ZGBriefs May 26, 2011
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FEATURED ARTICLE
From the sole novice Daoist monk honing his Taiqi skills on top of a stunning sacred mountain, to the teeming underground Christian churches of the crowded south, Stephen McDonell takes a journey through China's incredibly diverse spiritual renaissance. And he finds that wherever you go in this booming nation these days, there's a deep hunger and a passion for something more than material prosperity. |
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GOVERNMENT / POLITICS / FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Govt puts out details of budgets (May 23, 2011, China Daily) The public can expect to review the ways that the central government departments spend tax money on overseas travel, cars and receptions for the first time in June. Eighty-eight of China's 98 central government departments had published their budgets by Friday, the Ministry of Finance said, whereas 75 departments had done so last year. Earlier this month, an executive meeting of the State Council, China's Cabinet, ordered the 98 central government departments to publish such information this year.
Mongolians protest in China after herder killed (May 26, 2011, AP) The death of a Mongolian herder run over by a Chinese truck driver has touched off protests and shed light on one of China's lesser-known ethnic flash points. Thousands of ethnic Mongolians took to the streets in northeast China this week demanding justice for a herder killed May 10 in a hit-and-run incident while trying to block a caravan of coal trucks from driving over fragile grasslands, a rights group said. The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center posted photos and video of soldiers in Inner Mongolia's Xilinhot city facing off with dozens of uniformed middle school students and others as they tried to march Monday and Wednesday, demanding justice for the herder. Four protesters were detained on Monday, the New York-based group said in a statement.
China confirms visit of North Korean leader (May 26, 2011, AP) China confirmed on Thursday that North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong-il had this week visited China, where he told President Hu Jintao that North Korea was willing to resume talks on nuclear disarmament. Kim said that North Korea "advocates that the six-party talks on (the) Korean Peninsula nuclear issue (be) resumed at an early time", China's official Xinhua news agency said in an English-language report.
Two dead as blasts rock govt buildings in east China (May 26, 2011, AFP) A jobless 52-year-old man allegedly triggered a series of explosions at government buildings in eastern China on Thursday, killing himself and at least one other, state media said. The unusually brazen and premeditated incident is likely to add to official fears over possible public unrest stemming from a range of social grievances, with soaring inflation topping the list. The three explosions went off in the city of Fuzhou in Jiangxi province at roughly 10-minute intervals shortly after 9:00 am (0100 GMT), an official with the provincial propaganda department surnamed Zhang told AFP. Xinhua news agency initially said two people were killed and six injured, three of them seriously.
China confirms deployment of online army (May 26, 2011, China Daily) The development of China's "Online Blue Army" unit is for improving the defense capabilities of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), a Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday, citied by Beijing News. Launching the "Online Blue Army" is based on the PLA's needs, and enforcing the ability of Internet security protection is an important issue in its military training programs, Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said. The term "blue army" is used unsually to represent the enemy troops during exercises by the PLA. Geng's comments came in response to questions during the ministry's news conference in Beijing asking if the "Online Blue Army" is China's Internet squad aimed at carrying out attacks on other countries' Internet systems.
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HEALTH
Health fund freezes payments to China amid dispute (May 24, 2011, AP) A high-profile global fund for fighting diseases is freezing payments of grants to China worth hundreds of millions of dollars over suspected misuse of the money and the government's reluctance to involve community groups in the projects. The suspension so far has blocked $23 million in funds, Liden said. But if the problem isn't resolved, it will halt the payment of $300 million in funding over the next several years for programs to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS in prostitutes, injecting drug users and other groups and for projects to eliminate malaria and treat multi-drug-resistant TB. The fund has asked the government to respond to its concerns by an initial deadline of June 7, he said.
