Must-read China news by Danwei

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 5:36 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:58 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:55 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:50 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:59 AM | Permalink

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

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:12 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:05 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:30 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 8:08 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 9:28 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 7:12 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 3:56 PM | Permalink

The Global Times looks into the expenses incurred when local governments win cultural heritage recognition.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:14 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:05 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:45 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:39 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:38 PM | Permalink

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

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:32 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 1:28 PM | Permalink