2010." The totals are:
China Mobile 579.64 million
China Unicom 152.75 million
China Telecom 88.02 million
That's more than 820 million mobile phone accounts.
Sinosteel's proftiable bet on South Africa
Chen Zhu, in Caixin:
The glitter of mineral-rich South Africa caught the eye of corporate Japan during a hunt for overseas investment opportunities in the mid-1990s. But a closer look at the investment landscape revealed political risks, and the Japanese pulled out.
China's largest metals trader, Sinosteel Group, saw something more – and bet on South Africa for the long haul. The state-owned Chinese concern teamed up with a local company and formed what is today ASA Metals Pty Ltd., a profitable chromite ore miner and producer of ferrochrome, which is needed to make stainless steel....
ASA is now the world's second-largest ferrochrome producer, with an annual capacity of 900,000 tons.
"I personally think Africa is at the forefront of global profitability," said Zhang Suwei, Sinosteel's current president for South African operations, who's been in Johannesburg for a decade.
Hu Jintao to visit White House in January;
Pandas to stay in D.C.
Beijing U.S. Embassy press spokesman Ricgard Buanguan announced in a tweet today:
It's official: Hu Jintao coming to the White House on Jan 19. State Dinner later that night.
Meanwhile, not apparently related, The Washington Post reports:
The National Zoo said Wednesday that China has granted an extension of its lease of Washington's two giant pandas, Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, while details of a new agreement are worked out.
Zoo Director Dennis W. Kelly was in China last week seeking to negotiate a new panda arrangement to replace the 10-year, $10 million lease that expired Dec. 6. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.
December 22, 2010
On the ethics of microblogging
ESWN translates a report on Fang Zhouzi's complaints about journalists forwarding rumors without checking the facts:
Yesterday night at around 7pm, the reporter Li Meng wrote on his microblog: "The Xinhua reporter Liu Juhua's first article was titled
. But this Xinhua reporter Liu Juhua is Fang Zhouzi's wife. Xinhua reporter Liu Juhua is a colleague of Xinhua reporter Yan Bingguang. Xinhua reporter Liu Juhua's husband exposed Xinhua reporter Yan Bingguang for interviewing her own family members repeatedly. Xinhua reporter Yan Bingguang was kicked out of her job." Fang Zhouzi thought that this chief editor of a newspaper "ought to have checked with the principal before forwarding a microblog post that affects someone's reputation. He should have this basic quality." He also said: "Since he knew about my clarification before he forwarded the microblog post but he went ahead anyway, does this means that he hates my wife and me? Even if you had a run-in with me before like those rumor-spreading reporters, why has my wife ever done to you? Are you a man? Never mind before the chief editor at a newspaper."
Apartment block empire
The Black China Hand relates the story of a black prison:
“And so what happened?” I asked the young man. The young lawyer said, “no one really knows for sure… but the guess is that they are being held in a an apartment, storage room, house somewhere in the countryside guarded by those men off any official page. “So it’s like their own special detention center –a black prison–created just for them,” I excitedly asked hoping for concrete confirmation. “Yes” said the lawyer, “those are what you would call black prison but I think the current focus on them is incorrect.” What do you mean? “Well, black prisons are bad but what is more evil are the players and the process that go into making them. I mean just think about it, you have is a private concern (the real estate companies) colluding with a government (the city leaders) to perform illegal activities backed with their own private army that answers only to them. Black prisons can always be closed once you discover them but shutting down or out the cabal that created them is much, much more difficult. That is where the focus needs to be.”
December 21, 2010
History is not a feel-good business
For Caixin, Tsinghua University professor Nailene Chou Wiest (Zhou Nai-ling) looks at the 1911 revolution through the lens of modern events:
Popular blogger and amateur historian Xiong Feijun, coining newfangled terms like "Princeling Cabinet" (taizidang neige) with relish, concluded that the revolution started as a mass incident (qunti shijian) – another resonant word in the 21st century – which had gotten out of control and then snowballed into something too big to be contained.
Other historians have found a striking parallel between the move by the Qing court to nationalize the railways and the recent trend of "state advancing, private sector retreating," in which state-owned enterprises redoubled their dominance in the economy through easy access to credit and favorable government policies. The private sector, struggling to stay afloat in the financial crisis, was no match with the state behemoth.
Finding the facts about Mao's victims
Ian Johnson interviews Yang Jisheng for the New York Review of Books blog:
Ian Johnson: I wondered when reading Tombstone why officials didn’t destroy the files. Why did they preserve all this evidence?
