ZGBriefs December 23, 2011
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FEATURED ARTICLE
The huge volume was nothing unusual for Shijiao, the world capitol for recycling the old, unwanted Christmas tree lights that Americans throw away every year. Yong Chang recycles around 2.2 million pounds and Li estimates that Shijiao, located about an hour's drive from Guangzhou, is home to at least nine other factories that import and process similar volumes. Combined, the factories here process in excess of 20 million pounds annually. |
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GOVERNMENT / POLITICS / FOREIGN AFFAIRS
China's Hu offers condolences over Kim's death (December 20, 2011, AP) Chinese President Hu Jintao visited North Korea's embassy in Beijing on Tuesday to offer his condolences on the death of Kim Jong Il as China moved swiftly to assure its communist ally of its strong support amid an uncertain leadership transition. Surrounded by scores of security officers, Hu made an early morning trip to the sprawling complex in eastern Beijing's leafy Jianguomenwai diplomatic district, where the North Korean flag was flying at half-staff. The official Xinhua News Agency reported the visit but offered no other details.
China hackers breached U.S. Chamber of Commerce: report (December 21, 2011, Reuters) Hackers in China broke through the computer defenses of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year and were able to access information about its operations and its 3 million members, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. In Beijing, China dismissed the report. The Journal, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, reported the operation against the top American business lobbying group involved at least 300 internet addresses and was discovered and shut down in May 2010. The newspaper reported it was not known how much information was seen by the hackers, or who may have had access to the network for more than a year before being discovered. The group behind the breach is suspected by the United States of having ties to the Chinese government, one of the sources told the newspaper. The FBI informed the Chamber of Commerce that servers in China were pilfering its information, the source said.
China, Japan leaders to meet amid North Korea angst (December 22, 2011, Reuters) Leaders from China and Japan will likely agree to work together to help maintain stability on the Korean peninsula following the death of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il when they meet next week, but anything more than platitudes will be hard to come by. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing during a two-day trip from Sunday as the world waits to see where North Korea is headed under Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of the destitute nuclear state's late leader. Noda's visit to China, North Korea's biggest backer, was arranged before Kim Jong-il's death was announced by the unpredictable hermit state on Monday. "Instability on the peninsula would be in nobody's interest," said Sun Cheng, professor of Japanese studies at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.
Chinese seaside town protesters in police standoff (December 22, 2011, AP) Chinese authorities have detained a number of people in a southern seaside town where protests against a planned power plant resulted in clashes with police, an official said Thursday, as riot police fired tear gas during a third day of unrest. Thousands of people in the town of Haimen wanting to block a highway were locked in a standoff with riot police, said protesters contacted by The Associated Press. The protesters think an existing coal-fired power plant has contributed to what they say is a rise in cancer cases and heavy pollution in the seas, a serious problem for a town where fishing is a source of livelihood.
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HEALTH
Hong Kong orders chicken cull as bird flu alert raised (December 20, 2011, BBC News) Hong Kong is culling 17,000 chickens after three birds were confirmed to have died from the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain in the past week. The government has banned imports and the sale of live chickens for three weeks after an infected chicken carcass was found at a wholesale market on Tuesday. It has also raised the city's flu alert system to "serious". Two wild birds were also found to have died of the virus. The government said it was tracing the source of the chicken carcass, but it was not clear whether the chicken came from a local farm or was imported.
E China university reports 13 tuberculosis cases (December 22, 2011, China Daily) A university in the eastern province of Jiangsu has reported 13 tuberculosis cases among its students, local authorities said Thursday. From December 2 to 19, 13 students in the eastern campus of Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, based in the city of Zhenjiang, were confirmed to have been infected with tuberculosis, said Lin Feng, head of the city's health bureau. Health and disease control departments of the city have made quarantine and preventive measures to cut its spread, Lin said. |
RELIGION
China officials shut down outdoor Christmas party (December 16, 2011, AP) Chinese police and government officials scuffled with Christians and smashed sound equipment for a public Christmas celebration in an eastern village known for unofficial house churches and producing ornaments. Christians in Xintan village said Friday that the officials wrecked a mixing console, turned over an electric piano and pushed and punched worshippers, injuring five, Tuesday night. A local official said the believers hit first, sending a deputy village head to the hospital. "There were a few hundred of us. And the village heads were there too, and they were even more violent," said Wang Jingfeng, one of the Christians present. "This is like a dog biting a rat." Setting off the scuffle was an attempt by an unregistered local church to hold a Christmas gala on a stage set up in a village square. The Xintan Village Church, in a video posted on YouTube, said the local government authorized the event. But a higher-level official in charge of religious affairs said the believers were asked a day earlier to cancel because regulations forbid worship outdoors and Buddhists in the community complained.
