How I lived my life in the year 2010
China Digital Times provides a translation of Ran Yunfei's last post before his arrest.
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February 28, 2011
Pride of ownership?
Jen Ambrose looks at some peculiarities of China's rental housing market:
I told him about our experience in Shenzhen with our apartment that sold while we were still living in it. It was then ans still is now hard for me to understand how our rent could be at least 3000 RMB less than the landlord's mortgage (we later learned an even higher number for the mortgage, like closer to 5000 RMB more. The selling price was more than US$250,000.
I could not grasp the disparity between rent and mortgage, nor the incentive to buy, and especially the incentive to buy multiple apartments as many people did (and still do). These weren't income properties but investment properties. It seemed the only money to be made is on future appreciation that would only come into being at resale.
The end of cheap denim
Malcolm Moore writes for the Telegraph about rising denim prices in China:
As a result, Mr Atkins, the Hong Kong-based denim expert, warns that high street fashion have may have to slow down in pace a little. The days of so-called "throwaway fashion", where stores could sell garments cheap enough to be worn for a just a few months and then discarded, could be over, he said.
"Companies should be very scared, as throwaway fashion is now dead," he claimed. "For years they wanted to get more and pay less. They have pillaged the system in China. But now they are going to suffer."
In a follow-up, he notes an additional factor: Chinese jeans labels are paying top dollar for much of the supply.
Multiple angles on Huntsman's stroll
Adam Cathcart invokes the name of Leighton Stuart and digs through the Huanqiu comment forums to read the implications of US Ambassador Huntsman's visit to the Wangfujing demonstrations last week.
Just another manic Sunday
Sunday in brief:
Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday took part in a hastily announced chat with netizens in which he talked about various problems in China. The chat was hastily announced, but not new: this is the third year running Wen has chatted to netizens in the lead up to the annual sessions of China's legislative bodies known as the liang hui.
There were no protesters in Wangfujing but plenty of cops and plenty of foreign journalists, some of whom got beaten up.
In Shanghai there seemed to be a crowd of citizens who had show up expecting something to happen and a few were bundled off by police.
The The Financial Times has published a comprehensive report of yesterday's events by Kathrin Hille and Patti Waldmeir.
February 27, 2011
February 26, 2011
A civil servant's notebook
Tania Branigan in The Guardian:
Money. Power. Even sex, albeit offstage. Wang Xiaofang's novels capture it all – in the dog-eat-dog world of Chinese bureaucracy. Personal ambition, political intrigue and detailed renderings of the country's land management system fuse in the unlikely literary phenomenon known as "officialdom fiction".
Wang is king of the genre, -– general secretary might be more apt – having sold 3m copies of catchily titled works such as Director of the Beijing Reception Office.
Stealing fossils and tomb robbing no longer get death penalty
The BBC:
China has removed 13 offences from the list of 68 crimes punishable by death.
But death penalty campaigners say the revision of the country's criminal code will not necessarily lead to a significant fall in the numbers of criminals executed.
The offences were all economic crimes for which the death penalty was rarely if ever applied.
They include tax fraud, the smuggling of cultural relics or precious metals, tomb robbing and stealing fossils.
February 25, 2011
How the 'Troublemaker' Won the Village Election
China Elections Blog translates an article from Window of the South:
Yin Hui, a popular petitioner for the residents of Nanyin village and a stubborn troublemaker for the local government and the Party-branch committee, was elected head of the Villager Committee of Nanyin, Jiangsu province in October 2010, earning more than 70% of the valid votes. However, the power transition process did not go as smoothly as he expected. Before Yin Hui took office, the Part-branch committee and the Villager Committee made a change to take back the decision-making power in Nanyin. Also, the accounting department remains independent from the newly elected village committee. Without financial support and the ability to control the village budget, Yin Hui is actually taking charge of an empty shell.
Amb. Huntsman: Undermining hopes for a more open China?
The China Youren blog has a post titled "Get out of Here, Your Excellency!":
I was very disappointed when I read this story about the US ambassador in Beijing taking part in the so-called “Jasmine” protests last Sunday. This is very bad news for Chinese supporters of democracy (yet again).
First of all, let’s be serious. The idea that the ambassador didn’t know what was going on is an insult to intelligence, his appearing on camera lying to a Chinese passer-by only makes things worse…
…Don’t American politicians understand that democracy can only win if it is seen as homegrown? What would happen if the French ambassador was seen joining a protest for, say, the health reform in the US, would this help further the Democrats’ agenda? Does this kind of action help the millions of real, anonymous Chinese who hope for a more open system? Certainly not.
