|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Danwei Picks
Sorry, but there are no more tags available to filter with.
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
'Chocolate city': African traders in Guangzhou: Blogging for China translates a Southern Metropolis Daily article about African traders in Guangzhou and elsewhere in China.
Chinese in Tanzania: Tudou.com co-founder Marc van der Chijs has just returned from a trip to the east African nation of Tanzania and has written a blog post about Chinese entrepreneurs he met there.
Hip-hop Olympics: At Blogging Beijing from the the Seattle Times, Daniel Beekman profiles Beijing-based hip-hop group In Three (阴三儿).
Middle name? No tickets for you: The WSJ's China Journal blog tells of foreigners unable to claim Olympic tickets they reserved: The online application forms requested only first and last names. But when foreigners showed up to claim their tickets, using passports for identification, bank staff refused to hand over tickets to people whose passports also included a middle name. (It's a non-issue for most Chinese, who use family names and given names but not separate "middle" names.)
Make Polo: A group of journalism students from the University of Texas at Austin traveled around China in May and are publishing photos, articles and blog posts about their visit at ChinaOnThe Brink.com.
One of them, Patrick Michels, wrote about Internet startup MakePolo.com:
Makepolo is a search engine designed to help small businesses quickly find specific supplies and stock items from online retailers. By focusing on the online needs of a narrow group of users, Su is counting on the fact that just a sliver of the Chinese market can mean serious business--30 million small businesses in China alone, he says.
97 new airports planned: From The China Daily:
China sets aside $64b for airport shuffle
China drafted a long-term plan for development of air cargo, which will require the building of 97 new airports, consolidation of smaller airports and upgrading of certain key airports by the year 2020. The entire project will cost the government a massive investment of $64 billion.
Could China stop Taiwan from coming to the Olympic Games?: Susan Brownell answers that trick question at The China Beat:
Global politics usually don't change as quickly as we would like, but they do change. One year ago I was one of many people who thought that the biggest political threat to the Beijing Olympic Games was the movement toward independence in Taiwan. Now it appears that the Taiwan situation is comparatively stable. But the symbols associated with Taiwan - including words - remain one of the most politically sensitive areas of the Olympic Games. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Shutting journalists out?: From the blog of BBC correspondent James Reynolds: Recently, I asked whether or not the openness the Chinese authorities displayed in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake would continue. Now, after a day spent in the city of Dujiangyan trying to cover a story about bereaved parents, I can try to answer that question more fully.
A dull yarn about a disgruntled threesome: Writing for the Hollywood Reporter, Maggie Lee dismisses poet Yin Lichuan's new film, Knitting:
Reeling off traits recognizable in umpteen fest-bound independent films from China -- such as a snail's pace, minimalist plot and dialogue, and deliberate muffling of emotions -- Yin is several stitches short of creating a work of originality. Can these guys fix Chinese basketball?: China Sports Today reports on a basketball boot camp for Chinese players conducted by top NBA and college basketball coaches.
All-seeing eyes: Mary Ann O'Donnell discusses Naomi Klein's Rolling Stone article and the accompanying photographs:
rolling stone published lee's photos to illustrate klein's report. the photographs' formal composition and klein's article become a reader's primary tools for interpreting shenzhen. however, here's the rub: in an interview, klein states that her goal is to "show how u.s. and china more and more alike, creation of a middle ground". however, the photographer, thomas lee invoked the aesthetic conventions of creative photography to organize photographic composition. in these pictures, people in the foreground are blurred, while the background is in focus. consequently, the images show a shenzhen that is depersonalized and off-kilter. for an american viewer, these pictures do not provide common ground, rather its opposite--a looming gulf that threatens to swallow anyone who would dare cross over.
Cuban athlete breaks Liu Xiang's world record: From Beijing Olympics Blog:
Cuba's Dayron Robles has toppled Liu Xiang's 110m hurdles world record. The 21-year-old clocked 12.87 seconds, beating Liu's time by just 0.01 seconds and smashing is own personal best. Liu was not racing...
...Olympic favourite in more ways than one, Liu Xiang is not only expected to successfully defend his Olympic title, but is one of the most popular athletes in the host country. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
 Houmen, March 1, 1912 Foreign influence on China's revolution: Inspired by a photograph from 1912, Alan Baumler at Frog in a Well reflects on post-revolution mutinies: The Europeans "were in the best of humor and joked about what was happening" and much appreciated the view of the burning city from the walls. Although Chinese troops were looting, extraterritoriality still held and no foreigner was molested. I can thing of few things that would reinforce the foreign sense of privilege more than touring a battlezone like it was a play put on for one's amusement.
Yuan seems to have played the whole affair like a violin. While he claimed not be be behind the mutiny, and the looting probably went further than he would have liked it worked to cement his political position. He could portray himself to the foreigners as the one man who could keep order and to the Chinese factions as the one leader who could hold off foreign intervention.
SARFT issues video sharing website licence to minor players: From Caijing's English website:
Three small Web sites have won government licenses for video-sharing services in China, a move seen as a signal that Beijing authorities may be widening the door to popular content.
