Blogs » Politics » Chinese Parents of Gay Children Call for Equal Marriage Rights
Blogs » Politics » Chinese Parents of Gay Children Call for Equal Marriage Rights |
- Chinese Parents of Gay Children Call for Equal Marriage Rights
- Ministry of Truth and Harmony? Chinese Web Users Crowdsource Re-naming of Top Censor
- Chinese Web Users View List of Their Representatives and Ask: Who Are These People?
- From ‘Zombies’ to the ‘Reincarnation Party’ — Why It’s So Hard to Take a Census in Weibo Nation
- Secretary of State John Kerry on China
- Interactive Maps of China’s Most–and Least–Polluted Places
| Chinese Parents of Gay Children Call for Equal Marriage Rights Posted: 27 Feb 2013 06:00 PM PST More than 100 parents of gays and lesbians from different parts of China have sent an open letter [zh] to delegates of China's National People's Congress asking the government to legalize same-sex marriage. The letter, published with the help of the Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays affiliate in China, details the difficulties gays and lesbians experience in China and the anxieties this causes for the parents of gay children. About 60 million homosexuals live in China, about 4 percent of the population, according to the letter:
The news of the letter came after two Beijing lesbians were not allowed to register at a marriage registry earlier in the week. Gay marriage has since become a hot topic on the popular Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo. A search of "gay marriage" yielded [zh] 22,994,467 discussions on the afternoon of February 27, 2013.  A lesbian couple holding a sign that says "we want to get married." (A screenshot from youku) The National People's Congress is scheduled to convene for its annual session on March 5, 2013. Although none of the congressional delegates have commented yet, many Chinese intellectuals think it's encouraging to witness open discussion about the topic. Lawyer Yuan Yulai commented [zh]:
Famous columnist Lian Peng wrote [zh]:
Li Mu, another Chinese columnist living in Canada was very optimistic [zh]:
However, some netizens expressed sharp criticism towards gay marriage. Lu Qi, editor of a history website, urged [zh] for a ban on gay marriage:
It's not the first time the issue of gay marriage has been brought to the table in China. As early as 2007, a survey done by sexologist Li Yinhe showed [zh] that in China's middle- and large-sized cities, more than 80 percent believe homosexuals are created as equal as heterosexuals. In March 2012, 10 parents of Chinese homosexuals wrote to China's top legislative and political advisory bodies to call for legislation criminalizing discrimination against gays. A recent estimate by leading sexologist Zhang Beichuan claimed that approximately 10 million homosexual individuals in China are married to heterosexual partners, and that nearly 80 to 90 percent of gay men are already married to or will eventually marry heterosexual women. Written by Abby · comments (0) |
| Ministry of Truth and Harmony? Chinese Web Users Crowdsource Re-naming of Top Censor Posted: 27 Feb 2013 12:41 PM PST  (Issac Mao/flickr) Journalist Zhou Zhiyi (@周志懿) tweeted on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, the rumor that China's two censorship organs, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) and General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) will merge as a part of the widely-expected reshuffling of China's central bureaucracy. What will the merged entity be called? Zhou's source at SARFT tell him it will be SARFTPP, which is unimaginative, cumbersome and unpronounceable in Chinese as well as in English. In the comments section, China's social media users have put forth other suggestions that may be more descriptive:
Readers are invited to choose their favorite moniker–or offer a new one–in the comments section. |
| Chinese Web Users View List of Their Representatives and Ask: Who Are These People? Posted: 27 Feb 2013 12:24 PM PST  The Great Hall of the People in Beijing will soon host China's National People's Congress. (kafka4prez/Flickr) On February 27, People's Daily posted a long list containing 2,987 names on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter. These names are completely unknown to the average Chinese person, yet these are the supposed elected representatives of China's 1.3 billion people. They will attend the National People's Congress (NPC), an event of considerable pomp that will be held in Beijing in early March. In a post accompanying the list, People's Daily wrote, "In the next five years, they will represent us, and be subject to our oversight." China's Internet users immediately rejected the Daily's suggestion that those on the list are anything more than rubber stamps. Most commentators to the post asked "Who are they? How did they come out of nowhere to represent me?" "I have never voted for anyone to represent me. I have never even seen what a ballot looks like. How could I elect anyone?" one social media user fumed. Another quipped, "Hello representatives. Congratulations on being selected into the club of power. All the best to you. I wonder how many of you will be unseated soon by scandals?" @非哲 tweeted, "I refuse to be represented. In this information age, I speak for myself." The list contains at least one familiar name, that of Shen Jilan, whom Tea Leaf Nation profiled last year as "the longest serving rubberstamp" in the NPC, who has held her seat since the days of the Great Leap Forward. The list also includes 13 representatives from Taiwan, which draw some curiosity from China's Internet users. In fact, none of the supposed representatives of Taiwan's 23 million people was born in Taiwan except the wife of former World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin, who defected from Taiwan to the People's Republic. |