February 24, 2011
Who's Using Who? Zhou Hao's Hall of Mirrors
Dan Edwards at Screening China looks at two documentaries by Guangzhou-based filmmaker Zhou Hao:
In this sense, Using adds little to previous films about the culture surrounding heroin, apart from revealing its existence in present-day China. The film's emotional nexus, however, lies elsewhere, in the knotty relationship between filmmaker Zhou Hao on the one hand, and Ah Long and his girlfriend Ah Jun on the other. The on-again off-again nature of their “friendship” is established straight after the film's introductory sequence, when inter-titles tell us police cleared out the derelict building shortly after Zhou Hao filmed there. Ah Long disappears for six months and Zhou Hao gives up hope of ever seeing him again – until Ah Long calls out of the blue and they are reunited over a meal.
The fable of donkey island and piggy island
Mary Ann O'Donnell introduces a fable about trade imbalance that appeared on the left-leaning Utopia BBS:
However, one day there was an earthquake on Piggy Island, which sank into the ocean. In short, Piggy Island disappeared. At this news, the Donkey King went crazy, worried that this mode of production had been upset. What were they to do?
The Donkey King asked his ministers. An especially smart Minister said, “Immediately block this news. Do not tell the people that Piggy Island has vanished. Donkey Island can continue producing grain as before. Then send the grain to the docks and have it shipped to where Piggy Island used to be.”
Onward, Christian actors
The Global Times profiles Lu Liping and Sun Haiying, well-known Chinese actors who also happen to be Christian:
With those words, given as she accepted a Best Actress award at the 47th Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival last November, Lü Liping became the first Chinese mainland actress to express her "gratitude to God" at an international film festival award ceremony in a decade.
Chinese mainland media such as the Oriental Morning Post later reported Lü was "too nervous [and] delivered an incoherent and confused speech."
February 23, 2011
Dangerous farts: The absurdities of censorship
In Time
Writer Murong Xuecun prepared these remarks on censorship as an acceptance speech for a Chinese literary prize. But, as he approached the platform, he was abruptly barred from speaking. He delivered this version of the talk at Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents Club on February 22, 2011.
[Excerpt:]In another place I said that someone's fart had the 'flavour of India.' I must admit that this could be regarded as a bit vulgar, but surely either way it was hardly of great importance? But the editor insisted that I make a change because of the reference to India.
On this point he was unyielding: Indian-flavoured flatulence is not permitted. I sympathised with him, because apparently he was genuinely afraid of causing a diplomatic incident between China and India. But I also wondered whether China and India would really start a war over a solitary fart.
What a beautiful sensitive word!
China Digital Times has translated a blog post by Jason Ng, a timeline of the Jasmine non protests in China and some thoughts on what happened:
If the government hadn’t had such a big reaction, I believe that not so many people would have participated in the Jasmine Revolution.
Unfortunately, for those who have guilty consciences, at a certain point, demons can be heard in the sound of the midnight wind.
February 22, 2011
The Kinda Long March
For Outside magazine, Yang Xiao spins a tale "In which a team of Chinese men travel to the United States for the first time to hike the legendary Appalachian Trail—and find its manicured paths a little wimpy."
The bizarre backlash against Yu Jianrong's child beggar campaign
ChinaGeeks:
[R]ecently, we (and every other news source on the face of the earth) posted about Sina microblogging account Prof. Yu Jianrong set up for reposting photos of beggar children. At the time, the campaign was rapidly gaining momentum, the Chinese media was all over it, and Sina was making special efforts to build up followers on Yu Jianrong’s account.
Then, perhaps inevitably, came the backlash.
Failing to blossom in China
Taiwan's Next Media Animation covers the so-called "protests" over the weekend.
A lack of restraint in the twittosphere
Hao Leifeng writes for the Global Times to defend the delicate virtue of Chinese women against the perverted attention of western-influenced microbloggers. Read and be convinced:
Young people need to spend their time focusing on their studies, not such unhealthy interests. It is important that young women are not distracted by dating, until, of course, they graduate. Then they should listen to their parents' advice and marry immediately.
This so-called iPhone "contest" makes a link between sexual attractiveness, and the acquisition of luxury goods, which is of course completely misleading and could give young people the wrong idea of how life works in modern China.
Inside Sina Weibo
Digicha on Sina Weibo:
I have put together a simple presentation about Sina Weibo, as despite the huge run in Sina’s (NASDAQ:SINA) stock due to Weibo most non-Chinese have limited knowledge of the product itself. The document does not address censorship (See China’s Internet: The Invisible Birdcage for a longer discussion of Internet controls). We all know it is there, and Sunday we got a real time look at some of the layers of control, but this powerpoint focuses on the commercial and product aspects of Weibo.
