The iPhone and upstart smartphone Xiaomi

Posted on 2012-06-25 by Eric Mu

Photo Credit: androideffect.info

Apple’s presentation of new mobile operating system iOS 6 last week sent Chinese Apple fans into a frenzy. On Sina Weibo, 1.8 million and counting messages were posted commenting on iOS 6. Many people were excited by the new features aimed at Chinese users, such as default options to use QQ for email and Baidu for search.

The new feature that seems to have intrigued most people is that Siri now speaks Chinese – both Mandarin and Cantonese. On Youku.com, fans have posted videos of people interrogating Siri with questions ranging from the frivolous to the downright obscene such as the following:

User: Tell me a joke.
Siri: Once there were two iPhones and they walked into a bar… I can’t remember the rest.

User: Fuck your mother (in Cantonese)
Siri: Whoever said this should blush.

Not everyone is amused: Many Chinese Internet companies, especially developers who make apps that sell on the iTunes store, are worried that they might be undercut and sidelined, and see Apple’s new move as part of a bigger scheme to exert greater control over the users of its phones.

An article on Sina Tech expresses the concern that Apple’s new partnership with companies like Baidu will put other Chinese Internet companies at a disadvantage. App developers worry that some new iOS 6 features will make previously useful apps redundant. Apple switching to its own mapping function as the default rather than Google Maps means that some developers will have to redesign their apps to accommodate the new change.

Even though the iOS 6 update hasn’t gone public yet, pirated ‘developers’ preview’ versions are already available on Chinese websites. Early adopters who can’t wait to get a taste of the new fruit can get a trial version iOS 6 for 30 yuan on Taobao, China’s biggest online consumer-to-consumer marketplace (similar to eBay). A preview version of Mountain Lion, Apple’s next generation desktop operating system is also available for download for 10 yuan. Reviews of the new operating systems are mostly positive but there are also plenty of reported glitches. Some users noted on Weibo that their devices ‘turned into bricks’ due to unsuccessful updates, and some of them were unable to open old apps after the update.

****

The Chinese smartphone market is the largest in the world, accounting for 22% of worldwide smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2012. There are around one billion mobile phone users, and many of them are contemplating buying their first smart phone. In a Danwei survey of 209 Chinese mobile users conducted in March 2012 we found that 96% owned smart phones, and 94% of them used mobile phones to access the internet. The majority used Android phones. Our sample comprised only Weibo users, so is not representative of the general population. Not yet.

Cheaper smartphone brands are growing in popularity as their quality rises. 40% of Chinese smart phones are expected to cost less than $200 [around 1,200 yuan] by 2015, yet so far the only budget Chinese smartphone that has successfully built a brand and achieved a certain amount of cool status along the lines of Apple is Xiaomi, a phone that runs on a version of Google’s Android operating system called MIUI. Xiaomi currently offers only one model, priced at 1,999 yuan. The phone looks a little like an iPhone, and comes in a range of colors. Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun (雷军) is sometimes criticized for aping the fashion sense and stage manners of Steve Jobs (black shirt, blue jeans etc.). The Xiaomi offers itself rather blatantly as a cheap alternative to the iPhone.

Xiaomi is doing very well, selling 150,000 smart phones in only 12 minutes earlier this year according to this report. This is reflected on social media: as of this writing, more than 62 million messages on Weibo are about Xiaomi, compared to just over ten million about Meizu, Xiaomi’s main rival in the Chinese branded smartphone market. This is extraordinary since the phone was only launched in August 2011, and Lei Jun’s previous company Kingsoft is known for making anti-virus software, and had no expertise in hardware manufacturing.

Xiaomi is not the only new Chinese player to join the smartphone race: Early this year, Shanda, a NASDAQ-listed giant in online gaming and online publishing, entered the fray and has made its budget dual-core Bambook available for pre-order, with the official release date now imminent (June 28). Qihoo 360, a controversial anti-virus software company announced its intention to sell smartphones and has promised a device to be priced under 1,000 yuan. OPPO, a maker of consumer electronics, is breaking away from DVD and MP3 players it is known for to tease Chinese crowds with Finder, the world’s slimmest smart phone which is now available for pre-order for a whopping 3,999 yuan. Search engine Baidu is also entering the fray with the Changhong H5018 that will make use of the company’s cloud technology to offer 100 Gigabytes of free storage space.

With so many players in the market, a price war is looming.

****

Yet none of the Chinese smartphone brands mentioned above can draw the same kind of attention given to the iPhone as a marker of status, and this is reflected by the more than 273 million (and counting) messages on Sina Weibo that contain the key word iPhone. In comparison, there are just over 64 million messages that mention Android. (The gap is partially explained by the fact that Android is the operating system used by several different brands, and consumers are more likely to mention the phone brand than the operating system. There are over 12 million messages that mention Android in direct comparison with Apple’s iOS.)

Despite the attention, the iPhone’s market share in the Chinese smart phone market is only just over 8%, but the phone’s position as a status symbol and object of desire is firmly entrenched in the minds of China’s consumers. Thus the iPhone serves as a status symbol not unlike car ownership. This is reflected in Weibo conversations where people often associate the iPhone with ‘second-generation rich’ (fu er dai 富二代), young people born into wealth, whose photos of themselves show off their Ferraris and Hermès Birkin handbags, much to the chagrin of other netizens.

A retweeted message about iPhone is the following joke:

I really don’t want to work now, but I have to because son, I want you to own an iPhone N when you grow up, so you won’t have to masturbate, and you can become a tall, handsome, rich guy and pick up girls.

