Blogs » Politics » Photo: Burma on the Left, China on the Right, by Ilmari Hyvönen

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• Photo: Burma on the Left, China on the Right, by Ilmari Hyvönen
• Chinese Troops Prepare for Spillover From Myanmar Civil War
• Just to Make Sure
• Putting Tibet Back On The Map
• Dirty Business for China’s Internet Scrubbers
• General’s Son Detained in Connection with Gang Rape
• Chinese State Media Shares Powerful Map of ‘Cancer Villages’ Creeping Inland
• In Pictures: The Polluted Rivers of China
• Nine Tips for “Drinking Tea” With Chinese Police
• How to Fix China’s Income Inequality

Photo: Burma on the Left, China on the Right, by Ilmari Hyvönen Posted: 22 Feb 2013 10:46 PM PST Burma on the Left, China on the Right © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Ilmari Hyvönen Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese Troops Prepare for Spillover From Myanmar Civil War Posted: 22 Feb 2013 10:29 PM PST As international businesses circle an apparently reforming Myanmar, civil war continues to burn in the north of the country despite Chinese-hosted peace talks. Unsettled by stray shells hurtling over the border into Yunnan, China has started intense military training in the area in case any more serious spillover should occur. From Edward Wong at The New York Times: The training has been taking place in the hills of Yunnan Province. It borders Kachin State in northern Myanmar, where a civil war between an ethnic Kachin rebel army and the Burmese Army has been unfolding. The fighting intensified in late December, and Chinese officials and news organizations reported that shells had landed in China and that Kachin refugees had begun living in hotels and the homes of family and friends in Yunnan. […] The current round of fighting in Kachin State has centered on the town of Laiza, from which the Kachin army controls an autonomous area of the state. This winter, the Burmese Army has been pressing an offensive to capture Laiza or crucial military positions around it. The army has deployed fighter jets and heavy artillery, and residents have said civilians were killed. […] Chinese officials have expressed concern this winter over the violence, especially artillery shells falling within Yunnan; at least four have landed since Dec. 30. There are also worries about a potential flood of refugees. Human Rights Watch reported in June last year that at least 7-10,000 Kachin refugees had crossed the border in the previous twelve months, and had not received adequate aid or protection from China. Two months later, they were reportedly forced to return, though state media claimed that those who went back had done so of their own accord. The Wall Street Journal's Deborah Kan and south-east Asia bureau chief Patrick McDowell discussed the conflict and China's stake in it earlier this month, as the peace talks began: © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Burma, civil war, human rights watch, kachin, military training, Myanmar, refugees, Yunnan Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Just to Make Sure Posted: 22 Feb 2013 10:10 AM PST Radios with tuning knobs soldered to a fix position may sound last century North Korean. However, it has been confirmed that Nokia's brand new flagship Lumia 920/920T Windows Phones offered to mainland China market are 'hard-coded' to an app store run by the Chinese government. When owners of these Windows phones attempted to connect to the Microsoft app store, it would be re-directed to the state run app store hosted inside mainland China. Even if the owner set 'region' to other places, or travel outside mainland China, the phone would still refuse to connect to the official Microsoft store but rather redirect to the Chinese government store. The government-run store in China is heavily customized. For example, you will not find Skype or Facebook apps. This could prove to be a big blunder to Nokia's Chinese market. As Apple has dominated the 'fashion' population, and Android commands the 'feature' buyers, only a small number of 'geeky' users are left for Nokia's renewed high-end marketing approach. Unfortunately, this group is most sensitive to hint of information control. A few months ago, Microsoft announced that it would retire the aged MSN Messenger worldwide except in mainland China. The aged instant messaging service was replace by Skype. So they knew....