| From ‘Zombies’ to the ‘Reincarnation Party’ — Why It’s So Hard to Take a Census in Weibo Nation Posted: 27 Feb 2013 07:52 AM PST  (jonrussell/Flickr) Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, announced on February 20 that it had surpassed half a billion users — more people than live in South America, and approximately the population of North America. Thickly-settled Europe edges out Weibo by about 230,000, but the micro-blogging platform blows away Australia in this regard. In any event, we are talking about a membership on the order of continents — a remarkable fact, given that, unlike Facebook, its usership is almost exclusively Chinese. As many readers will be aware, Facebook and Twitter are among the Western platforms inaccessible in China, thanks to the government's so-called Great Firewall. Internet blocks create a vacuum that domestic entrepreneurs have rushed to fill. In China, chat client QQ provides a service comparable to the west's AIM or Windows Live Messenger. Then there are the ailing Facebook imitators — Ren Ren, Pengyou, Kaixin001 — which have struggled to sustain their respective user bases in recent years. Weibo, meanwhile, has steamrolled competitors to become the social networking service (SNS) of choice for China's growing bourgeoisie. It is now, as the Death Star's commanding officer would say, the ultimate power in the universe. Sort of. On the heels of Sina Weibo's announcement comes speculation that its achievement may be a hollow one. According to TechinAsia, Sina admitted in its 2013 post-report earnings call that only 46.3 million (about ten percent) of its virtual content of Weibo users log on every day. This lack of fervor could be forgiven if Weibo users maintained a steady pitter-patter of activity, logging on, say, a few times a week. Alas, on that same earnings call, the micro-blogging platform said that roughly the same nine to ten percent of its users are active over the course of a year. What's going on? The discrepancy between membership and active users may be due, in part, to the "zombie" phenomenon. With the rise of social media, China has seen an outbreak of cowboy enterprises that generate online accounts for money. These accounts are not tied to any real person; they post no content of their own. Rather, these "zombies" can be automatically deployed to follow a particular user, re-post that user's comments, and generally create "buzz." In effect, wealthy individuals or organizations can parlay financial resources into instant "popularity." To further explicate the gap between counted and active users — and to add another supernatural metaphor — Weibo also features an untold number of "reincarnated" users. Per government censorship policies, employees at Sina Weibo regulate users' conversations. If a user posts something controversial, he risks having his post deleted — or, in an extreme case, losing his account altogether. This user may "give up the ghost," only to come back as another user with a slightly different handle (often the same name with "Life2" [ 二世] or "Life3" [ 三世] appended). Reincarnation buys him a period of anonymity to speak more freely — until censors catch on again. It also means Weibo may be counting users more than once. There are other, more banal possibilities, of course. It could be that real, flesh-and-blood people join Weibo, participate for a time, then simply lose interest, deciding they have better things to do than "follow" and be followed. Maybe they reach a point of exhaustion with Sina Weibo's interface or functionality. Users may be lured away by sexy up-and-comers like WeChat, which many believe will eventually overtake Weibo in popularity. Or maybe Chinese netizens are inherently fickle, and no amount of clever web-design can hold their attention for long. No one seems to know for certain. But, from a developer's point of view, these possibilities are all equally discouraging. Compare Sina Weibo's numbers to Facebook's user activity stats. As a truly global site, Facebook squashes its Chinese counterpart with an estimated 1.06 billion users. But, more importantly, Facebook reports, 50 percent of its users log on every day. Among the key 18-34 year old demographic, nearly half do so within minutes of waking up, 28 percent before they even get out of bed. These mind-boggling statistics hint at a sort of addiction, which may set off alarm bells for some. But they also constitute resounding proof that the fuss about Facebook is genuine. When Facebook went public last year, Mark Zuckerberg had money — not zombies — on the brain. Western nations are not necessarily above e-necromancy. In early 2011, it surfaced that the U.S. government engaged private intelligence firms to create zombies on Facebook, Twitter, and anachronistically, MySpace in a covert effort to influence public opinion. Still, China is, by all indications, an environment where fakery runs especially rampant: the country has graduated from counterfeit designer goods to whole retail operations, from fake Apple and Ikea stores to a knock-off Disney World outside Beijing. As such, it is hardly surprising that the latest milestone from China's social media giant may be more sizzle than substance. |
| Secretary of State John Kerry on China Posted: 27 Feb 2013 08:11 AM PST  When it came to China, Secretary of State John Kerry's confirmation hearing touched on a little bit of everything. Here is what he said he wants:
