Archive for the 'Politics' Category

A false alarm over the death of traditional Chinese

Published
by
Jason Li
on July 24, 2008
in Government, History, Meme, News, Politics and Translation
. 1 Comment

Two calls to sign this petition have been floating around my inbox recently:

Being from Hong Kong, I quickly submitted my name to support this cause. Thoughts stirred in my head: What was the UN doing? Is this a signal for Taiwan? Does this mean Hong Kong will switch to simplified Chinese soon?

Upon further research however, it seems have all been a hoax based upon a chain of sloppy journalism. According to Xiao Zhao who took the time to investigate the matter:

…the rumor was obviously started with a false message from a professor in China, named Chan, Zhang Tai who casually said UN will stop use Traditional Chinese in 2008 to a reporter with a Chinese newspaper in Hong Kong, Oriental Daily in March 2006. The reporter didn’t confirm with UN and just went ahead reporting what professor Chan said. Later on, UN had to announce that there is not abolishment of traditional Chinese in 2008 and UN has never used Traditional Chinese since 1971.

See the full exposee at Xiao Zhao’s blog: A Country Bumpkin Offering Sunshine.

economists blogging China 2008: you might want to know

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 24, 2008
in Blogs, Commerce, Government and Politics
. 2 Comments

It’s one of the wonderful things about blogs.  You can find really smart people who are blogging their thoughts rather than writing super long, boring reports.  And if those people are economists, how great is that?  If you are NOT someone who likes to spend much time on economic reading, you might enjoy the WorldBank’s East Asia and Pacific Newsletter, which comes every now and then to your email Inbox and delivers the contents of the bank’s’ East Asia and Pacific blog.

Today there’s a piece from the World Bank’s Country Director for China and Mongolia, David Dollar, on possible scenarios for the rest of the year in China.  There are more jobs in places outside of the southeast, which is a good thing; but food costs too much, and a US recession and more expensive yuan could hurt Chinese exports. The Chinese government is trying to channel FDI into non-export-oriented projects.

Dollar’s most recent post is on a meeting he had with a group of economists in which they discussed possible optimist and pessimistic scenarios for what is happening in China right now, particularly the shift from exports to domestic consumption as a form of economic growth.  He writes:

The pessimistic scenario is that there is a sharp drop in investment as 2008 develops as firms and banks become aware that future profits in exports and industry more generally are not so promising.  Banks discover that some of the loans they have made in the boom years are not being serviced.  If these sectoral problems feed into generalized pessimism and consumer caution, then the overall slowdown could be quite sharp.

Another World Bank economist, Luis Kuijs, responds in a long comment with a slightly different opinion:

The expected slowdown of exports later this year will have an impact on domestic demand. I would think this impact will mainly be via an adjustment of investment plans of businesses in the tradable sector. Employment in the export sector will be hit. However, the importance of the export sector for job creation should not be exaggerated. In recent years, the “non tradable” sector (services and the part of industry catering to domestic demand) has created many more jobs than the export sector.

City’s men (城管) egao-ed on Baidu Baike

Published
by
Jason Li
on April 11, 2008
in Commerce, Internet governance, News and Politics
. 1 Comment

Headline image from 玩聚 on ju690 (with my translation in white):

The story goes that an officer within Chong Qing city administration (城管) looked up 城管 (city administration)”on Baidu Baike (= Baidu’s Wikipedia competitor) and found the following:

“City administration… A mafia (黑社會) that bullies storekeepers unable to pay their rent or economically challenged groups with problems with their licenses… Adjectives: Cruel, bloody, frightening… Verbs: Beat, smash, rob…”

This entry obviously distressed the poor officer, who himself was part of the city administration. It only hurt him more that Baidu Baike is supposedly written with the consensus of the greater netizen population.

What he may or may not know, however, is that he’s a victim of the greater egao (恶搞: spoofing/pranking) movement that is making its rounds on the Chinese internet.

Yet why did they egao city administration in particular? 王清 suggests on his blog that it’s a manifestation of the tension created by past incidents involving the city administration and small merchants. 王清 even goes as far as to say that it’s a call for reform and regulation on the role of city administration across the country.

And what happened to the entry in the end? Since the entry was first egao-ed on April 3, Baidu Baike has fixed it and erased the evidence of the egao edits (see deleted entries in their revision history)… but not before screenshots were captured for a Netease article.