Putting Tibet Back On The Map Posted: 22 Feb 2013 05:50 PM PST One of the central grievances behind recent unrest in Tibet is the marginalization of Tibetan language. While Tibetan is not among the 40% of China's minority languages already threatened with extinction, policies such as its relegation to secondary status in schools have fueled fears for its long-term survival. The final messages of at least two of the 100+ Tibetan self-immolators within China specifically express this anxiety. The preservation of Tibetan place names is particularly politically charged. References to locations in Sichuan or Qinghai rather than in Kham or Amdo are often fiercely contested, and the erosion of Tibetan toponyms has also taken place at a lower level. In one pre-Communist example, the town of Dartsedo (or Dajianlu 打箭炉, in the original Chinese rendering based on the Tibetan) was renamed Kangding 康定 in the early twentieth century. Adding insult to injury, this newer label is widely believed to commemorate the "pacification" or conquest of Kham. A new project by the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe, Students for a Free Tibet and the Tibetan Youth Congress aims to secure the future of Tibetan place names by adding them to Google Maps: Under the Chinese occupation many Tibetan towns and cultural landmarks not only were destroyed but also renamed with new Chinese names. To stop this ongoing attempt to systematically wipe out the Tibetan identity, language and tradition, we are starting a worldwide petition asking Google to put Tibet's heritage back on the map – by officially adding the traditional Tibetan names written in the Tibetan alphabet. So from February 13th 2013, exactly 100 years after Tibet's declaration of independence, we are collecting all the information about Tibetan landmarks on this map. Another valuable resource on Tibetan place names is the Places Portal at the Tibetan & Himalayan Library (via High Peaks Pure Earth's Dechen Pemba). © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Google, maps, qinghai, Sichuan, Tibetan culture, Tibetan language Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Dirty Business for China’s Internet Scrubbers Posted: 22 Feb 2013 05:50 PM PST A recent Southern People Weekly article translated by CDT revealed the world of official espionage in China: officials bugging rivals to gather ammunition, and allies to assess their loyalty. A report at Caixin describes another weapon in the ambitious official's arsenal. Former Baidu employee Gu Dengda spun his knowledge of internal complaints procedures and network of tech company contacts into a 50 million yuan business. Yage Time Advertising Ltd. illegally scrubbed unfavorable web content for corporate clients including China Mobile, Pizza Hut, Yoshinoya and automotive joint venture FAW-Volkswagen. Some 60% of the firm's business, though, came from officials. Eventually, Yage established a content partnership with the Beijing city government's Qianlong web portal, where it published negative coverage of various companies before seeking payment for taking it down. Gu, along with at least nine others from the internet-scrubbing industry, is now awaiting trial for bribery, among other charges. From Wang Chen, Wang Shanshan, Ren Zhongyuan and Zhu Yishi at Caixin: As part of Gu's strategy, dozens of Yage staffers spent the workday surfing the Internet in search of negative news, comments and postings about government officials. Any official whose reputation seemed to be threatened would be contacted and offered Yage's services as soon as negative information surfaced online. High season for Yage's business with local government clients was usually just before the National People's Congress and China People's Political Consultative Conference held every March in Beijing. It's around conference time that officials typically come under attack from whistleblowers. It's also when these officials are often willing to pay a premium to see negative publicity vanish. […] Arrested with Gu was Hu Chunyu, the financial news channel chief at Qianlong, a website tied to state-run media including the Beijing Daily newspaper, the Beijing Radio Station and Beijing TV. The site is managed by the Propaganda Department at the Beijing Municipality's Communist Party Committee. A few years after its founding in 2000, Qianlong started outsourcing part of its news production to public relations companies. In 2009, Yage won a more than 100,000 yuan-a-year contract to supply business channel content. Yage also won the right to post and delete articles on that web page. […] "We think Qianlong is shameless," [a] source said. "But you really can't cross it. It's still one of the Beijing government's official propaganda portals." Four Baidu employees were fired in July last year for carrying out paid deletions, and three of the four were subsequently arrested. At the time, Marbridge Consulting's Mark Natkin told The Wall Street Journal that the problem was far more widespread: "There's no major Chinese Internet company that has been able to completely avoid this sort of thing. It's just very difficult to police everybody all the time." © Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: Baidu, bribery, Internet crime, Internet entrepreneurs, National People's Congress, People's Political Consultative Conference, public relations, two sessions, whistle-blower Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