China party official warns members over religion (December 19, 2011, AP) Religious practice among Chinese Communist Party members is increasing and threatens its unity and national leadership, a top party official said in remarks reported Monday. Party members are required to be atheists and must not believe in religion or engage in religious practice, said Zhu Weiqun, a member of the party's Central Committee and executive vice director of its United Front Work Department in charge of dealings with nonparty groups. Religious practice is a growing trend, especially in areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, and must not be tolerated, Zhu said in comments published in the latest edition of the main party theoretical journal, Qiushi, and reported by the official Xinhua News Agency. While it no longer actively works to eradicate religion as it did under Mao Zedong, the party remains deeply suspicious of religious practice and strictly controls when and where it can take place. |
EDUCATION / CULTURE
Education ministry denies exam leak (December 19, 2011, Shanghai Daily) CHINA yesterday denied there has been another leak of a national English proficiency test paper, following rumors online. The Ministry of Education said the exam went on smoothly on Saturday, dismissing claims that the paper was uploaded online 20 minutes before the test started. The ministry said authorities nationwide have held 45 people suspected of spreading "malicious information" during the exam - including four who they say spread rumors in a bid to defame the exam. Meanwhile, the ministry said authorities have also cracked down on 14 gangs for allegedly earlier engaging in cheating at the College English Test (CET). |
SOCIETY / LIFE
Beijing orders new controls on 'Weibo' microblogs (December 16, 2011, BBC News) Authorities in Beijing have issued new rules requiring users of microblog sites to register personal details. New users of Weibo - Chinese equivalents of Twitter - will now have to submit their real names. Existing users have to register in three months. Those who refuse to do so will lose the ability to publish microblog entries. The new regulations - which take effect immediately - were issued jointly by Beijing's information, communication and police authorities, and published on the city's official news portal. Websites that are registered in the capital will have to follow the 16-point regulations and make their Weibo users register their personal data.
Beijing's controversial "English-language town" abandoned (December 19, 2011, Xinhua) The controversial "English-language town" project in Miyun, a county in the northeast suburbs of Beijing, has not been approved by the local government, sources said Monday. "Relevant departments argued the project and decided not to approve it," an unnamed spokesman with the Miyun county government said without providing further details. As the projected largest European-style town in Beijing, a private enterprise invested in the "English-language town" and planned to have it built within five years, hoping to attract fans of the English language and tourists from across the country who enjoy promoting the learning of English, local media have said. "Visitors in the town are only allowed to speak English," Wang Haichen, the head of the Miyun county government, said, as quoted in local media reports. Wang said every visitor in the town would get a "tourist passport," and the ones who break the language rule would have points deducted as a punishment. However, some people said the rule forbidding visitors from speaking Chinese in the town demonstrated a worship of foreigners and discrimination against Chinese.
Foreigners caught without work visa (December 21, 2011, Shanghai Daily) Shanghai police are warning expats without work permits not to find jobs in the city, which will cause them to be fined or deported if they're caught. The Exit-Entry Administration Bureau of Shanghai police said yesterday that they had found some foreigners with travel visas illegally working as English teachers in the city's language institutions. "We'll crack down on the illegal working of foreigners in Shanghai, as always," an officer surnamed Li said yesterday. The bureau did not say how widespread the problem of illegal employment of foreigners is, but it's known that the city's expat population is growing quickly.
China to allow some foreigners to retire there (December 22, 2011, Reuters) China will allow some foreigners who sign up to a new social security system to retire there so they can claim their pensions, state media said Thursday, offering details of a new tax that foreign businesses fear will push up costs. The government has so far given only basic details about the scheme, which all foreigners who work in China are supposed to have started paying into from October, and officials have acknowledged jumping the gun before working out implementation. "Those foreigners who contribute to social insurance and fulfill conditions will get social security, and will be able to, for example, retire in China and draw a pension," the report said, without providing details of how that might happen. Previously, the only foreigners allowed to retire in China were those who have dedicated themselves to the Communist Party or have worked selflessly for decades as teachers, doctors or in other similar fields there.
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BUSINESS / ECONOMICS / TRADE
China's house prices fall amid curbs (December 18, 2011, BBC News) House prices in most Chinese cities have fallen as government policies aimed at cooling the property market start to take effect. New home prices in 49 out of 70 Chinese cities dropped in November from the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday. In October 33 cities saw price falls. Analysts say it is also further evidence that the Chinese economy is slowing and could encourage Beijing to focus policy more on growth. Major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou saw prices fall marginally lower compared with October, the statement said.
More Chinese cities require real-name microblog registration (December 22, 2011, Xinhua) More Chinese cities joined an Internet supervision measure Thursday following Beijing's requirement of local microblog operators to register users with real names, a move designed to purge online rumors and enhance social credibility. Seven major websites in the cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen in south Guangdong province will begin from Thursday to require new users of their microblogging services to register with real names, the provincial publicity department said in a statement. Among the seven microblog operators is Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings, the country's leading Internet company that operates the popular QQ instant-messaging service. The new rules only apply to new users, including private and institutional users, who are required to submit their real identities at registration, the statement said.
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LINKS TO DETAILED ARTICLES AND ANALYSIS
In a country so proud of its global stature, football is a painful national joke. Perhaps because Chinese fans love the sport madly and want desperately for their nation to succeed at it, football is the common reference point by which people understand and measure failure.
Intrigue! Riches! Sex! Some violence! Not the latest movie plot, but a story that lurks in the background of some 100-year-old photographs of The Empress Dowager - once the most powerful woman in Asia. The mostly black-and-white photos languished for decades in the archives of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Now, they are on display and give a glimpse of Old China at a time when today's China is the picture of modern power.