Original story, sources and excerpts translated from 玩聚 on ju690.

opening up to Chinese tweets: Dave’s experiment

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on March 16, 2008
in Blogs, News, P2P, Politics, Religion, Translation and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

Dave’s experiment is brilliant. It probably takes this kind of situation to open up new practices across virtual spaces, which even though technically just a click away, tend to seem as far away as Mars.

In a nutshell, he’s got a tutorial for non-Chinese readers to sign up to a Chinese twitter-clone called fanfou, in order to start having a dialogue with Chinese folks who can speak English, regarding the current Tibetan protests. Imagine if conversations get started that will continue into the future.

I’ve signed up for fanfou and got myself a home page, but it’s not intuitive, even for someone who reads Chinese. Dave is now my only fanfou friend, and I used Twifan, which appears to search across multiple microblogging apps in Chinese, to search for tweets on Tibet and 西藏 (there are a lot more using the Chinese characters, but this will not help those who need to communicate in English). It’s not clear what could happen next. Maybe the problem is that it’s 4:30 in the morning on the mainland. We’ll see.

Dave is translating Tibet-related tweets here.

So microblogging and online videos are being brought squarely into the fray. Roland Soong writes about what’s happening on Youtube:

There is a propaganda war going on
YouTube because this is clearly one of the top video news sites. In a
propaganda, you win the share of voice and then you can win the share of
hearts and minds. Therefore, you want the videos that favor your
narrative to dominate. You also want unfavorable videos to be drowned
out. Therefore, you mobilize your people to post as often and as much as
possible….The
point here is that using YouTube to track Tibet developments is low-yield,
high-maintenance work.

the Youtube approach to understanding Chinese politics

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on December 18, 2007
in Politics and Video Clips
. 0 Comments

I find it difficult sometimes to keep track of Chinese power politics.  Now the Brookings Institution has provided us with a lovely, succinct 2-3 minute video analysis of the two new top leaders (Shanghai Party Secretary Xi Jinping and Liaoning Party Secretary Li Keqiang) who were recently promoted as possible successors to President Hu Jintao, at the 17th Party Congress in October. The speaker is Cheng Li, a Senior Fellow at the Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. If you’re like me, you might enjoy it!   

A slightly longer written version, same subject and author, can be found here.

HK-based research foundation makes flashy research, BBC & SCMP pick it up

Published
by
Jason Li
on September 18, 2007
in Commerce, Government and Politics
. 0 Comments

I saw this on the BBC Asia page yesterday:

"Mega-city move? Calls for Hong Kong and Shenzhen to merge into one city"

The people behind these "calls" is the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre. Their director, Anthony Wu, is quoted as saying "If you look at the long term competitiveness of Hong
Kong, Hong Kong has only got seven million people, and… Shenzhen has
13 million people. You need to merge the two to create a bigger
metropolis to take advantage of China and the world."

And he continues to argue that "Hong Kong should merge with China… as Hong Kong has the legal system and China the 5,000 years of culture."

The article continues by giving more details of his radical plan, which, as you may have guessed, I have my doubts about. Are these grandiose, sweeping generalizations the best that a "research centre" in Hong Kong can come up with?

Then of course, there’s the local English newspaper, the South China Morning Post, which ran an editorial  supporting Wu’s arguments and (quoting from the same BBC article) "argued that the ‘one country, two systems’ mantra, designed to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy under Chinese rule, was a ’straitjacket’, which ‘but for history’ was holding Hong Kong back."

I’m not even going to comment on that one.

Source: See original article on the BBC.

PRC 外的虚拟中国/Virtual China outside the PRC: child labor on Youtube

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on June 19, 2007
in News, Politics, Translation, Video Clips and Virtual China
. 3 Comments

Youtube is a forum for independent media that could never get a voice in China. Low cost cut-and-paste TV news clips, with voice-overs and bilingual subtitles, will be an increasingly powerful tool for cross-cultural dialogue.  These types of DIY videos will also be rallying points in PRC 外的虚拟中国/Virtual China outside the PRC, for discussions that cannot take place openly online on the mainland, drawing a mix of patriotic zealots of all stripes: American and Chinese, right wing and left wing.

