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).
Citizen reporter killed—by who?: (update: 22:10) John Kennedy at Global Voices Online collects some online responses to the death of Wei Wenhua at the hands of chengguan:
What began as a protest against a planned urban trash dump encroaching on a residential area held by the villagers there in Tianmen, Hubei province became a murder story after the city management officers moved from beating the residents to attacking passerby Wei Wenhua, the would-be citizen journalist filming the violence from his car with his cellphone, who they then quickly killed.
Chengguan operations are most often limited to cracking down on unlicensed business operations in urban areas, most visibly in chasing away streetside vendors and smashing or confiscating their goods, but as netizens have noted in their outrage at Wei’s death, chengguan abuse of authority has escalated in recent years. Qin Liwen, writing at the widely-read media industry blog MindMeters, was one of many to see the specter of Sun Zhigang in Wei’s death, which is already looking to be one of the bigger stories of 2008.
Wuhan might bet on horses: China might legalize gambling on horse racing, reports Xinhua. Chris O’Brien at Beijing Newspeak discusses the Xinhua report and other media accounts.
How China loses the coming space war: Wired’s Danger Room blog features a report by Geoffrey Forden, "an MIT research associate and a former UN weapons inspector and strategic weapons analyst at the Congressional Budget Office" on the threat of a Chinese assault on American satellites, which have become more and more critical to the US military. From Part I:
Because of this increasing dependence, many analysts have worried that the US is most vulnerable to asymmetric attacks against its space assets; in their view US satellites are "sitting ducks" without any sort of defense and their destruction would cripple the US military. China’s test of a sophisticated anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon a year ago, Friday — 11 January 2007, when it shot down its own obsolete weather satellite — has only increased these concerns. But is this true? Could a country—even a powerful country like China that has demonstrated a very sophisticated, if nascent, ability to shoot down satellites at all altitudes—inflict anything close to a knock-out blow against the US in space? And if it was anything less than a knock-out, how seriously would it affect US war fighting capabilities?
Interview with “Up the Yangtze” director Yung Chang: As part of its Park City ’08 interview series, indieWIRE talks via email to Yung Chang, a Montreal-based director whose "Up the Yangtze" is screening at Sundance:
What prompted the idea for this film and how did it evolve?
I first traveled to the Yangtze river in 2002 as a tourist with my parents and grandfather when I went on one of the Farewell cruises, a kind-of "disaster eco-tour" where the aim is to offer tourists the chance to visit the area before it is flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. The idea for "Up The Yangtze" was inspired by a surreal moment. We arrived to the southern Chinese city of Chongqing (Chungking), the largest municipality in the world. The city reminds me of a scene from Blade Runner.
At the city’s port, considered the Gateway to the Yangtze, we walk down a steep embankment to get to the waiting ship. Coolies grab our luggage and sling them on their bamboo poles. I arrived at night. Everything was in silhouette lit by neon lights. As we approached the gangway, a marching band began to play "You Are My Sunshine" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." At that moment, I decided to make a film about this surreal journey: The Love Boat meets Apocalypse Now.
Donghu, an AIDS village: The Economic Observer presents a gallery of photos of Donghu, Henan:
For years, these HIV-infected villagers have relied on continuous infusions for their survival. Like hundreds of villages elsewhere in Henan province, Donghu was stricken by AIDS when villagers sold blood in droves to illegal blood banks back in the mid-1990s. Donors didn’t realize they were infected until some years later, when batches of them fell suddenly and seriously ill.
War, not sex, makes the history books: Geoffrey McNab at the Syndey Morning Herald talks to Ang Lee about filming Lust, Caution:
He then adds that Tony Leung has projected aspects of Lee’s own character into Yee. A curious remark, certainly, given that Yee isn’t a remotely sympathetic character. He is a quisling, collaborating with the Japanese and overseeing the torture and killing of Chinese rebels. Then again, it is Yee’s personal and sexual life that intrigues Lee. "I desire it but I cannot do it. I make it into a movie. He projects a lot of that part of myself. It is a romance I never really experienced that I was longing for. It is almost like a dream."
“Ipsa scientis potestas est,” with Chinese characteristics: Bill Dodson of Silk Road Advisors writes about the flow of information in international business ventures:
Most of the cases in China in which Western businesses have been cheated comes down to trusting sole sources of information gathering and dissemination: the Chinese who successfully convinces the Western party that for cultural reasons the Westerner will never be able to succeed in China. The Westerner needs someone who knows "The Chinese Way."
The problem with hiring a guide/agent/translator of The Chinese Way is that there is no "Chinese Way".