Yang Jisheng: Destroying files isn’t up to one person. As long as a file or document has made it into the archives you can’t so easily destroy it. Before it is in the archives, it can be destroyed, but afterwards, only a directive from a high-ranking official can cause it to be destroyed. I found that on the Great Famine the documentation is basically is intact—how many people died of hunger, cannibalism, the grain situation; all of this was recorded and still exists.
Remembering the Boxer uprising
The Economist examines a variety of attitudes toward the Boxers:
In East Zhangwu Village, close to the railway line between Beijing and the port city of Tianjin, the village doctor is a Boxer fan. Sitting behind his desk in the clinic, he recounts, as if he had seen the action himself, how one sultry June local Boxers tore up the line to stop a trainload of foreign troops from heading to Beijing to break a siege of the capital’s embassy district by pro-Boxer imperial troops. “The foreigners had a couple of interpreters who said to the Boxers, ‘Don’t fight, we’ll give you some money, OK?’ The Boxers replied, ‘We don’t want money. We want the foreigners’ heads’.” He shows off a copy of the scores used by the musicians whose flutes, cymbals, drums and pipes accompanied the Boxers into combat. He and a group of fellow enthusiasts have formed what they call the Boxer Band. It performs at ceremonial send-offs for local army recruits. A picture of Boxers charging into pith-helmeted foreign soldiers covers a wall of their practice room.
December 20, 2010
The brief microblog career of the "Father of the GFW"
Fan Binxing opened a microblog account today but had to shut it down several hours later, China Digital Times reports:
On Monday morning, Fang Binxing, the President of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications who is known as the “father of the Great Firewall,” opened a Sina Microblog account. Within the first three hours, over 3818 netizens followed him, and despite rapid deleting of comments to his posts by Sina editors, many comments still appeared, the vast majority of which made fun of or cursed him. At 12:55 pm Beijing time, about three hours after it opened, his original tweets and all the comments disappeared.
An interview with the editor of Global Times
John Garnaut in The Sydney Morning Herald:
Hu Xijin ... is editor-in-chief of a fiercely nationalistic state-owned tabloid called the Global Times, which sells 1.5 million copies a day...
''What you portray is a distorted China, a totalitarian, uncivilised country,'' he says, from beneath forward-brushed hair, as we drink tea from paper cups in his office inside the vast People's Daily compound. He says the Global Times ''represents the true heart of the ordinary Chinese people'', to which I ventured that Chinese people did not seem remotely as aggressively paranoid as his newspaper. He told me I was ''naive'', I lacked ''education and experience'' and I was ''not qualified as a journalist''.
Diane Von Furstenberg in Beijing
The New York Times reports:
Today, there are roughly three dozen DVF boutiques worldwide, and she’s extending her reach into China, with shops in Beijing and Shanghai. Her 1998 autobiography, “Diane: A Signature Life,” is being translated into Chinese by her close friend Hong Huang, who’s been dubbed China’s Oprah. She’s even contemplating studying Mandarin.
UN Security Council fails to decide on Korean crisis
China Daily reports:
The UN Security Council on Sunday failed to reach a consens on the crisis of the Korean Peninsula after eight hours of closed-door consultations, due to the gaps among the council members, diplomats said here.
"While we still are waiting for firm clear instructions from every capital. I think its safe to predict that the gaps that remain are unlikely to be bridged," said San Rice, the US UN ambassador.
Fang Zhouzi and Julian Assange
On See China, Chung Kwong compares Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with Fang Zhouzi, the "science cop" who has made his name exposing academic fraud in China.
December 18, 2010
Class relations and the democracy movement in HK
At China Study Group, husunzi discusses Ho-fung Hung's essay in the latest issue of the New Left Review, "Uncertainty in the Enclave":
(2) The movement against evictions related to urban renewal and the high-speed rail is worth further discussion – almost nothing has been written about this English. When I first learned about this in summer 2009, I was a little surprised to see so much energy being put into, for example, the movement to protect a village of only 100 households who had squatted there just a generation or two ago, while demolitions of much larger and older villages take place on the mainland almost every week, usually with no outside support if the villagers resist. In fact, I had heard about the campaign to protect this Choi Yuen village from mainlanders who were impressed by the mobilization techniques, which they eventually drew on in their own campaign to protect East Lake in Wuhan. Only after talking to the HK activists did I come to understand that these anti-eviction movements are an important space where HK’s anti-authoritarian left is reviving and growing. And the movements aren’t limited to negative protest actions; they are experimenting with new forms of creative activity, from indymedia, music festivals and documentaries (for which they have organized a Social Movement Film Festival for eight years) to experimentation with cooperative living and farming. Last year I posted a very brief report about the Choi Yuen campaign. I hope to post a longer update about this, or about HK’s anti-eviction movement in general, before long.