But China's three leading video-sharing sites--Tudou.com, Youku.com and 56.com--were not included on the latest list of license awardees.
Instead, Caijing learned the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) granted licenses to the minor private sites Ku6.com, Uusee.com and 6.cn.
Talking to Taiwan: From CNN.com:
Negotiators from Taiwan and China launched their first formal talks in almost a decade Thursday, aiming to forge agreements on charter flights and tourism to build confidence between the long-estranged rivals.
Last of the Mongolians: David Treuer reviews Wolf Totem for the Washington Post and doesn't like it very much:
Pedantic or not, in the final analysis, "Wolf Totem" becomes more about race-baiting than wolf-baiting. Summaries of racial characteristics float from these characters' mouths with the greatest of ease (Chinese bad, Mongolian good). Perhaps "Wolf Totem" has been successful in China for precisely the same reason that James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales," not known for elegance or subtlety, were popular in the first half of the 19th century: It's safe and pleasing to look back on a landscape and a life that the nation-state has largely destroyed. One might even locate this cycle of destruction and romantic celebration as an early step in the literature of emerging capitalist nations. So while "Wolf Totem" seems to praise Mongolian life and the wild animals that inform that life, the wolf must die and be replaced with a novel that comes nowhere near the creature in terms of beauty and importance, and instead reads like a 500-page-long metaphor.
Laowai visa complaints: I mean, come on: Fromer Yunnan resident Rachel, blogging from Israel after a trip to China:
Ouch, probably these have been the perfect two years to take a break from China. I couldn`t go five minutes into a conversation with any of the Laowais I`ve met in Bj without them starting to moan about the [visa clampdown], and about how much of a hassle it`s become, being a Laowai in Beijing . I was thoroughly amused then, when dinner with two well travelled Chinese friends had turned into another session of moans about how hard it is to get visas to the U.S., the U.K., Holland, and (of course) Israel.
Seriously, I doubt if the citizens of any western country (Israel least of all) can say anything about visa issuance policies, I mean, come on.
Generally, the change in visa regulation seems like a good sign of China growing up, being more selective and more ruled by law, and the procedure is bound to become clearer and more consistent. Too bad for those of you caught in the middle of this process though.
Quake reporting raises concerns of media ethics: An interesting Xinhua article that examines how a lack of training in media ethics has led to insensitive reporting on the Sichuan earthquake:
Jiang Min, a policewoman in Pengzhou city near the epicenter of Wenchuan, lost 10 relatives, including her two-year-old daughter and her parents, at first became a symbol of fortitude in the face of overwhelming tragedy -- then later became the face of media exploitation....
But in one television report, the reporter pressed her to answer the question, "Why are you still here?" A drawn-looking Jiang was pounded with further questions, such as, "Do you think of your own parents and daughter when you see the rescued old people and the kids?"
...Later, Jiang was interviewed several more times on television.
Is the 'Running Teacher' morally corrupt?: Shanghaiist summarizes what many online commenters are calling "this year's must-see video" - a Phoenix TV discussion of the ethical and moral depravity of "Runner Fan":
Various individuals in the audience, including some in the teaching profession, also stood up to denounce Fan for his actions, and made the claim for themselves that if there was ever an earthquake, they would definitely save their students first, winning great applause from the rest of the audience. It seemed few voices were sympathetic to Fan, but some did stand up to raise the point that if one could not be sure that he would be able to save his students in an earthquake, he should not have the right to point fingers at Fan. Another member of the audience questions, "Suppose Fan had saved his students. Do we make a hero and another modern Lei Feng out of him? In this day and age, have we actually forgotten the fact that a man may have many different sides to him?" This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Cashing in on China's thirst for university training: At the Globe and Mail blogs, Marcus Gee writes about foriegn educational institutions who see a gold mine in China: Vancouver-based CIBT has 3,500 students in China learning everything from business management to auto mechanics to how to work in a casino. Mr. Chu said enrolment is growing at 30 to 40 per cent a year. He is opening new sites at a rate of one every three weeks. And that, he believes, is just scratching the surface of the market. By 2020, he said 600 million Chinese will be middle class, with the money and the ambition to get an education with foreign-label cachet.
Universities and colleges around the world are starting to recognize that potential, stepping up their efforts to lure Chinese students to study abroad while offering degrees in China in association with Chinese institutions.
Exploding Olympic outhouses: The Tiger Temple blogger reports on fires in portable toilets near the Bird's Nest; John Kennedy translates for Global Voices Online:
Firefighters arrived twenty minutes after it was reported because traffic was heavy at the time and getting stuck in traffic couldn't be avoided, but with the Olympics soon to be here, I'm afraid it's going to be hard for people to forgive this kind of emergency response speed. The fire squad had to struggle, just seeing them jumping back and forth over that newly-locked steel fence, feeding the hose through (see photos), you honestly wouldn't have known whether to laugh or to cry!
Gas prices may rise after the Olympics: The LA Times speculates that the price of gasoline in China may jump following the Olympics:
While consumers in much of the world have been reeling from spiraling fuel costs, China has kept the retail price of gasoline at about $2.60 a gallon, up just 9 percent from January 2007.
