Must-read China news by Danwei

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?”

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 12:49 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:59 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 2:02 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 1:48 PM | Permalink

Janet C Sturgeon writes for China Dialogue about small rubber producers in Yunnan Province who feel threatened by efforts to protect local biodiversity.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 10:29 AM | Permalink

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

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:41 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 12:36 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:16 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Alice Xin Liu at 11:10 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 10:03 AM | Permalink

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).

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:46 AM | Permalink

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".

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 2:54 PM | Permalink

Shanghai Scrap interviews Christine Tan of Shanghai Shiok! for a Valentine's Day-themed post.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 4:15 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Fang Kecheng posts an English translation of his Southern Weekly report on the plight of doctoral students.

Posted by Joel Martinsen at 11:04 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:51 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Jeremy Goldkorn at 8:42 AM | Permalink