China injecting $4.6B into public health services (May 24, 2011, AP) China says it will pump $4.6 billion this year into expanding public health services such as free vaccinations and routine checkups for children under 6 years of age. The health ministry said Tuesday the funds will be used to upgrade health programs and services. It raised the age limit for children to receive 13 free health services from 3 to 6. The ministry says free services such as comprehensive physical examinations will also be available to pregnant women and people over 65. |
EDUCATION / CULTURE
Asian University Rankings: 7 mainland China universities make it to top 50 (May 24, 2011, Shanghaiist) The Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Asian University Rankings for 2011 are out, and the top ten positions have all been filled by universities from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology rose from second position last year to become the top university in Asia this year. The University of Hong Kong took second spot while the Chinese University of Hong Kong came in fifth. China's top universities, Peking University and Tsinghua University, both based in the capital, came in 13th and 16th respectively, while Shanghai's Fudan and Jiaotong Uni came in 21st and 33rd. Other mainland Chinese universities to make it to the top 50 include the University of Science and Technology of China (24th), Zhejiang University (27th) and Nanjing University (29th).
Tsinghua University building name triggers debate (May 26, 2011, China Daily) China's prestigious Tsinghua University has triggered heated debates one month after its 100th anniversary of founding as it has named one teaching building after a well-known clothes brand. The university came to the spotlight on Tuesday after a picture of the building's new name was posted online. People blamed the university for "selling itself" and the incident was labeled as the "falling of the spirit of universities," while others said it was normal for campus buildings to be named after a donor. The No 4 teaching building of Tsinghua, built in 1987, is dedicated with shining Chinese and English characters of "Jeanswest Building," following a line saying that Jeanswest, as a leading company of casual clothes, has contributed its share to the nation's education. |
SOCIETY / LIFE
Xinjiang arrests 70 people who turn kids into thieves (May 23, 2011, Shanghai Daily) Police in the northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have arrested 70 suspects who allegedly abducted children and trained them to steal and rob. A police spokesperson said yesterday that they had busted eight criminal gangs in a nationwide crackdown since May 1 and rescued at least 16 children, Xinhua News Agency reported today. Investigation showed most of these children were abducted or lured by suspects to live a vagabond life by stealing and robbing. The Xinjiang government vowed in April to bring all abducted Xinjiang children home and help them go back to school. A total of 60 million yuan will be spent on building and renovating schools in the region, according to an early report by Qilu Evening News.
Foreigners may need more time to buy bullet train tickets (May 24, 2011, China Daily) Foreign rail passengers may need more time to buy bullet train tickets in local booths once a "real-name" booking policy is introduced later this month. Unlike Chinese passengers who can just show their personal ID cards, foreigners need to provide passports or other documents, according to the policy issued by railway authorities. "The information on these documents will require more time for the ticket booths to verify and input," said a railway official, surnamed Dong, at Shanghai Railway Station on May 13. Dong added that not all railway staff, unlike their airline counterparts, are proficient in English and other foreign languages, which could lead to misunderstandings. The real-name ticket buying system, which is aimed at curbing rail ticket scalping and improving security, comes into effect on June 1 throughout China. All bullet train services prefixed by the letters "G", "D" and "C" require passenger ID to buy a ticket.
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BUSINESS / ECONOMICS / TRADE
Foxconn suspends some production after deadly blast (May 24, 2011, BBC News) Technology manufacturer Foxconn has suspended production at its Chinese workshops that handle electronics polishing. An explosion at one such factory in the south-western province of Sichuan has killed three people and injured 15. The incident happened over the weekend on a production line for Apple's iPad 2 in the city of Chengdu, according to local media reports. Foxconn is one of China's biggest manufacturers and exporters. It has declined to say whether the blast happened at an iPad factory.
Survey: China treating foreign companies unfairly (May 25, 2011, AP A growing number of European companies in China believe they are being treated unfairly by the government and expect discrimination to increase, a business group said Wednesday. The European Chamber of Commerce in China's report adds to mounting complaints that Beijing is violating its free-trade pledges as it tries to build up technology industries and global competitors. The chamber said 43 percent of 598 European companies that responded to a survey see Beijing discriminating against foreign businesses, up from 33 percent in a similar survey last year. It said 46 percent expect the problem to get worse over the next two years, up from 36 percent last year. The chamber president, Davide Cucino, appealed to Chinese regulators to "remove all obstacles" to a "level playing field."