"Child slaves, Shanxi China" is the latest video posted on Youtube by a user named daughterofchina.  Her earlier video on environmental conflicts in Wuxi and Xiamen was informative and  provocative.  "Child slaves," however, which deals with the recent Internet exposure of horrific forced child labor in a brickmaking factory in Shanxi, goes right over the top.  If you want a hit of sensational sentimental drama, you’ll find it full force here, with an overwrought, verging-on-tears narrative tone, and also in the news clips of a runaway teenager who had been kidnapped but still didn’t want to return home, but who is convinced to do so by a parent who is looking for her own missing child.  There is an Epoch Times kind of a feeling to this particular video.

The comments are a delicious sea of Chinese viewers living outside of China, and Americans arguing about contemporary American politics, with passion, cursing, and inevitable accusations of homosexuality.  Selected comments below:

[yimaoyunyun] what I can say, we chinese just can’t fight with government anymore, we deserve torture. we deserve it

[fishhead06] No, you deserve freedom and democracy - the Chinese people need to rise
up and finish what the protesters in Tiannemen Square began.

[denbosz] based on what model? The American system? Where the media is controlled
by five corporations and to be elected people need to raise millions
from special interests to pay for campaigns. Where you can be in a war
where 70% of the population don’t want to be.

[xyzshimizu] actually all chinese are just slaves of commie dictatorship..all
chinese should fight for freedom against 1-party dictatioship. btw Free
Tibet, Free Taiwan, Free inner Mongolia, Free Uyghur!!!

[beefhead1984] free willy!!

[sadcow66] Hi..Well China’s Law Is Far From Perfect And Something Should Be Done
About It Before Its To Late And Many More Children Face This Fate And
They Need To Stop Killing Dogs For Fur And Meat Its Barbaric And
Because Of This A Lot Of People Are Becoming Racist. Thanks

[daughterofchina] I know. But maybe we’re too late already. You can not understand how I
feel. It’s the tragedy of our nation. So, friend, please help us to
spread this. Our voice was suppressed. I used to say that "life is
going on and tmr will be better", but now I feel I can hardly go ahead.
We’re destroying our future. It’s not only the gov to be blamed. We all
chinese are sinners. As for killing dogs, I do apologize. But I am vegetarian.

[beadtj] That is not I mean, general to say, I dont see any difference between
your opinion and CCTVs. you repeat the same story that DongFangShiKong
shows on TV. So, Why do you think, you are critcize the gov and the
CCTV not? How can you declare here CCTV is lying and you are not?

[noolympics] The CCTV never mentioned how uncooperative the local Shanxi government
was. The CCTV never mentioned the possibility of collusion between
local Shanxi government and evil businesses. The CCTV never mentioned
when the entire incident first happened. The CCTV never challenged the
responsibilities of the governments. The CCTV never mentioned that a
lot of Chinese are very disappointed about the CCP as shown on
discussion forums.

[beadtj] That is too much requirements for a CCTV, but all of this can be found
in chinese media (another many CCTVs). Nothing can be hiding if it has
be discovered in china this time. Another big step to a opening country.

[beadtj] You are not only sometimes naive man. what kind of a serious narrator
are you? Trying to mislead the foreigner by translate. Seat by TV
without necessary investigate and copy the text and just read it aloud.
Typical manner from a uneducated chinese.

[Hey Lizzy] Actually the
news were published by a local TV channel, and then was wide spread in
the nation through Internet, TV and other media. The freedown was now
led by the highest level of the government. Although there are still
nearly one thousand of children awaiting to be set free, we are
attempting to search for them. As a Chinese, I don’t want to judge my
country. And pls, don’t judge China from only one video.

[classicieon] It’s true crime and we have to prevent this happened again by chastising these criminals.
Before
thtat, we should let that "noolympics" shut the fuck up, as he insanely
roared me, it’s just likes I slaved those kids in his mind.

[noolympics] For someone who resorts to "barbaric" foul language, instead of
educated human logic, we surely know how reliable he/she is!
classicleon is a classic example of a Chinese communist!

[classicieon] I’m not a communist, even if I am, what’s wrong with that? but why you
care my words too much and keep dreaming about me? even if I don’t know
you. because you are a homosex, you keep thinking the way i am to
fulfil your sexual needs!

Coincidentally, I recently posted on Missing Persons websites–it looks like at least some of the missing younger people are probably in similar situations–kidnapped or tricked into brutal, exploitative work situations.

