Must-read China news by Danwei

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."

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 5:05 PM | Permalink

At the London Review of Books blog, Nick Holdstock blogs about propaganda murals in Turpan.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 4:53 PM | Permalink

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?

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:53 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:35 PM | Permalink

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.”

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:52 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:51 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:45 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:00 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:33 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 3:30 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 2:59 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Taiwan's Next Media Animation depicts the life of Liu Xiaobo.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:00 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:42 AM | Permalink

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).

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 2:08 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:33 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:31 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:24 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:18 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:15 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:12 PM | Permalink

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.”

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 1:09 PM | Permalink

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

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:09 PM | Permalink