‘The Art of Smart Power’: Hillary Clinton

‘The Art of Smart Power’: Hillary Clinton
Woman On Subway Literally Too Hot For Her Shirt
How did China fare hosting the 2008 Olympic Games?
Friday Night Musical Outro: Hanggai – Drinking Song
Dongjiang overloaded
Friday Links: China’s Steve Jobs, Jeremy Lin, and a chengguan who does not give one shit
How to be an Apple smuggler in China
Presented By:
Getting to Know You: Queenie Yehenala
Top 10 Search List (July 20)
CW Heated Debate: Is It Worth Learning Chinese in Shanghai?
Prominent Chinese economist found guilty of ‘artistic crimes’
Getting to Know You: Queenie Yehenala
Six Things to Salivate Over this Weekend
Monsoon: This New Thai Spot Hasn't Quite Got It
Stage Review: East West Theatre's "Adaptation"
Shanghai Weekender: Off with a Bang
Interview: Butch Bradley
Book Review: Jonathan Fenby’s New China Book Tiger Head, Snake Tails
Three of Shanghai's Best Muffins

‘The Art of Smart Power’: Hillary Clinton

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 08:00 PM PDT

I didn't support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Now, after watching her excellent performance as Secretary of State, I hope makes another run in 2016.

She has written 'The Art of Smart Power' that sets forth the principles that underlie her success. In it, among many other things, she places China in its broader international context and in relation to U.S. interests:

Yet, as strong as our historical alliances are, we also recognise the need to work with new partners. Because new regional and global centres of influence are quickly emerging – and not just India and China but also countries such as Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, as well as Russia. Some of these are democracies that share many of our core values; others have very different political systems and perspectives.

…

For the US, working with these new players in the years ahead, encouraging them to accept the responsibility that comes with influence and ensuring their full integration into the international order is a critical test for our diplomacy.

A zero-sum approach will only lead to negative-sum results. So we need to find areas where we can work together and strengthen diplomatic mechanisms that build trust and help manage our differences. The Strategic and Economic Dialogue with China that brought me to Beijing in May is a good example….

Our aim is to embed expanding bilateral relationships in a robust international order: to strengthen and mature effective regional and global institutions that can mobilise common action and settle disputes peacefully; to build consensus around rules and norms that help manage relations between peoples, markets and nations; and to establish security arrangements that provide stability and build trust.

And, much more. Well worth reading.

Woman On Subway Literally Too Hot For Her Shirt

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 12:00 PM PDT

In Shenzhen on Tuesday, a woman got into a verbal confrontation with a warden inside a subway station. The woman was wearing just a bra, no shirt. The warden was telling her she was being indecent. The "discussion" proceeded in such a way as to attract someone nearby to begin filming. This is what happened on tape:

Warden: "If you feel it's hot, we can turn up the air conditioner."

Woman: "I won't talk about it with you. I'm wearing clothes now."

Break.

Woman: "I'm hot now. I'm already 39 degrees (Celsius). You still want me to wear clothes? Look at my sweat! You don't have sweat."

Warden: "If you feel like our air conditioner isn't high enough, we can lower the temperature."

Woman: "Turn it on, turn it on, turn it on!"

Break. Then they get on the subway train, and we don't hear what is said. Which is too bad. The discussion was really going somewhere, I think.

Youku video for those in China after the jump.

(H/T Alicia)

How did China fare hosting the 2008 Olympic Games?

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT

CNN's Stan Grant on the impact the 2008 Olympic Games had on Beijing. [ more › ]

Friday Night Musical Outro: Hanggai – Drinking Song

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 07:30 AM PDT

If you haven't heard of Hanggai, you must not live in Beijing. One of the city's — and country's — most popular bands, it specializes in Mongolian folk music but is by no means constrained by that style. Singer Ilchi, an ethnic Mongolian, has established himself as perhaps the most famous "throat singer" in the country. Hanggai produces sounds that are both popular and inimitable, a rare combination in China, giving the band leverage over almost all others — and some international renown (check out NPR's profile of them). The above performance at WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) international festival in 2010 is of one of its best-known songs, "Drinking Song" (酒歌). Would it surprise you to know that the album version of that piece was partly recorded while band members were drunk? It's still great. Youku video for those in China after the jump.

Dongjiang overloaded

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 02:12 AM PDT

The eastern tributary of the Pearl River is the lifeblood of Hong Kong and the regions that surround it in south China. But its precious resources are being misused, writes Liu Su, and there is no sustainable plan for its future.

The Dongjiang, or Dong River, the eastern tributary of the Pearl River in southern China, supports the lives, livelihoods and environment of almost 40 million people in the southern Chinese cities of Heyuan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. It is crucial for the society and economy of Hong Kong and of Guangdong province.