December 17, 2010
Landfill shortage for Chinese cities
The Economic Observer translates a story from Science and Technology Daily about China's landfills:
More efforts need to be given to garbage classification, and measures need to be implemented to reduce consumption and trash production.
Out of the 668 cities in China, two-thirds are surrounded by garbage and one-quarter do not contain landfills. The total area of land covered in garbage in China has reached over 500 million square meters, resulting in an annual loss of about 30 billion yuan.
Chinese business is paying the price for inefficient and unfair green policies
South China Normal University professor Tang Hao writes for China Dialogue about environmentalism and economic plans:
When environmental aims become part of these plans, planned economy measures are naturally applied to achieve them: the government announces emission-reduction targets, the government decides how to achieve those targets and closing down businesses in order to reduce emissions makes sense. This process does not happen by formal legislation, nor are environmental groups or the media encouraged to exercise oversight. It happens by executive order of the government. You could call it “planned environmentalism”.
In recent years, this planned environmentalism has achieved impressive results. In particular, as soon as reduction of pollution and emissions was included in the evaluation of local-government effectiveness, energy-intensity started to fall. But there is an obvious problem: planned environmentalism concentrates environmental-protection powers in government hands and concentration inevitably affects efficiency.
Sino-DPRK relations today
Adam Cathcart rounds up the season's news on cross-border issues:
When it comes to the North Korea issue, there is very little light between Chinese “reformist-liberal” publications and the nationalistic tabloids. This very likely reflects the direction of the Propaganda Ministry, but it might also reflect that Chinese liberals aren’t particularly sympathetic to the American approach toward North Korea. It’s hard to say. In any event, I call your attention to Southern Weekend (南方周末) of December 2, 2010, where author Zhang Zhe writes a full page-story entitled “Revealing the US-ROK ‘Plan 5027’ to Make War on North Korea” (张哲，美韩对朝作战‘5027计划‘揭秘’, p. A7).
Don't miss the list of unanswered questions at the very bottom.
What lies beyond
The China Daily profiles Liu Cixin, China's most popular science fiction author. The long-awaited conclusion to Liu's Three Body trilogy has just been released.
Includes a sidebar recapping his career.
December 16, 2010
Empty news from China's greatest journalist
China Media Project presents an op-ed by Chang Ping about the Yan Bingguang scandal:
This comical result comes about precisely because Yan Bingguang’s reports preserve a great deal of truth. How different would these reports be if the names had been changed to “Mr. Wang,’ “Miss Li” and “Grandma Zhao”? They wouldn’t be much different at all. The question is why these trifling records of ordinary life have been transformed again and again into news?
Of course journalists should be attuned to the mundane details of life. But if the quotidian life of an ordinary citizen becomes the routine focus of news reports outside the context of more significant and newsworthy issues, we must ask tougher questions about why this is happening.
To put a finer point on it, another key reason why these news reports on Yan Bingguang’s family life were able to escape notice and censure is precisely because they dealt with vapid and insignificant issues
As scrap workers get older
At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter examines the changing demographics of Chinese scrap workers:
To those who don’t recognize what she’s doing, it may look like she’s sorting garbage. To those who do, they know that she’s a semi-skilled laborer who can distinguish different types of metal by sight and feel. That job description doesn’t generate much respect in China, or outside of it. Eight years ago, when I first started encountering workers like her, she was paid like it: between RMB 600 and RMB 800 per month (US$73 to US$97 by the 2002 fixed exchange rate). She was also younger: most of the hundreds of thousands if not millions of women engaged in this type of metal sorting were under the age of 30, unmarried, uneducated, and relatively local to the factories where they worked.