General’s Son Detained in Connection with Gang Rape Posted: 22 Feb 2013 11:42 AM PST Li Guanfeng (also known as Li Tianyi), the 17-year-old son of People's Liberation Army general and renowned singer Li Shuangjiang, has been arrested for involvement in a gang rape. In 2011, the younger Li was arrested after assaulting an elderly couple while illegally driving a BMW. The case generated anger online as netizens expressed resentment over the privileges enjoyed by the so-called "rich second-generation." From China Radio International: CCTV cited the Public Security Bureau of Beijing's Haidian District as saying that Li Guanfeng and four others were taken into police custody on Wednesday and held on suspicion of gang raping a woman on February 17. The woman reported to police on February 19 that she was taken to a hotel and gang raped on February 17 after drinking with Li and others in a bar in Haidian District. This isn't the first time that Li had a brush with the law. In September 2011, the 15-year-old was sent to a government correctional facility for a one-year confinement after he was found to have physically assaulted a couple and damaged their car in a dispute near a Beijing residential area. He was only released in September 2012. © Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: gang rape, li shuangjiang, li tianyi, second-generation rich Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese State Media Shares Powerful Map of ‘Cancer Villages’ Creeping Inland Posted: 22 Feb 2013 07:33 AM PST This map recently appeared in the Global Times' Weibo feed, and has been shared over 700 times since. (Via Weibo) This article also appears on ChinaFile, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. It appears that Chinese environmental activism is going further mainstream. The Sina micro-blogging account of Global Times, a well-known Communist Party mouthpiece, has just shared news about the horrific proliferation of "cancer villages" in China. Earlier today, @环球时报 wrote: A map of China's 'cancer villages': According to the Beijing Times, the Ministry of Environmental Protection recently published the 'Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Prevention and Control of Environmental Risks from Chemicals.' Among its content is a clear demonstration that because of chemical poisoning, 'cancer villages' and other serious [threats to] social health have begun to emerge in many areas. Moreover, according to media person Deng Fei, these … 'cancer villages' are spreading from the middle of Eastern China to the middle of Western China. Euphemistically-tagged "media person" Deng Fei might better be described as an environmental activist with a decidedly Web 2.0 twist. As Tea Leaf Nation's Liz Carter reported on February 16, Deng Fei recently caused a social media sensation when he "encouraged users of Sina Weibo, China's Twitter, to share pictures of polluted rivers from their hometowns, taking on local issues in a national campaign." At that time, Deng's campaign appeared to have irked at least authorities. A lawyer named Gan Yuanchuan wrote that "officials from Weifang, Shandong sent some of their subordinates to Beijing to prevent media from breaking the news," a post that was later deleted by censors. Global Times' recent sharing of this powerful image, accompanied by a weeping emoticon, perhaps signals that higher authorities have decided not only to get behind Deng Fei, but also to open reportage of the existence of so-called "cancer villages." This refers to Chinese villages whose cancer rates have spiked, each a horrific byproduct of China's runaway development and lax enforcement of environmental protection laws. As TLN's Shelley Jiang wrote  in September 2012, Chinese officials have previously acknowledged the existence of "cancer villages," but there has been a notable discrepancy between official and unofficial tallies. With the admission of the villages' spread, that gap may begin to close.

In Pictures: The Polluted Rivers of China Posted: 22 Feb 2013 07:00 AM PST Tencent News recently put together a photo story about the "colorful waters of China", Offbeat China has translated the captions of the pictures. Written by Abby · comments (0) Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