I really don’t want to work now, but I have to because daughter, I want you to use iPhone N when you grow up and be able to afford to buy an air ticket to go home, so you won’t be tempted by tall, handsome and rich guys who promise you an iPhone.

The myth that an iPhone can improve one’s chances of hooking up is partly substantiated by the prevalent use of flirting apps that come in handy on an iPhone. One such tool is Weixin. Developed by Tencent, the app enables users to befriend any other users who are near and send messages to random users. There are enough reports of success to warrant the app the title of ‘app of one-night stands (约泡 or 一夜)’.

Apple remains the dominant luxury phone brand, and this is unlikely to change. But the most interesting developments in China’s mobile phone industry will now take place in the low- to mid-price range, where rapid innovation, lawsuits and a price war are already under way. Users of these phones, mere mortals of the smartphone world, will have to settle for Android 4.0 operating systems, which in this writer’s view is not much of a sacrifice at all. Maybe even a step up.

Links and sources
China Yahoo: 推出中文Siri 普通语粤语带更多中国化功能
Sina Tech: iOS 6本地化令中国同行不安：或演变成进化战争
Taobao: 提前体验iOS6 beta特性 Udid 激活Iphone4S 开发者帐号 信誉第一
Taobao: mountain-lion 苹果 MAC 软件 系统 10.8 在线 更新 apple美洲狮
Inside Apple: China passes US in smartphone usage, over a billion mobile subscribers overall
The Next Web Asia: China’s affordable mobile revolution: 40% of smartphones will be sub-$200 by 2015
The China Daily: Xiaomi sells 150,000 smartphones in 12 mins
Forbes: China IPO: Qihoo’s Zhou Wins Big While His Rivals Simmer
Android Authority: Oppo Finder, the world’s thinnest smartphone, goes up for pre-order on June 6
Baidu Beat: Baidu Cloud smartphone unveiled
HC360: 国产低端机挤压苹果 iPhone市场份额仅8%

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Shenzhou 9 is in space, why aren’t public intellectuals happy?

Posted on 2012-06-25 by Julien Leyre

shenzhou 9

This is the 1510 Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published in Chinese on My1510.cn, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.

Shenzhou 9 is in heaven, why aren’t public intellectuals happy?
By He Renyong, June 17 2012
The recent launch of spaceship Shenzhou 9 was accompanied with loud acclaim from the official media – and a wave of criticism from public intellectuals. Criticism ran along two main lines. The first was the low quality of the space technology. The other was the use of public money to fund a space program when China has so many social issues to solve: education, inequality, poverty, democratic participation… This post, however, questions the legitimacy of these public intellectuals to represent ‘unhappy China’, ironically suggesting that they might have developed criticism into a business. This post was very widely read on 1510 and attracted a lot of comments – some of them very critical.
Original link: 神九上天，公知们为什么不高兴？

Why do I get angry so easily? 
By Rose Luqiu Luwei, June 19 2012
Who has never complained about bad service in China? And who has never witnessed an abusive customer shouting at a waiter, clerk or flight attendant? Starting from scenes in taxis, buses or planes, Rose Luqiu Luwei reflects on dysfunctional service relationships in mainland China.
Original link: 我为什麽那样容易生气？

Why does the Chinese elite emigrate? 
By Feng Qingyang, June 15 2012
According to a recent report, China has become the world’s top nation of emigration, with 45 million Chinese-born people living overseas. Of particular concern is that fact that the Chinese economic and intellectual elites are migrating in large numbers. This article explores the reasons for this massive emigration: an inadequate education system, healthier living conditions overseas, safety reasons (including investment safety), and the ease of travel that a foreign passport offers. To conclude, the author proposes that developing ‘soft power’ to increase emotional attachment to the motherland and to reassure the elite about their present and future safety in the country is the only way for China to retain the people it needs to build up its future.
Original link: 中国的富豪和精英为什么移民？

Smoking ban in Hong Kong
By Wei Yingjie, June 17 2012
Hong Kong has very strict anti-smoking regulations, as this visitor from mainland China discovers on his trip. This post, however, goes beyond the anecdotal description of anti-smoking notices on bins. It provides a reflection on why Hong Kong regulations are effective and respected: not so much because the punishment if severe, but because regulations are strictly enforced. This may be a model for mainland China to emulate.
Original link: 在香港遭遇禁烟

Evaluating Chinese Science and technology (1) and (2)
By Wang Xiaoping, June 17 2012
This post presents an interview with Economics Professor Cheng Xiaonong about the state of Chinese R&D, assessing whether China is indeed about to catch up with developed countries in industrial innovation.

The first part of the interview focuses on the distinction between military and civilian industries in China. Communist countries in general can develop military technology because they can focus a large number of resources on a specific project. However, this comes at the expense of civilian technology development: the best researchers are moved away from civilian technology, and the highly controlled environment of military R&D is not conducive to creative dialogue among scientists.

But even in this field, China has not matched the the achievements of the USSR. The Chinese military industry has mostly reproduced existing models rather than developed original technology. Furthermore, because civilian technology is underdeveloped, raw materials produced in China often do not meet quality standards, and therefore have to be imported.

The second part of the interview focuses on the Chinese ‘knockoff’ industry (山寨 /shanzhai). Unlike what happens in the West, military and civilian industries are completely distinct systems in China. The military industry relies on government funding, and is not subject to any market forces. It can tolerate high levels of defective products, and often fails to meet quality standards. Overall, Chinese industrial standards are low and unstable, both for processes and the quality of raw materials – for instance, ball pens are assembled in China, but the metal ball has to be imported. Apart from a few very low quality products, nothing in China is entirely produced in the country. As a result, the whole industrial system is fragile.