Life should not yield to development
Tim Hathaway translates an op-ed by Southern Weekly commentator Xiao Shu:
To be sure, those who advocate that there would be no new China without forced demolitions do not want these tragedies to happen. Though they are indifferent to the costs of development, they have probably prevented these tragedies from happening before. No one wants to see people die and they are no exception. Of this there is no doubt. But there is also no doubt that, though they do not want to see it happen, they are not afraid of it. They do not want people to die but they are not afraid of it happening on their watch. Therefore, even though they have stopped these things in the past, they did not exhaust their powers while doing so. They refused to put a halt to self immolations and people jumping from rooftops. This kind of development is a bloodthirsty totem which places itself above the right to life.
The membrane flute mystery
Peter Micic looks into the question of the origin of the membrane in China's transverse bamboo flute:
At some point in Chinese music history, the idea of boring a hole on a flute between the blow hole and the six finger holes and covering the hole with a membrane became aesthetically valued and desirable. Enter the dizi, a transverse bamboo flute. It’s been around for centuries in China, but we still don’t have any idea exactly when and where the membrane started.
One of the crumbs of evidence that has come down is found in Chapter 148 of a music treatise by Chen Yang, a scholar and theoretician of the northern Song dynasty (960-1127 C.E). This treatise was presented to the throne in 1104. We find reference to an instrument called the seven-star pipe and its maker Liu Xi.
December 15, 2010
Finding and using grassroots historical sources
At Chinese History Dissertation Reviews, Jeremy Brown explains how flea markets and online used booksellers are excellent resources for historical documents that may not be available in proper archives.
via MCLC mailing list.
A whitewash of the human rights record
A response by Diane Liu (aka San Mei 三妹), a Chicago-based dissident, to "I Have No Enemies," Liu Xiaobo's final statement before his imprisonment, which was read aloud during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony last week. Translated by Professor Xu Yi and posted to The Independent Review BBS:
“I have no enemies” is a betrayal of the prisoners of conscience, a defamation of those who perished in the June 4th massacre, and an insult to those who have sacrificed so much for the cause of democratization in China. It is a continuation of Liu’s whitewashing of the human rights record in China in the last 20 years, and it is yet another exposure of himself as a hypocrite who always tries to please the Chinese Communist Regime. This is a re-enactment of his speech on the Chinese national TV 20 years ago openly denying that any killing had occurred in Tiananmen Square.
Twenty years ago, Liu proposed his “no enemy” maxim, namely, not treating the Communist Party as an enemy. Today, the moderate collaborationists defend him by saying that this is his “great love” after achieving thorough awakening and enlightenment. In fact, this is deliberately confusing religious and legal concepts by substituting modern legal justice and protection of human rights with religious forgiveness.
Chengdu's pilot program to abolish the hukou
Sascha at Chengdu Living looks into the implications of the changes to Chengdu's household registration system:
Even if the government’s plan works and farmers throw their rural hukou (and land) away and move to the city, the impact might be less than desirable. Online critics of the plan point out that under the new system, rural schools will stand empty as rural parents make a mad rush for urban schools. Another major concern of netizens who reacted to the story is the clause that allows “outsiders to apply for a Chengdu hukou,” a clause that has many worried that benefits will be stretched thin by an influx of non-Chengdunese.
Chengdu officials make a point of saying that under the new system, all distinctions between urban and rural hukou are abolished, which means urbanites can also move to the countryside and buy land, farm and in effect “trade classes”. Instead of inspiring urbanites to consider life on the farm, statements like these only fuel farmers’ concerns that the whole hukou reform thing is just another land grab.
How much is preservation worth?
The Global Times looks into the expenses incurred when local governments win cultural heritage recognition.
Noodle supply interrupted
The Economic Observer reports on a price dispute between Carrefour and Master Kong:
Instant noodles suppliers have made several rounds of price hikes in the past three years, ever since the overall price adjustment in the industry in 2007. This is the first time a supplier like Master Kong has chosen to sever supplies to a distributor like Carrefour for the length of a month.
This source added that Carrefour was the last of China's supermarkets and superstores to accept the round of price hikes from suppliers in 2007.A source from inside the food-retail industry revealed that as long as one superstore refused the price increases, other stores followed.
December 14, 2010
BBC unblocked
The BBC website was blocked for the Nobel ceremony, now unblocked:
In this latest incident the BBC's English-language website was unavailable from the day before last week's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. The BBC's World News channel was also disrupted.
Hada, Monglian activist, is missing after his release
The New York Times reports:
Their quest for greater freedom has been overshadowed by the more publicized efforts of Tibetans and Uighurs, two other minority groups in China whose numbers have been overwhelmed by Han migration and whose efforts to maintain — or reclaim — religious, cultural and linguistic autonomy have led to violent clashes with the Chinese.