China's Baidu eyes foreign expansion (May 26, 2011, AFP) Chinese search engine Baidu said Thursday it was thinking about expanding into more overseas markets and expected its share of the booming domestic mobile search market to grow rapidly. The company, which has already launched a Japanese-language search engine in Japan, is currently determining which markets to target next, senior vice president Shen Haoyu told a technology forum in Beijing. Baidu is setting up a multi-language platform "to get us more ready once we do decide to go to a market," Shen said.
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ENVIRONMENT / TECHNOLOGY
China plans financial overhaul at Three Gorges Dam (May 22, 2011, AP) The operator of China's giant Three Gorges Dam plans to overhaul its finances after the government made a suprising admission last week that the world's largest hydroelectric project has urgent environmental, geologic and economic problems. The China Three Gorges Corp. said a government audit found 31 problems related to financial management, investment, bidding and other issues, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday. The Cabinet on Wednesday acknowledged the $23 billion dam required action to curb pollution, counter risks of possible natural disasters and improve life for the 1.4 million people who were forced to relocate. The statement promised a cleaner, more sustainable future for the scenic section of the Yangtze River that was dammed to create a 410-mile-long (660-kilometer-long) reservoir.
Central China drought worst in over 50 years: reports (May 25, 2011, AFP) Central China's worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs, stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric output slows, state media said Wednesday. Rainfall levels from January to April in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China's longest and most economically important river, have been 40 percent lower than average levels of the past 50 years, the China Daily said. The national flood and drought control authority has ordered the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project, to increase its discharge of water by 10 to 20 percent for the next two weeks. The measure is aimed at sending badly needed water to the Yangtze's middle and lower reaches for drinking and irrigation.
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LINKS TO DETAILED ARTICLES AND ANALYSIS
Taiwan and China may share the same linguistic heritage - like Britain and the United States - but more than six decades of separation and political tensions have led to the Chinese language evolving in very different ways on each side; sometimes causing confusion, frustration or embarrassment. Relations have been improving since 2008 and in the past year, the two former foes have been working on a first-ever joint dictionary that will encompass their different ways of writing and speaking Chinese. The dictionary, named the Great Chinese Dictionary, will be free and put online.
Back in 2007, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called the Chinese economy increasingly unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable. He has used the same language this year, and there is every chance the description will still apply in another four years. The timing for when China's growth model will run out of steam is probably the most critical question facing the world economy.
The difficulties Chinese men have finding partners is having a significant economic impact around the world as they hold back on spending in the hopes of saving sufficient money to attract a bride.
China's export juggernaut is not unstoppable: Just ask Lawrence Yen, president of Woodworth Wooden Industries. His factory here in southern China used to ship 400 containers of bedroom furniture to the United States each month. It now sends 60.
For China, the world's most populous country and now its second-largest economy, changes in food consumption are happening fast. In a nation where the word for rice is synonymous with food, people are eating less rice and other grains, preferring pork, fish and, to Liu's delight, chicken. Pig herds are swelling, and demand for some dairy products has been climbing 20 percent a year. Chinese imports of soybeans, a key animal feed, are booming.
Review of "A Jesuit in the Forbidden City" by R. Po-Chia Hsia. Oxford University Press (New York, 2010). Father Ricci's strategy was to identify with the local cultures and, where possible, elements of religion compatible with the Gospel, and to approach conversion through dialogue, friendship, intellectual respect and persuasion. He also had the advantage of preceding colonization and conquest.
Some Communist Party "princelings" can be disparaging, even contemptuous, about the leaders to whom they have delegated authority for running the country over the past two decades. They broadly agree that their time has come because China is stuck.
Standing in front of a stopped truck in the desert, two workers in red overalls are pumping water out of an oil slick before installing a new derrick. The landscape is moonlike. Off on the horizon is the city of Karamay, a bona fide boomtown in northwestern China that has multiplied in only a few short years.
