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).
Republished old books illuminate China: Graham Earnshaw talks to the Shanghai Daily about his series of republished books about China in the old days:
Another Shanghai book is The Unexpurgated Diary of a Shanghai Baby by Elsie McCormick, a humorous little book that was first published in 1923.
Adopting the "viewpoint" of a one-year-old baby, the author describes the life of an American expat household in Shanghai in the early 1920s. Seeing the old days through the eyes of the baby, you might find the expat lifestyle surprisingly similar to that of today.
As in the old days, many foreign families hire a Chinese ayi who speaks only a little English, if any. At times, they still get confused by how the ayi cleans the house or does the laundry. And the ayi still can’t understand when parents let the toddlers run around by themselves.
Such similarities are what Earnshaw considers “fun and significant,” and a big reason for republication.
Chinese Students in U.S. Fight View of Their Home: The New York Times has published an article by Shaila Dewan, with reporting by Michael Anti, about Chinese students in the U.S., and their views of the Olympic torch fiasco etc.
The nationalistic Global Times has published an abridged translation of the piece with the title The West has hurt the feelings of Chinese students.
Crack down on child labor after newspaper report: On Monday, the Southern Metropolis Daily did an investigative report about children working in factories in the manufacturing base of Dongguan in Guangdong Province.
Now the China Daily reports that the city has been spurred into action:
More than 1,000 children, aged between 9 and 16 from poor families in Liangshan, Sichuan province, have been lured to Dongguan, Shenzhen and Huizhou in the Pearl River Delta area, to work as cheap labor in factories, Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
Liu Zhigeng, Party secretary of Dongguan, has instructed the police and labor departments to rescue all youngsters as soon as possible and punish the people responsible.
The Southern Metropolis Daily is here (in Chinese).
The Green Olympics and an actress as UN eco ambassador: At Global Voices Online, Kelly has a roundup of blog posts on eco issues, including Treehugger and The Seattle Times‘ Blogging Beijing blog.
Hounded by heparin, protests and CNN: Joyce Lau of the IHT blogs about China’s PR crises:
But Beijing may be doubting its backfiring tactics, and secretly shameful of some of its own citizens’ behaviour. (You know something is up when you see Chinese guards cracking down on pro-China protests; or when even Communist Party members writing for Mainland newspapers are getting death threats for being too "moderate" towards foreigners.) In the past, when it looked like it was all going wrong, Beijing would call out the tanks. But that iron fist thing is so Soviet-era 20th century. Now, they bring in the PR flacks.
Or at least this is what commentators are suspecting, with a sneer about the Bohemoth Chinese media / propaganda onslaught that will soon (or is already) being let loose on the world.
Does the central government run China?: Josh at the Cup of Cha blog comments on an LA Times op-ed piece by Francis Fukuyama:
China has always been highly decentralized in its power, owing greatly to its enormousness. Yet at a more fundamental level, placing the blame on local officials absolves the central government of much of its responsibility. While it’s true that Beijing does not want rogue local officials terrorizing Chinese citizens, it also has shown little desire to step into disputes unless absolutely forced. In other words, it wants things to be better, it just has little interest in facilitating certain types of change.
French group LVMH postpones vintage car rally in China: From Forbes.com:
French luxury-goods group LVMH has decided to postpone a vintage car rally that it was due to organise in China at the end of May, a company spokesman told Agence France-Presse.
The Louis Vuitton China Run was supposed to take place between May 25 and June 1.
Growing up Han in Xinjiang: The China Beat has published an interview with a Han Chinese man who grew up in Urumqi. He talks about ethnic integration, separatists and Han migration to Xinjiang.
Crisis management at Carrefour: ESWN has translated an article from China Business about how badly Carrefour dealt with the first 13 days of the ongoing PR crisis in which they are being scapegoated for disruptions to the Olympic torch relay in France and other Olympic related French offenses.