The main R&D model in China is based on the shanzhai model. Businesses (as well as researchers) seek short-term profit. Importing core elements and developing a knockoff is cheaper than developing new technology. Beside, intellectual property is not respected. R&D investments are therefore at risk of being copied and never yielding returns. However, the media lets people believe that these knockoffs are actually original developments from China, causing a false impression of real technological progress. The shanzhaimodel can also lead to security issues – like in the case of the Wenzhou train incident: the Chinese high-speed train system is itself a knockoff, a hybrid of German, French and Japanese technology, which Chinese engineers failed to perfectly integrate.
Original article, part 1: 如何评价中国的科技现状？（上）
Original article, part 2: 如何评价中国的科技现状？（下）

All articles in this digest and a large range of other Chinese readings are accessible at Marcopoloproject.org. Some are available in English, French and Spanish translation. (You can join the project if you’d like to help with translations.)

Danwei is an affiliate of the Australian Centre on China in the World at The Australian National University. This posting is a result of one project that is part of that on-going collaboration.

China Heritage Quarterly and East Asian History are two other publications supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World.

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For 200 yuan, cab driver returns lost cell phone

Posted on 2012-06-25 by Allison Carol Goldman

June 25

The front page of today’s Chutian Metropolis Daily features a big red headline: “For how many students will the gates to their dreams open today?” The story announces that the results of the gaokao, China’s highly competitive national university entrance examination, will be announced around noon today. Students will be able to check their results online or collect a results slip from their schools.

A second headline reads: “online speculation on the price of gold costs clients over 70 million RMB.” The article describes how, for the first time, 9 executives at a Hong Kong-based firm will be taken to trial for encouraging clients on the mainland to engage in online speculation over the price of gold, which earned the executives a hefty commission but eventually caused the investors to lose upwards of 70 million yuan. The trial will take place this week in Hubei province, in the Jingzhou city court.

At the bottom of the page, the cartoon picture shows a mean looking cabbie holding out a crying cell phone to a young girl, under the caption: “Give me 200 RMB and I’ll give you back your phone.” That caption basically sums up the story, which was based off some recent postings on Weibo. It seems a young girl accidentally left her cell phone in a cab and when she realized it was missing, called the phone. The cab driver answered and said he’d return the phone for 100 RMB. She agreed, but he then changed his mind and doubled the price. Eventually she agreed to pay up and received her phone back. The incident sparked a lively debate among Weibo users over the morality of the cab driver charging so much for the return of her phone. While some said it was wrong, others argued that the sum he asked for was much less than the phone was worth.

The Chutian Metropolis Daily is a daily newspaper under the Hubei Daily Group that features local, national and international news and current affairs, plus background reports on science, education and health. 

Links and Sources
Chutian Metropolis Daily: 多少学子的希望之门今日开启，网络炒金致客户亏损7000余万元，女孩手机遗落的士上 司机索要200元

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Questions for an editor

Posted on 2012-06-21 by Jeremy Goldkorn

SCMP

This is Danwei Week, a summary of the most important China stories from the last seven days. We’ll choose a maximum of five topics per week, and try to link to the best coverage of them in English. Let us know your suggestions or send hate mail to: feedback -at- danwei dot com.

Questions for the editor of the South China Morning Post
From Asia Sentinel:

Journalistic ethics questioned at SCMP
A decision by the South China Morning Post’s new editor in chief, Wang Xiangwei, to reduce a major breaking story on the suspicious death of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang in a Hunan hospital to a brief has kicked off a new controversy at the paper.

Reuters picked up on the story, titling it ‘China casts long shadow as Hong Kong paper stands accused of censorship’ (link). Asia Sentinel followed up with a piece reflecting statements from Wang Xiangwei: ‘SCMP Editor Says He Didn’t Downplay Dissident’s Death’ (link). The article notes:

The South China Morning Post has long been considered a largely objective observer of affairs in the mainland and an important window into the country for diplomats, businessmen and others, giving it an outsize importance in the region.

That may have once been true, and the South China Morning Post remains influential in Hong Kong. But in mainland China and across Asia, in Europe, Australia and the USA, the Post has almost no influence at all thanks to its Cretaceous digital policy.

Niubi (the Twitter winner of Danwei’s Model Worker awards) has more influence on global ‘diplomats, businessmen and others’ than the poor old Post, with its doomed business model, absence from the open Internet, and reliance on the patronage of the Kuok family. The Post‘s slide into irrelevance is a shame, but it’s already a mere sideshow thanks to a decade of dumb digital decisions.

One ought perhaps not to be too critical of the pompous tone of Wang Xiangwei’s emails as reported in the articles mentioned above. He is merely continuing a South China Morning Post tradition of supercilious and humorless actions by chief editors. In 2007, for example, then editor Mark Clifford fired two staff members for producing an in-house spoof of the newspaper’s front page as a gift for a departing colleague. See Asia Sentinel’s report No Joking Please, We’re Journalists, and on ESWN, The Cultural Gap in Hong Kong Journalism.

Space travel and abortions: ‘One woman touches heaven, another hell’
On Saturday, Liu Yang became China’s first female astronaut as the Shenzhou 9 launched into outerspace. The Shenzhou 9 later succeeded in successfully docking with the spacecraft Tiangong 1, China’s first such docking with a crew of astronauts on board. (You can watch the video here, or see Xinhua’s official coverageand graphics.

