Bo Xilai quotes “In Memory of Norman Bethune” from memory

Posted on 2011-03-02 by Alice Xin Liu
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Chongqing Evening News, March 2, 2011

Bo Xilai is the Secretary of the CPC Committee of Chongqing, a favorite of the media because of his relaxed attitude and for organizing the campaign against corruption in Chongqing last year.

In a title granting ceremony that opened in Chongqing yesterday, Bo once again showed his love for using Communist material in his speeches and dedications. His speech refers to passages from Lei Feng’s life, and from Mao’s article “In Memory of Norman Bethune”, which the Secretary reels off by heart, including passages like:

What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people’s liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn.

Bo was awarding a group of doctors from Chongqing, and with his recitation he presented them with a statue of Bethune.

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Chang Ping talks about “being resigned” and the future

Posted on 2011-03-01 by Alice Xin Liu
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Chang Ping speaking at Fudan University in 2010, photo by Hong Jianpeng (洪坚鹏)

Chang Ping (长平), a journalist at the Southern Media Group, was forced to quit at the end of January. The Guardian reported that Chang said “It is not just because of one particular article, it is because I have always written critical articles.” In 2008, during the time of the Tibet riots, Chang Ping wrote an editorial in Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报) saying that reporting of Tibet should be more open. After that, he had quietly gone back to working for the Southern Media Group.

Chang Ping speaks to Danwei just before the Spring Festival break about the forced resignation.

Danwei: In your interview to foreign media, you said that “being resigned” was due to your accumulated essays rather than individual essays. Why are you “being resigned” now?

Chang Ping: Because of “being resigned,” the cause isn’t with me. Also the system operates under the characteristic of operating behind the scenes, to the extent f not leaving a trace behind the scenes, therefore very few people know the specific reason. We can only analyze and guess, now they want me to quit, it’s because the authorities are more nervous, and are under higher pressure.

Danwei: In your point of view, talking in the short term, when will Chinese media become relatively loosened up?

Chang Ping: The end of the autocratic system is hard to guess. It won’t automatically stop, but needs to see the extent of social resistance. From the viewpoint of the authorities, the trend of controlling of the media is getting tighter, and the control is becoming more and more effective; but from the point of view of the media, when the banning reaches an extreme, the wall will fall one day. Many people look to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, but they have forgotten when the media had high hopes for the “Hu-Wen system.”

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Swimsuit contest to enter college

Posted on 2011-03-01 by Jeremy Goldkorn
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Chutian Jinbao,

Today the front page of Hubei newspaper Chutian Jinbao is a hodgepodge of news, a wonderful snapshot of contemporary China:

10,000 officials to go to 10,000 villages and 10,000 homes

The top headline describes a new program of the Hubei provincial government: officials plan to visit rural and urban households to check on the people’s situation and listen to their concerns.

This seems to be part of a nationwide move for the government to be or seem to be more responsive to citizen concerns (see also Wen Jiabao’s chat with netizens). While such efforts are not new, there does seem to be an increase in media reports about such citizen outreach programs, possibly connected to the protests in the Middle East and the so far unheeded calls for similar demonstrations in China.

Bikini beauty contest to enter college

The large photo is captioned: “Performance major competition: 
Yesterday, there was a lively atmosphere at the entrance tests for modeling and design majors at the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts…

… More than 400 middle school students from across the nation took part in the competition for 24 places.”

Bikini beauty competitions seem to be catching on as a form of entrance examination: this gallery of photos of a similar college course entrance competition in Qingdao has been circulating widely on the Internet since it was published a few weeks ago.

March 15, Consumer Day

The smaller pink headline announces that Chutian Jinbao’s Consumer Day activity is starting. March 15 is a date that large companies that sell consumer products in China have grown to hate: newspapers and TV programs use the date to organize investigations into companies suspected of harming consumers.

Although there is plenty of legitimate consumer activism, some media have the reputation of using threats of negative Consumer Day coverage to extort advertising fees from companies.

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Dancing with shackles on

Posted on 2011-03-01 by Danwei

The Chinese Internet and living with censorship: a short film of interviews by Desiree Marianini and Janek Zdzarski with Keso, Wang Xiaofeng, Qi Youyi and Danwei’s Jeremy Goldkorn.

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Internet chat: Premier Wen promises to raise income tax threshold

Posted on 2011-02-28 by Eric Mu
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Peninsula Metropolitan News, February 28, 2011

During his latest Internet chat with netizens, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised that the government would raise the tax-free threshold for individual income tax this year. Wen made the above statement on Sunday when he had a two-hour long session hosted by Xinhuanet.com answering questions from netizens.

The current 2,000 yuan per month threshold was established in 2008. With the inflation going on and real estate price flying high, there are rancorous complaints among people about the current tax regime, which is believed both obsolete and unfair to the midium-and-low income people.