During that same period, average U.S. gas prices surged nearly 80 percent, to about $4 a gallon.
But Chinese consumers are bracing for a big jump in pump prices after the Summer Olympics in Beijing end in late August.
Chinese bank reserve ratios up: stocks nosedive: From The China Daily:
China's equities suffered their biggest fall in a year on Tuesday, after the central bank raised the commercial banks' reserve ratio for the 15th time since January 2007.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 7.73 percent to close at 3,072.33 points, the biggest loss in percentage points since June 4, 2007 when the gauge lost 8.26 percent.
The meltdown came after the People's Bank of China (PBOC) ordered banks during the weekend to set aside 17.5 percent of their deposits as reserves, up from the initial record 16.5 percent. The hike was unusual as the PBOC usually increased the ratio by 0.5 percentage points each time.
Yao Ming targeted by crooked NBA refs?: From ESPN:
Jeff Van Gundy, then the coach of the Rockets, said that an NBA official had told him about the league's plan to closely monitor moving screens by Yao Ming, and Van Gundy was ultimately fined $100,000 for his comments regarding the situation. Van Gundy later backed off his comments.
Tragic result in Tianjin: A Modern Lei Feng recaps China's 1-0 loss to Qatar:
Qatar, simply needing a draw from this result, played their part perfectly after getting the goal. They sat back, put their men in the box so that even when a Chinese player beat his man on the wing, the cross could be innocently parried away, and then played the counter attack perfectly, coming up with a few quality chances. They also used the Chinese players urgency and frustration against them. The Chinese team tallied up yellow cards with sometime stupid, sometimes iffy fouls, but this forced them to play more reserved. Li Weifeng, a veteran playing in what is perhaps his last World Cup qualifying campaign, led the way for juvenile play, often arguing with the refs and resorting to a number of questionable actions (including an outright push) that probably should have earned him a second yellow card.
Is it against Chinese law to be callous and pigheaded?: David Bandurski at China Media Project:
China's latest case of the 'human flesh search engine' (人肉引掣) at work has landed a 17-year-old girl in police detention, and that has some Chinese asking: is this really a matter of broad social concern, and is there any legal basis for police intervention?
Image from wpclipart. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Review of 'Last Days of Old Beijing': Jeffrey Wasserstrom writing in Newsweek:
Michael Meyer's impressive new book, 'The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed' goes a long way toward illuminating some of the scenes that have come to symbolize early-21st-century China, at least before the unrest in Tibet and the Sichuan earthquake. They include wrecking balls knocking down beloved small businesses; schoolchildren dragging their migrant-worker parents, who have never been in a restaurant, into a KFC; human-powered vehicles in a land of high-rises, evoked by the canopied pedicab set against construction cranes...
Christian Evangelism and the Olympics: At The Huffington Post, Monroe Price writes about American evangelical Christians, and what they have been saying about missionary activities in China, of which the government takes a rather dim view.
Rules for post quake construction: From The China Daily:
China on Monday promulgated the regulation on reconstruction after the May 12 Wenchuan earthquake. It was the first of its kind in the country, specially for a single massive quake, which led the reconstruction work into a legal orbit.
Premier Wen Jiabao on Sunday signed a State Council order to make it effective. Xinhua was authorized to publish the regulation that became effective on Monday.
The agent in economy: Adam at Shanghai Scrap reports a helpful hint he received from the flight attendant as his plane was approaching Beijing Airport:
"It is illegal to take photos over China, or in Chinese airports."
Blogger suggests temperance, accused of brown-nosing: Yu Qiuyu blogs that the western media is showing its anti-China stance by reporting on complaints about the earthquake while the rescue effort is ongoing (translated by ESWN). At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy translates some online reactions:
I've seen shameless, but I've never seen this shameless. People kiss butt, but that's to stay on the boss' good side. Yu Qiuyu this super butt-kisser extraordinaire, like your average race traitor from back in the day, has squeezed out a few alligator tears and shouted to the people: knock it off, the imperial army still means well for you.
Unity and natural disasters: Chris at the bezdomny ex patria blog looks at an article in the latest issue of Chinese National Geographic that discusses the impact of disasters on national unity.
Every kind of natural disaster can be found in the oracle bones of the Yin ruins, such as: droughts, floods, earthquakes, windstorms, thunder storms, locust plagues, also solar eclipses and lunar eclipses, because the Shang people also saw these astronomical phenomena as natural disasters. If we say that the oracle bone inscriptions are the source of the Chinese people's characters, then we can say that anxiety about natural disasters is one of the motive forces behind the coming into being of Chinese characters.