Back on earth, many Chinese Weibo users contrasted Liu Yang’s journey to the heavens with a far less fortunate woman: Feng Jianmei, a resident of rural Shaanxi, was forced to abort her seven-month old fetus due to her inability to pay a 40,000 yuan fine. A horrific photograph of mother and dead fetus lying together on a hospital bed was circulating online at that same time state media were blasting the nation with images of Shenzhou 9 and the female taikonaut on board. On Weibo, users circulated photo montages showing a smiling Liu Yang together with Feng and her dead fetus. Race car driver and blogger Han Han summed up the situation in a short comment: “One country, two words: torn apart.”
Tea Leaf Nation has the best roundup of Chinese Internet discussion of the above: Netizens Reflect As One Chinese Woman Touches Heaven, Another Hell. See also Evan Osnos at The New Yorker: Abortion and politics in China.

Death of Nigerian man prompts street demonstrations by Africans in Guangzhou
From the Wall Street Journal‘s China blog:

Protests by Africans in Guangzhou this week over the death of a Nigerian man in police custody prompted wide reactions online and served to draw attention to tensions between locals and the southern city’s large population of African immigrants.(link)

The China Daily reports that the ‘Nigerian embassy in Beijing has sent officials to Guangzhou to cope with the investigation of a Nigerian’s death in police custody’ (link).

ChinaSMACK covers some of the Chinese Internet reactions; predictably, there are many racist comments about ‘black devils’ and such.

Drogba to China
One African man is getting a much friendlier reception in China: the football player Drogba who is from the west African country of Côte d’Ivoire. The Guardian reports: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jun/20/didier-drogba-joins-shanghai-shenhua

On the subject of football, another must read this week is Playing fake ball: Why Chinese soccer matters by The New Yorker‘s Evan Osnos. Read it together with the preciously-titled Little red card: Why China fails at football, published in December 2011 in The Economist.

Posted in Business and the Economy, Consumer Culture, Crime and Corruption, Danwei Week, Internet and Media, Urban Culture and Cities | Tagged | Comments Off on Questions for an editor

Wang Yang considers the economy

Posted on 2012-06-21 by Allison Carol Goldman

June 21 Dongguan Times

The top headline on the front page of today’s Dongguan Times: “Wang Yang strongly supports the ‘three crackdowns two developments’ (三打两建)”. The picture shows him at the Dongguan investigation bureau, hearing a report on the ‘three crackdowns two developments’. On the table in front of him are drugs, counterfeit cash and illegal weapons.

Wang Yang is the Provincial Party Secretary of Guangdong Province, and a member of the CPC Central Committee. He is the representative of what has been called the “Guangdong Model.” In contrast the state-led, neo-Maoist “Chongqing Model” pioneered by Bo Xilai before his recent fall from power, Wang’s way is seen as more private-enterprise friendly and politically liberal. Last month, Wang caused a stir on twitter by commenting at the Party Congress that it’s not the Party’s role to bestow happiness on the people like a feudal leader. (See Danwei link below for more information)

In today’s article, Wang Yang discusses the recent economic slowdown in his Province and what should be done. He praises the work of the Dongguan municipal government, but says that more needs to be done in terms of structural adjustments to the economy. This means pursuing the goals of reform and opening up even more strongly, abiding by the new slogan: ‘three crackdowns two developments.’ The ‘three crackdowns’ refers to cracking down more severely on crime, while the ‘two developments’ mean strengthening the rule of law and supporting a good international economic market environment.

Links and Sources
Dongguan Times: 汪洋充分肯定 东莞“三打两建” 
Danwei: Wang Yang says it’s not the Party’s role to bestow happiness on the people ;  Wang Yang’s not lying low

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3-year-old falls out the window, gets head caught in rail before being rescued

Posted on 2012-06-20 by Allison Carol Goldman

June 20 Today Morning News

The front page of today’s Today Morning News shows pictures of a man rescuing a 3-year-old boy who had fallen out the window of his Ningbo apartment and got his head stuck in the anti-theft grate outside, so that he was dangling by his neck. The headline: “Ningbo has its own ‘big brother’”.

The incident happened two days ago. Xiao Liu, an agile air-conditioner installation worker from Sichuan province, sitting in his own apartment playing computer games when he heard the screams of a child and saw the boy dangling from a third-floor window of the apartment building opposite his, about to fall. He bolted down 6 flights of stairs and scaled the other building to where the boy was stuck. Clinging to the outside of the building, with one foot on the second-floor anti-theft grate, he managed to support the boy’s body with one hand for 20 minutes until firefighters arrived to cut the iron railing and free the boy. The child was saved, and Xiao Liu became a local hero overnight.

When the reporter interviewed him for the story, Xiao Liu simply said, “When you see other people in trouble, its normal to help them.”

Strangely, this is not the first time a story like this has come up. Already this month, similar cases of kids falling out windows and getting their heads stuck until a kind-hearted and nimble bystander climbs up to rescue them have occurred twice: once in Guangdong province and once in Guangxi. For more details about these other stories, and video clips of the incidents themselves, follow the Beijing Cream link below.

Links and Sources 
Today Morning News: 宁波也出了个“托举哥” 
Beijing Cream: Another young child gets head caught between railings before getting rescued  

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Three taikonauts smile and wave

Posted on 2012-06-19 by Allison Carol Goldman

June 19 Nanfangdushibao

The front page of the Southern Metropolis Daily today shows a picture of the three astronauts China has sent into space aboard the Shenzhou 9 space craft. The headline, ;Realized Dream Tiangong’ refers to the Tiangong 1 Space Lab, and the fact that the Shenzhou 9 has now successfully docked with it.