The Hong Kong-based think-tank Civic Exchange carried out a two-week investigation in the Dongjiang basin between October and November last year. This uncovered risks of huge future shortages; cities and industries competing for water; new strains placed on water resources by relocated industries; and a lack of basic protections for village rivers.

First, all of the available water on the Dongjiang is already being used, meaning there is no room for future growth in demand. The Dongjiang basin was the first in China to have a water allocation plan: in 2008, overall limits on the amount of water to be used were set. But by 2010, the five cities in the basin (not including Hong Kong) were either using or close to using all of their allocations. This was particularly the case in Shenzhen, Dongguan, Heyuan and Huizhou, which rely heavily on the river.

Estimates for water use in 2020 predict huge shortages in Shenzhen, Huizhou and Dongguan. Although there are no specific estimates for Heyuan and Guangzhou, development and plans for the future are bound to result in increased demand. By that point, Hong Kong's needs will also have reached the limit of its allocation from the Dongjiang. (See Table 1)

It can be expected that the existing allocation of water, already stretched, will be unable to support continued demand growth. Flexibility in Hong Kong's water supply will decrease, and the allocation of water from the Dongjiang will change.

Table 1: Estimate for water use for cities in the Dongjiang basin (100 million cubic metres)

*use for the entire city of Guangzhou
** 106.64 million cubic metres in a normal year, 101.83 in a particularly dry year

Second, overlapping demand is worsening water quality and exacerbating shortages. In China, population, urbanisation and industrialisation are set to peak simultaneously, creating huge environmental pressures via stacking effect – and the Dongjiang basin is no exception.

Of the five cities in the basin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Dongguan are already fully urbanised, and are both highly reliant on and limited by water resources. Huizhou and Heyuan are also very reliant on allocations of water from the river, and these are the destination for industries being relocating from the Pearl River Delta region. With urbanisation and industrialisation happening in tandem, water pressures are greatly exacerbated. Agriculture, industry and cities overlap, creating multiple simultaneous environmental pressures far beyond the environment's ability to cope. By 2020 in Guangzhou, even if all waste water is treated up to standard before being released, the total pollutants released will still be beyond the amount the river can cope with.

Third, industrial relocations are creating multiple threats for water resources. Industries within the Pearl River Delta area of Guangdong province are relocating to the east, west and the mountainous north of the province – areas which are economically under-developed, ecologically weak and the sources of tributaries to the Pearl River. The primary reasons for the relocation were to decrease social and environmental pressure on the delta, and to balance the economic development of the entire province.

These incoming industries have caused rocketing demand for water, burdened local water resources and overwhelmed the water quality. The poor enforcement and supervision of water-related laws, along with inadequate waste water treatment facilities and standards further stressed loading capacity of the Dongjiang basin. Waste water emissions are increasing and there is intensive hydropower development, which means the rivers cannot cleanse themselves and their ability to absorb pollution is decreasing. Meanwhile, some resource-intensive industries, describing themselves as working in "new energy, new materials" have arrived, bringing about more mining, the destruction of vegetation and damage to water sources.

Fourth, the source of the Dongjiang has been ignored. The source is in Jiangxi province, in south-eastern China, and administratively belongs to that province. The Dongjiang Basin Management Bureau, based in Guangdong province, is responsible for the Dongjiang basin – yet it does not have the right to operate across the provincial border. This created a situation while responsibilities for the source of the Dongjiang are shared, the benefits are not. Xunwu county, where the Dongjiang rises, has made efforts to protect the river, but it is an extremely poor area. If long-lasting policy, financial and technical mechanisms are not in place, there is little that can be done.

Fifth, the investigation found a lack of basic protections for village rivers. Along the entire length of the river, village rubbish and waste water are discharged at will, rather than collected and treated. This both reflects a lack of awareness among villagers, and a failure of government management. Non-managed agricultural sources of pollution also worsen river pollution.

In conclusion, the Dongjiang has been overloaded. If the current mode of development were to proceed as is, the Dongjiang basin could not develop sustainably. All the cities that benefit from the Dongjiang water allocation today would be greatly restricted in future. While the "One country, two systems" principle guides relations between Hong Kong and the mainland, Hong Kong should not ignore the "strictest" new policy from the State Council on water resources management. The Hong Kong government should be open to explore whether it can set a cap on water usage and progressively reduce it. Hong Kong needs a long-term water strategy for the future.

Liu Su is Greater China manager at Civic Exchange. To read more, see Liquid Assets II – Industrial Relocation in Guangdong Province: Avoid Repeating Mistakes, Liquid Assets IIIA：Dongjiang Overloaded – 2011 Dongjiang Expedition Report and Liquid Assets IIIB: A photographic report of the 2011 Dongjiang Expediion.