Mr. Hada was arrested in 1995 after organizing a rally in the provincial capital, Hohhot, that drew dozens of people, according to foreign newspaper accounts at the time. After his detention, about 200 college students gathered outside his bookstore to sing Mongolian songs and hold up pictures of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
December 13, 2010
Curbing inflation a priority, says Central Economic Work Conference
China's leading dailies publicize the report issued at the end of the Central Economic Work Conference. From the China Daily:
"The priority is to actively and properly handle the relations between maintaining steady and relatively fast economic growth, economic restructuring and managing inflation expectations," according to a statement released after the high-profile Central Economic Work Conference.
The conference also reaffirmed the recently introduced "prudent" monetary and pro-active fiscal policy for 2011.
But to meet the new monetary policy target, policymakers must strictly implement it, analysts warned.
More analysis at Reuters.
The Lius I admire
Microbloggers on Sina Weibo and Twitter are writing up short posts in appreciation of their personal heroes, all surnamed Liu (刘), and all of whom share certain character traits and experiences with Liu Xiaobo
Those damned book thieves
All Sages Books (万圣书园) in Beijing's Haidian district strictly enforces a rule that all customers must check their bags. The store's official microblog defends the policy.
December 10, 2010
Beijing firm as the Nobel is given
The Global Times writes:
China won't bow to outside pressure over its opposition to Friday's awarding of the Noble Peace Prize to convicted criminal Liu Xiaobo, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday, reasserting its opposition to the award a day before it was to be bestowed in Oslo, Norway.
"Any attempt to use the issue to exert pressure on China or block China's development cannot succeed," ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. "The Nobel Committee must admit it is in the minority. The Chinese people and a majority of countries and people in the world all oppose what they have done."
'New Countryside, New Farmers, New Customs'
At the London Review of Books blog, Nick Holdstock blogs about propaganda murals in Turpan.
A Peace Prize for Assange
The China Media Project translates an opinion piece by Liang Fengming (梁凤鸣) in the Beijing Daily that proposes the WikiLeaks founder as a substitute for Liu Xiaobo:
And this brings us back to the Nobel Peace Prize. According to the decision by the Nobel Committee and the remarks of a number of other Westerners [concerning Liu Xiaobo], considering the acts of free speech in which this Assange has personally participated, opposing all on his own the “government violence” of several Western nations, could he not be regarded as a “fighter for freedom of expression”? Why don’t the noble members of the Nobel Committee claim that the Peace Prize is given “in the defense of freedom of expression,” and then give it to this Assange who has been persecuted, chained and jailed by the West?
Top investigative stories for 2010
The Global Times reports on the New Century Watchdog Journalism Conference:
"That's probably why the authorities are so nervous," Wu said. "The mere presence of these investigative reporters attracts all sorts of people."
Unlike previous years, this year's conference had no question-and-answer session at the end of the presentations.
"The government is worried about the possible negative impact on university students," said Liu Wanyong, a journalist working at the special report desk of the China Youth Daily.
The article features a rundown of the top ten stories.
Another interesting story in today's Global Times looks at a man sent to prison in 1969 for rapes he allegedly started committing at age 10, who then made the choice to go back to prison in the 1990s so that he could obtain Beijing household registration when he was released.
Day trading is like a battlefield
The New York Times looks at outsourced trading firms:
Some 200 people have applied for jobs at the company in the last two months alone, Mr. Chan said. Turnover is high, with workers typically moving on after four or five months. Very few stay for more than a year.
At a Beijing affiliate of Title Trading, the manager — who asked not to be named because he worries about the chances of finding another job if his operation fails — said he moved here from Canada because of the advantages of operating a trading desk with Chinese who were willing to start trading for little or no salary.
“Before, when a trader could earn $4,000 to $5,000 a month, Canadians wanted to do it,” he said. “But if it’s $1,000 they won’t. So it’s like anything else: outsource to China.”
Inflation song
On ChinaGeeks:
It may not be as well-produced as the Chinese song about rising housing prices, but rising inflation has finally inspired its own song.
The song is a parody of an already well-known tune called “The Sound of Applause” (掌声响起来). The parody version is called 涨声响起来, roughly translated as “The Sound of Rising Prices.”
Translation of lyrics follows.