Chinese astronauts are often called ‘taikonauts’, (a combination of the Chinese word, ‘taikong‘ (太空 space) and the Greek, ‘naut’ (traveler). The three taikonauts on this mission include: Liu Yang, Jing Haipeng and Liu Wang. Liu Yang is the first woman China has ever sent into space. Last week China announced two contenders for the job, and then kicked Liu’s competitor Wang Yaping out of the running for the mission (see Danwei stpry linked below).

The current Shenzhou 9 mission is China’s fourth manned foray into space (the last was in 2008). It follows an unmanned mission last year, when the Shenzhou 8 docked successfully at the Tiangong Space Lab. Now, the three  taikonauts aboard the Shenzhou 9 will attempt the country’s first manned space docking. If successful, they will have accomplished an important prerequisite to setting up a national space state or space laboratory.

The docking that has already been carried out was an automated procedure, meaning that computers controlled the whole process. In a few days, the crew will attempt a manual docking, meaning they will decouple the Shenzhou 9 from the Tiangong Lab, retreat to a defined distance and then command their ship to re-attach itself. The article is full of optimistic projections for the success of this manual docking, and includes many pictures of the taikonauts maneuvering around the gravity-free Tiangong Space Lab.

Links and Sources
Southern Metropolis Daily: 梦圆天宫
Danwei: China’s first woman in space
BBC News: Shenzhou-9 docks with Tiangong-1 

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Model Workers 2012

Posted on 2012-06-19 by Danwei

Model Workers 2012

Today we present the Danwei Model Worker Awards 2012, a list of the best specialist websites, blogs and online sources of information about China.

The first Danwei Model Worker list came out in 2005. You can find links to all previous editions of this list at the bottom of this posting. This year, we thoroughly debated every website on the list. We’ve been stricter than in the past by excluding some sites that have not updated regularly, that have have strayed too far from their focus, written at too much or too little length, and those that have turned their blog into a mere feed of tweets. We’ve also reduced our list of people to follow on Twitter to just ten, plus a winner.

We’ll update this list over the next month if we discover any site we’ve omitted, so if you have suggestions for websites we’ve left out, please take to Facebook and Twitter, or email feedback -at- danwei dot com.

★★★★★

ChinaSMACK
Model Worker of the Year 2012 – Blogs and Websites
ChinaSMACK is an entertaining crash course in Chinese Internet culture, as seen by Chinese Internet users themselves. The site publishes translations of popular stories and postings, together with summaries and translations of user comments. Stories range from the wildly sensationalistic to the more serious, and include subjects like car accidents, sex, crime, corruption, social issues, education and misbehaving foreigners. ChinaSMACK’s Glossary is a useful reference guide to Internet slang as used behind the Great Firewall.

Some object to the site’s occasionally lurid headlines and use of graphic images. But we’ve selected ChinaSMACK as Model Worker of the Year for 2012 because the site has consistently highlighted stories that excite Chinese Internet users, rather than subjects that conform to a journalistic conception of news. This is what blogs and niche media are made for.

 

Bill Bishop
Model Worker of the Year 2012 – Twitter
Niubi is the Twitter name of Bill Bishop, an American living in Beijing who has worked as a translator and media entrepreneur in China and the U.S. He co-founded CBS MarketWatch and saw it through to its sale in 2004 to Dow Jones. Bishop tweets continuously on Chinese life, scandals, news, economics, finance, the culture of the super rich in Beijing, Chinese Internet and media, Western commentary and journalism on China, air quality, and just about anything else you care to know about China. Bishop also blogs at DigiCha, and Sinocism where he publishes annotated indexes of the material he tweets about.

★

 

BLOGS – Runners Up
Below are the other Model of Workers of 2012 in the blogs and websites section.

ART AND DESIGN

88-bar
Articles and commentary about Chinese contemporary design, news and tech. Team includes Tricia Wangand Jin Ge, both of whose personal blogs are worth following.

Artspace China
Detailed analysis of Chinese contemporary art forms with added reviews and interviews.

The Great Flourishing
Arts and culture in contemporary China by a husband and wife team: Sheila Melvin has been writing about arts and culture in China for more than 15 years; Cai Jindong is an orchestra conductor and professor at Stanford University.

★

MEDIA AND THE INTERNET

Blocked on Weibo
An archive of words and phrases that are blocked or filtered on popular Chinese microblog Sina Weibo; each entry includes an explanation of the probable cause of the block.

China Daily Show
Spoof news site that came into its own during the Bo Xilai scandal.

China Digital Times
News, issues, translations and aggregation. Two special sections worth mentioning are the Grass Mud Horse Lexicon, which is an excellent glossary of online slang and subversive puns, and Directives from the Ministry of Truth, an archive of propaganda and censorship instructions.

China Hush
Translations, vignettes and memes from Chinese social media and news articles.

China Media Project
Translation, analysis and commentary on Chinese media, media policy, censorship and journalism. David Bandurski edits the site, and writes many of the articles himself; but China Media project regularly publishes commentary and reportage by important Chinese editors, journalists and academics (see the Fellows page for biographies and links to their work). The site also hosts a growing section of special features, such as the China Media Map, the Media Dictionary, the Anti-Social List of deleted Weibo postings and the News Wire, a feed of summaries of news stories from the Chinese press.