The homepage photo is by Greenpeace from 2010. It shows a factory in Shenzhen discharging waste water into the Dongbao River, a tributary of the Dongjiang.

Friday Links: China’s Steve Jobs, Jeremy Lin, and a chengguan who does not give one shit

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 05:01 AM PDT

Via Buzzfeed's "The 50 Cutest Things That Ever Happened"

Hanggai is playing at 2 Kolegas tonight, and you should go. Links will always be here.

China's Steve Jobs? (He's reportedly now a billionaire.) "Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lei Jun, the jeans-and-black-shirt-wearing billionaire founder of Xiaomi, China's hottest smartphone company. And, if you believe Lei, the next Steve Jobs. // Beijing-based Xiaomi sells an Android smartphone called the MI-One. It's a high-powered phone based on a dual-core processor from Qualcomm but with a price far lower than many comparably equipped phones sold in China. That combination of raw power and a reasonable price tag has attracted huge attention from Chinese consumers: When the phone went on sale last fall, Xiaomi received 300,000 preorders in the first 34 hours. Less than a year after launch the company has sold more than 3 million MI-Ones and counting. The phone is hot. Red-hot. Apple hot." [Forbes]

Chinese fans mostly unhappy that Jeremy Lin's leaving the spotlight of the Big Apple, despite: "Analysts have argued that Houston, thanks to its experience with Yao, likely has a better understanding than New York of Lin's off-court value, especially in Asia. That's a notion not lost on users of Sina Weibo, where Lin boasts more than 2.8 million followers. 'The Rockets have tasted the sweetness of having a Chinese element and known the bitterness of losing it,' wrote a Weibo user posting under the name Canglan2010. 'This is a business transaction.'" [WSJ]

Corollary: About the Knicks and James Dolan screwing up – read this. [Jay Caspian Kang, Grantland]

Corollary: "'I love the New York fans to death,' Lin said. 'That's the biggest reason why I wanted to return to New York. The way they embraced me, the way they supported us this past season, was better than anything I've ever seen or experienced. I'll go to my grave saying that. What New York did for me was unbelievable. I wanted to play in front of those fans for the rest of my career.'" [Sports Illustrated]

Corollary: "Jeremy Lin That I Used To Know." [YouTube]

Just because you can prosecute doesn't mean you have to. "A 16-year-old boy (at the time of the crime) was in love with a 13-year-old girl and had lived together. Although both parents did not take further legal action, the boy was prosecuted by the authorities. First instance trail convicted him of rape, the court sentenced him 1 year and 3 months imprisonment." [China Hush]

I hate mosquitos probably more than anything in the world. "According to a statement from Beijing Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) Wednesday, the density of mosquitoes in Beijing has increased by 16 percent compared to last summer. According to monitoring results, more mosquitoes congregate in local residential communities, rather than other environments such as tourist sites or parks." [Global Times]

The public official who pissed off a lot of tourists (we linked to this story on Wednesday), has been identified. "On Sunday morning, a jeep carrying Liu Qi, the former mayor of Beijing and the architect of the 2008 Olympic Games, arrived at Mount Changbai accompanied by a single police car. Accordingly, park wardens suspended a shuttle bus to Heaven's Lake, which sits spectacularly in a volcanic crater at the top of the 9,000ft-tall mountain. // Tourists were left waiting in the parking lot, and a crowd of several thousand soon built up. // 'Thousands of people chanted "Refund! Refund!",' according to one witness, who posted several photographs of the scene onto Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, and gave her name as Ms Huang." [The Telegraph]

Review of Mao's Invisible Hand. "Their answer is something of a shocker, to experts and non-experts alike: The key to the survival and thriving of the Chinese Communist Party lies in its inheritance and continuing practice of Maoist 'guerrilla-style policy making.' That is, Beijing's ability to avoid collapse is not because of the abandonment of the core elements of Maoism but rather due to the continuing practice of it. // This is a rather bold argument. And it needs to overcome a few empirical and theoretical hurdles to be convincing." [Maochun Yu, WSJ]

Lip-dub of Beyonce interlude:

Finally…

An interview with filmmaker Ou Ning. [Dan Edwards, ArtSpace China]

Hidden old Communist bunker. [Atlantic Cities]

Here's what Patrick Henri Devillers (of Bo Xilai saga fame) looks like. [WSJ]

And Lin Jun's parents (of Luka Rocco Magnotta fame). [Shanghaiist]

Finally, finally…

Via QQ: Street peddler unable to get chengguan's attention.