Alibaba.com CEO Resigns in Wake of Fraud by Sellers
The Wall Street Journal reports on Alibaba's fraud case:
Sellers on Alibaba.com can display Gold Supplier credentials on the site after filing business-verification paperwork to Alibaba for a fee. But Alibaba.com said 100 sales personnel, out of its sales force of about 5,000, as well as supervisors and sales managers were "directly responsible in allowing the fraudsters to evade" the company's authentication measures.
The result is that some buyers were duped into doing business with fraudulent companies, in some cases paying for goods they didn't receive.
China's first mass political organization
Jane Leung Larson writes for China Beat on the baohuanghui:
Chinese civil society took a big step forward in 1899 with the founding of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, or the Baohuanghui 保皇会 (literally the “Protect the Emperor Society”), in Victoria, Canada. In effect a proto-political party, the Baohuanghui was founded on the premise that the first step in reforming China was the launching of an organization of like-minded Chinese who believed in its mission and would support a variety of methods, from uprisings to newspapers, to achieve their goals. This kind of voluntary association, or qun [群 group], was distinguished from the traditional Chinese organizations that formed around native place, clan, guild, or religious identities, which only reinforced the cliquishness and infighting of Chinese people. From the qun, it was hoped, would come the guo [国 the nation].
February 21, 2011
Sinica on Egypt, Groupon and Weibo activism for kidnapped kids
A Sinica podcast with Kaiser Kuo, Gady Epstein and Will Moss discussing the Egyptian revolution, Groupon's troubles in China, and the recent campaign on Weibo to identify kidnapped children who have been forced into begging.
February 19, 2011
Why I was able to become university vice president at age 24
China Elections blog looks at the furor over Wang Shengqi, a 24-year-old who became vice president of Liaoning Petroleum and Chemical University:
On Thursday, a statement from Liaoning Shihua’s Party Organization Department attempted to address the “doubts raised by media and netizens” regarding the authenticity of Ms. Wang’s diplomas, the university policies and procedures that allowed her to be promoted, and the institution’s intentions in promoting such a young individual to such a high position. Explaining that Wang received her undergraduate and master’s degrees from England’s Manchester University and Oxford University, respectively, that her promotion was carried out in accordance with university regulations, and that, as the school now welcomes “more than 140 exchange students studying Chinese language,” the administration thought that Wang’s “high-level foreign talent” made her suitable for the job. In a response posted on Rednet.cn, one reader wondered how four years of experience studying abroad (including stints as president of the Manchester Chinese Students Welfare Society and vice president to the Oxford University Chinese Students Federation!) is sufficient to qualify as “overseas talent,” asking “is that standard not a bit low?”
February 18, 2011
Petitioner vs. black jail
John Kennedy writes for Global Voices Online about one petitioner from Hubei who apparently torched the black jail where he was being held. The story is related through microblog posts:
Feb 15, 16:24:
Update on the burning down of the black jail: Yan Sen is safe but has been locked up again, his captors won't report the fire to the police because they're afraid of them finding out about the black prison. Staying tuned.
Property prices rise in most cities despite curbs
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports:
China’s January new home prices rose from a year earlier in all but two of the 70 cities monitored by the government, defying property curbs to keep housing affordable.
New home prices in the capital Beijing advanced 6.8 percent in January from last year, while Shanghai climbed 1.5 percent, the statistics bureau said on its website today, initiating a new method of calculating prices. Haikou had the biggest gain, surging 21.6 percent, and 10 cities had increases exceeding 10 percent. Housing values in the southeastern city of Quanzhou and the western city of Nanchong fell.
Great Firewall father speaks out
Fang Yunyu reports at the Global Times:
The father of the Great Firewall doesn't avoid defending the momentous Chinese mainland decision to monitor the flow of information on the Internet.
Such a firewall is a "common phenomenon around the world," he argues, and nor is China alone in monitoring and controlling the Internet.
"As far as I know, about 180 countries including South Korea and the US monitor the Internet as well."
He avoids all discussion of the relative quantity and qualities of overseas censorship when compared to his own unique creation.
Rubber's rough side
Janet C Sturgeon writes for China Dialogue about small rubber producers in Yunnan Province who feel threatened by efforts to protect local biodiversity.