ESWN
Prolific translator, statistician, and polymath Roland Soong’s website ESWN was a long time winner of previous Danwei’s Model Worker awards. Soong has been publishing less frequently in the past few years, but is still always worth reading. ESWN was the site that published the first translations of Chinese heart-throb car-racing blogger Han Han’s Three Essays: Revolution, Democracy and Freedom.

Global Voices China section
Collaborative global blog and translation aggregator; the China section is a good source of links, and at times also publishes timely translations of Chinese Internet reports on breaking news and interesting social commentary.

Free More News
The new English section of a Chinese blog-style news portal devoted to publishing articles about sensitive issues, scandals and breaking news.

Ministry of Tofu
Translations and photo compilations from Chinese social media and news articles.

Offbeat China
Translations and summaries of Internet memes and popular postings.

Paper Republic blog
The blog of an excellent online resource for translators, writers and publishers of translated Chinese fiction.

Shanghaiist
Shanghai news mixed up with links and aggregation of wider China news, expat gossip, and snapshots from Chinese social media. The main man behind the site is Kenneth Tan, who is worth following on Twitter. Sample recent post: Xi’an investigative TV program mistakes a two-way dildo for a rare mushroom.

Tea Leaf Nation
Translations, explanations and commentary on China as seen through social media. This site is frequently updated by a number of authors, and is often the first site to report and compile data about new topics of discussion on the Chinese Internet.

★

CURRENT AFFAIRS AND COMMENTARY

Beijing Cream
Videos, Internet memes, commentary and sarcasm about Chinese life and media.

Blood and Treasure
A preceptive blog about Chinese politics and media, issues of the left and the former Communist world, current events in Britain, China and across the globe and more; can seem cryptic to the novice.

China Rises 
Blog by McClatchey’s Beijing bureau chief Tom Lasseter (see also his Twitter feed).

China Geeks
Essays, articles and translations by Charlie Custer and others; see also Living with Dead Hearts, a documentary film about kidnapped children in China that’s currently in production.

Inside-Out China
Commentary from Xujun Eberlein, a Chinese writer based in the States, recently notable for insights into the Bo Xilai affair and Chongqing after his fall.

Justrecently
Reportage of insider riffs within the Party, recently peppered with an increasing number of translations. This German blogger describes his attitude towards the CCP as “cold-warlike”.

Peking Duck
Discussion of news, social and political issues in China, with a very active comments section.

Rectified Name 
Entertaining new group blog with contributions from Will Moss, a.k.a. Imagethief (one of the funniest commentators on media, PR and life in China), historian Jeremiah Jenne and his better half YJ who also write Jottings from the Granite Studio, translator Brendan O’Kane and Dave Lyons.

Seeing Red in China 
Translations, commentary and current affairs by three bloggers.

Sinostand
Analysis and commentary on news, politics, culture and business.

★

HISTORY AND CULTURE

Asia Society
An Asia portal featuring news and articles in a range of multimedia forms. The Asia Society also produces China Green, and recently announced the immanent launch of a new China-focused site called China File.

China Heritage Quarterly
A publication covering recent developments and scholarship in areas related to China’s heritage, culture, history and society. Recent issues include Tea, the West Lake, the Xinhai Revolution, Shengshi, China’s Prosperous Age, and Yang Xianyi. See also the slowly-developing Glossary.
The China Heritage Quarterly is published by the Australian Centre on China in the World.

China Rhyming
The blog of Midnight in Peking author Paul French, self-described as a ‘gallimaufry of random China history and research interests’.

East Asian History
Online journal of scholarship on East Asia, published by the Australian Centre on China in the World.

Marco Polo Project
The Marco Polo Project publishes a selection of essays, fiction and other writings from established and emerging Chinese writers, submitted and translated by the website’s users. The translations are ‘crowd-sourced’, and the site is looking for new translators.

★

REGIONAL BLOGS AND LIFE IN CHINA

300 Shots at Greatness
A blog by Derek Sandhaus, who is living in Chengdu and questing ‘to answer the following question: can an outsider gain an appreciation for Chinese baijiu‘ (strong liquor made from grain and rice)?’ The blog is a diary of Sandhaus’s stumbling through spirit-fueled enlightenment.

Beijing Boyce
A blog on Beijing’s bar scene, sister to Grape Wall of China, a blog about wine in China.

Beijing Daze
Live music in Beijing and China; see also Noodle Diaries by the same blogger.

Bezdomy ex patria
A Kiwi living in the rural suburbs of Beijing; see his history of Yanqing county.

GoKunming
Blog and events calendar with feature stories about Kunming and Yunnan.

Hao Hao Report
Something like Digg.com for English stories about China, Hao Hao Report is one of the websites run by Ryan McLaughlin. He also manages China Blog Network, a platform for finding and promoting blogs about China, and Lost Laowai, a group blog and forum that disseminates information about life in China for foreigners, including useful stuff for newcomers such as how to set up an English QQ account.

High Peaks Pure Earth
Translations from Tibetan and Chinese language blogs, and commentary on Tibet related news and issues; the only consistent English language source for Tibetan writings from within the People’s Republic.

Liuzhou Laowai
Notes from an Englishman in Liuzhou, Guangxi province. This blog is perhaps the longest-running, currently active digital journal of a lesser known Chinese city.

Shenzhen Noted
A blog devoted to recording Shenzhen’s urbanisation in impressive detail, using photos, translations, original writings and information from the media.

Sinosplice
One of the earliest English language blogs about China, with occasional postings on learning Chinese, Chinese characters and language, and life in Shanghai and China.