How to be an Apple smuggler in China

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 04:45 AM PDT

Via Reuters: "The latest iPad has officially arrived in China, four months after its U.S. launch. But it was already widely available on the mainland, thanks to illicit imports from Hong Kong." [ more › ]

Presented By:

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 04:45 AM PDT

Getting to Know You: Queenie Yehenala

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 03:55 AM PDT

Date: Jul 20th 2012 6:51p.m.
Contributed by: clairebared

Top 10 Search List (July 20)

Posted: 20 Jul 2012 01:41 AM PDT

Here is today's real-time top 10 search list, recorded at 1:32PM.

1. 游泳队遇色狼 yóuyǒngduì yù sèláng – A 25 year-old man was caught last Friday peeping at the Chinese women's national swim team change room inside University of Leeds. The Chinese swim team has been preparing for the London Olympics at the university. Here's the article in Chinese.

2. 武汉领导坐轿 Wǔhàn lǐngdǎo zuòjiào – Yesterday, photos of two men seated on a raft carried through flooded streets of Wuhan by four men inspired a great deal of attention on microblog platforms. Many online users made snide remarks of the photo assuming the two men perched on the raft as self-important government officials. However, it turns out the two men are just employees of the Wuhan Huangbei District Center for Disease Control with special health needs requiring extra attention during the flooding. Here's the article in Chinese.

3. 小贩抱大腿 xiǎofàn bào dàtuǐ – A photo of a street vendor clinging onto a city management official's right leg struck a nerve with microblog users. The official in the photo appeared coldly indifferent to the vendor's desperate pleas, inspiring enough hate messages online to get himself suspended from duty. Here's the article in Chinese.

4. 进错房抱错姑娘 jìn cuò fang bào cuò gūniang – Last month, an intoxicated man in Anhui province walked into the wrong hotel room and attempted to initiate intimacy with an unknown woman. The young lady bit the man so hard out of self defense that he finally came to his senses and ran out of the room. The 24 year-old was arrested roughly a week later in his home for acting indecently towards a female. Here's the article in Chinese.

5. 劫持北京地铁安检员 jiéchí Běijīng dìtiě ānjiǎnyuán – Yesterday around 9PM, a man dressed in black attempted to kidnap a Beijing subway security check inspector at Hujialou Station exit. The assailant held the inspector captive with a knife pointed to her throat, all the while threatening to kill her. The police team could not successfully negotiate her release, and eventually ordered for the man to be shot. The victim is now safe with her family. Here's the article in Chinese.

6. 女医生害羞 nǚyīshēng hàixiū – In October last year, an elderly man was kicked in the lower regions from a neighborhood dispute and rushed to a local hospital in Anhui's Shucheng county for emergency operation. A female doctor was called in to treat the patient, but upon a quick inspection of his injuries refused to conduct immediate treatment because the part of the body in need of care was "inconvenient" for her to handle. When another doctor was finally ready to conduct the operation the patient's conditions had already deteriorated beyond salvage. The court has recently ordered for the hospital to pay the victim's family a 96,000 RMB fine to compensate for delaying the victim's treatment, contributing to his death from septic shock. Here's the article in Chinese.

7. 裸奔拦车 luǒbēn lánchē – This Tuesday around 7AM, a naked man appeared on the streets of Anhui's city of Hefei, beating at car windows and causing major disruptions in city traffic. More than 20 cars were vandalized within 30 minutes of his unexpected appearance. The man's fists were already severely wounded from his violent tantrum when policemen finally stabilized him. The authorities plan to contact the man's family once the local hospital confirms his mental state. Here's the article in Chinese.

8. 裸身女鬼 luǒshēn nǚguǐ – A young woman with long black hair clad in nothing but a nude-colored underwear and nip-guards turned up at the 4^th Annual Shenzhen Animation Festival held this Wednesday. Organizers of the event confirmed that the woman was not invited to be a part of the exhibition, but seemed prepared ahead of time to put on a good show. Many online users are referring to the woman as the "naked female ghost." On the other side of the exhibition room that day, another young woman appearing to be just as naked as the "female ghost," held a sign that read "seeking for a sugar daddy." Here's the article in Chinese.

9. 茉莉死因 Mòli sǐyīn – Internet celebrity and up-and-coming TV personality Molly was found stripped bare and dead in a hotel bed in Guangzhou this Monday morning. The forensic inspection of her corpse suggests that she was raped and killed at around 3AM the night before her discovery. Here's the article in Chinese.

10. 潘秀成 Fán Xiùchéng – Fan Xiucheng has been named to replace Dai Hua as the new Nanjing municipal party committee member and member of the Nanjing standing committee. Here's the article in Chinese.