Links » Crème » Friday Links: Liao Yiwu wins German Peace Prize, people now selling sex mushrooms, This American Life, and Gu Kailai confesses?
Links » Crème » Friday Links: Liao Yiwu wins German Peace Prize, people now selling sex mushrooms, This American Life, and Gu Kailai confesses? |
| Posted: 22 Jun 2012 03:30 AM PDT
Dazefeast is tomorrow starting at 4 pm at 2 Kolegas, for those in Beijing. Unrelated: the most interesting things happen between Wednesday and Friday, as we're about to show you in today's links. Has Gu Kailai just confessed to murder? If yes, expect China blogsophere to figuratively blow up soon. "Glamorous Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chongqing city boss Bo Xilai, has confessed to killing British businessman Neil Heywood, according to Chinese Communist Party sources." [The Asahi Shimbun] Americans in China (hey, that's me!). "It used to be that the American expats in China were the big shots. They had the money, the status, the know-how. But much of that has changed. What's it like to be an American living in China now? What does life in China offer Americans that they can't get here?" [This American Life] A collection of countryside slogans encouraging the one-child policy. "Pull it out! Abort it! Induce it! Anything but to give birth to it! … We'd rather allow blood to flow like a river than to allow an excess child to be born." [Offbeat China] Street vendors are now selling sex mushrooms. "One very enterprising street cleaner who makes additional income by hawking things off the street is now passing off artificial vajayjays as the long lost magic mushroom, and selling them for as much as 18,000RMB (US$2,800)! // He even has a highly authoritative sales pitch playing off his laptop on loop — the Xi'an TV news report which has since gone viral all over the world. // When one 'prospective buyer' questions the man about the veracity of the report, he answers matter-of-factly, 'It's on the news. How can it be fake?'" [Shanghaiist] Is the SCMP still relevant? (Not as long as it's behind a paywall, in my opinion.) "But this issue masks a much larger and more consequential one: the SCMP's relevance. What happened this week was merely years' worth of tension boiling over. The general consensus in Hong Kong is the SCMP has been fading as a relevant source of information since its halcyon days under the British, made worse by ownership changes and management shuffles that have further destabilized the paper and diminished morale." [Zhongnanhai] Liao Yiwu wins German Peace Prize. "Though his works tell of atrocities and suffering, both his own and that of his countrymen, his skilled style draws in readers from other cultures and is not without humor, Herbert Wiesner, secretary general of Germany's PEN Center for persecuted writers, told DW." [DW] China owns moon. It's gonna happen. "For all the talk of the Obama administration's 'pivot' to Asia, what if the flash point for U.S.-China conflict in the 21st century isn't the energy-rich atolls of the South China Sea or the minefields of the Taiwan Strait, but a bit farther away — say, about 200,000 miles from Earth?" [Foreign Policy] A gaokao rant, overdue. "A 12-minute video of television host Zhong Shan (@我是钟山 ) delivering a passionate rant against the gao kao has gone viral on Weibo, China's Twitter. (Readers can see it in all its glory here.)" [Tea Leaf Nation] Chinese climber beaten by Tibetan guides on Mount Everest. According to eyewitness: "I did see the permitless chap being ushered down the hill. The Tibetan rope fixers were sent up to get him. I saw them bringing him down the ropes from the North Col to [advanced base camp]. It was disgraceful. They literally kicked him down the ropes. It was a disgusting example of a pack of bullies egging each other on and literally beating him down the hill. It was absolutely unnecessary as he was offering no resistance and was scared out of his mind. The Tibetans should, and could, have just escorted him down the hill and let the authorities deal with him." [Outside] Two Nigerians rob six taxi drivers at knifepoint in five days. "Sina is reporting there were six robberies last week targeting taxi drivers in Foshan's Nanhai District, all of which were alleged to have been committed by Nigerian expatriates. The robberies totaled RMB11,000 in value, according to the Guangzhou Daily. So far one of the suspects, a 33-year old Nigerian man, has been arrested." [The Nanfang] Corollary: On Weibo. A story of a "porn firestorm." "Mr. Gu, an unmarried pharmacist in north China's Jilin province, never aspired to be a champion for privacy, much less porn. Yet, sometime this spring — probably in March — Mr. Gu, possessor of 95 downloaded pornographic films on his hard drive, uploaded the wrong photo to a popular Chinese bulletin board." [Bloomberg] Conviviality on the Beijing subway interlude, via 647 Miles Apart: Finally… Bus plunges into ravine, killing 17. [Huffington Post] "Why Chinese soccer matters." [Evan Osnos, New Yorker] On middle class discontent. [88 Bar] |