What has garnered all the attention, however, is what the Secretary said with regard to the pivot: I'm not convinced that increased military ramp-up is critical yet. I'm not convinced of that. That's something I'd want to look at very carefully when and if you folks confirm me and I can get in there and sort of dig into this a little deeper. But we have a lot more bases out there than any other nation in the world, including China today. We have a lot more forces out there than any other nation in the world, including China today. And we've just augmented the president's announcement in Australia with additional Marines. You know, the Chinese take a look at that and say, what's the United States doing? They trying to circle us? What's going on? And so, you know, every action has its reaction. It's the old — you know, it's not just the law of physics; it's the law of politics and diplomacy. I think we have to be thoughtful about, you know, sort of how we go forward. Secretary Kerry's apparent unease with the pivot has unsurprisingly set the Chinese press all atwitter and given Chinese analysts some hope that President Obama has appointed a kinder, gentler Secretary of State. The major Chinese state-supported newspapers—the Global Times, People's Daily, and Xinhua—highlighted his remarks on the pivot and then offered some thoughts on Kerry's likely diplomatic approach: China Institute of International Studies' Ruan Zongze: "Compared with Clinton's tough diplomatic approach, Kerry as a moderate democrat is expected to stress the role of bilateral or multilateral dialogues"; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Ni Feng: Kerry's "diplomatic measures" will "greatly embody Obama's concepts." In reviewing Secretary Kerry's congressional voting record, Chinese observers also noted that he "generally voted in favor of bills conducive to promoting the development China-U.S. relations and generally voted against or expressed different opinions for bills not conducive to China-U.S. relations." Overall, as People's Daily observed, "Kerry stresses more on coordination rather than confrontation in foreign relations." Secretary Kerry does not, of course, stand alone in his questioning of the pivot. CSIS Senior Associate Edward Luttwak recently suggested in a panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations that the United States should refrain from putting itself front and center in Asia; instead, it should give the other countries in the region time to coalesce among themselves. This is an attractive idea—it conserves U.S. resources and keeps the United States out of Beijing's crosshairs, at least a little bit. However, it's not entirely practical. Some of our allies—such as Japan and South Korea—don't actually get along that well right now and may need a gentle push from the United States. Also, a relatively inchoate set of cross-cutting alliances or joint military exercises in the region is quite different from a well-thought-out, well-designed regional security effort that can mobilize assets efficiently. By suggesting that the pivot may be out of favor, Secretary Kerry has also drawn into question U.S. credibility. Officials and analysts abroad have already raised doubts about U.S. staying power in the Asia Pacific; Secretary Kerry's doubts will only add fuel to the fire. And Secretary Kerry might recast his "action-reaction" narrative. For most observers outside China, it was Chinese assertiveness that was the action, while the U.S. pivot was, in large measure, the reaction. Secretary Kerry understandably wants to make his mark on U.S. foreign policy over the next few years, and he appears to be setting himself a challenging agenda, including making progress on a free trade agreement with Europe and restarting the Middle East peace talks. However, the original logic of the pivot—ensuring security in the Asia Pacific and taking advantage of the region's economic dynamism through a free trade agreement—still stands. It's too early to pivot away. |
| Interactive Maps of China’s Most–and Least–Polluted Places Posted: 27 Feb 2013 03:47 AM PST This article by Eli Bildner originally appeared on Tea Leaf Nation on February 20, 2013 and is republished as part of a content sharing agreement. Nearly five weeks ago, Beijing experienced its worst day of air quality on record: Levels of PM2.5 — small particulates that can cause lung, cardiovascular and respiratory disease — soared to more than 30 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization. Air Quality in China — A Snapshot
Since then, reporting on China's "airpocalypse" has been accompanied by what seems like a monochromatic slideshow of the country's iconic cities — Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin —all smothered in thick smog. Indeed, China's most populous and prosperous cities are among the epicenters of this latest pollution crisis. In Tianjin, for instance, levels of PM2.5 hit 577 on February 9, the eve of the Chinese New Year. In Beijing, sales of New Years' fireworks dropped 37% after the municipal government asked residents to limit their use. But air quality in China is also a nationwide problem — a predicament that affects cities with far less name recognition than Beijing or a Shanghai. Last week, the People's Daily reported that of the 74 key cities monitored by China's Ministry of Environmental Protection, all 74 reported "excessive" PM2.5 concentrations on February 10, the first day of the Chinese New Year. And as a glance at pollution figures from this morning shows, hazardous air conditions remain in cities throughout China, from Urumqi (with a PM2.5 concentration of 511 micrograms per cubic meter, or 20 times the recommended limit) to Guangzhou.
China's most polluted cities 1. Xingtai, Hebei
China's least polluted cities: 1. Haikuo, Hainan Written by Tea Leaf Nation · comments (0) |
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