February 17, 2011
China Daily: "Cloud seeding is safe"
The China Daily:
"The impact of weather manipulation can be ignored because the dose of the catalyst is too small to cause a problem," said Lei Hengchi, a professor specializing in weather intervention at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
While silver iodide - the most common catalyst used to encourage clouds to discharge their water - is considered a hazardous substance and a toxic pollutant, the quantities used are not large enough to have any effect on the environment, he explained.
China has discharged silver iodide, dry ice and liquefied nitrogen into clouds from aircraft or from stations on the ground to enhance precipitation in dry regions since the 1950s…
…In order to relieve the drought that has continued since October, China had carried out nearly 2,200 weather control measures as of Monday aimed at encouraging precipitation
Dr Snake and the pit vipers of Hunan
The China Daily:
Former doctor Chen Yuanhui has gone from saving people from snakes to saving snakes from people.
Since the 62-year-old discovered a new species of venomous serpent when treating an elderly patient who sustained a bite in 1984, he has devoted his life to the creatures' preservation.
He has become known as "Dr Snake" in his community in mountainous Mangshan, in Central China's Hunan province, the place from which his Mangshan pit viper takes its appellation.
China blocks discussion on Internet freedom
After Hillary Clinton's Freedom of Internet speech in Washington yesterday, the US embassy tried to generate discussion on the contents in the Chinese microblogs. Wall Street Journal reports that they weren't successful.
Journalists roughed up in Shandong
CNN's Stan Grant was pushed and drove out of the village where Chen Guangcheng, a blind human rights lawyer, was held.
The BBC also has a report.
Xi Jinping's cave dwelling youth
Edward Wong in The New York Times:
The cave is dim and narrow and musty. A platform bed covered with a reed mat sits by the door. A green canvas satchel and a lantern hang from two rusty nails on a wall — possessions supposedly left behind by a lanky teenage boy from Beijing sent here four decades ago to do hard labor.
The homes in Liangjiahe are caves built into the hillsides, like that of Wang Zhihui and his wife, Shi Cailian.
“He liked reading books,” said Lü Nengzhong, 80, a farmer who housed the boy, Xi Jinping, for three years.
February 16, 2011
A bold new report in Caijing magazine
The China Media Project:
If anyone had doubts about the future health of Caijing magazine as a place for harder-hitting journalism after the departure of founding editor-in-chief Hu Shuli (胡舒立) in November 2009, the magazine’s latest issue is cause for optimism, if not applause.
A new investigative report in Caijing from journalist Luo Changping (罗昌平), known for his recent book about the 2003 Chenzhou corruption scandal, uncovers how the corruption cases against a number of prominent officials in recent years, including former Qingdao party secretary Du Shicheng (杜世成) and former Sinopec CEO Chen Tonghai (陈同海), all have a shadow figure in common — a former Vietnamese refugee named Li Wei (李薇).
February 15, 2011
Zhuang language exams
Liuzhou Laowai reads a China Daily report on an upcoming standardized examination for Zhuang, which is spoken by China's largest minority group:
The written form was invented 50 years ago by a group of academics. It is not a naturally evolved written language.
The article also points out that Zhuang has "many dialects and another 12 linguistic subdivisions". True, but they fall into two main, mutually unintelligible groups known as Northern and Southern Zhuang. They then say that while aiming "to encourage the use of the language, the test will push for the standardization of the many different dialects."
Encouraging standardisation seems to me to be a strange way to "protect such endangered heritages".
February 14, 2011
East-west relationship blogging
Shanghai Scrap interviews Christine Tan of Shanghai Shiok! for a Valentine's Day-themed post.
A national strategic language for China
China's national language is known by a variety of names, including Pǔtōnghuà (普通话), Hànyǔ (汉语), and Guóyǔ (国语). Zhang Wenmu proposes adopting a new term, Zhōngguó yǔ (中国语), or "Chinese language," to foster national unity.
Gambling for a PhD in China
Fang Kecheng posts an English translation of his Southern Weekly report on the plight of doctoral students.
China to build railway to rival Panama Canal?
The Financial Times:
China is in talks to build an alternative to the Panama Canal that would link Colombia’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts by rail – a move that Bogotá also hopes will spur Washington to push for Congressional approval of a US-Colombia free-trade pact.
“It’s a real proposal ... and it is quite advanced,” Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president, told the Financial Times.
Minister of Railways under investigation for corruption
The China Daily:
The newly appointed Party chief of the Ministry of Railways, Sheng Guangzu, said the ongoing investigation into the activities of his predecessor shows the Party's resolve to punish corrupt officials and pursue clean governance.