December 9, 2010
China Newsweek loses editors over Louis Cha rumors
An online rumor said that Louis Cha (aka Jin Yong 金庸) died earlier this week. China Newsweek's official microblog reposted the rumor. Now a deputy general editor has resigned, a website editor has been sacked, and another online content manager has been demoted for the error, the SCMP reports.
The re-incarceration of a hooligan
Dui Hua Human Rights Journal looks at the case of Niu Yuqiang, the last person in China in prison for the crime of hooliganism. Background, plus an op-ed by Yu Ge.
This year's top China myths
The New Yorker's Evan Osnos rounds up ten misconceptions about China:
3. China is parting ways with North Korea. Fact: When a leaked U.S. State Department cable suggested that Chinese diplomats were whispering about the need for change on the Korean peninsula, some in the West saw a glimmer of daylight between the “lips and teeth,” to use the unlovely old metaphor for that special relationship. But the Chinese government contains a large, variegated range of opinion, and for the moment the consensus is far more in favor of protecting Kim as a defense against a refugee crisis and a U.S. troop presence on China’s eastern border.
4. The U.S. has lost the green-technology race. Fact: It can be difficult to tell on any given day whether China is trouncing the U.S. or hobbled by its own top-down instincts to pick winners and losers. But, overall, this is the third inning, and we don’t yet know how it will play out. The one undisputed fact: China is hungrier.
December 8, 2010
China develops longest high-speed railway in the world
Global Times reports:
China is now the proud possessor of the world's longest high-speed railway network, with a combined track length of 7,531 kilometers, where trains could soon thunder along at close to 600 kilometers per hour, the Ministry of Railways and train manufacturers said Tuesday.
The latest Chinese high-speed record was set Friday by a CRH-380A train, which reached a national record of 486.1 km per hour, during a test run on the Beijing-Shanghai railway route.
The country's manufacturers seem positive that their trains will soon snap at the heels of the 574.8 km per hour world speed record set by France in 2007, an anonymous source with CSR Corporation, formerly known as the China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock Corporation, told the Xinhua News Agency Tuesday, during the seventh World Congress on High Speed Rail held in Beijing.
U.S. investors love Dangdang and Youku: IPO brings in the cash
Two of China's most promising non-listed Internet companies offer their shares to investors, and feel the love. On Bloomberg:
E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc. and Youku.com Inc. raised as much as 23 percent more than originally sought in their U.S. initial public offerings, the latest sign of surging demand for shares of Chinese Internet companies.
China Dangdang, the country’s biggest Internet book retailer, sold 17 million American depositary receipts at $16 each yesterday after originally offering them for $11 to $13 apiece, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and data compiled by Bloomberg. Youku.com, China’s largest online video company, raised $203 million after seeking $169 million, the data show.
18 states not attending Nobel ceremony have strong commercial interests
Reuters reports:
Most of the 18 states joining China in shunning Friday's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo have strong commercial interests at stake or share its hostility to Western human rights pressure.
The secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee which awards the prize says China has mounted an unprecedented campaign to persuade other countries to boycott Friday's award gala, but two-thirds of invited nations will attend.
A story of hope and struggle
Taiwan's Next Media Animation depicts the life of Liu Xiaobo.
And the Confucius Prize goes to....
The AP reports that the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize, China's response to the Nobel Committee's decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, will be given to Lien Chan!
Awards committee chairman Tan Changliu said his group was not an official government body, but acknowledged that it worked closely with the Ministry of Culture. He declined to give specifics about the committee, when it was created and how the five judges were chosen, saying it would be disclosed later.
The first honoree is Lien Chan, Taiwan's former vice president and the honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, for having "built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan." A staffer in his Taipei office said she could not comment Tuesday because she knew nothing about the prize.
Lien Chan will receive $15,000.
Earlier this month, the former vice-president of Taiwan was said by the Ming Pao to be under consideration for a position as vice-president of the People's Republic of China.
In November, another shanzhai Peace Prize called the "World Harmony Award" was presented to former Chinese Defense Minister, General Chi Haotian by The World Harmony Foundation, a private charity headed by a Chinese businessman named Frank Liu.
December 7, 2010
Interview with director of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin documentary film
On The China Beat: An interview with filmmaker Hu Jingcao who recently completed a film about two of Beijing most's interesting public intellectuals of the 20th Century, architect Liang Sicheng (梁思成, 1901-1972) and his wife, the writer Lin Huiyin (林徽因, 1904-1955).