A conversation with Xujun Eberlein: The Other Lisa interviews Xujun Eberlein about her new story collection, Apologies Forthcoming:
It also occurs to me that few westerners know the subtleties and nuance surrounding the participating parties in the CR. I once did an informal poll among writers I workshop with on what they thought of the Red Guards, and the answers were pretty much uniform with the representative one being "pretty much the same as the Hitler Youth." This is quite baffling and at the same time very interesting. As we know (I'm aware of the pitfall of generalization) Americans hate the communist government of China; but did they know the biggest thing the Red Guards did was to break China's state apparatus? Should a communist hater applaud or condemn that? There is just no simple black-and-white answer. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Lotte to expand chocolate sales in China: Lotte, the South Korean confectioner, will expand chocolate sales southward from its current markets in Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, in response to consumer demand, Reuters reports: "Chocolate consumption has been growing rapidly in China in recent years," Lee said. "China's chocolate market may exceed its candy market in size in the next three to four years."
China's 6.46 billion yuan (922 million) chocolate market is growing more than 10 percent each year, fuelled by rising wealth and increasing Western influence on consumer tastes, according to market intelligence company Euromonitor International.
Related: The Beijinger teaches you what to do at a chocolate tasting and gives names of Beijing vendors of gourmet chocolates.
Liaoning law will require children to visit their parents: Have you spoken to your parents recently? If you live in Liaoning Province, you'd better get in the habit of calling them and visiting them once in a while, or could be facing stiff punishment. Xinhua reports:
The province's standing committee of the people's congress recently released the draft - Regulation on Protection of Rights and Interests of the Aged - to seek public opinion. It is expected to become law by the end of the year.
An article says if children do not live with their parents, they should "often send greetings or go home to visit them." Government employees, who fail to do so, will face sanctions by their respective agencies.
For reference: Liaoning's Draft Regulations on Protecting the Rights and Interests of the Elderly and the existing Law of the People's Republic of China on Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly
Quake lake still a threat: From Xinhua:
The possibility of flooding from the Tangjiashan 'quake lake,' caused by China's May 12 earthquake, increased Thursday even as water levels rose steadily to the point where engineers believe they may be able to open a drainage sluice.
Profiting from patriotism: A Modern Lei Feng comments on Kappa's Love China t-shirts.
This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Mobile phones and music: Music industry insider Ed Peto has published a stats-rich blog post about the way Chinese consumers get and listen to music. Excerpt:
According to M:Metrics an astounding 34.8% of the 530 million mobile subscribers in China use their phones to listen to music, compared to 5.7% in the US. China's networks, infrastructure and data capabilities might need to improve but the mobile juggernaut is well on its way.
Video website 56.com shut down?: Kaiser Kuo:
Guangzhou-based video sharing site 56.com, one of China's triumvirate of 'YouTube clones,' has been temporarily shut down by the Guangdong provincial branch of the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), acting on orders from SARFT's national leadership, according to a highly-placed industry insider who declined to be named. The closure seems to have been in effect since 6pm on June 3.
Safety inspections and rules for post quake reconstruction: From Xinhua:
The State Council, China's Cabinet, passed a draft regulation on post-quake restoration and reconstruction at an executive meeting here on Wednesday.
The regulation put forward special requirements on earthquake-resistance levels of infrastructure construction in the quake-hit regions, including schools and hospitals...
...Local governments must organize personnel to conduct safety appraisals of all school buildings as soon as possible to ensure the safety of students as they return to school, according to the statement.
China on track to democratize?: Bruce Gilley, author of China's Democratic Future in The Wall Street Journal:
The beginning of the end
... In recent years there has emerged a consensus that the CCP is here to stay. Talk of democratization in China is dismissed as a 'fantasy' by journalist James Mann ... Fellow writer Ian Buruma ... says the Chinese model represents 'the most serious challenge that liberal democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s.'...
...These writers have espied a central truth about contemporary China. It is a relatively legitimate state that is not under immediate pressure to introduce democratic reforms. But does this imply democracy is not in the offing? Absolutely not, and for two related reasons.
First, the CCP today is a 'responsive' or 'legitimacy-driven' regime...
A profile of Wen Jiabao: A profile in The Jamestown Foundation's China Brief by Yu Maochun of Premier Wen Jiabao: 'From Tiananmen to the Sichuan Quake'.
China's grieving parents: Rebecca MacKinnon:
Thousands of Sichuan parents are grief stricken.
They want answers: why did their children die in the Sichuan earthquake when many other people in surrounding, better-constructed buildings, lived? What are the facts?
...Unknown hundreds of other Chinese have been grieving for 19 years, unacknowledged.
Civil society in China: NGOs and volunteer activities: At China Elections & Governance, Jens Kolhammar rounds up some perspectives on the future of Chinese NGOs and volunteer activities in the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake:
The advancement of civil society in China in recent weeks has not only been initiated by compassionate citizens and NGOs but also, if a new anti-corruption experiment will pan out, by the Sichuan government. NPR reports that there is a rare opportunity for the Chinese people to supervise government officials. In an effort to prevent local government officials from embezzling part of the aid money that is streaming into Sichuan, the local government is planning to use citizens to supervise the aid process. So far the state has started to take down the contact information of interested citizens. Hundreds of volunteers have already signed up. If this process moves forward it will create a unique public participation experiment in the fight against corruption in China. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Life on the Qiantang River: flowers and pollution: At China Dialogue, Yong Yongfeng reports on his visits with coastal residents: There are many different types of fruit trees in Shao and Wei's front garden. Shao lit a cigarette. "See those pomegranates? They're about to flower - red flowers, really beautiful. But in autumn, as the fruit ripen, you will find they are black and rotten inside." He pointed out a loquat tree. "We used to get fruit as big as a hen's egg from that. Now, they are more like pigeon eggs."