Sheng, 62, who has been head of the General Administration of Customs since 2008, made the remarks at a televised news conference on Saturday night.
His predecessor, Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun, is no longer the Party chief of the ministry, according to a report on Xinhuanet.com that quoted the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
February 10, 2011
PetroChina buys 50% stake in Canadian natural gas field
The Financial Times:
PetroChina has agreed to pay C$5.4bn (US$5.4bn) for a 50 per cent stake in a large natural gas field in western Canada owned by Encana, the Calgary-based oil and gas producer.
Hu Yaobang and the Democracy Wall
A translation of a 2004 essay by Hu Jiwei on Hu Yaobang and the Democracy Wall in Xidan.
February 9, 2011
Chinese mine managers on trial in Zambia
Nicholas Bariyo in The Wall Street Journal:
The trial of two Chinese mine managers charged with the attempted murder of Zambian coal miners in October will begin in March as the African nation steps up its efforts to demonstrate it doesn't condone labor violations by foreign investors.
The two are facing 13 counts of attempted murder after they fired live ammunition into a crowd of miners during a riot over a wage dispute at the Chinese-owned Collum coal mine, a major supplier of coal to Zambia's copper and cobalt sector. Attempted murder is a capital offense under Zambian law.
An American concentration camp in China?
Did Americans operate a concentration camp in Chongqing in the 1940s that tortured and killed underground Chinese communists? Xujun Eberlein investigates.
(Link is to summary of all five articles)
The ongoing wanton destruction of Shanghai's architectural heritage
Paul French has published his annual list of crimes against architectural heritage committed by the city of Shanghai.
The list of historically valuable buildings lost to the wrecking ball in 2010 is not pleasant reading.
China to pour $10bn into Zimbabwe economy?
David Smith in The Guardian:
Zimbabwe could be in line for a windfall of up to $10bn from China, a potentially huge boost to its ailing economy, its ministers have claimed.
But such an investment would be likely to heighten concerns about president Robert Mugabe's increasingly warm relationship with China, which has been accused of turning a blind eye to human rights violations across Africa…
…Tapiwa Mashakada, a government minister and member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told Reuters on Monday: "We have met with officials from China Development Bank and they have said they are willing to invest up to $10bn in Zimbabwe."
Microblogs help locate kidnapped children forced into begging
On China Media Project (CMP):
Two of China’s major Internet news sites, QQ.com and Sina.com, reported prominently today on a grassroots web-based initiative attempting to locate abducted children in China and re-connect them with their families.
The initiative, launched on January 25 by CMP fellow Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, calls on web users to share photos through the dominant QQ and Sina microblog platforms of children around the country who are working as street beggars. Once shared through these platforms, the photos may be matched with police databases or recognized by parents.
See also ChinaGeeks: Child Beggars and a Revolution of Digital Conscience
February 8, 2011
Chinese investment in Mongolia: An uneasy courtship
EastAsiaForum.org looks at the growing Chinese presence in Mongolia, and the landlocked central Asian state's discomfort and increasing Sinophobia.
February 2, 2011
The "Oriental Chaplin"
The Chinese Mirror takes a look at Zhou Kongkong, a slapstick star in China's early film industry:
For some reason, however, Zhou Kongkong made his motion picture debut in 1925 not with Mingxing, but with the smaller Xinhua studio, which folded a year later. Perhaps Zhang Shichuan owed someone a favor, but whatever the reason Zhou moved to the Mingxing studio later in 1925. From that point until 1930 he logged nearly 40 movie credits, and earned the rubric the "Oriental Chaplin." Although none of his films have survived, it appears this was not due to his duplicating Chaplin's "little tramp" character, but rather because he was funny, the first outstanding Chinese screen comic.
February 1, 2011
Comparing Egypt and China - wrong questions, meaningless answers
Adam Minter at Shanghai Scrap examines reactions to the Egypt demonstrations among China observers:
It’s an interesting point that I think is relevant, and overlooked, in any discussion about Egypt and China: uprisings are what happens when people don’t have any other means of venting their dissatisfaction and anger. Now, I’m quite aware that uprisings sometimes happen in countries where there are elections, and I’m also aware that non-democratic societies have their own, sometimes effective, venting mechanisms. But I’m not going to argue that point. Instead, I’m going to suggest that instead of journalists/columnists/bloggers opining on whether the “average Chinese citizen” has an appetite for chaos and revolution, it might be better – if not more empirical – to step back and ask whether China has sufficient, robust institutions whereby average Chinese citizens can vent their frustrations, anger, and grievances