The Nanfang
News and translations about the Pearl River Delta, as well as nightlife and cultural events, job ads and other information about life in south eastern China.

★

CHINA ABROAD

China in Africa
A blog by Deborah Brautigam, author of The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, documenting the Chinese presence in Africa.

South Sea Conversations
Translations and analysis of Chinese media reporting and commentary on the South China Sea.

★

BUSINESS AND LAW

Asia Health Care Blog
Group blog about the the health care industry from pharma to hospitals to care of the elderly. Covers Asia but focused on China. Includes section on employment.

Buy Buy China
A website about Chinese consumers, the retail industry and branding.

China Accounting Blog
Paul Gillis’ blog provides detailed insight and accessible commentary on topical accounting issues in China. This is an especially useful resource for following the Big Four corruption scandal.

China Car Times
Developments in the car industry, new models and news, and reporting on Chinese auto shows.

China Economic Review
News, reportage and commentary.

China Hearsay
Commentary on Chinese legal affairs and business by Beijing-based lawyer Stan Abrams.

China Law Blog
Practical commentary on Chinese law and its application to business. Includes lots of no-nonsense advice for small companies and information about general issues of interest to anyone doing business in China.

Chinese Law Prof Blog
Analysis and articles on Chinese legal issues by law professor Donald C. Clarke.

Jerome Cohen’s blog
Blog of the venerable Professor Cohen, most recently in the news for his efforts on behalf of self-taught legal activist Chen Guangcheng.

Jing Daily
Interviews, articles and news about luxury products, marketing and business in China.

Law and Border
Visas and the law for foreigners living in China and emigrating Chinese.

Maosuit
Fashion and couture from an expat seasoned in the industry. Includes plenty of photos and some commentary on the latest Beijing fashion shows and private screenings.

Silicon Hutong
Business, PR, Internet and technology from China media and tech industry veteran David Wolf. See also Wolf’s Twitter feed.

Stylites
A tastefully minimal blog documenting street fashion and the fashion industry in Beijing and beyond.

★

ENVIRONMENTAL AND LABOUR ISSUES

China Dialogue
Bilingual site focusing on China’s environmental issues with contributions from Chinese and global journalists and activists.

China Labour Bulletin
Research and analysis of labor issues and rights.

★

TECH

Tech in Asia
Good China section of Asian tech industry blog.

Technode
Internet and tech industry news. Founded by Lu Gang.

Techrice
The Chinese Internet and digital industries, from startups to established players, founded by Kai Lukoff.

★★★★★

TWITTER – Runners Up
Below are the runners up for the Model of Workers of 2012 — Twitter section. This year we have restricted the list to ten entries.

Black China Hand
Notes from a ‘black criminal defense attorney on the road in the heart of China’, also blogs occasionally at the Black China Hand blog.

China Geeks
Links, news and opinions on current affairs by Charlie Custer of the China Geeks website.

Gady Epstein
News and sark from Beijing-based correspondent for The Economist.

Imagethief
Media, PR and communications in China by Will Moss, who is also behind the Imagethief blog.

Josh Chin
Editor of the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report.

M Taylor Fravel 
A China security expert tweeting on maritime issues and militarization.

Malcolm Moore
Beijing-based correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, Moore used his Twitter feed to break the first English news of the Wukan standoff in Guangdong province in 2012.

Relevant Organs
‘China’s soft-power vanguard, rectifying your thought since 2010′. You WILL follow it.

Tania Branigan
The Beijing correspondent for the Guardian.

Victor Shih
Politics, economics and finance.

★★★★★

PODCASTS

AmCham China
Interviews with industry experts, government officials, academics and journalists.

Artman Talks
Interviews with writers, industry experts and bloggers about Chinese subjects. Artman also co-hosts China Punks, a podcast with C, Custer of the China Geeks blog mentioned above.

China in Africa podcast
Podcast series connected to the China Africa Project by Eric Olander.

China History Podcast 
Weekly podcast by Laszlo Montgomery on various topics from ancient history to very recent history. The podcast is non-chronological, jumping back-and-forth between different periods.

China Money
A podcast focused on economics, finance and investing in China, featuring economists, fund managers and analysts.

McKinsey China
Detailed conversations on business and economy in China from the suits.

Sinica
A talk show style weekly podcast with new guests every week who are industry experts, journalists and academics, Sinica is co-hosted by Kaiser Kuo and (let this count as disclosure) Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn.

★★★★★

VIDEOS

Charlie Custer for Link Asia
Video blog by Charlie Custer of China Geeks, with commentary on topics in the news media and current affairs.

USC China Institute Youtube Channel
Documentaries and video footage of lectures and speeches from the University of Southern California’s China Institute.

★★★★★

CHINA SECTIONS AND BLOGS OF MAJOR NEWS MEDIA
James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly (not all about China)
Adam Minter on Bloomberg, see also his blog Shanghai Scrap
The Economist’s Analects blog
The Financial Times
The Guardian
MSNBC’s Behind the Wall blog
The New York Times
Blog by the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos
The Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report

★★★★★

PHOTOGRAPHY BLOGS
Rian Dundon
Peter Carney
Sean Gallagher
Jonah Kessel
James Wasserman
Janek Zdzarski

★★★★★

PREVIOUS MODEL WORKERS
2011 
2010
2008 (Olympic edition): English, Chinese, supplement
2007: English, Chinese, supplement
2006: Chinese blogs — a list of favorites
2005: Inaugural Model Workers

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Anyone seen Lei Feng?