When being asked whether he had lost heart in checking roaring price of urban home prices, Wen said that he was still trying and confident that, with effort, the prices would return to a reasonable level. When talking about Liu Zhijun, the former Minister of Railway, who was recently arrested on corruption charges, Wen said Liu’s case attested to the government’s determination to punish corruption.

This is third consecutive year Wen has held an online chat in the run up to the ‘liang hui‘, the annual sessions of China’s legislative bodies.

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Inflammable noodles rumor busted!

Posted on 2011-02-25 by Eric Mu
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The Beijing News, February 25th, 2011

Paranoia over food safety runs deep as the incidence of shocking food scandals flies high. It seems here everyone is hyper-sceptic when it comes to what to eat, quick to pick up on suspicious cues and buy into conspiracy theories.

Which is perhaps why a Internet video clip showing freshly pressed noodles easily catch on fire raises so much concern among the noodle-eating public. Rumor has it that that some unknown, likely harmful additives make the wet noodles inflammable. Noodles, after milk powder, and duck blood, are no longer safe, right?

Today’s Beijing News dedicates an entire page discussing the possible causes behind combustible noodles.

A noodle dealer is quoted as saying that there is nothing unusual about burning noodles as the wheat flour that makes them is inflammable. A manager of a noodle producer says that sometimes alcohol is used to keep noodles fresh, which may contribute to their flammability, but he insists that alcohol as a food additive is both legal and safe. A nutrition professor says that common wheat flour additives, such “edible glue”, “elasticizer”, and potassium carbonate, don’t promote combustion, so there is no link between burning noodles and additives.

But the damage has been done: a shop assistant tells the newspaper that customers keep asking him whether weird stuff was in the noodles and a shopper says that she is not going to buy noodles until the truth comes out.

In a separate, but also noodle-related story, five Carrefour staff were hospitalized after eating some noodles stolen from the shelves. The cause remains unclear but nitrite poisoning is suspected.

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National People’s Congress to introduce prison sentences for defected officials

Posted on 2011-02-24 by Eric Mu
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Southern Metropolis Daily, February 24, 2011

The National People’s Congress, China’s highest legislature body, is currently in session with its standing committee members busy themselves voting on new laws. Among the laws to be passed (and passed they almost certainly will be), one in particular attracted the attention of Southern Metropolis Daily, which makes it its top headline today: “Defected officials can be sentenced to a maximum of ten years in prison”.

Turns out that the ten years maximum is only for those whose defections are deemed to be not serious. As the inside report says: government employees who leave their posts without permission, defect to other countries or defect when they are abroad, may face prison terms from five years to ten years. Defectors who are in the position to divulge classified “national secrets” will be punished even more severely.

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Chinese website goes after U.S. Amb. Huntsman for “cheerleading” protests

Posted on 2011-02-23 by Jeremy Goldkorn

M4.cn is a Chinese website that describes itself as “youth thought portal”. It’s a new incarnation of Anti-CNN.com, which became famous in 2008 by pointing out inaccuracies and biases in the foreign media reports about the unrest in Tibet in 2008.

Today, M4.cn published a story and video showing U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. at Wangfujing on Sunday afternoon, when the “jasmine protests” were supposed to take place. The video was also posted to Youtube (see above).

The story and video insinuate that the U.S. and Huntsman’s hand may be behind calls for protest in China.

The U.S. “Embassy spokesman Richard Buangan told AFP he was on a “family outing” and his presence was “purely coincidental”.

Update: Shanghaiist: US ambassador Jon Huntsman now a sensitive term on Chinese microblogs

Update 2: A report about the video has now been broadcast in the U.S. by KSL 5, a Utah-based NBC affiliate.

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China evacuates overseas citizens from Libya

Posted on 2011-02-23 by Eric Mu
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Qilu Evening News, February 23, 2011

Ji’nan-based Qilu Evening News highlights the news of 83 Chinese workers’ safe exit from riot-hit Libya, connecting it to China’s increased effort to evacuate its overseas citizens from danger areas in recent years.

According to the report, around 30 thousand Chinese citizens currently living in Libya, most of them oil workers and construction workers. As the disorder drags on, risk to their life and property is mounting.

On February 20th, a camp of a Zhejiang construction company was broken into and looted by rioters; thousands of workers living there were robbed and forced to leave. The local Chinese embassy says that up till 22nd, 15 Chinese citizens were seriously wounded in the unrest.

The report, which is vague on the nature of the incident, quotes Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Ma Chaoxu as urging the Libyan government to “investigate into the attacks quickly and punish the perpetrators severely”.

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Blowing up the school

Posted on 2011-02-23 by Jeremy Goldkorn

An early episode of Kuang Kuang’s diary, the animated series recently famous for its “bunnies gone wild” Spring Festival episode.

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