Walk the line
The Black China Hand sits in on a criminal trial:
the case was called to order and the defendant was brought in cuffed and in prison garb (an automatic grounds for mistrial in the US when done in trial in the presence of the trier of fact) and seated in the hot seat before the judges bench with no defense counsel. After the defendant was situated the judge and two laymen entered and took their positions on the bench. After gaveling the case into order the trial began in earnest with a informational phase where the judge directly asked the defendant questions as to his name, age, home and whether he understood the charges against him and if he wanted a lawyer. The defendants answers were barely audible and common in my experience to the initial hearing of a client who has never been to court before.
December 6, 2010
Historic Bell and Drum tower area saved?
From The Global Times:
Plans to redevelop Beijing's Gulou Drum Tower area into the "Time Cultural City" tourism attraction have been officially abandoned and a much smaller "time museum" requiring no additional demolition will be built instead.
Yin Jun, spokesman of the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, confirmed to the Global Times Sunday that the museum's construction plan was officially approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage last week...
..."I see the changing of policy as a sign of government progress," He Shuzhong, founder of the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, told the Global Times. "It shows that the government has a better understanding of the value of old community culture and it accepts the voices from the public and non-government organizations." He considered the museum appropriate for the area.
Generally, no major construction projects are planned for the old city area, according to the Beijing government's Suggestions to Strongly Promote Cultural Development in the Capital's Core Areas, which was issued on November 4.
Sichuan grassland fire kills 22
China Daily reports:
A spreading grassland fire in a mountainous Tibetan region in Southwest China proved deadly when it trapped soldiers and local residents trying to put it out, killing 22 and injuring four as of press time on Sunday night, local officials said.
Zambian mine shootings in the Chinese media
On African Boots by Tom Rafferty:
There was an interesting story in New Century Weekly (新世纪周刊) a few weeks back that is worth a look (available here in Chinese). It is a lengthy investigative piece by journalists Chen Zhu and Zhang Boling on the shooting of local workers at a Chinese-owned coal mine in southern Zambia, following protests over working conditions and lack of pay.
Eleven were injured after two Chinese supervisors, apparently fearing for their lives, opened fire with shotguns. The supervisors (pictured) were later arrested on charges of attempted murder but have since been released on bail. The incident has led to protests outside the Chinese Embassy in the Zambian capital of Lusaka and has again put Zambia’s relations with China under the spotlight. Tensions will likely be further exacerbated if the trial is perceived to be a whitewash, as some have predicted.
The interest groups that control China
In one of the Wikileaks cables published today, a source told a U.S. Embassy official that the Communist Party should be
viewed primarily as a collection of interest groups. There was no "reform wing," [THE SOURCE] claimed. [ANOTHER SOURCE] made the same argument in several discussions with PolOff over the past year, asserting that China's top leadership had carved up China's economic "pie," creating an ossified system in which "vested interests" drove decision-making and impeded reform as leaders maneuvered to ensure that those interests were not threatened.
It was "well known,"[THE SOURCE] stated, that former Premier Li Peng and his family controlled all electric power interests; PBSC member and security czar Zhou Yongkang and associates controlled the oil interests; the late former top leader Chen Yun's family controlled most of the PRC's banking sector; PBSC member and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Chairman Jia Qinglin was the main interest behind major Beijing real estate developments; Hu Jintao's son-in -law ran Sina.com; and Wen Jiabao's wife controlled China's precious gems sector.
Young man in detention dies of "suffocation"
From the Global Times:
Relatives of a young man who died in a detention center in Maoming, Guangdong province, said that they were told that he died of suffocation on November 25, according to an online post.
Qi Yeqiang, 22, had been held in the detention house since April 26, said his sister Qi Yueming, for allegedly adding water to diesel oil at the factory where he was employed. He had been held without being formally accused of any crime.
Peking University professor would approve of shooting journalists
David Bandurski on the China Media Project:
Late last month Kong Qingdong (孔庆东), a China studies professor at Peking University known most recently for his part in the nationalist bestseller Unhappy China, courted criticism from journalists and intellectuals in China when he said point blank during an interview that, “Right now journalists are a major public nuisance in our country.” Not stopping there, Kong said that, “If these journalists were all lined up and shot, I would feel heartache for not a single one of them.”
Translators given lifetime achievement awards
The Translators Association of China honored five translators with lifetime achievement awards, the China Daily reports:
Five prominent scholars including English and French literature authority Xu Yuanchong, Russian literature expert Cao Ying and Sinology scholar Sidney Shapiro were given lifetime achievement awards in translation on Thursday for their contribution to the country's translation causes.