The northeast Chinese city of Dandong faces North Korea across the Yalu river, its neon-lit riverfront of shops and restaurants underscoring the darkness on the other side, which struggles with chronic power shortages. But even after the abrupt death of Kim Jong-il threatened to throw the North into an era of uncertainty, many Dandong residents had little time for political speculation.
Looking forward, the Wukan situation raises several key issues and questions that will challenge the Chinese leadership and reverberate well beyond the limits of the village.
Shanghai has China's second-largest population of foreigners and overseas Chinese, and 27.3 percent of them have come to the city purely for jobs, according to a report released on Monday by the municipal statistics bureau.
While proselytizing is banned in China, Protestant -- and, to a lesser extent, Catholic -- high schools are doing their missionary work on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Through placement agents and religious networking, they're recruiting growing numbers of students from China, most of them atheists, and encouraging them to convert, in the hope that some of them will spread the faith back home.
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LINKS TO BLOGS
Domestic critics often blame China's governance problems on the wanton behavior of local governments rather than mismanagement by the central government.
This year marks the centenary of China's 1911 Revolution; an opportune moment to reflect more broadly on the past two centuries of history and how they have influenced the situation in China today.
It's not at all clear what will happen here. For the time being, the fact that an entire village has gone into revolt in a nation known for strict social control is remarkable.
A charm offensive from the U.S. ambassador and a few fumbles from the Chinese government were amplified this year through the growing power of microblogging
Europe and China have this much in common: the bad economic news just keeps getting worse. The latest headaches for Beijing: Growing numbers of analysts fear that a combination of slumping exports and overexposed loans could spell real trouble for the increasingly vulnerable Chinese economy.
The following report, printed on page 16 of today's Nanfang Daily, the official newspaper of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CCP, is the only news report in China's press today on the ongoing stand-off between villagers and authorities in Wukan Village.
I've been riding the subway more. I don't know why. I've never before been particularly masochistic nor do I generally enjoy close physical contact with strangers, but it seems an economical way to get around the city now that every available road surface is jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. Having spent quite a few commuting hours below ground now, I've started to distinguish a taxonomy of my fellow passengers, including several species which I find it best to avoid.
This is part II of a series of an occasional series of posts we will be running here on what our lead China lawyer, Steve Dickinson, is seeing of China's real estate market, based on his living "on the ground" in Qingdao.
The global population may have hit seven billion, but three decades of family-planning measures have curbed Chinese fertility - and demographers are beginning to worry. Wang Ling reports.
According to this past year's Hurun Wealth Report, the provinces with the largest concentration of wealthy residents are as follows: Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shandong, Fujian, Liaoning, Sichuan and Henan. Hurun defines a "wealthy resident" as someone earning RMB 10 million or more each year.
"Silent Night" is probably the most loved of all Christmas carols in China, at least among those who know Christmas carols. In this society, "sweet" music tends to be favored by the masses and "Silent Night" is definitely in the "sweet" music category. In Chinese, it is called Ping An Ye (Peaceful and Calm Night). Somehow, in the past few years, Christmas Eve has come to be known as "The Silent Night." Ping An Ye.
I was living with migrants and working as a food vendor for the last few days. I want to give you an idea what everyday life is like for street vendors.
n narrowing down candidates for this poll, we chose to define a "big" China story as one that not only captured the attention of the wider world but also had a major impact inside China itself. Below, and in no particular order, are the five stories we think best fit that criteria (apologies to Amy Chua and a certain fake electronics store in Kunming).
Pathlight magazine is a new English-language literary magazine produced by Paper Republic and People's Literature Magazine (《人民文学》杂志社). It is currently in trial publication period-the first issue came out on November 20, and the second issue will be published in advance of the 2012 London Book Fair, where China will be the Market Focus.
That's when I found this American classic in Chinese. When I put it into Google Translate and put it into English again, OH MY GOODNESS. It's hilarious.
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ARTICLES IN CHINESE
宗教和谐论 (Pacific Solutions)
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RESOURCES FOR RESEARCHERS
How do we interpret the huge gap between the international perception of China's economic rise and the growing negative views among Chinese elites about the Hu leadership? Should Hu be blamed for the problems perceived by Chinese opinion leaders? Could Hu's widely-perceived "inaction" be attributed to the nature of collective leadership and factional infighting, including the policy deadlock possibly caused by Hu's rivals in the Politburo Standing Committee?
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RESOURCES
Reading Chinese online is a great way to practice your reading and comprehension, but nothing is more daunting than arriving at a web page only to be greeted by a wall of Chinese characters. Here is a list of some browser extensions and online tools that you can use to make reading Chinese online a lot easier!
Our Chinese vocab word list today has everything from "Santa" to "wrapping paper" to "New Year's resolutions."
The Pacific Asia Museum welcomes the public to view its permanent collection of more than 15,000 works of art from across Asia and the Pacific region, from ancient times to today at Free Fourth Friday. Pacific Asia Museum, 46 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri. Free. (626) 449-2742.
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