19 years ago today...: Shanghaiist rounds up some articles looking back at the events of Jụne 4, 1989.
China: Democracy, or Confucianism?: At the China Beat, Xujun Eberlein introduces Political Confucianism (政治儒学) by Jiang Qing (蒋庆): Last October, when the CCP held its 17th congress, CNN reported the event with the headline "China rules out copying Western democracy." My first reaction to this headline was, So what? That spontaneous reaction might have been an unconscious consequence of my reading Political Confucianism by Jiang Qing, a contemporary Confucian in China. In this book, Jiang Qing draws a blueprint for China's political future based on Confucianism. It is the first such conception since the 1919 May 4th movement that denounced the traditional Chinese ideology as a feudal relic and began the age-old country's modernization efforts.
Quake lake likely to burst: The Economic Observer reports that the lake at Tangjiashan formed by the May 12 earthquake has a 93% likelihood of collapsing:
By 17:00 on June 3, the water level at Tangjiashan, holding 205.5 million cubic of water, had reached 737.33 meters, only some 2.37 meters away from its overflowing point near the diversion channel dug by risk mitigation team, according to the Water Resources Ministry.
Liu Ning, chief engineer of the Ministry, disclosed that if rainfall continued, chances of the lake to burst were 93%, as every two millimeters of rainfall upstream could increase the water level by one meter. Frequent aftershocks also added the risk, he said.
250,000 people have been evacuted. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
 Parents of Juyuan students ( SW) Why Juyuan Middle School collapsed: Peijin Chen translates a Southern Weekly investigation into the collapse of Juyuan Middle School: A later principal of the school, Lin Mingfu, had filed a report regarding the dangerous situation of the building to Dujiangyan education officials in 1998, saying that this building, constructed in 1986, had serious flaws. Officials told Lin to use some steel wires to hold up the part of the roof that was about to collapse rather than add anything to really buttress it. These few wires wrapped together are what held the building together until the day that it collapsed.
There's also a translation of an interview with Lin Qiang, an education official in Sichuan and a former torchbearer.
Carrying the torch: Kaiser Kuo takes part in the Olympic Torch Relay in Hubei Province.
Vantone to lease space in Freedom Tower: Chinese real estate company Vantone will lease space in the Freedom Tower, currently under construction on the site of the former World Trade Center in New York, the New York Times reports:
The Beijing Vantone Real Estate Company plans to build the China Center, a combination chamber of commerce and cultural center, on floors 64 through 69 of the Freedom Tower, at the southeast corner of West and Vesey Streets. Although Vantone has been close to deals at two other sites downtown in recent years, a company executive and officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expressed confidence that it had finally found a home.
"The China Center will be a gateway for Chinese corporations doing business in the U.S. or U.S. companies that want to understand the Chinese culture and do business there," said Xue Ya, project director for the China Center.
When corruption works: From the blog of Richard Spencer, Beijing correspondent of The Daily Telegraph:
But China has many good points so sometimes when the news is bad, you have to draw attention to the other side of the coin.
Put most bluntly, the other side of the coin is simply this: one reason a lot of schools collapsed was that there were a lot of schools.
Quake death toll nearly 70,000 - 15 million relocated - 18,000 missing: From The China Daily:
The death toll from the devastating 8.0-magnitude earthquake three weeks ago in Sichuan Province increased by three to 69,019 as of Monday noon, the Information Office of the State Council said.
It said 373,573 people were injured and 18,627 others were still missing.
The office said that 45.55 million people were affected by the quake, of whom 15.15 million had been relocated.
How to crash a market: Shanghai Scrap comments on a South China Morning Post article that reports that the government might punish mutual funds that destablize the market by selling off falling stocks:
Presumably, the invited fund managers won't sell their holdings into the declining market. But, at the same time, with their cash flow limited, they will be restricted in their ability to buy into the declining market. After all, who wants to buy an investment that can't be sold?
Which is to say that - by eliminating sell pressures - the authorities have succeeded in eliminating any and all incentives to buy into the declining market. Way to go. Down. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
 John Thompson on the guqin in Laoshan Music that Marco Polo listened to: John Thompson, an internationally-acclaimed performer of the seven-stringed zither (guqin), and the Estonian early music group Fa Schola were in China last month.
Thompson is well known for his historically-informed performances. The music performed reconstruct melodies 'that Marco Polo might have heard during his travels.'
This links to Thompson's account of the musical tour.
Beijing reins in quake coverage: Tom Mitchell writing from Dujiangyan in The Financial Times:
The Chinese government has instructed domestic media outlets to rein in coverage of the schools that collapsed during last month's devastating earthquake in Sichuan province, journalists familiar with the directive have told the Financial Times.