Four hundred and ninety-two veteran Chinese translators were also awarded the honor of senior translator at a ceremony held by the Translators Association of China in Beijing.
A Southern Metropolis Daily article goes into more detail. Cao Ying translated Russian classics, most notably the work of Dostoyevsky, into Chinese. Tu An translated English-language poets including Shakespeare, Keats, and Whitman. The other three honorees translated Chinese work into foreign languages. Sidney Shapiro rendered modern fiction, such as Ba Jin's Family and Mao Dun's Spring Silkworms into English. Xu Yuanchong translated classical poetry into rhymed English and French. And Li Shijun translated classic fiction, such as Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West, into Esperanto.
See also: Xinhua, American-born translator bestowed Lifetime Achievement Award in China
December 3, 2010
Volvo & Geely: The honeymoon is over
John Reed in The Financial Times:
Differences have arisen between Volvo and its new Chinese owners, Geely, over a planned expansion of the Swedish carmaker’s business in China.
While Geely wants to build up to three Chinese plants to profit from that country’s rocketing car sales, Volvo’s Gothenburg-based management want to build a solid business case before expanding, according to several people close to the discussions...
...One of the people briefed on the deliberations described the tone of the discussions inside Volvo over China strategy as “heated, not acrimonious”.
December 2, 2010
South African AIDS activists protest at Chinese Embassy
On African Boots:
A rather unusual but rather small protest took place yesterday in front of the Chinese Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa to demand the release of Tian Xi, an activist who was infected with the HIV virus in 1996 after a blood transfusion at a state hospital and has been lobbying for compensation from the government.
How Chinese dissidents use Western media
Andrew Chubb interviews Xu Wenli, editor of April Fourth Forum and co-founder of China Democracy Party.
Fuel shortages and e-commerce
Veggie Discourse finds one explanation for why online shoppers are finding their shipments delayed:
Because they couldn't obtain any diesel fuel, delivery trucks stopped running. Many packages that should have been on the road now sit in giant piles on the sorting facility floor. We ask that Taobao members to please be understanding, as Taobao is also actively managing the resources to ensure your goods are safely delivered. Thank you again for your support!
Does WikiLeaks clarify?
La Times blog opens up debate on how much the WikiLeaks cable on North Korea and China meant:
David E. Sanger, the Times’ chief Washington correspondent and a veteran of six years in Asia, noted how many previous predictions about the demise of the oppressive Korean regime have been wrong. He wrote that “talk of the North’s collapse may be rooted more in hope than in any real strategy.”
The Guardian’s report by Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs columnist, relies greatly on the lone WikiLeaks memo.
When I asked Sanger about the divergence of the two newspapers' reports, he e-mailed back: “China is a big place, with a variety of opinions. In my reading of the diplomats' reports back to Washington, we don't yet have any evidence that China's top leaders believe the liabilities of dealing with its longtime ally now outweigh the strategic benefits of maintaining the status quo.''
December 1, 2010
Tax for foreign firms increase
From the China Daily:
China is levying two taxes on foreign companies, marking the beginning of a standard national tax treatment for foreign and Chinese enterprises.
China will charge foreign firms with operations here two additional taxes (a construction tax and education surcharge) in a measure taking effect Wednesday, according to a State Council announcement in late November.
The cost of coal in China
The first episode of a four part series examining the human and environmental costs of the coal economy in China by Mary Kat Magistad.
Retired health official urges probe of China '90s HIV epidemic
Gillian Wong in The Washington Post:
In his dying days, a retired Chinese health official is calling on the government to come clean about a 1990s blood-selling scandal that infected tens of thousands of people with the virus that causes AIDS...
..."Not even one word of apology has been given to the victims, much less those who died, this is not how politicians should act," 78-year-old Chen Bingzhong wrote in an open letter to President Hu Jintao. "How can dealing with such a major disaster this way ever be explained to our countrymen, especially the many victims?!"
China is not going to abandon North Korea
Richard Spencer, former Beijing correspondent for The Daily Telegraph:
China has not abandoned North Korea and won’t any time soon. Nor is the country about to collapse.
That’s not what you’d think from reading coverage of Wikileaks today. But what we claim Wikileaks is saying is – probably – wrong on this point, and a lot else. And we shouldn’t be surprised at that.