| Today’s China Readings June 22, 2012 Posted: 21 Jun 2012 05:35 PM PDT "The company has made a decision to continue investing heavily in Asia in terms of product development," Olivier Puech, the president of Nokia's Asia-Pacific operations, said in an interview Wednesday. "We will not compromise our commitment to China," he said on the sidelines of the Mobile Asia Expo, which opened in Shanghai. In an admission that could alarm the shareholders of his NASDAQ-listed company, Victor Koo (古永鏘), CEO of online video group Youku Inc 優酷, said that there is no stable business model for online video in China. on the increasingly public debate over whether or not to loosen real estate controls How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy – until they were caught on tape Oppenheimer & Co.'s Andy Yeung this morning reiterates a "Perform" rating on shares of Chinese search engine giant Baidu (BIDU), writing that while the stock has an "increasingly attractive valuation," he's concerned about how the company will "navigate" the "transition" he sees this year, meaning its challenge to monetize mobile use of the Internet. I've seen some rough-looking landings of helicopters at sea but this one takes first prize. It shows a Chinese navy Kamaov Ka-28 nearly crashing onto the stern of what looks like a Type 54 frigate while attempting to land in rough seas. Qing Xian, who is thought to be in his 40s, shocked his fellow monks by handing in his resignation from the monastery on June 9. Move was initiated by Hu Jintao and is consistent with his efforts to expose and combat corruption two of the top three countries for iOS downloads are now Asian, with the USA out front with 28 percent, but followed by China and Japan with 18 and 7 percent respectively Hunan TV anchor goes on an epic rant against the annual Gaokao test system. Taking weibo by storm. he is now a superstar, wonder if he will get into trouble A quarter of all apparel sold in China this year was sold online, he said. In five years, ecommerce will account for 10 percent of all retail sales. Consumer demand for online shopping is soaring, especially in second, third, fourth, and fifth-tier cities, where the brick-and-mortar retail sector is underdeveloped. duowei says more than 300 officials in guangzhou and shenzhen under investigation for corruption, cleanup campaign also launched in other provinces// China's factories are still under real and increasing pressure, according to the latest HSBC Flash PMI. The index fell from 48.4 in May to 48.1 in June – the lowest since last year. Guo Jinlong, A political ally of Chinese President Hu Jintao is the front-runner to become the Communist Party boss of Beijing, two independent sources said, allowing Hu to retain some political influence after he leaves office. if there's one thing the Asian giants can agree on it's their mutual distaste for each other, according to new survey results. scholar Liang Qichao's thoughts on civic and private morals are instructive. He said private morals are concerned only with the good of one's self, while civic morals demand people strive for the good of others. "Morals in China can be said to have been developed from an early age, but these morals are private virtues, while civic virtues are lacking," he said. China will open up its public utilities to private investment as part of the current privatization drive to bolster economic growth, the official Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, citing the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. After generations operating in the shadows of China's financial system, providing credit to places the state-owned banks ignored, underground lenders in the coastal city of Wenzhou are finally going legit. Chinese Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo told Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily website on Thursday that China was well able to fight back in case of any provocation. Two senior officials from southern China's Guangdong province are undergoing investigation by the Communist Party due to "discipline violations," reports Duowei News, an online news outlet run by overseas Chinese. The news outlet also said that more than 300 local officials have been placed under "double regulation" on suspicion of corruption Apple needs to clarify this// Prosecutors said that in 2010, at Zhang's request, Wu helped collect information on Chinese scholar and democracy advocate Cui Weiping and her movements during a visit she made to T At its core, the problem is philosophical: the Chinese Football Association operates the