Danwei and ESWN have great round-ups on unfolding Shanxi forced labor events here and here.

podcast: on China’s “eco-Potemkin village”

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on June 6, 2007
in Design, Government, Podcasts and Politics
. 1 Comment

Ethical Corporation is a publisher and conference organizer on corporate ethics–broadly defined.  Their material is fresh and thorough.  You can sign up for a newsletter, and they have short podcasts as well.

Listen to this podcast with Toby Webb, EC’s Editor, and Paul French, their Asia-Pacific Editor (who is also publishing and marketing director at Access Asia), discussing Dongtan, the Chinese eco-village project being built on Chongming Island outside of Shanghai.  The second part of the interview is mostly about the politics of this project at home in the UK, which is a great illustration of how these international development projects always have multiple motivations behind them.  Of interest:

"…now every province in China wants to do one of these.  It’s almost as if, if I build this small green village with a couple of windmills and some solar panels, then we’ve done with the environment and I can go back to my strip mining and my dirty steel mill." 

"Now what they’ve done is scare all the [migratory] birds away by building these environmentally friendly buildings…so in a sense you’re destroying the natural environment in order to create an environmentally friendly environment…"

For more on Dongtan, link via CDT, see the IEEE Spectrum magazine’s excellent article, "How to Build a Green City."

One tiny critical point, a genuine question for those of us who are foreigners and think and write about China: why is it that so many of us continue to use the Cultural Revolution as a reference point for what’s happening today?  Isn’t it kind of like using the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967, as a common reference point for understanding something about current American culture?  The CR was between thirty and forty years ago–that’s a long time.  Of course it had a massive impact on many levels, but so did the free love/sexual revolution/women’s liberation 1960s movement in the U.S., but we don’t continue to reference it.  Or maybe we should?

Chinese online video activism: “We don’t need GDP, we need life”

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on June 3, 2007
in Games, News, Politics, Translation, Video Clips and Virtual China
. 3 Comments

Thanks to China Digital Times for the link to this rather extraordinary video, posted by someone called daughterofchina, whose producers are using the Internet and Youtube as a means of online environmental activism. It would be nice to know more about who produced it. I searched Yoqoo (which I notice is now calling itself Youku, thank god), Baidu, and Tudou and could not find it on any of these Chinese video sharing sites.  It must have been posted there, however, so perhaps it has been deleted?

The video calls attention to water pollution in Wuxi and the protests against the PX chemical factory in Xiamen, the latter which has been blogged in depth on ESWN and Global Voices Online. 

You can find a collection of Chinese videos of newscasts on the Wuxi polluted tap water issue here.
 

truthfulness and Chinese discussion forums (BBS)

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on April 30, 2007
in BBS, Politics and Virtual China
. 34 Comments

Wangyi_luntan

From the News BBS at Netease 网易, a discussion of how truthful you can be on Netease BBS. Could be a shill for Netease (as some of the commenters point out), but even so the discussion is interesting for its candid discussion of life in Virtual China–at least for those who want to discuss the news.  The assumption is that the more one can speak the truth on a news forum, the better it is.  Could relatively free speech be a differentiator in the BBS marketplace in China?  On the other hand, even though it’s been nominated as an "elite" post (I found it on the Netease BBS elite post list) it’s only been read by 1200 people in the last few days, a very small number. Does that mean that people see this kind of thing a lot and are jaded, or that they just don’t want to deal with this topic because it’s sensitive, or that it’s simply not important to them?

The post is titled, In all China, only on Netease does one dare speak the truth, you can speak the truth!

Every time I come to Netease I have the feeling I can speak freely! And not only this, but how many have been helped! For example, giving aid to the poor and so on! I’ve wanted to say this for a long time! At the very least it allows those with resentment or grievances to speak out and purge their anger!!

Selected comments:

Objectively speaking you love Netease because you can speak the truth
But that’s not now
It’s in the past

Compared with other forums Netease is already pretty good, at least you can get posts out…

It’s a lot better than Zhonghua–that place is garbage, you have to register just to respond to a post

The fawning posts are all here, my posts never go out so of course you don’t get to see them.

I’m suspicious!!! Why is that every post I respond to gets closed down??

You can speak the truth but once it’s said you won’t see it. They have to get by too, it’s understandable.

You can’t say everything here, you’re playing it up.