Posted on 2012-06-18 by Allison Carol Goldman

Guizhoudushibao June 18

The front page of the Guizhou Metropolis Daily today features a large photo of Lei Feng, with the headline: “Who has seen him?”

The article says the whole city of Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, has mobilized in search of the true ‘Lei Fengs’ among them. Lei Feng was a Mao era soldier who was held up as a selfless and modest person and posthumously became the subject of a massive propaganda campaign: ‘Learn from Comrade Lei Feng’ (向雷锋同志学习). Lei Feng often features in various propaganda campaigns.

Now, as of June 17, the Guiyang Culture Office  is recommending a series of online activities that revive the old propaganda slogans in an effort to make the people of Guiyang strive to learn from Lei Feng together, see the good in others’ actions and decide to become ‘good people’. The program will continue until December 20, 2012.

It is understood by everyone that the program will help the whole society ‘take pleasure in helping others’ (助人为乐)， ‘have the courage to defend a just cause’ (见义勇为) , ‘be honest and true’ (城市守信), ‘be dedicated to their work’ (敬业奉献”) and ‘piously love their parents’ (孝老爱亲).  Furthermore, the program hopes to encourage more morally advanced people to do extraordinary things, and create a strong social atmosphere of striving to be better.

At the end of the program, one person will be selected as the ‘most decent person in Guiyang’. They will be sent on to participate in the ‘most decent person in China’ public choice awards ( ‘中国好人榜’ 评选).

Also on the front page: a headline about China’s most recent space launch. The Shenzhen No. 9 space shuttle is now safely on its way. The three astronauts who will carry out China’s first manned space docking, Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and Liu Yang, are all safe and in good condition. Liu Yang is now the first Chinese woman ever to go into space.

Links and Sources
Guizhou Metropolis Daily: 谁见过: 贵阳全城动员寻找雷锋;
神九变轨　宇航员换装
Danwei: China’s first woman in space ;
China’s everyday heroes take their lead from the CPC ;
Lei Feng in the age of the microblog 

Posted in Front Page of the Day, School and Education, Urban Culture and Cities | Tagged , | Comments Off on Anyone seen Lei Feng?

Bao Tong on McDonald’s coffee; transsexual retired official

Posted on 2012-06-15 by Rebecca Bailey

Qian Jinfan, octogenarian and transgender woman

The Danwei Week is a new weekly experiment: we’ll introduce five and only five English articles, blog postings or other newly published materials that we consider the essential reading about China from the last week.

Here are this week’s readings:

‘In the current system, I’d be corrupt too’: An interview with Bao Tong
On the New York Review of Books‘ website, Ian Johnson interviews Bao Tong, a 79-year-old, partially blind counter revolutionary and former senior official. They met a McDonald’s in Beijing, after secret police refused Johnson permission to enter Bao’s apartment building. Bao is a fan of the unlimited coffee refills at McDonald’s.

Man enough to be a woman at 84
Shanghaiist summarizes a Southern Metropolitan Daily story about Qian Jinfan (钱今凡), an ’84-year-old calligrapher, art critic and retired government official based in Foshan, has become China’s oldest openly transgender individual’ (pictured above).

It was not until December 2008, at the grand old age of 80, did Qian feel the time was now or never to start taking female hormones, and to dress as a woman.
Shortly after embarking on transition, she wrote to the Foshan Cultural, Radio, Television, News and Publication Bureau, where she once worked, explaining her decision. She was afraid that she would lose all her retirement benefits.
“At first, I prepared to defend myself at whatever it would cost, but then I found I had been accepted already,” said Qian. “Their tolerance towards transgenders was beyond my imagination.”

China: 23 arrested in U.S. gun scheme
The AP reported on Tuesday that 23 people had been arrested in connection with a gun trafficking ring, in a joint US-Chinese investigation that has been in operation since last August. The latest arrests took place in 16 provinces in China and resulted in the seizure of 93 weapons, multiple gun parts and more than 50,000 bullets. The arrests follow on from the detention last month in the US of three other men involved in the scheme. The US Embassy in Beijing praised the joint investigation, and stated that it might pave the way for ‘even greater law enforcement cooperation in the future.’

7-month pregnant woman forced into labor to abort unborn Baby
On ChinaSmack:

Recently, a forum post said that the Government of Zengjia Town, Zhenping County, Ankang City, Shaanxi Province illegally took a 7-month-pregnant woman into custody, and forcibly induced labor in order to abort her unborn child. The pregnant woman, Feng Jianmei from Ankang City, was unable to pay the fine of 40,000 RMB for breaking the One-Child Policy, and was illegally taken into custody by the local town government, and forced to abort her baby.

Photos of Feng lying next to the body of her aborted baby have been widely circulated on the Internet, causing outrage (e.g. see Sina Weibo and iFeng). The Chinasmack posting linked above translates some of the comments. See also Go Bo writing on MSNBC’s website: Gruesome photos put spotlight on China’s one-child policy.

Huawei, ZTE execs sentenced to ten years for corruption in Algeria
An Algerian court has convicted ZTE’s Dong Tao and Chen Zhibo, and Huawei’s Xiao Chunfa of corruption, and sentenced them to ten years in prison. The three men were tried in absentia, and accused of using bribery to try and gain advantages for their companies with the state-owned Algérie-Télécom. Huawei and ZTE have both been fined and banned from entering partnerships with state-owned companies in  Algeria for two years. Although it is highly improbable that the men would be extradited and so have to serve their sentences , this episode will do little to promote Chinese technology companies’ reputation abroad.

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