In China, a country studded with Buddha statues not crucifixes, Christianity has been secretly blooming.
China's private jet market is cleared for take-off. The country's soaring economy is creating a class of wealthy entrepreneurs who have plenty of money to spend on one of the ultimate symbols of success: the executive jet.
As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells. Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money.
A child of migrant workers grimaces during an after-school programme initiated by Compassion for Migrant Children (CMC) in Beijing May 25, 2011.
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LINKS TO BLOGS
With Chinese reds and whites well-established and even winning awards, the next notch to make on the winery post will be bubbly. Chances are slim, but in three years you could be asking for a bottle of Ningxia, not Champagne.
Not everyone is worried, for good reason. When faced with everything from natural disasters to international financial meltdowns, Beijing has reached into its toolbox and took action, pounding away at some problems, twisting and wrenching others into shape. On some occasions, the Party stumbled, but gradually straightened up, deflecting dissent and making moves that have keep China rising.
For years, I heard almost nothing about this sort of discrimination from our American clients who sold goods and services into or in China. But in the last three to five months, I have been hearing so many complaints that I am thinking that someone or something from on high in Beijing has issued some sort of directive.
Commemorating the 60th anniversary of what China refers to as the "peaceful liberation" of Tibet, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency has come up with a piece of evidence that the country's modernization drive in Tibet has not, as critics claim, led to the dilution of traditional Tibetan culture: the popularity in Tibet, as elsewhere in China, of Apple's iPhone.
These days, it's all about the microblogging. Microblogs are one of the best ways to follow what's going on in China. And while you might already have a Twitter account the truth is that the real conversations in China are all happening on domestic microblogs.
Sunday's armed raid highlights the risks for all sides of involvement in the unstable region. Still, both the U.S. and China are unlikely to pull back. The U.S. needs Pakistan's help in combating the Taliban and bringing stability to Afghanistan. China sees its friendship with Pakistan as a way to counterbalance rival India and maintain influence in the Muslim world. This time at least, the Americans and Chinese seem to have emerged unscathed.
While many people outside China might have a cognitive understanding that reporting here is difficult, there's less knowledge of just exactly what kind of difficulties we come across. Our most recent reporting trip serves as a good example of the particular challenges the press corps here faces.
This neat little infographic from Endelman Digital maps out the social media habits of internet users all across Asia.
On the afternoon of May 19, Fang Bingxing (方滨兴), the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the man who is often credited as having engineered China's national internet controls, the so-called Great Firewall, was pummeled with eggs and shoes by a student while giving an address at Wuhan University.
The Asia Pacific is in muted tumult. China has seized on perceived changing regional power equations following the financial crisis and attendant economic stagnation in the US, and adopted a harsher and more insisting tone over its interests.
These detentions reflect a deep truth about the system that observers are often tempted to overlook: that China's legal system has never been about the rule of law. It has been and remains about making government function more effectively.
After being tailed by secret agents during an assignment for ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent program, reporter Stephen McDonell decides to confront his shadows. They're not happy. |
LINKS FOR RESEARCHERS
On the surface, trends in recent months would suggest that the conservative and reformist wings of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are locked in a ferocious struggle over seminal issues such as political liberalization and the treatment of dissidents.
Based on Beijing's average annual wage level RMB50,415 in 2010, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security announced the wage bases for distinct employees' social security payment in 2011.
Yin Renxian (Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity)
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RESOURCES
Recently I have been working on a new project which I was hoping my Chinese students who are learning English could help me out with. I have been writing an e-book how about how to avoid writing Chinglish in formal English. The book will cover everything from grammar to style to high-quality vocabulary and structures. Anyway, I am currently in need of some authentic sample essays written by Chinese students learning English. Everyone who sends me an essay will get a free copy of the e-book when it is published online over the next month or so.
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| Contributions to support the production of ZGBriefs are always welcome and can be made at our secure online giving page for ZGBriefs. Click here to give online. Thank you. |
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