A notice was sent to media outlets across the country late last week, following a spate of reports about the collapses that killed thousands of students.
No doping, just gold medals: The New York Times has published a story about China's Olympic rowing team and their Russian coach whose mission is clear: get gold.
The boycotts of '08 revisited: Writing on FEER's website, Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom compares the runup to the Olympics in 2008 and 1908.
The Mianzhu highway robbery: On ESWN:
A case of apparent looting of disaster relief materials on the highway was solved by Internet users, a policeman and a newspaper reporter.
Ban on free plastic bags takes effect: From The China Daily:
From Sunday on, all Chinese retailers, including supermarkets, department stores and grocery stores, would no longer provide free plastic shopping bags. China will try to reduce the use of plastic bags in a bid to reduce energy consumption and polluting emissions.
The Chinese language and me: At Managing the Dragon, Jack Perkowski explains why he decided not to learn Chinese while doing business in China:
I do this for two reasons. First, it happens to be true, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Secondly, I want to demystify China and make it more approachable for everyone. For too long, individuals who have studied China and have devoted the considerable amount of time it takes to learn the language have tended to make the country seem so mysterious, so complicated and so difficult, that it becomes an impediment for any person or company that wants to do business here. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
I'm just here to buy soy sauce: From Speak4China:
And the newest expression sweeping the Chinese internet: 'I don't give a $@*&; I'm just here to buy soy sauce.' (关我鸟事，我出来打酱油的)
Telecom reform: a tale told by an idiot?: From China telecoms veteran David Wolf:
The government has finally announced the broad strokes of the long-anticipated plan for the restructuring of the telecoms industry, and a quasi-definitive time frame for the government to finally issue the coveted 3G censes. The business and industry media are having a field day with it, arguing about what it will mean for everyone in the industry, from China Mobile to Cisco to Nokia and, yes, even to Apple.
Here is what it really means:
Nothing.
Sichuan photo gallery: A gallery of photos taken in Sichuan after the earthquake by Janek Zdzarski.
The story of Donations Gate: ESWN has translated a Southern Weekly article about 'Donations Gate', the online scandal in which Chinese netizens have attacked foreign companies for being stingy with donations, and also focused anger on Chinese real estate entrepreneur Wang Shi and his company Vanke.
Website copyright infringement pays, traffic inflation doesn't: From Tom Melcher's blog:
I think that it's clear that within the world of Chinese internet companies, lying limits growth, but stealing intellectual property doesn't.
China quake survivors scavenge amid the ruins: Tini Tran describes for the Associated Press how earthquake survivors are trying to carry on with their lives by looking for scrap metal:
Standing atop an enormous pile of rubble that was once a three-story building, Mao Hong Lin meticulously searched for the dull glint of metal. Spotting a pointed tip, he pulled out a twisted length of steel.
"It takes money to buy anything and everything. Now our house is collapsed and I have nothing. I need the money for basics, to buy salt and cooking oil," said Mao, 37, a short, wiry man in orange shorts and soiled white gloves.
China's all-seeing eye: Rolling Stone has published an alarmist article by Naomi Klein captioned 'With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.'
Klein's ideological biases and her undergraduate fixations about the evils of multinational corporations make her an unreliable journalist but the article contains some interesting research.
China starts probe into collapsed schools: From The China Daily:
The National quality watchdog Thursday warned of 'severe punishment' to anyone found responsible for the collapsed school building in the May 12 earthquake.
Inspectors have taken samples of rubble to see if shoddy construction material was used, according to an official of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Hu Shuli: don't pat ourselves on the back yet: Hu Shuli, editor of Caijing has published an article evaluating China's response to the earthquake and cautioning against complacency. Excerpt from the English translation: While the country's highly militarized rescue model is effective, we should not overlook its deficiencies. It would be wrong to equate strong government with 'big government,' or to wax nostalgically about the supposed superiority of a command economy.
Quake victims overwhelm hospitals: At the Wall Street Journal, Mei Fong looks at the difficulties that Sichuan's hospitals face in treating an enormous number of earthquake victims, many of whom have been left homeless by the disaster:
The quake has severely taxed China's medical resources. Many quake victims have been given free treatment, a departure from China's medical system, which usually requires cash upfront for treatment. But some patients say hospitals are now pressuring them to leave or transfer elsewhere before they are fully treated. Hospital officials say healthy patients are taking up room needed for others.
Ugandans learn Chinese language: The Assignment Africa blog looks at universities and training centers in Uganda that are catering to Chinese language learners:
Established in 1922, Makerere University is one of the oldest and most prestigious Universities in Africa. In April May of this year, the Business School of Makerere University started a new program to teach Chinese language to business students. It has set up a small class as an example group with twelve to fifteen students.
Ruth Taoli, who is the only Chinese teacher at the program, said that Chinese has become a required course for the business students since the program began, and that their learning programs are attuned to their specific areas of study. For example, students who are majoring in traveling business need to learn Chinese for travel and students who are majoring in accounting need to learn Chinese accounting terms.