Nine Tips for “Drinking Tea” With Chinese Police Posted: 22 Feb 2013 06:43 AM PST (Wikimedia Commons) Back in September 2012, Tea Leaf Nation translated in part one Chinese journalist's first person account of his "tea-drinking" session, a euphemism for police interrogation. Recently, Oiwan Lam of Global Voices translated the nine tips shared by social media activist Wu Gan, who is a regular "tea-drinker," on the do's and don'ts when being "honored" with such an occasion: 1. Don't be afraid and don't be angry. Try your best not to be provoked by violence or insult. 2. Only talk about yourself. Try your best not to provide information about others and play dumb. "I don't recall," "I forgot," "I don't know," and "I don't understand" are good excuses. 3. Tell the police that you believe in what you have done and that you are prepared to face the consequences. 4. Don't take their questions personally. Ask them not to make what they are doing into a personal vendetta against you too. 5. Don't humiliate or criticize them during or after the tea talk. Don't humiliate them on the Internet after the fact, unless they humiliated you. 6. Don't trust them and don't assume that you'll be able to persuade them to take your side. Don't believe that there are things that they will not do. 7. If you don't want to engage with them, you may consider signing the guarantee document. [This document certifies a citizen's promise to follow police instructions, which might stipulate that they may not blog about certain topics or discuss politics online. This document is not legally binding, so you do not have to abide by what you have signed.] 8. If you want to minimize risk, avoid getting involved in local incidents. Pay attention to other provinces as you are outside their jurisdiction. [Internal security police usually operate at the provincial level. The standard procedure for carrying out cross-border operations has to go through the local police unit, which requires a lot of paper work.] 9. They may try to put pressure on your friends, family, or employer. Try to tell your social circle about it and get their support for your cause. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

How to Fix China’s Income Inequality Posted: 22 Feb 2013 12:44 AM PST China's much-anticipated plan to tackle income inequality has struggled to reach a consensus, writes the Carnegie Endowment's Yukon Huang in The Wall Street Journal: The debate was unusually broad, ranging from the need for property taxes and agricultural support prices to the role of the state in influencing returns to firms and labor. Given the lack of details and firm targets, it's not clear whether this plan will effectively tackle the sources of inequality that are most harmful to development. Rapidly growing economies tend to experience widening disparities. China's growth has lifted some 600 million out of poverty even as its Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has soared to 0.47 today from 0.25 in the mid-1980s. Although high, China's Gini is comparable to that of the U.S. and other relatively successfully Asian economies such as Singapore and Malaysia. The Gini number is less important than the reasons behind it. Inequality is positive when it emanates from productivity increases, entrepreneurial risk-taking and structural changes that produce sustained growth. Harmful inequality comes from distortions that ultimately undermine the development process. It is the latter kind of inequality that Beijing has been slow to address. First, policy distortions have exaggerated geographical disparities. Second, the government budget has failed to provide equal access to social services. And finally, links between government-party officials and commercial activities have led to excessive rent-seeking. For The Diplomat, Eve Cary writes that time will tell if the Communist Party can execute on its plan and preserve its legitimacy: Indeed, the plan, in development for several years, is quite ambitious. It is the specific points–such as garnishing more profits from SOEs and spending more on social services–that have a better chance of success, though at first they may face considerable political pushback. It will be interesting to see how far these reforms go, considering that the new Politburo Standing Committee is dominated by the Jiang faction, with 6 of the 7 protégés of the former president, according to Brookings Institution scholar Cheng Li. Of those 6, 4 are princelings, or sons of Chinese Communist Party revolutionary heroes. In general, Jiang's faction- sometimes referred to as the Shanghai gang- and the princelings promote the interests of the middle class, entrepreneurs, and the coast, as opposed to the populists, who tend to promote the interests of the common people. There are other reforms in the pipeline, as well. Last November the State Council backed policy changes that aim to strengthen the property rights of farmers, including such measures as identifying and registering land, and issuing land ownership certificates to farmers. This policy was pushed through by outgoing populist premier Wen Jiabao. Affordable housing has also been a hot issue: in 2012, the central government allocated 37.1 billion dollars (233.26 billion yuan) for subsidized housing projects, up almost 40% from the previous year. Of all the problems that China faces in the next 25 years, the income gap–and all of the associated issues–is perhaps the most dangerous for the Communist Party and future social stability. For example, in its 2013 Social Development Blue Book, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences notes that there have been 100,000 "mass incidents" (large protests) every year for several years, and that half of these protests are related to land grabs. It has become a commonly-held belief among China watchers that the CCP has remained in power through a Faustian bargain with its people–it retains power as long as it maintains economic growth. With so many left behind, there is a growing contingent who are left out of this deal, and they are become increasingly vocal. Despite the elitist bent of the new Standing Committee, one hopes that they have the foresight to continue to focus on this critical issue, and develop effective solutions to it. See also previous CDT coverage of China's income inequality. © Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: communist party, economic reform, income inequality, political reform, reform, wealth gap Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

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