professional leagues, but it is also the body that supervises itself and investigates wrongdoing. The association has assembled what it calls an "independent professional league council" to chart a way forward. But until Chinese soccer gets anything like a system of checks and balances, its cries of reform are unlikely to convince the crowd. The Vietnamese law of the sea infringed China's territory sovereignty by putting China's Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands under Vietnam's sovereignty and jurisdiction, according to the representation. The Chinese government has raised the administrative status of Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands in the South China Sea from county-level to prefectural-level, according to a Thursday statement.The State Council, or China's cabinet, has approved the establishment of the prefectural-level city of Sansha to administer the three island groups and their surrounding waters, while the government seat will be stationed on Yongxing Island, part of the Xisha Islands, according to a statement from the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Yesterday, the Global Times again stepped directly into online controversy by running a piece by Zheng Ruolin (郑若麟), the European correspondent for Shanghai's Wenhui Bao, arguing that China is already "in the orbit of democratic nations." Zheng argued essentially that while "a number of scholars" have completely overblown the role of elections in democracies, elevating elections to a kind of holy standard, elections are not the be all and the end all. Beijing-based film and television investment company United Film Investment recently filed suit against the China Film Group in the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court. United alleges that the China Film Group violated a number of terms of the companies' agreement for the film My Own Swordsman, on which they cooperated, including "severe falsification" of box office profit reports In resource-rich, landlocked Mongolia, nationalism has often meant a wariness of its uncomfortably large neighbor to the south. Now, news that one of Mongolia's crown jewels — the copper-gold mining project known as Oyu Tolgoi — employs more than a third of its work force from China could set the stage for a surge in tensions between the two countries. Citron Research is pleased to present our analysis of Evergrande Real Estate Group. This research and analysis, compiled over several months, presents the conclusion that HK:3333 is essentially an insolvent company that has consistently presented fraudulent information to the investing public. The preliminary reading was 48.1 for a purchasing managers' index today from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics. Above-50 readings indicate expansion. The lowest crisis level was 40.9 in November 2008, when industrial production increased 5.4 percent from a year earlier, compared with a gain of 9.6 percent last month. Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd. (3333), China's second-biggest developer by sales, fell by the most since September in Hong Kong trading after it was targeted in a newsletter by short-seller Citron Research. Evergrande said claims in the report were untrue. SOMEONE HAD INSIDE INFO AND TRADED ON IT// good ideas in this post, but think scmp is a lost cause It seems strange, but the Ivory Coast striker is the latest in a line of high-profile football figures to take advantage of the attractive salaries on offer in the Chinese Super League (CSL). He will reportedly be paid $315,000 a week — the highest in the CSL. glimpse of a contentious debate In the past, ostensible campaigns to combat "news extortion," "fake news", "paid-for news" and other forms of media corruption have also been used to target legitimate hard news or investigative reporting. The timing of this campaign ahead of the 18th National Congress of the CCP might suggest a general vigilance by the authorities over news content regarded as sensitive, and that might upset the CCP session. abandoned, new high speed rail station at zijin. shandong. China bear porn After spending five years in Chinese prisons for her human rights work, a woman claims in Federal Court, she continued her work in the United States, until her new bosses fired her for being "insufficiently religious" and for refusing to pray with her bosses every day. The best way to read this blog is to subscribe by email, especially if you are in China, as Sinocism is still mostly blocked by the GFW. The email signup page is here, outside the GFW. You can also follow me on @niubi or Sina Weibo @billbishop. Comments/tips/suggestions/donations are welcome, and feel free to forward/recommend to friends. Thanks for reading. No related posts. |
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