Woeser's blog hacked again: China Digital Times reports that Tibetan writer Woeser, whose movements are restricted by official orders and whose writings do not appear in the Mainland, is the victim of identity theft (of her Skype account). Her website has also been hacked by a group calling itself the Chinese Red Hacker Alliance.
Chinese Red Cross on corruption watch: At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy presents photos of shoddy construction in Mianzhu and translates blog posts accusing the Red Cross of conducting a back-door deal with a shady tent manufacturer.
Image from LRN Science. This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Ten observations about the post-earthquake mess: ESWN translates a post by My1510 blogger lzhwolf108 who comments on pointless posturing by government officials: As common people like us know, when you pay respect to the dead or visit the sick, you should dress plainly and solemnly. It is advisable not to wear sunglasses. But Party Secretary Lu appears to be an important local official taking a leisure stroll during this emergency. Not only did he stroll before the camera, he also made idiotic remarks to the disaster victims such as: "An earthquake is really not such a bad thing. We can build new houses that are definitely better than the old ones ..." I would like to ask Party Secretary Lu: "Houses can be rebuilt, but what about the dead people? If this occurred at your home, would you comfort your family members with those words?"
Disabled groups not happy with Beijing: Stan Abrams at China Hearsay comments on a Times story that reports on China's new handbook instructing Olympic volunteers in how to treat disabled guests:
A few points:
1. Some of this probably language-related.
2. Seems like no one bothered to try and grasp the meaning behind a lot of that language and whether it was well-intentioned or not.
3. Most Westerners don't even know what is/is not acceptable speech these days from a politically correct point of view. Do we really expect people from another country, particularly one that is developing and was completely closed off to the world only a few decades ago, to follow all those rules?
China's silver lining: At The Atlantic, James Fallows writes about exciting opportunities in the conservation business in China:
The heart of his idea--easy to describe, tricky to implement--is capturing the enormous amount of heat normally wasted in cement making and using it to run turbines that generate electric power. This power can then be fed back into the factory, doing work that would otherwise require burning even more coal. The reduction of dust is a visible indicator of the more fundamental reduction of waste. Over the course of a long day, I heard about the many, many refinements Tang had made to this "co-generation" system since he first started working on it, in the mid-1980s. The punch line is that it now works well enough to cut the energy (mainly from coal) required to make clinker by 60 percent, and the overall power demands of the cement production line by 30 percent.
Flood fears force huge evacuation: The China Daily reports that yesterday's aftershocks in Sichuan caused tens of thousands of people to sleep outside last night, whilst more than 150,000 people were evacuated from an area below an earthquake-created dam near Beichuan over fears that it may burst its banks.
This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
Good Luck Games and Bird's Nest: photos: This links to a set of photos by Andrew Lih of the Bird's Nest during the Good Luck Games, held last weekend as a trial of some Olympic facilities.
See also TooManyTribbles's photos of various Olympic venues.
Big dumb recycling machine: At Shanghai Scrap, Adam Minter describes his attempt to use a new "reverse vending machine" on Shanghai's Nanjing Road:
Now, one might reasonably ask: why does China need machines to collect bottles and can when there are tens of millions of hard-working scrap peddlers who'll do the work for less than the cost of the new machine? Well, according to Shanghai's city fathers, as reported in the Shanghai Daily, the idea is to put the scrap peddlers out of business because, quoting Shanghai Daily, "they have a negative impact on the city's image."
Sanlitun Soho: Alex Pasternack looks at the latest real estate developments in Sanlitun.
Jia Zhangke and the three Factory Beauties: Translations of articles about director Jia Zhangke on the Faster than instant noodles blog.
Q&A with Wen Jiabao: Phoenix TV reporter and editor Rose Luqiu had a chance to ask Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao a few questions while he visited earthquake victims living in tents in Sichuan's Pengzhou city last week. John Kennedy has translated the transcript.
Landslide threats in Sichuan: This is a blog post by landslide expert David Petley about the key problems associated with landslides in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake.
KMT leader in PRC: From The New York Times:
The chairman of Taiwan's Nationalist Party left Monday for Beijing, the latest in a series of moves by officials on both sides of the Taiwan Straits to forge closer relations.
The official, Wu Poh-hsiung, is the first serving chairman of his party to visit the mainland, although Lien Chan, the party's honorary chairman and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2004, has also made the trip.
School safety and democratic mechanisms: From David Bandurski at the China Media Project:
Zhang Qianfan: making China's schools safer means building local democratic mechanisms
One of the most persistent issues to emerge in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake is of course the question of shoddy school construction. In a column running in The Beijing News just before the weekend, Peking University professor Zhang Qianfan (张千帆) argued that the building of local 'democratic mechanisms' was necessary if China wished to avoid repetition of the tragedies of Wenchuan.
New big 3 of China telecoms: Reuters have published a good summary of the government's restructuring--by fiat--of China's telecoms industry which will leave only three players in the market: China Mobile-Railcom, China Unicom-Netcom and China Telecom.
BBC journalist: Did we show too much?: A thoughtful blog post by BBC correspondent James Reynolds:
I'm back in Beijing with a bit of time to think back on the earthquake and the way I covered it.
A couple of questions have been going through my mind: Did I show too much/too little? Did I intrude too far into people's grief?
A seismic shift in China's relations with West?: Jane Macartney of The Times was allowed personal access to Wen Jiabao as he pledged openness to foreign journalists in front of the rubble of Yingxiu Middle School.
Missing panda spotted alive after Sichuan earthquake: Xinhua reports:
A giant panda which went missing from a major panda base in southwest China's Sichuan Province after the May 12 earthquake was spotted alive about 5:20 p.m. on Sunday by a group of road workers.
Learning to speak Olympics: Mike Meyer, author of soon to be published 'The Last Days of Old Beijing' has a piece in the New York Times about teaching English in a hutong in Beijing and Mocky the naughty monkey, star of the English text book.
China Red Cross deals with tarnished reputation: From China Herald:
The China Red Cross has come again under scrutiny of China's internet users. Initially it was accused for lack of transparency, because it did not want to explain what was happening with the funds it received for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.
Now the vice-chairman of the Sanya Red Cross Society China has been attached.
See also Speak4China: Chinese netizens continue to monitor earthquake corruption and Red Cross in the Crosshairs.
Beijing blood bank is full: From Black and White Cat:
China is usually short of genuinely free blood donations, creating a market for illegal blood selling. But Tiger Temple reports that on Sunday the blood collecting buses in Beijing had temporarily stopped accepting donations because so much has been given since the earthquake. Commenters report the same in other cities around the country.
Sunday afternoon 6.4 aftershock in Sichuan: From the Economic Observer:
As of late Sunday evening, at least one had died and 359 injured after a 6.4-magnitude aftershock hit Sichuan's Qingchuan county that afternoon, according to Chinese state media.
China visa - facts and fiction: At tbjblog, Nadine Ulrich presents the latest info on the increasingly difficult problem of getting a visa to China.
This article is from Danwei.org
|
-
Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).
3 minutes of Google silence: From The China Vortex:
Google China's blog (in Chinese) mentions a Google search query log which graphically shows the moment of silence and mourning on 2:28PM on May 19, which displays the moment of silence throughout China for the victims of the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan.
What kind of relationship should China have with the West?: The Carter Center's ChinaElections.net has published a translation of an article originally published in the Global Times by Liu Yawei, director of the Carter Center's China Program:
If China's reform and opening up was a result of the 1968 restructuring of interstate relations, what implications might the clashes between Chinese and Western values, as seen in recent events, have for China's future? Does it signal a new reconstruction of the world order?
Death toll rises to 55,239 in Sichuan alone: Xinhua reports:
The quake death toll has risen to 55,239 in Sichuan alone as of 7 pm, Thursday, said Li Chengyun, vice governor of Sichuan on Friday in Beijing.
About 83,988 people were rescued. The quake also injured 281,066, while 24,949 are still missing, said Li.
The hand of Rockefeller: Eric Abrahamsen investigates the Peking Union Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation's contribution to Beijing geography.
Letters from Sichuan: At The China Beat blog, Peter Hessler follows up his New Yorker web report with more letters from former students in Sichuan.
Post-quake challenge: 5 million homeless: From The China Daily:
The Chinese government is grappling with the next urgent task in the aftermath of last week's 8.0-magnitude deadly earthquake -- how to shelter up to 5 million residents in Sichuan Province who are now homeless.
Tudou's off the black list: Kaiser Kuo reports:
China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) has issued two new 'black lists' -- one of eight Internet audio-video companies ordered to shut down, and another listing 20 companies given warnings over objectionable content.
Tudou.com was on an earlier black list from SARFT but is not on either of the new lists.
China soft power and media freedom: Li Datong, in translation on Open Democracy on the events of 2008 so far and the weaknesses in China's government that they have exposed:
The Chinese government needs to understand that in response to the western media, an independent and free Chinese press would be much more credible than a government spokesperson. The truth lies not in one voice, but slowly becomes apparent amidst a diverse range of voices. An understanding of this underlies the effective deployment of soft power.
Accursed 2008: Shenzhen Fieldnotes has translated a short SMS poem about 'dog-fucked 2008'.
Ningbo candlight vigil: Photos by Wong Can of a candlelight vigil in Ningbo on Monday night to mourn the victims of the earthquake.
Ethnically diverse forum shut down: At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy reports on the shut-down of Uighur Online, "the main online forum serving to bridge the huge communication gap between China's Muslim population, other minority ethnic groups, and Han Chinese":
What surprises many Uighur Online users is that the website was even properly licensed, the excuse most often used by authorities to shut blogs and BBS websites down. Indeed, the 'Crowd of Spectators Out of Control' blogger, who writes about Xinjiang culture, mentions in a post late last month a conversation s/he had with the Uighur Online webmasters, retelling the absurdities the staff there went through recently in trying to report one UO user for inflaming racial hatred within the forums, and being kicked around like a football from police department to police department in Beijing and then back to the local internet supervision office, with none of them willing to address the situation. This article is from Danwei.org
|
|
|
|